Sept 11th - Sept 17th 2006
Sunday Bankside
Saturday Dwarvish
Friday Bankside
Thursday Pope-speak
Wednesday Brick Lane
Tuesday Adjectival core
Monday Aldgate
Sunday 17th September
Bankside, Summer 2006
Saturday 16th September
Overheard at the office
A: This UN story...
E: Mmm?
A: ...says the campaign to become the next Secretary General -quote- has been compared to a hurdle race between seven dwarfs -unquote-
E: And?
A: The plural of dwarf is 'dwarves', surely?
E: Mmm.
A: Should I change it?
E: Go on then.
D: One moment!
E: Mmm?
D: IMDB lists the 1937 Disney film as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarffffs"
E: Ah.
D: And given that the metaphor, excuse me simile, in question is patently a reference to Snow White..
A: They might be talking about some other seven dwarves...
M: Three Bears and Seven Dwarves?
G: Pornorella Meets the Seven Dwarves?
D: The Seven Dwarves of the Apocalypse?
A: I'll leave it then, shall I?
E: Mmm
Friday 15th September
Bankside, Summer 2006
Thursday 14th September
Professor Joseph Ratzinger taught theology at the University of Regensburg from 1969-1977. In his current incarnation as Pope Benedict, he has been revisiting his roots.
Last Tuesday, he addressed 'representatives of science' at his alma mater in a speech fetchingly entitled Faith, Reason and the University in which he spoke of the "experience of universitas, the experience, in other words, of the fact that despite our specializations, we made up a whole, sharing responsibility for the right use of reason."
He continued, "I was reminded of all this recently, when I read .. part of the dialogue carried on - perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara - by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both...
"He addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".
"The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable..."
"The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature..."
"But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality."
These [lightly-edited] remarks occur about a third of the way through the Pope's address, the remainder of which concerns itself with the historic relationship between rationality and the Christian faith. There are no further references to Muslim religion.
A reasonable speech, you might think, in which - almost in passing - His Holiness cites, but in no way endorses, the 'startlingly brusque' views of a 600-year-old Byzantine emperor as he addresses a specialist university audience on an obscure theological topic.
So are Muslims being reasonable in demanding, loudly and with occasional menaces, a personal apology?(Admit it, you didn't really follow the argument.)
Wednesday 13th September
Brick Lane, Summer 2006
Tuesday 12th September 2006
Much consternation at work, most of which I can't write about by virtue of my careful policy of never quite identifying precisely which newspaper website it is that I work for. (Those of you who give a fuck will have worked it out long ago; those of you who don't give a fuck - stay that way, I beg you.)
Suffice it to say that one of the trends in evidence is a necessary drawing closer between the hard-core webheads on the one hand, and the hard-bitten journalists on the other.
Many of my fellow webheads fear this trend, worrying that if we let the journalists get their hands on our web-access, what's left for us to do? I, for my part, I remind them that We Are The Future, and have been for several years now, and that, if anybody's feeling trepidation, it sure as hell shouldn't be us.
Failing that, I suggest the following tactic:
In mid-conversation with journalists, look suddenly distracted, mutter 'excuse me', reach for the phone, punch in a random number, and say: "Hi, its me, I'm picking up some sort of overload on the seventh sub-serve, something to do with the adjectival core, can't identify the exact problem but it looks as if the clausal parameters are running a little light...Yup, I tried the semi-colon thing but I just get a busy signal; do you wanna try rebooting the thesaurus?..Ok, let me know" and then turn back to the journalist and mutter "sorry about that..you were saying..?"
Monday 11th September 2006
Aldgate, Summer 2006
......previous week
