Painting Fakes

Recently my local paper featured a story about the Lifeline shop in our local shopping centre, finally re-opening after the January flood .  They were glad to be open again, but struggling for volunteers, and hoped that the community spirit that got us through the flood would bring them more volunteers. I've got some bad news for them.  The spirit of the floods will not continue.  People behave differently in an emergency.  There's normal life, and then there's what you do in a time of crisis. To some extent, this is sad.  The willingness of Brisbane people to help complete strangers back in January was one of the best things that's happened here in years, even as the flood itself was one of the worst.  The fact that we are now back to our normal routine - neither particularly good nor particularly evil - is a bit of a let-down. On the other hand, emergency behaviour is unpredictable.  We recently read stories from London of ordinary mi...

Fellow blogger Brad posted this interesting rave about cross generational computer skills, in which he refers to the technologically illiterate baby boomers and the current generation who have such easy to use technology that it requires no knowledge.  The the most tech capable people are therefore sandwiched between these two generations. Anyway, this story popped into my head and I popped it into his comments box, but I liked it so thought I'd post it here too.  My depression/war generation Dad was one of the early users of computers in Brisbane.  He was an electrical engineer who designed giant transformers (the sort that convert electrical current, not the ones that turn into fighting robots).  In the late 1960s he used to go into the Computer Centre in the city and get them to put cards through their huge machines to work out complex equations for him. I didn't inherit any of his technological skills so I became a social worker and ...

2 Timothy 3:16-17 is one of those snippets of scripture you get taught to memorise when you're a young evangelical.  I haven't read it for a while but it formed part of our readings on Sunday morning and it struck me that I had learnt it without thinking clearly about what it means.  Now's my chance to make up for that lack.  Here's the passage. 14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work . We were taught that this verse was a key indication that we should believe the Bible in its entirety.  It was often combined with a passing reference in ...

What do the English riots and social problems in remote Australian Aboriginal communities have in common?  Well, there are probably a few things but one of them is that they have brought both critics and defenders of the welfare state to the fore.   For the defenders, the riots are a protest against the welfare cuts of the new Tory Government.  They are an overflow of the stress of poverty exacerbated by the fear of lost entitlements.  For the critics, on the other hand, these generous welfare measures are part of the problem.  They encourage people to think that the world owes them a living, and enculturate them into a "something for nothing" mentality which disempowers them and disengages them from society. This same debate has been going on for years in Australia, particularly focused around the problems of Aboriginal communities.  Noel Pearson, a prominent Aboriginal leader from Cape York, has long been a critic of the welfare state, seeing ...

I've been listening to The Doors for the first time.  Really listening, I mean.  I've known of their music for years, had a tape or two in my collection, had them playing as I drove or read.  In fact it's hard to avoid them if you sometimes listen to the radio, or have neighbours who do.  They're one of those ubiquitous bits of our popular culture.  Yet this is the first time I've really set myself to listen properly.  Let me tell you, it's not for the fainthearted. The Doors were formed in 1966 and burst onto public consciousness in 1967 with their self-titled first album.  Four years, seven albums and untold quantities of alcohol and narcotics later, it ended with Jim Morrison dead in a Paris hotel room.  The other three band members - keyboard player Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robbie Krieger and drummmer John Densmore - tried to continue but most of the creative spark departed with Morrison, singer, chief lyricist and creator of stage ma...

For a long time I've wondered why some people seem so certain of what they believe, while I find myself so often vacillating and asking questions.  While I was out riding my bike this morning it occurred to me that it's because they practice. It's very much like playing guitar (something else I'm not very good at).  A brilliant guitarist like Bruce Cockburn or Jeff Lang  makes it look and sound easy, but they can only do that because they have spent hours behind closed doors playing scales and arpeggios over and over again until they can do it without thinking.  They have usually started young, when their hands and brains are still supple.  They also look after their hands like precious treasures.  I've never forgotten the bushwalk I went on with a serious classical guitarist - he wore thick gloves the whole day because he couldn't afford to cut his hands.  Of course they need some talent and the right shaped fingers, but without all that hard work...

One of the things that struck me in Alister McGrath's The Twilight of Atheism   was the link he makes between the Reformation and the rise of atheism.  He says A distinctive feature of the Reformation, particularly associated with the leading reformers Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin, is the "desacralisation" of nature....The declaration that the natural world was not in any way sacred opened the way to its scientific investigation.  There could be no religious obstacles to the analysis of the world.  The world increasingly became seen as a machine or an instrument - of divine origins, of course, but increasingly distant from God.  The material world might have been created by God; it could not, however, convey the divine presence.... ....in popular Catholicism sacred and secular times, events and places were so closely associated that they were often indistinguishable....The individual had a strong sense of place within the cosmos that radiated the glory o...