manasclerk's The Power Struggle

It's now become too much of a pain to continue to use Movable Type. It's made almost all my content unavailable except through Google, and now that's broken. I'm sure that it's all my own fault (user error) but I no longer have the desire to spend time messing with a piece of software for what is essentially an archive.

WordPress does more of what I need it to do, without having to mess around with extra changes to my templates. Since MT 4 has already rendered my old templates unusable, I'm just giving it up.

JMM may still maintain his: it's the only blog left on this server. But I'm saying "So long!" to Movable Type and hello open source software that I have to contribute to.

Today in 1991, Latvia declared their independence from the Soviet Union. Congratulations, Latvia, on 17 years of rugged survival in a dog-eat-dog world!

May you have a long and lustrous future as an independent nation, especially so that Dawn can get back.

You knew it would happen sooner or later: my site design, which is years old, has finally broken under the weight of the Movable Type upgrades. I have no idea where anything is any longer, and the links don't work.

Maybe I'll figure out a way to simply correct this by reapplying the templates that MT ships with.

But that's not nearly as easy as it is in WordPress.

I could just move this to WordPress, which would eliminate the problems that I've had with maintaining multiple content management systems. At least I've gotten rid of TWiki.

MacCulloch, Diarmaid. 2003. The Reformation: A history. New York: Penguin.

I've been reading MacCulloch's history of the Reformation. It's a thick book, some 680 pages, and in a small typeface. So slow going but quite interesting.

I go to a Reformed church, and used to be a deacon in the PCA. I've studied a bit about the Reformation and thought that I knew a bit. But MacCulloch brings several strands together in a way that strikes me as relevant today.

Perhaps the Emergent (Protestant) Christians and their (Protestant) foes are correct and this "new way" is really revolutionizing the way that we think about faith.

Except that it's really just a reverse Reformation.

Not that it's a Counter-Reformation: that's a Roman Church's response to the original Reformers. (See the Encyclopædia Britannica article on the Counter-Reformation or the entry at the Catholic Encyclopedia.) It's not a reaction so much as the reverse of the original Reformation.

Take a look at MacCulloch's description of the Humanist's obsession with textual analysis:

Here's a picture of me conducting the encore at the final band concert of my ninth grade year at Unnamed Jr. High School. The piece was "Night Train" and it was recently recalled by a high school friend who was in that Jr. High band with me.

Ninth grade: that was a fun year. Of course, if you really want to see something embarrassing, see the video of my awfully overbearing performance at the senior show my senior year. (Oddly, I had big roles in the senior show for all three years I was in the high school.)

Encyclopædia Britannica notes that on this day in the year 1958, Pres. Ike signed the legislation that created the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Sure, it more or less existed before that as a defense group but now we were going to beat the Russians publicly.

Darn that Sputnik!

Just to show that these messages from EB are almost always odd, the birthday for today is for Il Duce, 20th century Europe's first fascist dictator, having "assumed" absolute power of Italy in 1922. American conservatives loved the little fascist. Really. Hearst ran adoring editorials on Mussolini, even cartoons extolling his virtues by the masterful Winsor McCay (Little Nemo in Slumberland). "Mussolini rose up from nothing to be master of his destiny! You can, too!"

And, of course, NASA was staffed by unrepentant Nazis.

So it goes.

Hopefully I'll not have to wear a tuxedo again to a wedding until my daughter (who is not quite one) marries. I've just finished with standing up for my sister-in-law's German husband for their church wedding here in the states. Whew! That was hard work!

I'm not complaining, you know. I count him as a friend and not just a relation by marriages, so I was proud to step up and stand. For a long time. If we had had communion perhaps we in the wedding party would have been able to sit.

I know that I've been a professional public speaker but I find doing toasts unnerving. L and I both did them (she was the matron of honor for her sister) and although the audience seemed to enjoy them both (L did the better job) I've always had to leave the reception for an extended period of time in order to get myself ready. Maybe I try to do too much in them.

But next time, I'd love to just come to your wedding and not have to do anything! Probably just a result of having Stinky these days. She's a great baby and was a wonderful flower girl but she then left me with four hours of sleep last night.