by cameron | Apr 30, 2007 | Christianity, climate change, energy debate, environment, media 2.0, movies
While I was working out today I watched “Land Of The Dead“, George Romero’s 2005 4th zombie flick, starring Aussie actor Simon Baker, Dennis Hopper, Asia Argento and John Leguizamo. What a great way to pass a couple of hours of otherwise-boring exercise.
Two things I loved in particular with the “Making Of” doco.
1. Romero talking about how Hopper decided he wanted to play the part of the bad guy, Kaufman, as Donald Rumsfeld and the way Romero yells “Exactly! This is about the Bush administration!” Too many directors are oh-so-politically correct (even now!), but not George, oh no. He tells it like it is!
2. The other thing I loved was George’s glasses:
When I saw the Ocean’s 13 trailer, with Elliott Gould wearing the same glasses, George Burns glasses, I said “I’ve got to have some!”
Anyone know where I can get some? Without real lenses of course. I have 20/20 vision (not like the rest of you geeks out there… how come I’ve read more books than the rest of you put together, I sit in front of a PC all day, and I *still* have 20/20?).
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Kevin Rudd is pitching himself at the ALP conference as “Mr 21st Century”. Yet, at the same time, he is content to wear his Anglican Christianity on his sleeve. I find it impossible to take anyone seriously who tries to position themselves as 21st century yet clings openly to a 2000 year-old mythology about a miracle worker who could fly.
That said, I admire his cojones in commissioning an Australian version of the Stern report. Do we really *need* another Stern report though? Isn’t one Stern enough Stern? Let’s face it – we call know not doing anything about climate change will be BAD. REALLY BAD. And those that continue to dispute that issue, aren’t going to be convinced by one more report, any more that Rudd will drop his Christianity by one more book pointing out that there is no evidence to support his mystery faith. It’s a waste of money.
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I see Dom Carosa’s been busy launching yet ANOTHER new site – NICE SHORTS. I stumbled on this (yes, using Stumble Upon) last night and watched a great clip by up-and-coming Aussie filmmaker Gabriel Dowrick.
His short film, “The Lord Is My Shotgun” is very impressive. I’ve got Gabe coming on G’Day World later in the week for a chat. I think he’s about 21 and has made something like 20 short films as well as a recent straight-to-dvd zombie slasher horror feature called “Nailed”.
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Did TWO – count ’em – TWO workouts today. 45 minutes on the xtrainer at 9am and then another 30 minutes at 5pm. Don’t want to be a fatblogger. I cannot for the life of me get interested in working out at 6am, so I tend to wake up, do email for a few hours, take the kids to school, and THEN get on the machine. And watch zombie flicks. I can pretend I’m running away from the flesh-eating zombies. SPEAKING of which… am I the only person who is surprised that with those rotten teeth they all seem to have, the zombies still manage to rip huge chunks of flesh, tendon and bone out of their victims? Shouldn’t their teeth just fall out when they try? Now there’s an idea for a postmodern zombie flick – the zombie’s attack, their teeth fall out, and everyone falls over laughing while the zombies spend the rest of the film trying to gum people to death….
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by cameron | Apr 21, 2007 | Australian politics, Christianity, Melbourne
I’m scanning the headlines this morning and see this one on News.com.au: “Priest claims praying ‘pointless’“. You just know that’s going to get my attention, right? I thought to myself “I can’t wait to show this to Father Bob!”
You should have heard me laugh when I opened it and read:
“SOUTH Melbourne priest Bob Maguire says church leaders across Australia can pray for rain “until they go black in the face” but it won’t solve the water crisis.”
I love it when Bob says what he really thinks and bucks the establishment.
This week’s episode of The Father Bob Show on TPN should be fun. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about our “duty of care” to the indigenous population of Australia and I want to talk to Bob about it.
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I have decided that I am a racist. And it bothers me deeply.
Let me explain. A racist isn’t just someone who thinks other races are inferior to one’s own. I’m not that kind of racist. A racist is also someone who values another race less than one’s own. And based on my growing understanding of the situation that the indigenous population of this country is in, combined with how little I have personally done about it, I have decided that I must have valued their lives less than I should. And I think that makes me a racist. And I’m going to change.
200 years ago, European Christians, mostly from Great Britain, came to Australia. They invaded the country. Committed an act of mass genocide. Stole the entire continent from its traditional owners. They took children from their families, as recently as 40 years ago, thrusting them into Christian educational institutions.
What reparations has the United Kingdom made? What reparations has Christianity made? What reparations have *I* made?
Me? What did *I* do to them?
Nothing directly. But I am profiting off of what was done to them.
What duty of care do the people of European descent in this country have to the descendants of the aboriginals who were treated so abhorrently?
It doesn’t matter if our direct ancestors weren’t involved. WE are still profiting from that theft. The asset that was stolen from the indigenous population, this land, is our greatest source of wealth and prosperity.
If scientists found a living dodo specimen, wouldn’t we all feel a duty of care for it, even though our direct ancestors may not have been the ones who wiped out the rest of the dodo population?
Why then don’t we feel the same duty of care for an entire race?
Saying ‘it was 200 years ago’ isn’t a justification. Only 60 years ago, the international community gave the Jewish people an entire country which hadn’t been theirs for thousands of years. That’s a precedent for reparations.
Let’s say that when Napoleon annexed Italy in 1796 it had stayed under French control until now. Do you think the international community would be telling France to give Italy back to the Italians? 200 years isn’t a long time.
What if Japan had successfully invaded Australia during WWII. What if they have murdered the majority of Australians, taken their land, their homes, their crops. What reparations do you think we would be demanding today? Would we be satisfied with an annual stipend and access to education? Would we be saying “well that was your parents, not the current generation, so nothing can be done to turn back the clock?”
West Germany paid reparations to Israel for the Holocaust. What is the statute of limitations on genocide?
The Australian Aboriginal people lived here for 40,000 – 75,000 years before the Christian invasion and genocide. It is estimated that there could have been 750,000 – 1,000,000 of them at that time. By the early 20th century the indigenous population had declined to between 50,000 and 90,000. Today there are less that 500,000 descendants.
A friend of mine, Andrew Mullins, put it to me this way a couple of years ago:
“What if scientists discovered a population of humans living deep in the jungles of the Amazon who had been around for 40,000 years? How do you think they would treat them? They would wrap them up in cotton wool and treat them with the utmost respect.”
He opened my eyes to something, I am embarrassed to admit, that I hadn’t given much thought to. It is my belief that the media, the government, and the education system in this country, in fact ALL of us in this country, have willfully and knowingly obfuscated and belittled the issue of our responsibility to the indigenous peoples of this country.
Now – giving back the land, moving 22 million people out of Australia, is obviously impossible. But what, then, do we do? I am increasingly uncomfortable with the general opinion I hear from other white people in this country that “we give them money and they get unequaled access to opportunities – what more do they want?”.
We cannot wash our hands of this.
Russell Buckley asked me recently:
“What are we doing today that our descendants will look back on in disbelief and ask themselves how on earth we could have done that, thinking it was normal, or certainly harmless?”
I think perhaps our minimal concern over our duty of care to the Aboriginal peoples of Australia is one of those things.
by cameron | Apr 19, 2007 | Christianity, Melbourne, Uncategorized
How’s this for a cool way to enter the office each day?
Apparently this is the the Headquarters of Red Bull in London. Pretty brilliant huh. See more images here. (via PureProfile’s blog).
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Yesterday I had the privilege of listening to Phillip Goodman speak at the offices of E&Y in Melbourne. Goodman is the owner of clothing manufacturer/retailer Rivers. Wow. What a story. He talked for 30 or 40 minutes about how he started and built the company. Totally brilliant story. I invited him onto G’Day World as a guest for our “Melbourne’s Leaders” series but he declined. Apparently he avoids the press and prefers to stay under the radar, which I kind of understand. But if you ever get a chance to hear him speak, grab it. I can’t begin to tell you how many terrific anecdotes this guy has. It inspired me for the rest of the day.
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Yesterday I listened to Thomas Friedman’s recent talk at POPtech about “why this isn’t your parent’s energy crisis”. It’s brilliant. He explains how the USA is funding BOTH sides of the “War On Terrorism” by continuing to buy ever-larger energy purchases from countries in the Middle East who then donate large chunks of the money to Islamic fundamentalist organisations who, in turn, attack the US and US interests. He suggests that the only way to break the back of this addiction is to move as quickly as possible to green, renewable sources of energy.
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This image of Cho Seung-Hui from the video he sent to NBC is pretty interesting. Anyone else see a John Woo homage? I also love Cho’s rationale for his killing rampage:
“Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ to inspire generation of the weak and the defenceless people.”
How many times have I said here that Christianity was a violent religion that inspired (even justified) violence? The fact that the media is carrying this quote from Cho and everyone just accepts his rationale is interesting in itself.
“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.â€
Matthew 10
But you have to admire the resolve of the NRA in situations like this. Despite the rest of the world thinking the US are completely frakking NUTS for allowing the amount of guns they have on the street, the NRA obviously enough photos of US Congressmen and women engaged in sexual congress with furry mammals that they just breeze through situations like this.
Did you see that they are actually GIVING guns away this week in Virginia?
They are calling it the “Bloomberg Gun GiveAway”. On Thursday two gun shops in the state of Virginia will stage a prize draw. Anyone spending more than $100 in either Bob Moates’ stores or Old Dominion Guns and Tackle will be entered, and the first prize a free handgun or rifle worth $900.
(link)
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by cameron | Apr 7, 2007 | Christianity, Melbourne, science, science vs religion
I hadn’t planned to post anything about Easter this year but my neighbour David sent me a link to this article in The Age today written by Melbourne “literary critic” Peter Craven and it’s annoyed me. Craven has written a pretty bleary counter-revisionist attempt to convince us that the Christian mythology behind Easter actually has some validity and should be honoured. For someone who is self-described as “blisteringly arrogant” , this is a shabby piece of pious nonsense. Reading this article, you’d think that Craven must be nearing death and suddenly feeling like he has to do some major sucking up to his imaginary God to account for a lifetime of past sins.
As I wrote back to David:
I don’t see anything mysterious or wonderful about continuing a 2000 year old myth. I find it primitive and scary that so many people in the 21st century still feel the need to worship supranatural beings. I do agree with Craven though that kids should be taught about human mythology in school, but I’d love to see ALL human mythology taught. Kids should be taught the Christian heritage behind easter, but should also be taught the original reason for a celebration at the spring equinox, to celebrate the fertility gods that ancient humans believed brought new life, new crops. I think that if more people had an unbiased and comprehensive education in human mythologies they would recognize that Christianity is a mish-mash of many older mythologies,
some judaic, some “pagan”. Unfortunately the catholic church did too good a job wiping out the memory of those older mythologies during the dark ages so 1500 years later they aren’t understood by most people. All most people in the West have known is the christ myth which has value, no doubt, but should be seen in context to the entire body of human mythology.
Let’s teach the kids, from a very young age, the stories of Ishtar and Isis and Tlazolteotl (the eater of filth!) and, my favourite, Aphrodite.
Let’s not be sexist either. We should teach them about the blokes – Ba’al and Adonis and Marduk and Mithras (who was born of a virgin on December 25 with shepherds in attendance… 100 years before Christ) and Osiris.
Try finding a book for primary school kids which tells those stories at your local bookstore.
Now, let’s get back to the travesty of this Peter Craven article in The Age.
He writes:
“And with all the hideous barbarities of Western civilisation that made Nazis of us all, you can’t go very far in the civilisation stakes without recognising the power and the glory of the Easter story and what has been made of it.”
NAZIS?!! WTF?
“It may be that we live in a post-Christian age, it may be that the Enlightenment worked wonders to deepen the mercy that is enjoined on Christians, but our civilisation will lose its heart and mind — you might say it would lose its soul — if it turns its back on the miracle and mystery of the Easter story.”
Actually Peter I think abandoning the worship of imaginary deities and learning to accept rational thinking is the only way we can consider our society “civilized”. Any people that worship imaginary deities must be considered, at least in part, woefully primitive. The “civilized” parts of our society have nothing to do with imaginary deities. They can be considered the benefits of rational minds. Let’s not forget that Christianity forced the dark ages on the human race. They deliberately destroyed the great works of human antiquity. The science and philosophical works of ancient Greece and Rome were nearly all destroyed by small-minded Christian leaders. The “heart and mind” of the human race was obliterated and forced into a period of darkness which it finally struggled out from underneath only hundreds of years later.
“It is a story resonant with the gravest tragedy in the world, but it ends (that’s what those Easter eggs are all about) in light and triumph and love.”
No, Peter, the eggs and the rabbits are both ancient fertility symbols which were being used to celebrate the Spring Equinox in ancient times. Like most things in Christianity, this was borrowed/stolen from older human mythologies, probably to make it slightly easier to force the new religion down the throats of the pagans.
“Whether we like it or not, the story of Christ’s death on the Friday we call Good runs through all our dreams. It’s there in the greatest architecture we know, it’s animate in the great paintings of the Renaissance and a constant point of reference in our greatest poetry and drama, even in Samuel Beckett, who says he saw the world extinguished though he never saw it lit.”
Peter’s education is obviously sorely lacking. Greatest architecture? What about… The Cheops Pyramid? The Colosseum? The Aztec Cholula pyramid? The Eiffel Tower? The Sydney Opera House?
Poetry… 1001 Arabian Nights? The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam?
Drama… The Illiad? The Odyssey? Wuthering Heights??
Anyway… I could go on but I’m bored.
I agree with Craven that “the Easter Story is graphic, stark, mesmerising”. Like much of the Judeo/Christian bible, it’s a terrifying look at human (and deist) depravity.
Let it sit where it should with the rest of ancient human literature. A reminder of where we came from. A lesson on how thousands of years of oppression and bloodshed were justified.
And let’s move on to a brighter future.
by cameron | Mar 31, 2007 | Christianity, Iraq, Podcast, science vs religion
Greydon Square is the future of hiphop.
Raised an orphan by Seventh Day Adventists in Compton, Los Angeles, he did time at 17 for possession of a weapon, then joined the US Army for a tour of Iraq, where he did bible group in his spare time with a view to becoming a minister after he was discharged. However, the more he learned about Christianity, the more he questioned it.
Today he is studying cosmology and quantum physics at University and self-producing his own hiphop album with a powerful message – that rational thinking is superior to religion and faith.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.
by cameron | Mar 12, 2007 | Christianity, Podcast, science vs religion, TPN
Tonight is the first edition (if you don’t count a couple of false starts) of GDAY WORLD BITCH SESSION. Your chance to come on the show and bitch to me about anything you like. I’ll try to do one of these each week. You can bitch to me about stuff that’s been on the show recently, the show in general, life in general, or just bring your own baggage. Your daddy didn’t love you? Bitch to me about it. You can’t get laid? Blame me. You need marital advice? I’m your man.
Tonight was a pretty slow start. I started off by myself, nothing wrong with a little onanism, so I indulged and chatted about Priscillian, the first Christian “heretic” executed by Christians in 385 CE. His crime? He said Christians should lead more ascetic lives, avoid marriage, and retreat from “worldly honors”. At the Council of Toledo in 400, fifteen years after Priscillian’s death, when his case was reviewed, the most serious charge that could be brought was the error of language involved in a misrendering of the word innascibilis (“unbegettable”).
Then I’m joined by Urbaer and we talk about religion. Are Taoism and Confucianism religions or just social philosophies? Should Christianity become a social philosophy and leave behind it’s supernatural aspects?
I also show Urbaer the new TPN homepage which went up tonight. This is version 3.0 of the TPN homepage and we’ve been working on it, on and off, for about 10 months. It’s a relief to finally have it up. Version 2 lived WAY beyond it’s due by date. Mano and his team have done a great job pulling this together.
Finally we are joined by Molly and the Randulo, an American in Paris, who tells us about his wine podcast and the 24-hour podathon he is running on TalkShoe this week to raise money for third-world entrepreneurs.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!
