I Love Comics
Because cool people like Scott McCloud notice cool ideas like David Lasky’s.
Month: May 2010
Archive Glasgow
The University Library’s website called my attention to a collection of publicly-available online digital movies and clips, the Scottish Screen Archive. I’ve been skimming the full collection of films about Glasgow, but especially a selection of clips available immediately online.
“Fuchsia” and “Colour”
(I’m just kidding about “colour”; I switched my spell-checker from US English to UK English, though, so I have to keep alert to my u’s and zeds.)
Randall Munroe of the top-rank webcomic xkcd amassed a gargantuan dump of imperfect-but-fascinating data about colour perception and naming. It doesn’t bring to my mind any grand conclusions, doesn’t seem to prove anything about arbitrariness of colour identification or gender difference, but it’s fun to read about anyway — and I doubt that if one had adopted a means of removing the various sorts of bias from his data, you’d get results that differed appreciably. It’s a lovely bit of online experimentation and (on Munroe’s part) presentation of results. Cheers all around!
Morning’s Sermon
I don’t really know what to say about this morning’s sermon. Just before the service, I was sure it needed another day or two spent marinating in my homiletical sauces; I suspect I was nervous because preaching about death can risk touching on some people’s very strong, very raw feelings. Moreover, I really wanted my theological affirmations to be as sound as possible, and I wasn’t confident that I hit the mark.
The preaching itself went okay — I tried to keep my voice at more of a subdued, steady volume — and I was intensely relieved when the sermon was over. The feedback after the service was positive, and several people seemed to have locked in on the general direction I had been trying to strike.
After church, I was exhausted and ravenous, which would have been more fun if I weren’t trying to cut down on salty snacks. Munching has a different valence when your midday indulgence is red grapes and carrots (sequentially, not mixed). When my hunger was sated, I put on a long episode of Taggart, watched lazily, drifted to sleep, woke up in time to figure out much of what I missed (and in time to hear Jim Taggart diss Edinburgh). I’m glad the sermon worked out satisfactorily, especially for the folks who pulled me aside to talk after the service, and am thankful also for the opportunity now to curl up on the couch, read a detective novel, and continue unwinding.
Continue reading “Morning’s Sermon”
Not What You May Have Heard
There were overlapping episcopal jurisdictions in Scotland for a significant interval. If, in the aftermath of the years ahead of us, there were overlapping episcopal jurisdictions in some provinces, it wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened. Maybe not the worst outcome, either.