This morning’s photo kindly taken by Mrs Rev Sam, as Rev Sam still feels unwell, and was able to take advantage of an extensive lie-in – as a result of which he feels he has turned the corner. Lets see how today goes.
Author Archives: Elizaphanian
Sex tips from our priest
TBTM20061109
Feeling a leetle beet bettur…
The Power of Nightmares
“In a society that believes in nothing, fear becomes the only agenda… a society that believes in nothing is particularly frightened by people who believe in anything, and therefore we label those people as fundamentalists or fanatics… and they have much greater purchase in terms of the fear that they instil in society, than they truly deserve.”
I have finally finished watching the excellent – outstandingly excellent – BBC documentary ‘The Power of Nightmares’. Available, thanks to the generosity of Chris Locke here. Be warned – it is three hours long. But if you haven’t watched it, it would be fair to say that, unless you’re already in an exceptionally well-informed position, you don’t understand the nature of the present world.
And all I kept thinking about was this fact: the single command repeated more often than any other in the Bible is: DO NOT BE AFRAID.
Because if you succumb to fear, then the prince of this world will rule over you.
(Forgot to add: Wendell Berry on this topic) (HT Andrew Sherwood)
TBTM20061108
Having thought I’d recovered from my bug – it must have been the adrenaline surge on Sunday that disguised things – I now wake up feeling even worse. Ominous flu symptoms – aching joints and muscles, painfully sore throat – so I’m going to cancel just about everything and see what hunkering down with Lemsip can do today.
I think it’s (in part) the consequence of not having a proper day off last week….
Stanley Fish on tolerance
This is a great article: “far from being a simple, benign virtue, tolerance is the technology or governmentality… of an ideology that privileges some values — individual will, autonomy, choice, procedural (not substantive) justice, rationality, freedom of expression, freedom of markets — and stigmatizes or marginalizes others — group loyalty, religious obedience, the law of God, tribal traditions, the national ethos, blood, culture.”
Have a nice day
The solitary good reason for action against Iran. Outnumbered and outgunned by all the reasons why it’s a barking mad thing to do, but that doesn’t change it’s truth.
Damned and damnable
I argued before the invasion, that “if the Republicans have become arrogant with power, and are not trusting in God for the ultimate outcome, then I think they are leading the world to ruin. If the decision to attack is motivated by a concern for the weak and defenceless (the Biblical ‘widows and orphans’) then it is justified; if it is taken from a lust and glorying in power and temporal might – then it is damned and damnable.”
Now read this.
I really hope that Bush gets stuffed today. In particular, I hope that the Republicans lose both houses, so that some proper investigations can be carried out into the last six years of tragic incompetence.
(I say that as someone who would qualify as a Republican on most things.)
More climate change scepticism (Lomborg)
Lomborg on the Stern Report here.
I have been a great fan of The Sceptical Environmentalist. It was understanding Peak Oil which shifted my position – not least because in 1999 Lomborg argued that the oil supply was so healthy, there would be no peak, and therefore the price of oil would remain below $20 until 2020.
Ho ho.
However, I do think he makes one very good point, which is good irrespective of his arguments about global warming: “Spending just a fraction of this figure–$75 billion–the U.N. estimates that we could solve all the world’s major basic problems. We could give everyone clean drinking water, sanitation, basic health care and education right now.” And we don’t do that because, frankly, our system is profoundly wicked and about to suffer God’s just judgement (see my talks for further details 😉
The real trouble is that trying to capture the problem of global warming (which is itself only one symptom of the more fundamental problem of exponential growth in a finite system) through using economics is like trying to ward off demons by invoking satan. It’s just not going to bat on your side.
TBTM20061107
A very murky morning.
But what men consider reasonable or unreasonable alters. At certain periods men find reasonable what at other periods they find unreasonable. And vice versa.
But is there no objective character here?
Very intelligent and well-educated people believe in the story of creation in the Bible, while others hold it as proven false, and the grounds of the latter are well known to the former.
(Wittgenstein)