Bible Study Guide: Leviticus

I love the Guardian Online comments section and this weeks race row over Dr Laura's radio rant elicited some gems. Here is my favourite offered by an individual with the handle MediaRadar.

Dear Dr Laura,

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and I try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind him that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination. End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some of the specific laws and how to best follow them.

a) When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

b) I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

c) I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offence.

d) Lev. 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

e) I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

f) A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an Abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this?

g) Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God ifI have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

h) Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev.19:27. How should they die?

i) I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

j) My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them (Lev.24:10-16)? Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws (Lev. 20:14)?

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging. Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.


Brilliant!

College Life: Study Tips

It is that time of year again so I am adding some articles on study skills and strategies for college and university students.

Writing Introductions

Your introduction is the first impression your reader has of your writing. A good introduction will show him/her that you know what you are talking about and that you are going to complete the task in question. It will also make them want to carry on reading and look forward to what is to come. There should be no surprises in your essay; the reader will understand from the introduction what the essay will cover. A bad introduction will have the....read more

College Life: How to Increase your Concentration

College and university students often experience difficulties with concentration. This article will explore some of the main reasons student concentration may be low and offer solutions to overcome them. read more

How to Write the Main Body of an Essay: Connecting Ideas and Using Evidence

The ability to present the reader with an argument, set out in a logical and cohesive manner, is an important assessment criterion for most academic writing. As well as presenting your own argument, backed up by evidence, your instructors will expect you to report on, and evaluate, existing research. Developing the language that you use to report and connect ideas in academic writing will help you with both these tasks. read more

7 Steps to Effective Time Management

Studying can sometimes seem overwhelming; what is needed is the ability to organise your learning into small manageable pieces. Even having a rough plan allows you to see what you need to do and how long you have to complete tasks. The key to effective time management is how you plan and use your resources in relation to your identified goals. The following seven steps will help...read more 

Custom Written Essays: A Good Idea?

Custom written essays are becoming increasingly popular with college students. They claim to offer original content at reasonable rates and lightening fast turn

around times. But do they live up to the hype? This article will explain how these sites work and why it is a good idea to avoid them. read more

Oh the Good Ol' Days When Men Dressed Like Porn Stars. OOOOOH Baby! But what's with all the yellow?

From 1973 German Mail Order Catalogue - Images from Wanderingstan's Blog

One of the Many Reasons I Love Bill Hicks

Sarah Palin The New Shakespeare?

HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa

HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa*Snort*HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa*fart*HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa*wipetears*HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa...Ha...Ha......Shit that's funny.


refudiate - /ri'fud/iate/ verb. to refud something
Origin - Alaska: from middle ages Alaskan for fud (incredibly stupid) + iate (I am).
Derivitives refudulicious, refudify.

The Man-Girdle is Here!

The latest fashion essential for men has finally hit North America. The Man-Girdle promises to not only slim that pesky mid-section, but also fix a host of ailments. Developed in Australia and widely sold in Europe, the man-girdle, or 'Core Precision Undershirt', is the latest fashion must-have for men who want to wear more form-fitting clothes and improve their shape. No longer meant be kept hidden like a dirty little secret, shapewear for men is functional and attractive with not a flesh tone in sight. But will men wear it? Yes, and the reason is language.



How Girdles are Sold to Women

Advertisers are very good at tapping into hidden desires and fears. The promotional language marketing girdles to women has long operated on the premise that female consumers think of their bodies as a problem that needs to be fixed. Women, it is assumed, want and need help to look better, so for years they have been squeezing into shapewear because it will slim, shape, cover problem areas, hide extra weight, and hold everything in.
Marketing the Man-Girdle

The marketing campaign directed toward men makes no such assumption about male vanity and consequently employs very different language. To relieve male consumers of any suggestion that the garment is a self-indulgent purchase or remotely feminine, advertisers of the man-girdle emphasize health promotion and performance. The new undershirt for men not only streamlines and slims, it also improves posture, supports core muscles, controls body temperature and promotes circulation.

Couched in pseudo-scientific jargon, the makers claim the undershirt was 'developed in conjunction with physiotherapists, ergonomic consultants and athletic garment engineers', and was created using a 'unique body-mapping system that builds physio taping techniques into every garment to reinforce and support the body's natural structure from the core'. Wow, that's some underwear.

The use of phrases such as 'athletic technology' and 'high performance', and 'compression clothing' market the girdle as a sport enhancing device much like a weight lifting belt or powershake, while terms such as 'precision' and 'engineered' bolster its scientific credentials. This language also means that the man-girdle will not look or sound out of place next to the car or athletic drinks adverts in men's magazines.

But will men buy it? Of course they will. The sales pitch combines the ideal of male health and fitness with the contemporary interest in design and technology. But men will also wear a girdle for the same reasons women do, to fit into their clothes and to hold in the flab. It is not only women who need and want help to look their best, nor it is only men who want to feel like top athletes in their high performance, scientifically engineered underwear.

Gothic Fiction - An Introduction to Terror Writing

The term "Gothic" first appeared in the 17th century as a derogatory term meaning barbarous and uncouth especially in relation to the Goths (Germans) and their language (McCalman et al, 526). By the 18th century, the term had taken on additional meanings including medieval, unenlightened and superstitious. At the height of the neoclassical age, anything Gothic was decidedly anti-Roman, irrational and backward.
Gothic Revival

Yet toward the middle of the century, a revival was underway. A new found interest in medieval architecture and ancient romance culture resulted in the first Gothic novel: Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764). A keen participant in the Gothic resurgence, Walpole had already built his own Gothic castle, Strawberry Hill, before writing what he described as the first "attempt to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern" (9).

Walpole's novel established the popular formula for the Gothic romance which was emulated by authors such as Mathew Lewis (The Monk, 1796), Anne Radcliffe (The Italian, 1797), Samuel Taylor Coleridge ("Christabel", 1816), John Keats ("Eve of St Agnes", 1820), and John Polidori (The Vampyre, 1819), and Mary Shelley (Frankenstein,1831) among others.

Gothic Machinery

The Gothic is characterized by a set of conventions or "machinery". Events often take place in a gloomy medieval castle or Abbey and generally include a heroine trapped or pursued by a mysterious villain through labyrinthine passages. Much of the action occurs at night and involves supernatural events, dreams, prophecies, or psychological disturbances. The frame of the "discovered manuscript" is also common and functions to lend authenticity and antiquity to the story.

Some of the themes of Gothic fiction include: sexual fantasy, subversion of authority or convention, parent/child relationships, nobility and servitude, rationality and nightmare. The interest in the supernatural, in particular, is often viewed as a reaction to the hyper-rationality of the scientific Enlightenment and Romantic writer's growing interest in nature and the inner self.

Horror Fiction

Anne Radcliffe, one of the most famous of all the gothic romance novelists, was also the first to distinguish the difference between terror and horror. For Radcliffe, terror "expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life." Horror, on the other hand, "contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them" (643). Terror, in other words, is pleasurable because it is cloaked in obscurity and mystery while horror is graphic and unequivocal.

In a review of Radcliffe's Udolpho, Coleridge notes this distinction: calling the novel "wonderful and gloomy," he writes, its "mysterious terrors are continually exciting in the mind the idea of a supernatural appearance...and the secret, which the reader thinks himself every instant on the point of penetrating, flies like a phantom before him, and eludes his eagerness till the very last moment of protracted expectation" (361).

But not everyone was as enthusiastic and the dangers of reading Gothic fiction, especially for women, were widely debated. Excessive consumption was thought to distract young people from their duties, to plunge them into a fantasy world that promoted unrealistic expectations and stirred forbidden desires. Famously satirized in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, women who read too much Gothic fiction were deemed irrational and false.

While many of these early examples no longer attract the readership they once did, they established the conventions of horror and supernatural fiction and film that are still popular today. From Dracula to Twilight, Frankenstein to Halloween, the Gothic's concern of a barbaric past returning to haunt the present still manages to delight and chill. To appreciate terror and supernatural fiction and to understand its continuing appeal, these early texts are well worth another look.



References

Colderidge, Samuel Taylor. Review of Anne Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Critical Review, August, 1794, pp. 361-372.
MacCalman, Iain et al. An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture 1776-1832 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
Radcliffe, Anne. The Mysteries of Udolpho, Jacqueline Howard, ed. (London: Penguin, 2001).
Walpole, Horace.The Castle of Otranto, Emma Clery, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).

Christians Denounce Yoga

I was searching for one of my articles on google today (which is probably on page 1, 949, 245 or some such nonsense - memo to self, adjust keywords) when I came across an article of the same name that intrigued me. The title is What is Yoga? and is published by a Creationism site. Not only is it a poorly written piece, full of typos and dodgy grammar, it argues that yoga is evil and anti-Christian. Oh, great, I say, this is going to be fun.

The author begins by offering exceptionally narrow and highly dubious definitions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. For example:

"Buddhism, founded by the Buddha, Gautama Siddhartha, claims more than 249.600,000 disciples. Buddha taught that life is misery and decay, and that it has no ultimate reality. Mental and moral self-purification seem to give most Buddhists hope for liberation."

Yup, that's what Buddhism is alright - very well-researched, objective perspective.

She then focuses on some extreme practices such as drinking urine and severing the tongue as evidence of the link between yoga and the occult! Supporting this laughable claim is a born again Christian named Rabindranathn Maharaj (not to be confused with the Canadian writer of the same name): "Although the peace I experienced in meditation so easily deserted me...the occult forces that my practice of Yoga cultivated and aroused lingered on and began to manifest themselves in public'" (p. 74). Apparently, yoga even killed his father!

Another born again is also quoted to further press the point:

"Caryl Matrisciana believes her interest in Yoga began either by reading booklets in the supermarket or by watching a "Yoga for Health" television program...At first Matrisciana thought Yoga was helpful, but she later concluded, 'the Hindu has no grace [God's unmerited favor]. He is trapped by the impersonal law of karma cause and effect.' She documents many examples she's witnessed of Yogins doing violence to themselves. By the grace of God, Matrisciana escaped her involvement in Yoga and became a Christian firmly established in the Scriptures.'

Ah yes, the scriptures; those words of compassion, love and renewal...No wait, that's Buddhism, or is it Jainism, maybe Hindism, I forget. They all sound the same to me. And the only demons I see when practicing yoga is the instructor who bends like a noodle while I fart in the face of the person behind me.

So, all you practioners out there: be warned.

 "Yoga is integrally tied into a system of devout religious beliefs, primarily Buddhist and Hindu. As practiced in Eastern religious circles, it is considered the ultimate method for reaching religious self-realization, and can only be consummated by following prescribed physical postures, breathing exercises, mystical meditation, and diet, Thus understood it has no place in the life of a Christian believer."
What rubbish.

Writing Online: A New Vocabulary

When I first started writing online I spent a lot of time in the forums trying to pick up hints and advice from the experts. The first thing I noticed was the unique vocabulary that online writers use. As I soon discovered, if I wanted my work to be read, it would be crucial to understand this new lexicon. If you choose to share your blog or articles only with friends and family, you may not need to know this, but if your goal is to direct traffic to your work, establish yourself as an online writer, or to make money through your writing, then here are some important definitions to get you started.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization is the practice of maximizing the volume or quality of traffic to a web site. As google notes, it is important to think of your online writing as an interaction between users (readers) and search engines. The idea is to write content that appeals to both. Users search for topics they are interested in but can only find it if the search engine knows where it is and rates it for relevance.That is where SEO comes in. Including strong keywords will help readers and search engines find your work.

Keywords

Keywords are words and phrases that describe the subject of your blog or article. They are important because they will determine how reader's find or are directed to your work. How to know if a keyword is popular with users and indexed by the search engines involves some research using a keyword search tool such as Google Adwords.

One main place to use strong keywords if the title as the search engines will crawl and rank your title first. Avoid quirky or bland titles. They do not work well with search engines like Google. For example, if your article or blog post is entitled, 'Had a Great Time at the Show' you will not direct any traffic to your site because it is too general; no one out there is searching for words like 'great', 'time', or 'show'. However, a title such as 'Avatar: Great Movie for Teens' will attract more readers because people do search for 'avatar', 'avatar movie', 'movies for teens', or 'teen movies'.


Long Tail

Long Tail is an SEO term that refers to keyword combinations, usually 3 or more words combined to help make the topic more specific. Using the above example of the Avatar movie, the title is a long tail because it combines 'Avatar' (a popular keyword) with 'movie for teens'. Using just one word such as Avatar will have to compete with millions of other sites featuring the same word. As of today, the term 'avatar' receives 55, 600,00 global searches a month and is therefore insanely competitive; 'movies for teens' is less competitive with 18,100 monthly global searches, but combined they create a specific and unique title that may lead to a better page rank in the search engines.

Page Rank

Page rank is the placement of your site in the search engines. For example, if you searched for 'teen movies' in google and your post 'Avatar: Great Movie for Teens' was at the top of the list, you will receive many more readers than if your post appeared on page 10 of the search (most searchers do not go past the first few pages). Ultimately, the goal is to get on page one so aim for keyword rich, long tail titles, sub-titles, and even images.

So those are the main one I can think of right now. I am sure more will be forthcoming as I learn about writing online.

Essay Writing Sources for Students

Talk about uncanny. It's getting near the time for college and university students to begin planning for the upcoming academic year, and for professors to plan their lessons and write lectures. Do you get the feeling we've all been here before? So before déjà vu sets in, I thought I would get a jump on the panic that inevitably rears its ugly head by offering some writing resources for student scribblers.

As a teacher, it still shocks me that so many students get a place at university without being able to form an argument, structure their thoughts, and in many cases, even string two coherent sentences together. Many are even downright surprised when introduced to topics such as 'essay structure', or 'writing introductions.' They are hesitant to move from the comfort and simplicity of the '5 paragraph essay' to a more rigorous form of analytical writing (anal WHAT writing? I hear echoing in my head). What is more distressing is that some students just don't care. Their goal is to scrape through with minimum effort and be done with it. They usually sit droopy-eyed in the back, head cocked rather extraterrestrially so as to keep one eye on the front and the other on their thigh which apparently has some communication device stuck to it which sends messages of how bored they are to their universe of friends.

Ah yes; can't wait.