Category Archives: Random

Inbox

It took me a moment to decode an email subject line…

“Presale: Lamb of God at Tabernacle”

Theological treatise or concert announcement?

Answer: concert announcement…

Torture Testing

The list of “phrases you’d rather not hear your spouse say” includes this one which I just heard:

“Hey, honey—I just found your iPod in the dryer. With a load of towels.”

Now, there’s no way that my iPod Shuffle got into the dryer with a load of towels which means that this must have been its second trip around the drum after a romp in the washing machine.

It still works. Needless to say, I’m quite pleased…

New Submission for the Journal of Advanced Toddler Studies

The Economic Impacts of Black Magic in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty

Abstract: Post-Industrial Americans regard the spinning wheel as a quaint prop of a by-gone age. It is not until we grasp its place at the foundation of textile production in early economies, however, that we realize that Maleficent’s curse and the resultant destruction of spinning wheels was an attack not just on the baby princess Aurora but on the economic fabric of the kingdom itself. The sudden removal of wheel technology for yarn production would cripple if not topple the textile industry of a fourteenth century agrarian economy. Through use of computer modeling we discuss the volume production drop caused by a sudden shift from spinning wheel to drop spindle  technology and examine the ramifications on the wool trade, the rise in imports to replace lost domestic capacity and concomitant inflation across the economy , the loss of competitiveness among other regional powers, and the dramatic increase in costs accrued for the exotic textiles displayed in King Stephen’s court.

It’s one thing to anger a malevolent spirit—it’s another entirely to anger a malevolent spirit with a thorough knowledge of textile capacities and the creative curses to bring an entire kingdom’s economy to its knees.

Updates

  • Everyone survived the start of the Christmas season.
  • The Christmas pageant was a roaring success. Some parent helpers jumped in and everything went just fine. We only had one little clash—someone wanted to remove all of the identifying names out of the Luke 2 passage as being “too difficult for children”. Fortunately I had a couple of days between hearing about this and seeing the cast again so I could think of a more polite and tactful way to respond than my initial reaction. I explained that if we took out the names we might as well start it with “Once upon a time in a kingdom far, far away” and that the whole point of the names is that it happened in a very particular time and place and that matters. They didn’t like it, but the names stayed in and the kids did great with them.
  • (I found it odd that my reader had more trouble pronouncing “Syria” than “Quirinius”…)
  • Most memorable exchange—Parent: “Well, what matters most is that the kids feel good about what they did.” Me: “Hmmm. I think that what matters most is that the kids learn the Gospel…” Parent: [unconvinced] “Oh—right…”
  • We had a wonderful trip south to the ordination of Chris (aka the Lutheran Zephyr) and he’s got a nice photo with M up too.
  • M read the prayers, my role was sitting with three PKs (only one of which was mine)—all girls under the age of 6, all perfectly behaved.
  • About halfway through Lil’ G turned to me and said, “So, Daddy—when are you gonna get ordained?” I was a little stunned by that but mumbled that I was working on it…
  • For Christmas 1 we had a Lessons and Carols service at M’s parish that was quite nice. But in the midst of Von Himmel Hoch Lil’ H started singing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” at the top of her lungs. And continued with it whenever we started singing another carol. Several peopled noticed her singing; thankfully no one noticed what she was singing.
  • While you’re rounding up nice Christmas messages as the season continues, don’t miss the sermon here from friend-of-the-blog Fr. McCoy, OHC.
  • Dissertation progress has bogged down in Chapter 3. Trying to condense some 15 years of study of monastic liturgy into twice that many pages isn’t as easy as it sounds… I’m trying an ultra-minimalist approach but I have to keep reminding myself of that every sentence or two.
  • (And if anyone happens to have  copy of David Knowles’ The Monastic Order in England handy, could you tell me when [on p. 714 or so] he starts Matins and Lauds in the summer? I’m missing that page…)
  • For the SBB alpha-testers, I’ll have a new kalendar up before Jan. 1 with, hopefully, a choice of two…
  • I’ve got a few pieces for the Cafe in the pipeline, but blogging will continue to be light…

New Rig!

Case and power supply arrived yesterday; the hardware’s together and I’m using it as we speak. Still need to troubleshoot some motherboard driver issues and get the old hard-drive slaved in but other than that—I’m good to go!

And only 1,148 feeds have appeared in my rss-reader since the old unit went down… (oy vey!)

Frustration

…is having a smokin’ new motherboard with a dual-core processor, 2 gigs of RAM, and a fat SATA hard-drive

and no case to put it in.

The second half of my new computer shipment is delayed. I would pull out some fingernails if that would help it get here—but it won’t…

Computer Death

My central computer has died. (Thankfully it’s a case/power supply/motherboard failure, not a disk death.) Pithy analysis, absurd witticisms, and liturgical minutae are on indefinite hold. That having been said…

Congrats to Obama for an historic run but—as I said with +Gene et al.,—I sincerely hope he’s not remembered primarily as the nation’s first African American president but as a great president who also happened to be the first African-American.

I’m pleased the Democrats didn’t get a super-majority in the Senate; the nation won’t tolerate too many Republican filibusters and the parties having to cooperate in order to legislate is usually better in the long run. I hope McCain remains a leader for effective bipartisan action.

A Thought on the Economy

Fr. Haller writes good sense based on working in the Pit. Let me add my negligable two cents worth.

This credit crunch and market crash corresponds—as far as I can tell—concurrently with the end of cheap oil. Yeah, it’s bouncing around $100 a barrel now, much lower than the summer’s $140’s—but do you ever think we’ll see $20 or $40 again? Me neither…

We need a new economic paradigm that takes seriously both communication technology and the energy reality. Here’s my take: Keep data global; keep stuff local.