“Biblical terms”

There are phrases in some bible translations which are sometimes referred by American Christians as "biblical terms". I "wonder" should our perspective be to hold these terms as "biblical terms" or should it be "in another culture they have an idiom…" (or in an older stage in our own culture, or in another culture that also used English). My point is that it seems that we intentionally or unintentionally elevate the language of the Bible without focusing on the culture in which the events and letters are sent. It seems that by taking this approach we decontextualize the original message. One inadvertent result of removing the cultural context is that it allows us to recontextualize the text in our own mental framework. Instead of looking at the message as it was conveyed from party "A" to party "B"along with the cultural abnormalities of the methodology used to convey that message.

My example is comes from sitting in church and hearing the preacher reference the following verse while explaining the phrase "he fell asleep".

And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." And when he had said this, he fell asleep. - Acts 7:60

Similarity by not understanding the context of the common culture in which the stories were generated it allows an errant contextual vacuum to form in our understanding of the original text. In the following verse what does "Son of Man" mean?

And he said, "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God." - Acts 7:56

Images in the Free Culture Movement

I have been really encouraged by the availability of images which have been released under Creative Commons licenses.

While there are a lot of icon sets out there, here are some of my "go to" places.

  • The first place I usually go for free icons isthenounproject.com. There is a growing community behind the endeavor and their management operations are being taken seriously.
  • A second place which I have found helpful is: mapicons.nicolasmollet.com.
  • I have also found these images which are SVG for maps: http://map-icons.com/

As an archivist, I wonder where will these icons go if they are just privately hosted? - Is there an archive for these things?

Excel, XML, and CSV

I never thought the day would come when I would say that I wished that I had a Windows version of MS Excel. I am simply aghast. But never-the-less I have been looking for an XML parsing solution for OS X and can not find one which is graphically oriented.

I want to move certain XML encoded content to my blog and the best way (that I can figure) to do this is to import CSV files (although there is a WordPress plugin for importing XML).

I want to be able to do this, but the Mac version of Excel does not do this:

I really want to drag and drop, but this tutorial makes it look easy-ish to do at the command line. http://blog.mclaughlinsoftware.com/oracle-sql-programming/how-to-convert-xml-to-csv-and-upload-into-oracle/


What am I Using this for? Well I would like to use it with itunes XML, Endnote XML, Bookpedia XML, BibTeXXML, SIL-OLAC data as XML, WorldCat Data as XML? Glotalogue data as XML.

Lexical Database Archiving Questionnaire

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It's true!

I am asking around on different mailing lists to gain some insight into the archiving habits of linguists who use lexical databases. I am specifically interested in databases created by tools like FLEx, ToolBox, Lexus, TshwaneLex, etc.

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Adding white space to PDF after cropping

I have a PDF that I would like to crop to text and then add consistent white space (margin). The PDF was generated by a Bookeye 4 scanner. Which exported the content straight to PDF. So, I am trying to do this with Adobe Acrobat 9.2. SIL Americas Area Publishing suggested that I use ScanTailor - An excellent program, but one which I find crashes on OS X.

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