• Andy Ihnatko, internationally-beloved technology pundit and frequent guest on Mac Break Weekly, visited campus. We had a great time and even recorded a podcast in the van trip from the train station. I hope to have it finally edited and up some time this next month (followed by the nearly 1 year late SBL podcast).  Pictures are here.
• I traveled to Boston on business, taking our SHC “lion” with me for photo ops.
• Of course classes ended followed swiftly by graduation. We have over 350 Schreyer Scholars graduate with honors this spring and the ceremony was fantastic. You can read a nice summary of the class at the SHC website. In my closing remarks I urged the students to do two things as they go out into the world:
  • Be public intellectuals – don’t hide your intellect and ability, engage in the world and use the skills, knowledge, and ability that you have developed to make this world a better place.
  • Be people of honor – don’t simply accept the honors of academic success, grants, scholarships but strive to be honorable, doing that which is right. You can sense a theme in my comments.
• After welcoming our incoming freshmen for their first stage of orientation and registration I headed to Purdue with our associate dean for our annual meeting with our Big 10 peers. Always a good time, but this year had the added treat of watching the new Star Trek movie on a free afternoon (look for another movie review blog post if time permits).
• Upon arriving back in State College sans luggage, of course, the family and I immediately hopped in the car and headed to the beach for the Memorial Day weekend. You can see the pics in the post below. A good time and minimal sunburn.
• Finally, last week I spent three days in the Philly area at various events for rising high school seniors.

In between all of this activity I have actually finished the revisions on my article about eschatological lists in the Targumim of the Megilloth, preached a couple of Sundays, and started reading The Book Thief and Guns, Germs & Steel : The Fates of Human Societies for our summer book reading project. So far GGS is rather plodding and while the Book Thief is engaging it is not a light story…at all.

This weekend has thus been very nice. The weather has been gorgeous, we celebrated my wife’s birthday, watched the new Pixar film Up! (ditto on the review), did a lot of work around the house, and enjoyed the pool (which fortunately for us is heated, this is central PA after all).

The week ahead has lots of meetings (and hopefully a repaired MacBook Pro, the screen had issues) but no travel so all in all a lighter schedule. Why should anyone care? I don’t know, but I feel a sense of responsibility to those who do read to give some explanation for why I have not posted more than a few comics and some pictures.

Have a good week everyone!