Monthly Archives: May 2012

I’ve been called many things that I didn’t like, and some that flatter (in a gratifying way), and some that feel just right. I’m going to dump some of the latter two categories here, partly out of vanity, and partly … Continue reading →

I’ve been imagining, for a long time, a seminar of a sort that would undergird my particular approach to hermeneutics, but naming that a ‘hermeneutics’ course strikes me as false advertising. A student has the just expectation that a ‘hermeneutics’ … Continue reading →

I’ve moaned about the interface evolution that deprecates scroll bars and replaces them with a sort of reverse scroll bar, a slider that operates in the direction opposite to the direction that years of working with scroll bars has trained … Continue reading →

We’re bouncing around the country now, with hardly enough stabilitas even to confess our gyrovagous extravagance, but I spotted this article on honesty and why we cheat (or don’t) by Daniel ‘Predictably Irrational’ Ariely, and it struck me that it … Continue reading →

My favourite anecdote from our travels thus far came from when Margaret and I were standing on the L platform at Roosevelt, waiting for the Orange Line train to Midway. I was staring up the tracks, sizing up the picture … Continue reading →

I’m over here in the States. That feels weird; it’s a mark of how thoroughly I’m settling in Scotland that being in the USA unsettles me in vague, subtle ways. But the weather is great, and it’s wonderful to be … Continue reading →

Dangerous nihilistic postmodernist that I am, I’m still comfortable stating a few points as plain facts. Fact one: everyone errs, makes mistakes, misjudges, slips, blunders. (I know this in part because our progeny listened so often to Big Bird sing … Continue reading →

Bob Carlton called my attention to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (no, it’s not the thermonuclear-ly ignorant blogpost that got so much attention) concerning ‘the future of the seminary’. I want to emphasise at the outset that … Continue reading →

I’ve listened to this week’s The Digital Human, which announced that ‘Next week…, we’ll be looking at another way the Web has challenged authority — who is the keeper of our faith?’ (The Radio Four website says ‘Aleks Krotoski looks … Continue reading →

The past week went by quite rapidly — I’m not entirely sure why. I’m working through the (relatively short) James manuscript, developing a couple of points beyond what I had originally written, accepting the editor’s edits, and on just one … Continue reading →