A New Batch of iTunes U Podcasts...

Having caught up with my podcast listening over vacation it's time for some new on-line courses...

photo from photos8.com (you really should check out this site if you need stock photos)

The Book of Revelation almost didn't make the cut for inclusion in the Christian canon, and there's no telling how much happier Western Christianity might have been without it.  Having literally written the book on Revelation this course appears to be an in-depth exegesis by Dr. Louis A. Brighton (Professor Emeritus of New Testament Exegetical Theology at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO) who apparently will be taking this troubling book very, very seriously.

Zombies! The Living Dead in Literature, from the University of Alabama promises to be a real hoot.

[Updated to add: Yep, it was a hoot.]

What Darwin Got Wrong by Professor Jerry Fodor may be worth a listen.  This lecture is apparently drawn on the controversial book of the same name by Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini.

The History of Modern Mathematics (1906) by David Eugene Smith is featured in the USF Lit2Go series.

In Tales of Vampires and the Undead, Dr. Rebecca Haynes will "look at tales of vampires and the undead with special reference to Central and Eastern Europe and some orthodox funeral customs used to placate and hopefully prevent their return as revenants to the world of the living."

[This was actually a quite scholarly lecture on the European folklore surrounding the topic, from which Bram Stoker drew his inspiration.]

Religion in History: Conflict, Conversion and Coexistence is offered by The Open University.

[I've also added Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Stoker's Dracula, both from the USF Lit2Go program.]

As always, these courses are free to anyone with an iTunes account or (in most cases) by visiting the host institutions.

No Excuses

My Hoyt Havoc and I were inseparable this last week...

Purchased used from a very serious bowhunter who set it up as a pure hunting tool, my Hoyt Havoc XT 2000 dual cam compound bow is compact, very fast, and extremely quiet.  It's capable of such fine accuracy that I was forced to named it "No Excuses" after its first trip to the range.  I used it that first season to collect my Second Chance Buck.  About the only fault I find with it is common to all compound bows - the metal riser sucks the heat from my hands in cold weather.  This season I gave up on light arrows and mechanical broadheads.  I put Three Rivers Archery weight tubes in my Beman ICS Hunter carbon arrows and installed Muzzy MX-3 broadheads.  I zero'd the pins at 20, 30, and 40 yards (this last distance is intended for challenging practice rather than use in the field).  I was running the bow cranked down to it's full 70 pound pull for practice but backed off a full turn mid-week; a fella needs a bow he can draw without a warm-up once he's out hunting.  I saw the ten point buck I'm interested in three different times this last week but not once did he grace me with a shot.  One evening he loitered for 45 minutes in the vicinity of my buddy Greg's stand while I watched a mess of does from my ambush spot.  Problem was Greg was hunting does and I was after the buck.  Guess that's why we call it hunting instead of deer shooting.  Our host Tim shot a dandy buck his one morning in the river bottom.  Greg tagged a nice doe on Friday.  Alas, I have nothing to show for my efforts...yet.  I have until the end of December to try again...

The Gettysburg Address

One hundred forty-seven years ago today Abraham Lincoln spoke these 262 powerful, perfectly chosen words as he dedicated the Soldier's National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania...

Image of the Nicolay draft courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth
on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing
whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so
dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-
field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of
that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave
their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether
fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate…we cannot
consecrate…we cannot hallow…this ground. The brave men,
living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it
far above our poor power to add or detract. The world
will little note nor long remember what we say here, but
it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the
living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly
advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the
great task remaining before us…that from these honored
dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which
they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here
highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain;
that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of
freedom; and that government of the people, by the people,
for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

November 19, 1863

If you'd like to know more about the Gettysburg Address and the marvelously complex man who wrote and presented it, I strongly recommend Gary Wills 1992 book Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America.  Wills does an incredible job peeling away the layers of what some people incorrectly assume was a hasty piece of writing and an extemporized delivery of one of the finest speeches in the history of the republic.

Eid al-Adha

Do you remember a time when we Americans imagined the only religious holidays were Christian ones?

another fine photo from our friend Sam at photos8.com

Gratefully, the world is a much more interesting and diverse place than we Baby Boomers thought we grew up in.  In the Muslim tradition the patriarch Abraham was instructed by God to sacrifice his son Ishmael (instead of Isaac, as in the Jewish and Christian traditions).  At the last moment this test of ultimate obedience was called off and a ram was offered as a sacrifice instead.  Eid al-Adha is a family holiday that celebrates the event.  As with other Muslim holidays, Eid al-Adha is determined by the lunar calendar. In 2010 Eid al-Adha is on Tuesday, the 16th of November.  Happy Eid to all our Muslim brothers and sisters around this world we share.

The Other Brain

Neurons comprise 15% of the human brain; the rest are glial cells...

The Other Brain: From Dementia to Schizophrenia, How New Discoveries about the Brain Are Revolutionizing Medicine and Science by R. Douglas Fields, Ph.D. is an in depth look at the roles, positive and negative, played by glial cells in the central nervous system.  This accessible book lays out the many ways the various glia affect early childhood development, recovery from brain and spinal cord injury, psychiatric illness, neurodegenerative disorders, addiction, and stroke.  Fields was featured on episode 69 of the Brain Science podcast if you'd care for a sample of his research on this fascinating topic.