Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Bits and Pieces

* Blogging will be a bit limited this week. I'll be out of town for a wedding from Thursday to Sunday and in the meantime, I have fallen way behind on things like email that I need to get out of the way before I leave.

* For because of the miracle and deliverance that you will perform for your Messiah, and for the remnants of your people who will remain, all the Gentiles, nations, and tongues will confess and say, There is no God but the Lord, for there is none besides you; and your people will say, There is none mighty except our God.

That's from the Psalms Targum (18:32), which I came across through Ralph the Sacred River, and have been reading with interest.

* That mondegreen naturally puts me in mind of Coleridge:

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war !

* The January PLoS Biology is up, as is PLoS Medicine. The first PLoS Computational Biology issue comes out in June, and the first PLoS Genetics issue comes out in July. PLoS Pathogens will come out later in the year.

* I've done some work on the H.L. Internal Resources and External Resources pages.

* Food for thought from the the gentle apocalypse:

Instead of lands, therefore, buy afflicted souls, according as each one is able, and visit widows and orphans, and do not overlook them; and spend your wealth and all your preparations, which ye received from the Lord, upon such lands and houses. For to this end did the Master make you rich, that you might perform these services unto Him; and it is much better to purchase such lands, and possessions, and houses, as you will find in your own city, when you come to reside in it. This is a noble and sacred expenditure, attended neither with sorrow nor fear, but with joy. Do not practise the expenditure of the heathen, for it is injurious to you who are the servants of God; but practise an expenditure of your own, in which ye can rejoice; and do not corrupt nor touch what is another's nor covet it, for it is an evil thing to covet the goods of other men; but work thine own work, and thou wilt be saved.

* A bit of George Herbert, Bemerton's most favored sage:

Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life:
Such a Way, as gives us breath:
Such a Truth, as ends all strife:
Such a Life, as killeth death.

* And a bit of John Norris, Bemerton's second most favored sage:

Sun of my soul, what shall I do
Thy beauties to resist or bear?
They bless, and yet they pain me too,
I feel thy heat too strong, thy light too clear.