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This section is one of endless controversy, from Jesus' cleansing of the temple to his commendation of the widow who gave all. Even this woman, whom her culture sees as a helpless nobody, stands for Jesus in a favorable contrast to the Pharisees and the wealthy. The various debates in this section are attempts to trap Jesus, especially in light of the leadership's reaction to the temple cleansing. Jesus offers two rebuttals, one in a parable showing that the leadership is on the way out and another in a short question designed to focus on Messiah's lordship authority.
Make no mistake about this final section. It shows a battle for the claim to lead God's people. The leadership thinks it has earned that right. Jesus suggests it has been his, as David's heir, all along. Given Jesus' view of himself and the leaders' inability to trip him up, they will move to stop him. Their action will appear to work at first, only to undergo a miraculous reversal. The entire unit raises the question, Where does God's authority reside?
This event is like a stick of dynamite in the relationship between Jesus and the leadership. As if throwing a flame onto oil, Jesus raises the issue of his authority most directly by his act of cleansing the temple. In fact, the leadership clearly sees this as the issue, as 20:1-8 makes clear. Their plotting in verses 47-48 follows the cleansing and shows the action's importance in pushing them to act. In the other Synoptic Gospels, when the trials of Jesus start it is his attitude toward the temple that is the prosecution's launching point.
The custom Jesus attacks is the selling of various items necessary for sacrifice: animals, wine, oil, salt and doves (Jn 2:14; m. Seqalim 1:3; 2:1, 4; Eppstein [1964] notes that some of these practices may have been just recently moved into the temple courts). Money changers also collected Roman and Greek coins and exchanged them for the half-shekel temple tax required by the Torah (Ex 30:11-14). The exchange had a built-in surcharge, a portion of which may have gone to the high priest's family.
Is the cleansing of the temple prophetic or messianic? It must be admitted that little in the event itself has a messianic character. But its literary and temporal juxtaposition to the entry is crucial to an understanding of its character. Jesus has just left a dispute over whether the disciples should call him king--a confession he accepted. Now he is acting on the temple. Though his temple actions are prophetic in character, his acceptance of the earlier acclaim cannot be ignored. The confession is still ringing in his opponents' ears.
Many historical-critical scholars are used to treating events in Jesus' life in isolation from each other, as independent units of tradition. However, in the case of these Jerusalem events of Jesus' last week of ministry, such a separation is historically artificial. The connection between Jesus' entry and his first public act in the temple should not be ignored. The linkage makes Jesus' act one of messianic and prophetic authority. It may well be that Jesus acts here as a leader-prophet, much like Moses.
Now prophets, even those like John the Baptist, could be tolerated. But a prophet who also saw himself as a king had to be stopped, especially if he was going to impose himself on the nation's worship. If the nation had to repent for its actions at the temple, the priests would have to acknowledge their own culpability before God. They could not accept such a challenge to their authority.
Luke's version of this event is very concise. He does not supply many details the other Gospels include, especially the descriptions of how physical Jesus' actions were. Rather, Luke goes right to the heart of the event, focusing on Jesus' rebuke with its Old Testament allusions: "It is written," he says, " `My house will be a house of prayer,' but you have made it `a den of robbers.' " The quote combines Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11. Isaiah expresses the hope that the temple will be a house for all the nations, while Jeremiah condemns the Israelites' hypocrisy and injustice as they worship at the temple. (Interestingly, here Luke does not develop the point about Gentiles, even though he loves the theme.) The Jeremiah speech is one of that prophet's most scathing. It calls the Jewish people "robbers," bandits just like the thieves of Luke 10:30.
It may well be, given Jesus' lament and the leadership's protest which precede this event, that Jesus' rebuke for hypocrisy is not limited to commercial practices in the temple but extends to the nation's refusal to worship God and recognize the day of visitation. Either way, Jesus is the issue, and the subject is properly honoring God. Israel thinks God is honored at the temple. Jesus claims the exact opposite. The nation is divided; choices are required. They cannot both represent God's will. The warning also illustrates the danger of combining religiosity and commercialism at the expense of true worship--a danger to which we also must be sensitive today.
The leaders begin trying to kill Jesus before he becomes even more dangerous (the Greek means "to destroy"). The plot to get Jesus, originally raised in 6:11 and 11:53-54, is hardening. Something must be done. Jesus is appearing at the temple daily. But because of his popularity the leaders cannot yet act. All the people hung on his words. Believing they have power, the leaders are in fact powerless to act until they get a break. That break will come from within the ranks of Jesus' inner circle.
Nothing has changed between Jesus' declaration that the nation's house is desolate (13:34-35) and his weeping for the nation upon entering the city (19:41). The nation's rejection, like the plot against Jesus, has hardened into resolve--and as sin calcifies it becomes even more dangerous. The "Jesus problem" goes in search of a "final solution." But like the Iron Curtain, this attempt to control the situation through isolation and containment will fail; even death cannot hold God's agent back from doing God's will.
Today religious claims are a dime a dozen. If you survey the media it is not hard to find all types of claims about what God is doing. Ultimately the issue is not the claim but what stands behind it.
The Pharisees' question about Jesus' religious authority is in many ways a natural one. He has had no official training. He comes from Galilee, an area not known for its religious instruction or anything else of stature (Jn 7:52). He has never sat under a rabbi. Where does his authority come from? How can he justify the things he has been doing? This is really a fundamental question for the entire Gospel (4:32, 36; 5:24; 9:1; 10:19). It also opens a series of five controversies in 20:1-44. In these disputes the answer to the Pharisees' question becomes obvious, even though no direct reply is offered here. Though an answer is not forthcoming from Jesus, anyone who has followed Luke's story up to this point knows the reply, which is why Jesus' analogy with John the Baptist is so powerful. By whose authority does Jesus do these things? He responds, By the same authority John the Baptist possessed.
This controversy arises as Jesus is teaching in the temple, something he is doing daily (19:47). The fact that Jesus is teaching the gospel shows that his message has never changed. But the leadership wants to know the basis for Jesus' actions. Whether it is his teaching or his cleansing of the temple, where did he get the right to do such things? In Greek the question puts by what authority (en poia exousia) in the emphatic position, at the front of the question. In the questioners' view the leadership represents God's will and has the right to teach it. Where does Jesus get the right to challenge their teaching?
In good Jewish and Hellenistic fashion, Jesus answers the query with one of his own. This style of disputation was popular in the ancient world. It was designed to show who could ask the wiser question and expose weaknesses in the opponent. Such an approach also produced reflection about the proper approach to a problem. Jesus' question is a simple one: "John's baptism--was it from heaven, or from men?" The question is both obvious and subtle. By dealing with a public action, he has excluded a war of words merely over public claims, titles or credentials. There will be no appeal to derived authority by means of lineage or mere assertion. Did John give evidence that God stood behind his deeds? Only two options exist: either he did or he did not. The subtlety in the question lies not only in its appeal to concrete events but also in the popular consensus that has developed. The multitudes know the answer to this question: John came from God. God's presence manifested itself clearly in his ministry. Rejection of that conclusion can only reflect blindness.
So the leadership is in a dilemma, since they had not responded to John. They caucus to determine an answer. Either way of replying would leave them exposed. If they acknowledged divine authority, they would be hurting on two counts. First, they would raise the question why they had not embraced John. Second, they would concede a major point to Jesus: that one need not come from the Jerusalem school of rabbinic studies in order to teach the way of God.
Now the text only mentions the first reason, but surely the leadership senses the trap and knows that more than a historical religious dispute about John is wrapped up in the question. Jesus is building a solid analogy, and the leaders want to stay out of that building.
However, if they took the other option and said "From men," they would run the risk of being stoned, because the people know John was a prophet. Though the concern about stoning may be figurative for the rejection their answer would face, technically to reject a true prophet of God did merit stoning (Deut 13:1-11).
Faced with a catch-22 and sensing they have been successfully cornered, the leaders do what politicians often do when faced with a no-win situation: they dance around the query and refuse to take a position. Fence-sitting is always a tempting option when one is faced with a losing proposition. The leaders' private dialogue reveals the blatant hypocrisy of their answer. Clearly they regard John's authority as simply human, but they don't have the nerve to tell the crowd so. Rather than acknowledge their view and its unpopularity, they try to finesse the question. By doing so, they give up any moral ground for challenging Jesus. If they cannot decide about John, how can they decide about Jesus?
Jesus refuses to answer their original question, though the force of his analogy in his reply is obvious. The power behind Jesus is like that behind John. God has stood behind the actions of both, as Luke's narration had already made clear. In this case Jesus' silence lets the story of his ministry speak for itself. Claims of authority are not necessary since authoritative actions mark his entire ministry like giant footprints. Religious claims may be a dime a dozen, but some claims prove themselves to be true.
In this face-to-face battle, like a shootout in the Old West, the leadership had tried to destroy Jesus. But after the two sides had marked off their ten paces and turned to fire their questions, it was the leaders who blinked.
As a child and now as a parent, I have always enjoyed story time. I enjoyed hearing stories as a child, and I have received the special fun that comes from telling and acting out stories with a rich variety of voices for my children. There is something special about sitting on a parent's knee or watching a child's eyes light up as a story is read. Even more, if the story is a good one, it does more than just entertain: a lesson comes with it.
When Jesus turns to review Israel's history of response to God, he presents that history through a story, a parable. This final parable in Luke is really an allegory. Where a parable may have one to three points of contact with reality, an allegory has a whole set of correspondences to reality (Blomberg 1990). Since there are many points of correspondence between this story and the history of God's activity in salvation, it really is an allegory. Like many of Jesus' parables, it is a rebuke to Israel, especially its leadership (v. 19). But the people also reject the story (v. 16). So it is unlike a parent-child story time in that the message is not a pleasant one for the audience. Nonetheless, there is a point to the story, a lesson to be learned. Though the Son will be removed through death, the promise will not remain in the leadership's hands; it will go to others. They can destroy neither the Son nor the promise.
Jesus opens the story by referring to a vineyard. This image is rich with Old Testament and Jewish background, alluding to the presence of promise in Israel (Ps 80:8-13; Is 5:1-7; 27:2; Jer 2:21; Ezek 19:10-14; Hos 10:1; 1 Enoch 10:16; 84:6; 93:5). When Jesus places tenants in the story, he enriches the Old Testament imagery by setting up the role of the nation and leadership as caretakers for the promise. This addition is significant because the parable concludes with the vineyard given to others, a reference to Gentile inclusion in the promise.
The servants represent the series of prophets whom the nation rejected. This theme has been constant in Luke (11:47-51; 13:31-35; Acts 7). The concept builds on texts such as Jeremiah 7:21-28 and is Jesus' response to the plot of Luke 19:47. The nation is a poor tenant, lacking fruit and abusing those sent to check on its work (13:6-9). The calls for fruit and repentance for its absence have gone unheeded--in fact, they have been rejected and ignored. Three times the owner's representatives are cast out. There is no significance in the number three other than to point out that God sent prophets to the nation repeatedly.
The vineyard owner, God, decides to send "my son, whom I love" (3:22; 9:35), hoping that the stubborn tenants will at least respect him. The owner anticipates that his son's visit will be fruitful. But with logic that illustrates sin's blindness, the tenants decide that if they slay the son, they will inherit the land. When land belonged to someone without an heir, inheritance followed a certain custom: when the owner died, the land usually passed on to those who worked the land. Their scheme, of course, assumes that the murderers will not be discovered. There is a major blind spot in their thinking. Given their past track record with the owner's servants, wouldn't these tenants be among the first murder suspects? Hardness of heart does strange things. So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him, an allusion to Jesus' death outside Jerusalem. Jesus knows the leaders have rejected him so that death is his fate. In Luke's telling of the parable, the violence steadily increases as each messenger comes. The rejection is firmer all the time. The nation has gone the opposite direction from repentance.
So what will the owner do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others. The vineyard goes to those outside the leadership, even the nation, as the promise will encompass many people of the nations. Acts fills in this part of the story, though it is also clear that Israel still has a place in God's plan (Acts 1:6-11; 3:18-22; Rom 11:25-27). The point of God's judgment on the nation is clear as the crowd responds, "May this never be!" The point is clear and shocking to all--this should never happen, they respond. Yet this very act of murder is days away from taking place!
A Scripture sums up the lesson. Jesus cites Psalm 118:22 and asks why it is recorded there: The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone (NIV margin). This psalm, already cited in 13:35 and 19:38, indicates that God will vindicate his rejected leader. This building-stone imagery made a great impact on the church (Acts 4:11; Rom 9:32-33; 1 Pet 2:7). The psalm uses the symbolism of the foundation stone that is crucial to a building. Jesus is the foundation stone of God's plan. Though some may reject him, God will make him the centerpiece of his plan. Rejection by the Jewish nation is not the end of the plan. There is no replacing this precious and chosen stone.
In fact, judgment resides with "the rock." To fall on that stone is to be broken to pieces. When the stone falls on someone, it crushes. The point is clear: anyone opposing God's stone will be crushed by it. A Jewish proverb has a similar thrust: "If the stone falls on the pot, alas for the pot; if the pot falls on the stone, alas for the pot!" (Midrash Esther 3:6). Imagery for the passage does not allude to a specific text, though the concept is reminiscent of Isaiah 8:14 and Daniel 2:34-44. Rejecting the "beloved Son" has grave consequences--not for the Son, since he will be raised up by God, but for those who reject him. The parable is Jesus' statement regarding the source of his authority. He is the beloved Son, and God will vindicate him and exalt him. His death will be followed by resurrection and exaltation into a place of authority (Acts 2:22-39).
The leadership wanted to seize Jesus on the spot. They knew he had told the parable against them. They could not allow their authority to be challenged anymore. Still, the problem was Jesus' popularity. So opinion polls caused a degree of restraint but did not bring a change in resolve. They would find a way to get Jesus, despite his clear indication that the ultimate outcome would be their dashing themselves against God's precious cornerstone. You cannot kill a solid rock.
The next controversy is political and is a clever attempt to get Jesus into trouble either with Rome or with the Jews. The background is the "poll tax," which symbolized the Jewish subjugation to Rome, a sensitive social issue. Nationalist Jews questioned whether the poll tax should be paid, since it went directly to Rome. On one reading of the leaders' test of Jesus, they were really asking Jesus whether he was loyal to Rome or to God's nation, Israel.
The question's setting is clearly hostile. Keeping a close watch on him, they sent spies, who pretended to be honest. They hoped to catch Jesus in something he said so that they might hand him over to the power and authority of the governor. The entire effort is hypocritical. Appearing to ask a sincere question, they are really trying to set a trap. To add to the hypocrisy, they flatter Jesus, saying that he does not show partiality and teaches God's way truly. If they really feel this way, why have they not become followers of Jesus? Such shallow flattery is similar to the arguments of those who say Jesus is a great teacher but ignore his claims to unique authority.
Nonetheless, the question is whether the tax should be paid. Jesus pursues the answer, even though he is aware of their duplicity (the Greek term panourgia really refers to trickery [Bauernfeind 1967:726]). His answer will frustrate and expose their hypocrisy at the same time.
Jesus asks them to produce a coin. The fact that they carry the coin reading "Tiberius Caesar, Augustus, son of divine Augustus," shows that they already function under Roman sovereignty. The denarius was about the size of a dime and was the average pay for a day's labor. The men carry these coins as a matter of course. When Jesus asks whose inscription is on it, they reply, "Caesar's."
Jesus' reply is brief: "Then give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." Government has the right to exist and function, but its presence does not cancel out one's allegiance to God (Rom 13:1-7; 1 Pet 2:13-17). To what had been posed as an either-or question Jesus gives a both-and answer, avoiding the trap.
There are many points the passage does not discuss. What happens when there is a blatant moral conflict between the affairs of state and one's union to God? The reply does not endorse a doctrine of separation of church and state, as if these were two totally distinct spheres. What it does suggest is that government, even a pagan government, has the right to exist and be supported by all its citizens. Its existence is not an inherent violation of Christians' commitment to God. The passage does reject the Jewish Zealot approach. Jesus was not a political revolutionary, nor was he an ardent nationalist. He could not have rightly been charged with being politically subversive, though his opponents will misrepresent his words to make this charge in 23:2-3.
Once again, an attempt to trap Jesus has failed. His work transcends politics. His opponents are unable to trap him in his reply. In fact, they are silenced by his response. Frantic attempts to corner Jesus have failed. Another way to get him has to be found. A final point emerges from the drama: Jesus looks to be wiser than the leadership. He knows God's way; they do not.
It's easy to assume that questions about resurrection and life after death are modern concerns. Surely only the Enlightenment's empiricist tendencies led to such doubts. Weren't the ancients all very open and malleable when it came to the supernatural? The theological controversy presented to Jesus next shows how wrong such thinking about the ancient world is.
The Sadducees, who ask Jesus about the wife of seven men through levirate marriage, did not believe in resurrection or in the existence of angels (Josephus Jewish Wars 2.8.14 163-65; Antiquities 13.10.6 297-98; 18.1.4 16-17; Meyer 1971). For these priestly and lay aristocrats, who controlled much of the religious and political situation in first-century Israel and whose rich heritage stemmed back to Zadok, the natural world and the Torah were the only religious authorities (Ezek 40:46; 43:19; Josephus Antiquities 18.1.1 4; Fitzmyer 1985:1302-3). The Sadducees were ideological rivals to the Pharisees. Their movement collapsed in A.D. 70, and the Pharisees took control from them. So all our descriptions of them come from those of the prevailing party, the Pharisees. They reacted strongly against the oral Torah of the Pharisees and were theologically conservative in their commitment to the Torah alone, yet they were very pragmatic in their relations with Rome, possibly because of their high social status. In the sense that modernist religion abandons any supernatural belief and keeps only moralism, then the Sadducees were modernists. Thus the controversy is important not only among the ancient Jewish camps but also for modern times. This is the Sadducees' only appearance in Luke's Gospel, but their effort here means that most of the major Jewish groups have taken their swing at Jesus.
The law of levirate marriage was designed to perpetuate the line of descent for a man who had died childless (Deut 25:5; Ruth 4:1-12; m. Yebamot). If a man died without progeny, his brother would take his widow as his own wife and raise their children in the name of the deceased brother. Preserving the line of descent also kept land in the family, so numerous social consequences resulted from the practice.
Hoping to embarrass Jesus theologically, the Sadducees use the practice of levirate marriage to pose a question with a satirical edge. They are trying to show how foolish resurrection teaching is. Their question seeks to discredit resurrection much like another text, t. Niddah 70b, which asks whether the dead need to be ritually cleansed after resurrection since their contact with the dead and the grave renders them unclean. The question shows how carefully such issues were considered. This was no trivial matter for them.
So a man's brother dies married and childless, and the brother takes up his familial duty, marrying the widow. The only problem is that this man also dies childless. In fact, a total of seven brothers come and go as the woman's husbands, yet no children are produced. The superstitious person might wonder whether marriage to this woman was hazardous to one's health! Finally the woman dies. On the premise that resurrection follows, "whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?" The dilemma is clear. This woman has too many men to be responsible to and for in heaven! The Sadducees have fired their best theological shot, and it looks pretty damaging.
Numerous premises stand behind the question: (1) Relationships in the afterlife will be like those in this life. (2) The absurdity of the woman's dilemma reveals the absurdity of resurrection. (3) With the possible exception of levirate responsibility, monogamy was recommended--a key point since this woman has been committed in marriage seven times!
Jesus' reply undercuts the basic premise before stating emphatic support for resurrection: "Those who are considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die, for they are like the angels. They are God's children, since they are children of the resurrection." After the resurrection relationships change. "Putting on immortality" means there is no more need to create new mortals (1 Cor 15:50-54). With God as Father, families are no longer necessary. There is no more death, nor is there any need to worry about continuing one's family line. This makes the afterlife a new paradigm of existence to which the problem the Sadducees have posed is irrelevant. People do not marry in the afterlife, and the issue of whose spouse the woman is becomes vacuous.
By mentioning the angels, Jesus has made a second dig at the ancient modernists. The Sadducees also denied the existence of the spirit world (Acts 23:8). Jesus' point is that resurrection life takes on the qualities of eternity and sheds the limitations of mortality. The Sadducees' lack of appreciation for the new dimensions of resurrection existence, not to mention their hesitation to embrace alternate forms of existence at all, has caused them to frame a question that exposes their ignorance. Their denial of the spirit world is significant, since God himself is spirit. This is why Jesus says being like an angel means being a child of God in resurrection. The transformation of resurrection is what makes eternal life possible.
In fact, Jesus goes on, to deny resurrection is to deny the teaching of Scripture, such as that revealed at the burning bush. When Moses, years after the patriarchs died, called the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, he was asserting the continued existence of the patriarchs. Here Jesus exploits an absent verb in the Old Testament passage. God is the God of the patriarchs. That conclusion follows on another premise: "He is not the God of the dead, but of the living." For Moses to speak about God's relationship to the patriarchs means that they must be alive--and raised. The beauty of this allusion to Exodus 3:2-6 is that Jesus argues for resurrection from within the Torah, the only portion of Scripture that counted for a Sadducee. God's promises live on for the patriarchs because they still live. In fact, life is in his sovereign hands, and all live for him.
Luke notes that some of the Jews--Pharisees in all likelihood--commend his reply. And having failed to trap Jesus politically and theologically, his opponents stop asking Jesus questions. Jesus has passed his oral exams too well. They will have to find another way to trap him.
This passage is important because it shows again that Jesus' understanding of God's way and will is superior to his opponents' perception. In addition it shows Jesus' affirmation of a resurrection and an afterlife that is different from life now in certain particulars. There is no reincarnation, nor is this life all there is. In the face of modern doubts about resurrection and rising belief in reincarnation and other theories of cosmic recirculation, this text makes it clear that this life is our one mortal moment and that after it we are accountable to God for how we have spent it. Death is not the end, only a beginning. The question is, the beginning of what? Only one's response to Jesus determines the answer to that question. Childless levirate wives need not worry which man is their husband. All should worry whether they are a child of God.
Who is Jesus? Who is the Messiah? For Christians this is one of the basic questions of faith. This passage deals with that question by noting a short controversy between Jesus and the leadership. Previous attempts to stump him had failed, but now Jesus will silence his opponents with a question about the most important figure in Jewish promise, the Son of David, Messiah. It is Jesus' turn to ask a question and seek answers. How will the leadership fare in the hot seat?
Jesus raises a rabbinic antinomy. The question is asked both before and after a quotation of Psalm 110:1. "How is it that they say the Christ is the Son of David? David himself declares in the Book of Psalms, `The Lord said to my Lord: "Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet." ' David calls him `Lord.' How then can he be his son?" Jesus' goal is not to deny either premise but to show a relationship between two concepts that otherwise might appear to be in tension. In effect, Jesus is saying, more important than Jesus being David's son is that he is David's Lord. Or to answer Jesus' final question: that he is David's son is less significant (as significant as this is) than that he is David's Lord. Davidic sonship is not being denied; in fact, Davidic sonship is an important concept to Luke (1:31-35; Acts 13:23-39; also Paul, Rom 1:2-4). Rather, the point is Messiah's authority, and thus by implication Jesus' exalted position.
In fact, Jesus does not answer the question, nor does his audience. Instead the audience and Luke's reader are left to ponder it. In literary terms the answer comes in Luke 22:69 and Acts 2:22-39. The Son of David exercises divine prerogatives from the side of the Father in heaven. His authority is shared heavenly authority. To understand who the Son of David is, one must understand that he shares authority with the Father. As Acts 2 shows, authority over salvation comes from the Father through the Messiah, who sits at the Father's side functioning in "coregent" fashion. Thus the Lord Jesus reigns at the Father's side. Jesus does not make this explicit point here. But Luke 22:69 and Acts 2 show that ultimately this is the answer to the question.
Psalm 110:1 is the explanation for the answer; this is among the Old Testament passages most often quoted or alluded to in the New Testament (Acts 2:30-36; 7:55-56; 13:33-39; 1 Cor 15:22-28; Eph 1:19-23; Heb 1:3-14; 5--7). This royal psalm described the authority of the promised son of David. The picture of him at God's right hand is a picture of rule with God. A modern analogy would be to think of a corporate boardroom where the chairman of the board and the CEO sit together to manage the corporation. Only here the boardroom is God's heavenly court and the corporation is Creation and Redemption Inc. The Son of David shares authority and rule with the Father. So David, even though he is the ancestor of the Son in terms of family line, is under him in terms of authority.
All these points are only implied here. It took the resurrection to fully reveal who Jesus is, but the psalm shows the promise that through David's son eventually all the king's enemies would be defeated (Lk 1:67-79; Rom 1:2-4). Messiah's authority has the highest possible connections and reflects the highest possible position. When hymns declare, "He is Lord," passages like this explain what they mean.
The lines between the Jewish leadership and Jesus were drawn since the journey to Jerusalem began. In 11:37-54 the Galilean teacher pronounced a series of woes condemning both the Pharisees and the scribes. Nothing has happened in the interim to change that assessment. So Jesus issues a warning to his disciples that also comes within earshot of the people. Because of the scribes' pride and hypocrisy, the disciples are to beware. The warning is like 12:1.
Pride reveals itself in the scribes' public behavior as they wear their long robes and receive greetings of honor in public places. In fact, rabbis received special salutations (Windisch 1964:498; Lk 11:43). The robes were nicely decorated and ostentatious (Josephus Antiquities 3.7.1 151; 11.4.2 80). Pride was also evident in the scribes' taking the first seats in the synagogue or at feasts. Jesus had condemned such pursuits of honor in 11:43 and 14:7-14. So Jesus is reviewing his displeasure at attitudes he considers unworthy of disciples.
Hypocrisy surfaces in the scribes' treatment of others. The estates of vulnerable widows are devoured, while long prayers create a façade of caring about God and others (11:39; 18:9-14). The scribes' actions contradict their surface practice. "Such men will be punished most severely" (10:14; 11:31-32, 51). Luke often mentions widows or the poor to indicate those God cares for (2:37; 4:25-26; 7:12; 21:1-4; Acts 6:1; 9:39).
How the leadership abused widows is debated. Was the widows' property now dedicated to the temple handled in a way that defrauded them? Did the leaders take undue advantage of their hospitality? Did they accept debt pledges that they knew could not be repaid? Did they charge for legal advice against the dictates of the law? Scholars are not sure. But abuse occurred.
Disciples should avoid such superficial, destructive piety. True devotion comes from the heart, is marked by humility and cares for others; it does not use people.
In contrast to the leadership's pride and hypocrisy come the simple actions of a poor widow. She also stands tall in contrast to the rich who are passing by and contributing to the temple treasury. While noting the rich who give in passing, Jesus draws attention to a poor widow who puts two very small copper coins into the treasury. These two coins, lepta, were the smallest coins possible. They were worth about 1/100 of a denarius, or five minutes' labor at minimum wage! Hers is a minimal gift, at least on the surface.
Nonetheless, Jesus calls it the greatest gift. She "has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on." This last phrase can be translated "out of her poverty put in all her living" (ek tou hysterematos autes panta ton bion). The contribution really came from "all that remained of her life." Jesus' point is not so much to rebuke others' contributions as to exalt a contribution that otherwise would have been underappreciated.
Sometimes little gifts cost a great deal more than big gifts do, and their merit is in the sacrifice they represent. In fact, real giving happens when one gives sacrificially. Interestingly, research has shown that when people's income increases their proportion of charitable contributions tends to drop. We tend to give less the more we are blessed. How would Jesus assess this trend?
In contrast to the scribes' pride and hypocrisy stands this woman who has sacrificed out of her life to honor God. So Jesus says, "Beware of the scribes, but follow this widow." When God measures the life of service, he does not just count, he weighs.
Previous commentary:
Jerusalem: The Innocent Slain and Raised
About this commentary:
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Delle Donne headed to Connecticut to play Kentucky as upstart Delaware enters 1st Sweet 16
NEWARK, Del. – Tina Martin is no historian. That didn't stop the Delaware coach from weighing in on the significance of a victory that thrust the Blue Hens into the Sweet 16 for the first time.
"This is without question the greatest victory in Delaware sports history," Martin declared after the No. 6 Blue Hens pulled out a 78-69 victory over No. 3 North Carolina on Tuesday night before a packed house that included Vice President Joe Biden.
Elena Delle Donne scored 33 points in her final home game, and now the Blue Hens are headed to Connecticut to face Kentucky. If Delaware pulls off another upset, it could face UConn for the right to play in the Final Four.
Delle Donne initially accepted a scholarship to Connecticut before quickly leaving with a bad case of homesickness. She enrolled in Delaware, enjoyed a great career, and now she's headed back to the state where it all started.
"I enjoy the irony that I'm playing in the Sweet 16," Delle Donne said with a sheepish grin. "Obviously, I'll be in Connecticut. That's great. It's a beautiful state and I'm excited to play there."
Delle Donne surpassed the 3,000-point mark in a game she was absolutely intent on winning.
"I don't think I've wanted anything more than this win, and that's saying a lot," she said.
After the final buzzer, Delle Donne had mixed emotions as she and her teammates gathered in the middle of the court and waved to the 4,653 screaming fans.
"It was a little sad, it was emotional, saying goodbye," she said. "But to leave this way is absolutely incredible. I even said to the girls before the game, 'We deserve to win our last game on this court. That's how everybody played."
Biden was on hand to watch it happen, and afterward he visited the Delaware locker room to congratulate Martin and the players.
"He talked about the fact that he told President Obama to pencil us in (his bracket)," Martin said. "He gave everybody big hugs, gave everybody personal greetings, whispered some words of encouragement to our team and just said how very proud he is of our team."
Biden, it seems, couldn't stay in his seat as the game reached its exciting conclusion.
"The president of the University of Delaware said that the vice president kept standing up and blocking everybody's view," Martin said. "A few people wanted to say, 'Mr. Vice President, please sit down,' but I don't think the vice president would have sat down. He's been one of our biggest fans. We certainly are honored and humbled he came to see us tonight."
Waltiea Rolle scored 23 points for the Tar Heels, but the 6-foot-6 senior was in foul trouble for much of the second half and finally picked up her fifth with 4:08 left.
North Carolina point guard Tierra Ruffin-Pratt, who scored a career-high 30 points against Albany in the tournament opener, played the final 11:55 with four fouls and finished with four points on 1-for-13 shooting.
The Tar Heels were called for 24 fouls compared to 13 for the Blue Hens, a discrepancy that did not escape coach Sylvia Hatchell's notice.
"I wish Delaware good luck when they get on a neutral court," she said.
When asked to comment on having her two stars in foul trouble and the 24 whistles against the Tar Heels, Hatchell said, "That hasn't been a problem all year until now. With Pratt and Waltiea both out, that was the difference in the game. But I told the girls in the locker room, 'This is a great lesson. Life isn't always fair.'"
Delle Donne missed 18 of 28 field goal tries, but the 6-5 senior went 11 for 13 at the line and now has 3,006 points during a sensational career in her home state.
Trumae Lucas scored 20 for the Blue Hens and Danielle Parker contributed 14 points and 13 rebounds.
Delaware trailed 48-39 when Rolle picked up her third foul with 16:39 remaining. The Tar Heels slowed down their offense to kill time while their center was on the bench, and she returned 2 minutes later, but was whistled for her fourth foul with 12:47 left.
To make matters worse, Ruffin-Pratt got her fourth foul less than a minute later.
With its two leading scorers on the bench, North Carolina came apart. Delle Donne made a basket, Parker scored on a drive and Lucas sank two straight layups to put the Blue Hens up 52-51, their first lead since 30-29.
Xylina McDaniel then scored on a drive for the Tar Heels, their first basket in nearly six minutes, but Delle Donne reached the 3,000 mark with a follow of her own miss to put Delaware back in front.
It was 63-60 when Rolle fouled out, and Lucas subsequently made two foul shots for a 65-60 advantage.
Told of Hatchell's insinuation about the officiating, Martin said, "I don't see it the same way coach Hatchell does. We will agree to disagree on this one."


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The 70-footer is designed in cooperation with Tony Castro to accentuate performance, luxury, and speed. The saloon doors, one of Raptor's key features, slide effortlessly into the deck creating a vast space with the stern area - perfect for leisure and relaxation. This unique mechanism runs smoothly and swiftly thanks to in-house design.


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Patient Safety
The Minnesota Department of Health is a leader in the promotion of patient safety. Minnesota was the first state to start an Adverse Health Care Events Reporting System that tracks adverse events, such as wrong-site surgeries and medication errors, at hospitals and other facilities.
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of the American Society for Information Scinece
Go to Bulletin Index
Volume 25, No. 2
December / January 1999
Hal VarianSix Forces Shaping the Network Economy
by Steve Hardin
Some observers say we need new economic models to deal with the new facts of the information economy. The Dean of the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California at Berkeley believes otherwise. Hal R. Varian, who co-wrote the 1998 book Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy with Carl Shapiro, says the issues we are seeing in the information economy were present in the industrial economy.
Varian spoke on Six Forces Shaping the Network Economy at the final plenary session at the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science in Pittsburgh.
Varian discussed six themes present in his book. First is the issue of differentiation of products and pricing. Varian defined information goods as anything that can be delivered over the Internet. They have very high first-copy costs and very low incremental costs. The first-copy, fixed costs - sunk costs - are not recoverable. If you start to build something in a factory, and it does not sell, you can at least sell the factory. But if a movie is a flop, there is not much of a market for the script. Also, the variable costs of production are often negligible. There are no capacity constraints. The problem with this kind of cost structure is that once you have sunk the cost to get it up and running, there is no natural price floor. We saw this with CD-ROM telephone directories. The first CD phone directory sold for $10,000. But the producers had a falling out, and two competing companies were set up. Once there was competition and each company tried to undercut the other, the price moved rapidly toward zero. Now you can buy all the phone books in the United States on CD-ROM for $4.95. So how do producers keep this from happening?
The Internet has opened up a much broader and dispersed audience than has been traditionally available. For example, some of the very high quality products that are good for the American market are less appropriate for international sales. A lower quality, less expensive product may sell better overseas. So how can producers sell into that broader market without having to cut prices and quality among their traditional users? "Versioning" is the answer - they can sell the high-priced, high-value version to the top-end users and the lower-priced, lower-value version to the low-end users. We see this, Varian says, in the book publishing industry. People anxious to read a book when it first comes out pay the higher hardback price; others wait for the less expensive paperback. The same goes for movies - people who want to see a film right away will pay the higher price to view it in the theater; others will wait until they can rent it on video. The process has found its way to the Internet, too; a real-time feed of stock prices costs $30-$40 per month, while a feed delayed by 15minutes is essentially free.
Varian notes that the traditional approach to versioning has been to add value to a basic product to produce a more expensive version. But with information goods, you generally start with a high-value version and take value away to get a lower-end product. In some cases, it is even more expensive to produce the lower quality good. (For example, the producers have to hold stock prices for 15 minutes to get the delay for the cheaper version.) He says IBM produced a professional version printer that put out 10 pages per minute; for the home version, they added a chip with a "wait" routine to make the printer put out five pages per minute. These effects are largely benign, Varian says, because IBM probably would never have sold to the home market if their home printer took away sales from the professional market.
A second issue for U.S. information providers is rights management. Producers of information have both the benefit and the cost of easy production. It is easier for people to produce content, but also easier for others to copy that content. Should a producer allow lending or sharing of its information product?
Varian and Shapiro contend that content owners are too conservative with their approach to rights management. For example, some of the first libraries targeted to middle-class users appeared in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. These libraries started by renting novels. People who could not afford to purchase a book could rent it. Publishers opposed the idea, but during the 50 years of this practice, reading for pleasure dramatically increased, which led to increased demand for books. Publishers profited. The same thing happened when videos were introduced. First, they were toys for the rich; no one could afford VCRs or tapes. But someone got the idea of renting tapes and VCRs, and that stimulated demand as well as the number of outlets for video content. Video stores are much like libraries, but with the addition of the profit motive. What happened with book publishers 200 years ago has now happened with video producers. Hollywood originally resisted the idea of video rental, but now the movie industry makes more money from video than from theaters. The idea is to maximize the value of intellectual property, not to maximize its protection. Learn how to take advantage of new modes of distribution; do not fight them.
A third issue involves lock-ins and switching costs. A network can be "real," like the Internet, or virtual, like the network of Mac users. In either case, the value of participating in the network depends on how many other users there are. Switching one component of the network can be costly, because you have to change other components as well. For example, switching from LPs to CDs necessitates changing players, storage shelves, etc. This situation can lead to a lock-in, where the user is forced to use the same technology to avoid all the additional costs of changing. The seller is trying to get the user locked in to one technology; the buyer is trying to avoid it. One of the most common ways to lock in consumers is to sell complementary products to the one you are really trying to sell.
Look at printers, Varian says. More than a third of Hewlett-Packard's profits in its printers division comes from selling cartridges. You can buy a cheap printer, but then have to pay big for cartridges. This strategy is as old as giving away the razor and selling the blades. Dell has been offering system administration services by partnering with companies that will offer those services only for Dell machines. So now, if you want to switch away from Dell, you must switch not only your hardware but also your system administrator.
We hear a lot of talk about the "friction-free" economy - "the competition is just a click away."Varian and Shapiro are skeptical. As fast as the frictions are removed, we see the creation of new frictions to replace them. For example, consider "loyalty programs," in which you are rewarded by an airline when you limit your flight business to that particular carrier. Amazon.com has its affiliates program - when you put up a link to Amazon.com from your Web page, you get something from them for every sale they make through your link. Amazon.com now has thousands of affiliates, all very loyal. In many cases, competition among producers and vendors is competition for the best rewards they can give their customers.
Next, Varian turns his attention to the effects of networks and positive feedback. The value of a network to the individual user depends on the number of other network users. This conceptappeared in 1974 when economist Jeffrey Rohlfs created it to explain the commercial failure of the picturephone. There are two equilibrium outcomes, Rohlfs said: one in which everyone expects a product to fail, so no one will buy it; and a second in which everyone expects a product to succeed, so they want to buy it. The trick is to sell enough to get to the critical mass to achieve the second equilibrium. This paper was not cited for eight years, Varian says, because no one cares about failures. But after all, it is just as important to know why a product fails as why it succeeds. The seller needs to persuade people through marketing that the product will be successful. Last year there were two standards for high-speed modems, K56flex and x2. Both were marketed very aggressively to show they were winners. The same goes for Netscape and Internet Explorer; both are trying to show they are the people's choice.
The fifth issue, Varian says, is standards and interconnection. In order to resolve the stalematebetween the competing x2 and K56flex modem standards the producers got together and set up a common standard. Standards, Varian observes, change competition for the market to competition in the market. He offers historical examples. In the early days of radio, Marconi sold maritime radio services. The company would not sell services to a customer unless the customer used its equipment. Marconi wanted to keep people using its system. It gave subsidies to its big customers, and arranged things so that Lloyd's of London would not insure a ship unless it had a Marconi set. But in 1912, an American shipping act decreed interoperability. Bell did similar things; in towns with competition, Bell would not let its competitors access Bell's long distance service. After they gained critical mass, they went back and picked off those single-city providers.
It is important to consider and recognize your value as your share of the market times the totalmarket value. Strategies such as standards can affect both your share and the total market value. If the total value goes up through interoperability, there should be a way to manage profits for all. Sometimes a third party forces a standard. Hollywood forced video producers to settle on a single read standard for DVD. So, Varian says, he and Shapiro recommend "make alliances, not wars."
Varian's sixth issue is antitrust and competition policy. He says it is important to know what antitrust law says and does not say. The antitrust laws try to produce competition as a process. It is permissible to be a monopolist as long as you get there fair and square. The government's role is not to pick winners, but to set the rules of the game. We want to be sure the race goes to the fastest runner, not the person most adept at tripping other runners. Antitrust cases always focus on practices. One practice is exclusive dealing, in which a monopolist says to other firms, "If you deal with me, you cannot deal with anyone else." Varian says much of the government's case against Microsoft runs along this line. A second practice is tying - that is, in order to buy a product from a monopolist you must buy other products as well. A producer must allow each of the markets for which it makes products to be competitive. It is important to realize these tactics may be legal for a firm with a 10% market share, but illegal for a firm with a 90% market share. This fact is one of the reasons Microsoft and Intel are fighting suits so vigorously; if they are branded monopolists, it limits the tactics they can use.
In short, many of the aspects of the information economy were present long ago. Varian's conclusion: the new economy really is not so new after all. Much more information is available at the Information Rules web site. Steve Hardin is associate librarian, Cunningham Memorial Library, Indiana State University. Before launching his career in librarianship, Steve was a broadcast journalist. He has just completed a term as ASIS director-at-large.
How to Order
@ 1999, American Society for Information ScienceLast Update: February 21, 1999


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I too have climbed with Lucky Jacques, and he is indeed a skilled dood and good partner. My first time out with him he dug deep and snaked Duet Direct onsight without a fall. He's actually a pretty good troll.
I'm not sure but maybe there is a lesson in there about playing nice in the sandbox if we care to look closely at it from which we can learn something.
You guys been climbing lately? Pretty much 10 out of 10 for August.Here is Rob trying to onsight my new 11d trad route today, no name yet.
Quote from: eyebolter on August 24, 2013, 07:05:46 pmYou guys been climbing lately? Pretty much 10 out of 10 for August.Here is Rob trying to onsight my new 11d trad route today, no name yet."been climbing lately?" unfortunately, not so much...anyway, who cares about "playing nice in the sandbox...."that fracking rob, i never liked that guy....edps. ward, susan's dad just passed away. 2 weeks short of 97 years. he rocked....
97 is a good run, but as Captain Kirk told Scotty: "I WANT that third option!"Rob pumped out, fell, and then was too tired to send it, so you can like him even if he is a young bastard at 40....we did manage 11 pitches although short including a bunch of 11's and one 12a. Fortunately I had the home court advantage so age and treachery overcame youth and strength.Went bouldering with Stevie J today at the Sun Cave, new crazy highball finish to the Hueco Simulator that we worked on a toprope. Easier, maybe only V5 but like 35 feet off the ground with the sloper crux at the top. Gonna need about three feet of snow and helium up my ass to boulder that one. You gotta come down this fall. I've seen you climb so i know you can do it.
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It's time to let the yarn out of the bag! You will notice that I have been sitting on these photos for over a week and I'm most excited to share them. I've been putting my thoughts in my head in order because I want to chat a bit about the colours. I think I've said before that I've been stashing this yarn for over a year. I think I started buying Cashmerino dk in July last year with the intention of it being a "slow stash" and then making it into a patchwork blanket of solid squares. It was for this reason that I didn't mind too much about the colours: I bought most of the yarn online without putting much thought into the colours. It was to be the yarn itself that was the focus rather than the colours.
Then I changed my mind, like I do often, because I realised that I really did want to make a ripple. The thing is, Cashmerino just ripples up SO beautifully and the feel of the fabric you make is gorgeous. I think that it loses a bit of quality the more you twist it into shapes like squares. Cashmerino Ripple it was then!
I continued to work on my stash and received both yarn and vouchers for Christmas and my birthday. I've also bought a ball when I've been on trips to places: I bought one in London, for example, so I like that it will be like crocheting a bit of my trip to London into my blanket.
I've held off for so long making this blanket because I wanted it to be a sofa blanket in our new house. Well we are still a way off having sofas and a living room that is useable so I've decided to just Go With It. It has also taken a while to make sense of the colours I bought. I've spent some time lately taking them out of the bag and lining them up in different combinations and orders, making notes of which colour numbers I have, deciding which to buy two of and which to take out. I removed a dark forest green and a silver grey. The green didn't go, and there are quite a lot of bluey-grey tones already and this one was more of a hinder than an enhancer.
I'm happy with my colours now:
All Debbie Bliss Cashmerino dk. Some shades are discontinued now (off the top of my head they are: 25, 10, 06, 03 but there may be more.) Thanks to some google searching and the help of First4Yarns, Tangled Yarns and Woodland Yarns I was able to buy more of the discontinued ones that I needed.
I was a little dubious about number 03, the beige camel one. My mum sent me this colour as she bought it in the John Lewis sale. I don't usually use brown colours but the more I put it into groups with other colours, the more I realised that it was quite a fab colour. An enhancing colour, if you see what I mean?
I feel that one of the most important things I've learnt about colours is that it's not just how that colour looks on its own, but how it looks with other colours as the ones all around it can really change the personality of that colour. The colour number 33 looks a great deal greener when it is next to number 25, but next to number 36 or 28 it looks more blue/dark grey.
I've put a lot of colour thought into this blanket. It's only this year that I've started to think properly in colours, it has definitely taken me a long time to get my eye in with colours. With my first three blankets (Big Blue Blanket, Granny Alice, 400 squares) I copied Lucy's colour palette exactly and I really liked it. This year I've been really pleased with my colours for my Phoebe Ripple and Rosie Ripple and the more blankets and cushions I make, the more confident I become.
Because Cashmerino is so expensive (the reason why it's taken me over a year to stash all of this!) I didn't want to end up with a blanket that I didn't like (like the hexagon fiasco. Incidentally I'm sending that into hexile to live with my mum for a bit) or where the colours didn't work. What I have done is tried to place the yarn in groups of three or so where they all look lovely together, but to make sure that they overlap with the next group of three. Hopefully, you'll be able to pick out a chunk of three or four stripes in the blanket and the colours will look reasonably good together.
The middle photo really does it for me here. I LOVE this combination: you may have noticed that it is quite similar to the little striped blanket I'm working on at the moment. The last photo is Autumnal and also makes me think of a piece of Candy Corn. The first photo … well, can't go wrong with pinks and purples can you?
I also stacked them into colour "families" and then gave them all colour names, like seaglass, banana and peacock. It's easier to remember than numbers!
The next exciting part of this is that a couple of months ago, Lucy and I decided that we would like to do this as a Ripple-Along. Yarn & ripple love is even better when you can share the yarny excitement with someone. (Or a LOT of people if you look at all the comments on this post!) I'd been speculating and fantasising about my ripple blanket in the pub during Pub Hooky for ages and Lucy wanted in on this Cashmerino action too. I said that I would wait a bit longer until Lucy had acquired her stash and some time to crochet in (after school summer holidays) and now the time is here. Oooooh yes.
Two weeks ago we had a bit of a yarn fest photo shoot and lined up all our yarn together and tried to think of names to describe that green one on the bottom (second in from the left on the bottom.) Bogey green anyone?
Lucy's colours are more like a rainbow than mine despite us having a number of balls that are the same colour. I think it's because I don't have a bright yellow and orange, or a lilac colour. Lucy's palette also has another green, and less dark colours than mine.
This is partly because Baby Cashmerino has a MUCH better colour range than the Cashmerino dk, and partly because Lucy is better than me at picking a balanced rainbow-type palette.
I think you can tell who's is who's!
I really wish that I both my thumbnails were the same length here. I've been obsessing about that since this photo was taken.
I get a little "ooooh" when I add each new colour :-D
I started my ripple with a 210 +3 foundation chain and this way I should be able to get 2 stripes (4 rows) out of one ball of yarn. In the interests of keeping the blanket balanced, I've divided my yarn into two bags and have the same number of each colours for the first half as I do the second half. I don't want this to be a random blanket: this is meticulously colour-planned and ordered!
I'm doing two rows to a stripe because really love the solid stripe effect you get when you have one row of back facing stitches and one row of front facing stitches in the same colour. I know it's the same as all the other ripples I have done, but I really like it and this really is the first one I've made for myself. At the moment, I can't quite put into words just HOW much I love it already. But it's a lot :-)
If you head on over to Lucy's blog you can read about her yarn and blanket choices too. Or more likely: hello and welcome if you have popped over to my blog from Lucy's!
If anyone wants to join in with our Ripple-along, leave a comment :-)
Some images kindly provided by Lucy.


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Posted on 11/27/2012
Reviewed by Hannah, grade 12
In the 4th novel of the Gone series the kids of Perdido Beach are facing even more struggles. As the Darkness is emerging the kids are forced to face their biggest and most deadly fears. This novel unravels the true needs and fears the children are forced to face.


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text:
Jenkins: Nascar's Creative Destruction
Here's one great business innovation no one seems to want to copy.
Keepers of Nascar lore will recall that it was a Bobby Allison crash in 1987 at Talladega, when his airborne car shredded the catch fence in front of the stands, that led the racing body artificially to reduce the horsepower and speeds of cars at its two biggest tracks, Daytona and Talladega. The goal was keeping cars out of the spectator seats.
Serendipitously discovered or invented along the way, however, was a wholly new form of motor racing. It turns out that when stock cars are put on a long, wide, steep-banked track,...


text:
NEW YORK — A German runner has won an annual race up 86 flights of stairs at the Empire State Building for a record seventh straight time.
Stuttgart resident Thomas Dold completed the Empire State Building Run-Up on Wednesday in 10 minutes and 28 seconds.
"Well, the good thing is that I've done better than all the others," said the 27-year-old Dold, who completed his last three run-ups in 10 minutes and 10 seconds or less.
He said he didn't know why the finish was "so exhausting" this year because he's "really fit" and compares training techniques with other runners.
Two other men have won the race five times since it began in 1978: American Al Waquie from 1983-87 and Australian Paul Crake from 1999-2003. Crake remains the record holder with a time of 9 minutes and 33 seconds but has not competed since suffering a devastating bicycle accident in 2006.
Melissa Moon, of Wellington, New Zealand, was this year's women's winner in 12 minutes and 39 seconds. The 42-year-old Moon also won the race in 2010.
"You can't start too fast too soon in a race like this," Moon said. "I knew I had it when I got to the 70th floor and I could no longer hear them breathing behind me."
Athletes from around the world took part in the grueling-even-for-the-elite-athletes trek from the lobby to the observation deck, floor by floor, up 1,576 steps.
About 650 people registered for this year's race, said Drea Braxmeier, a spokeswoman for the New York Road Runners, which hosted the race. NYRR also puts on the annual New York City Marathon.
In a switch from previous years, the race was held at night instead of in the morning. Braxmeier said the change allowed people who had to be at work in the daytime to take part and created a sparkling finish for the climbers.
"You get to finish under the lights of the Empire State Building," she said. "Everyone thinks of the twinkling lights of the city. This is exactly what we'll present to them."
Like the marathon, start times were staggered. The elite men and woman started before the general field.
In another first this year, Braxmeier said, the general public was allowed to start at 10-second intervals to avoid a crush of people all trying to get to the initial flights of stairs at the same time. She said the last climber would start at 10 p.m.
The Empire State Building race is among the more high-profile tower climbs in the world.
It's "an entire world unto itself," Braxmeier said of the climbs.
"Some people are really great at running 5 miles," she said, "and some people are really great at running up the stairs."
Empire State Building Run-up: http://bit.ly/8d7lnA


text:
GNU xhippo is a generic playlist manager program for a variety of Unix sound players. It's been shown to work with mpg123, bplay, s3mod, tracker, xmp and timidity, and should work with more-or-less anything that can take a filename on the command line. (The latest versions of all of these players may be found through Freshmeat's Appindex.) It is capable of automatically deciding which player to use depending on a file's extension; the defaults are set in a config file. It uses textual playlist files, which are easily generated with the ``find'' or ``locate'' utilities (and are compatible with most other Unix sound players). xhippo's interface is very loosely modelled on the ``HippoPlayer'' player for the Amiga.
xhippo was developed under Debian GNU/Linux, but it contains nothing Linux-specific, so it will probably work on any Unix-like system where gcc, glib, getopt_long and GTK are available; standard "ports" are available for NetBSD and FreeBSD. xhippo will optionally integrate with the GNOME desktop, supporting GNOME themes and drag-and-drop, and supports specific GTK themes through its own gtkrc. xhippo can optionally read the ID3 tags from MP3 files, and has randomisation features ensuring that you don't hear the same song over and over again.
xhippo is highly configurable both at compile-time and at runtime, and supports both German and English interfaces.
xhippo comes with no warranty, to the extent permitted by law. You may redistribute copies of GNU xhippo under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
xhippo was written by Adam Sampson, <email@example.com>. Bugs and suggestions should be reported to <firstname.lastname@example.com>. Other contributors are credited in the ChangeLog file which can be found in the distribution.
FSF & GNU inquiries & questions to firstname.lastname@example.com. Other ways to contact the FSF.
Comments on these web pages to email@example.com, send other questions to firstname.lastname@example.com.
Copyright (C) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
Updated: 13 Dec 2000 3diff


text:
At long last, a continuation in my children's book series. To recap: this series is divided into five parts consisting of 6 posts.
Part One talked about strategies for using your local library to find quality children's books.
Part Two (A) discussed several design fundamentals that contribute to superb illustration in picture books.
Part Two (B) (this post) will talk about several more design fundamentals that contribute to superb illustration in picture books.
Part Three will explore language and literary techniques used in quality writing for children.
Part Four will provide a genre summary and list recommended titles in each genre.
Part Five will list 100 excellent author/illustrators for children with either links or a brief overview of their works/style.
A repeat of my copyright caveat: I use a lot of pictures in this post most of which are copyright protected. I did not scan any images into my computer nor upload them. I am simply drawing in images from elsewhere on the web. My purpose in doing so is solely to promote the books depicted. I have not used images from books I do not recommend. I also do not derive any income (monetary or goods and services from my writing); as such I am in no way profiting from the intellectual property of others. Having said all of that, I will remove all embedded images except for book covers from this post and replace them with external links in 7 days time. In the interim, should I receive any requests from copyright holders to remove images from this post, I will do so immediately.
And now, to pick up where we left off...
You may recall that I am relying on The On-line Visual Literacy Project at Ponoma College for my terms of reference in defining the 11 basic design components of all visual communication. I have grouped these components into 4 broad categories.
The building blocks (dot, line, shape, and texture) (the subject of my last post in this series)
Movement (motion and direction)
Colour (hue, value, and saturation), and
Perspective (scale and dimension)
The rest of today's post will look at movement, colour, and perspective.
From utter stillness, motion emerges:
Image Link (note: I've added the external links to the images just in case you want to see a larger version of any of them.)
Rob Gonsalves holds stillness and motion in tandem in this surreal illustration featured in Imagine a Night (2003). His paintings have been pulled together in three separate picture books, Imagine a Night, Imagine a Day, and Imagine a Place, all with text provided by Sarah L. Thomson. The text doesn't shine so well as the illustrations but the books are stunning eye candy for all ages.
Picture book artists create motion on a fixed, 2-dimensional plane by using using multiple techniques, and, unlike the Gonsalves illustration would you have you believe, the motion created is, most often, pure silly fun.
Image Link
David Shannon's title character from No David! (1998) makes a mad dash from his bath. The oversized sidewalk seems to spit him out, limbs extended and body soaring skyward.
Image Link
Barry Moser's rabbit leaps above the title of this book: Jump!: The Adventures of Brer Rabbit by Joel Chandler Harris, Van Dyke Parks, Malcolm Jones (1986). The torn blue backdrop that is slightly akimbo reinforces the motion suggested by the image.
Image Link
Moser again on the cover of Margie Palanti's Earthquack! (2002). Even the letters in the title are subject to seismic upheaval.
Image Link
Lane Smith's retro, space-age tumble into the abyss on the cover of Scieszka's Math Curse (1995).
And now, a few motion-centric illustrations that bring me joy:
Candace Fleming's Smile Lily, 2004 Image Link
Helen Cooper's continuation of the Pumpkin Soup story, Delicious, 2007.
Me and My Sister, Ruth Ohi, 2005.
Linda Bailey's Stanley's Party illustrated by Bill Slavin, 2003.
One of my favourite object lessons in motion could not be found on the web but I'm sure most of you will be able to picture the image immediately if I simply type the words, "LET ME DRIVE THE BUS!!!!!!"
While motion suggests movement on the page, direction prompts the movement of your eye over the page.
Image Link
In this illustration from Barbara Reid's Sing a Song of Mother Goose (1987), Jack and Jill are pure motion; their tumble down the hill, though, directs the reader's eye straight to the page turn, for one does not linger in the verbally tripping land of the nursery rhyme.
Image Link
Harold's policeman also points to the page turn with his arm and his eyes. (Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson, 1955) In the illustration from No David! above, the sidewalk forces our eyes to follow David's streak to freedom.
Image Link
Image Link
Peggy Rathmann's heroic quest, The Day the Babies Crawled Away (2003), features a driving, rhyming cadence that is accompanied by illustrations that move the reader's eye from top corner left to bottom corner right. As such, the story tumbles along until the pattern stops abruptly when our hero and his infant charges get trapped at the bottom of a cliff. At this point in the story, the black frame of the page surrounds them on three sides, effectively holding them captive. Sadly, I could not find an image online to show the trapped scene, but I think you can imagine what I mean.
Image Link
Anthony Browne's Willy is a nose-in-the book sort of fellow. No so, his friend Hugh, who attracts the annoyed stares of the other library patrons. The entire meaning of this illustration from Willy and Hugh (1991) is told by following the direction of the eyes. You may need to follow the image link to get the full effect of this one.
And finally, here's one more marriage of motion (the font, the girl with arms uplifted) and direction (the buildings) acting in harmony. Robert Neubecker's Wow! City! (2004)
Colour has become a dominant design principle in illustrated books for children over the last several decades. Classics, such as Johnson's Harold books and McCloskey's Make Way For Ducklings or Blueberries for Sal, however, are evidence that illustration can be divine on a monochromatic scale.
From Blueberries for Sal (1948) Image Link
Other books, such as Richard McGuire's Orange Book (1992), which uses only the complementary colours of orange and blue, or Cathy Stinson's Red is Best (1982), which emphasizes the narrator's preferred colour, or the wordless picture book Yellow Umbrella (2001) by Jae Soo Liu deal in the essence of hue.
Hue is plucked straight from the colour wheel and comes in the infinite combinations of those three primary colours: red, blue and yellow.
Bob Staake's The Red Lemon (2006)
from Fish Eyes: A Book You Can Count On by Lois Ehlert (1990) Image Link
A picture can comprise mainly warm hues:
a cross-section of the old white cabin in Delicious by Helen Cooper (2007) Image Link
Or cool hues:
From Rob Gonsalves' Imagine a Place (2008) Image Link
Sometimes the lifeblood of the image is a pocket of warm colour lying in a sea or sky of cool:
Marie-Louise Gay's Stella: Star of the Sea (English language version) (1999)
Christopher Myers' Wings (2000)
Value refers to the amount of light or dark in an image and the interplay between them.
From Peggy Rathmann's The Day the Babies Crawled Away (2003) Image Link
From Creation by Gerald McDermott (2003) Image Link
Whereas Beatrix Potter uses value to show the warmth of the hearth in winter,
Chris Van Allsburg plays with value to eerie effect in The Mysteries of Harris Burdick (1984), a suggestive, imaginative picture book for elementary aged children.
Image Link
Image Link
Ed Young's mice sparkle against their black backdrop in Seven Blind Mice (1992), and
Image Link
Ted Harrison's depiction of the Aurora Borealis feels like stained glass, so filled with light are his colours. From O Canada (1992).
Saturation deals with the amount of grey that influences a colour.
Image Link
In Janell Canon's Stellaluna (1993), the contrast of the bats who lack colour saturation with the highly saturated night sky provide maximum visual impact. The resulting ultra-realism emphasizes the vulnerability of the bats, creatures that the reader may not normally sympathize with.
Image Link
In Knuffle Bunny (2004), Mo Willems splashes highlights of mid-saturated colours over top of black and white photo stills of a Brooklyn neighborhood to add a family atmosphere to the city backdrop. His illustrations often look like animation stills.
The use of water colours produces a canvas of lightly saturated colours.
Image Link
In many books, and Barbara McClintock's Dahlia (2002) is a fine example here, such illustrations have a rural or old-fashioned feel to them, no doubt because they hearken back to the 19th and early 20th styles of early masters in the genre:
Randolph Caldecott Image Link
Kate Greenaway Image Link
Leslie Brooke Image Link
and Beatrix Potter Image Link
And then there is Norton Juster's Hello, Goodbye Window, illustrated by Chris Raschka, that conjures up a rustic nostalgia by using mid-saturated, high value colours.
Image Link
If you want to see what Rashka has to say about his approach to illustrating this book, read the engaging caption he put on one of his pictures that was reproduced for the New York Times.
Raschka uses a similar style for a cover of the Horn Book Magazine. Deelish.
Highly saturated colours often, but not always, suggest an urban or contemporary setting, partly because contemporary printing technology allows for the mass reproduction of rich colours.
Here is Raschka again with Yo! Yes? (1993)
Vera B. Williams' A Chair for My Mother (1982). Image Link
Then there's the tropical feel of Dayal Kaur Khalsa' My Family Vacation (1988):
Highly saturated colours also feature prominently in many folk tales. Different colour combinations can be suggestive of different cultures or ethnicities:
Leo and Diane Dillon's Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears: A West African Tale (1975)
Ricardo Keens-Douglas' The Nutmeg Princess; illustrated by Annouchka Galouchko (1992) (a folk tale from Grenada)
Gerald McDermott's Raven: A Trickster Tale From the Pacific Northwest (1993).
Phew. Colour dang near killed me. I hope you're still with me. We're coming down the home stretch.
Last but not least, we come to perspective and the two visual techniques that help to determine it: dimension and scale.
Dimension refers to the level at which a reader's eye encounters an image. Are we viewing the scene from on high? Are we looking up from the ground? Or are we meeting the image at eye level?
Molly Bang's When Sophie Gets Angry--Really, Really Angry (1999), shows the child reader what a temper tantrum looks like from a child's eye view.
Image Link
When Sophie explodes, the dimension is eye level. When Sophie runs away and feels very small, the reader sees her as a speck on the landscape. By carefully manipulating dimension, the artist aligns the reader's sympathies with her character. Throughout the book we identify with Sophie and can therefore better empathize with her situation.
Now you tell me, in this illustration from David Wiesner's Tuesday (1991) are we meant to identify with the people who inhabit the town or the town's mysterious night time visitors?
Image Link
Scale is similar to dimension but it is intrinsic to the picture itself rather than relying on the reader as viewer. Scale can simply let us know the size of one object relative to another as is the case in this picture from Wiesner's June 29, 1999:
Image Link
And scale can sometimes make you smile:
From David Shannon's Duck on a Bike (2002) Image Link
Alternatively, scale can convey the emotional crux of a situation. Take for example the day Willy the Wimp accidentally bumps into Hugh:
From Anthony Browne's Willy and Hugh (1991)Image Link
In regaling you with examples of how the 11 design principles work in picture books, it was my hope that you would see how smart illustrations, when combined with visual literacy skills on the part of the reader, can contribute to the overall experience of reading a book. Do I kid myself that my daughter sees all this when she is looking at books?
No. Not for a second. But she does see a lot of things in illustrations that I don't catch right off. We also spend a lot of time talking about the pictures in her books in an effort to tease out both our ways of seeing. Books that are flatly illustrated don't allow us to open up the conversation. They don't influence our mood or emotions as we are reading. The really good books do, though, and each time I come back to those books to figure out why, the answer is usually right there in front of me in their finely crafted illustrations.
OK, you all need a break from this so I won't post again in this series for at least a week if not longer. Truth be told, I need a bit of a break too. This was some hard work finding all those pictures and then making them fit my big picture. Next up, I'll be savouring the flavour of words. Mmmmmm, tasty words.
Monday, November 17, 2008
How to know when a book is superb: pictures edition, part 2
At long last, a continuation in my children's book series. To recap: this series is divided into five parts consisting of 6 posts.
Posted by Mad at 4:16 PM
24 comments:
- Mary G said...
In 'Tueday' it's hard to say. We are almost at eye level with the frogs, but we are looking at their backs as well as with them down onto the town. And the colour values in the town, the cool, moonlit blues, are distancing. I think we are supposed to see both the town and the visitors from a backlit vantage.
Oh, Mad, this is just amazing. Its so well organized and so well researched. You really make me think. Thanks a million.
I've always adored the illustrations to 'No, David' but I didn't ask myself why.
Audrey's brothers bequeathed her several 'Where's Wally' type books and she loved them from about 18 months on. She would look at and comment on each of the gazillion people who weren't Wally and had no interest in finding him.
- Beck said...
I love these posts. I'm going to bring them up on our library's computer and just HAPPEN to show them to the librarian. Sans comments.
Maybe I shouldn't be writing this! hm.
- No Mother Earth said...
Is the person who wrote Hello, Goodbye Window the same one who wrote The Phantom Tollbooth? I love that book!
- Mad said...
NoMo: Yes. 44 years apart. He also wrote The Dot and the Line which was made into a cool animation back by Chuck Jones way back when. You know, back when I was born and Chuck Jones was king.
- Christine said...
i've definitely noticed some of these elements in my kids' books. the deep colors often used in urban settings tend to really draw my children in.
this was great, mad!
- Gwen said...
Despite the sweaty flashbacks I'm having to an early class from this semester's Survey of Tech for the Library (*such* a catchy title) during which my professor elucidated these exact principles, I loved seeing the covers and pictures from some of our favorite books. Thanks, Mad!
One thing my prof said that resonated with me (who considers herself a verbal person, not a visual one) is that we are all aware of these design principles, because so much of our world--tv, books, magazines, etc--uses these techniques. We can't always articulate why we like the things we see, or what they mean, as we don't have the terminology for it, but we still use the criteria unconsciously to evaluate images ourselves because that knowledge has become innate.
- Hannah said...
And to think all I did on my blog this week was bitch about Stephanie Meyer... a pat on the back and a large martini to you, Mad, for putting this together. It's an amazing amount of work.
Can I just say I cannot believe "Red is Best" was published in 1982? That makes me feel old. It was my little sister's favourite book for years.
It's amazing that with the number of fantastic titles out there that people will still buy Isaac crap books based on Disney movies (your point from an earlier post, and a very good one).
I'm going to share these posts with my playgroup. Thanks again.
- Reluctant Housewife said...
I love these posts, Mad. Wonderful stuff.
- Karen said...
thank you, thank you. I am making Christmas lists right now.
- Janet said...
Having just done a post with about 800 links, I greatly admire your 8000. Unfortunately, I had to click on them all to see the pictures. I hate with a white hot hate which could lead me to violence, er, am very frustrated with Windstream. We didn't have internet all weekend, and many times I can't call up pictures on blogs, mine included.
- Magpie said...
You are divine. I want to hang out in a library with you, pulling books off the shelf - hey, look at this! And, what about this?
Again, thank you.
- Bon said...
mouth hanging open. i have taken entire courses - for credit - with less effort and insight put into them than this series, and we haven't even gotten to words yet!
i wish i was teaching this semester. i'd be plagiarizing all kinds of fab ideas. i'd ask nicely and credit you of course, but i'd still be plagiarizing.
Oscar and i found "Dinosaurs Roar" at the library this week...it put us in a good mood. and it was definitely the pictures.
- Andrea said...
I really wish Greg was reading this. he'd be so happy to see Chuck Jones in the comments section.
I love these posts, Mad--but I have to say--no Dr. Seuss! Any particular reason? (I'm just curious b/c Seuss is considered such a children's classic and it seems odd not to see him here.)
- Mad said...
Fear not. For me Seuss is all about words and nonsense. He will come up.
On another note:
I will admit that I NEVER mention Seuss or Munch to undergrads b/c kids will find those books no matter what. I always try to lead education students to books they may not discover otherwise.
Actually, I lie. I do mention them to undergrads in that I spew out that above sentence before moving along with my session.
- alejna said...
I had to come back to read this when I had time to really focus on it.
Wow. What an amazing feat!
Mad, I would totally take a class with you. Have you considered offering one? This would be great material for people interested in writing and/or illustrating children's books, as well as for people who like to read them.
I used to take art classes at a nearish museum (nothing is actually close to my home), and they once almost offered a course on children's book illustration. I really wanted to take it, but it was cancelled.
I really need to check out the Gonsalves books. I love surrealism.
I came back today to give this as much time as I needed, but I am being asked to assist the children with their water color painting. Maybe I'll provide some...who am I kidding? I'll be painting Batman with a plastic brush.
Tomorrow is library day this week. Can't wait!
Wonderful! I wish you were our librarian too...
By coincidence, my local library was displaying a book about the fine art of children's book illustratio - Show and Tell by Dilys Evans. I borrowed it, partly inspired by your post last week. The author explores the work of 12 illustrators.
I find your posts to be more organized, more thorough and comprehensive, and much more informative than the Evans book. Her review is also a little disappointing because she presents only American artists - completely ignoring talented Europeans, Canadians, Australians etc.
You are probably swamped with many other things in your life, but if you wanted to expand this series of posts into book format, I suspect you would have an appreciative audience. Thank you for the effort in providing such a thorough review - I'm eagerly awaiting the next in the series.
- mo-wo said...
Thank you for this 'highly effective series about children's books'. Lots of new ideas for us. And, as with others some articulation of things we already love.
Yes, a martini for you and the power of your expertise.
- Mary-LUE said...
This is stunning!
I think we need to pay you for all this work... or better yet, talk you into turning this into a book that you can sell and make tens and tens of dollars from.
- Andrea said...
That makes sense. I'm relieved to hear that you don't just think I have really bad taste!
I'll have you know, by the way, that I've spent at least $100 extra on christmas presents in the form of picture books as a direct result of these posts. So I guess they worked. :)
- Womanin a Window said...
I am right now overwhelmed by the diversity of books that are available for our children. Plainly, our library sucks. We're better off buying other people's castoffs on the discount fundraising table. However, this does show the potential, the possibility. Thanks you.
- painted maypole said...
love this, love it!
- Business logo design said...
Really Helpful Guide for me. Thanks
A subject near to my heart thanks.
- buy rift platinum said...
Great post.. love this one.=)