Magic Statistics

The 2005 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded on Thursday evening, 6 October, at the 15th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, at Harvard's Sanders Theatre. Here are some noteworthy winners:

LITERATURE: The Internet entrepreneurs of Nigeria, for creating and then using e-mail to distribute a bold series of short stories, thus introducing millions of readers to a cast of rich characters — General Sani Abacha, Mrs. Mariam Sanni Abacha, Barrister Jon A Mbeki Esq., and others — each of whom requires just a small amount of expense money so as to obtain access to the great wealth to which they are entitled and which they would like to share with the kind person who assists them.
. . .
ECONOMICS: Gauri Nanda of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for inventing an alarm clock that runs away and hides, repeatedly, thus ensuring that people DO get out of bed, and thus theoretically adding many productive hours to the workday.

Read the whole thing. Watch the video.

Sponsored by Annals of Improbable Research.

. . . these three, but the greatest of these is politics. (Grantian Florilegium doesn't seem to have permalinks. The post I'm referring to is entitled "More" and is dated 6 October.)

Dr George Grant is commenting on the fact that, in our age, all social problems have come to be automatically seen as government problems, e.g., economy, health care, family values, education, severe weather. Ipso facto, all social problems degenerate into power struggles and ideological clashes.

Virtually all social historians agree that this is indeed the most distinctive aspect of our age: the subsuming of all other concerns to the rise of political mass movements based upon comprehensive, secular, closed-universe, and millenarian intellectual systems.

And of course, the civil authorities–elected representatives, government bureaucrats, the judiciary–are all quite eager to accept these augmented expectations and pretend to be able to ameliorate all of society's problems. The end result, however, is less liberty for all. So, the cycle of ideological polarization and state intervention continues.

Thus, the state continues to manifest itself as the beast.

UPDATE: A timely editorial in London's Daily Telegraph.

At the height of the wool trade in the 15th century, Chipping Campden rivaled Cirencester in importance. Today, however, Chipping Campden is a village based almost entirely on the tourist trade. The High Street shops are largely oriented toward antiques and expensive clothes and gifts, while there seem to be no inexpensive restaurants. Even the many pubs fancy themselves gourmet restaurants. Although on the expensive side, they come well-recommended and the food is very good. The surroundings are attractive and gracefully well-kept in keeping with the area’s current status as a tourist destination.

The village is home to a magnificent wool church, the Parish Church of St James. An earlier, much smaller Norman church was almost completely re-built in the late 15th century. The majestic West Tower stands 120 feet high, twice the length of the nave, and serves as a local landmark.

The overall design of the church is quite simple, consisting of nave and chancel, West Tower and two aisles, each one of which has a chapel at its east end open to the chancel. The impact of the church derives not from its decorations but from its simplicity and spaciousness.

Between 1490 and 1500, the nave was re-constructed with its great chancel arch. The window above the chancel arch is a rare feature of church architecture. (The very bottom of the window can be seen in the photo at right.)

The church contains many monuments to its benefactors. Inside are several family tombs endowed by wealthy clothiers.

At the top of the East Window (photo at left) is the only surviving glass of the 15th century. The remainder is modern glass in memory of those who died in the Great War of 1914-18 and was placed in 1925.

For more photos of the church, click here.

Links to all my blog posts about British churches and Christian sites can be accessed through the box located at the top of the page. 

That's the warning from Liam Lacey, film critic of the Globe and Mail, and a man with an intuitive grasp of the obvious. As Ted Byfield reports,

Canada's liberal press has greeted Disney's coming movie version of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia with a delicate note of caution. "Be alert for hidden Christian messages," warns the Toronto Globe and Mail's movie reviewer Liam Lacey.

No question, this is a man sensitive to religious innuendo. In the opening Narnia episode, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, after all, the lion plainly represents Christ, the witch is Satan, and the whole thing is an allegory of the Christian doctrine of the atonement.

So yes, there could definitely be "hidden Christian messages," perhaps because Lewis wrote the whole series for the express purpose of putting them there. In reading Bunyan's A Pilgrim's Progress, one must be similarly on guard against "hidden messages" about the Christian life pilgrimage, and in watching Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, one must watch out for "hidden allusions" to the Passion and the Christ.

Mr Lacey deserves all the sarcasm one can muster for such a block-headed comment. And American Christians think the U.S. press doesn't get religion!

Read the whole thing.

via CaNN.

The collect for today, the 20th Sunday after Trinity, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

O almighty and most merciful God, of thy bountiful goodness keep us, we beseech thee, from all things that may hurt us; that we, being ready both in body and soul, may cheerfully accomplish those things that thou wouldst have done; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.