Painting Fakes

Last year I wrote a short series of posts on Jesus' miracles .  For some reason the first of the series has been read by quite a lot of people, although since not that many have read the subsequent posts it seems likely they didn't find what they were looking for. What I was trying to say is that the miracle stories in the Gospels were not intended to demonstrate Jesus' divine power.  Jesus said explicitly that they were not, and if they were their message on this subject is at best ambiguous.  Rather, the miracle stories, like the other deeds of Jesus (I suspect the gospel writers didn't necessarily distinguish between miraculous and non-miraculous deeds), are dramas intended to illustrate aspects of Jesus' message and mission.  They dramatise the forgiveness, inclusion, abundance and peacefulness of the Kingdom of God. Lately I've been thinking about the relationship between the miracle stories and the idea of the Incarnation - the idea that Jesus was G...

It's been said that to us an alien of sufficient power and complexity would be indistinguishable from a god.  It's also been said that if we had enough knowledge we would be able to prove, one way or another, the truth of religion.  However, if we could do that its character would change completely.  It would no longer involve faith and belief, it would simply be another branch of science, the gods other beings who could be studied and communicated with, heaven and hell realms of exploration and even conquest.   I'm not sure what Iain Banks' religious views are.  From his novels I would be surprised if he was not an atheist, or at least an agnostic.  Yet he has arguably the most fertile imagination of any living speculative fiction writer and he is certainly more than capable of imagining heaven, hell and all manner of gods or demons to inhabit them.   Many of his science fiction novels are set in a Galactic-scale civilisation kno...

Apropos of Oscar Pistorius and Reeva Steenkamp , here's another little song for you.  It's an old English folk song that goes by the name Polly Vaughan, Polly Von, Molly Bond  or other variations thereof.  Here's a version by Anne Briggs. Come all you young fellows that handle a gun Beware how you shoot when the night's coming on For young Jimmy met his true love, he mistook her for a swan And he shot her and killed her by the setting of the sun As Polly was walking all in a shower of rain She sheltered in a green bush, her beauty to save With her apron throwed over her he mistook her for a swan And he shot her and killed her by the setting of the sun Then home ran young Jimmy with his dog and his gun Crying Uncle dear Uncle have you heard what I done? I met my own true love, I mistook her for a swan And I shot her and killed her by the setting of the sun Then out rushed his uncle with his locks hanging grey Crying Jimmy oh dear Jimmy don't y...

Here's a little song for you.  It's called What Are Their Names?.  It was written by David Crosby and first recorded on his 1971 solo album, If I Could Only Remember My Name.   He has been singing it ever since with Crosby Stills and Nash, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, in duet with Graham Nash or as here with many other musicians who admire him and this song.  Who are the men who really run this land And why do they run it with such a careless hand? What are their names and on what streets do they live? I'd like to ride right over this afternoon and give Them a piece of my mind about peace for mankind Peace is not an awful lot to ask. Crosby and co are well known peacenicks.  They sang at Woodstock, protested the Vietnam war, sided with the anti-war protestors killed at Ohio State University, and wrote a large number of anti-war and anti-nuclear anthems.  They're still at it.  In 2006 Neil Young got the band back together to do ...

In the years after the Second World War, science fiction was essentially a pulp genre.  Magazines and niche publishers put out small print runs of short stories and slim novels.  Most of the writing was clunky, the stories strong on technological marvels and weak on plot and characterisation.  This all started to change in the 1960s.  Not all at once and not everywhere - there is still plenty of pulp science fiction written even now - but a new breed of writers started to focus more on the fiction and less on the science.  Philip K Dick's best novels are masterpieces of imagination, beautifully characterised and exploring issues of drug use, mental health, religion and the meaning of being human.  His school-mate Ursula Le Guin wrote stories of lyrical beauty and moral depth. Some legacies of the pulp era remained.  Circulations were still small, and if they wanted to make a living from their writing they had to keep...

It's hard to avoid Dan Sultan these days.  Ever since he appeared in the ridiculously funny Bran Nue Dae he's been constantly in the media, recieving music awards, playing at celebrity concerts, promoting worthy causes.  He seems a level headed young man, comfortable with his Aboriginal heritage and not afraid to speak up for himself.  He's also no mean singer, belting out an infectious brand of soul-inflected pop music. However, I have to admit I find myself a lot more fascinated by his long-time collaborator Scott Wilson.  When I first saw Sultan live on stage - a vibrant set at Byron Bay Bluesfest - it was obvious Wilson was the key to the band, playing lead guitar, counting everyone in,  holding the whole thing together while Sultan did his charismatic performing thing. So I've been digging.  On Sultan's most recent album, Get Out While You Can,   released in late 2009, Wilson plays a large number of different gui...

Over the past few days I've found myself wondering what the socialist German playwright and poet Berthold Brecht would have made of my short post on Plutarch and his biography of Mark Antony.    The trouble with using someone like Plutarch as your source of historical information is that as a biographer, he is only interested in the individual.  You learn plenty about Mark Antony but not much about those around him, and virtually nothing about those under his command or under his rule.  This can make him seem like a romantic figure, an actor in a glorious tragedy. You do learn enough, though, to know that things were not so glorious for others.  When he stuffed up the campaign in Parthia thousands of his soldiers died, and the others had to resort to eating bark and leather to survive on their long retreat through the desert.  Thousands more died in his ill-fated naval battle against Octavius, while he and Cleopatra high-tailed it back ...

Reading ancient authors can be disconcerting.  It's hard to be certain if you're inhabiting the same mental universe as they are.  How similar are we to our forebears of two millennia ago, and how much have shifts in time and culture made fundamental changes to our outlook?  For instance, my recent reading of some of Plutarch's Lives . Plutarch was a Greek author and philosopher who wrote at the end of the first and beginning of the second century CE.  He was a philosopher, trained at the Academy in Athens, and also a priest of Delphi, the famous shrine of Apollo from which Greek and Roman leaders sought oracles before they set out on important ventures.  However, he is best known for his "Lives", a series of short biographies of prominent Greek and Roman leaders from various eras.  He produced these in pairs - one Greek, one Roman - intended to illustrate different moral and political lessons and to compare and contrast Greek and Roman civilisation....