Context for Confusion: Understanding Babel in the Book of Beginnings

The meaning of the Tower of Babel episode in Genesis 11 proves to be continually elusive for both biblical scholars and pastors. While the results of this momentous event in world history seem obvious, owing to the racial and linguistic diversity present in the world today, the reason for God\u27s judgment over the unified peoples who attempted to build together is far less clear. This has even led some to question the justice and wisdom of God, considering the challenges posed by racial division throughout history. As with most questions of biblical interpretation, however, the key to interpretation lies within the unity of the text itself. The Babel passage stands as the climax to the primeval history section of Genesis and, therefore, relies heavily on the literary themes and motifs which are presented in earlier chapters. Relying on these clues along with supplemental material from the contemporary cultures of the Genesis account, this study will probe the meaning of the Babel narrative in light of man\u27s descending spiral into sin, just before God decisively re-enters history to begin his redemptive master plan

Prisoner\u27s Dilemma and the Tower of Babel

The modern business paradigm, like the Tower of Babel, is being transformed by information technology-enabled communication capability, from one of competition to one of cooperation. This is illustrated by Miller, Roth and Kim\u27s (1992) report, in which they compare and contrast the Boston University Manufacturing Futures Survey\u27s results from its inception in 1981 with those throughout the1980\u27s and the most recent in 1990. The survey was administered to approximately 200 American manufacturing executives, who in it ranked the importance of strategic manufacturing capabilities and the initiatives their firms are undertaking. The authors\u27 results thus give a cross-sectional view of manufacturing priorities and initiatives, their evolution through the 1980\u27s, and the respondents\u27 projections of such into the 1990\u27s. The authors report a shift in manufacturing response patterns from restructuring (i.e., downsizing, plant closure, plant relocation, workforce reductions, product standardization) and process improvement and product improvement in the 1980\u27s, to the response pattern characterized by the authors as integrative . This integrative pattern includes initiatives such as : 1) constructing measures that are congruent with business strategy, 2) using interfunctional teams to span functional barriers, 3) sharing goals through the entire hierarchy, 4) training supervisors and workers, and 5) enhancing organizational learning through knowledge transfer. I contend that this paradigm shift is partly due to the ubiquitous integration of information technology (IT) into all facets of the business environment. The Tower of Babel is an apt metaphor for the modern IT-enabled business paradigm shift, in that communication capability enabled cooperation in the Tower\u27s construction. The Tower\u27s destruction was due to lack of communication. Likewise, business effectiveness and efficiency are enabled through cooperation, which depends on communication capabil

Testing the spirit of the information age

Every age has a 'spirit," The Information Age seems to be a more extreme case than most eras, with the constant barrage of messages promising social and individual salvation. Information and information technology are heralded as\ud great, new possibilities not just for reform but perfection, with some even predicting the end of physical death (using information technology. by the end of the next century. The intensity of our current period's fascination with technology is partly due to the technology itself-ideas or sales pitches get out to more people more quickly than ever before in history, and, as a result it\ud is easy to be blinded by all the promises and hype. It is no accident that ideas like "ecommerce" and "knowledge management' are unifying concepts for many in this era, but although there is nothing intrinsically wrong with them, there is something amiss with how they are discussed. This essay comments on the latter issue, the hyperbole of the Information Age, from three perspectives: 1) as a consumer of information technology; 2) as an educator in a field (archives and records management) utilizing information technology; and 3) as an individual convinced about the relevancy of basic Judaic-Christian beliefs as one means to shift critically the many conflicting and confusing messages promulgated by the so-called modern Information\ud Age

Paleolinguistics brings more light on the earliest history of the traditional Eurasian pulse crops

Traditional pulse crops such as pea, lentil, field bean, bitter vetch, chickpea and common vetch originate from Middle East, Mediterranean and Central Asia^1^. They were a part of human diets in hunter-gatherers communities^2^ and are one of the most ancient cultivated crops^3,4^. Europe has always been rich in languages^5^, with individual families still preserving common vocabularies related to agriculture^6,7^. The evidence on the early pulse history witnessed by the attested roots in diverse Eurasian proto-languages remains insufficiently clarified and its potential for supporting archaeobotanical findings is still non-assessed. Here we show that the paleolinguistic research may contribute to archaeobotany in understanding the role traditional Eurasian pulse crops had in the everyday life of ancient Europeans. It was found that the Proto-Indo-European language^8,9^ had the largest number of roots directly related to pulses, such as *arnk(')- (a leguminous plant), *bhabh- (field bean), *erəgw[h]- (a kernel of leguminous plant; pea), *ghArs- (a leguminous plant), *kek-, *k'ik'- (pea) and *lent- (lentil)^10,11,12^, numerous words subsequently related to pulses^13,14^ and borrowings from one branch to another^15^, confirming their essential place in the nutrition of Proto-Indo-Europeans^16,17,18^. It was also determined that pea was the most important among Proto-Uralic people^19,20,21^, while pea and lentil were the most significant in the agriculture of Proto-Altaic people^22,23,24^. Pea and bean were most common among Caucasians^25,26^, Basques^27,28^ and their hypothetical common forefathers^29^ and bean and lentil among the Afro-Asiatic ancestors of modern Maltese^30^. Our results demonstrate that pulses were common among the ancestors of present European nations and that paleolinguistics and its lexicological and etymological analysis may be useful in better understanding the earliest days of traditional Eurasian crops. We believe our results could be a basis for advanced multidisciplinary approach to the pulse crop domestication, involving plant scientists, archaeobotanists and linguists, and for reconstructing even earlier periods of pulse history

BOOK REVIEW OF “THE TIME KEEPER” WRITTEN BY MICTH ALBOM

“Time is money” is one of the most popular phrases in the world. Nowadays, human life depends on time as it is everything. According to history, the time creator was humans. After knowing how to count time, they became afraid about time, out of time, and they became aware about keeping time, saving time. Humans became selfish about time. Their ego made them want time to be faster or slower. They are afraid about their age, to be old, to be dead. Another wants to die, and some want it to come faster and soon. It is all because of their knowledge about time, after they know how to count it

Review of 'The City of Words' by Alberto Manguel.

Review of 'The City of Words: Understanding Civilisation Through Story' by Alberto Manguel

'Babylonian flats' in victorian and edwardian London

The first half of this paper examines the controversy associated with the building of Queen Anne's Mansions, London's first high-rise flats, erected between 1873 and 1890, and a catalyst for the introduction of height restrictions in the London Building Acts of 1890 and 1894. Subsequent sections consider the building's place in the imagination of Londoners, the marketing of the mansions, which emphasised their height and novelty, and the characteristics of residents, especially as recorded in the 1901 census. The paper concludes by positioning Queen Anne's Mansions in wider debates about living in flats and the acceptability of high-rise buildings in nineteenth-and early twentieth-century London. © The London Journal Trust 2008