Recently I entered a photo into a competition – of a man juggling in the middle of the road, in front of waiting cars. The judge’s main comment (after a surprised laugh) was that he thought the image had been created in Photoshop. In fact, it’s something I’ve seen several times at the gyratory around Berlin’s Siegessäule (victory column – from various 19th century wars).
I’ve finally got round to assembling a short video from some clips on my little point and shoot camera. Now if only I could send it to that judge!
Blogging and tweeting has been very light lately, mainly owing to severe back pain making life difficult. However, I would like to wish anyone who drops by here a very good, joyful and peaceful Christmas.
This is the image from my home-made greeting card for this year.
I was very impressed last week with the art installation “Light Music” at the Tate Modern, by filmmaking artist Lis Rhodes. It’s there until the end of October. The official blurb page is here.
What makes it is the wonderful diversity of ways people interact with it, some of which I recorded as I watched.
This year I’ve branched out in Christmas greetings by adding a video. These are images of and from the Basilica of the Annunciation. “Verbum caro hic factum est” (here the Word was made flesh).
Yes, I know that that the Orthodox say it’s a bit up the road at St Gabriel’s Church by Mary’s Well, and that there are all sorts of questions over the historicity of Luke’s narrative. But the point is that the Church does not understand incarnation as a vague theological principle, but a story about one specific birth of one unique God-shaped human in the womb of one particular obedient woman at a definite point in time.
No-one may really know where the “here” was, but there was a “here”.
Anyway, that’s enough verbal theology: let’s get to the greeting.
Earlier today I tweeted that I’d just overheard a woman in the medicine and science section of Blackwells saying “I can’t find a book on homeopathy” I commented that I should blooming well hope not!
This attracted the attention of someone who wanted to know why I thought homeopathy didn’t belong there, to which I could only reply that it’s not scientific medicine.
Thinking about this exchange led me to ponder the similarity between homeopathy and intelligent design. I don’t intend to get dragged into the kind of fruitless slanging matches James McGrath gets into over comparing creationism and mythicism mind you!
I am, however suggesting there is a basic similarity: Both seek to clothe their beliefs in the language of science, while being unable to satisfy the criteria of science. In a way that, of course, pays a back-handed compliment to the power of scientific explanation, while entirely subverting the methodology that lies at the heart of the enterprise.
But enough serious observation. I invite you to enjoy a little Mitchell and Webb instead:
