From the monthly archives:

January 2010

Candlemas images

January 30, 2010
creator_child.jpg

Looking for some images for a Candlemas reflection, I found myself pondering lines from two songs. First there is the Timothy Dudley-Smith Christmas hymn “Child of the stable’s secret birth”;

whose are the hands and the fingers curled
but his who fashioned and made our world

Then there are the (perhaps more familiar) lines of Graham [...]

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Being Human: how not to do a review

January 29, 2010

Imagine a review of a series of novels in which the reviewer dismissed a trilogy on the basis of disliking the third chapter of the second book, in part because he didn’t understand the story. But that’s pretty much what the Church Times TV reviewer Gillean Craig does in today’s paper (sorry it’s behind the [...]

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Richard Dawkins: “Oh, the cleverness of me”

January 29, 2010

“Oh, the cleverness of me” is, of course, a quotation from that exemplar of immature arrogance, Peter Pan, who really can’t quite cope with emotions, and endlessly defers the complexity of growing up. It struck me looking at this extraordinary piece in the (London) Times, that it’s remarkably appropriate as a summary of so much [...]

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So, farewell then J D Salinger

January 28, 2010

J D Salinger has died. One of the men who had a profound influence on my growing-up, although I like most know almost nothing about him. I shall go back, I think, and re-read that most important book that articulated so much of my own teen angst and frustrated romanticism. The opening lines seem curiously [...]

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Hitler can’t see the point of an iPad: me neither

January 28, 2010

I have to confess that I’m still among those feeling a little underwhelmed by the iPad. I can’t quite see the point of a 10inch mobile phone that doesn’t make phone calls. It’s quite pretty, but when I’m doing anything approaching a serious computing task, I need more than one application open at a time [...]

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Is this bad blogging manners or not?

January 28, 2010

There are all sorts of issues of netiquette that regularly come round for discussion, but I think I’ve found a new one. Michael Gorman posted a private password-protected class discussion on his blog today.
Now, obviously, at one level it’s his blog, and he can do what he wants with it, without regard for any particular [...]

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Hebrews and the Temple’s destruction

January 27, 2010

Ken Schenk posts a summary handout on the situation of Hebrews. The letter is, of course, his area of greatest expertise, so I raise this question with some diffidence. However, if I understand him rightly, he dates the letter not that long after the destruction of the temple.
Hebrews is, of course, quite hard to situate [...]

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Social Attitudes, News Headlines and Moral Relativism

January 26, 2010

Buried in the British Social Attitudes survey (a copy is currently available of the chapter on religion via Ruth Gledhill) is one result I wanted to abstract. I’m still digesting the rest of the chapter, which largely makes discomfiting reading.

Only six per cent think that people should faithfully follow their religious leaders; 89 per cent [...]

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Enjoying Eagleton’s delicious dismemberment of Ditchkins

January 25, 2010

I’m currently reading Terry Eagleton’s Reason, Faith and Revolution and finding its acid acuity and delightfully phrased polemics a sheer joy. Here are just a couple of quotations from what I’ve read so far. In the first (pp37-38) you can hear the scornful hauteur of the unrepentant Marxist for the bourgeosie.

The trouble with the Dawkinses [...]

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Offensive or irresponsible? Complaining about adverts.

January 25, 2010
affairs-poster#1#.jpg

David Keen and Maggi Dawn are among those blogging the story publicised by Dave Walker today.
The website maritalaffair.co.uk has started advertising on billboards around the country. The website describes itself as ‘delivering a dating arena for extra-marital affairs’ for ‘uncomplicated adult fun’. It directly promotes and faciliates people being unfaithful to their partners, and their [...]

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