Archive for category World
Reinventing Copenhagen
Global climate change treaty looking doubtful? Well not to worry. The seas will eventually reclaim all the world’s industrial sites, and then it won’t matter. But Copenhagen needn’t go down as another week of happy snaps and silly clothes. I propose an alternate agenda:
- sport: some swimming lessons wouldn’t go astray. And how about a water polo world cup?
- trade: a global exchange in rubber life rafts, fishing rods and mosquito repellant.
- construction: relocate UN headquarters to Quito, Ecuador (altitude 2850 m)
- military: strengthen naval defences. 3 or 4 life rafts per continent should do it.
Or failing agreement:
- a new age of discovery: if NASA get their skates on maybe we can find another planet somewhere and start again. (Yeah I know – we’ll wreck that one too, but at least it buys us some time … )
Glass houses
Posted by eN0ch in Letters, Politics and society, The Age, World on October 25th, 2009
The Rudd government is under heavy fire from it’s own constituency on many fronts, most prominently asylum seekers and climate change. Ultimately the two are united by the question of lifestyle. How thinly can a finite pool of resources be spread before the general populace considers itself deprived and cries foul? And as day follows night, any such discontent will surely find its fullest voice on election day.
And there’s the rub, not just for the government but for all Australians. It’s easy to label the PM as “Howard lite” and charge Government and Opposition alike with gross moral relativism, driven by electoral self-interest. “Vote buying!” cry some. “In bed with the coal industry!” say others.
But at least some of the righteous protesters might well live in glass condominiums. Compassionate largesse and serious community action to slow climate change must eventually cost us all in lifestyle, reducing all our options at home, at work, and in leisure.
Our politicians may be vote-driven. But with 3-year terms and a very comfortable electorate, who’d be surprised?
It doesn’t work
Posted by eN0ch in Politics and society, World on October 22nd, 2009
I’m a film dork, if there’s such a thing. (And if there isn’t, there will be when you’ve met me.) When I’m with a bunch of people who are talking movies, I try to grunt intelligently but my answer to every question is “No, I didn’t actually.” After giving that answer six times, the room knows there’s a cinematic philistine in its midst. (I do occasionally see it on DVD when the world’s moved on, but no one’s asking by then.)
So it was truly out of character that, with a nearly empty evening beckoning, I spent last night in a nearly empty cinema. On the screen was the latest Woody Allen directed flick Whatever Works. It was nearly empty too. I picked it because it was in a timeslot that worked and because I don’t mind some of Woody Allen’s one-liners.
Whatever it was it didn’t quite work for me, but I’m glad I saw it to remind me of the senseless futility of the world viewed through the prism of nihilistic agnosticism. I knew Allen was a bit of a nihilist, penning classic lines like “Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.” But I’d forgotten just how truly empty and purposeless that world is. From a quick google about Woody Allen, a spiritual drifter from an orthodox Jewish background, he strikes me as a man running from God – and making hard running of it too.
To watch this film is to take a crash course in the brand of ancient gnosticism which, predicated on the ultimate meaninglessness of pretty much everything, advocates the worship of today’s erotic pleasure ahead of yesterday’s covenant.
Will someone please pass me a Bex …
Positions vacant
So Jacko has now followed Elvis out of the building! Now I suppose we watch for the impersonators …
Kippers
Posted by eN0ch in Politics and society, World on June 23rd, 2009
A good article here about “Kippers” (Kids in Parents’ Pockets Eroding Retirement Savings), as they’re lately defined. Financial ties still bind empty-nesters Good cross-reference for those of us Melbourne Anglican clergy who attended the recent ministry conference in Bendigo, and heard Mark McCrindle’s stimulating opening plenary.
Islam, the world and us
Posted by eN0ch in Politics and society, World on May 12th, 2009
A record of interview with Barnabas Fund’s Dr Patrick Sookhdeo in the April issue of Australian Presbyterian is one of the more helpful things I’ve read in a while for an understanding of Islam and Muslims, both from a western cultural point of view generally, and from a Christian point of view in particular.
The most significant insights for me centre around Islam’s understanding of the world, the future and its place in both. Muslims are taught that every nation belongs in effect to them. (“Islam teaches that all lands belong to Allah, who has given them to the Muslims.”) When coupled with a historical perspective on the theology of Jihad, violent conquest of other nations can be seen as legitimate. (Jihad may have a core meaning of simply ’striving’ for a righteous life, but in the context of the development of Mohammed’s understanding of his destiny violence came to have a place in the quest.)
So in terms of human endeavour, one worthy priority is encouraging the branch of contemporary Islamic scholarship concerned with the place of war in Islamic theology.
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Greed without borders
Posted by eN0ch in Letters, Politics and society, The Age, World on February 27th, 2009
Kiwi Kops
Posted by eN0ch in Letters, Politics and society, The Age, World on September 19th, 2007
How many Kiwi cops does it take to change a lightbulb? None; they
haven’t got a warrant yet.
Planet for sale
Posted by eN0ch in Letters, Politics and society, The Age, World on February 3rd, 2007
For Sale: One very used planet, occupied by 6 billion careless
owners. Set in established solar system with free and unlimited solar
power. Distant views of planet Mars with potential for future
transport links. Owners must sell, in search of somewhere cooler.
Renovator’s dream.
Mighty pens indeed
When in 1839 novelist Edward Lytton wrote ” … the pen is mightier
than the sword”, he didn’t know the half of it. Within just a few
months, by scribal enactment, a planet has been cut adrift from the
solar system, and here in our own backyard tonnes of toxic waste have
been detoxed. And the drought is over too. (It must be; I just wrote
it.)