Out, sugar demons, out!
One of M.’s students at the community college writes in a psychology paper that while she herself is a diabetic, she controls her diabetes “through diet and exorcise.”
Once again we see that the spellchecker is no substitute for literacy. On the other hand, Ted Haggard could add this to his ministry of spiritual warfare.
Jay’s at it again
Jay Allen has revived his Kensho Godchaser blog, and it is back in my permanent blogroll. His other blog is The Zero Boss.
More grad school advice
From the Recovering Academics Live Journal, good advice for grad students.
Then there are the unintended consequences of postgraduate studies.
On the undergraduate-teaching front, meanwhile, I see in my referral logs a number of search engine requests for “summary analysis of …” or “notes on …” followed by a book title. You haven’t written that paper yet, have you. And now you’re cutting corners. Remember, professors know how to use Google too.
Giving good headship
Jeff Sharlet of The Revealer has way too much fun dissecting Christian men’s self-help books. Some quotes:
Women can’t get enough of good headship, but a man must be careful; a woman’s hunger for his headship may lead him to abuse its potency through the sin of anger. . . .
I place “homosexuals” in quotes to suggest that the very term itself — so often referred to with code such as Lewis’ — is itself a kind of code within the Christian men’s movement. Lesbians, as one might imagine, are not popular among evangelicals; but then, they are not really imaginable. In the theology of “Jesus plus nothing,” there is no room for anything that is not man-God (or God-man, if you’re particular about such things), and that includes female sexuality. Many of the man-manuals advise loving attention to wives and speak of the joys of married, heterosexual sex as a bulwark against the culture (which is queer by definition, since it is not Christ-centered, a peculiar oxymoron at the heart of the faith), but they also teach a “sensitivity” that is called to stand in for the sins of their cavemen fathers. . . .
But with Christian womanhood restored and redeemed, a crucial character in the Christian conservative morality play has gone missing: the seductress. It is no longer acceptable to speak of loose women and harlots, since sexual promiscuity in a woman is the fault of the man who has failed to exercise his “headship” over her. It is his effeminacy, not hers, that is to blame. And who lures him into this spiritual castration? The gay man.
Sharlet thinks about how the Christian-versus-culture debate is framed in terms of homosexuality. Personally, I think the “harlot” image is still present, and had I nothing better to do, I would write at length about how so much of organized religion deals with controlling female sexuality.
Wicca, by contrast, exalted and attempted to ritualize sexuality, with mixed results. Both the polyamorous and the monogamous agree that sexuality has a sacred dimension, but just how that works in daily life continues to be debated, usually in venues closed to outsiders.
The purgatory of peer review
In a this case, the kind of car your mom drives is factored in. (Thanks to Scribbling Woman.)
Looking through a Sportsman’s Guide catalog, I saw this portable fireplace. 
It is copper with a wrought iron stand, made in the former imperial province of Anatolia.
Lift out the grill, and it seems to cry out for libations, which you pour from the patera. You can see a fine silver one from the sacred spring of Minerva Sullis in Bath, while here is a pewter version.
Detailed instructions for serious Romans are here, while what you might call the children’s version is here.
It’s a pity that the stand does not bring the firebowl up to waist height. I need an ironworker to make me a tripod.
It’s ours, and you can’t have any
Sabina Magliocco (her last book mentioned here) has a good piece on “Indigenousness and the Politics of Spirituality” in the American Anthropological Association newsletter.
Some quotes:
Cultural tradition is a process, rather than a product; the key quality of many indigenous spiritual practices is their variability and adaptability to different contexts, depending on the needs of their practitioners. Copyrighting spiritual practices would involve freezing them in time, rendering a living tradition static, unchanging, dead and preventing its adaptation by other group members. Not only is this anathema to many practitioners; it is also not how religion works.
My emphasis. And she points a finger at anthropologists who aid and abet the process of limiting spiritual material to only the “right people,” which practice is itself a form of reverse racism.
Paganism–religion or fad? Stay tuned
‘Australia Talks Back’ tackles the question: Traditional religions continue to lose their flock to the evangelicals,but an increasing number of Australians are opting out of Christianity and turning to pre-Christian paganism, with its spells and witchcraft. Paganism may be on the rise, but is it a serious religion, or new age trend? (Real Media and Windows Media links here–scroll down)
Guests on this program:
Dr. Rachael Kohn
Producer & Presenter of Radio National’s ‘The Ark’ and ‘The Spirit of Things’
David Garland
Pagan priest and spokesman for PAN – The Pagan Awareness Network
Lynne Hume
Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Queeensland.
Author of Witchcraft and Paganism in Australia
Stacey Demarco
Sydney businesswoman who describes herself not only as a Pagan but also as a modern -day witch
The “Yeah, Right” department
A news release for an online witchcraft school trots out the interview that I gave to Religion Link a few months back.
Whoever wrote the release was pretty sloppy. Phyllis Curott, for instance, is a lawyer not a “researcher.” And straight-line demographic projections are generally meaningless. Then there is “visionaire.” Is that supposed to sound slicker than the usual “visionary”? I think the only vision here is “get rich quick with the World Wide Web.” Of course, if you have to divide the money among your “staff of over 300,” there will not be much cash to go around.
“Goddess of the North”
Plans are underway to create a huge goddess figure next to a northern British highway. Ironically, the material to scupt her will be the overburden (“mining spoil”) removed from an open-pit coal mine.