Warmongers

Maia discusses Iraq and asks who do you want to win?

How about nobody? Yes, that works for me; I want nobody to win in Iraq. Unlike some of my fellow leftists, I do not think of the men who plant the bombs as the resistance. I do not believe these men are courageously fighting foreign occupation, engaged in a war against American Imperialism.

I think the bakers might agree.

Truth, beauty, etc.

Friday was National Poetry Day. In celebration of same, Apathy Jack has performance, while Harvest Bird has fragments. Meanwhile, everything is digital at the NZ Electronic Poetry Centre.

Update: Zen Tiger has Tyger and Tangerine Dream, while PC has more poems.

News 29/7

Da Vinci code theories crash Last Supper websites
Jesuits take word of God to Second Life
Pope Benedict admits evidence for evolution
Religion joins US election debate
Red-faced church sorry for blue dean
Rising violence in schools blamed on discipline changes
MySpace Finds 29,000 Sex Offenders
'Gay' rally in Georgia cancelled

With thanks to Craig

Arts and letters

Other places on Internet may offer you rather distasteful video clips, such as tramps fighting and skateboarders suffering unpleasant injuries. The Fundy Post, however, has the noblest intentions of civility and culture. So when this blog brings you a fight, it is between a writer and an actor. It also has French subtitles.

The following bohemian death-match is from Norman Mailer's 1971 film, Maidstone. It features Mr Rip Torn attacking Mr Mailer with a hammer, quite unexpectedly, and Mr Mailer biting a chunk out of Mr Torn's ear. The film is being shown in a retrospective in New York at present. You can read more about it in the NYT, The New York Sun and Time.

Youth against Fascism

3 Quarks Daily discusses Vladimir Putin's teenage fanclub:

The word [Nashi] means ‘ours’, and it is in the nominative plural.  That is to say, there is more than one thing that is ‘ours’, but nowhere in the literature is a precise inventory offered.  The clean teens of Nashi are, as we learn from the ‘Ideologiia’ section of their website, strong defenders of tradition, of respect for parental and political authority, strong opponents of corrupt morality (sex, drugs, laziness), and wary watchers of the non-Russian peoples within Russia’s boundaries.  In view of all this, one might be surprised to learn that they are also the staunch opponents of something they call ‘fascism’.

Here's Sonic Youth:

Vers une architecture

He first teleports me to his studio, where he is sitting at a glass table outside his showroom smoking a giant cigarette, with what appears to be a female slave in a trance kneeling at his feet. "Greetings Vitruvius," he says, and shakes my hand. Actually, he puts his hand through my back because I'm facing the wrong way.

The Guardian reports on the practice of architecture in Second Life.

In Brigadoon again

Oh dear. My former employers still persist in trying to make everyone believe that Dr Bill Cooke really, really, was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Buffalo (2003-2006). So determined are they to prove white is the new black that they have now amended Dr Cooke's bio to include a link to a jpg of his letter of acceptance and his staff card. They really are trying very hard.

It won't work. As I observed in a previous post, there is no University of Buffalo and the Department Chair of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo has said that Dr Cooke was never a member of the Faculty.

In particular, the NZARH have not addressed the explanation given by the Department Chair, in a letter to me:

As I observed in my previous communication about this matter, the Philosophy Department has often offered courtesy appointments to resident fellows at the Center for Inquiry to permit them to get a parking tag and to use the library at the University at Buffalo. In the past we were required to submit paperwork that appointed people as visiting professors in order to establish this relationship, although in our “in-house” language the relationship was called “research fellow”. (I suspect that Dean Sukhatme, who was new to the university at the time, may not have been aware of the terminological disparity.) At any rate, these appointments were not true appointments to the faculty, for the fellows did not teach for us or receive salaries.  In order to remove misunderstanding that this situation sometimes generated (more than once I should add), we now use different titles and do not submit paperwork that appoints people as visiting faculty.

I find it pitiful that the governing body of an organisation which is supposedly based on Reason is prepared to put its reputation at stake for the sake of someone who is on record as having lied to them and of having used his position for personal gain. But that is their problem. Here's Nick Lowe:

Rock logic, water logic

In search of ley lines on the island of Lundy:

On the rugged east side of the island we found a lovely rounded stone behind some sheep fields. Shaun reckoned it was 'female' with 'strong energy', so he and Lawrence decided to bless it. Lawrence whispered tenderly: 'Thank you, stone, for being here,' and poured water on it. As it ran down the side, I pointed out that it made the stone look like the yin-and-yang symbol. They jumped on this, declaring the stone male and female, even more special. We held hands around it, shut our eyes and chanted 'Ommmmm'.

Mad about Harry

Over at NZ Conspiratorial, Fletch has been watching too much television:

Anyway, back to GOD TV. I was watching this the other day and it had a segment with a man and a woman who turned out to be Wendy and Rory who started the station. Wendy was praying especially for Britain on this segment as she felt that it was under attack, and that the weather was somehow connected to the occult and Harry Potter. Yes, you can scoff, but I wondered....
Of course, this weekend is the launch of the new Harry book and it has seen some of the worst weather Britain has seen in YEARS. Coincidence? Maybe....

Maybe, but the Rt Rev Graham Dow, Anglican Bishop of Carlisle, has another theory about the floods. He blames the gays. Yes, it's God's judgement on society, once again. And once again it is a flood, which is a rather crude way of telling off the people: Daffyd may be the only gay in the village but everybody gets wet. You think He would have at least warned the righteous to build boats or take out insurance.

Of course, the real blame lies with the Government, which "has been playing the role of God in saying that people are free to act as they want." Hang on; I am no theologian but doesn't God say we are free to act as we want, or does the doctrine of Free Will mean something else? And, whilst we are at it, didn't God tell Noah that he wouldn't send any more floods?

Meanwhile, the Government is also being blamed for Harry Potter:

Blair's 10 years as Prime Minster coincided exactly with the 10 years over which the Harry Potter series was published, 1997-2007. What does this tell us? Professor Bloom argues that Rowling's work appeals to 'millions of "reader non-readers" because they sense her wistful sincerity, and want to join her world, imaginary or not, in their desire to feed a vast hunger for unreality.' It's not a bad summary of the Blair years, is it? The Harry Potter books are pure escapism; clearly the Blair generation of readers craved escape.

Men without hats

I was today reading about Chapeaugraphy, a form of street entertainment in 17th Century Paris invented by Tabarin, the most famous of the Charlatans. It involved taking a ring of heavy felt and forming it into the shapes of various hats. Perhaps it does not seem much like fun, but you must remember they did not have Facebook back then.

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI should consider discovering this lost art. Such an ability to perform tricks might come in handy for distracting critics from the huge problem of child abuse in his Church. At present the Roman Catholic Church is adopting a tactic of smearing other institutions that have care of children, by suggesting that the Church has dealt with the problem and that the others should jolly-well get on with it themselves.

Clearly this ruse will not work, since everyone knows (or should know) how Rome has dealt with the problem until now. Consider, for example, Cardinal Bernard Law, who was forced to resign as Archbishop of Boston after his to conceal abuse almost brought the Archdiocese to destruction. When he found himself in need of a new job and somewhere to run, the Church took him to its heart by awarding him the position of Archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, in Rome. This, of course, was the action of John-Paul II; the present Pope is said to take a harder line on the issue - taking any kind of line is considered to be quite staunch, given the Church's reluctance to discuss the matter. But Benedict XVI has done his bit; in May 2001, when he was plain old Cardinal Ratzinger and head of the Congregatio pro Doctrina Fidei, he sent a letter to all the Bishops reminding them that claims of child sex abuse were subject to the Pontifical Secret, and so should not be reported to the lawful authorities until they had been investigated within the Church.

It is not as if it were a new problem, either: the matter of child sexual abuse by Priests was first addressed a couple of Benedicts ago, in 1741.