Is it just me, or can you totally fit the words to the hymn “Blessed Assurance” to the music of “Crazy Train”? On a not unrelated note, last weekend we got to hear a wonderful performance by Rachel Barton Pine, who, in addition to being a phenomenal classical violinist, also plays crossover renditions of heavy metal songs on the violin. Here’s a medley that is available on YouTube which includes “Crazy Train” and “Paranoid”: Read more
I won’t say too much about last night’s episode of LOST, except that using time travel to put some of the main characters in the time of the Dharma Initiative is a brilliant move. Either it allows the writers to tell a back-story that is necessary in order to resolve mysteries from earlier seasons without simply dropping the characters that we’ve come to know and love, or it is something that was planned from the beginning and these characters’ involvement... Read more
The reading for this past week’s Sunday school class was Romans 5, to provide an opportunity to bring our last two topics (Jesus’ life and work, and evolution) together. We didn’t actually discuss the evolutionary aspects to any great extent, but we did focus on the question of what is meant by the “sinful nature” (NIV) or “flesh” which Paul refers to in his letters. The image of an angel and a demon sitting on one’s shoulders making suggestions was... Read more
We human beings have a tendency to take what little information we have and extrapolate from it into a worldview that guides our lives and our decisions. Perhaps that is inevitable. What makes it particularly pernicious, however, is our tendency not only to make generalizations based on our limited knowledge, but to then affirm with unswerving certitude that which we claim to know. Darwin is rightly getting a lot of attention at the present, but we should not neglect the... Read more
Through a round-about sort of way, I’ve happened across some interesting points of intersection between the TV show LOST and the writings of Aleister Crowley. Among Crowley’s writings are The Book of the Law (a book with a similar title featured in an episode of LOST) and an account of “The Lost Continent of Atlantis” that features, among other things, Atlanteans who cannot have children, and a fear that further “progress” beyond the perfection they’d achieved would mean a loss... Read more
For those who have a special Romanian woman in their lives, don’t forget to get her a martisor, as tomorrow is March 1st. And flowers. Just a friendly reminder! Read more
Most people are aware of the discovery of the tomb in the Talpiot suburb of Jerusalem containing an ossuary apparently inscribed with the name Jesus son of Joseph, which was the focus of a documentary not that long ago. Scholars and other well-informed individuals know that the tomb in question was in fact excavated in the 1980s. I experienced a moment of initial perplexity when I read Andre Parrot’s 1955 book Golgotha and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and... Read more
David Ker has announced the following conference, to be held a millenium from now. Cyber-Symbology in the early-21st Century: Recursive Orality and Cotexting through Cyber-Psalm 26Date: February 29, 3008Location: TBACall for papers: Please submit title, abstract and a brief bio. Due to the nature of this conference an infinite number of papers may be submitted. I am proposing a paper, since I’m confident that between now and then, time travellers from the future will come and fetch me to make... Read more
Human beings in a wide variety of cultural and religious contexts find it comforting to think that everything happens for a reason, and this is a theme explored not only in various science fiction contexts in which notions of fate, destiny, and one’s path have been touched on (including not only LOST but also The Matrix and Star Wars films among many others), but also the very different Slumdog Millionaire. But why should we find it consoling that a slum-dwelling... Read more
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