Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 5 (Feb 2009)

Sacred Treasure

• Fantastic archive of Don Carson mp3s going back years.
• Because this is STILL rumbling on, especially now that Christians are going for a more in your face version, here, in case you missed it, a nice little piece from Theos on why the ATHEISM bendy bus adverts are quite a good thing! I have to say that I don’t find the tone of the Christian response very helpful or charitable and completely agree with Dave Keen here (HT to him for this nice development of the theme below)

 

• Then if you want to make your own slogan, check out this Bus Slogan Generator!

Topical Treasure

• Ouch!! When Satire becomes Irony – looking back at The Onion’s 2001 predictions about the Bush Presidency, it is shockingly prescient. I guess when originally written, they didn’t really believe it would all turn out like this.
• Golden Thread, National Myth – a genuinely fascinating essay on the relationship between politics and history by Tom Holland in the New Statesman (HT my brother Francis)
• Talk about cool-headedness – check out the communications between the pilot and air traffic control about the plane that crashed into the Hudson river. Then get this repeat performance in miniature in Australia. Weird.

Quirky Treasure

• Check out Roger Ebert’s hilarious glossary of Movie Terms – full of insights about pervasive movie clichés.
• DORD: a classic dictionary error – but then as Gove commented, why shouldn’t it mean ‘density’?!
• Some fascinating church architecture with 20 Unusual Churches here and and 20 More Unusual churches here.
• Measuring Worth – a cunning site for working out currency equivalents – especially interesting for checking out how much the £ over the last 800 years of British history is with in modern terms. (HT – Andrea Clarke at the British Library)