James's Weblog

The statue in Daniel 3

Mon, 16/04/2007 - 18:47 -- James Oakley

E C Lucas, Daniel (AOTC), pages 94-95

"Five times in vv. 1-12 it is stated that the image was set up by Nebuchadnezzar. This emphasizes the way in which religion and the State get intertwined. Refusal to worship the image cannot be tolerated because it subverts the authority of the State. As Welch (1958:85) comments, 'The State has certain ends in view and want a certain type of citizen to fulfil them; it issues its orders by which it shall procure the best means to serve its ends. Some day it may demand an obedience which will make it impossible for certain men to save their souls alive. Then the opposite ends for life will come into open collision, and men will have to choose whom they mean to serve.' This is the choice that faced Diaspora Jews from time to time.

"Nebuchadnezzar's rage (13-15) may contain an element of annoyance at the ingratitude of these Jews. Powerful patrons can turn into dangerous enemies. However, he does not accept the accusation against them without giving them a chance to prove their loyalty and obedience. His primary concern is with their public conduct, rather than with their private beliefs. There is a parallel to this in modern secular society. Religion is acceptable as long as it is a matter of private belief and does not lead people to challenge the assumptions and values of their society by what they say or do."

Blog Category: 
Daniel

Conclusion of Miserable Children

Fri, 13/04/2007 - 17:48 -- James Oakley

I’ve just read (in the transcript online – I’d got home long before this point) Andrew Brown’s conclusion to the programme:

But what can we change? What should our arrangements be? We can’t disentangle the problems of children from those of adults. The government, too, sends families mixed messages. They are to be, in Gordon Brown’s great phrase, “hard working families”. But do the hardest-working families have the happiest children? The evidence suggests that they don’t and that it’s the family which plays together that stays together. In fact it’s hard to resist a rather heretical conclusion. Most of what we have seen as the peculiar horrors of modern childhood seem to arise from a lack of authority: they can, in shorthand, be blamed on the Sixties. But that was a complicated decade, with good as well as bad; and one of the distinctive attitudes of the Sixties was a distrust of money, and a belief that material success should not be the measure of everything. We’re never going to get away from a society that cares about status. But one in which status is measured only by material success makes us, and our children, needlessly miserable.

Blog Category: 
Children
Current Affairs

Miserable children

Fri, 13/04/2007 - 17:39 -- James Oakley

I had to laugh out loud in the car on the way home from standing committee last night. I often have Radio 4 on in the car, engine starts up for a ten minute journey, and I catch some snippet of something.

Last night, the programme was Analysis, looking at the UNICEF report that said Britain’s children are amongst the unhappiest in a developed nation. No, the laugh-out-loud (shortened to LOL, by the way) moment wasn’t the continuity reader accidentally calling us an undeveloped nation, although that was funny.

Blog Category: 
Children
Current Affairs

Sorry - authentication required for commenting

Wed, 04/04/2007 - 10:41 -- James Oakley

Sorry everyone

I've just had to delete 280 spam comments, going back only a week or so. MovableType has an excellent junk comment filter - 280 comments got caught and marked as junk, and I only got notified by e-mail of 10 comments that were spam. Still - I have to glance down the junk comment list to make sure I've not deleted a genuine comment.

So, hate to do it, but I've had to go to authenticated-only commenting.

Movable Type (of which this blog is an instance) uses TypeKey for this. All you do is create a TypeKey account. You then sign in and have the option to stay signed in for a fortnight. You're then allowed to comment again. As a bonus, you only have to type your name once.

Sorry about that - I'll look into introducing some human-only security feature to weed out the spambots, then I should be able to go allow anonymous comments again.

Blog Category: 
Technology

Brazilian Sitio Boa

Sat, 24/03/2007 - 09:00 -- James Oakley

Sitting down to work with an americano in hand, made from beans grown on the Sitio Boa Sorte farm in Brazil. This coffee came number 33 in the Brazilian 2005 Cup of Excellence competition, and I have to say it is another great Steve Leighton find.

The sad news – it’s run out. Steve has no more. I buy green which means the beans keep for a year or so, so that I can keep drinking long after he has none left!

Blog Category: 
Coffee

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