JOLLYBLOGGER

Video - My Battle With Cancer

A little over a month ago a friend of mine did a video interview with me for our presbytery - the interview was about my battle with cancer.  So, I thought I would share it with you, with one little word of introduction.  This was prepared for a presbytery meeting so the questions and answers are directed toward an audience of preachers, not a general audience, but I do hope that this is still helpful for a general audience.

David Wayne - My Battle with Cancer from David Wayne on Vimeo.

Everything you need to know about Martin Luther

These past few weeks we have been celebrating graduation and one of the things we have done is that the mom has gone through the sons old schoolwork.  While going through one of the sons old schoolwork we found an essay that one of the sons wrote about Martin Luther when he was in 2nd grade (I think, it could have been third).  And so for all of you theologians, historians and others with similar interests I present to you the definitive paragraph on the life of Martin Luther from a 2nd grade Wayne kid.

Please note that in order to insure the authenticity of the text I have retained the original spelling, grammar and punctuation as much as possible.   Also, please note the advanced literary abilities of this Wayne kid - he uses an advanced literary technique which some uneducated people find fault with - he shifts from past tense to present tense in the middle of the essay.  While some may find fault with this it has the effect of making history come alive and seem as if it is happening today, right now.  I could go on and on about this kid's brilliance, but on to the essay.

Martin Luther was a monk.  He had a wife named Cathrine Von Bora.  He also had three children named Hans, Lenchen, and Martin.  A dog named Topel.  He lived in a monastery named Black Cloister.  He had a dimple on his chin.  He also had big shoulders.  He hates lawyers and Doctors.  He enjoys a good laugh.  He loves to sing and play the lute.  he says it makes the deive (note from editor - this is an ancient, more authentic spelling of the word "devil") run.  He loves to quote scuptirire.  He has a very bad temper.  He is also very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, smart.  He worte the ninty-five thesis.  He reads the bible about twice a year!  He thinks that Monks are fleas on God's fur coat.

So there you have it folks, what more needs to be said about Martin Luther after this? Please give proper attribution and use proper formatting when quoting this article for any academic papers, dissertations and reviews.  The author has grown up to become an eminently humble young man and prefers not to give his real name for this article so you can simply refer to the author as "A young Wayne kid."

In Praise of Wreckless and Wanton Book-Buying

For all of you like me who can't  bring yourself to walk by a bookstore or browse an on-line catalog without buying at least something, and who also know good and well that you aren't going to read everything you buy, at least right now, here's an anecdote from the life of Umberto Eco that should give you encouragement to keep it up.

From the introduction of part one of The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb:

The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with "Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?" and the others -- a very small minority -- who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allow you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.

Via Kottke