AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Michael has posted an exquisite series of photos at his Flickr area, celebrating Lily’s first Communion – she’s growing so fast! It seems like ages since we saw her.

Yesterday we sang a hymn by Michael Hewlett that describes the Holy Spirit’s action apart from the people of Israel and the church:

His the truth behind the wisdoms
Which as yet know not the Lord

which struck me as an impressively nuanced way of making the theological point that divine truth can be known (albeit perhaps obscurely) apart from committed faith – especially impressive since Hewlett managed to say it in rhymed lyric.

That, in turn, reminded me of my favorite little-known Isaac Watts hymn verse, a Lesser Meter doxology:

Glory to God the Trinity
Whose name has mysteries unknown;
In essence One, in person Three;
A social nature, yet alone

Next time I’m in charge of a liturgy, I’ll try to work that one in.

Mustering my tattered energies, I put together a very short contribution to a project in which Blogaria’s own Mark Goodacre is involved: a textbook on methods of New Testament interpretation, with examples of each approach. My assignment was to describe “the history and theory of Theological interpretations of the New Testament” – in 700-800 words. The brevity was, of course, an attraction and an impediment at the same time. I managed to say most of what I wanted to, but goodness gracious, what gross oversimplification!

Now, to finish grading, produce three overdue lectionary essays, three overdue book reviews, and close out the academic year. (Mini-essay after the jump)
Continue reading “Whew!”

St. Luke’s celebrated a wonderful Feast of the Pentecost, whereat we welcomed a couple of beautiful new souls to the Body of Christ.

And Lily made her first Communion. Yay, Lily!

I was running through my group of Pippa’s images on Flickr, taking advantage of the option for flagging images as “Art/Illus” (as distinct from photographs, the originating premise of Flickr — a distinction that aroused some controversy). In the course of adding the “Art” flag where appropriate, I spotted a number of images that people had requested for particular Flickr groups. (This has happened to me, too; I stopped joining them after I joined “Bunny Lovers,” no I’m not kidding, so they could share the photo. But really, do I want to belong to a group called “Bunny Lovers”? I do not.)

Why can’t I share Pippa’s Lloyd Dobler poster with the “Johnny Everywhere” group without joining the group? I don’t mind if they look at it; I just am not that fascinated with pictures of people pretending to be John Cusack. Why can’t I share Pip’s sketch of the Nativity with the “creche” group without joining?

By the way, speaking of Pippa, she got her hair cut for the first time ever yesterday (I mean, cut as opposed to trimmed). I’ll try to elicit a picture of her as soon as I can.

Tom has contributed a lovely investigation of JSTOR, its presence in Google’s search results, its firewalls, and its future. I’ve been following with interest as Tom earlier alluded to this exploration; what was he getting at? The conversation with Bruce Heterick unveils what had been shrouded.

JSTOR’s practices arise from a weird series of contingencies. Where once a robber-baron-cum-philanthropist would fund public libraries so that everyone had open access to knowledge, now foundations fund an operation that prevents access to information — though first it tantalizes the excluded inquirer with crumbs of the essays they may not consult. Because print constitutes so expensive a medium for academic journals, and because digital media emerged after the point where the tenure system and the post-baby-boom surge of grad students produced the current proliferation of minor journals and monograph series (made necessary in order to produce extrinsic credentials for the tenure-eligible academic scholar, or to burnish the credentials of the tenure-holder), print publication has become a watermark of genuine achievement. Even though more readers would benefit more from more useful digital publications, many academics quail at the thought of disseminating their work online. Likewise, the costly structure of printed professional journals – heightened by the cost of production, distribution, and archiving – necessitates limiting access to these.

Were I not loath to compare my friend to a former B-movie actor, I might wish that Tom exhorted his interlocutor, “Mr. Heterick, tear down these firewalls!”

It turns out that tomorrow is Towel Day, a memorial to author and geek icon Douglas Adams. That’s a neat coincidence, because on my note cards of topics to bring up in discussing Christopher Hitchens and so on, I had noted that Hitchens seems to be audtioning for the role of Oolong Coluphid in reality’s unfolding production of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

If you’re going to be an atheist — and I don’t doubt that you have a long list of good reasons, I’ve heard most of them, please trust me on this — you might as well take Douglas Adams for your model rather than the bombastic assassins of honest discourse. When Hitchens informs Prof. Glaude that the Princeton professor has been speaking “white noise,” I recognized a great deal more than what CH seems to have thought he was saying; Hitchen’s incapacity to make sense of Glaude’s points was very white indeed, and arrogant, and peevish.

Why not rather be gentle, funny, self-deprecating, and endearing? I don’t have anything particular against atheists, but I have developed a pronounced antipathy to Christopher Hitchens and his apologists. Tomorrow, I’ll raise a towel to Douglas Adams, with respectful disagreement.

The Chris Lydon interview appears here, now.

As my head rested on the pillow last night I remembered an ill-considered (more to the point: unconsidered) expression. I gave a very harsh description of Alasdair MacIntyre’s writing style, an opprobrious description that a humbler and more thoughtful interviewee would have avoided. I assume Prof. MacIntyre has better things to do than listen to me on the radio, but if he was slacking last night and hears of this, I tender a heartfelt and embarrassed apology.

In my defense, Chris Lydon was rushing the interview at that point, and I was grasping at straws, trying to come up with authors whom I would recommend to the particular audience he seems to have attracted. I wanted to indicate my respect for MacIntyre, but to caution the radio audience that several orders of magnitude of readability separate his books from, let’s say, anything Christopher Hitchens has published. I was thinking particularly of Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, a particularly convincing-but-very-dense book. Sadly, that’s not what I said.

I can’t say with a high degree of confidence — I wasn’t listening, I was talking — but I think the conversation on Open Source went OK. Chris seemed pleased, Allen and I got along well and complemented one another. I didn’t have the chance to say a lot that I’d have wanted to, but I also don’t remember having said anything egregiously stupid.

I’ve been trading emails and phone calls with the good folks at Open Source Radio today — I mean, they’re probably all good, but I’ve been in touch with Chris Lydon and David Miller — about me appearing on a follow-up segment to their show last night with Christopher Hitchens. I’ve said “yes,” foolishly no doubt.

I’ll sit down with Margaret to figure out what I really want to say about what’s so wrong with Hitchens’ representation of faith, to figure out what that’s worth saying I can squeeze into intelligible one- or two-sentence sallies. In the meantime, I have a ton of tasks and errands to move around my desk while I muse about what to say on the radio.

I gather that Adobe has consigned Freehand, the drawing program that they acquired when they absorbed Macromedia into their graphics empire, in favor of Adobe-originated Illustrator. I preferred Freehand to Illustrator, so this comes as a disappointment to me (and a constituency of other Freehand users, to judge from the response on the Net.

The quick-witted entrepreneurs at Freeverse Software (motto: “We’re not just Burning Monkeys any more”) have jumped at the opportunity. Reasoning that Freehand appealed to non-Illustrator users because of its more intuitively-useable interface, Freeverse has announced that for the next week or so, anyone who buys their drawing application Lineform from Freeverse can enter the word “Freehand” in the promotional/coupon code box on the order form, for a $30 discount. I haven’t pushed hard on Lineform, but my initial impressions are positive; it’s not an all-purpose vector graphics Swiss Army knife that also microwaves your ramen noodles, but it looks like a highly-founctional vector drawing program at an optimal level of complexity for casual users.

Among the things I’d call to my colleagues’ attention (if I were ever accorded the prerogative of programming a faculty event), I’d surely want to include Sir Ken Robinson’s talk at TED (link by way of Jeremy and, earlier, Jordon). Earlier Jordon had pointed to Richard Baraniuk’s talk about online education (thought I had linked to it, but I can’t find such a reference) — that’s another I’d show. But then, no one’s asking.

Philippa Grace was confirmed yesterday, by the Bishop of Chicago (“the XI Bishop of Chicago,” as they say). She’s been studying up — taking this as seriously as she takes everything — and preparing, shoe-shopping and meeting with her sponsor. It was a big, impressive service, and (I think) the confirmations of Pippa and our friend Käthe were the highlights of the morning. The sermon — well, better to say nothing at all. The music was lovely, the Lord was praised, and I had a chance to catch up with Jim McGee, whose son Derek was also being confirmed. OK, add “Derek” to the highlights above, though I don’t know him; Jim’s word is good by me.

Anyway, chalk up another sacrament for the family, and a lovely day all around.