May. Almost mid-May. This is the best part of the year, right? Is there anything better than the pre-black-fly world? It's like mosquitoes (is there an "e"?) don't exist, let alone wasps and hornets. It's still all about the plants but not quite yet the mowing. May is a time of imagination.
- You know what may is? May is the time for thinking about the things you will never do this summer. Like going to that bluegrass festival with mass banjo instruction. My inner novice banjo star would do so well at that sort of thing. But there might be bugs.
- Good to see the powers of the surveillance crime controllers are entirely misplaced:
In becoming the world's most-watched nation, Britain was promised a commensurate drop in crime. But the estimated 4.2 million closed-circuit television cameras in the U.K. have made barely a blip on the graph of public safety, a senior London detective in charge of the program admitted yesterday. Calling Britain's multibillion-dollar surveillance network "an utter fiasco," Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville said video footage has solved only 3 per cent of crime.
Multibillion. That is the beauty of a new technology. Boosts the economy without any real idea whether it works or not. - There is one thing that I don't understand about the post-9/11 anti-faithers like Martin Amis:
As the Ayatollah Khomeini used to say — in scandalized terms — affiliates of other religions think that they can go to church once a week, or even pray once a day, and that’s that. He said, Islam isn’t like that. The whole wave of Islamism is the revival of the idea that Islamism is the total guide to existence, that it’s not on the edges but right in the centre. If you adhere to this literalist way, [Islam] does follow you into every room in the house. It’s without its grandeur and beauty if you deny this central severity.
What kind of person has faith that doesn't get into every room in the house? It is like you have a relationship with the creator of all things and say: "feh - you can stay around but only in the rec room"? What kind of faith is that? - Dark matter is really out there. It's apparently baryonic - unlike me.
Comments
sean liddle - May 9, 2008 9:21 am
You don't have blackflies yet? Harrumph. I tried to weed one 1.5 X 2 metre section of my veg garden for my jalapenos (to be pickled this year!) and I was nearly carried away. It will be a bumper year for them, I so predict.
get out yer banjo!
http://www.lyricstime.com/wade-hemsworth-the-black-fly-song-lyrics.html
Jay Currie - May 9, 2008 10:56 pm
Why am I entirely unsurprised at the video surveillance failure? Realistically, there are not enough people in England to watch the output of 4.2 million cameras in real time. Your standard criminal is not so dumb that he does not own and wear a hoodie and dark glasses. The English, notably, set traffic cameras on fire. The use of cameras almost certainly reduces the total number of police on the actual street which is the one, proven, deterrent to crime.
A pal of mine who happens to be an Anglican priest was over for dinner a couple of nights ago and she mentioned that there were church going Anglicans, social Anglicans (like social members at a golf course, they can drink but not play) and now an emerging group of cultural Anglicans who like the tradition and the music but remain doubtful about the whole God thing. No mention of faith in the rec room but somehow it seems much the same thing.
However, I suspect what the Ayatollah was aiming at was not so much Faith as a guide for conduct. For example, my Anglican faith is silent on what food I should eat and the conditions under which I can beat my wife. I just have to make that kind of stuff up - with Islam you have certainty. I mean this is a religion which has, apparently, directions as to how one is to clean ones' self after shitting and the shaving of various bits of the body.
The interesting thing is that certainty is not the same thing as faith.
Alan - May 10, 2008 12:53 am
"...<i>For example, my Anglican faith is silent on what food I should eat and the conditions under which I can beat my wife. I just have to make that kind of stuff up</i>..."
Read your Bible. It's in there. No making up or make believe if you understand and, yes, it's the same thing as faith. The trouble is that people find it convenient to confuse attacking bad obligations with attacking obligations so that they can excuse their own failings at obligations. There are a multitude of obligations. Do you honour them before you find the beam in the eye of the other?