When the inspector calls, the chief weapon of fundamentalist fishermen–particularly those with long white beards–is Genesis 1:26-28: And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all…
I know it’s just a formula, but I still don’t like the tag on the Allawi quote: BAGHDAD Iraq will create a security service to tackle the insurgency in the country, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said Thursday. The new service, the General Security Directorate, “will annihilate those terrorists’ groups, God willing,” Allawi said during a…
It seems that the local parasite class is going to stop moaning about Bush and his Saudis for long enough tomorrow to welcome Prince Sultan ibn Salman, apparently secretary-general of the Saudi “Supreme Commission for Tourism”, who is here to open some anti-democratic jamboree down at the Forum, to which local women’s groups presumably haven’t…
With a high proportion of Guardianistas seemingly convinced by the thesis of that notorious pre-Ockhamite, Mr Moore, that things are better seen “as if in the continuous story of a divinity who spent his time reading and devising the Weekly Puzzle Magazine” (Eco, Travels), it is interesting to note that The Guardian might (almost, kind…
Waszynski’s extraordinary 1937 Dibuk still drifts into the occasional dream. Der Volf was written by another Polish Jewish artist, H Leivick at around the same time as the play on which Waszynski’s film was based. Both introduce the supernatural in order to help us understand why it is wrong to do wrong, but where Der…
From a lovely bit of work, Formatting the Word of God: The Charles Caldwell Ryrie Collection, produced by the Bridwell Library at SMU in Dallas: This [a 1551 Estienne bible, published in Calvin’s Geneva] is the book to which we are indebted for our custom of quoting the Bible by chapter and verse. It is…
Job 1: While [the messenger to Job] was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. So what do you do then? Phone a certain gentleman…
In the Middle Ages anyone of any commercial talent (and his/her mum) had visions and stored some human bones in the new toilet chapel extension of the pig shed nave of the temple next to that handy spring holy source on the hillside. Here, extracted by moderately cunning device from Amazon, is the relevant part of the ToC of Eileen Gardiner’s (not completely exhaustive) Medieval Visions of Heaven and Hell: A Sourcebook:
No help for the beardless wonder in the search for Conan Doyle’s Reminiscence of Cricket, but I did find two wonderful poems by South Asian schoolboys. Cricket Teams by Raza Shahban Ali of Fatimiyah Boys School, Karachi would have been an outstanding review of the world scene, had his laudatory couplet about England not been…
I have been up the coast a couple of times this week (off again tomorrow) and I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many spring flowers. Their profusion is partly a consequence of heavy rainfall, and partly of the fires last summer that burnt away heavy shrubbery and young pine woods, clearing the ground. However,…