All posts in December 2006

Micah (Micah Jackson, the homiletician, not Micah Wright Kaufmann, the chorister whom I mentioned the other day) calls my attention to this article in The Economist, which argues that recent tactics in marketing correspond to the philosophies of postmodern theorists such as Lyotard, Foucault, and Derrida. Hmmmmm. To the extent that the article implies that…

I just caught Church and Postmodern Culture’s notice of Derrida’s last words. Rather than simply reproducing here the translation that Jamie Smith offers, I’ll note that the translation obscures at least one pun; oraison does indeed mean “oration,” and Derrida knew well the difficult obligation of composing a eulogy (in his last years he wrote…

I am not a music blogger, but since music surrounds and suffuses my daily activities, and inasmuch as all the cool kids are posting their “Top Albums of the Year” (woe to the December release that doesn’t garner enough attention to be “top,” and then doesn’t qualify in the next year), I too decided, after…

I vote for Eye of a Cat (linked from Liz) over Concurring Opinions (linked from Mark).

The sermon went off this morning, with a generously positive reception. I have a fair number of reservations about the way I finally realized the composition; another day of gestation might have served the sermon well — but I did meet the challenge of (a) incorporating the metaphors from the “O Antiphons” in to the…

For some reason, the existence of a tag for small caps (〈small〉) had escaped my attention.

Our friend John Utz had long felt uneasy about having a mantelpiece without a fireplace — so he set about taking direct action against an underornamented room: Don’t tell Amy Laura, Rachel, or Emily, though; it’s a surprise. (You can probably tell Emily, since if she relayed it to Amy Laura and Rachel they wouldn’t…

OK, so I forgot to mention this in time for Hanukkah, but I think you can still order David Weinberger’s My Hundred Million Dollar Secret in time for Christmas (and there’s always the tradition of gift-giving on the Twelfth Night of Christmas, and Purim is right around the corner). (The website that accompanies the book…

I was going to develop a laudatory commentary on Dorothea’s “Blogging and the ‘Social Journal,’ ” but really I don’t have anything substantial to add — except an enthusiastic Amen! from the writing scholar’s side of the analysis.

I very much want to square away the sermon today, so I won’t devote reflection time to my comments on the status of the Anglican Communion, the idea of “reinventing” things and selves, year-end lists of music, or any of the other topics that dangle shiny trinkets in front of my easily-distracted consciousness. I’ve been…

Bonus Sixth Thing: Evidently, I permitted my feet to suffer cold damage at some point — I suspect the days when I was driving a Waterbeds East delivery truck with holes in the floorboards — and parts of my feet are painfully sensitive to cold weather. (By the way, I went to college with Fred,…

Yesterday, Maggi listed me among those to whom she passed the webquery about “Five Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Me,” and in the message she sent me about the post, she allowed that I might be cranky about such phenomena — but she was very polite about giving me an escape clause, so I’ll…