Do you know if there are any particular leanings one way or the other? Has it shifted over time?

That struck me as the opposite of what I (= secular background but very interested in the history of religion) presumed the overriding Christian image to be. Just on a general search, however, I came across a lot of historical artworks like this one which completely undermined my presumption.

I came across this recently doing a bit of poking around on whether a weighed soul “should” be heavy or light. In Islam the image is that heavier is better (“Nothing is heavier on the scales than good character”, Abū Dāwūd, #4801; “Those whose balance is heavy, it is they who shall prosper”; Q 7:8).

Though personally I rather like the idea of Andrew’s name being carved into legislative posterity as the only man specifically named as too depraved to be a successor to a chair previously sat on by any number of wife-killers, nephew-murderers, and warmongers.

… but they’re clearly desperately trying to not have this as a parliamentary issue and, anyway, how would you do it? You’d either have to insert a clause specifically excluding Andrew, which smacks of attainder, or you’d have to make it a generic “anyone who does X or Y” … which is *far* too risky.

Well it does come down to who gets to giveth and who to taketh away; in the case of titles and dukedoms, it’s His Maj and/or Parliament; but in the case of actual succession that’s indubitably Parliament: it’s set out in the Act of Settlement. Of course that has been amended in our very lifetimes…

because—hold your horses before you berate me—the other MS of this bibliography list definitely reads الإرشاد لابن عقيل، شرحه للأنصاريّ. So whoever put it together did think that al-Anṣārī’s text was a sharḥ of Ibn ʿAqīl’s Irshād, rather than al-Juwaynī’s. Not my bad here! But any other suggestions?

Hmmm, I’m hoping it’s a deliberate nod to Finnegans Wake?

Plus, Ronnie’s *way* too tall.

There’s a Hythe Bridge in Oxford.

Oh, I’d always presumed it to be from Teufel.

I invite you to peruse the insanity that is BlueBook citation style. APA is merely a touch quirky in comparison.

More seriously, I wonder about the comments in the article focussing on “art”. I get the points made about symbolising, etc. But that early minds did that I don’t find particularly extraordinary. That it at least hints at *a sense of humour* I find far more interesting.

Utterly splendid. Also, without context, the *rest* of Bluesky is gonna completely misinterpret your “you might want to sit down,” comment.

Tbh, not listening to radio 4 this morning, I have zero context for this. But I think it’s safe to say most cobbles must look like *someone’s* nose from *some* angle.

Ah well, growing up with a Ma doing an OU geology degree meant trips to the beach involved taking along things like this.

Definitely a cobble, then. Maybe even a boulder.