I continue to administer and update the website of Christ Church, Windsor, and make occasional contributions to Anglican Essentials Canada blog.

Those who appreciate the collects and artwork that have been posted here on Sundays and saints’ days should click over to Christ Church, Windsor, where the series carries on.

I apologise to everyone who received that e-mail.

According to gmail’s activity information register, someone at the IP address 123.11.243.131 accessed my account using a browser. That IP address is located in China. It would appear that the spammer somehow guessed the password to my gmail account, logged on, and sent the e-mail. I have since changed the password and implemented other security measures.

This is the first time something like this has happened to my e-mail account, and it’s creepy.

I hope to return to blogging in another day or two.

Part 1 of his story is posted here, and Part 2 here.

No one with my last name shows up in Nova Scotia or, indeed, anywhere east of Ontario. I have given the authorities the slip.

Speed addicts get their kicks on route 101

Highway 101 seems to be turning into an autobahn.

The famous German superhighways, where there are no speed limits, may be the inspiration for some drivers heading through the Annapolis Valley.

Sgt. Rich Walkinshaw, with the RCMP’s traffic section in the Valley, said police issued more than 100 tickets during a 2½-day period on the highway, including one to someone going 189 kilometres per hour.

He said there were a few people caught doing over 150 km/h and a lot of drivers were going 140 to 150.

All were caught on the twinned section of the highway from Avonport to Falmouth.

I’m not one of those speed addicts, honest!

I received the benefit of that influence when I was a relatively new Christian in the early 1980s. I first encountered him in the pages of National Review, where he wrote a regular column on religion. In 1984, his book The Naked Public Square helped me to understand the place of Christianity in politics and public life. Also about that time, Fr Neuhaus launched the indispensable periodical First Things.

He was a leader in the cause of promoting intelligent, classical Christian thinking in the contemporary decadent West. His passing is a great loss to us, but he is now in the care of our Lord and Saviour.   May light perpetual shine upon him.

This video is from a CBC interview of December 2007.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFwMZKtHiaE[/youtube]

Images of Jesus with a beard may also have developed through a wish to symbolize ugliness. There was some debate in the early Church as to whether Jesus was in appearance the most handsome, or the most repulsive of men. One view was that since God is supremely beautiful, and Jesus was God on earth, so Jesus too must have been supremely beautiful. The opposing view was that God the Son took on himself all human misery when he entered the world, and so had a horrible, diseased appearance. This ‘ugly’ view claimed support from the Prophet Isaiah: ‘he had … nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by others … surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases’ (Isaiah 53:2-4). Bearded and unbearded images of Jesus appeared concurrently until around the eleventh century. The theory runs that during this period, if an artist wanted to emphasize Jesus’ divinity then he would take the ‘beauty’ side of the debate, and symbolize this by having Jesus beardless, whereas he would portray him as bearded if he wanted to emphasize Jesus’ humanity and supposed ugliness. From around the eleventh century, images of Jesus with a beard took the ascendance.

Images of a bearded Jesus originated from a need to represent human ugliness? Surely not.

“It’s simple. Just list all the jobs you’ve had in your life, in order. Don’t bust your brain: no durations or details are necessary, and feel free to omit anything that you feel might tend to incriminate you. I’m just curious. And when you’re done, tag another five bloggers you’re curious about.”

Here are all the jobs I can remember.

• Newspaper carrier — Montreal Star
• Grocery store packer — Dominion Stores, Dorval, QU
• Food-products factory worker – Procter and Gamble, Pointe-Claire, QU
• Shipping and receiving clerk — Pointe-Claire, QU
• Labourer at window and door shop — Delta, BC
• Saw mill labourer — MacMillan Bloedel, New Westminster, BC
• Teaching assistant — Economics, Simon Fraser University
• Teaching assistant/Lecturer — Economics, University of Washington
• Statistical computing consultant — University of Washington
• Bank management trainee — CIBC, Vancouver
• Teaching assistant/Lecturer — Regent College
• Statistician — Government of Yukon, Whitehorse
• Retiree (best job of all, even though the pay sucks)

I’m curious about Peter, Kate, David, John K, and Rebecca. I hope you all had a blessed Christmas.

INTP – The Thinkers

The logical and analytical type. They are especialy [sic] attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

That’s me, all right—arrogant, impatient, and insensitive.

Although the Typealyser bills itself as a blog analysis, it isn’t necessarily limited to blogs. You can enter any URL you wish. The National Post and Globe and Mail come up as “ESTP – The Doers”, but The Star as “ISTJ – The Duty Fulfillers”.  Interesting.

h/t: Comment Central

Here is the scene this morning.

This photo of the same scene was taken on 9 September when we moved into the house.

Our power flickered twice while I was trying to blog yesterday afternoon; then, around 4:30 pm, the lights went out for about an hour.

The wind also brought very warm temperatures, almost breaking record highs recorded in 2006. Yesterday’s high in Halifax was 16°C.

Clicking on the image will bring up a much-enlarged view.

Not only is this a beautiful scene, IMHO, two very important structures that are actually about four kilometers apart appear almost next to each other.

A large water tower can be seen in the distance in the centre-right of the photograph. The Big Blue Tower is located just up the street from my new house. If you look a little to the left and below the tower, you can see a black church spire. That is my new church home, Christ Church, Windsor. (I can’t link to Christ Church because it does not have a website. Someone should do something about that.)

The top of the hill where I took the photo is occupied by Windsor’s Super 8 Motel. It’s a fine place for the price, and it has a water slide.

The blue marker on the left side of the map below is the Big Blue Tower, the one in the centre is Christ Church, and the right-most marker is the Super 8.

I decided sometime ago to close the old blog and start a new one. I’m not sure there’s a definite reason for doing that; it just seems appropriate in the circumstances. I apologise to all who have linked and bookmarked the old site. I’ll try to make the change worth your while.

So, away we go.