There are definitely appropriate times and places for lying on the floor emitting animal noises. I'm considering it as a contribution to the next meeting in which someone mentions "strategy", for a start.

Possibly a divine anoinkment; possibly the worship of Baa'l.

(I wish I'd been relaxed enough about it at the time to make puns.)

(It is so very reminiscent of the reasoning I heard in the 1990s when a charismatic revival reached my local church and folk were rolling on the floor making farmyard noises. "If there is any chance this is the Holy Spirit moving, can you afford to be left out?")

I'm also faintly reminded here of Miller's "Discovering Water" — the thesis that by choosing the weight to give to an experiment vs a fully realised theory, partisans of a particular claimant can pick the definition of "discovery" that suits them.

There was one on the Monkland Canal in Glasgow, used instead of the locks during periods of low water supply. As far as I can make out there's basically no trace on the ground, though as often with canal features you can see a hint in the Lidar.

That kid has class.

Boat lifts in their various forms are fascinating...

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co...

That rang a bell for me... I should have remembered this @threadinburgh.scot piece about the Local Veto Act.

threadinburgh.scot/2024/01/25/t...

What startled me here was how late Cathcart went dry — I'd have guessed C19th during the height of the temperance campaigns, which shows how much I still don't know...

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Rowan Williams yet: a lovely guy who could chat to undergraduates with no hint of pulling rank whatsoever.

HfA is a brilliant site. I have learned a _lot_ from it.

Thread about freedom, in which he merrily projects the dynamics of C20th regimes onto The Church(TM).