Cross-cultural calendrical clarification

Elsewhere on this thing called internet, I have today noticed a query from someone wishing to know “do they have July 4th in England?”.

The answer, of course, is No.

Since 1776, there has been no July 4th in England. Instead, we move directly from 3rd to 5th July (without passing go, without collecting £200). England is thus unique in the world in having a 30-day July.

There are varied and curious by-products of this calendrical anomaly. For starters, it goes some way to explaining the unpredictability of the English summer: dropping a day is bound to have an impact on calculations of mean monthly temperature, rainfall etc. More significantly, the accumulation of skipped days over the last 233 years has nudged England slightly ahead of the rest of the world: here we are now on 22 February 2010.

I hope that clears things up.

But then, we knew this already.

You Scored as Neo orthodox You are neo-orthodox. You reject the human-centredness and scepticism of liberal theology, but neither do you go to the other extreme and make the Bible the central issue for faith. You believe that Christ is God’s most important revelation to humanity, and the Trinity is hugely important in your theology. The Bible is also important because it points us to the revelation of Christ. You are influenced by Karl Barth and P T Forsyth. Neo orthodox 93% Emergent/Postmodern 75% Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 71% Roman Catholic 57% Charismatic/Pentecostal 46% Classical Liberal 43% Reformed Evangelical 36% Modern Liberal 32% Fundamentalist 14%

My dog’s got no nose…

… how does it smell? Awful.

Inspired by Scott Bailey’s take on an age-old question, here are some Biblical and theological snippets ripe for redaction. But go read Scott’s, it’s better.

Moses: Take a dog, a male one year old without blemish, and bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting. There Aaron shall cut off its nose.

Isaiah: And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a dog of unclean nose, and I live among a nation of unclean noses…” Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my nose with it and said: “Now that this has touched your nose, your sense of smell has departed and your aroma is blotted out.”

Amos: And the LORD said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A dog with no nose.” Then the LORD said, “See, the stench of injustice rises in the midst of my people Israel, yet they smell it not.”

John of Patmos: Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great dog, with seven heads and ten tongues, and no nose on any of its heads.

Origen: But since our present object is not to make inquiry about every case, but about the passage before us, let us, adopting a figurative interpretation, consider who we may say the dog was, and what was his nose which was absent, and what is meant by the dog smelling.

Augustine of Hippo: Canis extra ecclesiam naris non habet.

Bultmann: Our task is to demythologize such accounts of noseless dogs.

Girard: Mimetic rivalry dictates that a dog must be singled out. The one with no nose is the obvious victim; see how quickly a pretext of its foul smell is adduced as evidence of its guilt! Through this mechanism of scapegoating and violence, harmony is restored to the community until the mimetic cycle begins once again.

Hauerwas: In the colony, the community founded upon non-violence, the stinking dog has no need of a nose.

Jesus: Let those who have noses, smell.