James's Weblog

I had to laugh out loud in the car on the way home from standing committee last night. I often have Radio 4 on in the car, engine starts up for a ten minute journey, and I catch some snippet of something.

Last night, the programme was Analysis, looking at the UNICEF report that said Britain’s children are amongst the unhappiest in a developed nation. No, the laugh-out-loud (shortened to LOL, by the way) moment wasn’t the continuity reader accidentally calling us an undeveloped nation, although that was funny.

Slightly technical article here, but I post it just in case anyone else has been getting infuriated by the same thing I have been infuriated by.

Sorry everyone

I've just had to delete 280 spam comments, going back only a week or so. MovableType has an excellent junk comment filter - 280 comments got caught and marked as junk, and I only got notified by e-mail of 10 comments that were spam. Still - I have to glance down the junk comment list to make sure I've not deleted a genuine comment.

So, hate to do it, but I've had to go to authenticated-only commenting.

Movable Type (of which this blog is an instance) uses TypeKey for this. All you do is create a TypeKey account. You then sign in and have the option to stay signed in for a fortnight. You're then allowed to comment again. As a bonus, you only have to type your name once.

Sorry about that - I'll look into introducing some human-only security feature to weed out the spambots, then I should be able to go allow anonymous comments again.

I’ve been meaning to post a link to this for a while. Steve Leighton has written an article on how the Fair Trade movement impacts coffee growers. It’s insightful, because he has a lot of inside knowledge when it comes to the coffee industry.

Sitting down to work with an americano in hand, made from beans grown on the Sitio Boa Sorte farm in Brazil. This coffee came number 33 in the Brazilian 2005 Cup of Excellence competition, and I have to say it is another great Steve Leighton find.

The sad news – it’s run out. Steve has no more. I buy green which means the beans keep for a year or so, so that I can keep drinking long after he has none left!

Looks like David F is about to deliver a splendidly helpful talk.

Yes, the notes on his blog leave us with a lot of gap-filling to do. But better to have these notes to fill the gaps in that not even have those. Thanks, David.

A risky thing to claim – that we should expect to fight and lose.

Numbers 14: The people are judged for what? Deciding the enemies are too mighty to be beaten.

That was then. Since then the enemy has been beaten. Dare we risk angering the Lord in a similar way?

That's exciting news.

Phil Sowerbutts is to be the next vicar of Castle Church, Stafford. He starts after Easter.

Welcome to Lichfield Diocese, Phil - it'll be a joy to work near you.

Exodus says 600,000 (rough numbers). So does Numbers. Some modern scholars try to say it can’t be that simple.

Arguments too and fro will be many – but may I note the contribution that Numbers 3 ought to make?

Note to self.

There is a debate when it comes to Exodus 12-13: Do the firstborn Israelites inherently belong to God, or do they belong to him because of the Exodus? From memory, Peter Enns goes for the former, but I could be wrong about that.

Numbers 3:13 - (I have all the Levites by substitution...) "...for all the firstborn are mine. On the day that I struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, I consecrated for my own all the firstborn in Israel, both of man and of beast. They shall be mine: I am YHWH."