h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We can't stop here, so close to the 20,000! Come on you lot, get your fingers out!

Alji

Gotta beat the Thingites damnit...

I posted this elsewhere yesterday. We might want to discuss the separation of church and state? This article shows just how whacky things are getting in the US :

"Moonie leader 'crowned' in Senate"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1245929,00.html

"Republicans and Democrats attend cult blessing ceremony"


az

Well I think its good news
Given what hes done with Hitler and Stalin its just a pity it doesn't seem to have any effect on here and now world leaders

toxx

>>Hi Jez. Hope you don't mind if I quote without the exclamations. Reverence might be appropriate, but not surprise, for that which is appreciated for its reliability. <<

I don't think I followed this - what do you want to quote?

If the thing about exclamations is a reference to the Hail Sunna! ritual chant, then it has exclamation points not because of surprise, but because it is an invocation to the goddess The exclamation is in the same mode as shouting Hey! Sunna! That was the greatest sunrise, my Lady! I was really impressed!

PS az, I am being Jez today, as I need to use the scanner and I am on system 9 I'm not an interloper

Jez - eating toast, bagels, coffee and fruit juice, and watching a bit of the program on the Elgin marbles.

A friend of mine says as far as she can make out, Athena would quite like some new stuff, rather than everyone arguing about the broken bits. :D

What does everyone think? How about a new temple to the Greek gods?

:D

If (if? when...) I were a god I'd like a huge solid thing made out of granite and marble and the like. Built to really last. Then I'd like it to be used, but never cleaned. And all the green stuff could grow through it and slowly tear it apart. And I'd have the foreman's descendants sacrificed if the build quality was shabby.

Hi Jez. Yep, I was referring to 'Hail, Sunna!'. It occurred to me later that the exclamations may be attributable to the vocative case, as you explain. However, perhaps the alternate lines might arguably be described as descriptive - although also praise.

We might well say: "Hi Fred! Good to see you here as usual." However, I don't think a second exclamation mark would make sense - and the first one seems optional at most. Sorry to be picky, but there's a shortage of topics of discussion here it seems.

toxx

Toxx, did you hear 'In the Footsteps of Muhammad'?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/muhammad/footsteps/index.shtml


Alji

Hi, just passing through

Hi Azahar

Here in the UK this is presently impossible without the disestablishment of the monarchy. Hmmm...that idea certainly has some merit to be sure .

I can see no reason whatsoever why one sad, old, middle-eastern death cult should be allowd exclusive access to and influence in the corridors of power. Indeed it is positively dangerous to allow them to continue to have such an influence when their constituency is shrinking at such a rate.

I mean the Automobile Association has more practicing members than all the Christian Churches in the UK, so why shouldn't they have half a dozen members in the House of Lords, and exclusive access to both the monarch and her ministers?

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\.

Morning, toxx

>>Hi Jez. Yep, I was referring to 'Hail, Sunna!'. It occurred to me later that the exclamations may be attributable to the vocative case, as you explain. However, perhaps the alternate lines might arguably be described as descriptive - although also praise.<<

I think maybe the confusion here is in the way I use the chants I sing to the gods. You will have heard the monotheist drones mumbled in most Christian or Islamic places of worship, or produced for things like 'Songs of Praise'.

Well, a midsummer dawn shout to Sunna just isn't like that. You get up in the cold, with the breath steaming around you, you trek half a mile in a cloak with a staff to a stone circle, you meet up with a few hundred similarly clad, similarly mad pagans and you wait for the light. And when it comes, an exclamation is the only appropriate response. The magic is in the air, the song is good, the world is wonderful.

Hail Sunna! Golden one of the morning!

>>We might well say: "Hi Fred! Good to see you here as usual." However, I don't think a second exclamation mark would make sense - and the first one seems optional at most. Sorry to be picky, but there's a shortage of topics of discussion here it seems.<<

Yes, someone who doesn't know the Lady who carries the sun in her wain probably would think the ! was optional. But when I stand in the dawn light on the longest day of the year, or the shortest day of the year, or, in fact, any day of the year, I raise my arms and voice to Her in an ever-pressent sense of joy and wonder in the beauty and glory of it all.

Ooo, Jez has gone all poetic in the morning - eat your breakfast, folks, and get back to the gods.

Jez

Thanks Jez. You explain most clearly and, indeed, peotically. I guess one could say that the reason for the punctuation is in the context - and not simply the content. As I read it I was, of course, aware of the former but was not exactly empathising with the latter. I was sitting at my screen in a boarded-up house, as usual. I was nevertheless moved enough to wish to quote it, in view of the date.

If I quote it in future, I shall stick with your punctuation.

toxx

Sorry about 'peotically'. An inadvertant Molesworthism! Chiz!

I recall being on a hillside caravan site on the morning of one first of June. The sun rose over the sea, 'out of' it - as it were. This was back in '98 perhaps, but the impression remains clear. This was an unaccompanied experience. Nobody else was about at that early hour.

I vaguely recall a recent R4 programme where I think a little girl said: "Look, Daddy. The Sun is bathing!" Presumably, this would have been a sunset experience.

toxx

Sure did, Alji. Must admit I was surprised that the Haddith wasn't mentioned by name. What intrigues and frustrates me is the apparent free-for-all in interpretation of the life and lore/law. Alternative interpretations seem to be accepted and ignored at will. I find that the Irish politicos do something very similar.

toxx

Aren't there plans to do away with the House of Lords though? It doesn't have a great deal of power as it is. And as always, better a monarch than president Tony. Or president anyone.

I don't mind so much, the current archbishop seems to have his head screwed on right at least. I'm only bothered about religion being all over the schools myself.

>>You will have heard the monotheist drones mumbled in most Christian or Islamic places of worship, or produced for things like 'Songs of Praise'.<<

Have to disagree here! Some Christian music, certainly that on Songs of Praise, can be boring and unimaginative. But other songs...oh, other songs can hardly be read without your heart soaring with the joy and the wonder and the beauty of it all.


O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder,
Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made;
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

Try and forget the old-fashioned language and read the words. You can't tell me *that* is a mumbling drone!

Hi Changeling,

You are right it isn't a mumbling drone. It is the song of the hebrew slaves.....

Why is so much church music such obsequious drivel? Perhaps because it reflects the relationship that most christians aspire to with their deity - slave to master?

If He art that great why is His creation such a mess?

Rambunctious blessings,
Matholwch the Apostate /|\.

"... the relationship that most christians aspire to with their deity - slave to master?>

You know better than that, Math. It's child to father. To quote another excellent hymn: "Dear lord and father of mankind...", or perhaps: "Eternal father, strong to save...".

How would you characterise your relationship with your gods? Sort of passing acquaintances?

toxx

Greetings Toxx, (& everyone else)

Thought I'd suspend lurking and add my humble opinion of Western non-secular music. It collects around either extreme of the spectrum that is taste. Who can deny that Bach's masses & organ works are among the most sublime things ever written.

On the other hand there's amateur evangelical music. I don't mean to upset anyone when I say that it's frankly offensive. I can only imagine that the euphoria reached by the performers during worship removes all inhibitions of self-control. Maybe this is the intention?

Icy

As a musician, albeit one who finds expression of this in therapeutic work with children, rather than in the spotlight of the public stage.

Enourmous amounts of majestic music has been written for both god......

and

The Devil....

In god's courner we have Jerusalem, to add to the titles already mentioned

and in the devils, Night on a bare mountain

But also for other things beside these two,

Poly theism has its own majestic pieces too, the planet suite for instance despite it's confusing title was claimed by Holst to refer to the gods of Roman mythology.

Just my twopeneth worth since I have a hard time visiting this or any other page at the moment.