Disturbance in the Force

Things are out of whack in my life for two major reasons. First, I boycotted the Times Picayune because they aren't going to publish daily. So when I woke up today, instead of reading a daily paper as I've done for the past 25 years, I just got my computer and went to work. I feel like I don't know what's going on in the world. That's a bit ironic, as with the internet I should feel more connected. But I enjoy starting the day with the paper. I read just about all of it in order. I think that the newspaper helps me be  a better teacher, as I can model to my students what an informed conscientious person looks like. Second, my employer Xavier University is thinking about switching from a departmental model to one of divisions. That's pretty scary to me, as I imagine faculty would have much less of a say in the governance of this institution. Thinking about a Catholic University without a Theology Department is unsettling to me. Instead, I would be in the division of the Humanities or something like that.

So to fix this imbalance I am going to end my boycott of the Times Picayune and resubscribe to the paper, even though I wish Ricky Mathews would go home and sell the paper to someone who would keep it a daily publication. As for my second stressful change, well, that's ongoing and I'll know more in the next six months. I keep trying to tell myself that the change will be OK but I can't convince myself. Maybe in the end it is the paper and keeping abreast of all of the news that makes me such a cynical pessimist?

Independence Pecan Brown Ale

To celebrate independence and to anger the queen, today I am making a pecan brown ale.


Here is my recipe:
12 oz of roasted pecans (I think I will include these from the very beginning. Some advise to add most during the final 15 minute boil but I am not listening).
6 lbs Briess dry malt (amber)
.5 lb Briess Victory malt
.5 Cara-Munich
.5 lb Crystal 120L
.25 lb Muntons chocolate malt
.25 lb Muntons roasted barley

Hops: Full boil: Fuggle pellet hoops 4.2% 1oz
Last 10 minutes same hops, same amount
Nottingham English Ale yeast (11gm), damn, I used metric on the 4th of July.

Online Teaching

I'm teaching a summer course on Prophets and Prophecy. I love the material, and I have taught this course several times. But what is atypical is that for the first time I'm teaching the course entirely online. Through "Blackboard" course management software and by placing my lectures on vimeo, I'm hoping that the course will be a success for the 40 students taking it. I will definitely miss the student interaction. Often times I can gauge the level of student learning by listening to students try to verbally make sense of the material. Now though I'll be limited to answering email and by giving feedback on their papers and study guide answers. But for self motivated students who are good with time management, I think the course format could be fabulous.

I've finished the Introductory lecture, as well as lectures about the four 8th century BCE prophets: Amos, Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah. The lectures can be seen in this Vimeo Album. I thought quite a bit about making them public. There are dogma police who will seek to cause trouble for me and my university for the things that I say in these videos. It's happened a few times in the past with things that I've published here in this blog and in other more academic publications. I'm also very aware of the escalating dogma battle between the U.S. bishops and Catholic Sisters in academia. But in the spirit of spreading knowledge about these amazing ancient prophets and the texts that bear their names, I decided to keep with my policies of transparency. 

Ricky Mathews and the Nazi Toht

My nemesis Ricky Mathews writes today that the reason the Times-Picayune fired half the employees and will reduce this great weekly publication to 3x per week is because of the 21st century and they had to do this "before we faced economic doomsday." For once in my life, I enjoyed reading the comments for this article on nola.com. My favorite was by Louis Hernandez, who noticed that Mr. Mathews looks like the Nazi in Raiders of the Lost Ark. He's right. So here's a visual quiz involving two of my favorite topics: New Orleans and Raiders of the Lost Ark, and two of my least favorite villains: Ricky Mathews and Major Arnold Ernst Toht. But which one is Ricky, and which one is the Nazi? See how well you do:

Note: Today James Gill has a very entertaining piece carefully comparing the reaction by New Orleanians to both Mathews and Spoons Butler. His point was that people in New Orleans hold grudges. Not surprisingly, I can't find Gill's piece on nola.com.

A Hymn to Shamash for the Times-Picayune

"Sunlight is the best disinfectant."

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

New Orleans will soon become the largest U.S. city without a daily newspaper. The Times-Picayune, one of the best newspapers in the country, and one that helped New Orleans immeasurably after the flood, will soon be delivered only three days per week.  One third of the Times-Picayune employees were fired yesterday. One half of the people in the newsroom were let go. Kevin from the Gambit did a good job covering the devastation. The villain in all of this is Advance Publications, and especially publisher Ricky Mathews, who is my new nemesis (I'll deal with you later Adrastos!). The paper is profitable, and it has the highest saturation rate of any newspaper in the country. Despite calls to sell the newspaper or keep it daily, Advance Publications is determined to move forward. It's a good day to be one of the many corrupt people in New Orleans, as your chances of escaping justice improved dramatically thanks to Mr. Mathews and company.


What we need is for the Mesopotamian sun deity Shamash to open up a big can of solar whoop-ass. Here's a picture of Shamash traveling round the sky in his solar tent:

Shamash from a tablet in the British Museum


Shamash, like most sun deities, is responsible for justice. He shines light on dark situations, and he's in charge of law and order, as well as prophecy. He gave Hammurabi his famous law code. He allows us to see clearly what is transpiring. Ultimately, in my opinion, he solved every mystery on Scooby Doo. Below is a portion of the Assyrian text known as the Hymn to Shamash. It's about 2,900 years old. In my mind, it's what journalism is meant to do. Most important though, notice that Shamash brought his solar disinfectant DAILY, not three times per week with an enhanced web presence.

Hymn to Shamash 

Translation B. Foster 

Illuminator of all, the whole of heaven,
Who makes light the d[arkness for mankind]
            above and below,
Shamash, illuminator of all, the whole of heaven,
            and below,
Your radiance [spre]ads out like a net [over the
 world],
You brighten the g[loo]m of the distant mountains.
…
Your beams are ever mastering secrets,
            At the brightness of your light, humakind’s
            Footprints become vis[ible].
            You blunt the horns of a scheming villain,
The perpetrator of a cunning deal is undermined.
You show the roguish judge the (inside of) a jail,
He who takes the fee but does not carry through,
            You make him bear the punishment.
The one who receives no fee but takes up the case
            of the weak,
            Is pleasing to Shamash, he will make long his
            life.
The careful judge who gives just verdicts,
Controls the government, lives like a prince.
What return is there for the investor in dishonest
            dealings?
 The feeble one calls you as much as his speech
            allows him,
The meek, the weak, the oppressed, the submit-
            sive.
Daily, ever, and always come before you.
            He whose family is far off, whose city is dis-
            tant,
The shepherd [in] the afflictions of the wilderness,
The herdsman in trouble, the keeper of sheep
            among the enemy, come before you.
O Shamash, there comes before you the
            fishermen with his net,
The hunter, the archer, the driver of the game,
The fowler among his snares comes before you,
The skulking thief comes before Shamash,
The bandit on the wilderness paths comes before
            you,
            The wandering dead, the vagrant spirit come
            before you,
O Shamash, you have listened to them all.
You did not hold back (?) those who came before
            you, you heeded them,
For my sake, O Shamash, do not despise them!
You grant wisdom, O Shamash, to humankind,
            You grant those seeking you your raging,
            fierce light.

Transits of Venus

I'm looking forward to watching the Transit of Venus tomorrow. We're heading over to Bart and Xy's house, and we've got our cocktail picked out: The Blond Venus. This is my last shot to see the Transit of Venus, as it won't occur again until 2117.

All of this has me thinking quite a bit about the planet, partly because I've been reading Richard Holmes' The Age of Wonder. It's a book about "science" during the Romantic Age at the end of the 18th century. The first chapter is about Captain Cook's voyage to Tahiti in 1769 to measure the Transit of Venus. England also sent out expeditions to North Cape Norway and Hudson Bay Canada, with the idea that through triangulation they could then measure the distance to the sun. This concept of solar parallax is credited to James Gregory who published Optica Promota more than a century prior to Cook's Tahitian voyage. Cook's team measured 4 "phases" of this transit: when Venus first appeared to touch the outer solar sphere, when Venus was entirely within the solar sphere but still touching the outer rim, when Venus had crossed the solar sphere and first touched the outer sphere, and finally, when Venus had exited the solar sphere but still touched the solar rim. Using the data collected from this 1769 transit, 2 years later Thomas Hornsby published that "the mean distance from the Earth to the Sun (is) 93,726,900 English miles." That's pretty accurate, given that today it is believed that the distance is 1/8 of one percent shorter: 92,955,000.

The Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa, British Museum

Observing the planet Venus is also key to understanding chronology in the ancient Near East. This is mostly because of a cuneiform tablet known as the Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa which was part of the library unearthed at Nineveh. While copies of this text tend to date to the 8th and 7th centuries BCE, the text is believed to have been composed much earlier during the reign of Ammisaduqa, who ruled Babylon about a century after Hammurabi. The tablet records the exact date of the heliacal rising and setting of the planet Venus for 21 years. Modern astronomers use these dates to reconstruct when the referenced 21 year period occurred. The problem is that there are questions about the accuracy of the recordings, and that the events recorded accurately fit into three different time periods. Thus scholars must choose between the so-called High Chronology, Middle Chronology, and Low Chronology. Thus Hammurabi's reign begins in 1848 BCE, 1792 BCE, or 1736 BCE. I'm personally a Middle Chronology kind of guy. So Hammurabi was reigning in 1769 BCE, and James Cook recorded the Transit of Venus in 1769 CE, and in another 1769 years, I'll be dead.

Magic House

While I do not suffer from Alzheimer's disease, I spend many hours per week looking for things. Things like keys, remotes, and tools disappear for good, or more frequently, they wind up in places very different from the spot in which I originally placed them. Nobody I live with claims responsibility, so the only logical conclusion is that the house must be magic. I wish there were a way to reverse the spell though, so that instead of things disappearing, new stuff would magically appear. Cash would be nice.

Grendel Gander the Sinister Goose

I wrote a story about a self-centered goose named Grendel. As Grendel himself puts it,

"I'm mean & I'm nasty, I'm full of abuse. I'm evil incarnate, a most sinister goose! If you think I am kind then your idea's absurd, I am a low-down stinking fowl-feathered bird!"

So if you were asking, will there be rhyming? The answer is yes. Grendel Gander is inspired by the many adventures I had on the Platte River while growing up in Nebraska, as well as the epic poems I love teaching, including the Iliad, the Aeneid, and Beowulf. What makes the book special is the amazing artwork done my talented cousin-in-law Peat Duggins. From the cover you can just tell that Grendel is a fowl bird:
 
 Duggins has a great eye for detail in his images. Here is the part where the goose hero/villain destroys Buck Tooth Billy's dam
 
 Those of you who are goose experts I'm sure are curious if there will be swimsuit grabbing. The answer is yes, there is some grabbing of swimsuits:

 It's available from Amazon for $14.95. The same deal can be had (and it's far better for me) by going straight to the publisher: Writelife. Many thanks to Cindy Grady and Writelife for publishing the book.
Finally, the book is dedicated to my children Kalypso and Gilgamesh and maybe, one day, their sinister offspring.

Three Dog Night (and Day)

We added a third dog to our pack. Gilgamesh had been wanting an English bulldog, and yesterday we decided to add a new puppy to our family. Ladies and Gentlemen, it is my privilege to introduce to you, Colonel Enkidu:



and a video:

John Kennedy Toole: The Omega Point

I spent the afternoon watching a fantastic documentary about the author of one of my favorite books: A Confederacy of Dunces. The film is entitled John Kennedy Toole: The Omega Point. Through interviews with Toole's friends and colleagues, as well as footage from interviews/performances from Toole's mother, it paints a background for Toole's creative yet disappointing life. I learned many interesting things, such as the book was written in Puerto Rico, and that only a couple of people attended Toole's funeral because of the shame his suicide brought his family. He's buried close to my house. The film also has some philosophical aspects, as you can see from the "Omega Point" in the title. One of the best has to do with a mysterious third manuscript that was found in Toole's car when he died. It was in the Biloxi police headquarters but got washed out into the Gulf of Mexico during Hurricane Betsy.

Thankfully, film maker Joe Sanford has the film online for free: http://www.jktoole.com/viewthefilm.html

Finally, Sanford ends with the following quotation, one of the best I've heard about New Orleans:

"The older I get, the more I realize, that living here isn't a conscious choice anyway. It's the first joyful step on an elegantly worn staircase to oblivion."