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When I recently posted a YouTube clip of the band Devo, it was based on a vague recollection of a hypnotically quirky song attached to a supposedly subversive philosophy not of revolution, but of devolution. Checking out the back-story, though, I discover that the whole idea was rather ironically purloined from a controversial anti-evolutionist pamphlet-writer of the 1920s, B H Shadduck. The Devo track was, in fact, named for Shadduck’s 1924 pamphlet Jocko-Homo Heavenbound.

At the back of our house we have a one and a half acre meadow on a steep slope. I went out this week to rake out some mole hills before they harden – it makes the mowing easier in the spring. I was surprised to find that one of the pretty roe deer that frequently emerge from the woods to browse there had decided to die – and only a short time before, too, as it was still warm.

With the number of posts on The Hump now exceeding 900 I’ve added a “random post” facility in the sidebar to keep you amused for hours. I must note, given one of our perennial subjects, that “random” here means “epistemologically random”, not “ontologically random”. The widget is in fact governed by some kind of clever algorithm that simulates randomness: the posts actually appear according to deterministic criteria. That doesn’t preclude them, of course, being providentially tailored to your particular interest and needs. Isn’t theology wonderful?

Here is a link to chapter 10 of my book.

Sy Garte has a new piece on his blog about a Chinese paper, published in a Western journal, in which some biological function is dealt with, and its suitability to the wisdom of the Creator is remarked.

Holly (this growing on our spread) – a most fallen plant by Genesis literalist standards, being both poisonous (like the ivy, in fact) and thorny. But it is undiminished, nevertheless, in its Christmas appeal and the allegorical lessons to be learned from the English folk carol first published in the early nineteenth century. And so it’s clearly an integral part of Christ’s good Creation. Have a good Christmas all – we’ll be back soon.

…last week marks the fiftieth anniversary of two events in my life. The first was that I launched a message in a bottle from an International 14 dinghy in the Afon Dwyryd estuary in North Wales, expecting that… well, realistically, even at the optimistic age of thirteen, I expected that would be the last I heard of it. But what I hoped was that the river would sweep my pop-bottle out into Cardigan Bay and then the Irish Sea, and that the ocean currents would carry it hither and yon until many years later, I’d receive tidings back from some exotic shore.