A Case of Identity

"My dear fellow," said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, "life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent."
This being the opening sentence from Conan Doyle's third SH story about a father masquerading as a short-sighted suitor to deceive his daughter. Which led me to a few idle thoughts about identity and the wearing of badges which are, it seems, some kind of validation of it. I could bang on about hijabs or barcodes bearing 666 in binary at this point, but others have been there before, so, no.
I myself am contractually obliged to drape an unflattering, laminated photograph plus emblematic logo around my neck to proclaim my identity to anyone curious enough to peer at it. The children I teach do not, yet for security reasons they are the very ones whose identities should be known with more accuracy than mine.

The very act of donning such a tag is a signal of submission. Not of mutual commitment to public safety. To the sceptical, why does no one with actual power wear one? Which chief executive has one on over their suit. In a university, does the chancellor wear one? Hold your breath until the next time Obama appears at a press conference with one on. Of course, the reporters, lower in the food chain, will have them. ID badges, whatever their ostensible purpose, have the effect of segregating those whose dignity is deemed important from those whose is not.
There perhaps exist circumstances in which immediate identification of an unknown person's affiliation outweighs such concerns: in a nuclear weapons facility, perhaps. Or a school playground. Otherwise, do I really wish to know that my waiter's name is Omar? I hardly think we're gonna exchange Christmas greetings.

The image is of king penguins in the Falklands, recently making a comeback. Startlingly similar, there's not an identity tag in sight.

June the First and other incoherencies

No, it's not the Queen of the ancient Sahelian kingdom of Burkina Faso. I only know one person, fortunately, called June and only two called May. It surprised me to learn that there are over nine hundred and twenty-four million Internet possibilities for June the First, however. One wonders what can rivet people so consistently. It seems that a good deal happened in the past on this day, including the birth of Marilyn Monroe, Brigham Young and John Masefield. If any reader knows of any convergences between these three, do let me know....
I am also advised that it's also the first day of National Accordion Awareness Month. How can one not be aware of an accordion? It makes a cacophonous racket and is usually played by fat men with halitosis.

Islam Beheaded

Jerry Falwell, the presidential kingmaker, died recently, his legacy being to raise the profile of the Christian Right with the influence of its large voting bloc in US politics. Jerry put his foot in it more than once, inter alia referring unkindly to Muhammad as a 'terrorist'. It might be argued that he only did for Christianity what many radical imams do for Islam every Friday in London mosques.

Falwell's disastrous legacy does not lie only in American politics. He, like many of his evangelical brethren, took an aggressive and inhospitable view of religions other than Christianity. As a Muslim, I was well aware of his characterizations of Islam, and how they served to divide and set people at odds with one another, rather than to encourage peace and harmonious relationships. His belligerent stance against other religions only facilitates stereotyping and arrogance, both of which enable the kind of ongoing conflict and warfare we see today between America and various Muslim countries.

Clearly, this isn't mine. It is from here

Even a cursory reading of the Quran, which increasing numbers of Westerners have done since 9/11 suggests the concept of Ms Taylor's Muslims for Progressive Values is is a wee bit disingenuous, even oxymoronic. Muslims don't do progressive since doublethink is a prevailing mindset within Islam and its nominal proponents seek to reconcile its barbaric beginnings with appropriately 21st century human rights. There is a chink in the armour, however. Islam dragged its feet when mass printing became available; they continue to do so in the era of Internet communications. In the propaganda war, Islam will lose out ideologically since it is losing the race against time. That’s why Muslims work so hard to curb freedom of religious speech and any “mockery” or even rational criticism targeting Islam in infidel countries. Will Muslims bomb away freedom of speech in the West before we attempt to detonate this unexploded bomb underneath Islam’s feet? Every time there is a terrorist attack, we respond by increasing the volume of criticism of Islam in circulation on the Internet. Some would claim that this isn’t our fight. Yeah. Right. Ernest Renan, the influential French thinker and almost-priest, scourge of both Catholicism and Islam, has said that if there ever was something like a Reformation in the Islamic world, the West should gracefully stay out of it. However, he lived in the 19th century and could not have imagined that we would be naive enough to let millions of Muslims settle in major Western cities. We are implicated now, whether we want to be or not. We are no longer just 'fighting' against Islam but for our own freedom of speech, and thus democracy itself, which some might assert is worth fighting for. Maybe we can't slay the dragon, but we can almost certainly help the people who can.

Pellets and Aubergines

Dear, oh dear. The Holy Father is getting a bit precious about South America, it seems, and an 18th Century friar, Antonio Galvao, has become the first Brazilian-born saint. Slam dunk for the Catholics, but they're still well behind on points to the Evangelicals.At a monastery in Sao Paulo, followers of Friar Galvao still use a "miracle cure" on which his reputation rests.

Here's the deal. The cure comprises tiny paper pellets inscribed with Latin prayers that the faithful swallow whole in the belief that it can rid them of ailments. One wonders what exactly was written in the miraculous vulgate that precipitated an untwisted Fallopian tube, hence the birth of a boy, attributed to Fr Galvao's techniques. Also, does mastication invalidate the prescription? Two miracles minimum gets you into the sainthood club. Fascinating. A very superficial trawl reveals that the age of miracles is by no means dead, they sprout and flourish everywhere, in manifold guises and belief systems.

Now, a little interfaith dialogue. In 1996, the home of Salim and Ruksana Patel, in Bolton, was inundated with about fifty visitors a day, coming to see their miraculous aubergine. Mrs Patel foresaw the miracle in a dream after she'd bought the aubergine from their local shop. On slicing the vegetable in half, she saw that the seeds were formed in the Muslim symbol "Ya-Allah", meaning Allah exists. Mr Patel said: "I felt so excited I ran round to the priest and he confirmed that it was indeed a miracle." Abdulla Patel, priest of the local Masjide-Gosia mosque, said: "In all my years as a priest, I have never witnessed anything like this. It is wonderful for the community, and for Salim ..." When the aubergine had been displayed for several weeks in the mosque it was divided into small pieces and shared among the faithful.

Ah. Excellent. No surprises there, then......Fr Galvao died in 1822.

Soomer is icomen in

Is a traditional English round, dating from the mid 13th century and is possibly the oldest such example of six part polyphony. It is sometimes known as the Reading Rota because the manuscript comes from Reading Abbey. The spelling is transliterated from a Wessex dialect. Interesting. Thanks, Wiki.
My Gaelic blood stirs at this time of the year. The Feast of Bealtaine, when the herds were driven to the summer pastures and various festive Celtic practices observed, falls, it would seem, today.
In the past, particularly in central Ireland, great bonfires would mark a time of purification and transition, heralding in the season in the hope of a good harvest later in the year, and were accompanied with ritual acts to protect the people from harm.
Beltane was considered to be the beginning of summer. So, welcome to halfway house, between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice.
No, I am not slipping into my woad-clad polytheistic dotage. Summer here is just beginning, a sleeping giant is being slowly awoken and the fires are being stoked. Today was 42 degrees Celsius in the shade and we're hardly getting started yet. At full snarl, the malevolence gets to a punishing over 50, exposure to which dehydrates with astonishing speed. My new car has front and rear air conditioning, which provides essential refrigeration during the summer months . I thought you might like to see a picture of it.

Cultural flux

Fascinating. The Daily Mail tells us that 'reasonable force' is back in British schools. The Holocaust and the Crusades are out. We are again in a 'state of flux', shall we say.

Marvellous, innit. ''You can't confiscate me mobile cuz it infringes me civil rights to peaceful ownership" and "I don't get to learn about wholesale massacre on the grounds of religion 'cause the Muslims are told it didn't happen, innit." Don't get to learn about the Crusades either, 'cause the imams tell 'em all different stuff to what we learn about."

We might remember what the Daily Mail said about Jews fleeing from Nazi Germany “The way stateless Jews from Germany are pouring in from every port of this country is becoming an outrage..... the number of aliens entering the country through back doors is ­ a problem to which the Daily Mail has repeatedly pointed” Daily Mail, 20 August 1938.

Or, going back further “They fought, they jostled to the foremost places at the gangways.. ...When the Relief Committee passed by they hid their gold and fawned and whined in broken English asked for money for their train fare.” Daily Mail, February 3rd, writing about Jewish immigrants in 1900.

H'm....The image is of a medieval birch, used for chastisement.

Beetlejuice and God

I seem to have found myself enmired in apologetics recently. Does God exist and would he prefer Coke to Pepsi? Nothing wrong with that. A more esoteric chain of reasoning crossed my path recently. Betelgeuse, in Orion, whose name is derived from the Arabic for "Ibt al Jauzah" (the Armpit of the Central One) is one of the brightest M-type stars in Earth's night sky, yet having a density approaching that of a vacuum, hence being nothing more than a cloud of nebular dust. Why then does it glow so brightly? Some allege that 'it's God', perhaps not realising that the thing has a maximum radius the size of the orbit of Neptune. Thus, not much stuff per cubic metre but a shedload of cubic metres, making up to 17 solar masses' worth, hence lots of stuff and able to burn. Some apologetics is like that. Short on information, long on flawed reasoning. I was going to include an image, but the prettier ones were just concentric orbits of orange and yellow,rather like a streetlamp in thick fog, plus a scale, so I thought it better to leave a massive amount of not much to your imagination.