Read it all here:
The legal squabble between Niagara Bishop Michael Bird and an Oakville blogger who criticized him is over.
The Diocese of Niagara issued a press release Monday saying the pair has reached a settlement.
The church said blogger David Jenkins offered an apology to Bird for “any suffering he has experienced as a result of blog postings” on Jenkins’ Anglican Samizdat blog.
A press release from the Diocese of Niagara’s website.
Update: This item has been removed from the diocesan website.
Anyone interested in the details of my adventure can go here.
From here:
The IBM mainframe is celebrating its 50th anniversary.
The first System 360 mainframe was unveiled on 7 April 1964 and its arrival marked a break with all general purpose computers that came before.
The machines made it possible to upgrade the processors but still keep using the same code and peripherals from earlier models.
I started working on a 360 model 40 two years after its introduction in 1966; I probably would have retired by now if someone hadn’t sued me but, alas, I toil on. What is extraordinary is that the z series mainframes that I now work on have essentially the same instruction set – admittedly with embellishments – as the antique 360. Writing a mainframe assembler program today isn’t too different from when I started in 1966.
The illustration above is a 360 model 40. The one I programmed had, as I recall, 8k of core memory (the early version of RAM: little magnetic rings threaded on wires). The operating system was 8k BOS, a non-multitasking OS which was not even able to spool print output. It was not much later that we upgraded to a luxuriant 16k of core and DOS which could not only spool print but had foreground and background jobs: a very primitive form of multi-tasking.
Here is a front panel of a 360/40. The big red knob disconnected power from everything; we never touched that. The lights showed actual bit values in core and the switches allowed us to dynamically change bits if things were not running as they should.
The 2311disk drives we used held 7.25 megabytes; they were big boxes that shook when in use and, when broken, would occasionally leak hydraulic oil onto the floor. I miss those days.
Then there were the punched cards whose inconvenience was only slightly mitigated by the pool of girls operating the card punches.
Not necessarily hearing, though.
From here:
In a few weeks, the Anglican Church of Canada’s commission on the marriage canon will invite Anglicans in Canada and across the Communion, as well church ecumenical partners, to offer their views about changing the marriage canon (church law) to allow same-sex marriage.
“…One of the things the commission wants to make clear is that everyone [in the commission] has an open mind,” said its chair, Canon Robert Falby, in an interview.
What this really means, of course, is that the commission will be working hard – very hard; it is their main task – to present the illusion of having open minds. After all the talking, alleged listening, indabas and theological papers that we have already been subjected to, any member of the clergy who has not yet made up and closed his mind on the issue has been living in a cave in Afghanistan.
Asked whether the commission reflects the “theological diversity” that the primate, Archbishop Fred Hiltz, had promised, Nicholls said, “I think the group reflects the ability to hear the theological diversity of the church.” She added that each member has demonstrated “an ability to hear, to listen, to reflect from all perspectives.”
To confirm my suspicion that the outcome is a forgone conclusion, Bishop William Anderson had this to say in a comment:
How reassuring that the promise of theological diversity has been replaced by the “ability to hear the theological diversity of the Church”. What this really means is that they will go through the motions of listening, and then present their own already expressed beliefs as representing a ‘fair’ outcome.
The Primate and the members of this panel should be ashamed for having so blatantly perverted a process that was intended to be balanced. All should be ashamed for being involved in this travesty.
Conservative politician Ann Widdecombe questions the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Q: “is homosexuality wrong.”
A: “I am not going to answer that straightforwardly because it’s a complex question.”
He goes on to say: “my position is that the the historic position of the church is that sexual relations should be within marriage and marriage is between a man and a woman”. Of course, it’s an unarguable fact that the historic position of the church is that sexual relations should be within marriage and marriage is between a man and a woman; Welby could scarcely say his position is that that is not the church’s historic position. What Welby does not say is: “my position is the same as the the historic position of the church.” Perhaps I am splitting hairs, but I suspect not.
Admittedly, Wobbling Welby isn’t as incoherent as Rambling Rowan but he still falls very short of the kind of clarity we see from other parts of the Anglican Communion.
From here:
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and his wife, Caroline, are expected to arrive in Canada on Monday, April 7, for a “ personal, pastoral visit,” with Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada.
The brief visit is a part of Welby’s personal commitment to visit the primates (senior archbishops) of the Anglican Communion, to meet them and learn about their provinces prior to the next meeting of all the primates.
If a prior meeting is anything to go by, what Welby learns from Hiltz is going to be slightly one-sided: the lawsuits, the attempts to intimidate conservative clergy, the inhibiting of clergy and the acquisition of buildings will, I am sure, all be glossed over.
[Welby] has said that his visits are aimed at fostering friendship and “mutual understanding.”
And here is the fundamental problem: there is already mutual understanding. Conservative Christians understand the Anglican Church of Canada so well that most of them have left. The Anglican Church of Canada understands that conservative Anglicans who have left are engaging in unfair competition by preaching the genuine Christian Gospel. What more is there to understand?
The diocese sold St. Richard’s Anglican Church to the North Vancouver Islamic Association for $3.05 million as a site for the Ar-Rahman mosque.
After selling a church to a competing religion, the next obvious step for members of the diocese is to start attending the mosque. After all, all religions are equally valid; there are many ways to God; we don’t want to exclude anyone; everyone knows Michael Ingham’s book should have been titled “Mosques of the Spirit”.
From here:
On Sunday March 30th, forty-five Anglicans and Lutherans were guests at Masjid Ar-Ramnan, the mosque in the former St. Richard’s building in North Vancouver. As part of a North Vancouver Lenten Visiting Program “Who is my neighbour?”
I have used the Firefox browser for a while because it is the only Windows browser that can be configured to use a monitor’s profile to display colours correctly on a high gamut display.
Now I have two more reasons: standing with Mozilla’s CEO who is in trouble for supporting traditional marriage; being blocked from accessing the okCupid dating website.
From here:
Brendan Eich, the CEO of Mozilla, which created and maintains the Firefox web browser, is under fire for having donated $1000 to Proposition 8 in California. Prop 8 was against changing marriage to make homosexual unions equal to heterosexual unions.
Among many protests against Brendan’s ‘politics’, the dating site okCupid is blocking visitors to its site using Firefox and asking them to ditch the Mozilla browser as a way of punishing Mozilla and Brandon for his views.
The champions of tolerance once again have turned into bullies to harass and punish all who disagree with their opinions.
As many of you will be aware, in February 2013 Bishop Michael Bird sued me for defamation of character. I was served on February 19th, five years to the day that my church, St. Hilda’s was served with papers to take possession of the church building and freeze our bank account.
The lawsuit has now been settled; hence the post beneath this one.
I thought it might be instructive to catalogue much of what has occurred between February last year and today.
In brief, the claim sought:
Here is a summary of what has happened:
2013
March
An initial attempt on my part to achieve an early settlement was rebuffed since I was unwilling to “put some money on the table.”
April
I filed my statement of defence.
I received the initial Discovery Plan from Bird’s lawyer and the Pleadings were closed.
May
The Hamilton Spectator published an article on the lawsuit.
The Anglican Journal published an article on the lawsuit.
The Church of England Newspaper, and various bloggers including VOL posted articles.
Following this publicity, I received a formal Offer to Settle which included:
I responded with an offer to settle that included:
There was no response to my offer.
October
After numerous delays, the Examination for Discovery took place.
Directly after Discovery, Bird’s lawyer made a new offer to settle:
Michael Bird’s legal expenses amounted to $24,000. I made a counter-offer of $12,000 in addition to the other items.
2014
January
Michael Bird’s lawyer made another offer of $18,000 for legal expenses in addition to the other items.
February
I decided that further financial haggling was infra dig, so I agreed to the terms.
I would like to thank everyone for their prayers and support during this interesting episode.
David Jenkins apologises to Bishop Michael Bird for any suffering he has experienced as a result of blog postings made by David Jenkins on his blog Anglican Samizdat.
