After a trip abroad I have been catching up with The Spectator and was most interested to read Piers Paul Read's piece (25 October: "The Muslims' letter to the Pope is not all it seems").
http://www6.lexisnexis.com/publisher/EndUser?Action=UserDisplayFullDocument&orgId=574&topicId=100012117&docId=l:690305803&start=22
Read quotes the letter as saying that "Islam is not against (Christians) as long as they do not wage war against Muslims"... and he goes on to exonerate Christians of any such charge. He does not mention that the war which many Muslim readers would think this referred to arose with the appearance of Israel in what is considered the territory of Islam - from the early British support via the Balfour Declaration - to the more recent aid to Israel from the USA. A large proportion of westerners, many of whom are Christians, do not see this as an anti-Muslim war; a large proportion of Muslims, do.
Read refers to a "historic enmity between the two religions" but argues that very important moves have been made to put this in the past. Read welcomes Islam's "veneration of Jesus and Mary". However a fact little known in the west is that on the inside of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem are Arabic inscriptions which set out essential theological differences between the faiths. Excerpts from these writings (not difficult to find by websearch via google) include:
The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a messenger of God, and His Word which He conveyed unto Mary, ....So believe in God and His messengers, and say not 'Three'.... . Far be it removed from His transcendent majesty that He should have a son...... It befitteth not (the Majesty of) God that He should take unto Himself a son. ..... Say: He is God, the One! God, the eternally Besought of all! He begetteth not nor was begotten. .... Praise be to God, Who hath not taken unto Himself a son, and Who hath no partner in the Sovereignty,
These standpoints suggest that Islam is much closer to Judaism than to Christianity. If ecumenial progress is being worked upon this is an excellent thing and one hopes that not just two faiths but three will carry on with efforts to understand each other and inhabit this planet without conflict.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Dengl 5 Oct 31 Word Quirks in Politics
I imagine it will not have escaped the notice of some LibDems - let alone others - whose heartbeats - or hearts beat - or beet? close to the centre of Europe that one leadership contender is Mr Huhne.
No doubt an excellent man, but if he ever gets in a flap, or gets cooped up in some political corner, let alone falls off his perch, it will be realised that his name - notwithstanding the final e - means chicken in German - will LibDemChickens come home to roost?
I wonder what the comedians and cartoonists will make of this.... the mischievous part of me looks forward to finding out ...
on a more serious note, the quirks of language can be killers -
a British comedienne (should I have to say comedian - I am not sure which she would prefer) has invented - a prizewinning - character called Cockface (try the link) - maybe she will run with this one ...
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=2012264275
No doubt an excellent man, but if he ever gets in a flap, or gets cooped up in some political corner, let alone falls off his perch, it will be realised that his name - notwithstanding the final e - means chicken in German - will LibDemChickens come home to roost?
I wonder what the comedians and cartoonists will make of this.... the mischievous part of me looks forward to finding out ...
on a more serious note, the quirks of language can be killers -
a British comedienne (should I have to say comedian - I am not sure which she would prefer) has invented - a prizewinning - character called Cockface (try the link) - maybe she will run with this one ...
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=2012264275
Dengl 4 Top Guns Under Fire – BBC’s Rolling Heads
An incisive article by Ray Snoddy (Independent, 8 October 2007) reports that a BBC executive has lost his job following a report by ex-BBC executive Will Wyatt. The report details what happened when an Independent programme-making company (from whom BBC and other broadcasters buy programmes) made it seem that HM the Queen had walked out of a ‘photo shoot’ in a huff. This was inappropriate in at least three ways. One, which has been mentioned, is that the reported incident was untrue – the misdemeanour would have been one whomever the victim of misreporting had been. Another, which has also been mentioned, is that when the BBC – or other broadcaster buys in a programme there is more chance that crucial details of veracity – or other elements of quality – will go unchecked. A third consideration – which has not been mentioned as far as I can tell, anywhere, is that the BBC operates under a Royal Charter; surely in this case it should be particularly considerate of the monarch and how she is represented. Quite possibly some senior broadcasters behave as though either Polly Toynbee or Germaine Greer are the part-time monarchs, but if they check the charter they will find this is not so. Accordingly respect is due to the real monarch.
Leading from the second consideration above, the BBC recently broadcast an important documentary ([rime time, over one hour, no interruptions for adverts) on the history of Britain’s nuclear bomb making endeavour to reach collaborative status with the USA. I watched this through, carefully, and considered it as good as it could be, given the constraints of its length – a book can say vastly more – as I have tried to show in my study: http://www.amazon.com/Television-Nuclear-Power-Communication-Information/dp/0893916765. In particular, I watched the credits and – rarely it seems these days – it was the BBC itself which had made this item. Correspondingly, there was less chance for error in what was a very politically sensitive programme. This is a lesson the BBC evidently knows, even though it may not practice it often enough.
Leading from the second consideration above, the BBC recently broadcast an important documentary ([rime time, over one hour, no interruptions for adverts) on the history of Britain’s nuclear bomb making endeavour to reach collaborative status with the USA. I watched this through, carefully, and considered it as good as it could be, given the constraints of its length – a book can say vastly more – as I have tried to show in my study: http://www.amazon.com/Television-Nuclear-Power-Communication-Information/dp/0893916765. In particular, I watched the credits and – rarely it seems these days – it was the BBC itself which had made this item. Correspondingly, there was less chance for error in what was a very politically sensitive programme. This is a lesson the BBC evidently knows, even though it may not practice it often enough.
Dengl 3 How to have Two Top Lives (in London anyway)
The Evening Standard in London gave away in mid-October a booklet listing “The 1000 London’s Most Influential People 2007” http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/influential.do/. The introduction also declares that “London is the world’s most influential city”. Maybe – this depends on how one measures such things – but as we will see, systematic analysis is not the name of London’s (or the Standard’s) current game. Influence should be measurable in terms not just of current impact worldwide but also guessable in terms of anticipated impact in the future.
Looking through the 22 walks of life listed in the Contents (24 walks of life on the outside cover) one soon notices that a person in one section appears again elsewhere (Sebastian Lord Coe, for example, and James Purnell Gordon Brown’s new man in the Department of Culture media and Sport). This may mean that there are not actually 1000 names in the whole booklet. Never mind – this is the least important drawback in what is in many ways a valuable and interesting exercise.
My main sadness is that there is no section on Science. Yes, Education is there, and Health, but no specific section for Science. This is connected with the weakness in outlook which emphasises energy, charisma, heaps of bounding current success, but which partly neglects the intellectual foundation on which durability depends.
The Contents list starts with “new media” (itself a dubious term), goes on with retail, and ends with television & radio and finally “Social London”. This is a markedly upper class collection whose recognition or impact fifty years on may well be fading out of sight. Daily we read of street stabbings by teenage members of “gangs” – are these not a prominent part of “social London” with a huge impact on how many people live now – and possibly on the future evolution of the capital?
In the section on ‘literary life’ we lead with J.K.Rowling who may or may not be considered a Londoner, since she lives in Edinburgh, and Jamie Byng, an Edinburgh publisher; also borrowed is Chimamanda Adichie who lives in America. These are not quintessential Londoners surely, but also listed is Charlotte Mendelson – the topic of a separate Dengl.
Looking through the 22 walks of life listed in the Contents (24 walks of life on the outside cover) one soon notices that a person in one section appears again elsewhere (Sebastian Lord Coe, for example, and James Purnell Gordon Brown’s new man in the Department of Culture media and Sport). This may mean that there are not actually 1000 names in the whole booklet. Never mind – this is the least important drawback in what is in many ways a valuable and interesting exercise.
My main sadness is that there is no section on Science. Yes, Education is there, and Health, but no specific section for Science. This is connected with the weakness in outlook which emphasises energy, charisma, heaps of bounding current success, but which partly neglects the intellectual foundation on which durability depends.
The Contents list starts with “new media” (itself a dubious term), goes on with retail, and ends with television & radio and finally “Social London”. This is a markedly upper class collection whose recognition or impact fifty years on may well be fading out of sight. Daily we read of street stabbings by teenage members of “gangs” – are these not a prominent part of “social London” with a huge impact on how many people live now – and possibly on the future evolution of the capital?
In the section on ‘literary life’ we lead with J.K.Rowling who may or may not be considered a Londoner, since she lives in Edinburgh, and Jamie Byng, an Edinburgh publisher; also borrowed is Chimamanda Adichie who lives in America. These are not quintessential Londoners surely, but also listed is Charlotte Mendelson – the topic of a separate Dengl.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Dengl2: On The Death Of Diana Princess of Wales
When the news of the death of Diana Princess of Wales was given out, everyone remembered where they were when they first heard of the tragedy – just as happened 34 years earlier when President John F.Kennedy was assassinated. The two deaths were remarkable in another way – as Magnus Linklater the Times’ columnist has pointed out, in both cases stories, myths and legends sprang up as to the causes of such trauma. The ‘official’ accounts of who killed Kennedy and of Diana’s car crash were not universally accepted – dark doubts were expanded into tales, some extravagant but some simple, as to hidden and in many stories, nefarious motives and actions.
In 1965 I was in Nigeria and on one occasion driving from Lagos to Benin. The road mostly went through thick forest and I gave a hitch to a young Nigerian; two hundred miles gave much time for conversation. We talked about Kennedy and the young man asked me if I believed the official account – he emphatically did not. He declared that the then Vice President Lyndon Johnson was responsible – he had arranged a secret assassination. Why? What evidence had my companion?
(Evidence is our bedrock criterion in western ‘modern’ scientific, print literate cultures, to help us explain events).
My companion’s evidence (he might not have used that term) was that Johnson had the most powerful motive to do such a deed. He would get the Presidency.
I was in Nigeria as a social psychologist attached to Ibadan University and this conversation served as a prompt and an example to asking more about how people in many Nigerian (and other West African) cultures respond to the blows of what we call fate. In many cases they did (maybe still do) consult a diviner and that person (like a consultant Conan Doyle) looked for the motivational patterns around the event: who might want an event to happen? How might they prompt it to happen? If and when there is a plausible tale along these lines, the diviner (in his or her role as social healer) might suggest either a negotiation (or something more drastic …). The pattern, however, is that enquiry is more like a piece of playwriting than what happens in a laboratory. So, in this man’s mind, Lyndon Johnson was responsible for the death of Kennedy.
Where does this take us with Diana? I did not ever expect that (some) patterns of social explanation found in Nigeria might be found similarly in Egypt. I know next to nothing about Egyptian society. Yet perhaps that is true and that ways of thinking in village cultures are strong enough to be found in later generations now living in towns – among people who are perfectly literate and in many other ways thorough members of a modern “scientifically habituated” society.
So we find Mohammad Fayed’s early thoughts on his son’s death (and that of Diana) were that he, with she, had been murdered. He further inferred the person most likely (in his view) to gain from such a deed – and blamed Prince Philip. The scenario of the burdensome current inquest may therefore be a contest between “western” scientifically-based ways of thought and exploring causes and effects, and more antiquated pre-modern ways of such thought. We are seeing something like what happened in the enquiries into Galileo’s assertions about the moon going round the earth and the earth round the sun. Galileo may have lost that dispute in the short term – most reckon he won in the end. The jury in the "Diana (and Dodi) inquest" are likely, as people educated in modern society, not to see things Fayed's way; but we shall see.
In 1965 I was in Nigeria and on one occasion driving from Lagos to Benin. The road mostly went through thick forest and I gave a hitch to a young Nigerian; two hundred miles gave much time for conversation. We talked about Kennedy and the young man asked me if I believed the official account – he emphatically did not. He declared that the then Vice President Lyndon Johnson was responsible – he had arranged a secret assassination. Why? What evidence had my companion?
(Evidence is our bedrock criterion in western ‘modern’ scientific, print literate cultures, to help us explain events).
My companion’s evidence (he might not have used that term) was that Johnson had the most powerful motive to do such a deed. He would get the Presidency.
I was in Nigeria as a social psychologist attached to Ibadan University and this conversation served as a prompt and an example to asking more about how people in many Nigerian (and other West African) cultures respond to the blows of what we call fate. In many cases they did (maybe still do) consult a diviner and that person (like a consultant Conan Doyle) looked for the motivational patterns around the event: who might want an event to happen? How might they prompt it to happen? If and when there is a plausible tale along these lines, the diviner (in his or her role as social healer) might suggest either a negotiation (or something more drastic …). The pattern, however, is that enquiry is more like a piece of playwriting than what happens in a laboratory. So, in this man’s mind, Lyndon Johnson was responsible for the death of Kennedy.
Where does this take us with Diana? I did not ever expect that (some) patterns of social explanation found in Nigeria might be found similarly in Egypt. I know next to nothing about Egyptian society. Yet perhaps that is true and that ways of thinking in village cultures are strong enough to be found in later generations now living in towns – among people who are perfectly literate and in many other ways thorough members of a modern “scientifically habituated” society.
So we find Mohammad Fayed’s early thoughts on his son’s death (and that of Diana) were that he, with she, had been murdered. He further inferred the person most likely (in his view) to gain from such a deed – and blamed Prince Philip. The scenario of the burdensome current inquest may therefore be a contest between “western” scientifically-based ways of thought and exploring causes and effects, and more antiquated pre-modern ways of such thought. We are seeing something like what happened in the enquiries into Galileo’s assertions about the moon going round the earth and the earth round the sun. Galileo may have lost that dispute in the short term – most reckon he won in the end. The jury in the "Diana (and Dodi) inquest" are likely, as people educated in modern society, not to see things Fayed's way; but we shall see.
Dengl 1 I explain my title
Nowadays, with the lack of awareness of the history of a word, plus a certain amount of carefree creativity – we have new words boiled down from parts of two, to one – thus web log becomes the supremely inelegant blog - not a word which a sensitive person (Veper?) might wish to use. Similarly, these examples of “Mad English” or of Bad English could be called Denglishes – or just Dengls.
Party Conferences may become Tycons;
Sensitive Person(s) might be Vepers;
(mind you, so would insensitive persons)
tax incentives (are there such things?) would be Axinces; ....
Solar eclipses would be Larecls
keep going!!!
I'll perhaps put up some more examples - what about suggestions?
Party Conferences may become Tycons;
Sensitive Person(s) might be Vepers;
(mind you, so would insensitive persons)
tax incentives (are there such things?) would be Axinces; ....
Solar eclipses would be Larecls
keep going!!!
I'll perhaps put up some more examples - what about suggestions?
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