Author: AKMA

I feel for Dave. Just a month or so ago, Peachpit Press published his very helpful introduction to Facebook, and no sooner does it hit the shelves than Facebook alters its interface so as to disrupt the smooth connection between the copious illustrations in Dave’s book (on one hand) and the experience of a novice user (on the other). It’s just not fair, especially since so many of the time-marked aspects of the book are so clearly recent; Dave and Peachpit must have taken pains to emphasize the contemporaneity of the material, only for Facebook to pull the rug from under them.
 
Still, I haven’t seen many ways that the new design (to which Facebook is apparently committed, no matter how strong the backlash against it) negates the value of Dave’s patient explanation and step by step instruction. I hope that beginning users of Facebook would consult Dave’s book with the cautious awareness that FB itself moved the furniture around; if they make allowance for that nettlesome fact, they should be able to puzzle out any discrepancies they notice. And Dave points out many aspects of Facebook that a new user wouldn’t guess at just on the basis of beginning an account — so even if the interface elements look different from the illustrations in the book, the new user knows more and expects more on the basis of having consulted Dave.
 
Plus, he’s a swell guy with great taste in music.

Even though my NCAA brackets are a disaster (thanks very much, Wake Forest and Maryland); even though our job situation is not any more nearly resolved than it was several weeks ago; even though Pippa has spent almost the whole day visiting other people, rather than making her dad laugh (usually at himself) as she so consistently does; even though the weather was a shade cooler than my favorite; even though various other things, this has been a beautiful day.
 
Not the only reason, but a delicious ingredient: a pen came in the mail today with an unadvertised italic nib. It looks somewhat frankenpen (it’s a jade Sheaffer Flat-Top Lifetime pen, whose two halves have faded to radically different extents), but it’s such a sweet big golden italic nib, I couldn’t be happier with it.
 
It’s a beautiful day, won’t let it slip away.

One aspect of the online conversation several of us were holding involved the question of whether “we” or “students” or some other constituency could read long-form texts adequately any more. If students can’t read The City of God but immerse themselves in Facebook status updates all day, have we arrived at the threshold of civilization’s end?
 
While I quickly and firmly stand against portentous claims about digital media making us stupid, I sympathize with people’s concerns about students’ — and “our,” for those of us who don’t self-identify as students — capacity to read well. Experience suggests to me, though, that this has more to do with the capacity to read texts of any length, than with skill at one length (contrasted with incapacity at a different length).
 
I resist the quick identification of the problem as “short texts, digital media” in part because changes in reading involve complex cultural changes on other fronts, too. Scapegoating digital media ignores the role of video culture, cinema, of changes in journalistic practice, and changes in the ways that scholars produce long (and short) texts. To indulge in self-quotation, “It’s more complicated than that.”
 
I also resist these concerns because of the presumed valorization on longer expositions of scholarly argument. Long isn’t ipso facto bad, but neither is it good. Too often, writers and teachers and preachers and liturgists presume that the only reason for making their productions shorter involves impatience, short attention span, the moral and characterological flaws of their audiences — when we can easily point to plenty of profound meditations and arguments that manage to express tremendous wisdom in relatively short compass. Sometimes, long is sheer self-indulgence — and when we focus attention solely on the alleged short attention span allegedly caused by digital media, we occlude several other very pertinent aspects of problems relative to our expression and apprehension of meaning.

Last year, David Isenberg spontaneously called on me at the Freedom To Connect conference to offer a “prayer for the internet.” Now, I spent enough years teaching for Protestants that I have some practice at extemporaneous prayer; such prayers are always an adventure, but with a decent sense of how to get to a conclusion, they usually turn out just fine.
 
At F2C, though, I knew that the room was brimful of people who espouse faiths quite distinct from mine — or no “faith” at all. While I am not ashamed of the gospel, I also try to follow the Apostle by meeting people on their own ground. To those under the Law, I become as one under the Law; to the geeks, as a geek. So I steered clear of explicit Christian theological affirmations. If I recall correctly, I cited a saint whom most everyone could recognize, Stevie Wonder: “Heaven help us all.”
 
Since I care ardently about well-chosen words, though, I’m beginning to scour my brain for a somewhat more extensive invocation. I would anticipate deliberate equivocation (not in the interest of suppressing the truth I learned from Scripture and the saints, but in the interest of bringing as many people as possible together in affirming convictions that are at least proximate to that truth). I don’t know when I would have a use for such an invocation, but I expect that President Obama may have some jobs left, or maybe a Little League opening ceremony. Anyway, it seems fitting that il cappellano di Blogaria, someone who has reflected on the nature of digital benediction, have an interfaith invocation readily at hand for internet occasions.

This morning I spent some time pondering the extent to which Francis Bacon’s diagnoses of intellectual errors persist in contemporary theologizing (as well as in professedly non-theological biblical interpretation). In the course of contemplating a renewal of Baconian asceticism from within theology, I stumbled on O. Bradley Bassler’s “Theology and the Modern Age,” which intrigued me by focusing on Hans Blumenberg (whom I studied here in grad school decades ago), the problem of modernity, Bacon, and theology. Hard thinking — it’s good and good for you!

K. Beaton comments on historiography in a comic that pertains to the quest for the Historical Jesus.

The two events are not, I suspect, causally related, but today is my mother’s birthday (Yay, Mom!) — a sufficient reason for joy and celebration by itself. Candles and song, if not a parade and marching bands, will no doubt ensue on Nantucket Island today.
 
Yet while I was browsing around the Web this morning, I noticed that a few days ago, the Nantucket Historical Association has opened a Flickr account and licensed their images under “no known restrictions” licenses. The NHA is relatively small (209 images today) compared with, for instance, the Library of Congress (5,621 images) or the Smithsonian (1,490 images, including a photo of Nantucket summer resident Lillian Gilbreth — see, it’s all intertwingled, which concept connects this digression to Nantucket visitor David Weinberger too) — but its very smallness makes the point that the cultural commons doesn’t exist solely from and for the Massive Institutions, but especially from and for the more modest archives that couldn’t afford the information architecture and infrastructure that would make public access so convenient. Three cheers for my Mom, three cheers for the NHA, and three cheers for a shareable cultural heritage! Hip, hip, hooray!

I was thinking about the gospel passage that cites popular opinion to the effect that Jesus was a glutton and a wino this afternoon, and wondering why our visual representations of Jesus never hint at the physical symptoms that might have corroborated such an assessment.
 
Not, that is, that I irreverently wish that our stained glass windows show the unedifying spectacle of a Jesus flushed, red-nosed, and tottering along the road — I can readily imagine that even if we take the gossip-mongers at their word, we have reasons both historical and theological to demur from supposing that Jesus regularly drank to excess.
 
On the other hand, though, all the figures of Jesus that I can call to mind range from emaciated to average in girth. We have the synoptic gospels’ word that Jesus fasted for forty days at the outset of his ministry; that would provide grounds for the “skinny Jesus” tradition. But once Jesus rejoins social life after his testing in the wilderness, we characteristically encounter him at dinner parties, supplying superabundant food for crowds (albeit with no indication that he used it to satisfy his own hunger), rebutting the urgency of fasting for his disciples, and again, being accused of gluttony. All of these provide at least tenuous grounds for thinking of Jesus as a big eater, and stoutness is no sin — so why should these many indications outweigh (pardon the pun) the testing narrative such that I don’t ever see a picture or sculpture of a jolly, round-bellied Savior?

Darryl prodded me, the other day, to point to the Auseinandersetzung between Gardner Campbell and Jim Groom about the nature, importance, and current status of Edupunk. I had so many, such varied thoughts about it that I stalled out trying to figure out just what to say.
 
On one hand, I’m not a punk in any sense of the term, never was, not even in the seventies — so I don’t have an existential stake in the internal conflicts. I admire a great deal in the punk outlook, and I care that it not be diluted or poisoned by additives that mix in someone else’s great idea about what music, or punk, or some other enterprise, ought to be like (that’s one reason I try to butt out of the back-and-forth; my ideas don’t pertain, and would probably attenuate the urgent vigor of punk with my senior-citizen, bourgeois preoccupations).
 
On the other hand, some of what I’m up to bears clear relations to punk, and [some versions of] edupunk demonstrate ideas I advocate. Add in, then, my concern about the relation of popular music to theology (and theological education), and this very long reflection and its comment thread bring to the fore some white-hot issues for theological educators, especially since (as Michael points out in an essay on which he’s working) radical discipleship and the punk ethos converge at many points.
 
I don’t have a convenient take-away capsule, but these sorts of discussion matter, and they affect academy and church (and music!) in ways that we’ll be untangling for years to come.

Not my feet, though that’s what one would suppose with my recent foray into locomotion — but my fingers. My very handsome little Sheaffer 5-30 Ringtop has a section that will not let go. This one is resisting even more fiercely than the Spors.

Two goodies for Greek students: the SBL Greek typeface (designed by John Hudson) has been released for free downloading, and Rod Decker is compiling an online list of errata for the Bauer-Danker Lexicon.
 
On an entirely different topic, the second day of running jog-walking strains and aches very differently from the first day.

The ring around the bathroom washbasin means that Pippa’s hair is now some shade of purple. She hasn’t descended yet, so I haven’t seen the corpus dilecti, but I’m sure it will be fine. I think her ordinary hair color is exquisite, but if she wants purple for a few weeks I don’t mind. Photographic evidence will follow, I’m sure.
 
And, shamed by Halley and Dave and Pippa herself (who has been running laps around East Campus lately), I got up early and ran-walked halfway around the Duke running path this morning. I remember the first metabolic change in my life, when I suddenly could no longer eat whatever I wanted and still not gain weight. I’m coming to terms with the second great metabolic change, when I can no longer run to catch a bus, or lope upstairs, without my legs feeling leaden and my lungs straining. I acknowledged this change back in the fall, when my cholesterol reults came back; now I’m beginning Phase Two of my resistance-to-inertia initiative. Plus, I know that however disheartening my job situation may be, exercise and fresh air will always make a positive difference in my outlook. So watch out — the ungainly professor lumbering along the path might be me.