Mitchell Seow

There are still people coming here looking for information about the Sydney High student Mitchell Seow who died suddenly on 14 January 2006: see my January 2006 archive. Mitchell was in the debating team I supervised in Years 7 and 8. High Notes that reprinted a lovely article that appeared a short while ago, though not online, in the Sydney Morning Herald:

Strawberry Hills Pub

Lunch with Lord Malcolm and Sirdan was here yesterday: warmish beer but good value food. And Lord Malcolm saw lots of cute — um — and we saw the sexiest car we have ever seen:

Still preparing to write about Islam

Yesterday in church Dorothy McRae-McMahon said she had been interviewing a woman who had been on the Hajj, and as they talked about what this experience had meant to the interviewee, Dorothy was surprised when, having told the interviewee that she, Dorothy, was a Uniting Church minister, the woman asked “What is a minister?” But then on reflection Dorothy remembered that for years she had no idea what the Hajj is. “We all stay in our boxes, don’t we?”

Today we are reaping the whirlwind of our insularity, and theirs, I fear.

Did you see this odd story in the paper today?

Getting checked at the hospital soon

The Redfern doc thought the Heinz soup theory possible but also detected an ectopic arrythmia, not in itself necessarily all that dangerous.

Seyyed Hossein Nasr

There was an entry on Lines from a Floating Life in June 2005 when I first got Nasr’s The Heart of Islam, which I am now reading carefully as I think what to say here on the subject soon. At the end of that entry I may have been a bit harsh. Certainly one great plus in the book is to enable the rest of us to appreciate the diversity and complexity of Islamic ideas and practices, and to grasp the import of the fact that Islam has no central authority like, say, the Vatican.

I have also just reread The Koran: A Very Short Introduction by Michael Cook which deservedly is in this Guardian list, Robert Irwin’s top 10 books on Islam and Islamic culture. It really is fascinating.

Vertigo again!

So the last time was 9 January: today I have it again, but this time alcohol is definitely not a factor, seeing as I have not had any. But if memory serves me correctly I did have the same meal last time, a particular Heinz soup. That may be significant. But of course it could be any number of things. I will go to the doctor tomorrow and hope, as last time, the condition lasts no more than 24 hours.

Meanwhile the good news is my superannuation payment should be in the bank tomorrow.

I have also ditched IE6 in favour of the latest Firefox: IE6 was freezing far too often.

Today Tonight on 7: Shock Crisis Scumbag Betrayal of OUR Kids Horror

The Shock Crisis Scumbag Betrayal of OUR Kids Horror of the moment on this flagship of manifestly declined standards in Australian television “journalism” — the mix of microstories tonight was as bizarre as anything on Frontline — is an education panic story tantamount to an infomercial (is that the correct spelling of this nonce-word?) on behalf of coaching colleges; for a little while at least, until they get bored with it, as they will, and move on to some new “outrage”, perhaps zoo keepers into bestiality with gorillas while rorting tax payers and diddling pensioners of their life savings.

(I really shouldn’t complain, I suppose, as I get a little return myself in the tuition market. Not enough, mind you.)

Falun Gong: Information From Answers.com: Kamahl and the Chinese Gala

This seems comprehensive and accurate: I commend it to you. I have made the link because the Chinese New Year Gala I went to with M on Saturday night was not merely sponsored by Falun Gong, but was a proselytising exercise on behalf of Falun Gong. So far as that was the case, it would seem the worst they could do was bore us to death. It appears M’s Assyrian friend, a lovely guy by the way, is a practitioner; he is the one who organised the outing. M muttered somewhat about commercialism and religion and politics, and about Buddhists (he was taught in Christmas-New Year 1999-2000 by the Dalai Lama) not trying to convert people.

It would also appear that the Chinese (Mainland) government has inadvertently promoted Falun Gong more effectively than any other government in the world by its heavy-handed and inhumane persecution of the group. It is of course somewhat ironic that John Howard, George Bush, Tony Blair, Helen Clarke, and various other world leaders who endorsed the Gala’s program in writing, did so as part of promoting relations with China and the Chinese people generally. The program was full of ads connected to Falun Gong media outlets, fronts, and Taiwanese organisations and fronts. The Australian branch of the Guomindang had a full page ad.

Book Reviews - Get a Life by Nadine Gordimer

This seems to be my time for encountering extraordinary wise women. Nadine Gordimer’s Get a Life (2005) is the amazing product of an octogenarian South African writer and Nobel Laureate.

Get a Life begins with Paul Bannerman, a South African ecologist, being treated for thyroid cancer with radioactive iodine.

NTDTV’s 2006 Chinese New Year Global Gala: The Classical and Beautiful State Theatre in Sydney

Well, the Opera last Saturday, thanks to Marcel Proust, and this tonight, thanks to M.

Building Bridges

Here is a site I had never seen before, but I am glad to have found it, as I did when searching for information about my friend the late Father Ken Sinclair.

The Bell Shakespeare Company

It’s a bloody Flash site: a waste of computer power as usual. However, they do a fantastic job on Shakespeare, and this year are offering Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest. Some of the best times I have had in the past five years involve attending Bell productions. According to Google, Kelly, Philippa “Performing Australian Identity: Gendering King Lear”, Theatre Journal - Volume 57, Number 2, May 2005, pp. 205-227 apparently alludes to what I had to say in relation to a non-Bell production of King Lear, part of that series The Rabbit and I saw between September 2002 and September 2004; September 2005 put the kibosh on that, unfortunately.

SojoNet: Philip Rizk "Loving our global neighbors - and enemies"

I have to confess that the louder and more bizarre the protests from SOME Muslim quarters the more I sympathise with the cartoonists. However, Philip Rizk, an Egyptian-German Christian working with the Foundation for Reconciliation in Gaza, does make some serious points in this article. Do read it, even if you have to enter a free subcription to do so.

Dateline - Home - Abu Ghraib- New Horrors Revealed

Tonight SBS DATELINE presents a world exclusive – the release of new photographs from Abu Ghraib in Iraq showing new horrific abuses committed there. These images have never been previously shown to the public.

Taken at the same time as the notorious photographs from Abu Ghraib, which were leaked in 2004, these images reveal further widespread abuse including new incidents of homicide, torture and sexual humiliation. The extent of the abuse shown in the photos suggests that the torture and abuse that occurred at Abu Ghraib in 2004 is much worse than is currently understood.

A transcript is now available on the above site.

I have just seen this, and I have only one word to say:

depraved!

Utterly.