Ken Martin's Blog

Sure, maybe for the sake of argument I can give you that eating a whole tube of Ritz crackers is not a great weight loss strategy. And perhaps - possibly - topping said crackers with 0.4 pounds of five-year-old cheddar cheese is similarly less than ideal.

So what? OK? What's it to you anyway? All right?

I have a real affinity for 'old fashioned' science, where simple objects can be made to show things which you can see or touch. It's a refreshing diversion from buttons and screens.

Well, here's something I have to try. Sure, we all have heard that objects with mass have gravity, but it's always just lingered as an idea in my mind. That experiment uses simple, old concepts to demonstrate the concept right before your eyes.

There's video available there in case you're curious but will never perform the experiment. :)

I woke up Saturday with with the latest delivery from the Cold-of-the-Week Club. But there would be no relaxing and sleeping it off. The usual Saturday tasks: tidying, Anna at ballet, more tidying. Then it's off to Grandma Martin's 90 birthday party, which was very nice. Good conversation with family I haven't seen for a while, and some I'd never before met.

On the way to get the kids and head home, I got a call that I needed to teach on Judges and Ruth at church the next morning; the scheduled teacher was stuck away from home. Of course, I hadn't read it yet. Last week I had to pick between reading that and Greek study, since illness left me too short on time to do both.

Well, I was up early studying Sunday and class went well. But that wasn't my big concern for Sunday. Sunday was also the day that Helen's family and the Vadnais Heights Lions Club was set to clear as much tree and brush material as possible for Helen's mom. Really good, hard, physical work. Which on a regular day is fun, and on a sick day is devastating.

I ended up a pile of weak uselessness heaped on the couch. And looking like a wreck at work this morning. And feeling the part.

And now, to sleep. Good night.

Another good class. Concepts are settling down well in my head, I think, but vocab is getting me. I could tell that I didn't have me vocab cards with me as much last week. We read more of 1 John 2. A little tougher going for all of us. I well understand the idea that word order can be wacky in Greek, but I think I saw the biggest example of this so far this week. We have another bit "translation cage match" homework which I might blog on later.

"I'm not going to get married when I grow up."

"Why not?"

"Because then I'd have a whole bunch of kids and they'd drive me nuts."

Argh. I've gotta talk to my PR department. I'm not getting my props. I had a cat box exhaust fan running long ago. Oh well... cool to see I'm not the only goofball with the idea.

In the texts below, I marked the couple of things I noticed with bold and a letter. My thoughts on those are: {a} Considering αυτος εστιν, I tend to like the NASB because the "he" is already built in to the verb, and we usually recognize the addition of a personal pronoun as being intensifying. However, based on what I understand about this week's chapter so for, it isn't specifically an "adjectival intensive" because there's no article, so maybe the RSV weights that fact heavily.

Another fun class. Lots of translation time. Had a couple of examples of places where you can see emphases in the Greek text which would be very difficult to be keyed in to using only the English texts, such as the verb tenses/moods concerning "sin" (we went through 1 John 1:7-2:2).

We had an interesting optional homework piece which I will probably blog on later.

Book Recommendations:

• R. Guelich, Mark (1-8:26), WBC
• W. Lane, Mark (8:27-16:20), WBC
• R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary of the Greek New Testament, Int'l Greek Testament Commentaries
• M. Hooker, The Gospel According to Saint Mark, Black's New Testament Commentary

Preview:

• Three uses of αυτος
• 2-1-2

Homework:

• Read Chapter 12
• Wkbk: Parse odds
• Wkbk: Translate 1-5

I was wearing cotton and walking on a wool rug. And here in Minnesota, the humidity is quite low in the winter. All of which meant I kept zapping my computer every time I sat down to work on it. If I tried to ground myself against the nearby outlet (which was inconvenient), I had a static discharge over half an inch long.

Well, I wasn't going to continue to zap my computer all day, so I made myself this quick little static discharge cable out of an old cord and a paperclip. Don't do this yourself. You'll kill yourself. No... I won't tell you how. Just don't.

That said, it worked great. :)

This whole non-diet diet thing is working. At least I think it's the diet, and not the month long bout with every virus to pull into town, swagger up to the bar and ask me if he can buy me a drink. Actually, I haven't been that sick. Just a lingering, low-level kind of discomfort punctuated by the occasional, crushing need for an impromptu nap.

I was surprised by a nice snowfall today. Cheerful, bright and quiet. It made having a frustratingly unproductive day in front of the computer a little nicer. We listened to WNAR-AM [iTunes link] today. Suspense! and CBS Radio Mystery Theater. Which I remember listening to in my dad's black AMC Gremlin when I was a kid. The intro music has stuck in my head perfectly since then. It's fun to be able to hear it again.