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Showing posts with label Random. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Random. Show all posts

Thursday, 4 April 2013

Who's the Patron Saint of 'Epic Fails'?

I got this through the letterbox a few days ago.


I can be a bit pedantic, as you know.  Nonetheless I don't expect the composer of the average parish church/community newsletter to know that Richard I never fought any battles at Antioch, or that he never went on the First Crusade (which finished 58 years before he was born).  I don't expect them to know the dates of the Emperor Diocletian (or to know that Diocletian was the name of the persecuting emperor rather than an adjective to describe his persecution; it's not clear how our author understands the term).  Or, possibly, to conjugate the verb to slay in less, shall we say, non-normative fashion.

But I do - kind of - expect the reader of a Christian parish church to spot something logically wrong with the statement that a persecution of Christians took place in 303 BC...

P.S.  It's the sentiment that counts, though, and I approve of that.

Friday, 1 February 2013

A new type of memorial?

This pic is from the National Art Gallery in Copenhagen, which my partner and I visited over Christmas.  It is called 'A Victorious Danish Soldier' (after the first Schleswig-Holstein War), by H.W. Bissen.  According to the accompanying plaque, this is the first war memorial to depict only a common soldier, rather than an officer, general or member of the royalty or nobility.  The date of its execution (1850-51) is surely not coincidental.  The First Schleswig-Holstein War (a rather bizarre, stuttering conflict won eventually by the Danes) broke out in the aftermath of the revolutionary movements of 1848.

"I found the source of the irritation!"