Cranmer's collects

Online from the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, courtesy of William S Peterson. Please, take a look and read a couple of them aloud. That there is what the English language was meant to do. Note how gracefully and easily the tongue and lips move when they pronounce perfectly-composed English. Cranmer may have been a crazed schismatic, but he sure could write.

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick & the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth & reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick & the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth & reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.

B. Franklin on the pleasure of conversation

How unfortunate I was, that I did not press you and Lady Kames more strongly to favour us with your company farther.  How much more agreeable would our journey have been, if we could have enjoyed you as far as York.  We could have beguiled the way, by discoursing of a thousand things, that now we may never have an opportunity of considering together; for conversation warms the mind, enlivens the imagination, and is continually starting fresh game, that is immediately pursued and taken, and which would never have occurred in the duller intercourse of epistolary correspondence.  So that whenever I reflect on the great pleasure and advantage I received from the free communication of sentiment, in the conversations we had at Kames, and in the agreeable little rides to the Tweed side, I shall for ever regret our premature parting.

-- Benjamin Franklin, in a 1760 letter to Henry Home, Lord Kames, in volume 4, pages 3-4, of The Writings of Benjamin Franklin. Edited by Albert Henry Smyth. New York: Macmillan Co., 1905--7.

Seven quick takes

• Fresh-picked basil atop the pizza sauce and below the rest of the toppings!
• America's Funniest Home Videos is our guilty teevee pleasure.
• I tuned my acoustic guitar down a few steps and now it won't stay in tune.
• I'm working on a texinfo edition of the King James Bible.
• Irish breakfast tea is stronger and tastier than English breakfast tea.
• I've rediscovered http://www.universalis.com
• You can hear the influence of Pete Townsend in this 1969 video from Shocking Blue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2DBcbZc3ck

A government program I can get behind

The Afghan oxymoron

"Afghan democracy" is one of those phrases like "jumbo shrimp" or "honest politician" - one term contradicts the other.  The key point from Michael Yon's latest dispatch: "Democracy" does not grow on land where most people don't vote. It's a fool's game to try to establish a democracy in Afghanistan.