Very interesting interview with an Islamic expert, Saad Al-Faqih on Al-Qaeda here (HT John Robb).
I’m not persuaded that America is as week as Faqih believes. I agree that it is about to suffer a severe setback, but I think that what will happen is that the underlying strength and resilience of US culture will then emerge out of the crucible. In contrast to Faqih I think the long term comparison of cultural strength favours the US. It is Islam that faces a true existential crisis.
Two boys and a dog.
I believe in angels.
Or, more precisely, WOBbing, is the sin of placing white text on a black background – which apparently makes things difficult to read. So I’m going to experiment with some changes to the look of the blog – I’d be most grateful for feedback from people about the look of the blog, both it’s present format and any of the alternatives that I’ll experiment with in the next couple of days.
NB if you use Firefox (and I imagine if you use IE) you can automatically change the text size by using the ‘view’ options.
People
Light up your light tonight
I wanna see you shine
Fight despair
Don’t let it get you down
Don’t let it tie you down
There’s a man with a wife and three children
Who’s been told he can’t work
There’s a boy who’s been told there’s no future
He’s been led by the blind.
Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misercordiam tuam.
Lord, when did we see you…?
Better than I thought (after having had hints of reviews).
I do think that the unconscious emerges in film – and that something like the Saw franchise is saying to our society: what do you really value? For the culture as a whole is trapped in a room with a tape recording saying ‘Let’s play a game….’ The walls of the room are made from energy, and Peak Oil is the lock.
For some reason, I’d never seen this before (tho’ I had seen some sequels). So this was catching up. I can see why it became so influential (especially on Nightmare on Elm Street); it had some very good moments; but there wasn’t enough back story/ mythology to make it really interesting. Apparently the sequel goes into that more, but I’m not sure I’ll bother.
You don’t believe me, but it gets better…