Ivories strike gold

A rather to the point review of the American release.

If the name Keith Emerson doesn’t ring any musical bells, you may be too young to recall the heady days of progressive art rock when instrumental proficiency carried more weight than flashbulb image or red-carpet appearances. After churning out a succession of mediocre solo albums and critically acclaimed soundtracks, the keyboard’s greatest and perhaps most flamboyant player returns with “The Keith Emerson Band featuring Mark Bonilla,” a self-titled CD that stands proudly among his best work with Emerson Lake & Palmer.

Best of all, this version also contains an update of Barbarian, the piece that gave the first ELP album it's headstart. Or headblast.

New Scientist denies the fossil record

It is a rare treat these days to see a scientific journal that openly denies the fossil record. It takes a lot of courage and conviction.

So praise then to Jo Marchant in New Scientist for showing that freedom of speech is so cherished that deniers still are allowed to publish in serious magazines even in the Darwin Bicentennial year.

The fossils that comes into play here are of course the strata of sources and eye witnesses from the times in question. One cannot make serious historical claims while ignoring written material and real historians. It is worse than bad science, it is bad manners.

Two examples will suffice.

WHEN Roman civilisation fell in the early centuries AD, the light of scholarship was extinguished. It was close to a thousand years before civilisation recovered, thanks to European scholars who rediscovered classical Greek learning and ushered in the new dawn of the Renaissance.

At least, this is how history is taught. Now two books argue that this view ignores the crucial role of Islamic scholars.

That a long range of books by professional historians like Edward Grant and David Lindberg for decades have shown that the whole outline of history on this "fall" and "recovery" is a myth, is beyond New Scientist.

After this start it is not surprising than New Scientist even denies the dinosaur in the room. The Flat Earth Myth is present in all it's gore.

While the Islamic world was enjoying astronomy, philosophy and medicine, those in Europe could not tell the hours of the day, thought the Earth was flat, and saw disease as punishment from God, says Jonathan Lyons in "The House of Wisdom".

So much the worse for Jonathan Lyons. That a modern scientific magazine perpetuates the myth that European scholars in the middle ages believed to earth to be flat is nothing short than a miracle.

The only hope is to prescribe the normal antidotes, by Russell and Garwood.

Even if it always has been hard to argue against fossil deniers, it may provide some enlightenment.

Though one has some doubts after reading revealing passages like the following.

By the late 12th century, though, the Islamic world was increasingly under threat from Christian armies, and Muslim leaders responded with a return to fundamental religious values. The battle between scientists and theologians was ultimately settled in favour of God. But in Europe, the genie was out of the bottle. The rationalist approach bequeathed by the Arabs "changed forever the landscape of Western thought", says Lyons, and led directly to the scientific revolution.

The reviewer doesn't even begin to get suspicious about the much maligned European society. Why not ask a simple control question on why science in Europe, though allegedly in the clutches of The Church and the Clergy for still many a century, was able to set roots, and have the reasons and resources to grow into modern science?

Not the least as the Arab and Ottoman world had a lot more money and manpower, at least til the 17th century. And the Europeans definitely lost the crusades in precisely the late 12th.

Well, fossils deniers always have had their own peculiar logic.

god vs. god

What shall one say?

Except, of course, there really is no contest.

"The Art of the Duel", an original piano piece inspired by and dedicated to the two giants of piano prog rock: Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson. Written and performed by Matej Hrovat, pianist and com...
"The Art of the Duel", an original piano piece inspired by and dedicated to the two giants of piano prog rock: Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson. Written and performed by Matej Hrovat, pianist and composer from Slovenia who also composes and publishes electronic music under the alias "Aziraphal". Recorded at a live piano performance in 2006; directed by Boštjan Miha Jambrek.
More information and music at http://www.aziraphal.com and http://www.soundclick.com/aziraphal

"Darwin vs. God" - and BBC History

The latest issue of BBC History has an illuminating article on Darwin vs. God, "exploding the myth of the clash between church and science".

This is really an occasion to congratulate, celebrate and dance in the streets. Before shouting from the rooftops.

In short, keep 'em coming!

Not the least as the Historian of Science John van Wyhe shows how easy it is to be trapped by myths which seem impossible to counter by mere facts.

"We often hear that when the Origin of Species was published there was a great outcry and an historic clash of science and religion.

This is probably more fantasy than fact. Such stories can now be told and repeated only because we have forgotten just what was, and what was not, shocking in 1859".

Still, once again the left hand doesn't know what the right does, something that as far as known has no evolutionary benefit. If there is anyone keeping by the myths, it is BBC itself. In an overview of historic figures we read that

Darwin was vehemently attacked, particularly by the Church.

The matter is not directly improved by van Wyhes article so far not being published on the net. Just to ensure that the myths will stay as safe as ever.

In a Darwin Jubilee Year, not to mention a neoatheistic age, it would anyhow take a miracle to move them.

Cats and credulity

Among a myriad of myths on the Medieval Church is the order to kill cats, millions of them. Which helped contribute to the Black Death, as it was spread by fleas on rats. While other cultures kept their cats and were far less severely hit.

One never gets used to the lack of elementary logic and research behind such stories. It shouldn't take long to see that the Black Death was not much less virulent in China and the Middle East. And that one strand of the plague was air born. Breathing the germs hacked up by someone having it, made you easily get it.

In short, looking at sources provides a different picture.

Cats suffered horribly during witch hunts, which fostered or encouraged all kinds of superstition and brutality. Yet manuscripts show them about the house, playing with the spinster's twirling bobbin, and earning their living on farms. (Excerpts from: Lost Country Life by Dorothy Hartley. New York: Pantheon Books, 1979).

It is hard to avoid the feeling that while the sources tell us that cats were loved and abundant, one has to stick with the myth, as everyone just know it is true.

And it all seems alligned to modern day satanist crazes (and more here).

Still, the standard story is everywhere, even serious places.

"Though cats had always behaved in this manner, to the superstitious minds of the Middle Ages, cats were practicing supernatural powers and witchcraft. Most accused witches were older peasant women who lived alone, often keeping cats as pets for companionship. This guilt by association meant that roughly a million cats were burned at the stake, along with their owners, on suspicion of being witches".

To state the obvious, as no witches were burnt in the Middle Ages, this means that no cats were burnt either. Point proven.

Or perhaps the story is quite another?

"It took the authorities some time to figure out the cause of the problem. At one point they tested the theory that the disease was being spread by dogs and cats; thus the mayor of London ordered the execution of all such pets. Despite the extermination of millions of companion animals, however, the plague did not abate but actually accelerated, for, of course, the elimination of all cats was soon followed by an explosion of the rat population.

Eventually it became evident that people who had kept cats, in violation of the law, fared better; for the cats, according to their nature, killed the rats that carried the fleas that really carried the plague. People slowly began to deduce the rat-flea-disease connection. When the truth finally came to light, cats were quickly elevated to hero status, and soon became protected by law.”

So in reality it was all due to science. The authorities made a testable hypothesis, which then was falsfied.

From this we learn again how dangerous science is. It poisons everything. So be sure to visit you nearest hospital if you ever get hit by a scientist.

Matt it is

And then it is clear. You'd have to travel in time to have expected that one.

Say hello to Matt Smith. And mix it with a farewell here.

Exile from Babylon

One of my Fav Historians, Philip Jenkins of Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way fame, has just written an article (and a book) on the Church in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Across much of the Middle East, the ancient Christian story seems to be coming to a bloody end almost before our eyes. The most dramatic catastrophe in recent years has been that of Iraq's Christians, who represented 5-6 percent of Iraq's population in 1970. That number is now below 1 percent, and shrinking fast in the face of persecution and ethnic/religious cleansing.

Western Christians watch this story in horror, but few claim detailed knowledge of the situation, or can easily recognize the Iraqi churches we read of in the news. Are they perhaps the survivors of some Victorian missionary enterprise? we wonder.

Actually, understanding the history of Iraq's churches should make us still more keenly aware of the tragedy we see unfolding. Not only are these churches — Chaldean, Assyrian, Orthodox — truly ancient, they are survivals from the earliest history of the church. For centuries indeed, the land long known as Mesopotamia had a solid claim to rank as the center of the church and an astonishing record of missions and evangelism. What we see today in Iraq is not just the death of a church, but also the end of one of the most awe-inspiring phases of Christian history.

Be sure to catch Jenkins' book The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia — and How It Died.

Wall Street Journal on Obama and GKC

What better Christmas Gift than Wall Street Journal praising Chesterton?

For a writer whose first two books were published 100 years ago, G.K. Chesterton is looking pretty contemporary. During his run for the Republican presidential nomination, Mike Huckabee quoted freely from Chesterton. On the Democratic side, numerous Obama supporters claim to see the influence of Chesterton's thought on the president-elect's worldview.

Wick Allison, former publisher of National Review (and current editor-in-chief of D Magazine) sees no contradiction in Chesterton's attraction for both the right and left. "I think both sides could benefit from reading Chesterton. I certainly see a conservative side to Obama that connects to what Chesterton said of tradition, that it represents 'the democracy of the dead.'"

Say no more.

Or, rather, keep on talking!

Merry Christmas - though not as you know it

Great one going it's rounds this Christmas.


And hopefully the next few hundred as well.

Obviously the Season

Though I don't quite get jolly by these.

Sara Brightman.

Anonymous (understandable)

Party version.

T'is The Season

What better to delight these days than a fresh and sparkling cover of I Believe In Father Christmas?

Even if the original is better and the sound not quite good, is it obvious that the tune has become a Britich Christmas Icon on level with Lennon's seasonal song. Though one notices a certain strategical change in the lyrics.

What then is RED(Wire)?

You can do less pretentious things than listen to this fellow.

Agoraphobia?

A new movie - Agora - about the concflict between paganism and Christianity is planned. It is

set in Roman Egypt in the fourth century A.D. Weisz plays astrologer-philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria, who fights to save the collected wisdom of the ancient world. Her slave Davus (Minghella) is torn between his love for his mistress and the possibility of gaining his freedom by joining the rising tide of Christianity.

Hopefully they will avoid the blunders of making the murder of Hypatia symbolising the "fall" of the Ancient World, not to mention the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.

It is however definitely a good sign that they seem to see Christianity as giving hope for the slaves.

Though a tad of agoraphobia may for once be in order.