Davewatch part #94

I think I am going to go and lie down for a bit.

Ebay newbie "caught using irony".

In such schemes, both jurisdictional stakeholders may need to examine the way they operate; a communal/religious nomos, to borrow Shachar's vocabulary, has to think through the risks of alienating its people by inflexible or over-restrictive applications of traditional law, and a universalist Enlightenment system has to weigh the possible consequences of ghettoising and effectively disenfranchising a minority, at real cost to overall social cohesion and creativity. Hence 'transformative accommodation': both jurisdictional parties may be changed by their encounter over time, and we avoid the sterility of mutually exclusive monopolies.
Rowan Williams

In both countries [Britain and the U.S.A.] an essential part of the ordination exam ought to be a passage from some recognised theological work set for translation into vulgar English—just like doing Latin prose. Failure on this paper should mean failure in the whole exam. It is absolutely disgraceful that we expect missionaries to the Bantu to learn Bantu but never ask whether our missionaries to the Americas or England can speak American or English. Any fool can write learned language. The vernacular is the real test. If you can’t turn your faith into it, then either you don’t understand it or you don’t believe in it.
C.S Lewis

.....and a happy new year.

Well. That was much the best movie in which Lady Galadriel pretends to be Bob Dylan that I've seen this week.

Is there any possible reason why "Where his children gather round, bright like stars with glory crowned" might be preferred to "Where like stars his children crowned, all in white shall wait around"? Is there some objection to the w-word? It's political correctness gone mad, I tell you.

So. Is it child abuse to describe little Jimmy as a "cultural Christian", do you think?

Thought for the Day

Dave Sim: Having just finished a biography of William Blake, I understand he suffered terribly from this. In many ways, he was the original self-publisher.

I mean, I really want to do a good multilayered story with Cerebus, and I have a compulsion to say a lot of -probably too many- things in the six thousand pages.

But, man, at least I don 't have a sense of being put here on Earth to put everything right. To me, Blake clearly thought he was Moses or Jacob or the heir to their legacy, anyway.

Chosen by God to tell the world what really happened, get everyone to agree that every Renaissance painter he didn't like was a fraud and everyone he did like was a prophet or a beacon on the hill. everyone he liked was an angel from his personal God until he didn't like those people anymore, at which time they were one of the Legions of Hell sent to torment him.

People like that I find very worrisome....

Alan Moore: ...If (Blake) occasionally seems to have an inflated opinion of himself, it would seem to me only a natural counter-reaction to his seeming wretchedness and failure in all save the eyes of a few close friends (and, of course, posterity).

You're right in naming him the first self-publisher, near as damn it, and I think that you might find more in common with him than there seems to be at first glance: a man who had a vision and decided that the best way to convey it was by devoting his life's work to an extended fantasy narrative, a symbolic world where invented characters would play out the drama of the creator's divine insight

....This is not to discount your own view of Blake of course, simply to suggest that my own is maybe a bit more forgiving and more prepared to overlook the occasional bout of hubris.

Lord knows, Dave, we're not above the occasional bout of hubris ourselves, are we? And we haven't even written London or painted Glad Day yet.

(William Blake: Nov 28 1757 - Aug 12 1827)

Thought for the Day

Do I have the right? Simply touch one wire against the other and that's it - the Daleks cease to exist. Hundreds of millions of people, thousands of generations, can live without fear, in peace, and never even know the word Dalek. But if I kill, wipe out a whole intelligent life form, then I become like them. I'd be no better than the Daleks.

Thought For The Day

Here lies a whole world after one
Peculiar mode; a buried sun,
Stars and immensities of sky
And cities here discarded lie.
The prince who owned them, having gone,
Left them as things not needed on
His journey; yet with hope that he,
Purged by aeonian poverty
In lenten lands, hereafter can
Resume the robes he wore as man.

And here's another one

This time, we manage to go from "People sometimes support football teams from towns where they don't live" to "The Government has a policy to stamp out History and Geography" via "Children don't know dates and maps as well as they did in the Olden Days. Is this some kind of complex multi-layered parody, do you think?

Right.

Suppose I'd better start trying to catch up, then.

Thought for Today

"It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was, and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies and threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace."

Lost: One Plot. If found, please return to Guardian offices

Likely to be out of circulation for the next three weeks (nothing bad.)

Couldn't have said it better myself.

It's International Talk Like a Pirate Day

In an honest service there is thin commons, low wages, and hard labour. In this, plenty and satiety, pleasure and ease, liberty and power; and who would not balance creditor on this side, when all the hazard that is run for it, at worst is only a sour look or two at choking? No, a merry life and a short one shall be my motto.
Captain Roberts

I wish I was dead....

(or, if you are rather more clear-headed, that the Vogon had never been born.)

News Values

12th Aug: POLICE THINK MADELEINE IS DEAD

13th Aug MADELEINE : SHE IS ALIVE

14th Aug: MADELEINE : NEW BRITISH SUSPECT INSISTS "I AM INNOCENT"

16th Aug: MADELEINE POLICE: WE KNOW WHO KILLED HER

17th Aug: MADELEINE : WE ARE JUST HOURS FROM THE SOLUTION

18th Aug: MADDY DNA SHOCK

19th Aug: MADELEINE : COMING HOME TO FACE HEARTBREAK

20th Aug: MADELEINE : BRITISH SUSPECT TO BE ARRESTED IN HOURS, SAY POLICE

21st Aug: MADELEINE : ALL POLICE LEAVE CANCELLED

22nd Aug: MADELEINE : NOW POLICE TELL PARENTS: DON'T LEAVE PORTUGAL

23rd Aug: "WE'VE LET MADELEINE DOWN"

24th Aug: MADELEINE : MUM'S FURY AT "YOU KILLED HER" SLUR

25th Aug: MADELEINE : NOW HER PARENTS ARE ACCUSED OF KILLING HER WITH A DRUG OVERDOSE

26th Aug: MADELEINE LET US SPEND £1M

27th Aug: MADELEINE : NEW SLUR SAYS THAT MCKANN'S CAR KEYS HAD "THE SCENT OF A CORPSE"

28th Aug: MADELEINE : NEW SETBACK OVER DNA EVIDENCE

29th Aug: MADELEINE : FATHER STORMS OUT OF TV INTERVIEW

News Values

Ten in row....

Fri 3rd MADELEINE
Sat 4th WE DID SEE MADELEINE
Sun 5th MADELEINE: POLICE DIG FOR BODY
Mon 6th MADELEINE
Tue 7th MADELEINE BLOOD CLUE
Wed 8th WE DIDN'T KILL OUR MADELEINE
Thu 9th MADELEINE
Fri 10th MADELEINE
Sat 11th MADELEINE
Sun 12th POLICE THINK MADDY IS DEAD