I received my Neighborhood News from the Samish Neighborhood Association today. I'm not a dues-paying member, but hey, they send me the newsletter so I read it.

Bottom-right, page 3 has the following paragraph:

Parking in Residential Yards Now Prohibited

Bellingham has a new ordinance that prohibits parking in residential yards (BMC 11.33.185). To report a possible parking violation, call 911 and ask for parking enforcement.

Get that? The emphasis is mine. Call 9-1-1 to report a “possible parking violation”? That's what my “Emergency Services Levy” is funding? Hold on; I thought if the levy didn't pass that much-needed “emergency services” would be denied. Ambulances would stop running. Fire trucks would be mothballed. Police officers would be restricted to walking beats -- uphill both ways, with five feet of snow. Their only weapons would be sling-shots. Response times to vital emergencies would lag, putting people at risk!

Yet, 9-1-1 is supposed to handle calls about parking? That's a 9-1-1-worthy emergency? This is what my “emergency services” tax levy is paying for? An operator to direct calls that should just go to the police department anyway, but don't because some busybody is too lazy to look at the front inside page of the phone book?

When the 9-1-1 services come a-askin' for more money (and they will) be sure to read the fine print and see how the levy will expand services. I know these folks do good work, but if it is an emergency service, let it be an emergency service. If it is directory assistance, then call it that, and implement it that way. Don't guilt folks into voting for “emergency services” so that oh-so-critical “potential parking violations” can be taken care of with swiftness and efficiency.

Rico's Rule of Thumb: If you think, “should I call 9-1-1?” then you've answered your question. Don't. Open the phone book and call the number for whatever service you think you need. These numbers are typically listed on the inside front cover. You'll know when you need to dial 9-1-1. You won't have to think about it, you'll just know. Trust me.

Nat Torkington, perl coder extrordanairre, has a short article on how to convert one's US street address into Latitude/Longitude, and then how to plug that data into a map server. This is not an article on perl, so you don't need to know a thing about perl to use this info.

This allows you to request satellite imagery of the exact spot where your house is located.

Very cool, methinks.

I don't have a TV, so in the mornings I usually listen to the radio a bit to catch up on the news. I usually listen to NPR. Sure, they're a bit biased, but at least you know where they're coming from and can account for it.

Anyway, I caught a snippet of Democrat presidential nominee John Kerry closing out some backyard meeting with voters in, I think, Wisconsin. His closing words to his audience were (I'm paraphrasing the first part from memory; the italic part is a word-for-word quote) “Let's go work hard out there. Thank you, and God bless.”

After getting over the initial shock of NPR actually airing the words “God bless”, I got to thinking about this.

I know that most major candidates bandy about the words “God bless” like this, and it's always bothered me. But it bothers me in other settings too. It bothers me when it happens as an almost liturgical response when people greet you in church. Essentially, it bothers me when the context of usage is unthinking, formulaic, and trite.

Did John Kerry really, sincerely mean to ask God to bless those at that meeting who go out and work hard for him? Or was it just a little formula, a verbal tick of some sort, appended on out of habit and lack of thought because it seemed appropriate? In most contexts, among most people, I think it's the latter. And that's why it bothers me.

My further question: Remember that piece of scripture known as the “Ten Commandments” (Ex 20.1-17)? Is this sort of thing a violation of Ex 20.7? You know, taking the name of the Lord God in vain? Why utter “God bless” if one doesn't truly and sincerely mean for God to bless those to whom he is speaking? And if one doesn't mean it, isn't that taking the name of the Lord in vain, or using the name of God emptily?

Please note that I'm not saying that any and all uses of “God bless” are wrong. There are times when it is sincerely meant and appropriate. But I fear the phrase is used tritely far more often than it is used properly, and I think that as Christians, we should be aware of this and be diligent in ensuring that we say these sorts of things when we mean them, not when they're expected to be said or heard.

Side note: What is the correct response when someone says “God bless you!” to you in a personal conversation? I never know how to respond to this. I'm sure the proper answer isn't “He'd better!” I usually mutter something like, “well, thank you” but this doesn't seem right either. A knee-jerk “well, may God bless you too!” doesn't seem right for the very reasons mentioned above. So, what do you say? How should one respond in this situation?

I'm looking at different translations of a particular word (ESV “enslavers” in 1Ti 1.10).

In comparing translations, I made a mental list to look up: NASB, NET, NKJV, NRSV, RSV, KJV.

I just realized that I forgot about even looking at the NIV. I almost never use the NIV anymore; it has now apparently got to the point where I don't think about it.

For the record, I prefer to use the ESV as my primary English translation, though I usually bring both an ESV (pocket sized) and my trusty UBS3 Greek NT with me to church or to studies, and I prefer to follow along in the Greek when the reading is in the NT.

Why do I prefer the ESV? Well, it isn't condescending. It has a certain style to it. And, as I've worked through the Pastoral Epistles, I've done a good bit of comparing Greek to English at a fairly detailed level. And I like the way the ESV handles things moreso than the NASB. I was on an NKJV kick for awhile, but that was primarily because they told me via footnotes when they went with a majority reading, or when they went with the UBS/NA reading. English translations need to be better about marking where they follow variants; the NKJV is one of the few that does it consistently and well.

But I like the ESV. So I'll be using it as my primary English text.

Typographica (cool typography-related blog) has a posting about the benefits of owning/perusing The Manual of Linotype Typography.

Hear, hear. I agree. I've seen and perused in-depth a copy of this book, and it is astounding. In a design rut? Page through this guy to get inspired. Sure, some would say that the look is dated (the manual is from the 1920s/1930s) but there are good things going on in this book. Drop the over-thick page borders and dated colors, but look at the spacing, sizes, and font selection. And some of the sample text used is simply priceless.

The Typographica article has several links to sample pages.

If you want to get really classically inspired, you could also poke through Alan Bartram's Five hundred years of book design.

Yesterday I picked up a post on B-Greek about the new NA27/NET Diglot from The Biblical Studies Foundation. Check out the photo. This looks exactly like the classic NA27/RSV English diglot, only instead of the RSV it has the NET translation, and instead of the English apparatus it has the oh-so-useful NET text-critical notes.

Thinking about this (yeah, I'm gonna buy one) I was thinking about the usefulness of the NA27 apparatus to the average Greek dude (or dudette, as the case may be). The apparatus is unapproachable for most because it is hopelessly cryptic unless one has diligently taught himself the language of the apparatus. If one desires to use the apparatus, he dooms himself to looking up MSS in the table in the back. And even then, not much info on the MSS are given. The date/century is helpful, but do I really care about what library the MSS is in currently? I'd rather know more about the provenance, not the current location.

Anyway, there are two primary classes of cited MSS for each major portion of the NT (gospels, acts, paulines, catholic epistles, and the apocalypse). These are the “Consistently Cited Witnesses” and the “Frequently Cited Witnesses”. The primary and most important are the “Consistently Cited Witnesses” as all variants of these MSS are cited for the given range (book/portion). No citation means the MSS either agrees or is missing the reading in question. These consitently cited witnesses are, for larger sections, selected on a book-by-book basis.

I think the most useful and innovative thing that the GBS could do with the NA27 would be to devise a running footer for each two-page spread that lists the consistently cited uncial witnesses for the current book with a short bit of info about each. Not much info — there isn't much room left on the page. But they may be able to squeeze the sigla and century/date if they stretch the list in one or two lines across the two-page spread. It would be great if the uncial data from the witness/abbreviation pamphlet could be used. This way folks would at least get familiar with the sigla for the consistently cited witnesses. Some may object because this focuses on the date, which may or may not be misleading text-critical information. I say it's better than the bupkes that's there now, and it sure beats flipping to the back to look things up. It gets people actually starting to use the information in the apparatus on a regular basis because the barrier to entry is much lower.

Or, one could just use the electronic version ... :)

I've been reading further in 2 Clement (see previous post) and I've noticed further usage of the “double” metaphor used earlier.

For instance, I earlier cited 2Cl 10.5's use of “double penalty”, regarding those who teach improperly and those who follow the improper teachers.

I've run across a few more. Note the citation link looks up Lightfoot's English, which is a little KJV-ish. Ehrman's recent edition reads much better.

• 2Cl 15.1: Those who heed the homilist (the one giving the sermon) save themselves and the homilist.
• 2Cl 19.1: Again, “... so that you may save yourselves and the one who is your reader.”

Please note I'm not examining 2 Clement (or the other documents in the Apostolic Fathers corpus) as if they are Scripture. My interest is in seeing how they applied the NT Scriptures they had -- scattered collections of documents, no formal “canon” as of the writing of 2 Clement.

I find this whole “save/punish themselves and their hearers/readers” motif interesting by itself, but moreso as it is also used in 1Ti 4.16. I'll be keeping my eyes open in the rest of the Apostolic Fathers corpus for this now.

Does anyone have any other citations of this sort of language — Biblical or otherwise — from, say, NT times through 250 AD or so?

I love coffee. Not that fru-fru, all-fancied-up stuff (iced frappa-whatever) but the black gold that is coffee. No cream, no sugar, just the java.

The best coffee I've ever had, in recent memory, is a blend called Panama la Florentina, which is available at Starbucks.

It is only available this time of year. I so enjoyed it last year, I drank it almost exclusively at home for the time it was available. I'm almost afraid to start drinking it again.

Be warned, though: The coffee is excellent when you make it with a French Press; but it loses something when you use a drip machine.