Month: October 2009

Chris pointed out to me that our lovable madcap Saviour has been at it again, this time manifesting himself in the wood grain of the door to a “male toilet” at the local branch of Ikea, just outside Glasgow in Braehead. What makes this story unusual among the “face of Jesus seen on freezer/grilled cheese sandwich/burrito/fingerprint” stories is that I was there yesterday afternoon as the news was breaking. I observed no commotion, no rowdy pilgrims, no healings or feedings (and I could’ve used a few loaves — it was dinnertime). In fact, I didn’t see Jesus at all. I probably walked right past him without even noticing. Someone could write a maudlin country song about that, and I’d only ask for a small cut of the royalties.
 
I had spent £10 on a cab ride to get to Ikea because I needed a work chair for my flat, and I thought I’d pick up a laptop-height table so I could surf comfortably while sitting on the couch. Lacking a car, I had tried to order the items in question online, but o-o-o-o-o-oh no, Scots may not buy from Ikea online. So I telephoned the store, but no-o-o-o-o-o, they may not accept phone orders (you can order by phone from Edinburgh, but there’s a £60 delivery charge). I looked around for alternatives, but I didn’t see the same combination of suitable style and value, so I clenched my teeth and rode out to Braehead. (By the way, I’ve only been inside a motor vehicle twice in the last six weeks: once when I caught a ride from the man who brought the boxes of my personal effects from my office to my flat, and yesterday riding to and from Braehead. It’s weird to go from “driving somewhere pretty much every day” to “hardly ever stepping in a car.”) The cab fares to and from my flat still came in less than the fee for delivering the goods, so I came out ahead — if somewhat frustrated.
 
To abbreviate an already overlong story, I found Dave and Moses (the table and chair for which I was looking), and made one impulse buy:
 

 
There are still a few battle-scarred veterans of the days when the world of blogs could be set ablaze by controversies over the relative merits of soap-dispensing dish scrubbers. But sentimental guy that I am, a tear bedewed my eye as I spotted Ikea’s answer to the iconic Dishmatique, and I had to pick one up. Tonight, when I do the dishes, I will raise it high and laud the soapy name of Delacour!

I’m plucking out readings for a course on interpretive method, and since it’s my job to introduce plain old historical criticism I turned to obvious prominent reference works as possible sources for readings, or for guidance in my endeavor to find other such sources.
  
Neither Abingdon’s Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation nor the Anchor[-Yale] Bible Dictionary has an entry under “Historical Criticism,” nor “History” (in the critical-interpretive sense), nor “Historiography” (again in the contemporary sense; the A[Y]BD has articles on Mesopotamian, Judaic, and Greco-Roman historiography).
  
I suppose that historical-critical interpretation is so transparently obvious that it needs no discussion?

While I was preoccupied with unpacking and conferring last week, the other (of the two topics I alluded to before) involved developments in the Google Book Empire. So, for instance, the NYTimes acknowledged the groundswell of resistance to the proposed settlement between Google and the Authors Guild, and also posed the question “Will [Digital] Books Be Napsterized?.”
 
For the time being, we’re all still stumbling around in the twilight of print-oriented copyright regimes. Change will come; the pressure of “napsterized” versions will contribute to that, as will consumer demand and competition, once real competition gets started. Eventually, we ought to develop a marketplace in which
  
  Books are published in digital-native form, without restrictive DRM;
  These digital editions are metadata-rich;
  Publishers acknowledge that in all but a very few cases, digital versions (even and especially when free) drive print sales up;
  Editions are not device-specific;
  We can concentrate on making better publications, rather than fighting over which redundant regulatory process controls them.
  
Someone will get there first, and benefit immensely from the market recognition. Since most of the world’s most treasured works are in the public domain, the first-comer can develop a powerhouse line of well-produced digital-print complementary editions (think Everyman’s Library or Modern Library) to support contemporary works. They’ll learn the ins and outs of production and marketplace first-hand, benefiting from their fundamental appreciation of the fact that digital publishing alters the conditions of print publishing at the same time it launches a new artery for distribution. And people will forget that this awkward intermediate phase ever afflicted us — I hope.

So far as I have been able to observe, one says “Cheers!” over here:
  (a) as an alternative to “Thanks!”
  (b) as an alternative to “Goodbye”
  (c) some other times for which I can’t account
  
Does it work as a response to someone else’s thank-you “cheers!” as well — that is, as an alternative to “You’re welcome”? Are there other pertinent usages of which I should be aware?

Last week provided two distinct sets of convergent story and commentary for me to blog, both of which I missed due to general busyness. In the first, Tom called my attention to Ajay Kapur’s memos advocating Plutonomy. At the same time, Calvin Trillin’s op-ed in the NYTimes ascribed the financial collapse to “smart guys working on Wall Street.”
 
Somehow, I don’t think these are commensurable explanations.

Mark and Nathan both pointed me to (different versions of) this helpful story from the BBC yesterday. Swamped with unpacking and conference-going, I would have missed it entirely. I’m doing pretty well, though; the main impediments to my understanding derive from the speed with which my local interlocutors speak and the extent to which they articulate their phonemes. If I can hear the sounds distinctly, I can usually puzzle out the vowel shifts and colloquialisms. If, on the other hand, they’re talking like Brad Pitt in Snatch (link — NSFW language alert), then I’m at sea.

Classes and a small conference on Religion and Technology, with fascinating people such as Siegfried Zielinski.

It is, in the nature of the case, impossible to confirm that the questions and circumstances that the Guardian may not identify correspond to Trafigura and its tens-of-millions-of-pounds settlement with the plaintiffs who allege they were poisoned by toxic waste that Trafigura knowingly dumped. At the same time, we can look at Trafigura’s corporate track record, especially its persistent efforts to suppress disclosure of its track record, and we can draw conclusions about how likely it might be that Trafigura was behind the gag order.

Kirsty MacColl would have been fifty today; there’s the annual meet-up at the memorial bench in Soho Square (then from 1 PM on at The Phoenix Artists Club, 1 Phoenix Street, Charing Cross Road). Wish I could be there, but I took out the DVD of her videos from the Hillhead Library as a gesture of long-distance solidarity.

The biblical-studies constituency of Blogaria is all abuzz with the startling, dismaying news that the University of Sheffield is moving to dismantle its academic program in Bible. While the UK can boast a number of strong departments in this area, once you bracket the faculties of Oxford and Cambridge, Sheffield had to rank as one of the top programs in the country — especially given its long track record of scholarship that is not just sound and reputable, but that changes the shape of the discipline itself. To the extent that I understand things — and I make no pretense of being an insider — Sheffield lost two faculty members going into last year, and then was frozen out of replacing one of those positions, then was marked down for shrinking enrollments and diminished staff (both attributable, one might think, to the prior decision to not replace departing staff), with the administrative decision that the department might not recruit or accept any incoming undergraduates.
 
Such a decision would in all likelihood mean the dissolution of what has been a vibrant, provocative, agenda-setting centre of scholarly deliberation. Sheffield has a recognizable brand, and an administration’s decision to gut (and eventually to kill off) one of its most distinguished, distinctive faculties suggests a degree of managerial myopia that would make even David Brent or Michael Scott recoil in horror.
 
It’s not clear whether the resulting uproar will change anything; when managers commit to ill-considered programs, they often stick resolutely to their plans rather than acknowledge a misstep. Still, I could hardly be more startled or disappointed. If anything, Sheffield’s leadership should have seen an opportunity to reinforce and enhance the standing of the Biblical Studies program, which would still have an exceptional core staff of scholars in Hugh Pyper, Diana Edelman, and James Crossley. Rather than taking the opportunity to lead from strength, the University seems bent on eliminating one of its strong points, for reasons that remain unclear in the larger institutional perspective.
 
Not for the sake of Hugh and Diana and James, nor for the sake of the students do I ask that Sheffield reverse course on this ill-starred maneuver, but for the sake of the decision-makers whose records will forever show that they chose to dismantle a front-rank program that helped put Sheffield on academic maps, and used the savings to buy legal pads and paper clips.

Michael: “Sometimes the smartest people don’t think at all.”
Jim: “You just came up with that?”
Michael (nodding): “… as I was saying it.”