« November 2005 | Main | January 2006 »

December 31, 2005

Free Play

Margaret and I will be offline for twenty-four hours or so, taking a day away from our reunited family to celebrate New Year’s and to catch Paula Poundstone (annoying background music alert) at the Paramount in Aurora. If you’re coming by to leave a comment, please be patient, ’cause I won’ get to them till tomorrow.

In the meantime, permit me to commend to you Ethan Zuckerman’s ten-question quiz about African news of the past year (I saw it first at David Weinberger’s). I did well enough to not be mortified, but not well enough to boast; how about you?

Posted by AKMA at 07:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 30, 2005

On Certainty of Others’ Folly

Yesterday morning, Margaret pointed me to the comments in David Weinberger’s post about Daniel Dennett. I had read the post and skipped the comments, because I heard David to be making a point to which I generally assented, with reference to a gesture — the “all religious people are deluded” gesture — about which I usually keep silent. When I turned to the comments and saw a vigorous back-and-forth involving Dave and Frank and Tripp, I was moved to speak up.

I usually keep silent for various reasons. Most important, I try not to enter discussions where one loud participant already knows, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that anyone who disagrees with them is an idiot. I find that such discussions usually take up a great deal of time and care on my part, with no apparent benefit to either participant (except, perhaps, a mild inflation of my interlocutor’s estimate of their own intelligence — but that was already sufficiently high, in most cases). Plus, these conversations guarantee that one more person in the world thinks I’m an idiot, which outcome I prefer to avoid.

I also avoid these discussions because I have friends who tend to endorse the anti-religious side of them, and this topic brings their outlook into a less pleasant light. If people whom I otherwise like (and who seem to like me) want to persist in a way of thinking that categorizes me as a fool, an oppressor, a judgmental ideologue, a deceiver, I’d rather not take part in a discussion that triggers their inclination to dismiss me that way. (There might be some discursive value to challenging them to think of the guy they know and whom they profess to respect as the deluded ogre their rhetoric would imply, but for all I know they like deluded ogres, or they don’t mind the dissonance.) Someone who would write off all “religious” people as fools only reveals their own superficiality, and I would rather not put my friends in a position that invites them to affirm their enthusiastic triviality in this matter.

I venture to say that “someone who would write off all ‘religious’ people as fools only reveals their own superficiality” not because I believe that the soundness of religious belief is self-evident (far from it!), but because I observe that some extraordinarily intelligent people find it possible to manage their lives with no trace of religious faith, and other extraordinarily intelligent people profess (and exemplify) very deep faith. “Religiousness” has never shown itself a useful predictor of folly, so far as I’ve been able to tell (nor has irreligion proved a sign of intelligence).

Moreover, I don’t see useful distinctions between “spirituality” and “religion” or between “organized (or ‘institutional’) religion” and more fluid manifestations of faith, at least not as symptoms of more commendable intellectual standing. My ideological inclination probably colors my sense that Roman Catholics or highly-observant Jews are not stupider than more free-church-y, or “spiritual-not-religious” people, but though I be predisposed to favor such an assessment, I don’t think it’s groundless. I may be wrong — there may be a graduated scale of intelligence on which adherents of “organized” religions are lower, while adherents of religious practices with less explicit structure and dogma are higher. If that’s the case, I’m too low on the scale to be able to tell.

Within my limited capacities and experience, a theory of intellectual rigor proves its worth by how it deals with apparent contradictions. When someone’s theory of irreligion confronts someone who appears to be quite brilliant, but who goes to St. Nicholas Orthodox Church, by saying that such a person must be foolish, I tend to doubt the theory (rather than dismiss the apparent wisdom of the subject). When an explicitly irreligious person shows painstaking attention to the nuances of theological affirmations, taking seriously the patterns of difference and convergence to which David Weinberger’s original post pointed, I regard that person’s observations quite highly; their religious skepticism doesn’t oblige me to disregard or deride them.

Put more simply, any troll can say that “everyone who doesn’t think my way is an idiot.” It provides a mild opiate to assuage the anxieties that sometimes follow from attention to complications. It takes someone with integrity and intellectual substance — someone like David, for instance — to say, “I don’t share this understanding of life, but I can’t gainsay the depth and rigor of the intelligence and wisdom that have articulated it.”

Posted by AKMA at 06:46 AM | Comments (9)

December 29, 2005

Told You So

Who’d have thought it? Downloadable audio — podcasting — helps church attendance.

Posted by AKMA at 09:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Call The Doc

We’e wondering if Doc Searls makes house calls. We know several recording engineers, but no one who knows more about the transmission end of the radio business; every month or so, Doc offers a seminar in some aspect of FM radio: band distribution, the effect of ground conditions, how to make your iPod transmitter work better, whatever.

We need Doc because we get bad reception on our household FM radios, even though we live well within the full signal strength of WBEZ (our local NPR affiliate). The radios downstairs manage all right, but the clock radio in the master bedroom sometimes doesn’t register a signal at all, sometimes picks up two stations, and receives a fine, clear signal. Sometimes it helps if I’m holding the clock radio; sometimes it makes a difference if I jiggle the cord; most of the time, the reception stays mediocre.

My sister gave me a fancy, improved clock radio for Christmas, and I was hoping that the problem had been limited to the dime-store clock radio we had been using. The new radio comes with an FM antenna (well, a wire that the packaging calls an FM antenna), so we figured it was bound to zero right in on WBEZ, and we could listen to our hearts’ content.

Unfortunately, the problem seems more precisely to reside in the steel-and-stone architecture of our house, or the power lines that run by our bedroom window, or our refusal to conduct animal sacrifices to the arbitrary demons who control radio signal propagation. Whatever the reason, you can bet that if Doc ever comes for a visit, we’ll drag him upstairs and ask, “What’s with this?”

Posted by AKMA at 09:04 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

December 28, 2005

Moving Type

I’ve done some para-typographic work in my day, and have remained over-attentive to matters of type and page design. Thus I choke up with type-design exhilaration at the Typographi.ca Year’s Best Type column. Some of these faces impress the daylights out of me. It would be great, for instance, if Seabury could change from Trajan to the finer, subtler Garda.

As Stephen Coles says in the introductory paragraph, “As public awareness of typography increases, it becomes even more important to use something other than the same old stuff that lingers in your font menu.” There’s no reason a school or a congregation can’t decide on a serif text face, a complementary sans-serif for headings and captions, and a display face for headlines (not that one might not ever deviate from them, but as a house rule for institutional printing). If expense is a concern, why not adopt Lido STF as a visibly distinct alternative to Times Roman? The Ascender Creativity Font Pack will cost only $20, but includes several very fine typefaces that distinguish one’s organization from every other place in the world that just uses the default typefaces that come with their system software. Better yet, hit a benefactor for a specific package.

Posted by AKMA at 08:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 27, 2005

Holiday Wishes

Today’s the day we celebrate Christmas at our house (it’s within the twelve days of the season, so this is kosher, although I hope no one gives anybody three French hens). Nate had some singing jobs lined up and couldn’t get away; Jennifer still won’t arrive till Saturday, but there’s only so long you can put things off.

Last Saturday, Pippa and Laura and Si decorated our tree, which we have named “Bob” every year for the past eight years or so for reasons too convoluted to elaborate here. This year’s Bob cuts an especially dashing figure, though my photo doesn’t do it justice:

Close examination of the giftage around the tree will reveal something (typically) odd. It turns out that Pippa Margaret decided that we ought not participate in the annual deforestation ritual that requires every gift to be surrounded by paper destined to the torn off and discarded in a matter of moments. She brilliantly connected the problem of gift-concealment with the query I posted last summer concerning what to do with canvas tote bags. As a result, the gifts from local family members to one another have all been wrapped packaged in canvas totes, tied closed with a tag that Pippa prepared.

Yet another stroke of out-of-the-box thinking from your syncopated blogging friends here.

Posted by AKMA at 10:31 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 26, 2005

Back In Olden Times

We opted out of much of the holiday spending extravaganza, partly for reasons of conscience, partly for economic reasons, and partly because we’re just not organized enough to plan and list and shop and ship in time for plausibly festive arrival. I hadn’t been inside a Major Retail Establishment except the Apple Store, and the only reason I went there was to make a maintenance purchase that I would have been making anyway.

So when Pippa and I ventured into Target this afternoon to buy a couple of blankets for the coming influx of family, I was astounded — verily flabbergasted — to see the staggering abundance of “poker sets” (including ensembles specifically designed for the currently-popular Texan version of the game). Once upon a time, I especially appreciated card games in general and poker in particular because you didn’t need a “set.” A deck of cards, some pocket change or other small counters, and you had a game. Pippa and I threaded our way between small mountains of packages that included chips, cards, rulebooks, storage devices, probably make-up kits, screwdrivers, sump pumps, and dental appliances.

Our only consolation lay in the fact that evidently a lot of people looked at these overpriced packages and said, “Who needs a ‘set’ to play five-card draw?” and left these boutique poker sets on the shelves.

Posted by AKMA at 04:22 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 25, 2005

Progress — With The Accent On “Grrrrr”

This evening I went to the printer to print out a simple job for Pippa. The same printer has worked fine for months; we’ve been printing with it, on and off, all fall. For some reason, it began choking on the photos Pippa wanted (although it printed the Google home page perfectly agreeably).

After an hour of increasing blood pressure, I fetched the old printer Si used to use. It doesn’t work (though to be fair, we haven’t even tried it for months).

Bah, humbug!

[Follow-up: I went in to the office and printed the pictures for Pippa there. Since then, I’ve figured out that the problem on this end was a misfiring black ink jet; it didn’t malfunction predictably, but eventuially I noticed that the startling special effects on the color images I printed derived from their not being dark in the appropriate areas. New ink reservoir, all clear.]

Posted by AKMA at 07:07 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

December 24, 2005

A Vanishing Difference

I was talking about authenticity* with a friend after church last week, and she advanced the premise that careful, deliberate writing showed a writer’s minimal courtesy to her or his reader. Since I have a reputation to uphold, I suggested that it’s more complicated than that — but I sympathized with her concern that too few writers attend to readers’ uptake.

This shows up in student papers when writers back up their claims with an aggregation of assertions, rather than a productively structured argument. I understand why the distinction might not appear obvious; relatively little public debate observes the difference between assertion and argument (indeed, a great deal of political discourse seems to rest not simply on naked assertion, but on bellicose assertions without even a tenuous basis in common knowledge). Discursive conflict gravitates quickly and fatally to “she said, he said” or “well, that’s my perspective, you have yours,” without acknowledging the possibility that he and she, you and I might have a way of reaching for conclusions to which we both can assent.

Deliberative argument doesn’t guarantee that possibility, nor does it provide some ideal, neutral path toward truth. Still, it’s different from mere assertion — and if we fail to respect that difference, we’re poorer both in intellectual responsibility and in the wiser, more generously consensual relationships that the practice of argument can foster.

To oversimplify: If you want to elicit agreement with your thesis, you should not simply assert claims you suppose to be true (perhaps even self-evidently so), but present your reader with reasons to think that your claims are true, and that they add up to the thesis you propose. Some of your reasons may indeed strike some of your readers as self-evident, but if everything you think were equally self-evident to your reader, you wouldn’t need to persuade her of anything. If your reader disagrees with you about something, we have grounds for suspecting that she doubts a reason that you regard as sound, or that she doesn’t follow a chain of implications that you take as granted. Further, the more a writer takes for granted, the more likely he has overlooked (or deliberately elided) a fallacious inference in his own reasoning. The more carefully you write out your argument, the better you protect yourself from your own fallibility.

I worked through this with a student once, who experienced this as the revelation of a great secret. Once my student caught the idea that one could distinguish “assertion” from “argument” and that one could actually craft a paper toward the goal of persuading a reader to accept a thesis for explicit, sound reasons, my student couldn’t believe that the world had withheld this knowledge thus far. Why hadn’t anyone explained this to her? How could any grown-up get along without this knowledge?

Most people don’t find the distinction as surprising as that. Still, few cultivate the countercultural practice of differentiating assertion from argument. Preserving that distinction won’t resolve all the world’s problems — but it might make a useful step toward ameliorating a few, here and there. And it certainly wouldn’t hurt.

Posted by AKMA at 11:29 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

December 23, 2005

Seasonal Remembrances

It’s been a tough year for natural disasters. A year ago, hundreds of thousands of people died in the devastating tsunami in South Asia. An October earthquake killed tens of thousands and destroyed the homes of millions more in Kashmir. Hurricane Stan killed thousands in Central America, and in the U.S. Hurricane Katrina killed thousands, despoiled a beloved major city, and wiped out the structures of entire coastal areas.

We haven’t forgotten any of these, but this morning I spent extra time trying to wrangle copies of students’ notes for the classes David Knight took back when he was in seminary here. I followed links he sent earlier this week to an editorial stock-taking and some visual reminders of how Katrina affected a far greater swath of the Gulf Coast than only New Orleans.

If your Christmas can include yet another round of sharing what you have with others who have lost much, you’ll be the richer for it.

Posted by AKMA at 12:02 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 22, 2005

Political Musings

If the media incline to the left, why has all the coverage of the transit strike in New York (all that I’ve heard, in other words “mostly NPR and online news sources”) stressed the hardship this strike imposes on commuters, tourists, hoteliers, and merchants, and the unusually-comprehensive pension and health care package that the laborers are striking to maintain? A lefty press would, I’d imagine, lionize the brave workers who have drawn the line at corporate exploitation (billions of dollars of profits, comfy benefits at the top, but a desperate need to cut benefits for the laborers who actually make the transit system run).

A left-inclined press might be baying at the heels of congressmen and White House officials who have fallen afoul a special prosecutor for violations of political procedure rather than for lying about a stupid, tawdry sexual affair. A left-inclined press might try to suppress or rebut, rather than perpetuate and amplify, reports that the press inclines toward the left. Or so I’d think.

---

This morning brings yet another complaint about the internet as the ostensible cause of stupidity, inn the name of a greater civility that apparently arises automatically when people communicate face to face. Evidently the author, who admits to having gone to college “way back in the technological stone age (the mid 1990s),” lacks sufficient experience of face-to-face interaction to back up his overripe nostalgia, but he might have stopped to drink a cup of badly-perked academic coffee and thought back on centuries of life in educational institutions before he committed such callow folly to public display.

News flash: The academy has never been the idyllic preserve of systematically undistorted communication after which Steele hankers; academic life involves a perpetual negotiation of generosity and venality, liberality (in its best sense) and reaction, the search for truth and the struggle to control how that search turns out. Very often, academic people behave extremely badly. It didn’t start with the Internet, face to face interaction doesn’t solve the problem, and a great many more academic conflicts and misdemeanors take pace through good ol’ fashioned scheming, manipulation, personal interaction, and offical memo than through web sites.

---

But while the subject of Paul Mirecki has come to the surface (Steele refers to Mirecki’s situation as one of his examples), has anyone ever made a less-appealing case for himself? He might have simply, patiently offered a course on Intelligent Design, displayed its characteristics and encouraged students to think through the problems involved in construing it as a scientific theory, while at the same time encouraging students to push as hard as they care to against the mythos of evolution, and everyone involved could have learned a lot. Instead, he revealed a streak of intolerance that should embarrass him, then claimed that KU’s squeezing him out of being department chair constituted a breach of academic freedom. Oh, the pernicious effects of the internet. . . .

Posted by AKMA at 09:45 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

December 20, 2005

Grace and Theft

Kevin has a neat post about the difference between digital reproduction and physical theft. The overdeveloped world can persistently legislate technological and judicial sanctions to enforce the illusion that the conditions of [re]production have not changed — but since letting digital media function as they do best costs less in hardware, software, and just plain bother, there will always be places in the world (hence, always a place online) where copying will remain free.

In this context, I’m tickled to point to Michael Iafrate’s holiday album, Happy Xmas, X is Here, with downloadable mp3s.

Posted by AKMA at 08:32 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Convergence and Synergy

Two of my favorite print artifacts, made easily available courtesy of the Net: Demotivators and Holy Cards. (Thanks for the reminder, Chris.)

Posted by AKMA at 08:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 19, 2005

Adium Rocks

When I mourned about the deficiencies of iChat (relative to GoogleTalk's Jabber protocol), my wonderful readers recommended Adium X. I downnloaded the latest version and it started up smooth as silk.

I had to reset the alert sounds, but everything else works like a charm. I love tabbed chat windows, and the fact that the dock icon tells me whose message just arrived.

One remaining desideratum: a number of my contacts and I enjoyed seeing what’s playing on one another’s iTunes; is there a hack that enables that for Adium? (Not that it would have mattered for the last week or so, since I turn off iTunes when I’m playing Warcraft.)

(Micah recommended this solution.)

Posted by AKMA at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)

December 18, 2005

A New Crop

Josiah and I elled down to the Cathedral yesterday to celebrate the ordination to the priesthood of my former students Dave, Leigh, and Jane, and my former colleague Horace. It was wonderful to share their moment, and to catch up with alum friends such as Susie and Jane.

Since no one else has blogged this yet, I will note for the record that Bishop Persell opened the service by asking if it were the congregation’s will that these people be ordained bishops — a slip that occasioned exuberant mirth, and inordinate speculation about these clergy’s futures.

It was particularly good to catch up with Horace, who left Seabury very suddenly this fall. He moved to New York with indefinite job prospects, but has landed nicely on his feet at General Theological Seminary in New York. Well, done, sir!

Posted by AKMA at 09:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 16, 2005

In Case You Were Wondering

Margaret and Si landed just fine at Midway last night, despite intermittent snow squalls. It would be untrue — or inauthentic? — to suggest that I have devoted all my attention to Margaret since her arrival. I have spent much of the time with her, but a chunk of my afternoon and early evening went to introducing Josiah to World of Warcraft and, unwittingly, getting into a very time-consuming dungeon instance.

Exciting as that underground battle was, the part that prevented my putting the computer down and returning to Margaret’s side was the social element; four other people had set aside a chunk of their afternoons (or mornings, or evenings, or nights — I don’t know where in the world they were located) to accomplish that dungeon along with me. I didn’t want to discountenance the team, or disregard the time they’d invested. A hat tip to the Warcraft designers, for engineering the game to draw so effectively on that sentiment.*

But, it sure is great for Margaret to be back home again. That goofy grin on my face is neither just my usual expression nor some particularly favorable turn of the game’s fortunes — it’s due entirely to my sweetheart’s presence in the very same Zip Code (plus four!) as me.

* By the way, it just occurred to Si and me that the player whom Pippa created and designed looks a lot like Mena Trott, only taller and darker-skinned, dressed in a battle skirt. But since Joi roped us into playing, I suppose that just keeps things all in the family.

Posted by AKMA at 10:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 15, 2005

Backed-Up Links

I’ve been holding a bunch of links in tabs for days (some for weeks), waiting to say something substantive about them. It’s come clear that I won’t get around to devoting extensive reflections to them, but in order to close out the windows I need to throw the links somewhere, so I’ll just dump them here in a big heap.

+ I’m not sure what all these links lead to, but it includes a variety of ancient Judaic and Christian scriptural, deuterocanonical, rabbinic, apostolic, and patristic texts. Some of these might not be conveniently available elsewhere — haven’t had time to compare.

+ Hugh’s right; meaning scales. We could have a long discussion about what that implies, and how to deal effectively with it, but the premise is spot on.

+ Al Kimel and I disagree forcefully about very many things, and I doubt that I’d refer to “open communion” as “blasphemy,” but I read this pontification with some sympathy, not least because Al found himself beset by intransigent interlocutors from further to the right than he. The effort to articulate a sound, careful position between left and right can be very frustrating, can’t it?

+ I’m bemused by the whole “Christmas Under Siege” charade, especially because it seems to be orchestrated by heirs of the Reformed tradition — which itself sought to eliminate Christmas as a legacy of idolatrous paganism and Papist superstition.

+ Miss Manners talks good sense about watching your language when speaking about, even thinking about, people who have cancer. Meaning scales, and meaning matters.

+ A Creative-Commons downloadable book on Enquiry-Based Learning and Problem-Based Learning, from the All Ireland Society for Higher Education. Maybe I’ll have time to read it someday.

+ An ideal case for blogging in an educational context.

+ Congratulations, Rhonda!

Posted by AKMA at 08:27 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

(Makes a Dissatisfied Face)

Wasn’t there going to be an OS X version of the Google Talk client? I followed the directions for making iChat work with Google Talk’s Jabber interface, but it never seems to work. It avails only to give me two pop-up dialogue boxes every time I change my iChat status, advising me that the login is not secure (no, really it is, says Google), then that I wasn’t able to connect to a Jabber server. Every time.

Posted by AKMA at 07:32 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

December 14, 2005

Seasonal Links

Don’t forget to make a holiday Christian Christmas snowflake. . . .

Posted by AKMA at 09:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 13, 2005

Authenticity Redux

Frank questions my interrogation of the positive value of “authenticity”: “Mark Woods has linked to this post, giving it more substance and weight than I think it deserves. The Hermenaut link is as much piffle as the Fishko presentation. Either can be criticized or enjoyed for the superficial mind candy that each of them is.”

One way of getting at my dissatisfaction, Frank, is to confess that I’m a very careful, deliberate writer. That’s my style; were I to try to write more spontaneously, with more of the visceral spontaneity that characterizes Jeneane’s writing, I think it would be inauthentic for me (in the sense that it would give a false impression of my character and my typical mode of expression). To that extent, careful writing is authentic for me, that’s the kind of guy I am; and no-holds-barred vividness is authentic for Jeneane. [Side note: I’m picking on Jeneane here because she’s put a lot of energy into advocating her visceral bloggery, which is great with me and I admire her style, and also because she knows I think she rocks, so she’s not likely to construe my argument here as an attack on her or her chosen authentic style.)

But many people use the term “authentic” to mean, “baring the performer/writer’s inmost feelings, holding nothing back” — and to those who use the term that way, the style of writing that best fits my gnereal persona would likely seem inauthentic, inasmuch as I express myself in measured, deliberate prose. I do bar some holds. I do hold back some of my thoughts and feelings.

Which is why I raise the question, “authentic to what?” Do I fail the test of authenticity if I don’ write more like Jeneane?

Or to put it another way (because I admire Shelley, and I want to share out my links), if we were to find out that the Burning Bird’s phoenix-song were very carefully composed, to convey the effect of having been written by someone very much like the Shelley we imagine when we read her heartfelt, sometimes very pointed, clarion-calls — would that be inauthentic? What degree of deliberation and painstaking composition disqualify a recording or literary work from the category of “authenticirty”? A brilliantly gifted writer, after all, may well be able to depict impassioned spontaneity with utterly convincing prose. Is it only authentic if she really felt it?

The Hermenaut article’s invocation of Philip K Dick touches on the point for which I’m arguing. The relation between “the convincing artifice of genuineness” and “heartfelt painstakingly-devised prose” defies a binary taxonomy of authenticity. I like hearing the mistakes and rough edges when some performers play, the eyebrow-scorching graphic explicitness of some writers’ prose — and the elegant precision in some performers’ recordings, and some writers’ fine, exquisitely-assembled literary compositions. I like them all, authentically. Or not.

Posted by AKMA at 06:34 PM | Comments (12)

December 12, 2005

Imperfection, Authenticity, and Excellence

I was in a cranky mood yesterday afternoon at about 4:45, so when NPR commentator Sara Fishko started expatiating about her recent hunger for “authenticity” in recorded music, my buttons didn’t even need pushing; she merely brushed them, and set off my temper.

This is not a new topic; others have treated it with wisdom and profundity, online and offline. I don’t have time to search for specific links right now, but I’m sure Jeff Ward, Tom Matrullo, the Happy Tutor, and Ray Davis would provide more than enough grist for an edifying mill; I’d love to convene an online seminar on “authenticity” with those luminaries, chaired by Heideggerian philosopher David Weinberger — what a treat! Hermenaut’s article on “fake authenticity” opens the topic nicely, and if you’re more comfortable with print media than digital media, Adorno’s Jargon of Authenticity and I’m inclined to think there’s something by Dorothee Soelle that led me to Adorno — her critique of Rudolf Bultmann — that led me to Adorno, but I can’t find the reference right now.

The short expression of why “authenticity” vexes me comes down to, “There’s no there there.” Fishko rhapsodizes about the informal, flawed performances that she prefers to the technically-refined, highly-engineered masterworks by perfectionist performers. She’s entitled to that preference, of course, but identifying it as “authenticity” perpetuates a critical sleight-of-hand by which Fishko’s preference for endearingly imperfect performances ascribes to the work in question a positive attribute: “authenticity.” That ascription, though, occludes the question of “authentic to what?” Are the missed notes and “risks” that Fishko admires part of, say, the composer’s own vision of the work? Or do they constitute a more genuine performance than one in which the instrumentalist doesn’t miss any notes, or take risks with the piece?

In other words, “authenticity” all too often serves as an ideological placeholder term for “stuff I like, for which I don’t have a more precise or reputable adjective that justifies this appreciation.” That’s sloppy thinking, and I object to it.

For the record, I too tend to prefer performances that involve risky, technically-imperfect expression of the compositions in question — though not by any means across the board, and certainly not because such performances are more “authentic.” Some performances benefit from a swung tempo, some from an urgency that missed notes actually reinforce, some from precision and immaculate engineering, some from the casual ambiance that amateur recordings imply. Some rare, astonishing performances combine technical virtuosity with imagination and risk-taking in a sublime confluence of the highest standards in accuracy of performance, recording and artistic imagination; would they be more authentic if the performer flubbed a few notes, or the engineer recorded the performance with a narrow dynamic range and mediocre microphones? When performers deliberately select minimalist, one-take recording techniques, are they opting for greater authenticity, or are they inauthentically adopting a style that doesn’t reflect their customary practice or capacities? Different listeners will assess different combinations of qualities differently, but not because one recognizes true authenticity while the other doesn’t.

To paraphrase the quotation I have most often heard ascribed to Sam Goldwyn, “The secret to success is authenticity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

Posted by AKMA at 10:29 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

December 11, 2005

Third Advent

Ooops, I didn’t call it “the liturgical season before Christmas” — I must be one of the secularizers who are ruining Christmas (parishioner and Trib columnist Charlie Madigan’s take on the War is here, behind the Trib’s annoying free-registrration firewall). Well, you can judge for yourselves how anti-Christian I am if you care to read this morning’s sermon in the extended version of this post.

Anyway, we have a short break before Advent (otherwise known as “Pre-Christmas”) Lessons & Carols. If St. Luke’s posts a recording of the sermon, I’ll link to it here.

A couple of weeks ago, the wind changed; after an exceptionally long mild, pleasant autumn, the gentle breezes changed and brought us bitter, cruel icy weather. The warmth of September lingered long enough to kindle the dream that maybe we could get away without freezing, maybe our plants wouldn’t wither and our parkas could stay in storage; then winter came, pummeling us, shivering us, slithering in drafty doors and windows. The air bites at your ears, wet snow chills your marrow, and we won’t even start talking about how short the days have gotten. All this comes as no surprise – it’s December in Chicago, after all – but being predictable doesn’t make the chill and the darkness pleasant. For every cheermonger who urges us to have ourselves a merry little Christmas, if we’re attentive we can count several neighbors whose hearts won’t be turned sunny and bright by dint of will and determination.

Cheerfulness is, of course, a fine thing. I myself tend toward light-heartedness, and I have a dear friend who says that if some people see a glass as half-empty and some people see it half-full, her half-full glass is two glasses’ worth. Good cheer is a precious gift, one for which I give thanks – but we can’t command good cheer, we can’t set it up as an expectation. When an afternoon is bleak and grey, rose-colored glasses only attenuate our capacity to see clearly. Winter comes suddenly some years, comes too early some years, and an unexpected freeze just makes the chill wind more rude, the grief more raw. Honest hurt trumps facile jollity every time, and on some mercy-forsaken days St. Paul’s advice to “rejoice always” reminds us of what he said elsewhere about the loveless sound of a clanging gong. Winter has come, Paul; the wind has changed, the world shows us its heartless side. Don’t come around haranguing people about joy when their spirits falter in this bitter season.

In this bleak midwinter, I bring you a message from John the Baptist. John sends us an scouting report, a prospectus, assuring us that “the light is coming.” He sent his message without being quite sure what he was talking about; he knew he was not the light himself, and he hadn’t yet encountered the light. He didn’t make boastful claims to represent God’s Anointed One or Elijah. He simply had a message for us: “The light is coming; no matter how fierce the gale, no matter how cruel the chill, the light is coming, and the light will bring us joy.”

John’s message doesn’t change the temperature, doesn’t shovel the walks or weatherstrip the windows or pay the bills. The promise of light doesn’t brighten the shadowy noonday. The promise of light hovers at the horizon, teasing us with something unseen, with an intangible hope. And that’s all that John’s message offers us: a baffling hint about a yet-undelivered package, with the assurance that it’ll be good, that it’s worth our waiting for.

John doesn’t foresee exactly what or who he’s talking about, but he knows the magnitude of the promise to which he binds us. John brings us the message that hope speaks the truth. In our miseries, our frustrations, in the cold and the darkness and the grief that all stake a claim on our souls, the last word belongs to hope, and we who band together in order to sustain one another through frightful winter already share (in tiny ways), already share the beginnings of the fulfillment of that message. John has been to the mount that overlooks the Jordan River, and he has seen the blessings that God promised of old – and he sends us the message, “Hold on, stay together, abide – because the light shines in the darkness, and darkness cannot overcome it.” John has been to the mountaintop, and although he may not live to see us enter our promised rest, he rejoices at the prospect of blessedness that awaits us.

Then Paul picks up John’s message of hope and passes it along; Paul urges us to rejoice not as a finger-wagging rebuke, not as a glib demand that we buck up. Paul reaches out to us with the resonant harmonies of love joined and amplified and gathered into hymns that lift holy hearts to the very brink of glory. Paul sends us a message from the threshold of hope’s realization, that our dreams do not play us false. The intuition that great things await us, lying yonder, just beyond what can be shown: that sense, that trust, that fragile, slender, tenuous thread of faith binds us to God’s promise that the power that made all things and makes them new has given us a taste of joy’s flavor and will feast us with delight. By a thin thread God draws us to look clear-sightedly on brokenness and grief, and there to build an shelter where love and trust open our hearts to a limitless grace that sustains us through winter. The message of hope, the thread of faith, the promise of grace found our dream of the best-ness by which God’s love makes itself known among us – and we pray for the wisdom and will to share that best hope with everyone who needs it.

Right now, we may seem to have naught but the dream of what’s best; disaster and misfortune still haunt our days, cold winter besieges our nights, and war and pestilence dominate our headlines. The dream of abundant life appears to us in the shattered fragments of incomplete projects, corrupted intentions, broken promises. But this is exactly where Jesus comes to us: as as the thin mint at the end of a sumptuous seven-course feast, but Jesus comes to us as bread for the starving, wine for the grief-stricken. This is winter, this is darkness; and this is the precise address to which John and Paul send their message, to which Isaiah sings the divine blessing of the peaceable kingdom: “They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain,’ says the Lord.” “Be glad, and rejoice forever!”

We see that mountain in our dreams, dreams that bespeak not a fleeting illusion or fantasy, but dreams that convince us of a truth real-er than the very real afflictions that beset us now. We know that joy in our dreams, but those very dreams reveal to us a life luminous in wholeness and love. We inhabit a world incomplete and partial, but our dreams show it to us perfected in love and harmony. “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, our tongue with shouts of joy.” John reminds the people who wait in winter that our dreams remind us of a joyous summer to come, a new creation that will make all things a delight, a joy, a blessing. John’s message reminds us that Advent leads always to Christmas and culminates in Easter; what is wounded and bare comes to fruition in fullness; and though we spend a season of exile in darkness, we blossom in light.

Indeed, this very building itself testifies to John’s message. Look around you, sisters and brothers, at the incomplete church where we’ve come to this morning. Look at the empty pediments for angels, the structural steel that awaits being clad in wood. Look at the paintings of St Luke’s over by the bookstore, in the front parlor – they show our church building with a prominent bell tower overlooking the neighborhood, a bell tower that fills up the space that Diane and Mark and so many of you replanted so beautifully this year.

Unfinished beams, empty alcoves, lacking a tower, we gather in an unfinished church, a church whose completion lies far beyond any prospect of our immediate restoration, any realistic prospect of any kind of “-toration” in the first place – and I half think I like it better this way.

The church may not yet be architecturally complete, but assembled here around the altar of our Lord, for a few minutes we lack nothing.

This winter where we live harbors an ember of the light, and though it be cold outside, though gloom hover over us prisoners of darkness, we gather here as sisters and brothers, as half-empty and half-full, as wounded and as strong, as one, to celebrate in this unfinished church and make it such a place as shelters the embers of hope and awaits their bursting into flame. Through Advent and Christmas, Epiphany, Lent and Easter, we assemble at the foot of the bell-tower, the tower that we see only in our dreams, and in our meeting we bring together some of the broken shards of of fragmented lives. We raise our eyes and see choirs of angels guarding our columns. We bring our selves together and see marvelous healing, wondrous harmony. We see smoke drift upward, we see sparks rise, and in our dreams we know they signify the fire of the Holy Spirit dwelling among us, making this building whole, this people whole. We gather up our grief, we defy desolation, and with all the wounded joy of winter disciples we persist together in the prayers that tell the story of our life. Any day now, every day now, by grace, though faith, our hope takes on flesh and lives among us. The wind has changed, winter will not prevail; we know, because in our dreams we have seen his glory.

Posted by AKMA at 01:00 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

December 10, 2005

Here’s Why

Someone somewhere got the idea that blogs owed certain sorts of writing to particular topics. We’ve seen several sketches of “bloggers’ code[s] of ethics,” and I’ve heard various people opine that “_______ bloggers” (fill in the blank with the modifer of your choice, though recently the topic of “bibliobloggers” has been pressed on my attention) should write more about ______ (fill in the blank with the topic of your choice, presumably pertinent to the modifier you chose before). I’ve tried to opt out of these discussions (as the previous iteration, “What is a blog?”). They strike me as gravely misguided, conceptually confused (who appointed whom the High Commissioner of What Blogs Are And Ought To Be?), and antithetical to what I do here: namely, to converse semi-monologically with whatever readers happen by, on such topics as I suppose may be of some interest to some of them and to me. If they think I should write more about professional biblical studies, or less; or more about U. S. civil politics, or less; or more about technology, or less, that’s their lookout.

My exasperation factor has peaked, though, because somebody has decided that there’s something amiss with the fact that “Religious bloggers” or “Christian bloggers” haven’t devoted copious attention to the plight of the Christian Peacemaker Team hostages in Iraq. Now, let it be recognized right away that nobody mentioned this blog, much less singled me out for remonstrance. At the same time, since I’m arguably “religious” and almost undeniably “Christian,” the column implicates me by category anyway.

Some of the comments to the article point out that it’s better for the hostages that Christian groups not raise a hue and cry that might amplify hostility between Muslims and Christians. I suppose that’s right, although it wasn’t why I had not mentioned these peacemakers yet.

I hadn’t blogged about them because I hadn’t conceived that to be a topic on which I had something to say more than my readers might expect, nor does their captivity and jeopardy touch me so as to elicit from me a personal expostulation of fear and sorrow as it would have if the Peacemakers involved were Leah and Jonathan. I didn’t blog about the unfortunate family whose car was crushed at Midway airport the other day, killing their 6-year-old son; nor do I blog frequently about the thousands of U. S. troops killed in the Iraq conquest, or the tens of thousands of Iraqis killed in that same war.

Anything more that I say will sound tinnily defensive, and I can offer no defense to the accusation that I do not devote enough of my energies to the cause of peace. Nor is the point obliquely to elicit testimonials from people who think I’m not all that bad.

I’m writing about this now to foreground the question of whose expectations were going unfulfilled, and what claim readers’ expectations have on bloggers’ writing. Whatever one decides in answer to those questions, it shouldn’t be simple, and it may not be that bloggers stand under an obligation to write whatever readers expect them to. It’s more complicated than that.

Posted by AKMA at 02:43 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

December 09, 2005

End, Indeed

Today was the last day of chapel for the term, the last day of classes, pretty much the last all around (apart from one of our classic all-day faculty meetings next week, followed by a faculty-colleague evaluation). I’m six papers away from being done for the term.

Meanwhile, I’m preaching at St. Luke’s on Sunday, a sermon for which I had a notional start — except that there’s been a death in the congregation, which will have to affect the way I address the congregation, the theme, pretty much everything about the day. I’ll try for a good night’s sleep, and see whether I can summon up an insight that’s respectful of grief while not immediately signaling to visitors that they’re not in the loop, that attends to the season and also acknowledges that holidays bring not only joy and togetherness, but can also bring despair and isolation. Oh, and that good news persists through all of this. And do laundry, maybe finish off those papers, and devote some time to the Pip.

Tall order — I guess I should get to bed right away.

Posted by AKMA at 11:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 08, 2005

Results Are In

A communique from the editorial offices at Fortress Press indicates that the title of my forthcoming book will be Faithful Interpretation, partly because it’s what the book is actually about, partly because they wanted to defer to my suggestion, and partly because it would mean changing only one word in the title design. (I didn’t hear about the subtitle, but that’ll come eventually.)

Posted by AKMA at 12:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The End Is Near

Today’s my last class session of the term, and that’s an exam, so I’m pretty close to being done. I can grade exams tonight, depending on how my sermon is going and how much energy I have. Papers arrive tomorrow (they’ve already begun trickling in), and I have some leftover papers to evaluate from other degree programs, I have to write an evaluation of Frank (“ought to blog more. . . .”), but the finish line is in sight.

There’ve been big developments in Blogaria, with Jeneane landing an interesting client, Euan receiving a prestigious award, Dorothy’s a nominee, Frank’s been approved for ordination, and so on. Just consider me part of the Long Tail of congratulations and recognition.

Posted by AKMA at 09:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 06, 2005

Nineteen

— Years of serving in the priesthood today. I had Alice Cooper’s “Eighteen” running through my head once I remembered what day it was, which is both the wrong number and the wrong musical accompaniment to my anniversary, but it’s also probably the Alice Cooper song that I’m most ready willingly to permit into my imagination. . . .

Posted by AKMA at 12:13 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

Not Enough, and a Little Too Much

On this morning’s dog walk, the random five songs that my iPod offered for my morning listening pleasure were Bruce Springsteen’s “Jesus Was an Only Son,” Buddy Holly’s “Rave On,” Garbage performing “The World is Not Enough,” Emmylou Harris and Spyboy singing “Deeper Well,” and Parliament’s “Funkentelechy” (“You may as well pay attention; you can’t afford free speech”).

As I was listening to “The World is Not Enough,” I reflected (again) on the genre of James Bond theme songs. “TWiNE” is near the top of my list in that category, along with the early classics such as Shirley Bassey’s “Goldfinger.” The most recent entry, though — Madonna’s “Die Another Day” — would rank right up there except for the staggeringly banal exclamation about Sigmund Freud. Is there a remix that edits out just those four words? It would improve the song incalculably.

It would be funny how inflexible headphone wires get in subzero windchill, if it weren’t so hard to untangle them. Can’t do it with gloves on; and once you take gloves off, naked fingers gradually lose their dexterity. Add to that an immobilized right thumb, and a dog pulling on her leash, and the whole thing is simultaneously quite amusing and intensely exasperating.

Posted by AKMA at 08:26 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

December 05, 2005

Another Reason To Not Read This Blog

Tonight I made a soup for dinner. Since I’m not pure of heart, I used a dry soup mix from the cupboard; Pip and I evaluated the choices, and agreed that this one looked promising. I am very sad to say that we erred. The soup was thin and cardboard-y, and Pippa and I decided after a half bowl each that we would not require one another to finish — and Pip made a delicious tofu dip to tide us over.

This sort of post — personal, unabashedly mingled with more serious reflections — has occasioned a number of posts on the bibliobloggers’ blogs (it’s slightly amusing to be the subject of a series of blog posts explaining why people don’t read my blog). At the same time, I don’t begrudge my colleagues their diffidence. Online media offer every reader the opportunity to read what suits him or her, and every blogger the opportunity to link to what suits him or her. . . .

Posted by AKMA at 11:32 PM | Comments (10)

December 04, 2005

Tempest In A -Pedia

Dave has been calling attention to drawbacks in the openness of the Wikipedia — first in conjunction with the Adam “The PodFather” Curry vs. Kevin “The Humble But Firm Pioneer” Marks fiasco, then in conjunction with the more weighty problem of horribly slanderous allegations against John Siegenthaler.

Two consequences of these demonstrations: First, I think Rex Hammock is quite right that we should “use Wikipedia as a gateway to facts, not a source for them.” If one knows nothing about a topic, the Wikipedia can be a great place to start — but one absolutely ought not stop there. A lot of people with strong opinions have a great motivation to insinuate biased or erroneous positions into this ostensibly NPOV (“neutral point-of-view”) reference source, whereas people who know a lot about such things tend to have other things to do. I observed something of this when working on linking Wikipedia entries to a Disseminary project. Good place to start, but by all means, check it (I’m looking at you, GOE-takers).

Second, there should be a space for professional societies to maintain moderated local-pedias on their areas of demonstrable expertise. That would be a tremendous step forward, wouldn’t infringe on Wikipedia’s turf, and would provide much more reliable information. Someone set up the Disseminary with the bandwidth and some small stipends, and we’ll show you how to do it.

Posted by AKMA at 09:47 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

This Is My Question

People frequently ask me how I find time to blog. I will have completed this post inside two minutes — but last night Pippa and I spent four hours playing World of Warcraft, and really only just got our toes wet. So, my question is, how do people find time to play WoW?

Oh, and Mac users: How do you negotiate the chat interface? I find myself typing the slash-letter command, then deleting the slash, and the whole thing gets confusing.

Posted by AKMA at 08:56 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

December 03, 2005

December Stromateis

Chris pointed me to this amusing report on Slate’s slam on the Left Behind theo-cultural miasma.

Dorothea live-blogs this take on open-access academic periodical publishing, which I heartily endorse.

Jeneane and Halley both point to Susan Mernit’s lament that the SF Weekly could devote a long, insightful article to Craig Newmark of Craig’s List, which quotes various industry-leader types while avoiding citing any women. Hello?

World of Warcraft is marvelously engineered, but is no game for a pacifist (not that anyone’s surprised by that, but I’m confirming what one would expect). As one of my capacities therein is “healing,” I’m looking forward to finding a vocation as an in-game EMT.

Writers who use Unicode Greek now no longer need rely on Gentium (marvelous though it is) or whatever was loaded with their system software; the Greek Font Society has released a Greek Didot in regular, bold, italic, and bold italic. I haven’t kicked the tires myself, yet, but their PDF samples look very impressive (via Hypotyposeis, the long way around).

Posted by AKMA at 11:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 02, 2005

Can You Tell?

I stopped by the Appl