Sanitizing Cell Phones
A cell phone, rather obviously, should be one of the germiest things we use. Between times we pull out our phones, we touch door handles, shake hands and so on. Now some inventive folks are trying to create a special UV sanitizer just for cell phones. The nifty thing is that this device avoids making UV sanitation an extra step by combining cleaning and charging into one process. Intriguing.
From the site:
Wired put it best when they said, “The irradiated warmth of a cellphone's interior is a vile, germ-infested bath loaded with more pathogens than any surface in your home.” The difference from your cell phone and everything else around you is that your cell phones is a safe-haven for bacteria. Their warmth allows bacteria to continue to live and to continue to reproduce!
The inventors have set their Kickstarter fundraising goal at $18,000 for production to begin.
Paraclesis and the Authority of Scripture
From Erasmus's “Paraclesis,” concerning the authority of Scripture:
It is no school of theologians who has attested to this Author for us but the Heavenly Father Himself through the testimony of the divine voice…
Note that Erasmus does not place the authority he gives to Scripture in the church structure, but in God's attestation. This is huge, even if Erasmus ultimately did not follow the Reformers.
iHungry Hippos
Another excellent April Fool's Day joke. I just love the idea of capacitive touch screen compatible hippos. I wonder how long a Gorilla Glass screen could hold up with this?
Quest Mode
While you still can, you should visit Google Maps and try the “Quest” mode. It shows to how great an extent the company is willing to go to for a good April Fools Joke.
Late Night Haiku XLI
CXV. Silence prowls around
Bushes below my window.
Claws scratch quietly.
CXVII. Oh, cruel time! Tick, tock.
Time erodes when it could build —
A hole, but not whole.
CXVIII. Old friend, so much time
Has passed through the rugged chasm.
Ever widening.
Lenovo Shows Apple How It's Done
People often get upset at Apple for suing companies that borrow design ideas from the Mac maker. That's why it is refreshing to see Lenovo has new laptops headed our way that are completely innovative in their appearance. No one would ever confuse this for a MacBook Pro. Note, for example, the location of the power button.
Mr. Bezos Goes Fishing
Alicia Chang reports for the AP:
An undersea expedition spearheaded by Bezos used sonar to find what he said were the F-1 engines located 14,000 feet deep. In an online announcement Wednesday, the Amazon.com CEO and founder said he is drawing up plans to recover the sunken engines, part of the mighty Saturn V rocket that launched Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins on their moon mission.
Intriguing.
Hermeneutics and Colossians 3.22
Jeff Kloha, over at Concordia Theology, offers a very good analysis of the dilemma of reading a passage like Colossians 3.22 in the modern world:
How do we read this in a way that is consistent with the text's own goals and agendas, and not our own goals and agendas? And, if we insist on our own goals and agendas, as quite clearly the people who paid for this billboard will, should we be allowed to read the Bible at all? For ironically, when we read a passage like this we are not free to read it and decide what it means. We are, perhaps ironically, in fact “slaves” who have no choice as to how we read it. Our minds have been made up for us even before we see it. We are not autonomous, rational creatures. Who will rescue us from this body of death?
One of the things a person realizes very quickly when one studies interpretive theory is just how difficult it is for us to do proper interpretation (or even figure out what proper interpretation is). We can work through the “hermeneutical spiral” and build strong support for interpretations of a text, but the process is one that calls for humility and an earnest desire to understand the text instead of merely what we want the text to say.
A Taxing Subject
This little bit from coverage of the Supreme Court's hearings on President Obama's healthcare plan is fascinating — there are reasons why the administration wants the fines for non-compliance to be viewed as a tax and other reasons why everyone wants it to not be viewed as a tax (viewing it as a tax would delay the decision for years).
“General Verrilli, today you are arguing that the penalty is not a tax. Tomorrow you are going to be back and you will be arguing that the penalty is a tax,” said Justice Samuel Alito, in one of the few laugh lines throughout the 90 minutes of argument Monday.
The remark underscores the fine line the White House is walking in its argument. On one hand, it says the backstop is not a tax, because that could subject it to the Anti-Injunction Act — the focal point of Monday's arguments — and delay a ruling to at least 2015. On the other, they claim that the power to impose a penalty derives from Congress' broad taxing power. That's in part because calling it a tax makes defending the mandate easier — Congress' power to levy taxes is less in question than its power to require people to do things.
Nothing like a few good technicalities to make a Supreme Court hearing more interesting.
