2011 — 5 April: Tuesday
Let's start the day (or end the night) with another of the latest-to-be-found slides of Christa, shall we?1 It goes right back to our first summer together, in 1974. I took this, as far as I recall, on a battered pier, or maybe a bridge, somewhere on the river Thames. It was also before we married (no ring on her finger).
Just don't ask me exactly where, OK? Mercy me, it's already 00:40. G'night.
Yes, no, I know...
... I shouldn't follow links from the New York Times (which is largely disappearing behind a paywall in any case), but who could resist a web site called bishopaccountability.org? It's quite a rabbit hole (or should that be priest hole?) should you choose to explore it. Still, it was Alfred Kinsey who's usually quoted as having said that the only sexual perversion is celibacy...
Whether anyone, anywhere, ever said any of the things later attributed to them, of course, is a whole different ball game.
It's 08:51 and the day is off to a grey, drizzly start. Earlier this morning (shortly before 03:00 in fact) I watched the final episode of "Studio 60" and am left wondering if any TV producer in Hollywood is actually sentient. I would have my doubts about those responsible for cancelling this show. I then finished the final chapter of "Pride and Prejudice", but that's another story. Now there is a certain irreducible amount of supplies shopping to be done. Not to mention breakfast.
The #1 nonfiction paperback bestseller...
... honestly, I cannot believe I'm typing this — is HEAVEN IS FOR REAL, by Todd Burpo with Lynn Vincent. (Thomas Nelson, $16.99.) A boy's encounter with Jesus and the angels. (Link.)
Comment would be truly superfluous.
Let's not get (too) cross
Not much comment needed in the case of the judgement described here, either. Source and delicious snippet:
In a non-religious context like a school, used for the education of young people, the crucifix may still convey the above-mentioned values to believers, but for them and for non-believers its display is justified and possesses a non-discriminatory meaning from the religious point of view if it is capable of representing and evoking synthetically and in an immediately perceptible and foreseeable manner (like any symbol) values which are important for civil society, in particular the values which underpin and inspire our constitutional order, the foundation of our civil life. In that sense the crucifix can perform — even in a "secular" perspective distinct from the religious perspective specific to it — a highly educational symbolic function, irrespective of the religion professed by the pupils.
Glad that's all cleared up. Bill Hicks was more right than he ever knew, I guess.
Big Bro has just emailed to say he's pleased to see visual evidence that I'm still wearing the hat he gave me. I never leave home without it, actually. It's by some margin the nicest present2 I can recall getting from my ancient sibling :-)
Guess what happens...
... when, in the midst of rewiring your internal network, after re-arranging and cleaning up quite a lot3 of your living room, you inadvertently use the shared port adjacent to the uplink one in your switch downstream of your ADSL modem / router without noticing you've done so? That's right. Total loss of connectivity. More hours later than I really wish to admit, and with help from Brian in bringing round a spare router and isolating various cables and boxes one-by-one to eliminate all the impossible possibilities first, I once again have a fully working system, using all the original4 bits, though several of the IP addresses have altered.
It's now 22:29 and way way past time for my next cuppa. Still, at least I've also confirmed that the Ubuntu web server on one of my boxes is, indeed, updating itself automagically with security patches, so that's nice. Computers are all very well, but...
By the way, thanks Mr Postie
It was so long ago I've almost forgotten the neat way you jammed this into my letter box:
I'm off to the Land of Nod. It was a late night, and has been an exhausting and rather frustrating day, all in all. But just maybe we'll manage a walk tomorrow.