Seabury Update

As I’m off-site, I get my Seabury news in dribs and drabs; yesterday I got an email message reporting unexpectedly upbeat news. As it turns out, Seabury will indeed offer classes to continuing students during the 2008-09 academic year. The present plan entails offering courses in Anglican history, theology, polity, and liturgy; congregational leadership; and…

Pernicious Propensity

I just handed in my paper for next week’s colloquium, and as I was roughing out the last bits it occurred to me that among the difficulties that beset biblical interpretation, few may be as toxic as the the disciplinary proclivity toward esotericism. I don’t mean that all biblical scholars shop in the sort of…

Ratings Redux

I’ve written about the five-star rating system built into iTunes before, and have offered several revisions of my categories for rating. I’ve recently observed that the significance of the stars in itunes operates less as a personal evaluation of critical quality — “By St Anthony’s whiskers, this is a five-star jingle indeed!” — and more…

iMixtape

Tim Bray asks whether we have reached the time I foretold a couple of years ago, when an iPod is inexpensive enough that a customer could intelligibly buy an iPod and fill it with music as a casual present (on the scale of a mix tape). Of course, there are the obvious digital-restrictions impediments for…

Hmmm, Changing Topic

Since I suggested yesterday that I would alternate days between anxiety and other topics, I’ll point to the heavy-handed corruption evinced by Comcast’s deliberate inhibition of participatory democracy, and I’ll put off talking about lost sleep till tomorrow. On the other hand, if that fortune cookie slip were right, and my dreams were indeed to…

Another Resource

Fred Sanders points to a scanned “pocket course” in drawing comics (dated 1943, from the Snack-Pack Co. of Indianapolis). Even though I have all of Scott McCloud’s books, I’ll be downloading this and trying it out; McCloud is a heavyweight on comics theory, but (sensibly) he skims over “how-to” issues, reasoning that the marketplace for…

Avocational Interlude

The 2008 Type Directors’ Club recognition list is out (Typographica.org, not yet). I was delighted to see that award-winner Anselm includes handsome Greek glyphs, and to have noticed designer František Štorm’s characteristic treatment of ductus and contrast.   I’m still delighted for Si and Laura, and I’m trying hard not to think about my vocational…

Great News

  Yesterday, Josiah and Laura called home to tell us that they are engaged to be married! We couldn’t be happier about it; we love Laura, we are delighted to be more closely tied to our in-laws-to-be Carol and Doug, and we rejoice that Si didn’t drop the ring in the snow or something.  …

Things To Do Today

I’m showing the slideshow from a couple years ago to colleagues at the Center on Tuesday; right now I’m going over that, freshening it up in my recollection and fine-tuning it (also thinking about it in terms of an essay I owe to a Festschrift around midsummer). I need to wrap the slides up quickly,…