AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Doctor’s Report

My surgeon today removed the adhesive tape that had been covering the incisions, poked and prodded me and made me cough, and congratulated himself on his handiwork. The ridges at the incisions will take several weeks to ease down; discomfort associated with the mesh that he inserted into my abdomen should abate over months; and the slight numbness to the front plane of my abdomen may or may not go away. Although he points out that I should ease back into full-time work, that recovery from a bilateral hernia takes longer than from a single hernia, still I’m free to do whatever comfort permits me.

Can’t tell you how many stitches; they’re on the inside somehow. The incision lines look appropriately dramatic, though.

Stealth Disco Self-Protection

Tell you what, I’m not turning my back on Joi this weekend. . . .

The Da Vinci Code

I’ve been invited to take part in a panel discussion of The Da Vinci Code. It’s supposed to be an exciting story, though I must admit to having little patience for stories about hypothetical conspiracies involving the Templars, the supposed bloodline of Jesus, and other esoterica, especially after Foucault’s Pendulum. Why would I spend 450 pages of time reading a portentous potboiler whose author claims to base it on facts, after having been enchanted several times over by a comparable narrative compiled by a master story-teller who actually has a grip on the history involved, the theological nuances at stake, and the complex, tenuous, but vital relation between stories and facts? I confess: I start out knowing that Eco is a brilliant philosopher, critic, and literary composer, whereas I suspect that Brown is. . . a poser.

It would be fun to discover I’m wrong, but I’m not holding my breath.

A Point About Links and Subscriptions

Frank has a good point about the ways that different sorts of links effect different modes of social connection online. There’s the inline link, where I observe (for instance) that Frank said something interesting tonight about links. There’s the blogroll link, where one can tell that I keep Frank on my list of people-to-visit, with the snazzy recently-updated feature from Jason at Blogrolling. But lots of people (I included) rely to a great extent on news aggregators that scoop up the RSS or RDF files from target sites without actually making a detectable link on their blogs.

For instance, I subscribe to Phil Wolff’s RSS feed, but he’s not on my blogroll (not deliberately, I think; as I recall, A Klog Apart seemed to be on hiatus when I moved over from my Seabury address to Cornerhost). But no-one would know that I read Phil unless I made it explicit here. The link is there in my aggregator behavior, but not in my textual presence. I wouldn’t want to overdramatize that difference, but it does disrupt the generosity of the Web that David describes. Frank says he’ll want to talk about that in the BloggerCon session with Jon Udell (I read his RSS feed, too, and sometimes I pretend I understand it) — someone take notes, because I’ll be talking about Spirituality in that time slot. . . .

It’s Been One Week

A week ago I came home from the hospital. At the time I imagined I was pretty clear-headed, but in retrospect I have to admit that the general anesthetic was still befogging my thoughts with some lingering curls of confusion. My abdomen hurt a fair amount.

Today I’m still easily tired (the discharge instructions said that I could begin work part-time this week, and that’s about right, though I’m impatient to do more than I ought to). My incisions hurt some, and the formerly-herniated parts also hurt some; I assume that’s from the stitching that put mesh over the ruptures in the muscle wall.

I still haven’t passed the point where I feel more comfortable after surgery than I did before, but everyone tells me I will. That would be good. I see the surgeon tomorrow, and he may have more specific words about what-all is up.

I Wish

It’s a little frustrating — I’d certainly like to eat dinner with some of those other folks, too. I was anxious when Wendy called to ask if I’d be one of the dinner host; how embarrassed could I be, if no one wanted to eat with me? Well, at least one friendly blogger has signed up. And maybe he’s taking requests!

Well, More Links

I meant to throw together several links in last night’s post, but I got too sleepy. Among the links I left out was Jim McGee’s musings about institutional cluelessness:

Hypothesis one is that modern training in marketing succeeds in conditioning marketing types that markets consist of statistical abstractions that have no connection to the living, breathing human beings they interact with on a daily basis.

Hypothesis two is that training in strategy ignores any notion of dynamic change or any notion that people outside the organization might behave in ways inconsistent with the assumptions in the strategic plan.

So far as I can tell, these hypotheses apply not only to marketing, but to other social scientific studies as well; the interests of aggregation trump the interests of particularity or adaptation. As a result, serious and intelligent people develop scientific generalizations about human behavior that human behavior itself tends to falsify when people behave in ways that reveal their difference from the aggregate, their responsiveness to contextual signals too fine to incorporate into a data set. One reason I appreciate blogs derives from their marked proclivity to favor the particular over the aggregate, their tendency to open onto adaptive behavior rather than to enforce expected conformity.

This is not to say that no bloggers are conformists or stick-in-the-muds; far from it! But although bloggers reflect the aggregate, homeostatic behavior that justifies quantitative research, the practice of blogging provides opportunities for particular differences to get a hearing, to make productive connections, to move in unanticipated directions.

Next link: This sure looks interesting, and seems to address issues close to what I already work on. Now, if I can just get travel funding. . . .

And Dan Gillmor shows why it isn’t just cloudy-eyed day-dreamers who believe that the internet may provide an collective endeavor that rewards cooperation more than exploitation — and that keeps me hopeful.

Links on My Mind

Yahoo News pointed to a column I missed from USA Today (“missed,” that is, in the sense that I hardly ever look at all). The author seems to lobby against home schooling, across the board, advancing some awfully tired and fallacious arguments. “ Not all parents are good teachers” — but neither are all professional teachers. I’ve taught at the elementary level, and schoolteachers have my highest respect, but Dr. Evans will surely allow the possibility that some home-schooling parents are better teachers than some institutional-school teachers. “The isolation implicit in home teaching is anathema to socialization and citizenship.” Excuse me, but does anyone who knows our kids — espcially Josiah — think he’s inappropriately isolated? If you see him before I do, tell him so. “It is a rejection of community and makes the home-schooler the captive of the orthodoxies of the parents” — as opposed to other schools, where students are captive of no ideology?

And at home, we have smaller class sizes, active parental involvement, teachers who love the kids in their classes unreservedly, and attention to the learning style of each individual child. . . .

Law and Order

It’s a good thing we have a fiercely ethical, law-and-order Republican administration these days. After all, they wouldn’t let up on Bill Clinton for his illicit sexual liaison with Monica; how much more determined they must be to plumb the current cases to their very depths!

There’s the question of which White House official betrayed the national security by fingering Valerie Plame as a CIA agent.

And the question of unethical profiteering on the horizon, as highly-connected firms begin brokering the the billions that the Bush administration has decided to spend on rebuilding Iraq.

Oh, and the Bush-backed buyout of bankrupt Edison Schools, Inc., with money from the state employees’ pension fund.

Luckily, these all involve matters so obviously relevant to the well-being of a constitutional democracy that the hyperactive legal minds of the G.O.P. must be slavering to pick apart the immorality and hypocrisy of such cynically self-serving acts.

Words and Images 3

"It is pictures rather than propositions, metaphors rather than statements, which determine most of our philosophical convictions." Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 1979, p 12

Heres the point of my meanderings and natterings: metaphors such as “the text is a mirror” should help us understand something that would otherwise be obscure, or they risk further obscuring the topic by introducing problems with the metaphorical representation of the topic that aren’t already implied by the topic itself. And that phenomenon matters all the more urgently since “clarity” and “obscurity” are themselves metaphors in this context, deployed to characterize more or less satisfactory appropriations and performances of words and images, texts and pictures (yes, Brad, thanks for the reminder to go back to Mitchell, which I’ll do ASAP!).

So, in the context of biblical hermeneutics, instead of crowding more and more, contradictory and complementary metaphors into an already confused discourse, may we take a moment to check the most obvious and misleading of our metaphors at the door, acknowledge their metaphoricity, and ask what we’re trying to get at when we deploy them?

When we say, “this sort of criticism treats the text as a window on the world of its origin,” don’t we mean something such as, “The appropriate way of reading this text notes what we imagine the author and characters to take for granted, to regard as necessary or given, the circumstances of subsistence and interaction that make the text intelligible to us”? The metaphor, in this case, distracts us from recognizing that we imagine particular features on the basis of our interaction with the text, and that we determine a particular context to which we feel satisfied that the text coheres. The text serves as a window only to the extent that we project a background, and proceed as though that background had a pertinence authenticated by its realness more than by our selection of it and comfort with it. (Here I don’t intend to deny or even depreciate the alleged reality of that background — simply to note that it’s usually, if not always, contested, so that its reality is to some extent constituted by our advocacy of one version of “reality” rather than another.)

Similarly, when we say that another sort of criticism treats the text as a mirror, we suggest that the appropriate way to read the text involves reflection (!) on how we understand ourselves in relation to the text, how we imagine that the author and characters would affirm or disparage our assumptions and values. Here the metaphor occludes the extent to which our self-critical interaction with the text depends on (and is limited by) what we can begin to imagine in ourselves as possibly open to criticism. (The overused example here would be the way that antebellum white slaveholders in the U.S. could perceive a biblical justification for slaves’ submission, but not a critique of chattel slavery in general; more controversial examples might explore the ways that some readers resist “biblical” critiques of patriarchy, heterosexual normativity, and capitalism.) The metaphorical mirror’s capacity to reflect depends entirely on the reader’s willingness (no, that’s too voluntarist) capacity to imagine the “reflected image” that supposedly issues from the text.

(Time for a break.)

Brief Addendum

Branding provides another sign of the way that word and image suffuse one another (wish the Tutor weren’t taking a break so he could chime in). The principles of vexillology and heraldry provide, as it were, the grammar of their images’ signification.

“A picture held us captive.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations § 115

Now, grant (if you will) that pictures and words are not as diametrically opposite as they are sometimes supposed to be. Isn’t it odd that schools of hermeneutical reflection so often begin with apposite, vivid metaphors, which critics then deploy as terms of art within the hermeneutical discourse, and which at the end function as though they were simply descriptions of what actually takes place?

I refer here to such hermeneutical staples as “the world behind the text,” “the world in front of the text,” and “the world of the text” or “text as window” versus “text as mirror.” Am I being perversely literalistic if I ask, “If the world is behind the text, why can’t I reach around and touch it?” I’d like to think that I’m not, that instead I’m (in effect) asking how to recognize the metaphor’s fit to the situation it presumably describes, and how to discern when the metaphor has so captivated its user that the user now takes the metaphorical description as an account of what is.

Confession

I am a bad convalescent: indeed, a terrible, wayward, foolish convalescent. Yesterday, oblivious to the fact that I was insulated by a three-day cushion of pain killers, I supposed that I felt good enough to get up and do some odds and ends around the house. I was very wrong. First, I allowed my obliviousness to the benefit of pain relievers to induce me to neglect to take last night’s prescribed dose till well after its appointed hour; second, and more important, I discovered (well after the appointed hour for taking my evening pain killer) that my very recent surgery did cause inflammation and tenderness, and that overexerting did have painful consequences (albeit on an unfortunately delayed feedback loop).

So I acknowledged my folly to Margaret, who did not say “I told you so,” but did agree that I’d been bad, terrible, wayward, and foolish. We talked over the reasons I might have been such a ninny, and we hope I’ve learned from my mistakes. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I just have a couple of small errands to run, really nothing too demanding, just three or four that I’ve been meaning to take care of. . . .

Working On It

I owe the Bible in Ancient and Modern Media a presentation in November, and it’s time that I get to working it out. Here’s the abstract I submitted:

Certain problems have become embedded in discussions of hermeneutics -- topoi such as "text as window/mirror," "world behind the text," "letting the text speak for itself," and so on. The advent of digital media has not dislocated these set-pieces of interpretive discourse, but often treats them as given, as assumed in the nature of hermeneutical reasoning. This essay takes its cue from a short semiotic rumination by Rene Magritte, from the paintings of Mark Tansey, and from the disembodied arguments typical of biblical hermeneutics, to use digital media (in the form of a series of images and, perhaps, other stimuli) to illustrate and thereby to recontextualize the vocabulary of biblical hermeneutics. By observing the repertoire of metaphors prevalent in biblical hermeneutics, the essay aims to suggest some of their limitations, to elicit and perhaps to suggest a different repertoire of metaphors.

The semiotic rumination to which I allude here is an article from La Révolution Surréaliste, a journal which appeared sporadically between 1924 and 1929. In what I think was the last number of the journal, Magritte offered eighteen line drawings toward demonstrating the extent to which words and images constitute overlapping categories. Here’s one example:

which appears under the caption, “In a picture, the words are of the same substance as the images.”

Magritte’s essay demands that we recognize the extent to which interpretation mediates the functions of both looking at a picture and reading a word. This conceit makes possible both “found alphabets” (also the recent online flurry about “recognizing words as shapes.”) and rebuses function.

But if words and pictures are neither unsubstitutable nor identical, certain of our premises in hermeneutical discourse take on a different cast, especially when we cast our premises themselves as metaphors. (And here I'll pick up tomorrow.)

Hat Tip

I’m pleased to see Dave Winer advocating more online publishing of audio communication. This is part of what we’ve envisioned at the Disseminary (although we haven’t made any of the recordings yet; we’re waiting, for now, to hear from our first choice of a reader). Chris Lydon’s interviews are a good thing, but they’re only the beginning, and we’re hoping to extend the premise into further areas of theological writing.

Let Us Not Forget

This summer’s brutal heat wave in France killed almost 15,000 people, according to the recent calculations. That’s 15,000 graves, in a country with the population a few million more than California and Texas combined. That’s as though the entire enrollment of James Madison University or the University of Arkansas or University College, London, died. If the canicule had hit the U.S. with the same mortality rate as in France, 200,000 people would have died.

Now, the U.S. uses a lot more air conditioning than Europe, and doesn’t observe the same unanimity regarding vacation schedules (sometimes it seems as though absolutely everyone in Europe takes the whole month of August off, which must not be possible since somebody has to insult the American tourists). But if you simply respond, “It can’t happen here,” you’re not dealing with the magnitude of the catastrophe, or the reality that Bad Things Do and Will Happen to the United States.

What would George W. Bush do, whom would he blame if 200,000 inhabitants of the U.S. died in a heat wave? If just as few as 15,000?

Listen to What the Man Says

Dave “Connect & Empower” Rogers is his own guy (come to think of it, Dave “Time’s Shadow” Rogers is, too; maybe it’s something to do with the name). He doesn’t follow the herd — no, sirree. He marches to a different drummer, he calls the tune, and when a bunch of other people were getting excited last year about my book on postmodernism, he kept his own counsel. He would read it when he felt like it, if at all, and he wasn’t about to be buffaloed into liking it just because David Weinberger and Tom Matrullo and Joseph Duemer said kind things about it.

But the time came, and he read it, and it turns out that he likes it after all. I’m feeling like Shelley, after those good reviews of Practical RDF: “I can feel satisfaction that it's helping folks and the writing is respected and seen as a quality effort. That's pretty damn important for a writer — worth more than bucks. . . . Well, bucks are nice, too.” Thanks, Dave, for a welcome lift!

Rolling the Ball

I just finished my first post to the Disseminary seminar on “The Ethics of Interpreting the Bible.” It’s just a potted history of several developments that set up the readings and topics we’ve selected, but I’m hoping it’ll serve adequately as a jumping-off point for discussion.

The Man

Elliot Noss is a hero of mine; last year, when the Disseminary was still just a weary twinkle in my eye (it had been twinkling there for seven years or so, and was nigh on to burning out), he saw what I was ranting about and saved "disseminary.org" for us (we’ll re-up very soon, Elliot, I just have to get back to work). When everything else seemed near hopeless, Elliot offered something to hang onto, and that means a ton.

So when my man gets mad at Verisign — and heaven knows there’s reason enough even before the latest fiasco — I say, “Amen,” and emphasize that this is just exactly the kind of action that undermines the possibility of top-down DigID measures, especially if Verisign is involved. Let’s be candid and say, “Verisign is not acting as a respnsible, trustworthy agent in its dealings with users and competitors. Why on earth would we trust them with our digital ID?” (I see David is there, too. You tell ’em!)

Class Warfare

And if Halley thinks W. is prosecuting a war against the middle class, just imagine how his policies look to the unemployed, the impoverished, the non-connected, the people who would be wildly enthusiastic at the prospect of an inheritance worth taxing in the first place.

Kids’ Software

Liz and Kevin (permalinks blogspotted, scroll to Sept. 22), pointing to Tim Burke, hit the nail on the head (and Kevin confesses his complicity) when they indict the deplorable condition of software for kids. All three of our children have taken to computers as ducks to water, but have been almost entirely uninterested by games. Nate was scared silly by Reader Rabbit; Si played some, but not persistently; Pippa went through a phase of spending lots of time (and printer ink) on KidPix, and played a couple of educational games. The boys liked Carmen Sandiego for a little while, but the options are so limited that the game becomes a highly predictable exercise in repetition.

Mostly, they wanted to play the games for ordinary people — games that were not designed to be condescending. All three love Ambrosia Software and Freeverse games; the boys still play NetHack (Nate prefers playing in the ASCII mode to the newer, gussied-up-with-graphics mode). There’s no reason those games can’t be educational. Sim City certainly has been. But as Greg Costikyan observed earlier this year, the blockbuster mentality rules computer gaming as it does the film and music industries — with the concomitant constriction of their commercial imaginations.

Part of the reason our kids didn’t relish the games that were ostensibly designed for them involves the fact that we homeschool the kids — but it would be too easy to write them off as exceptions on that count, especially when Liz and Timothy and Kevin and especially Greg see the problem, too. Maybe part of the answer to the game design industry’s constipation, a part that reflects our experience as homeschool parents, involves treating children and grown-ups as people with the capacity to think and act and choose as adults.

New Warning

According to the labels on my little orange cylinder, when I take Darvocet, I shouldn’t drink, or operate a car or heavy machinery, because the drug may cause dizziness (among other side effects, including dulling the pain of two openings cut into my flesh and sewed together).

What it ought to say is, “Do not blog while under the influence of this drug, and do not leave comments on other people’s blogs. May induce feelings of grandiosity and of immunity to future consequences. Lock down keyboard until the stitches are out.” Not that I’d pay attention if it did say that. . . .

Status Report

As the dust settles, I find that I’m able to simulate full capacity for short periods, and that getting up and walking around for a while actually feels better than sitting or lying. (That may just be my character as a terrible convalescent, though.) My abdomen does hurt, especially when I flex in any way, or when I make the kind of quick adjustment in posture that’s a significant component of everyday balance.

The pain killer helps.

That, and Margaret’s knocking herself out taking care of me, while Pippa feels extra needy herself. Margaret’s keeping a watchful eye on me, feeding me, and making sure I get my pills on schedule.

The main problem is that life goes on apace, and I see myself falling behind in a dozen areas, when I only have about a half day’s worth of energy. Still, I promise to keep my eyes open for something worth commenting about, instead of just jabbering about myself again and again.

And listen, y’all are sweethearts; thanks so much for all your kind wishes and prayers.

I’m Ba-a-a-ack

Okay — while I’m still more-or-less coherent, here goes the story. Warning: medical narrative follows — if you’re like me, consider skipping this entry. Certainly don’t read this post while driving.

Margaret and Terry drove me to the hospital (as I was saying). At the Ambulatory Surgery (a word-picture that will stick with me a long time) reception desk, they signed me in and send me to a room of my own. By 11:15, Terry and Margaret and I were safely ensconced in a cozy little room, I in my formal hospital best. Hospital staff kept wishing me luck, which made me wonder if they knew something I ought to find out before surgery.

We then waited till 1:00; Terry and Margaret had a good long talk, the nurse made sure I hadn’t altered my pulse and blood pressure since last week, and I napped on and off.

All was pretty straightforward, apart from — well, the medical term I was taught for me is, “vasovagal on venipuncture.” By that, my doctors mean, “I’m inclined to faint when they draw blood.” The first blood doc tried to find a vein on the inside of my left arm. Whoops! Missed. Then he tried again, on the outside. Ouch! Missed again.

By this time I was sweating profusely and if my eyes hadn’t been closed, they’d have been bugging out. Blood Doc Number One recognized that he needed help, and summoned Blood Doc Two. Blood Doc Two began probing my right arm while my surgeon (who was shaving the regions he would soon be cutting through) sternly barked, “He’s going vagal!” (If I hadn’t known what that meant, I’d probably have fainted on the spot just from the dangerous sound of the expression.) Luckily, Blood Doc Number Two had found his vein (my vein), and soon they were pumping a comforting cocktail of saline and sedative into me.

I don’t even remember them gassing me for the general anesthetic. That’s how vagal I had gone.

I woke up gradually in post-op, helpless without my glasses. I waited rather impatiently for a half hour or forty-five minutes, and they wheeled me back to Margaret and Terry.

My review of the experience: right now, I'm not quite convinced that it beats having the hernia itself, but everyone tells me I’ll be glad I had it in a few weeks. In the meantime, I’d say that if you don’t already have a hernia, you should probably skip the surgery — there are better things to do with your entertainment dollar.

On My Way

Well, I'm wearing comfortable clothing, I haven’t eaten in, let’s see, twelve hours or more (I snacked after dinner), I’m basking in the radiance of many kind people’s well-wishes, and in a half hour or so, Terry will come join Margaret and me, and we’ll head off to Evanston Northwestern Hospital. I’ll let you know when I get back.

Memo

Before surgery, Shallow Grave is not the movie to watch as a distraction, even if it does feature Ewan MacGregor.

Three Mysteries

Number One: Why have left-side curly-quotation-marks started going wonky, not only here but on at least one other site I’ve visited?

Number Two: Why do I feel so anxious about surgery that’s really no big deal (by the way, in recognition of all that he’s done for me, I bequeath my blog and Joi Ito’s to David Weinberger, in case I predecease him)?

Number Three: Why have at least two people come to this site recently searching for the string, “self flagellation”? Isn’t there at least one site they ought to have visited first?

Something to Look Forward To

Dave Sifry was showing off an idea toward a distributed DigID network (involving Technorati, of course). It was only a tiny first step, but as I looked at it, I think I saw a glimpse of the future. DigID as rhizome, not tree. . . .

A Day of Affirmation

It looks as though Dorothea and Rabbi Lewis aren’t the only people who are making congenial points online these days. I’m overblogged nowadays — there are more interesting people online than I can possibly keep up with — so I’m late to the party on some of these — but I want also to applaud

• Aaron’s quoting mjd to the effect that Wired represents tech-talk apart from real information: “That’s what Wired is about: The illusion of knowledge without any of the difficult bits.” Sometimes I worry that that’s a direction toward which seminary education tends.
• Clancy Ratliff hearts Gayle Rubin: well, I suppose that I’d quail before using that locution, but I too remember reading “The Traffic in Women” and feeling my neurons tingle. An awful lot of queer theory engages issues at such fascinating angles, with such provocative insights, that I still get irked when people trivialize it.
• Clancy also posted an entry entitled “Blogging as Privileged Speech,” in which she discusses a presentation she gave last year. Lots to chew on there, but the point that particularly stuck in my mind as a teacher who uses blogs, and as a blogger who’s a theologian and teacher, was her connecting the dots of “blogging as genre” and &ldqu;;genre as social action” (observations on Carolyn Miller’s article here, partway down the page). Now, many of us would like to think we were changing the world by blogging; some of us even make so bold as to stake that claim outright. But Clancy, I think, is onto something when she associates bloggers’ participation in the social practice of online writing (of a particular sort) with the social conditions that produce blogging, and that blogging itself contributes to producing. It’s a notion I’ll be mulling over for a while.
• Other things I’ll probably add throughout the day

So much to learn and think, in so little time. Well, at least it distracts me from the flaming car wreck that my beloved congregation is hurtling towards.

Again, I say, “Amen”

Dorothea has repeated her opinion that the natural starting-point for ebooks is academia. I second the motion — which is part of what Trevor and I are up to at the Disseminary (and it may be part of why Dorothea’s so agreeable about working with us on it).

Amen

Richard at Looking Backward reproduces a letter from Rabbi Justin Jaron Lewis, the Director of Jewish Studies at Queen’s Theological College, on Christian use of the divine Name. Knowing that one or two Jewish readers sometimes stray in this direction, I wanted to call attention to this letter.

The heart of the letter — carefully worded with respect for Christian neighbors’ good intentions — gently asks that Christian stop the practice of uttering the Name, even on the basis of indicating their kinship with Judaism:

In this context, to any Jew with even a moderately traditional or religious sensibility, hearing the name spoken aloud (or even seeing it written with vowels as I have had to do here) is shocking, even blasphemous. Its use in Christian circles, therefore, does not build a connection with Judaism, but introduces discord.

Now, this is a practice that has long bothered me, and in the relatively few occasions on which an Episcopalian encounters the Name in the Book of Common Prayer (the Song of Moses and one or two psalms) I simply fall silent for those syllables. I don’t use the Name in teaching or preaching.

My reasons fall largely into the zone Rabbi Lewis suggests — but I await correction and instruction from others on how best to show humble respect for my neighbors.

O Tempora, O Mores!

There’s a lot of hand-wringing these days in the Anglican Communion, as many church leaders outside the U.S. decry the doctrinal disarray of a province that would allow the consecration of an openly gay man as bishop. More than forty years ago, Eric Mascall (himself a resolutely conservative theologian) wrote a poem entitled, “The Ultra-Catholic” with such verses as,

The Bishop’s put me under his ‘profoundest disapproval’
And, though he cannot bring about my actual removal,
He will not come and visit me or take my confirmations.
Colonial prelates I employ from far-off mission-stations.

anticipating proposals for traditionalist parishes to align themselves with remote dioceses rather than their geographical diocesans.

His Ultra-Catholic clergyman refuses to pay his diocesan assessment, and concludes that “The C. of E. [Church of England]’s in heresy and schism.” This, before the U.S. and U.K. approved the ordination of women, and before one would even have considered institutional approval for ordaining lesbian or gay candidates.

That doesn’t mean that today’s traditionalists are necessarily wrong (if anything, they may point to these verses as indications that they have been suffering ecclesiastical discrimination for decades, made unbearable by recent developments). One might also look on this poem (second on a page from Project Canterbury), though, as a sign that one portion of the church will always perceive itself to be beset by error and folly. Perhaps the persistence of such lamentations demonstrates, contra appearances, that there has been and will be room for dissent within the boundaries of the Anglican Communion. . . .

Would You Believe. . . ?

Would you believe the tale of an Oulippian god of narration, a limber-lipped limner of laudable lore, or some windy, ancient professor saying, “It was probably just old age and toting leaden baggage all over England”?

Belay that, Ye Froward Wenches!

Arrrrrr!

A little parrot, a burning parrot told me that three piratical maids have claimed pre-eminence on the pseven pseudo-seas of pcyber-[not really]-space! Aye, and the Flaming Bird has upped the ante by several doubloons, or doublets or something, by adding a graphical buccaneer’s banner!

Well, that slimy scupper the Pomo Prince (David??) can do what he wants, but as for me and my crew, we can design better than the hardest sea dogs they can pressgang out of the shanties of St. Louis, or the ateliers of Atlanta, or wherever in New York Elaine lives. Captain Trevor, be quick with that Photoshop! Seabury scurvy, swab down those links! Arrrr!

Where’s Cabin Boy Si? I hope he hasn’t deserted to sail with the vixens!

Gnash, Gnash

Well, OK, I was going to try to just not mention this online — each of us adopts certain modes of self-disclosure and eschews others — but I feel all cranky and weary, and it’s because I have a double hernia that they’re going to operate on Monday, and now it hurts more and differently than it had so far, and it makes me grouchy to feel vulnerable. And it makes me feel ashamed of my vanity when I realize that I’m concealing and resisting my own feelings of vulnerability. Which, of course, doesn’t improve my mood.

You can tell how out of sorts I am by the fact that I’m just leaving that big ugly split infinitive in the first line.

Part of this has been catalyzed by the two-day faculty conference Seabury holds several times a year, which I found very stressful, for several reasons that I will resist detailing. Suffice it to say that I think I held up my end pretty well for two days, but now I’m exhausted.

What Will the Revolution Be?

I’m not a Professional Matrix Speculator, so what I’m about to say has probably already been suggested elsewhere. Indeed, given the expansiveness of the field of Professional Matrix Speculation, it almost certainly has been suggested elsewhere, as the number of Matrix hypotheses approaches infinity. Probably on Kottke’s Matrix blog entry.

So my (surely belated and unoriginal) question is, “If in the first movie, we learned that Neo can see through the Matrix to the code that constitutes the apparent world, and in Reloaded we learn that he can not only hack the Matrix-reality, but can control elements of physical-world reality too (the mechnical jellyfish thingies), why ought we not learn in Matrix: Revolutions that he sees through reality itself?” Now that I write it out, it seems banal; but it’s the logical culmination of the gnostic theme of the series, which the Wachowskis could take in any number of theologico-philosophical directions.

Plus, it would make for some jim-dandy special effects.

Or They’ll Keelhaul Ye!

Arrr, mateys, link ye up to David Weinberger and Dan Gillmor’s new site, Word Pirates. They’re fighting to liberate words from their captivity to stuffed-shirt spinmeisters, to mealy-mouthed managers, to yahoo euphemizers, and restore to these words their appropriate significance. (Boy, do I have philosophical problems with this, even as I whole-heartedly share the sentiment.)

And don’t forget, there are fewer than forty-eight hours till International Talk Like a Pirate Day, by which they don’t mean “saying things from the Word Pirates site.”

So True

A tremendous proportion of what I do as a teacher derives from my conviction that I’m not such a very important part of the process. I don’t mean to suggest that I don’t lecture, or give assignments, or those other teacherly things; but I do them tactically, on the premise that the real learning takes place around the edges of what the magister does in the center of the classroom.

Some wise teachers advise me to abandon the center stage, to put everyone in the center and stand to the side. With all due respect, and fully acknowledging that (as the Apostle saith) “not that I have attained, or have already been made perfect,” but working out my pedagogy with fear and trembling, I try to constitute the center as a masque of instruction, while cultivating the kind of atmosphere in which motivation flourishes and instigates (on the student’s own time, on the margins of the classroom) the learning that really sticks.

This is how and why we home-school; this is why I’m pouring energy into the Disseminary; and it sounds to me as though it’s at least close to what George Siemens is getting at (via Stephen Downes). &ldqu;;Year One of a new program should somewhat resemble courses (i.e. provide structured exposure to content)...but subsequent years should resemble the way in which knowledge will be acquired once in the workplace. As I've stated before: ‘Small communities of practice, loosely joined, are the future of effective, lifelong learning...’ ” That’s a vision of seminary instruction I can get very enthusiastic about.

Already, Pippa’s standard response to any unknown situation is, “Google it!”