Fifth Day of Christmas: 20 GO-OLD RINGS!

The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey

"Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, 

Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, 

Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, 
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne 
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. 

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, 

One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them 

In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie."

-J.R.R. Tolkien's epigraph, The Lord of The Rings

...And a Partridge in a Pear Tree.

Love this pocket edition, with illustrations by Tolkien

"Official Movie Guide" by Brian Sibley (review here)

(US Marines) "Men, it's leadership problems:" The Calamitous Condition of Contemporary Anglicanism

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=17013


THE CALAMITOUS CONDITION
OF CONTEMPORARY ANGLICANISM

By Roger Salter
Special to Virtueonline
www.virtueonline.org
December 30, 2012

If Holy Scripture and Reformational standards are to be our measure the present
state of the Anglican Communion is lamentable. Discounting those rare
exceptions in academy, diocese

Grammarly - Don's Detestations

I was interested in your 'Grammarly' list of solecisms. Here are some of mine from my book 'Milestones':

Detestations

1.

How I detest the silly fool

Who calls the noble street 'Pawl Mawl'

But I'll make him a lifelong pal

Who, unaffected, says 'Pal Mal'.

2.

Some people in a verbal mix

Will call this star * an asterix

Far better not to take the risk

But properly say 'asterisk'.

3.

'Crèche' said 'craysh' just blows my mind I'd like to kick the sayer's behind While shouting 'Crèche is 'cresh' you fool Were you taught nothing at your school?'

4.

Bought for brought and brought for bought Is trotted out with little thought By teachers and TV presenters, Police, MPs and riot fomenters Proselytisers, red wine swillers - They're all of them just language killers!

5.

Singular, data is datum

So I hand you this stern ultimatum -

If you didn't do Latin at school

You shouldn't use Latin at all.

Don Donovan. Writer & Illustrator.

Facebook Tops 2012 Wikipedia Queries

Fotog/Tetra Images, via Corbis

How do you learn about another culture? Maybe by looking at its Wikipedia searches. On Friday, a Swedish software engineer published a list of Wikipedia's most-searched articles of 2012, sorted by language. 

Facebook tops the English-language site's list of things we care about, with One Direction, 50 Shades of Grey, and The Avengers also showing up in our top 10. Over on the Spanish site, people learned about the Mayan culture, while in Iran, searchers seem curious about homosexuality, sex, and female genitals, which all showed up on the Persian site's top 10. 

Sex made another appearance on Japan's list, where the top search was for a porn actress. The most inexplicable international No. 1? German-language speakers really care about cul-de-sacs.

Read it at The Washington Post

December 29, 2012 8:52 AM

Bookselling in Dunedin

Otago-based poet David Howard snapped this shot yesterday and shared it with me with the following comment:

A bookseller and, perhaps, a writer as well in George Street, Dunedin, today.