Black Futures

I refuse to get 'upperty' about the degree of ignorance exposed in the world over the black hole issue - what I will say is 'so much for Science education!'

Romanians (I am sure) are no worse than other nations (although the refusal to recognise their backwardness in things educational is spectacular - one teacher in a 'respectable' secondary school not far from where I am typing openly taught a class of 17-18 year olds that the dinosaurs died out because they didn't go into Noah's Arc and dinosaurs and people lived at the same time!), but the emotional outpouring of fear over the CERN experiment is amazing to behold. The strongest reason given so far for such fear and belief in the inevitable end of the world is Nostradamus and his 'predictions - so much for the quality of education.

Thank goodness the Romanian National football team is doing so badly - it is providing a much needed distraction. The headline "major" victory for a 1-0 defeat of the Faeroe Island team I suspect is a little over the top. In case anyone here needs reminding - the population of the islands is less than 50,000!

Mind you, the glorious victory of the English over the Croatians, if population is a factor, doesn't quite hold up to too much inspection.

But Walcott got 3 so I don't care.

Know the enemy ...

Bad night – strange dreams.

Too hot to do anything during the day – including eat … !!!!

Not even in the mood to drink: A half hearted attempt to sink a couple of beers in the form of shandy failed miserably.

Not as miserably as the Romanian football team – which appears to have taken the example of the English team and gone down the drain. So too the Scots – not a nation I have an over fondness for at the moment (although they are doing great things for Romanian education). Pleased to see their precious national team hasn’t got a chance and that the sensible thing would be to field a British team in football … whoops, forbidden territory.

That unshaved, ugly traitor Mad Murray is unfortunately doing too well in his beloved USA (you can have him – give him States citizenship, please) at the expense of a real player (Mr Nadal) – but it’s taken a hurricane to help him out of the inevitable slaughter which was about to ensue as the clean shaved and respectable looking Spaniard recovered form.

Whilst we are over in the states it is worth mentioning that the Palin woman (real Republican Candidate for president) is accused of book banning ….

…. anyone shocked?

Mind you – as a schoolchild I was pleased the Catholic Church had their ‘index’ – a book with a list of books that they had banned. It was a great place to go for a quick smutty read in the library – it not only told you what was banned but why … so the fertile teenage imagination could fantasize about countless bestial and worse activities under the guise of ‘explanation’. I have to say I suspect anyone wanting to ban a book is more frightened of the power the words are having over them than over others. What happened to ‘know thine enemy’?

There is a seriously odd television channel here in Timisoara which perpetrates all sort of Christian nonsense (which I am quite happy with – no banning needed, just a quality state education) and provides regular moments of poor quality ‘healthy’ programming … pity the child exposed to that alone.

Babel, Kosovo, Orwell and Kadare

On This Day

• 1389: Ottoman sultan Murad I defeats the Serbs at the Battle of Kosovo, a key event in Serbian national history.

The BBC.

Strange the banging together of ideas and thoughts - and lessons.

I was doing a 'conversation' session on Wednesday - based (at the request of one of the participants) on a set of programmes from the BBC Learning English programme, Talk about English.

The series (excellent) is called, 'Who on Earth are we?' - and has a basis in the idea of culture and how it affects communication.

We started to examine the idea of stereotypes and got on to the question of what stereotypes people thought there were about Romanians. Our discussion moved into the topic of religion, never very safe at the best of times.


Life got a little warm, but not too heated - the biggest issue being over the peaceful nature of the Orthodox religion in Romania.

I decline, at this point, to address that.

After the discussion, I thought about posting a few comments on the effects of religion on the 'cultural identity' of people.

However, seeing as I regard statements in the English classroom as more confessional than those delivered to your average psychiatrist (at least you are concious of what you are saying on the couch, and in some control of the language you are using) I decided against it - and preserved the integrity of Babel, once again.

However, the issue has been simmering - and when, today, the Beeb pop up with the Kosovo Battle - it spills over.

Take a look at this choice piece of writing:

On June 28, 1389, a mighty battle was fought at Kosovo Polje. It pitted the Serbian defenders of Christ's holy cross against the invading Ottoman Empire (Turkey) adherents of the Muslim crescent moon.

This is from a piece from 'Truthmedia' - welcome to 1984 'newspeak' in reality.

I think the idea of combining crude nationalism and divisive religious views can find no better expression (I also guess the writers of this 'truth' wouldn't even notice they'd done it).

I've blogged before on nationalism and patriotism - on the difference between loving the state and loving the land.

Unfortunately, religion has been dragged in on the side of the state - and that leads to an intensification of conflict.

It doesn't have to be - the English (after beating each other to death and burning a few people) finally settled to a religion which, at its best, fitted the land: Anglicanism is a now dated celebration of getting on with the farming and not messing around with the harvest.

It's whole principle is the reduction of religion to being servant of the people, not the other way round - and if the sate is going to be involved (and, boy, is it involved in the Anglican Church!) it is only to make sure the religion stays firmly in it's place - Sunday morning, and a couple of rites of passage.

God and you are friends on personal terms - you don't need a man in silly clothes to interfere between you - and the buildings are nice too.

Not so I'm afraid with other nations - they take their gods far too seriously - look at the state America gets in!

And don't forget, that is a place which believes in the separation of religion from the state!

Newspeak!

If there was to be a 'new-speak' in Orwell's totalitarian world, there must have been an 'Oldspeak'.

Fortunately, Kosovo has managed to produce an adherant to Oldspeak as well as countless adherents to the destruction of words.

Ismail Kadare

You may, or may not have heard of the Albanian author - he has something of a reputation.

For the purposes of this little excursion, he wrote perhaps the sanest book on the events in Kosovo over 600 years ago:

Three Elegies for Kosovo.

(Amazon uk)


Technorati Tags: BBC, Kosovo, religion, Timisoara, Romania, Babel, USA

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DEBATE: US Elections - Super Tuesday: Your views

SENT: 05-Feb-2008 06:54

COMMENT:

Not the most pressing issue in the world - and certainly not the most interesting.

Hopefully the 'issue' will be resolved today - then we can go back to getting some real 'international' news.

Will say that the fact one of the candidates can openly admit he doesn't 'believe' in evolution - and can still be seriously considered intelligent enough to run such a dangerous country as the USA scares the living daylights out of me.

Imagine such 'fundamentalist' views being expressed elsewhere.

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The more I think about it - the more frightening it is - a serious and supported Christian fundamentalist in power!

What next - a pope who believes in exorcism?