Sunday, August 14, 2005
(12:53 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Event Horizon
I say that we should push back the proposed Theology and the Political event to late September. Everyone is either in vacation mode or, as Anthony pointed out, "oh shit I didn't do anything this summer" mode. In any case, I think we'll be able to have better visibility during the school year, because The Weblog is clearly in that class of blogs that is highly dependant on the academic calendar.I've contacted Creston Davis on the possibility of getting a few review copies of the book, but he's on vacation in Australia, where he has apparently founded an Institute of some kind (before finishing his PhD). Those of you who feel insecure and inadequate reading about my meager accomplishments should probably make a point never to look at Creston's C. V. Also, a Google Image search will reveal his ability to grow a quite formidable beard.
[In other news, I've decided that the key to my success with French was definitely the strategy of going through a second grammar text while embarking on my "real" reading. There is no time to do that before the German exam, but I will probably pass that nonetheless. I think that the relationship between being able to pass a typical grad school translation exam and being able to use the language as a genuine research tool is indirect at best, but I do think that such exams should be retained since gaining the ability to pass such an exam is a necessary first step in attaining relative fluency in reading. In any case, starting August 30th, I'm definitely breaking out Anthony's German reading text that he has laying around, and by the end of the semester, I should be down to looking up one word per sentence, rather than my current average of twelve words per sentence. (There are no German sentences of fewer than twelve words.)
My ultimate goal by the end of my career is to be like Robert Jenson and able to say, in the preface to my career-capping systematic theology, "All translations are mine unless otherwise noted," then go on to quote sources in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, French, and Italian, with maybe two or three "otherwise noteds." That's at least thirty years off, though. Maybe I can be the last one ever to write a systematic theology!]
