More Religious News

A fantastic precis on fark today of a story about Pope Benedict XVI in Australia calling upon ‘all faiths to unite against violence’

fark trails this as “Pope urges all faiths to unite against violence, apparently not realizing that they are the main cause of the problem in the first place“

Wow Wow Wow

Neatorama displays this jaw-dropping video of the moon transiting the earth filmed from 50 million kilometres away - with the following background information supplied by Bad Astronomy, the site where this image originally appeared -

First, the setup. The Deep Impact spacecraft was the one that smacked a chunk of copper into a comet so that we could see what materials were below the surface. After the impact, the spacecraft kept going (with the mission renamed EPOXI), and it’s being used to do all sorts of interesting observations.

In late May, 2008, it turned its cameras back to Earth and observed us over the course of a several hours. During this time, from EPOXI’s point of view, the Moon passed directly in front of the Earth! The images were put together into, well, one of the most astonishing animations I have ever watched. Ever.

This is a view that is literally impossible from the ground. Only a spacefaring race gets the privilege of this view from a height.

Religious News (Incorporating Electrified Food)

Here’s a kindly old American Grandpa advocating the electrocution of Christians - seems like a pretty good idea to me

But, for fuck sake, don’t try this at home

500,000

In a post on 24 March 2007, I wrote the following -

If you look at the bottom of the right hand margin you will see a sort of ‘hit-counter’ which is now recording that some time earlier today the 100,000 hits mark was passed. That is 100,000 hits since I moved the blog from Blogger to WordPress in June last year.

I do not record this out of any sense of boastfulness because I’ve no idea whether the figure is large, medium or small in terms of what other blogs get. I merely record it to mark the passing of a landmark figure - the next one which will be worth mentioning will be 500, 000 and I will clearly be long gone before that happens

It had taken 9 months to clock up 100,000 hits and I figured that it would be about March 2010 before we got anywhere near half a million.

I am both staggered and gratified that according to the wordpress stat counter in the left hand margin we have arrived at half a million hits today.

Once again, thank you to all readers for visiting - a particular thanks to all who have taken the trouble to add comments - I love reading them, please keep them coming.

The blog continues to be primarily for my own amusement, but if it incidentally gives some entertainment to visitors then I am very well pleased.

For reasons which will become clear, in the next week or two I am going to have to seriously curtail my blogging activities, at least in the short term, but maybe permanently. I will let you know - but many thanks to all for the half million hits.

Does Jesus Really Exist Or Is It Just Your Father Dressed Up?

It Was Nine Years Ago Today

This is one of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century.

It was taken in November 1963 when this child was 3 years old.

On 16 July 1999 he died when a plane which he was piloting crashed in the Atlantic Ocean near Martha’s Vineyard.

It Was Sixty Three Years Ago Today

16 July 1945

The photograph may look like one of these cute snow-shaker globes that are all the rage at Christmas.

In fact it is a photograph taken on this day 63 years ago approximately 0.016 seconds after detonation of the first nuclear device, codenamed Trinity.

The detonation was conducted by the United States on July 16, 1945, at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range in a remote section of desert near Los Alamos, New Mexico on what is now White Sands Missile Range. Trinity was a test of an implosion-design plutonium bomb.

The photograph thus shows the very birth of the Atomic age.

Before this test took place, no one knew whether it would work. The race had been on to develop an atomic weapon ahead of the Germans (and Soviets) who were desperately trying to acquire this decisive war-winning bomb.

But the scientists, perhaps the creme-de-la-creme of human intelligence, were not certain what would happen when the bomb was detonated. In theory they knew that it should cause a big fucking explosion, but in practice………??? Who knew?

In what passed for light-hearted humour among the Los Alamos physicists, they had started a betting pool on the possible yield of the bomb. Estimates ranged from zero (ie it’ll go phut) to as high as 45,000 tons of TNT. Enrico Fermi, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1938 for his work on nuclear fission, offered side odds on the bomb destroying all life on the planet.

The detonation, when it came, staggered everyone who witnessed it, and moved Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan project (the project to develop the atomic bomb), to utter his famous apocalyptic quote from the Bhagavad Gita, “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendour of the mighty one. Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.“

T. F. Farrell, a brigadier general on the staff of Major Gen. Leslie Groves, the Manhattan Project’s military commander, wrote:

The effects could well be called unprecedented, magnificent, beautiful, stupendous and terrifying. No man-made phenomenon of such tremendous power had ever occurred before. The lighting effects beggared description. The whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times that of the midday sun. It was golden, purple, violet, gray and blue. It lighted every peak, crevasse and ridge of the nearby mountain range with a clarity and beauty that cannot be described but must be seen to be imagined.

The blast, which sent a mushroom cloud boiling 38,000 feet into the sky, was both visible and audible for hundreds of miles around. The heat generated at the blast point was described as being 10,000 times hotter than the surface of the sun. Even at 10 miles removed from ground zero, witnesses said the resulting heat wave was like standing directly in front of a roaring fireplace.

In other words - it worked !!

Yee-hah.

Less than 3 weeks later, on August 6 1945, an atomic bomb (’amusingly’ code-named ‘Little Boy’) was used to destroy the Japanese city of Hiroshima, followed on 9 August 1945 by the similar destruction of Nagasaki by means of the equally wittily named ‘Fat Man’ plutonium bomb. At least 148,000 people perished instantly with another 200,000 dying of delayed effects, hours, days, months and years later.

(thanks to Wired and Wikipedia from which most of this was drawn)

My Man, Buzz Lightyear Here

1984 Revisited

There’s a great article on boingboing (in turn referring to the source at ACLU) about the United States Terrorist Watch List.

The list contains the names of people suspected of being terrorists or helpers of terrorists.

The list of names is secret (ie not in the public domain).

The criteria for listing people are secret.

Once you are on the list, it is impossible to get off it.

It is known that the list includes Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other ’suspicious characters,’ with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith.

ACLU describes people becoming “trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape“.

Once on the list, you will spend your days being harassed, denied the fundamental right to travel, and punished for having a name vaguely like the name once used by someone who may or may not be a terrorist.

But of course States have the right to protect themselves and their citizens from the depredations of terrorists. And, it is of course a fairly fundamental freedom not to be killed by some mad bastard with a bomb.

The reason I mention the USA’s watchlist is that the number of names on it

NOW EXCEEDS ONE MILLION

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae

As the financial markets head towards global meltdown, we start to hear about more and more exotic companies (usually American) hitting the buffers.

Bear Stearns ?? Jesus.

If someone had asked you about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac a couple of weeks ago, you would’ve thought it was some kind of porno film (remember the master-stroke of the BBC calling a costume drama ‘Fanny by Gaslight’ - huge audience figures to begin with, tapering off markedly when the true nature of the production became clear).

But Freddie Mac is the common slang term for The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, while Fannie Mae is the equivalent term for The Federal National Mortgage Association.

In other words the names are acronyms invented by people with dyslexia.

Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee about half of the U.S.A.’s $12 trillion mortgage market. As a result of the mortgage crisis over the last year Fannie and Freddie are fucked.

The US government is having to take action to prevent the collapse of both corporations, with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson echoing the commonly held belief that “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac play a central role in our housing finance system“, and therefore could not be allowed to fail.

It seems that, in a reversal of the usual trend, all your Fannies have turned out like doughnuts.

Milk Snatcher Revisited

A comment from Sonsdiary here, prompts me to make some remarks about the weekend story that arrangements are in hand to afford Mrs Thatcher a State funeral. We have to wait for her to die, of course, and apparently that isn’t imminent, but ‘it’s sensible to plan ahead’ is the official word.

I haven’t the foggiest idea how this decision was arrived at. Whatever your political allegiances, whatever your view of Mrs Thatcher’s tenure as Minister and Prime Minister, there is simply no denying that she was one of the most divisive political leaders this country has ever known.

It is 17 years since she left Downing Street, but even after all that time, her death, were it to occur now, would be greeted by rejoicing in many parts of the UK. In fact ‘rejoicing’ is a very apt term - remember 1982 and the beginning of the Falklands War - the Press are sceptical about her announcement of the re-taking of South Georgia and ask “Are we at war with Argentina ?” - Answer “Rejoice“.

So, perhaps a State funeral is not such a good idea, as many would turn it into a gala day.

Not many politicians in a democracy could inspire the kind of loathing evident in Elvis Costello’s 1989 song ‘Tramp the Dirt Down’ - this song has echoes of Dylan’s ‘Masters of War’ (I’ll stand over your grave till I’m sure that you’re dead), but in Costello’s case, names are named -

I saw a newspaper picture from the political
campaign
A woman was kissing a child, who was obviously
in pain
She spills with compassion, as that young child’s
face in her hands she grips
Can you imagine all that greed and avarice
coming down on that child’s lips
Well I hope I don’t die too soon
I pray the Lord my soul to save
Oh I’ll be a good boy, I’m trying so hard to behave
Because there’s one thing I know, I’d like to live
long enough to savour
That’s when they finally put you in the ground
I’ll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt down

When England was the whore of the world
Margaret [sic] was her madam
And the future looked as bright and as clear as
the black tarmacadam
Well I hope that she sleeps well at night, isn’t
haunted by every tiny detail
‘Cos when she held that lovely face in her hands
all she thought of was betrayal

And now the cynical ones say that it all ends
the same in the long run
Try telling that to the desperate father who just
squeezed the life from his only son
And how it’s only voices in your head and
dreams you never dreamt
Try telling him the subtle difference between
justice and contempt
Try telling me she isn’t angry with this pitiful
discontent
When they flaunt it in your face as you line up
for punishment
And then expect you to say “Thank you”
straighten up, look proud and pleased
Because you’ve only got the symptoms, you
haven’t got the whole disease
Just like a schoolboy, whose head’s like a tin-can
filled up with dreams then poured down
the drain
Try telling that to the boys on both sides, being
blown to bits or beaten and maimed
Who takes all the glory and none of the shame

Well I hope you live long now, I pray the Lord
your soul to keep
I think I’ll be going before we fold our arms
and start to weep
I never thought for a moment that human life
could be so cheap
‘Cos when they finally put you in the ground
They’ll stand there laughing and tramp the
dirt down

The Knives Are Out

Is that a dagger I see before me?

Yesterday I was watching Sky News when I saw Adam Boulton interviewing the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith. She was on about ‘knife crime’ which is the latest passing riderless horse that the Government has leapt aboard in the hope of restoring some popularity for itself.

The Home Secretary said that youngsters caught with knives would be forced to confront the possible consequences by bringing them face-to-face with blade victims in hospitals.

Boulton clarified this by asking “One of those proposals is that people caught carrying knives should be taken to see people in hospital who have been stabbed, or to meet the families of victims, is that correct?“

“It is,” replied Ms Smith.

Over my afternoon latte and croissants I thought to myself in the Gaelic, “That is a fucking crackpot, hare-brained scheme if ever I heard one” - but then I am a mere cynical provincial blogger, and not one of Her Majesty’s Ministers or Most Honourable Privy Councillors.

Despite my initial gut feeling, I believed that at least they would’ve thought this through before making such a radical announcement.

Imagine my surprise on coming home from work tonight to see film of the self-same Ms Smith answering questions in the House of Commons today (less than 24 hours after her appearance on Sky News) in which she said,

“I never said, and nor would it be sensible, for young people to be trailed through A&E wards while people were being served.“

Leaving aside the fact that customers in shops are ’served’ - people in A+E are ‘treated’ or ’stitched’ - this seems to be a complete U-turn, indicating utter chaos in the Government.

Information City, Arizona

I don’t know whether all readers are aware of the remarkable facility that Answers.com offers when you are browsing a web-page, including postings on this very blog (note - I’m not sure whether you have to download any software - or whether this only works with Firefox etc - but if you like this you can investigate how to get it to work on your own site).

If you come across a word or a phrase that you would like to know more about then you can press ‘Alt’ and click simultaneously to get instant information.

For example, in the recent posting about Buddy Holly, if you highlight the name Buddy Holly and then ALT + click, a dialogue box will open as if by magic, like so

And Robert is your auntie’s husband.

It Was Twenty Three Years Ago Today

July 13 1985

Live Aid concerts in London and Philadelphia and elsewhere.

A gathering of the rock royalty.

Some, such as Queen, U2 and Madonna etc seized the opportunity of the massive world-wide audience to turn in career-defining show-stopping performances that magnified their earnings ten-fold overnight.

In the absence of Elvis and Beatles (though individual members of the latter turned up), the undoubted primus inter pares of the collected popular music talent, and thus top of the bill with the right of seniority to close the show, was the Bard of Hibbing himself, our old chum Bobby D.

Or, as Jack Nicholson put it, in a tremblingly effusive and awestruck introduction, “Some artists’ work speaks for itself; some artist’s work speaks for his generation. It’s my deep personal pleasure to present to you one of America’s great voices of freedom. It can only be one man! The transcendent Bob Dylan!“

Bob then appeared on the stage clutching an acoustic guitar looking quite forlorn and a bit lost and entirely un-transcendent. He mumbled something about being joined by ‘a coupla people who came along tonight - Ron Wood and Keith Richards’. He then peered around the stage and said “I don’t know where they are though”.

This is going to turn out well, I thought, watching at home.

Eventually the two errant Rolling Stones turned up and the trio commenced a performance for which the word ’shambolic’ could’ve been especially invented.

The three of them were playing acoustic guitars, but as you will see from the video here, they were each playing entirely different songs simultaneously.

Apparently they HAD rehearsed this, but there is no way that you can tell that from the ‘performance’.

Before they got to the song shown here, Bob made a small speech which indicated that he’d entirely missed the point of Live Aid being in support of the poorest people in Africa who were literally starving to death, saying, “I’d just like to say I hope that some of the money that’s raised for the people in Africa - maybe they could just take a little bit of it - maybe one or two million, maybe - and use it, say, to pay the mortgages on some of the farms that the farmers here owe to the banks.“

Certainly there was a place for raising the plight of American farmers.

This wasn’t it.

Though Bob did this deliberately, and it directly led to Farm Aid in America, so maybe he was right.

There’s a huge TV audience. Play your best and/or best-known songs. Bob played Hollis Brown and When The Ship Comes In. Only Bob-cats had ever heard them before. Bob wasn’t cashing in.

And on to ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’.

Pretty well anything that could’ve gone wrong here went wrong.

While U2 and Queen etc had gathered legions of new fans, with this performance Bob pretty well alienated every viewer who was not already a devoted Bobcat. Instead of stunning the non-Bob world with a display of his old power, he stunned everyone, including the Bob world, with a performance that would’ve had him and his companions ejected from every pub in Glasgow.

There’s a quite wonderful bit at 3m 10s on this video, when Keith is totally gone, playing a complex noodling solo. Bob turns to Ron Wood and shrugs and grins, as though ‘what the feck is he doing?’

Bob breaks a string. Him and Ronnie exchange guitars at a critical moment. The effect is so irredeemably amateurish that you think they must be doing it deliberately for a laugh. Ronnie’s temporarily left without a guitar - you cannot see it on this film, but he actually plays air guitar for a few seconds, including extravagant Townshend style windmilling, before a replacement is provided, which he then proceeds to tune up WHILE BOB IS SINGING.

But it makes no odds. The song is ramshackle and it meanders along towards a conclusion that Bob hasn’t worked out, and Keith hasn’t been told about. Before the end, there’s a delightful ‘Carry On’ moment when somebody behind the curtain at the back of the stage nips Ron Wood’s bum and he jumps forward Charles Haughtrey stylee.

It is completely fantastic.

PS - I have been receiving quite a number of visitors here from a link posted on ‘Expecting Rain’ one of my favourite Dylan sites. I can see that some visitors might think I am being unduly harsh on Bob and Co, so I just want to make it abundantly clear to new visitors that I am a life-long devotee who considers Live Aid as an unfortunate blip.

So, welcome to visitors from Expecting Rain - all of my (125) postings concerning Bob Dylan can be found here -

http://almax.wordpress.com/category/rock-music/bob-dylan/

Campbeltown Loch Just Moments Ago…..

…….courtesy of the webcam at visitkintyre.info