Somehow, Luther is to blame for this too

If bearded holy men do have to fight each other, can't they at least have the courtesy to use Bo staffs and samurai swords, not... brooms?

Feuding Christian sects have attacked each other in a flurry of fists and brooms at the Bethlehem church where Christ was reputedly born, leaving four people injured.

The fight took place at the ecumenical Church of the Nativity, where priests from both the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic orders had been cleaning up after Christmas celebrations earlier in the week, the BBC reports.

It is understood the fracas began when a Greek priest placed a ladder in a part of the church known be under Armenian jurisdiction.

Up to 80 bearded holy men wearing dark robes became embroiled in the fight, many wielding brooms.

Palestinian police were forced to separate the warring orders by forming themselves into a human shield.

The church, shared between the Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic and Roman Catholic authorities, has long been a source of tension.

It is built over the spot Jesus is thought to have been born 2007 years ago.

Thousands of pilgrims have already packed out the church over the Christmas period, with more celebrations planned for next week.

- " Warring priests trade blows with brooms," NineMSN News (28 December 2007)

The late [Charles Gore, 1853-1932, Anglican Bishop of Oxford] was once shown around Jerusalem by a friend of mine, who asked what he thought Jesus would say about the sectarian disputes round His Tomb. "I believe He would say, with that wonderful smile of his: 'My children must have toys. Do not all children sometimes quarrel about their toys?'."

- HV Morton, In the Steps of the Master (1934, rep 2002), p 52.

The Church of the Nativity is a shabby mess, a result of quarrelling religious orders. The Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, and Roman Catholic priests have staked out Nativity turf with the acrimonious precision of teenage brothers sharing a bedroom. A locked steel door prevents direct access from the Roman Catholic chapel to the Manger Grotto, which has to be reached through the Greek Orthodox monastery where there is a particular "Armenian beam" that Greek Orthodox monks stand on to sweep the area above the grotto entrance, making the Armenians... angry...

- PJ O'Rourke, Peace Kills: America's Fun New Imperialism (2004), pp 47-48.

Imperial cronies

... The main corridor [of the new Death Star] was filled with courtiers, all awaiting an audience with the Emperor. Vader curled his lip at them – fools all. Pompous toadies in their velvet robes and painted faces; perfumed bishops passing notes and passing judgments among themselves – for who else cared; oily favour-merchants, bent low from the weight of jewellery still warm from a previous owner's dying flesh; easy, violent men and women lusting to be tampered with.

Vader had no patience for such petty filth. He passed them without a nod, though many of them would have paid dearly for a felicitous word from the Dark Lord...

- James Kahn and George Lucas, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (London: Futura, 1983), p 90.

Maxine/ You're not the only one...

.. who's been shot from that particular direction. However, in other cases - if the culprit is a teenage boy with a camera-cellphone, or a middle-aged businessman - he can get sued or prosecuted, or at least shamed. If it's the Canberra Times, then, it's a freedom of the press issue. Sorry. Grin and bear.

"The Omega Man"

In preparation for the impending release of Will Smith's I Am Legend, I watched the original Charlton Heston version of The Omega Man on DVD last week.

(I'm assuming studio executives vetoed some original plan by Mr Smith to title his remake "Tha Omega M###aF####a".)

There's something about those late 60s/ early 70s (post Forbidden Planet but pre-Star Wars) SF films that just can't be replicated. Whether the tight polyester clothes, the long slabs of speechifying, the low-budget special effects, or the loud, anthemic organ music... (you can hear a sample on YouTube here, if you have a good connection).

The DVD has extra material including a portentous mini-documentary, made at the time (1970s) where Heston interviews anthropologist Professor Ashley Montagu about the sociology and psychology of Robert Neville. Great stuff.

I kept expecting Heston to say "Damn you all to hell!" and "Get your damn paws off me, you dirty vampire!" I see now why he likes guns so much.

I also liked Anthony Zerbe's Matthias - a sort of Kent Brockman figure who morphs into Ward Churchill as played by Jim Steinman.

Democrats vs demographics

Australian Democrats. They're pro-choice and they vote. And so do all their surviving children.

In theory, the ranks of Don's Party should by now be bursting with the millions of small-L moderates driven out of the Liberal Party by the far Right wing's harsh, unrepresentative social conservatism. In practice, though, I know of exactly one - Greg Barns, formerly a Howard Government Ministerial staffer (I still have the letter, signed by him, from ten years ago assuring me that my opposition to the privatisation of Telstra was groundless), who quit the Libs and deed-polled his name to Don John Woodchipp. Without those reinforcements, the number of dreadfully earnest, well-meaning schoolteachers who deeply believe that [1] "the Coalition is too patriarchal but Labor is too blokey", and [2] using the words "toys" and "boys" in the same sentence is only problematic if the word "war" is in there too, just ain't sufficient to reach the Senate quota.

Admittedly, at the same election the Greens' vote held up, although that's doubtless because the Greens are more consistently pro-choice in defending the reproductive autonomy of the individual.

Lexx (no, not Cathar Lexx)

I had never heard of the TV series Lexx before until I came across this article (a review of Battlestar Galactica) which described it (Lexx, that is) as "a sort of R-rated HR Pufnstuf". Intrigued, I consulted Google, and ended up renting episode 1 on DVD. Someone at IMDB described it as "The American Red Dwarf ... Made By Canadians and Germans", but having now watched the pilot episode, I'm not sure that's quite right either. So what would be a better description? Well, I'm torn between "Blake's Seven crossed with Babylon Five out of Brazil" on the one hand, and "Farscape meets The Fifth Element, with a touch of Firefly" (although dragonfly would be more apt) on the other, or even "Dune meets Delicatessen" (by which I mean the fairly weird 2000 Euro-Dune, not the even weirder "Hmmm, melange pie" 1984 Lynch-ed version: although Lexx has so much more Euro-weird that it makes M John Harrison seem as standard Hollywood as Michael Bay by contrast). Contrast, eg, the two leading men. I'm also wavering as to whether to order Disk Two. It's either brilliant or it's absolutely insane.

"Tu es vox"

Or arguably "Tu es ille vox" - it matters not. The following shall (on pain of such penalties as the local Ordinary shall judge it meet to impose) be sung (loudly) to the tune of John "Whispering Jack" Farnham's 1968 classic "Sadie - The Cleaning Lady" - and inspired by every Pope Eugene who ever got elected by 5 votes to 3 of his own private conclave in backwoods Idaho or suburban Neufchatel. Dedicated to Gerry Matatics, who was originally a Calvinist of some stripe who then converted to Catholicism, but is now a Sedevacantist: he decided, in other words, that new Priest was but old Presbyter writ large...

The Sedes - is clearly vacant
Since the latest Pope but one was kissing Korans
Saying "sorry" to the Jews
Wobbly on the Right to Choose
And forgetting that Eius transitum tota orans

[CHORUS:]
So lock the doors, light the straws, hold the conclave
Let each member of the Remnant, mark his parchment
With no Supreme Inerrant Head
the Christian Faith would soon be dead,
Any idiot could claim his Private Judgment

But quick! The Sedes - is clearly vacant
It's unthinkable Our Lord would want such chaos
Leave His children in the lurch
With no Father o'er the Church
You'd get self-appointed leaders from the laos

[CHORUS:]
So lock the doors, light the straws, hold the Conclave
Let each member of the Remnant, mark his parchment
With no Supreme Inerrant Head
The Christian Faith would soon be dead,
Any idiot could claim his Private Judgment

We knew the Sedes - is clearly vacant
Since 1958 (or '63, at latest)
I don't care who did the deed
All I know is that you need
promptly to elect me Gregory the Greatest

[CHORUS:]
So lock the doors, light the straws, hold the Conclave
Let each member of the Remnant, mark his parchment
With no Supreme Inerrant Head
The Christian Faith would soon be dead,
Any idiot could claim his Private Judgment

Cubiculum obtenete!

'Robert Mellors Primary School on the outskirts of Nottingham, England, is a long way from the verdant lawns and haunted forests of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the main setting of JK Rowling's Harry Potter books. But by borrowing elements from that fantastic realm, this once-failing school has turned itself around as if by magic dust...'

- Alex Altman, "Harry Potter Works Magic at School," Time (16 November 2007)

"Mellors..." Hmmm. Let's hope in the name of Sean Bean this school's enactment of classics of English literature goes no further than Harry Potter, what?

Neither Christian, nor democratic, nor much of a party

"Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for one of your own country..." - Leviticus 24:22

Couldn't quite believe my ears last night, around 9.30 and then around 10 PM. Watching Red Eye on TV, savoring Cillian Murphy's enjoyably hooded-eyed, creepy persona, but thinking "Hmm. He's curiously whitebread for a Hollywood terrorist/ assassin villain. Not even Russian Mafiya or European neo-Nazi links, let alone... you know what."

But you-know-what was not lacking from my TV diet last night, because at the aforementioned times were screened election advertisements spoken and authorized by Paul Green, the Christian Democratic Party's lead Senate candidate for New South Wales, listing the party's policies, with Article I being "a halt to Islamic immigration and a ten-year moratorium".

Nice work, CDP. In theory, this week should have been a good one for the ChrisDems, with Fred Nile at last getting his chance to publicly grieve over the senseless deaths of unborn babies without being vilified as a [W]oman-hater. But this silly idea has thrown away their moral advantage, for three big reasons.

[1] Administrative problem with "a moratorium on Islamic immigration": How do you enforce it? Do you lock would-be migrants in a room with closed-circuit TV and see if you can catch them praying towards Mecca? Do you make them spit on a Quran as part of the visa application process? Or do you cap the quota of visas from any country with green and Arabic lettering on its flag, or that's a member of "The Organization of the [sic] Islamic Conference"?

[2] Constitutional problem with "a moratorium on Islamic immigration": The Federal Government, which exclusively controls immigration, is constitutionally barred from discriminating on the basis of religion. That's in Section 116 of our strong Constitution, Fred and co (right after the clause that says how the Queen is descended from King David and is therefore God's anointed). Yes, the Feds do have pretty much unlimited legislative power to discriminate on the basis of race - but they have no power to discriminate on the basis of religion. (If you were going to Constitutionally permit one but not the other, religious discrimination is less completely irrational - "prohibiting the free exercise of any race" is a logical contradiction, since race is wholly involuntary while religion is only largely involuntary - but Australian voters, in their wisdom, voting in 1900 and 1967, chose the opposite combo: live with it.)

[3] Practical problem with "a moratorium on Islamic immigration": It does nothing about Muslim criminals or terrorists who were born in Australia. Deportation is the easy way out: it requires less proof from the government (despite Justice Spender's stirling efforts to impose some rationality on the Haneef debacle) because - in theory - it's "non-punitive". But deportation won't work on naturalized citizens, or radical fundamentalist Muslims who are native-born - as were most of the 2005 London bombers. Sorry, government, you actually need to get off your backside and start prosecuting the guilty individuals, as individuals.

Floating (no pun intended) this proposal barely a month after the untimely death of one of Australia's most valued and productive Muslim migrants, Mustapha "Crazy John" Ilhan, is tasteless.

[Disclosure: one of my siblings has an Indonesian Muslim spouse. So no, I'm not well-disposed to knee-jerk proposals that would make their visa applications harder. Allow for my bias as you will. I still think this is a dumb proposal].

"Rebuilding Hollywood to be like Silicon Valley"

Marc Andresen's vision here:

http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/11/rebuilding-holl.html, also here:

http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/11/suicide-by-stri.html.

"The Sophist" has some quibbles here:

http://thesophist.wordpress.com/2007/11/13/hollywood-20-who-pays/

Workchoices: Rather too pro-choice for my liking

Maybe the intercession of the Blessed Che and the Holy Martyrs of Tolpuddle is called for after all. Can there be anything more un-Australian than sacking someone for having a beer or two over lunch?

'... the Industrial Relations Commission upheld the sacking of a supermarket manager for having two beers at lunchtime... violating the "zero tolerance" policy on drinking in working hours enforced by Woolworths, which owns Safeway.

Mr [Tony] Selak, 36, admitted having two glasses of beer over lunch in May, but argued that the policy should not apply to managers, who did not operate equipment or machinery. He said he was drinking only to help create a more relaxed environment in which he could convince a valuable employee, who was thinking of resigning, to stay with the company.

But Commissioner Gareth Grainger found Woolworths's decision to sack Mr Selak, who had worked for the company for 18 years, was "not harsh, unjust or unreasonable"...'

- Andrew West, " Eat, drink and risk getting the sack after lunch," Sydney Morning Herald (13 November 2007)

If that's this Gareth Grainger, then such newfound zeal for upholding dismissal at will - for treating every breach of the employment contract, however trivial, as a potential "hanging offence" - sits very oddly with his known support for other not-terribly-productive connossieurs of alcohol holding down well-remunerated jobs for life.

GK Chesterton, phone your office! I call on Tim Blair and Mark Steyn to take a break from eulogising George Jones and George Jonas to condemn this creeping Sharia-fication of the Aussie working lunch.

John Ralston, Saul

Pro Nobis

"... [The] Adoration as well of Images as of Reliques, and also invocation of Saints, is a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God..."

- The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of the Church of England (1562), item #32

White dove to descend on Crowe

"What we do here today, echoes in eternity!"

Russell Crowe is planning to be baptised at the chapel on his Nana Glen property in northern NSW.

"I'd like to do it this year," the 43-year-old actor told Men's Journal magazine [December 2007].  "My mum and dad decided to let my brother and me make our own decisions about God when we got to the right age. I started thinking recently, 'If I believe it is important to baptise my kids, why not me?'"

Crowe says the baptism will take place in the Byzantine chapel he built at his property near Coffs Harbour for his wedding to Danielle Spencer in 2003.... "It is consecrated and everything," Crowe says....

Crowe - who has a reputation for throwing temper tantrums - is more spiritual than people may think. "I do believe there are more important things than what is in the mind of a man," he says. "There is something much bigger that drives us all. I'm willing to take that leap of faith"...

- " Crowe to be baptised with his son," National Nine News (8 November 2007)

Kapla'gh!

'It is the military version of Harry Potter's invisible cloak. British researchers have unveiled new technology that renders army tanks invisible to observers in the battle field, a British newspaper reports. At top secret trials last week the Ministry of Defence demonstrated how the clever use of cameras and projectors can beam images of the surrounding landscape onto a tank.

'Observers at the trial said the vehicle completely disappeared into the surrounding countryside.   One soldier described the optical camouflage as "incredible". "If I hadn't been present I wouldn't have believed it," he told the Daily Mail. "I looked across the fields and just saw grass and trees - but in reality I was staring down the barrel of a tank gun." The British Army predicted that invisible tanks would be in use by 2012, although how it works in combat is very sensitive.  The Army is also believed to be testing the technology on military jackets for its soldiers....'

- NineMSN News, " Invisible cloak for army tanks" (Friday 2 November 2007)

Honour among thieves (or at at least some quality control)

'A hoon driver who performed a "burn-out" inside a convenience store after driving through the front door made the task of tracking him down easy for police: he left a registration plate behind. Police said the store attendant had to jump for his life as the car crashed through the front of the store in Warrigal Road, Oakleigh, when the driver lost control during a tyre-smoking "burn-out" in the car park just before 9pm yesterday.

[Police] said the man then drove further into the store, damaging equipment and threatening the attendant. "Not satisfied with the level of stupidity he had displayed to this point, he did another burn-out inside the store, narrowly missing the attendant," [police] said. [... A]s the driver reversed out of the store, "he conveniently left his front bumper bar inside" with the registration plate attached...'

- " Number's up for clueless hoon," Melbourne Age (Friday 19 October 2007)

"A thief caught shoplifting a packet of cheese from a supermarket in Germany tried to make his getaway in a cement mixer, but he was quickly nabbed by police.... When a shop detective in the town of Limbach-Oberfrohna caught the man stealing a 2.79 euro ($3.98) packet of processed cheese, the 55-year-old broke free and leaped into his cement mixing truck outside... The shop alerted police, who arrested the man when he stopped his getaway vehicle at a red light a few hundred yards away.'

- " Thief fails to grasp concept of getaway", Reuters "Oddly Enough" (Friday 19 October 2007)

"Deuwd! I, like, teautally left my car plate behind!"

Won't always have Paris

... but may keep Elaan for a change, this time:

Australian actor Eric Bana is to star as a villain in the latest film adaptation of hit science fiction television series Star Trek. The 39-year-old star of Munich and The [sic] Hulk, will play the character Nero in the movie, which is being directed by JJ Abrams, the man behind hit television shows Lost and Alias, Daily Variety reported today. Details about plot and characters in the new film are being kept under blanket security. Bana joins a cast that already includes Leonard Nimoy, although it is not clear if the veteran actor from the television series will be reprising his famous role as Mr Spock. The actor who will play USS Enterprise captain James T Kirk had not yet been decided, Variety reported. The new film is the 11th to be based on the series, which began in 1966 and became one of the most successful franchises in Hollywood, extending to 726 episodes.

- AFP, " Bana to play Star Trek baddie", Sydney Morning Herald (Thursday 11 October 2007)

Answers: Yes, Nimoy does play Spock. But so too does Zachary Quinto. As as for Kirk... In 40 Terrestrial years, Trek has come full circle from being captained by Christopher Pike to being captained by Christopher Pine. (No, not that one.)

Strange intentions

"Oscar-winner Reese Witherspoon's divorce from actor Ryan Philippe has been confirmed, nearly one year after the couple's separation, court documents revealed today.... Witherspoon, 31, filed for divorce from Philippe, 33, in November 2006 after a seven-year relationship which began when the duo met on the set of Cruel Intentions. The couple have two children, Ava, 8 and Deacon, 3..."

- " Reese, Ryan divorced," Sydney Morning Herald (Thursday 11 October 2007)

Huh? 7 - 8 = ... -1 (plus nine months)?

UPDATE: Some more funny numbers in the news...

"At stake... were five of the 10 non-permanent seats on the 15-nation council... Unlike the five permanent members, ... the non-permanent members have no individual veto. But an alliance of seven of them can stop a resolution even if the big powers want it."

- "Libya elected to UN Security Council," ABC News (Wednesday 17 October 2007) http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/10/17/2061568.htm

Seven out of fifteen can pass a motion, with... hmmm... (15 - 7 =...) eight voting against? Maybe they use a weighted voting system,like this one:

"Australia opposes the death penalty. It is an article of faith for both the Government and the Opposition... The 2004 Australian Election Survey found support for the death penalty stood at 51.1 per cent, with opposition at 32.7 per cent and 16.2 per cent undecided."

- Sian Powell, "Double standard on death: Labor foreign affairs spokesman Robert McClelland's remarks on capital punishment put bipartisanship under scrutiny," Weekend Australian (13-14 October 2007) http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22576191-28737,00.html

Yep. The pro-DP Australians only outnumber the anti-DP Australians by a mere 1:59 to one. That's a pretty clear and convincing margin by which "Australia" opposes the death penalty, innit.

"I, the Jury" meets "We, the Living"

"Tomorrow, October 12, marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged...
In his 1989 memoir, Judgment Day: My Years With Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden recalls that Rand once enjoyed a literary friendship with another popular and controversial author - Mickey Spillane. Branden recalls that when Rand first met Spillane she found the tough-guy novelist crying in his soup. "They sure hate us, don't they?" he told her, lamenting all those harsh reviews. "Some literary guy," Spillane added, had recently approached him at a dinner party and said, "it's disgraceful that of the ten bestselling novels of all time, seven were written by you." "You're lucky," Spillane replied, "that I've only written seven books."
Spillane was right to think he deserved a bit more critical praise. When he was bad, he was very bad: gratuitously violent and crude. But the author of I, The Jury and My Gun Is Quick had certain talents too: a clean and vivid style, a sly wit, and a distinctive narrative voice that hints throughout of self-parody. Moreover, Spillane was, by most accounts, a sociable and likable fellow, and seems to have largely avoided the urge to take himself too seriously. Ayn Rand took herself very seriously indeed..."

- Brian Murray, "Who Is John Galt? And Does Anyone Care Anymore?" First Things "On the Square" blog (Thursday 11 October 2007)

Shoulda known/ We'd never get far

One Eighties icon hopes to succeed in bringing peace to the Middle East where others have failed...

Bryan Adams has announced he will headline two peace concerts [on] October 18, calling for an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as part of the New York-based OneVoice Movement. The organization seeks to create a grassroots movement to bring about a two-state solution to end decades of strife. The Canadian rocker will begin his epic day in a soccer stadium in the ancient West Bank town of Jericho in the Palestinian Authority, then cap the day with a set at Hayarkon Park in Tel Aviv, Israel. The simultaneous festivals, which will also include Israeli and Palestinian artists on the bill, will be beamed by satellite to audiences in Washington DC, Boston, London, Ottawa and other cities in the US and Europe that will be holding their own "echo events." ...

- Josh Grossberg, " Bryan Adams' Mideast Peace Plan," NineMSN News (9 October 2007)

Reports that Mr Adams plans to dedicate his live accoustic of "Cuts Like a Knife" to Daniel Pearl and Kenneth Bingley could not, at time of writing, be verified.