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I was skeptical that a product with this low price tag could adjust to my glasses and required angle of vision and prove sturdy enough to qualify as a keeper.

I was wrong. Bike Peddler’s Take a Look eyeglass mirror does both.

It must be said that an eye-glass-attached mirror is not for every cyclist. Some body types—mine included—make it difficult to get a helpful angle of vision over the hunched shoulders of the in-action cyclist. A handle-bar-mounted mirror has some advantages here.

Yet the dexterity and light weight of the eyeglass approach has its compensating virtues. I’ve trained myself to glance up slightly and focus on an 11:30 clock position to gain security that no car or other cyclist is on my left flank before I pass or turn left. A little effort makes the ‘Take a Look’ an ally in the battle of the road.

It would be too much to call this a revolutionary product. Yet, price and capacity combine to make it a potential game-changer. Skepticism not firmly in my rear view mirror, I’m a fan.

This stylish value-point bike helmet is all I expected at the mid-fifty-dollar price point and more.

I’m especially impressed with the snug and comfortable fit. Ventilation is adequate or better, though I have not yet summer-tested the helmet.

The Interval comes in a nice assortment of colors. I purchased the white one. I like the style very much.

A winner, without breaking the bike-gadget budget.

This morning’s newspaper chronicles, in a manner of speaking, the movements of kings, princes, and their armies. Such human jockeying for power and the ‘outcry in the streets’, the end of which the psalmist longs to see, sound a constant beat in the rhythm of human affairs.

Yet there is, in the newsprint of a dying print medium, no similar register of dark, demonic forces. One is left to understand that powerful men and women make the world, plowing deep, bloody furrows by their unrelenting ambition. Continue Reading »

Though I tried on the highly-recommended Oakley Jawbones in my local bike store, I told myself I needed a few more months of serious riding to prove to myself the cost aligned with my commitment. Having drawn that rather philosophical line in the sand, I moved on to shop’s low-end alternative: the Tifosi.

Having now broken them in via cold-winter riding in Indianapolis, I can say that they are a comfortable, solid, and more than adequate armament for the cycler’s eyes. I attach an adjustable mirror to mine. The Tifosis provide a solid platform for this gizmo and do not shift at all on my head under the added weight. Continue Reading »

This handy little app is a marvel for finding out the nearest pharmacy, gas station, coffee shop, and a shortlist of other categories based on its discernment of your present location. Some categories display a bit of mysterious overlap. If you’re suffering from chest pains, however, your dash to the nearest ‘hospital’ might take you through a couple of veterinary clinics before you get to somebody who knows about human hearts. Nonetheless, a helpful little icon for your iPod screen!

Non-Muslims who need to know the Quran could do worse than begin with M.M. Pickthall’s English translation, here formatted for the iPhone. Scholars and the pious debate the merits of Pickthall’s renderings, but this handy and inexpensive app opens the door to those less interested in the minutiae who benefit from having Islam’s most holy book a tap or two away.

From time to time the course of events hands to us a particularly pleasant fruit encased in a most bitter shell.

The genre of biblical literature—it is of course to be found outside the biblical text as well—that is called ‘apocalyptic’ addresses itself to the faithful who have lost control. Words like ‘power’, ‘influence’, and ‘clout’ have meaning in a society and an historical moment in which the pious can share in the shaping of their space, their time, their shared destiny. Often this privilege is denied. Then, apocalyptic speaks its word. Continue Reading »

The letters to the churches that occupy the early chapters of the book of Revelation are a study in nuanced assessment. The Lord Jesus, who speaks in these letters embedded in an apocalyptic neighborhood, metes out both praise and rebuke in roughly equal measure. Not unusually, the reader is stunned by how severe and encouraging the dominical voice can be with regard to the same listening church.

Thyatira, for example:

Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan’s so-called deep secrets (I will not impose any other burden on you): Only hold on to what you have until I come. To him who overcomes and does my will to the end, I will give authority over the nations— ‘He will rule them with an iron scepter; he will dash them to pieces like pottery’—just as I have received authority from my Father. I will also give him the morning star. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

The italicized words come from the second psalm, which contains a message from YHWH to his human delegate on Zion that is routinely quoted by the New Testament and early Christian literature as an anticipatory description of Christ’s dominion over the nations. Continue Reading »

By the time Jack finds himself walking away from his beloved Audrey and staring at the ocean over which a new sun rises, neither guns nor brains can save him. Jack has come to his end.

Or so we would conclude if we did not know the penchant of 24 writers for making the impossible become plausible.

Along the way, Jack has saved a blooded United States of America and, arguably, its constitution. One of the elements that makes Season 6/Day 6 powerful is the insight into ‘politics as the art of the possible’ when the possible has been circumscribed beyond precedent by men who are prepared to do anything to advance their cause.

Action, it seems, begets contemplation which begets drama. Continue Reading »

bridle: 2nd John

We take for granted at this late evening of Enlightenment’s day that truth is to be discovered by the earnest, individual seeker. Nothing stands above his range of movement as independent investigator, no truth looms larger than he, no calculation of danger is to be admitted. Continue Reading »