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Monthly Archives: January 2023
Swinging shepherd blues
I thought I ought to read Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur before I die. Not only is it one of those “monuments to English prose,” but to be honest I wanted some temporary escapism from the present evil age. The edition I got from Amazon, for a mere 15 quid or so, gives reading pleasure of the old sort in itself – leather bound, gold-edged, illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley, nice illuminated large-cap chapter starts, with old Gothic script headings, and with a modern scholarly introduction. Handling that old-school volume is as much superior to a Kindle edition as a live church service is to a webcast. It was printed in China, … Continue reading
Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology
2 Comments
Never let a spy treat your cough
Well, you wouldn’t, would you? “They never had the Latin,” to quote Peter Cook. The record of national Intelligence in medicine has not been good since Rudolph Nadolny of German Intelligence tried out anthrax as a weapon in the Great War.
Posted in History, Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science
2 Comments
Permacrisis management
A comment I noticed on a blog today, after someone suggested that there would be huge political ramifications once the truth of one of the COVID lies emerges: “Most Americans don’t trust the government already – but they still obey it.”
Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology
5 Comments
Fleeing our democratic values
There is a fascinating long-form discussion on The Duran, surely the best geopolitics channel on YouTube, including a very big fish indeed – Sergey Karaganov. His Wikipedia page shows some signs of anti-Russian bias, and a better idea of him can be gained from the few references in Richard Sakwa’s enlightening work, The Putin Paradox.
Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology
2 Comments
The shape of things that ought to have gone
I couldn’t resist watching, when YouTube’s algorithms offered it, the full print of Alexander Korda’s 1936 adaptation of H. G. Wells’s 1933 novel, The Shape of Things to Come. That’s because I watched it on our 14in TV back in the late 1950s, when the 1940 world war Wells accurately predicted, as Hitler came to power, was in the film still only half over. At the age of seven or so I was, naturally, impressed with the sci-fi sets and costumes – which were certainly not bad for the 1930s.
Posted in History, Politics and sociology
2 Comments
The logic of murder follows naturally from climate deception
One old trope of horror movies is that the witness to implacable evil is never believed. The sweet old lady you notice speaking to your friend in the lane suddenly morphs to reveal its true nature: “I saw it – it had huge eyes and green skin, and dragged Thelma down a hole.” “It’s just your imagination – she’s only gone to buy some bread, and will be back soon.” Since the Great Gloom, many of us (usually isolated from each other) have felt the same way, as our friends and relatives either humour or mock us for what, in fact, we know and they don’t. Very often they seem, … Continue reading
Posted in Medicine, Politics and sociology, Science
5 Comments
The Great Gloom – a theological perspective
With the hindsight of history – or, perhaps, of eternity – the Great Gloom that was imposed upon the world in 2020, and continues into 2023, is likely to be seen primarily as a failure of political leadership. Most of the world now is led by the kind of “false shepherds” condemned by the prophet Ezekiel in the Old Testament. In those days the agenda was idolatry and personal gain, and in one way or another the same is probably true now.
Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Theology
6 Comments