Things No One Ever Told You About Women in the Bible

Check out Mona Loewen’s guest-post at Wade Burelson’s blog, Grace and Truth to You. Mona surveys the role of key women in the biblical texts.

Check This Out: How to Save the Planet

This is a very cool video from the Cyclists’ Touring Club, the national bicycling organization in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

HT: Kent.

Indoor Rides

The weather is improving a bit in central Virginia, but I haven’t found time to get on the road. My three spin sessions this week:

Date	Distance (mi)	Time	Workout
Sat, 2/16	18.57	0:53:19	Spinnervals 3.0
Sun, 2/17	14.30	0:40:08	Recovery
Mon, 2/18	22.26	1:02:54	Carmichael
2008 Totals (23 rides)	423.30	20:09:27

Movie Review: The Eye

The Eye achieves a kind of Hollywood miracle you don’t see much of these days. It’s so stupendously awful the English language cannot contain it. Breaking free of the confines of human thought patterns, it prohibits mere mortals such as myself from crafting the similes and metaphors needed to communicate its utter stupidity. Perhaps one day a race of immortal aliens will develop the symbolic logic needed to probe the depths of this film’s idiocy. Only time will tell. In meantime, I will do my best to describe the worst turkey I’ve seen since The Forgotten (2004).

Don’t Blow That Whistle, Lady

In an amazing example of discriminatory religious beliefs carried to absurd lengths, a Kansas high school (St. Mary’s Academy) refused to allow Michelle Campbell to officiate at a boy’s basketball game. The reason: as a woman, she cannot be allowed to hold a position of authority over boys.

I suppose if Hillary Clinton is elected president this high school will be forced to succeed from the union.

Some TV Motivation

So I’m lying on my cheap Wal-Mart futon rationalizing my decision to stay lazy and not endure my scheduled spin session. I’m tired, and I’ve had little sleep this week, so fighting through a 50-minute Spinnervals DVD is just not in the cards. And then I flip the channel to FitTV, one of the homes of the single greatest TV show on the air today, “Shimmy.” Unfortunately, no “Shimmy” tonight. Instead, they’re rerunning an episode of “Insider Training,” the one about tri-athletes, specifically Lokelani McMichael, the youngest woman to ever finish the Hawaii Ironman.

Why Muscles Get Tired

A fair amount of attention has been paid by the cycling blogs to yesterday’s NY Times article on muscle fatigue. Apparently, calcium, and not lactic acid, is the culprit. Follow this link for a descent summary.

My spin session tonight followed the Carmichael “Cycling for Fitness DVD.” Distance, 22.96 miles; time: 1:03:09.

2008 indoor totals: 19 rides. Distance: 353.98 miles; time: 16:52:44.

Britain Backed Down by Communist China?

The Daily Mail reports that British Olympic athletes are being forced to sign a contract prohibiting criticism of China’s communist government. If an athlete does not sign the contract, he or she does not compete in China. If one violates the contract while in China, he’ll be put on the next plane home.

Indoor Spin Sessions

I have two DVDs that I rotate for my indoor training sessions: “Cycling for Fitness” from Carmichael Training Systems, and Spinnervals 3.0, “Suffer-O-Rama.” The workouts are about equally difficult, but in different ways. The Carmichael DVD demands a sustained effort at just below threshold for longer periods of time than the Spinnervals DVD, which shoots for short, very intense intervals. Both DVDs specify the target effort level with a sliding scale marked “low, medium, high.” The Carmichael DVD sets a target cadence and allows the cyclist to select the gear; the Spinnervals DVD does the opposite. Neither workout completely exhausts me, but both send my heart rate above 90% of the maximum. In a typical week, I’ll use the Carmichael DVD three or four times and the Spinnervals DVD once.

Putting “Intelligent Design” in its Place

From EthicsDaily.com:

An international group of scientists and theologians has issued a strong rebuke of “intelligent design,” a theory that has gained ground with conservative Christians, especially in the United States.

“We believe that intelligent design is neither sound science nor good theology,” the International Society for Science and Religion said in a statement last week.

I don’t find it surprising that trained scientists and theologians reject intelligent design. It’s difficult not to reject it once you become educated about the underlying ideas, although I have respect for a few of its proponents.

As I’ve said for years: Not only should intelligent design not be taught in our schools, it should not be taught in our Sunday Schools. It’s a compelling idea: that science may uncover some type of independent verification for Christian truth-claims, but the universe functions in a manner starkly different from what’s imagined by intelligent design. Yes, God created/creates the Universe, but not in the manner suggested by ID, and certainly not in the manner suggested by Creationists such as Ken Ham.