Thorn in the Rear

I am a Hebrew Bible scholar (or at least I pretend to be). I generally try not to venture too far outside of my discipline. The “extended footnote on the Old Testament” (the New Testament) gets me into trouble. If you look at my Bible – you’ll quickly notice the lack thereof notes and scribbles in the New Testament (save Revelation because it’s cool). Well, consider the New Testament. Throughout your studies you may have encountered a peculiar man: the apostle Paul. Quite an interesting character - this Paul. Many love him. Others loathe him. I won’t go into detail about what I think, but there’s a particular thing that drew me to the apostle Paul today. Consider 2 Corinthians 12:7-10. This curious pericope reveals that this Paul has a “thorn” in his flesh. Conjecture aside – we have no idea what this “thorn” is. The narrator doesn’t tell us what it is. Stop reading into it. What’s the point of looking at this passage then? Well, there isn’t one. It’s just a nice segue.

Speaking of “thorns” in the flesh - I migrated my Luther email account to Google today. The process itself wasn’t laborious, but the criteria for coming up with a new password is a little bit ridiculous. Here’s a few:

Password must be at least eight characters in length

Password must be different from the last four passwords

Password must be changed every two hundred-such-and-such days

Password must not contain more than two successive characters from your first or last name

Password must use at least three of the following criteria:

Uppercase letters

Lowercase letters

Symbols

Numbers

Remember that this list is from memory and isn’t exhaustive. I'm sure that I remember seeing: blood type, grandmother's maiden name, and favorite Ben Stiller movie on the list too.

It took me about twenty minutes of trial and error to come up a memorable password that fit the ludicrous criteria. It was quite the chore. I understand that security is always of concern, but it’s not like my seminary webmail is being targeted by government trained hackers. I hope no one hacks into it and prints off a copy of my thesis! Thorn. In. The. Flesh.

- (dAn[o]0101)

Wait.

-Dan (that’s more like it.)