• I’ve lived in several locations with low railroad overpasses (Evanston, and I believe I recall having encountered overpass problems when I was driving a furniture installation truck in Maine), but I was particularly delighted to see Durham foregrounded as a site for unfortunate truck-overpass interactions in this YouTube clip. • I loved the colouring-book comic…
All posts in August 2010
Joy Doth Wait
I did mean to post Sunday’s sermon yesterday; I just ended up in two committee meetings that ran much longer than I expected, and then after I strolled home and made dinner I remembered that I was supposed to go to the Monday evening Bible Study at the cathedral, so I dropped everything and dashed…
Going To The Chapel
I’m on my way to church this morning, and the weather couldn’t be more lovely. My Sunday croissant and coffee are delicious, the sun shines gloriously, and I have time To sit and give thanks before I have to get vested and preach. Only one thing could make this better — and Margaret will be…
Unsuitable
May I say that every day I see men in Glasgow who are stouter than I am, and (although I’m taller than most Scotsmen) often enough see men of about my height? I’m not so unusual in my dimensions, honestly — just a tallish fellow who’s gone a bit round in the chest and middle.…
Neither Inventor Nor Bomber
A couple of days ago I noted that Andrew Adam had invented a sort of fencepost in 1904, but that I am not that guy; he lacked the distinctive “Keith Malcolm” that makes a mere “Andrew Adam” into an “AKMA.” Today, I learn that Andrew Adams of Swansea, Wales, is in the headlines because Boots…
Here, Here
I’ve been scrambling around to put together reading lists for my courses (and my portion of other people’s courses) this fall, which involves interacting with the online repositories of journal articles — an obligation that rivals for sheer ecstatic titillation such enviable pursuits as root canal surgery without anaesthesia, writer’s block, and listening to Vogon…
In Another Life
It turns out that Andrew Adam (sans the extra nifty middle names) patented a design for fence posts back in 1904. What’s really odd is that his handwriting isn’t all that dissimilar from mine, especially if you obliged me to use strict cursive hand.
A City Neither Knows
Yesterday, a circle of friends gathered for a sort of combination leave-taking and blessing for Alana and Mark. We prayed and listened and gave thanks and watched Mark struggle valiantly to cast on, and to consume mass quantities of exquisite goodies. They asked me to read a poem, which I gladly agreed to do.…
Open Access Coming Into Focus
Everyone from an anonymous emailer to Margaret to most of the people in my Twitter stream has pointed out to me that Seth Godin is through with publishers. This should come as no huge surprise to people who’ve been keeping an eye on Seth, but it’s significant that Seth has come to the point of…
Further Adventures of the Crockus
It’s not clear whether he’s still promoting “the crockus,” the part of the brain “recently named after Dr Alfred Crockus,” but scholarly scorn seems not to have squelched Dan Hodgins’s lecturing career (also here) (found out via the vigilant Stephen Downes). I’m not sure there’s a “moral” to this story, but it does seem…
From Kermode
“It seemed necessary to examine specimens washed in by the flood [of French structuralist and semiological critical theory], and it was during those years that I chaired, at University College London, a seminar dedicated to that and to similar enterprises. No other phase of my academic life has given me so much pleasure and instruction.…
Shake It
I’m going to a dance party tonight, and my fondness for the host doesn’t for a moment alleviate the deep dread I have of dancing in front of people who know me. I danced for a brief interval after Si and Laura’s wedding, and before that at Joey and Wendy’s — but my…