Smorgasbord

It’s time to browse an eclectic mix of posts from other bloggers, beginning with Ben Witherington, the New Testament scholar and jazz aficionado, who has penned a nice retrospective on jazz great John Coltrane:

A very long time ago, 80 years, an African American was born in Hamlet, North Carolina, but he was raised and learned the joy of music in High Point N.C., my home town. That town, sadly has never done enough to honor him and his remarkable legacy, but I want to pay tribute to him today as we approach the anniversary of his birth. His name is John Coltrane, the greatest jazz saxophone player of all time, hands down. If you ask the great players of today like Michael Brecker or Branford Marsalis or James Carter who has influenced them the most, there is no question who they will mention.

Sticking with the musical theme, Mikey at Think Christian writes about Mockingbird, the new album just released by Derek Webb, formerly of the Christian music band Caedmon’s Call. Derek has made this new album available on the web free for downloading. Follow the link for more details. I’m listening to Mockingbird right now and will have more to say on it in another post.

I want to suggest two posts from Signs of the Times. The first is a retrospective on the life of Steve Irwin, the “Crocodile Hunter.” John Coleman thinks the reason Steve delighted so many was his passion for animals, and his perseverance in pursuing something he loved:

What if we all lived life in that way? Stupid. Unconcerned with how we look to others. Totally dedicated to something outside of ourselves. Above the pain and detachment around us and able to stand strong against it because we have found joy — real joy — in something we love.

Kate Bluett’s passion, after seeing that so-bad-it’s-good movie Snakes on a Plane, is pleading with Hollywood to resist the temptation to make Snakes on a Plane 2:

I do not, in the near future, want to see any of the following in the theaters:
Spies on a Plane.
Snakes on a Starship.
Little Snakes on the Prairie.
… Hollywood: we know you. We’ve seen enough movies to know your conventions. … we loved Snakes on a Plane. Yes, it’s a terrible movie. Yes, it makes no sense. But it plays by the rules. And it does so well enough to be entertaining.

Katie, dear, they remade The Poseidon Adventure, for heaven’s sake! Isn’t that proof enough that Hollywood has no shame?

In Germany, it’s not snakes but Elektrosmog that has the country screaming. Mark Daniels has the scoop on this latest technophobia: killer cell phone emissions. They’re everywhere, and only the tin-foil hat brigade will survive this insidious terror. Will cell phone transmissions become our new second-hand smoke?

And finally, let me close with something I’ve stolen from blogging pastor Rev. Ed at Attention Span, a feature he calls “How to get here.” These are a some of the actual search strings people used to find their way to AnotherThink this week:

• How much booze for a wedding? — I believe Miss Manners might prefer the word spirits, actually.
• Another word for a newlywed — Soused? Tanked? Three sheets to the wind?
• My husband’s old girlfriends — I realize you can find just about anything on the internet these days, but…
• Why haven’t animals evolved radio communication? — Actually, the antennae of Cretaceous grasshoppers worked as crude cell phones, but they were soon killed off by Elektrosmog. Evolution never made that mistake again.
• What would happen to hereditary if a meteor hit earth? — Most scientists agree that in such an event, hereditary would cease to heredit.