Ben Witherington offers some excellent guidance on blog posting etiquette (“blogiquette” anyone? How’s that for a neologism!). He proffers a rudimentary set of rules for bloggers to consider before they post: On Speaking Privately in Public — on Blogs

Here is an excerpt where he states his premise:

Doubtless most of us have been there. You are stuck in an airport waiting for a flight, and at least four or five private conversations are going on around you. Now its one thing when the other person is there and you are talking to them. That’s all fine. But suppose you are in a quiet space, like some airports have set up for laptop users and the like— and someone breaks out the cellphone and begins talking at the top of his or her voice? This is having a private conversation in public, in a manner that is rude and obnoxious, ignoring and being oblivious to the fact that there are others around who might not want to hear what is being said. Though we have all endured this in one form or another, we now have a new form of public rudeness of this sort– on blogs.

Witherington provides some excellent rules of thumb to consider before you click the “publish post” button. That being said, the analogy between overhearing a private conversation in public breaks down since blogs are not really public in the same way as a conversation in a public place. While anyone may read a blog, to do so they have to decide to go to URL to read it. If you don’t like what someone says in their blog, you can just not go there.

Nonetheless, an excellent post for all to consider.

At my wife’s beckoning, I had to take a quick break from my marking (have I mentioned how much I love marking…) to clear the corpse of a mouse from a trap. Mouse number three has felt the cold hard steel of my expandable trigger mouse trap.

This infuses the traditional “T’was the Night before Christmas” poem with new meaning: “all through the house not a creature was stirring living, not even a mouse”!

Stay tuned for some more mouse facts as soon as I finish grading… the end is nigh!

This was recently posted on the ANE list. Good food for thought, IMHO.

I have for some time been concerned about the character of the discussion on [insert academic forum of your choice here] as is typified in this string (and so many others). I’ve spent much of my life hanging around academia. I went to grad school for 20 years at three institutions. I finished two masters degrees and a terminal degree. I put a couple of decades into research. I’ve taught for a decade, and I’ve attended a lot of conferences. Through the years, I’ve met a lot of people with doctorates and lesser degrees. I’ve met a lot of teachers and a few real scholars. One thing that I’ve learned through the years is that real scholars are usually humble and gentle people. They are low key because the evidence drives them to it. Real scholars understand how weak any case is and how limited any grasp of the evidence can be. I’ve also met a great many people who try very hard to make other people think that they are smart. They are wannabees no matter how their resumes may read and no matter what status they may have grabbed for themselves. I’ve seen some wannabees treated with a level of respect that borders on awe because of their sales skills, while I’ve seen some real scholars largely ignored because they don’t try to sell themselves.

– Rodger Dalman (reproduced with permission)

OK, so I’m in the middle of finishing up my semester marking. All in all it is a mundane part of the instructor’s job that I don’t really like. But every once and a while there are bright spots like great essays or exams, etc.

I just finished marking a final exam essay for my introductory Old Testament/Hebrew Bible course where the student incorporated numerous titles to U2 songs throughout the essay! I got quite a chuckle out of that! And it was a good essay to boot! (I make my class aware of my fondness for U2 when we talk about lament psalms and modern laments — I use some U2 songs as examples of modern laments).

OK, so I set up the mouse traps yesterday (see here) and we went out to a friend’s house in the evening (a mouse free house) and when we came back we found two mice caught in traps (my four-year-old son exclaimed, “wow, cool” and was going around today saying that we’re mouse killers!).

Two down and who knows how many to go!

So, while I have been trying to “think like a mouse” I decided to do some more research. This time, however, I decided to do some biblical research! Did you know that mice occur in the Hebrew Bible? There are actually six places were we find our furry little friends: Lev 11:29, 1Sam 6:4, 5, 11, 18, and Isa 66:17. The first instance includes mice among various unclean “swarming things that swarm on the earth,” along with weasels and lizards. The references in 1 Samuel are to the gold mice that the Philistines made and sent back with the Ark, while the Isaiah reference also includes them with other unclean animals. What I find interesting is the way the various translations render the Hebrew term for mouse (עַכְבָּר). Almost all translations consistently render the word as mouse. The NIV, however, always translates it as “rat”, while the NLT renders it was mouse in Leviticus and Isaiah, but rat in 1 Samuel. I’m not sure if there is really enough data to go on to know how exactly to render it, though I wonder if the NIV’s translation is more to vilify the animal?

Stay tuned to see what tomorrow may bring…

P.S. Make sure to read the comments to my original posts (here) — Joe Cathey provides an interesting Texan approach to dealing with mice infestation!