We had a full week of classes this week at Northern Seminary — I had a fresh New Testament cohort, David Fitch had an intensive, and so did Lynn Cohick (DMin). Lots of new faces but the best part of it was how joyous the students were. The NT cohort also featured a few special lectures by Becky Castle Miller, who has just begun her PhD at Wheaton. Northern is a special place, and when school begins I often think of the history of schools and my own education. Here’s an old-fashioned schoolhouse.
Photo by Brad West
Photo by Brad West on Unsplash
A house refurbishment in northern England has uncovered a trove of gold coins, which could be worth up to £250,000 ($290,000) at auction next month.
The discovery is one of the biggest hoards of 18th century English gold coins ever uncovered in Britain, according to auction house Spink & Son in a press release sent to CNN on Thursday.
While renovating their kitchen in July 2019, residents unearthed a salt-glazed earthenware cup burrowed underneath the concrete and floorboards of their home in Ellerby, North Yorkshire.
The cup, described as being no larger than a soft-drink can, contained more than 260 gold coins dating from 1610 to 1727. The stash of coins has an estimated value of £100,000 ($116,00) in today's spending power, auctioneers said.
Gregory Edmund, an auctioneer with Spink & Son, said the remarkable trove is unlike any find in British archaeology or like any coin auction in living memory.
"It is a wonderful and truly unexpected discovery from so unassuming a find location," Edmund said in the press release.
"This find of over 260 coins is also one of the largest on archaeological record from Britain, and certainly for the 18th century period," he added.
(Reuters) - Nicole Aunapu Mann has waited nine long years for her chance to go into space.
And if all goes according to plan, that wait will end on Oct. 03, when she will lead NASA's Crew-5 mission to the International Space Station.
"It has been a long journey, but it's been so well worth it," Mann told Reuters on Friday.
Mann will be the first Native American woman in space. The first Native American man in space was John Herrington in 2002.
"I feel very proud," said Mann. "It's important that we celebrate our diversity and really communicate that specifically to the younger generation."
Mann, a member of the Wailacki of the Round Valley Indian Tribes in Northern California, says that her upcoming mission has sparked excitement in her community.
"That's really, I think, an audience that we don't get an opportunity to reach out to very often," she said.
With her journey into space just weeks away, Mann says she will be taking a few mementos into orbit to remind her of home, among them a 'dreamcatcher,' a traditional Native American protective charm.
What does it take (for you) to block someone? Here’s James Ernest’s answer:
If you don’t know the abbreviation, maybe it’s because I just made it up: infrequently asked question. This question is infrequently asked because I rarely block anyone.
But recently I have blocked three people from my personal Facebook profile, and one of them found another way to ask why. It may or may not have been an honest question, but I will treat it as such.
Here are things you can do to get me to block you. Most of these have to do with your comments or reactions to my posts.
Threaten me.*
Taunt me.
Make false accusations against me.
React to my posts with angry-face or (for serious posts) laugh emojis.
Make my feed, or my contributions to a group, all about you by responding to all or many of my posts with blatantly hostile questions or retorts.
Respond to links that I post without having bothered to read the linked article or post.
Reply with questions or arguments that I have already answered, but you somehow just cannot understand.
These are in order: the higher it is on the list, the faster it will get you blocked. I am really sorry about the last one. If I block you for this last reason, take that as meaning: I am sorry, but it is clear to me now that we don’t understand each other and the back-and-forth is useless.
(NewsNation) — Despite the attention given to COVID-19 influencing Americans to move away from home, the Census Bureau reported that permanent migration levels in the U.S. still continue to decline.
There are, however, “lifestyle migration” patterns happening that didn’t exist pre-pandemic, according to real estate experts.
Julie Faupel, a broker in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, told NewsNation Digital that there’s a massive shift happening in the real estate marketplace.
With the ability to work remotely, “We’re all saying, ‘Wait a minute, I don’t have to live anywhere that I don’t want to. It’s so nice to have that luxury of choice. Because then it really is all about just defining where you want to be and how you want to live,” Faupel said.
As people realign their priorities, and learn to work in new ways, moving to places such as Wyoming have seen increases in demand, according to Faupel.
Faupel is the founder of REALM, a real estate tech startup, and works closely with top producing real estate professionals, from all over the map. She says they’ve also seen demand in Aspen, Colorado; Park City, Utah; and Hawaii.
Urban environments are still seeing demand, as well, but people are starting to prioritize different things, especially the amenities in their homes.
Chocolate, enough said:
Chocolate is a food product made from the fruit of a cacao tree (Theobroma cacao). Raw, unprocessed chocolate tastes bitter and dry, but chocolate that’s been fermented, dried, and roasted, and had a bit of sugar and cream added to it, tastes divine.
People around the world enjoy the decadent flavor of chocolate on its own and in an enormous variety of foods. More than half of all the chocolate we consume comes from West African countries, primarily Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire.
Chocolate is derived from the fruit of the cacao tree, which grows exclusively in tropical climates. The cacao tree is native to Central and South America, but once European invaders discovered the delicacy in the 18th century, the popularity of chocolate took off and farmers soon established plantations in other parts of the world, according to the book "The True History of Chocolate(opens in new tab)," by Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe (Thames and Hudson, 2013). Today, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, Nigeria, Indonesia and Brazil account for around 80% of the world's cacao production.
Cacao trees bear fruit that are about the same size and shape of a football, according to the World Atlas of Chocolate(opens in new tab). These lumpy berries, or pods, are full of up to 50 sour seeds, or beans, covered in white pulp. The pods are harvested by hand and cut open to remove the cocoa beans which are then placed in covered trays where they ferment for several days. After fermentation, the beans are uncovered and left out to dry.
Next, the beans are taken to the chocolate factory, where they are cleaned and debris is removed. The beans are roasted in large, rotating ovens. The roasting draws out flavor and removes the beans from their hulls. Roasted beans go into a winnowing machine, which cracks the beans and removes hulls. The remaining part of the bean is called the nib, and that's the piece that becomes edible chocolate.
The nibs are ground down under a series of rollers to create a thick paste called chocolate liquor. Chocolate liquor does not contain alcohol (chocolate liqueur does, however), and is the main source of unsweetened baking chocolate, said Pam Williams, co-founder and past president of the Fine Chocolate Industry Association(opens in new tab) (FCIA) and founder and lead instructor of Ecolé Chocolat Professional School of Chocolate Arts(opens in new tab).
At this point, chocolatiers have creative freedom to create chocolate to their tastes. According to the FCIA, ingredients separate fine chocolate from that of average quality. "Fine chocolate," as designated by the FCIA, contains only cacao liquor, cacao butter (optional), sugar, lecithin, vanilla (optional) and possibly milk fats and solids. Additional flavors or ingredients like nuts can be added later. [quite the article if you read it all]
Shifting Christian apologetics to newer questions:
Finally, the future of Christian apologetics must look beyond answering the questions of modernity, such as the existence of God, the historicity of Jesus, and the veracity of Scripture. These questions are the product of the Enlightenment era when the primary concerns raised against the Christian faith were related to rationalism and scientific empiricism. While these types of questions should retain a proper place in the practice of contemporary apologetics, it is important to recognize that postmodernity asks new questions. These questions include, but are not limited to:
How do Christians account for the colonization of the Western world, the genocide of Indigenous peoples, and the enslavement of Black people, all in the name of the Christian faith?
Is Christianity the white man’s religion?
How should Christian leaders respond to the sex scandals, racism, and abuses of power that have left a generation of believers disenchanted with the institutional Church?
How should Christians respond to the cries for justice among marginalized communities, rather than merely dismissing them as liberal?
How can Christians preach a message of unity and reconciliation when the Church itself is so divided?
These are the types of questions being asked by the postmodern skeptics of our time, Christian and non-Christian alike. These questions should not be interpreted as a threat to the Christian faith, but an opportunity. They are an opportunity for the institutional Church to look more like the bride of Christ, and for the God of justice to speak into the injustices of our world today. They are an invitation to engage in an apologetic that is more concerned with “gentleness and respect” than merely “giving an answer.” They are an indication that Christian apologetics must shift its approach from having all the answers, to being present in the questions. To quote a conversation I had with Dr. Dale Coulter, “what we need are not ‘apologetic experts’ given how much expertise is being questioned, but ‘family doctors’ who live with the people and show their concern through their concrete practices.” This just may be the best defense for the Christian faith in our postmodern age.
If you care about errors in books or editing, you might like this (as a friend said who sent it to me) rambling about errors.
Love the thoughts about the new questions for apologetics!
I just want to report that this little post about the new apologetics is making a big difference to me. Friends and family members I’ve been praying and seeking to open up to Jesus for ages, but were disinterested in any ‘proofs of the resurrection’ or old style apologetics- well, since I read this post and wrote it down (as per that life changing post on recording what you read) and prayed and thought on it just days ago- I’ve had chances to talk with some of these same people- about issues that matter to them. I’ve been able to listen more (seeing THAT as part of showing love to them too), and then start to put into perspective the ideas they thought God’s view was and paint a picture of God they’d never thought of. I haven’t felt I needed to have all answers, but that’s been part of the benefit for them. But I’ve been then able to show some ways Jesus acted in related situations, as well as Old Testament examples, which show God’s love. The responses have been open and positive and surprised, and left doors open for more discussion. Thank you, Scot, for sharing this really helpful information.