Month: September 2008

The Subaru will take — at an estimate — $2000 to rehabilitate the engine, plus money for the electrical system. We’re trying to figure out whether we’d buy our car for $3500 (or so, counting rental and miscellaneous), or whether we should pony up to get a car made in this century, all the while needing the car to get to and from airport and art center on a near-daily basis.
 
[Update: Margaret and I decided that the circumstances required action, and the most cautious course of action seemed to us to be renting a car for a month. That gives us time to get the car fixed, if we so choose, or to take the time to pick a different car without being rushed.]

Does anyone remember the periodic spasms of moral ferment that have bestirrred Blogarians to device “Codes of Blogging Ethics” or good-behavior certification systems? Well, Micah calls my attention to Ruth Gledhill’s report that “The Evangelical Alliance will on Monday publish the new Ten Commandments of Blogging.”
 
I suppose there’s something more laudable about this than, say, submitting that the internet obviates any concern about ethics — but will these commandments actually change anyone’s behavior? I tend to doubt that there are evangelical bloggers out there who have been scraping other people’s websites, but who now will stop because it]s against the Ten Commandments of Blogging to “steal another person’s content.”
 
In my interactions with evangelical blogging, the two leading ethical questions these blogs provoked concern anonymous writers defaming their enemies, and [openly-named] bloggers misrepresenting their opponents’ claims and persons. The same applies to progressive bloggers, of course, and to presidential politics on both sides; none of these groups has, as best I recall, codes of ethics that prohibit such conduct. Returning now to the topic, do the anonymous bloggers and public polemicists imagine that they’ve been transgressing — or do they understand themselves to be using their full repertoire of rhetorical leverage in order to expose the iniquity of their adversaries, who are obscuring the truth and destroying the church? Is someone going to be conscience-stricken, or will they reiterate their self-justifications? (And who am I, who are we, to determine that we know they are wrong?)
 
I’m all for ethics and Ten Commandments (the originals, that is). I’m just hesitant about well-intentioned grand gestures such as this one. It would be great if enough people demonstrated their commitment to righteous blogging that they could point to positive results that show me to have been unduly skeptical.

 

 
I have the feeling that Henry Woolf’s character is making more sense than Sarah Palin.

On the way to Pippa’s acting class in Carrboro, the Subaru started overheating again. Any helpful, economically-feasible suggestions welcome. We’d be inclined to lease a car for the rest of our Durham year, but at the prices I’ve been able to find, we might as well just buy a junker somewhere.

It occurred to me to check at the Ars Electronica webcast site, to see whether they had edited and posted the video footage from the festival. I was delighted to see that they had, and prepared to click on the link for my presentation (to see whether I’d have convinced myself, if I’d been paying attention at the time). I was disappointed to see that they’ve published the video in Windows Media format — who thought to distribute videos of a conference about open access as wmv? — but I recalled that QuickTime can open wmv files with the Flip4Mac add-on, so I went ahead and clicked on my name.
 
Nothing happened.
 
And not because my talk was boring. For some reason, although the link successfully launches QuickTime, I don’t get the video feed. I’m trying to figure out whether it’s a PC/Mac problem, or a transmission problem, or what, but for now I don’t know how I look in the video. Follow the links at your own risk; if you can view the presentation and it makes you wish they’d invited Sarah Palin instead of me, I tried to warn you.

I didn’t sign up for any of the formal “call everyone’s attention to the Millennium Development Goals” events — not because I don’t appreciate the goals, but because I take the MDGs to be a side effect of good theology. That is, if the church is doing its job well, it’ll be reaching out and teaching and preaching in ways that advance the cause of eradicating global poverty.
 
That doesn’t mean that it escapes my notice, though, when the Congress and the world’s financial systems can within a week decide to allot more than a half a trillion dollars toward shoring up already-wealthy people and institutions. Under the circumstances, one can hardly avoid the conclusion that political leaders don’t think of malnutrition and starvation, disease, and the lack of educational resources and economic opportunity as that big a crisis.
 
Perhaps now is the time to remind our most vocally Christian political leaders (especially ones who profess to take the Bible seriously) that Jesus said, “If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again…. [L]end, expecting nothing in return.”

We already knew that this presidential campaign would make history in one of several ways — but this keeps getting weirder and weirder. Between Biden’s blurts and McCain’s call for a time-out, I half expect to find out that Rod Serling is managing someone’s campaign (maybe both).

There’s plenty that Pittsburgh’s Bishop Robert Duncan and I disagree about. No need to retail all those differences; they’ll be obvious to anyone who knows of us both. I do not understand why, however, the leadership of the Episcopal Church found it necessary to construe the canons in so very unconvincing a way, so as to be able to depose Bishop Duncan before he had the opportunity to commit the sorts of act that might (arguably) have warranted deposing him. (I don’t think the canon that’s being used to depose bishops who can no longer cooperate with the U.S. instantiation of the Episcopal Church should be so used, either, but even if it were, this action seems to premature to me.)
 
When a sizable proportion of Episcopal congregations blatantly ignore the canons every Sunday (offering communion to unbaptized people, to take just one example), it seems a vicious case of selective enforcement: find a charge to level against “the bad guys,” then force it through willy-nilly. I would not want to be so treated by those who disagree with me, and I cannot in conscience support that treatment when it is applied to someone with whom I disagree.
 
This sort of politics does not commend the gospel, nor does it proceed from a sound theology of the church’s catholicity, nor can it even claim the shabby banner of “inclusiveness.” However much I dissent from Bishop Duncan’s teachings and tactics, the end does not justify the means. Instead, the unexplained heavy-handedness with which the institutional force of the canons have been brought to bear against Bishop Duncan amplifies my sympathy for him and alienates me from leaders with whom I might otherwise be aligned.

The last few days have passed without the my feeling the fiery inclination to address to the internet my customary gems of insight. Either I see someone else saying all that needs to be said, or I don’t and it saddens me, or I don’t and I don’t see a way to articulate what seems important, or I’m just plain tired. (“And I’m ti’ed — T-I-D-E, ti’ed,” as Katie Webster sings to B.B. King in “Since I Met You Baby”).
 
At the same time, various items have come to my attention. Emily pointed out the “texting in church” practice of a St Louis congregation; I’m pretty pro-technology, but this one hasn’t convinced me yet. On the other hand, it may be the kind of congregation where texting questions to the preacher is as natural as it feels for me to take notes on the bulletin or in my Moleskine.
 
After Tim and I went ’round about digital and paper books, BoingBoing pointed to an article in New York magazine about the publishing industry. Cory had some apposite criticism of the article, and the article itself ignores what I expect to constitute the sweet spot for publishing in the digital epoch: freely available online text complemented by pay-for-printed bound copies. I reckon the article neglects that option because the industry itself disregards it. (It should be said here that all I know about publishing concerns the tiny academic-theology market, which I persist in believing to be distinctly suited to providing a foothold for alternative publishing/distribution practices — but I have no experience of the inside of trade publishing.)
 
I wanted to point one of my students to Jeffrey Lewis’s delicious “History of Punk On the Lower East Side,” so here it is on WFMU’s “On The Download” web page.

It’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day, ye scurvy knaves — but the University of Michigan Shapiro Library too another step toward unbricking knowledge by installing a print-on-demand book machine. It’s another little increment, but it points ahead toward a book-preparation model where we distribute our fictions and arguments in complementary print and digital versions, each with its own affordances.
 
That reminds me that I’ve heard from several people that they were impressed by a slide from my presentation in Austria — a slide I popped in for the sake of visual rhythm, more than as a point I wanted to emphasize. The slide contrasted the benefits of digital books with printed versions: I suggested that digital media are shareable, searchable, and disposable, whereas their physical versions are durable, artifactual, and ownable. I’m very sure that this should be refined, but I’m also thankful that a spontaneous intuition sparked the interest of some observers.
 
I mean, “…sparrrrrked the intarrrrrest of some obserrrrverrrrrs, matey!”

I have plenty of skepticism about the McCain-Palin ticket, but Josh Marshall’s histrionics about McCain’s confusion over the name of Spain’s Prime Minister strike me as grossly overstated. Sure, one would like McCain to have responded clearly and fluently right away — but granted that the subject had been hostile Latin American governments, and granted the phonetic similarity between “Zapatero” and “Zapatista,” and granted the tremendous amount of information someone who’s running for President has to keep on top of all the time, I’m more than willing to give McCain a pass on this one. Of course, it would be better if he came out and said, “D’oh! I shoulda caught that” rather than trying to make it sound as though he self-consciously categorizes Spain with Venezuela and a rebel group in Mexico, but I can readily understand the basis for his experiencing an interval of disorientation when his interviewer changed the subject from Latin American opponents to European allies. Surely there are better reasons to not-vote for McCain than this, and surely it’s not an “über-gaffe.”

I find that watching the unfolding of “Depression II: The Global Meltdown” is a little like watching House M.D. Teams of highly-credentialed experts offer proposed diagnoses, each of which appears plausible as long as the expert is talking. I don’t know nearly enough to evaluate whose ideas best fit the circumstances, but I watch with interest as they try them out, one by one, and nothing seems to account for the mysterious malady. Every now and then, I’m alert enough to think, “But if it were malaria, she’d be…” and anticipate a plot twist, but usually I’m quite completely out of m y depth.
 
On the other hand, when Lee Pickard points out that the very investment firms whose precarious health is giving the world economy an acute illness are the ones that the SEC exempted from minimally common-sense investment restrictions, I hear Hugh Laurie’s voice barking out the ingeniously improbable etiology of the dire disease. Unfortunately, they haven’t devised antibiotics to combat the effects that privileged parasitic greed inflicts on complicit hosts.
 

After a deliciously restful night, I drifted down to St. Chrysostom’s to get ready for the big Homecoming service (the day after Rome observes the Feast of St. John Chrysostom). Fr. David Hefling had his deacon, his seminarian, the full choir (of about six souls, I think) and a crucifer and thurifer for us, so we made a majestic procession. I had realized yesterday that I haven’t preached at a regular Sunday service in ages — more than a year, I think. And there was no 8 o’clock service to warm up with.
 
No matter; everything worked out fine. (I’ll add the sermon itself in the extended portion of the post.) I felt my pacing was rusty, and the lip of the pulpit desk was slight enough that I had to catch slipping pages a couple of times, but I don’t recall losing my place at all. And after the service, as I stood in the narthex nodding and shaking hands, who greeted me but Dylan! I knew she might attend, but I didn’t recognize her because I was looking for the 2001 version, not the new and improved 2008 version. I’m actually relieved I didn’t know she was there, because I wasn’t focusing on her (the one known attender in the midst of an unknown congregation). The windows at St. Chrysostom’s are lovely depictions, devoting special attention to early theologians. I’ll Flickr-post some of the pictures I took as soon as I get home and upload them; unfortunately, Chrysostom himself suffered from lens shake that I couldn’t overcome. All in all, though, the service was lovely and the opportunity to visit with David and Michael, and to meet Dylan, all made for a fine trip.

  Continue reading “Under Chrysostom’s Watchful Gaze”

I’m theologian, not an airline executive, but if it were my job to rescue a struggling airline, I think I’d not nickel-and-dime customers, but would try to impress them and earn their loyalty and appreciation. I guess that shows how little I understand about the airline industry.
 
Later: we’re sitting on the plane at the gate, watching a team of mechanics try to bend a strip of wing metal back into place with their hands. Oops, here’s an older guy using a real tool! And now they’ve all left, abandoning their ladder at the wing.
 

 
Later still: this plane deemed “out of spec.” Uncertain what they’ll do with us.
 
End of the story: we boarded another plane a half-hour or so later, and made our way to Boston safely and without further mishap. I still feel bad for the bird.

Matthew Butterick’s excellent guide to elementary computer typography addresses itself principally to lawyers, but a whole lot of church bulletins, web sites, and correspondence would look better if the clergy (and staff) followed Matthew’s advice.

I’m imagining a campaign ad wherein Barack Obama emphatically repeats his charge that the McCain ticket represents nothing faintly resembling change, after which he looks straight to the camera and concludes, “As John McCain said about Hilary Clinton’s health care plan, ‘They put some lipstick on the pig, but it’s still a pig.’ ”

In a delusional fog, I agreed to preach this Sunday at St. Chrysostom’s Episcopal Church, in Quincy, Mass. I’m thinking that I may have to fall back on card tricks and interpretive dance; I have a stack of papers that need marking, errands that must be run, appointments that must be met, and nary an idea to expound.

A few weeks back, David pointed to We magazine, an online enterprise that includes webcasting and print versions of their periodical — all in all, a very cool thing, and I really meant to link to them right when David called my attention to them.
 
My apologetic tone derives from the fact that after I gave my talk in Linz, Ulrike Reinhard of We was excited by my proposals, and she asked to interview me for We-TV, which made me feel extra bad for not having blogged them right away. But aha! It turns out that the microphone we used for the interview was out of whack, and they didn’t get any footage they could use — so I can link to them afresh without risk of self-promotion.
 
The segment on which I would have appeared is Ars Electronica Day Three, for which you can see Jamie Boyle’s introduction of the panel, hear Ulrike’s characterization of the goings-on, and see a few seconds of David Weinberger’s presentation.

I’m not sure whether I should post this item from PhD Comics on my office door….