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Chatterpillar - Metamorphosis come on!!

 
Big Cat lives in Sydney (Nthn). Originally he was a news writer. Then he focused on entertainment. Now his articles are on good news. This is about transformation. Metamorphosis come on!! Spiritually.
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins


We desperately need this first, if we are to have any chance of stopping man-worsened climate change.

Two shows on ABC last night (Monday 21 Dec 09) gave a glimpse of the depths of mankind's ignorance, which we need to change first if the world is ever to be freed from potentially catastrophic climate change.

The first was the “Elders With Andrew Denton” interview of 67yo revolutionary biologist Oxford University-based atheist writer, Richard Dawkins. In revealing man's ignorance, it showed less of Dawkins and more of Christianity-professing Denton, who persisted with inane personal questions instead of investigating what viewers are really concerned about - whether Christianity or Darwinist thinking presents the best hope for overcoming the man-worsened world condition.

Myself, I'm a religious skeptic based on the evidence that Christ does not live in religious church organizations. But I'm skeptical of moralizing atheist writers too.

In terms of powerful humility, the interview demonstrated Dawkins as having more of the person Christ in him than Denton, whose Ocker tendency to play the man instead of the ball bordered on the ridiculous, with his last question asking about Dawkin's star sign!

The second ABC show evidencing our underlying ignorance was "Lilies" .

The series is about three working class sisters aged late teens or early 20s, living in a Catholic family post-World War I in Liverpool (UK), with a father and brother but no mother. Last night’s storyline demonstrated the ignorance of the upper class seeking to employ eugenic solutions coming close to euthanasia, to address perceived over-breeding of the ignorant working class.

I'm no feminist. I'm a 63yo man whose younger-life ignorance was extreme even criminal selfishness, using intellect and religion to manipulate others including family members. The writers of "Lilies" further opened these old eyes to the tragic consequences for mankind, myself included, in persisting to manipulate for self's sake.

Taken together, the night's ABC viewing spoke volumes about the rarely heard real condition lurking behind damaging popular behavior.

Could this be the food for thought we need more of, if we are to change our condition starting with each one dealing with himself?

We desperately need this first, if we are to have any chance of stopping man-worsened climate change.

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Highly evocative Dr Who end

September 23rd 2007 06:30
Tardis
Dr Who's Tardis

Last night's ABC showing of the final in the present series of Dr Who was highly evocative emotionally and even spiritually. No wonder it has a cult-like following of avid supporters. Even older, mildly avid viewers like me get excited enough to want to write about it.

It's interesting to see how biblically similar the plots of Dr Who have become. Last night we glimpsed a foretelling of the end of the world, a furnace for all Earth's poor souls trapped in their individual spheres.

Dr Who stands for the good time lord. The other time lord stood for evil. He enslaved the people, called himself the master and made broadcasts obliging the people to rejoice in him.

Had the plot followed the biblical way, his ending might have been in the furnace too. But no, the scriptwriters decided on another ending. After loosing his powers then receiving a life- threatening shot to the chest, the master preferred to suicide. Faced with the alternative of prison locked in the Tardis (Dr Who's time machine), he refused to use his time lord's capability to regenerate.

"I win", the master uttered just before dying in the arms of Dr Who, who pleaded with him to regenerate.

Earlier the evil master heard the word's from Dr Who that he most dreaded and definitely did not want to hear. "I forgive you", said Dr Who. More highly evocative script.

So what is it in us that gets evoked when we see something like this? Why do we get so excited that we seek out others with whom to share the experience? Some in these groups get so enamoured that they organise international travel to places where these fictitious events were said to have taken place. Adherents to the story of The Da Vinci Code do this, and travel tour operators to Europe are happy to oblige.

Does anyone remember the kid's film "Never Ending Story", especially the part where the boy reading the book is confronted when the book seems to speak to him something like this: "Children's disbelief in fairy tales is the reason that the heaven for kids is disintegrating - and your own disbelief in this story at this moment."

An adult in the cinema audience of about age 35 at the time, I was no kid. But at that moment in the film, the book seemed to be talking to adults too. I had the sense that my disbelief had dire consequences far beyond just me.

That is why I write the kind of thing for Orble readers that I do now, observing things like this: How interesting that the Dr Who scriptwriters picked prison in the Tardis time machine as Dr Who's penalty intended for the master. Because in the bible the devil faces a thousand years prison from the time of Christ's second coming until the very end of the Millennium period. Then he gets a release like Napoleon got from the Island of Elba, to cause even more torment and misery in a final battle.

Dr Who is fiction. Never Ending Story is fiction. But Napoleon was real. Which is most exciting, fiction or truth? Which is most evocative? And what is it in us that gets evoked?
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- It's a region where religious fanatics have a long history, like the mass-murder when British-held Khartoum fell in 1885 -


How would you like to be a Darfur dad trying to feed eight children, or the mum whose oldest kid got butchered by Arab militiamen right in front of your eyes?

Then endure the hardships of an eight day trek over harsh terrain from Darfur region across the border into Chad, drinking from silty pools scratched from the sand in dried up river beds.

Limping your way to the only help you know of - a make-shift refugee camp - the only place to go since the Arab gunmen came and raped, murdered and pillaged your village, right after your own government's helicopters bombed it!

All possessions gone and with them, the livelihood to be able to start again.

So you go across to Chad hoping fellow Africans will feed you on the way. Precious few do.

When you get to the camp you can't get a tent, food for your kids, or anything at all because your camp registration isn't accepted. It's a bit like boat people coming to Australia. You're disqualified from help because you're seen as a queue jumper. It takes two starving, shelterless weeks with your kids under just a blue tarp until your sheik admits this is the case.

The doco


I knew none of this yesterday but can report it today, thanks to SBS's showing last night (Wed 24 Jan 07) that let Aussies see the refugees' conditions.

Thousands of black African survivors from Darfur's bloody carnage at the hands of Arabs struggle to have their presence acknowledged at the camp, for a share of the rotting food that the authorities portion out, only to people whose names have been accepted onto the refugee list.

This is the kind of backpack journalism we need more of, to see what's really happening in the world. Close-up and personal as only a video-journo toughing it with the refugees can do.

Not like the second and third hand accounts we hear from news correspondents hoteling in the cities, passing on text from Reuters.


Donate

Sponsorship by Oxfam and several other aid and UN organisations helped defray the expenses of the video-journalist - the London-based Sierra Leonean Sorious Samura who is winning awards for "real" reality TV.

Oxfam Australia's Executive Director, Andrew Hewitt, said Oxfam continues to send planeloads of supplies like water and sanitation equipment which is used to provide clean drinking water and build over toilets in the camps.

“With only a handful of toilets people are forced to defecate elsewhere, the result is human waste is spread around the camp," he said. "The regular torrential rain washes the excrement into the camp and leads to dangerously unsanitary conditions. Disease and diarrhoea are serious problems and cholera could break out at any time.”

To donate to Oxfam Community Aid Abroad’s SUDAN CRISIS APPEAL
call 1800 034 034 or donate online.

Or donate to UN - UNHCR's Chad-Darfur link
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Who else was fortunate enough to catch SBS's July and August Friday night episodes of the Kiwi-made The Insiders Guide to Love? It's not often that SBS shows a New Zealand series, preferring sources further overseas like France.

The Insiders Guide to Love scooped the drama prizes at the 2006 Qantas Television Awards in the award ceremony in Auckland last week, taking the prize for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Drama, Best Camera, Best Director for a drama, and Best Script


[ Click here to read more ]
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Thanks BBC

Did you know that the theme of New Tricks now in the Saturday 7:30 ABC timeslot vacated by Doctor Who is sung by Dennis Waterman? (Same singer as "I could be so good for you" - among others.)

[ Click here to read more ]
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Rachel
Rachel, source http://www.love.insiders.co.nz/characters/rachel.php

Hey, Big Cat, whatja do last night?
Hey, Cool-kid. The usual, how about you


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Nicole
Nicole, source: http://www.love.insiders.co.nz/characters/nicole.php


Hey, Big Cat, let me in!
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