Notables

* Macht at "prosthesis" points to this informative interview on embryonic stem cell research by James Thomson (who actually does stem cell research). I've noted before the fact that there is very, very little reliable information on this subject that's easily accessible to the public and that isn't too vague to be helpful on the moral question; so it's nice to see something that is circulating information that's a bit better. His answers to the moral questions (on pages 3 and 4), by the way, are a much more rational response to moral questions like these than moral questions in science [usually] get.

* Botton and the anthroposophical worldview at "An accidental blog" posts some notes on Rudolph Steiner (HT: Christian Carnival LXXIV).

* Hebrews 12 and discipline at "reasons why"

* Exegeting stop signs at "Mindless Meandering" (HT: Hypotyposeis). Someone in the history of philosophy would exegete the sign in something like the following way:

The philosophical significance of the stop sign has been a matter of controversy; in particular, there has been considerable debate on the meaning of the word "stop".¹ Needless to say, the text as it is presented on Third Street is somewhat ambiguous. However, given similarities between the context of this sign and certain texts of Locke, which I have noted elsewhere,² my suggestion is that this sign be seen as an example of semiotics in the Lockean tradition. This supposition will shed considerable light on the rational basis of stop signs, and will make possible a more complete reconstruction of the important early modern metaphysical debate that created it: the feasibility of reaching Elm Street from Main Street in less than two minutes. I will also show that, despite recent attempts to reconcile it with the impossibility of a complete stop, the sign's exhortation to stop is necessarily incoherent.

¹ For the most important examples, see the seminal paper by N. Pepper-Scott, "Stopping and the Re-introduction of Final Causes: The Liebnizian Foundations of Stop Signs," B J Hist Phil (1996) 888-2110, and the response by S. Jolschmal in Termination of Philosophy in the Early Modern Period, 234-576, which argues for a Spinozistic interpretation of the stop sign as a text arguing that stopping is the third mode of the divine substance. My reply to Pepper-Scott will be found in Section 2; I will reply to Jolschmal in Section 3.
² "Locke, Liebniz, and Road Signs: Two Paradigms of Signification," J Hist Phil (2005) 289-290.

UPDATE: fixed link.

UPDATE 2: This is an interesting post at "Evolving Thoughts" (HT: Science and Politics). Of course, biblical scholars should be expected to use methods of textual scholarship; the whole point of biblical scholarship is to understand a set of texts. And theology in the 19th century was extremely complex; only a few strands of 19th-century theology would fit the article's description. And what the scholar in the article is talking about sounds nothing like what I learned as an undergraduate Theology major. But I agree with Wilkins's post.