On preferring grape soda to grape juice

Today I had a first experience – for the first time I found myself preferring an art catalogue to an actual exhibition.

The exhibition has already displayed at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, is currently at the Asian Art Museum (San Francisco), and thence to Musée Guimet (Paris), Museum of East Asian Art (Cologne), and finally the Museum Rietberg Zürich.  I saw in San Francisco.  Some highlights of the exhibition can be found here; see also the entry point here.

An example of the problem can be found with this piece, one of a series of 12 18-19th century thangkas showing scenes from the Jātaka Tales, stories of the Buddha’s previous life.  Take a quick look at the link, and ask yourself what you are looking at.  It is almost incomprehensible to a Westerner.  In fact, there is a central of the Śākyamuni surrounded by 10 different stories.  The charm of the painting is improved by a knowledge of the stories, but the museum signage for the thangka is not annotated with an explanation.  Even worse, the exhibit had poor lighting (perhaps to protect the thangkas, but more likely out of a casual disregard for how art was displayed, since other thangkas were well illuminated).  (I have read portions of the Jātaka Tales in the Pali text society edition; but the explanation in the exhibition’s catalogue was concise, well illustrated, tasteful, and clear.)

Another example – an important part of the exhibition is the recording, apparently for the first time, of a type of tantric yoga dance:  “cham.”  This is represented in the catalogue by a 40 minute DVD containing highlights of more than 300 hours of recorded dances.  The DVD itself is particularly well annotated and is one of the most gripping examples of religious dance that I can remember seeing.  In the museum, these dance sequences were represented by LCDs hanging all over the museum, blasting out music – creating an effect midway between going to a children’s science museum and one of those tourist trap Times Square stores (e.g., M&M World).

In fact, the catalogue, which was printed and bound, allows for many of the pieces a better view than possible in the museum – for sculpture, the illustrations are usually enlarged in the catalogue, and with a magnifying glass, it is possible to discern far more detail than one could see in the poorly-lit exhibit.

This experience has made me think more about the advantages of simulacra.  My next post is about more levels of simulara.

Blogs as weapons

It’s all a bit over the top (and likely to be ruled unconstitutional as well), but here is a link to proposed legislation regulating blogs.  This is a bill which seems unlikely to ever make it out of committee.

Still, one can fantasize.  Most of us have too much respect for free speech to ever consider supporting something like this, but it is amusing to consider what would happen, for example, if legislation regarding bloggers who post book reviews required that the bloggers have actually read the books they review.

Frozen pizza and Bible commentaries

There is something slightly miraculous to me about the frozen pizza one can buy at the store.  One simply unwraps it, heats it in an oven (convection ovens work particularly well) and in 10 minutes one has, in most cases, an exceptionally delicious pizza.  I’ve actually cooked bread.  While the local pizzeria may be able to produce an even more delicious pie (although, the best of the frozen pizzas I’ve had can hold their own), by the time I bring such a pizza home, it’s cooled slightly and can’t compete with the crisp, super-delicious taste treat that comes out of my oven.  So despite its drawbacks, frozen pizza is frankly pretty good.

The disturbing aspect of frozen pizza is that it is just too easy.  Right now it is 12:15 on a Tuesday morning; while I undoubtedly could find some pizza parlor to which I might schlep over and order pizza, it certainly does not compare in convenience to the frozen pizza in my freezer – a variety of delicious tastes, available in 10 minutes –anytime I desire it.

And so, there is something slightly wicked about frozen pizza.  It has taken the ceremony out of eating pizza.  No longer am I going out with friends and sitting in the pizzeria, waiting for the pizza to come out and be served.  The aspect of locality of space is gone (the pizza is cooked in my house, with me in my bathrobe, rather than at the restaurant where it is formally served by waiters); the aspect of ceremony is gone (I cook the pizza because I enjoy it, and not for the ambience of the pizza parlor and to chat with friends); the aspect of locality of time is gone (whenever I am peckish – at 3 in the morning or at 2:30 in the afternoon, the pizza is available when I need it.)

Consider the Saturday Matinee Broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera of New York.  Of course, in the highest society (if one were living in New York), actual attendance – locality in space – was preserved. This was an event, one dresses up for it, brings in a libretto – and enjoys a magnificent performance.  But America – at least outside of New York and the wealthy circles – soon learned to love the Texaco broadcasts.  They were magnificent, and live (thus preserving the locality of time). Moreover, the supplemental features soon learned to take on their own life (indeed, Father M. Owen Lee’s witty intermission commentary has been anthologized in a number of volumes, such as this one.)  This was pure middle-brow joy – performances where all America was democratic – all America was constructing mental images of the staging, listening to the live Met broadcast.  Even listening on my own as a kid growing up, I felt I was a member of the Metropolitan Opera. 

Of course the Metropolitan Matinee Broadcasts still continue (you can find the details here).   And, of course, you can always listen to a streaming station, such as WQXR in New York, to listen to the broadcast – a little less “live” after Internet latency, but perhaps sufficiently close in time to count as a shared group experience with the other listeners across the US.

But things are a bit different now.  The frozen pizza level of convenience has begun to emerge.   You can sign up for the Met Player and watch, on your computer, 20 high definition television broadcasts, 42 ordinary television broadcasts, and 150 radio broadcasts.  These are available anytime you wish.  (Many of these are available on DVD and CD should you prefer to avoid using a computer).  And now the MET rebroadcasts live performances in high definition in movie theaters across the country.  I must confess I have not attended one of these – my home projection system is better than many theaters, and is certainly more convenient.   And now there is a permanent Sirius XM radio station (indeed, as I am typing this, I am listening to Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis on XM satellite radio.)

Now in many ways this far more convenient, and not just as a way of watching opera anywhere and anytime.  I can pull out my opera commentaries (there are a vast number – more than you likely imagine) and follow along with a written lecture teaching me about the salient features of the opera to which I am listening to.  But in another sense, a cord has been broken – I have moved to the frozen pizza model – I am no loner sharing space, time, and ceremony with others listening to an opera.

Now, I wish to speak about Bibles.  For me, listening to the Bible is a fixed even in time and space.  According the story, the Torah was given to Moses at Sinai, and entire books (e.g., Deuteronomy) are records of speeches by prophets.  There can be little doubt that both oral and written transmission figured heavily.  But for the synagogue, the oral transmission happens when the cantor lifts the Torah and reads the words, off of the ancient sheets of animal skin parchment, written in the classic way.   And it seems to me the same in other congregations – when the Bible is read from the grand lectionary volume or chanted in Latin, Greek, Slavonic, or any other language – when the preacher opens his leather bound volume and says “let us turn to this book at this chapter” and starts reading aloud – these all create strong holy moments for us bound up in space and time and community and ceremony.  We can listen to an MP3 reading of Scripture on our iPod, but it is not at all the same.  It’s the frozen pizza level.

But for me, the most remarkable thing is the Bible class.  Here, we have seen some remarkable commentary forms that truly bring to the reader much of the experience of such a class.  There are hundreds of different study Bibles, each with advantages and disadvantages, but at the end of the day, I think the most serious ones recreating the experience of a secular or mainstream religious classroom share these characteristics:  long book introductions that introduce the theme of individual books, detailed annotations addressing individual phrases of interest and larger sections in the text, and then detailed essays addressing points of interest.  Such a volume is, in many ways, a course in a volume – ready to replay in the reader’s head as he reads the Bible.

Notable in particular are the excellent Oxford Study Bibles;

• The RSV-based New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, expanded edition still regarded as the academic conservative standard bearer of study Bibles.  The commentary and introductions are terse and intelligent, and the 45 pages of essays are brief but useful.
• The NRSV-based New Oxford Annotanted Bible with the Apocrypha Augmented Third Edition is perhaps the most popular text used in college courses today.  It features considerably longer book introductions, somewhat longer commentary (and, its critics claim, more liberal commentary) and the essays have been expanded to 100 pages (and because of the way they are printed, actually represent closer to 150 pages).  This is a book that one can actually sit down with and learn from directly.
• The NJPS-based Oxford Jewish Study Bible represents an attempt to put secular commentary on the Hebrew Bible in a standard format.  The typesetting is beautiful, but the greatest value comes from the long 300+ pages of highly intelligent essays (again, printed densely – probably closer to 500 pages in they were printed in standard format.)  Because of those essays and the extended commentary, this book has quickly become (according to an unscientific survey I conducted) the leading text for courses in the Hebrew Bible in secular institutions.
• The rather different NAB-based Oxford Catholic Study Bible, 2nd edition.  Because the NAB translation includes extensive notes and book introductions as part of its standard text, this volume includes an entirely separate 525 page long commentary, which is indexed in the Biblical text.  The introductory commentary is useful, but the experience is a bit like using a single volume commentary, and perhaps there are better choices (such as the Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible discussed below.)  Still, one cannot but help sense the enthusiasm of one Amazon reviewer who wrote about it being a supplement for RCIA classes.
• Now we move into non-Oxford Bibles, the first being the Society of Biblical Literature-sponsored NRSV-based HarperCollins Study Bible, 2nd edition (with Apocrypha).  Similar in many ways to the New Oxford Annotated Bibles (but without the supplementary essays), I am less fond of this volume with its poor production values sloppy editing, and heavily redundant notes.  It is less a guide to broader themes in the text, and more a commentary on individual verses.  Still, the actual contributors are known for their high pedigree and this is a useful reference volume for me.
• Abingdon’s NRSV-based New Interpreter’s Study Bible (with Apocrypha) is especially useful because it mixes scholarly commentary with a generally liberal outlook on scriptural and pastoral issues.  The notes here are long and look more like mini-lectures in some cases, and short explanatory essays (as well as book introductions) are scattered throughout the book.  Someone dissatisfied with the dry tone of the above volumes will find this book to be the most like a lecture course.
• It does not contain a Bible translation, but the single volume Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible deserves special mention – it is perhaps the closest to a careful set of analytical lectures on the Bible, and as a separate single-volume commentary can be used with your favorite translation.
• An unusual and highly intelligent stand-alone single volume commentary that deserves special mention is Rober Alter and Frank Kermode’s Literary Guide to the Bible (Harvard University Press).  This work surveys the entire length of Scripture with highly opinionated comment on literary features of the Bible (a fact often underplayed in most commentaries)  It is not a verse-by-verse or section-by-section as with the above commentaries, but rather is a book-by-book discussion of literary techniques from the word and phrase level to broad thematic themes.  This book has, more than any other, influenced my thinking about the Bible, and I found it to be revelatory in a way that few other commentaries are.  This book also very much feels like a series of long lectures – I can smell the chalk dust as I read it.

To me, these volumes are a bit like frozen pizza.  They are incredibly convenient – you can pick one up at any time and enjoy it, and while they may fall short of a full lecture-based course, they are nutritious and provide the next best thing.  If one works through one of these study Bibles, one will have an excellent grasp of Scripture. 

These volume reproduce well enough the experience of sitting in a secular or mainstream seminary classroom, but what about different forms of teaching.  For example, in Judaism, shiurim and chavrusa study, together with great use of medieval commentaries, provides a fundamentally different type of learning experience.  In my next entry, I will consider the “frozen pizza” of Jewish study Bibles – works that help to simulate the unique form of Jewish pedagogical method.

Chinese Internet Censorship – See it for yourself

From Freedom to Tinker:

You probably know already that the Chinese government censors Internet traffic. But you might not have known that you can experience this censorship yourself. Here's how:

(1) Open up another browser window or tab, so you can browse without losing this page.

(2) In the other window, browse to baidu.com. This is a search engine located in China.

(3) Search for an innocuous term such as "freedom to tinker". You'll see a list of search results, sent back by Baidu's servers in China.

(4) Now return to the main page of baidu.com, and search for "Falun Gong". [Falun Gong is a dissident religious group that is banned in China.]

(5) At this point your browser will report an error -- it might say that the connection was interrupted or that the page could not be loaded. What really happened is that the Great Firewall of China saw your Internet packets, containing the forbidden term "Falun Gong", and responded by disrupting your connection to Baidu.

(6) Now try to go back to the Baidu home page. You'll find that this connection is disrupted too. Just a minute ago, you could visit the Baidu page with no trouble, but now you're blocked. The Great Firewall is now cutting you off from Baidu, because you searched for Falun Gong.

(7) After a few minutes, you'll be allowed to connect to Baidu again, and you can do more experiments.

Sugawara and the Secrets of Calligraphy

One of the miracles of our age is the ability, through recorded material (the DVD in particular) to witness extended performances that one would normally never have access to.

Do you wish to watch the complete Shakespeare War of the Roses series?  Do you want to watch all of Shakespeare?  Do you want to watch all of the Mozart operas?  Do you want to watch an orchestra perform the complete Beethoven symphony cycle (or a second Beethoven symphony cycle?)  Do you want to watch the full Wagner Ring cycle?  Do you want to watch a second Ring cycle?  A third Ring cycle?  A feminist Ring cycle?

This list could be continued for a very long time.  I am fortunate to live in a cultural center, so I have had a chance to see Ring cycles, Shakespeare cycles, and Beethoven cycles with my own eyes – but those were frankly once in a lifetime events.  (And some cycles are simply impossible – even if one were in Salzburg in 2006, it was simply logistically impossible to watch all 22 Mozart operas performed in his 250th year.)

Now, if this is true for Western performances, it is even more true for Eastern performances.  Major Chinese and Japanese dramatic works are typically from 6 to 24 hours long, and thus in an evening out, one will only get scenes from a performance.  While these can be quite satisfying, they simply do not reflect the genius of the author.

A particular wonderful and hard-to-see type of performance is Japanese bunraku – the Japanese puppet theater.  This is quite different from Western puppet theater – the puppets are half-sized representations of human and each is manipulated by a team of three performers, which will often be present on stage.  A shamisen player performs music while a singer chants the dialogue.  Because the performance is small, even the two large bunraku theaters (the Osaka Bunraku National Theater and the bunraku stage at the Tokyo National Theater) can only seat a few hundred attendees – and these performances are sporadic.  Still, bunraku theater is something special – whenever I visit Japan, I try to attend a performance, even if I have to substantially alter my schedule to attend.  I have never been disappointed.  A single ticket to an afternoon matinee performance can easily cost $100 to $200.  Most of the kabuki repertoire is adapted from the Japanese puppet theater (and thus come the famous scenes where the human kabuki performers mimic puppet characters.)

One of the more famous plays in the bunraku repertoire is Sugawara and the Secrets of Calligraphy.  This script has been translated into English (and I can recommend that translation).  Scenes from the play can be found in a cheap Dover volume and in an older Oxford anthology.  There is a synopsis of the play here; it is loosely based on a real historical character, Sugawara no Michizane (845-903).  Sugawara was a calligraphy master and one of the two leading ministers in the royal court; and the play discusses the manuevers  – it concerns the political machinations as his rival Fujiwara no Tokihira tricks the emperor into exiling Sugawara.  Sugawara was a leading poet, and the 1746 play is a masterwork of Japanese writing, with long poetic sections.

Now, I’ve not come across a complete performance of this play – even one spread over several days or weeks.  Indeed, several parts of the play – including the first scene and especially the fifth scene are almost never performed.  So you can imagine my excitement when the Japanese public broadcaster NHK released a complete nine and half hour DVD set of the performance.  (If you want to shop around, the Japanese DVD code is NSDX-13208.)  Amazon Japan sold me a copy – with overnight shipping from Japan, for $140 – less than I have paid for some single bunraku tickets (the box set was released on April 24th, and it was mailed via FedEx from Amazon on April 23rd at 3PM, so that its buyers could have their copies on the next day.  My copy arrived in the US on April 24th – just before 10AM).  But my real delight came when I started watching.

This is no ordinary DVD set – it is a compilation of performances drawn over a period of five decades – including a few classics in black and white:

• Act I Scene 1
      The Imperial Palace
      (filmed in May 1972)
• Act I Scene 2
      The Bank of the Kamo River
       (filmed in September 1996)
• Act I Scene 3
      Transmission of the Secrets
      (filmed in September 1996)
• Act I Scene 4
      Outside the Gate
      (filmed in September 1996)
• Act II Scene 1
      Sweet Words on the Journey
      (filmed in May 1972)
• Act II Scene 2
      Awaiting the Tide at Yasui
      (filmed in May 1972)
• Act II Scene 3
      The Chastising
      (filmed in April 2002)
• Act II Scene 4
      Rosy Breaks the Dawn
      (filmed in January 1983)
• Act II Scene 5
      Sugawara’s Farewell
      (filmed in January 1983)
• Act III Scene 1
      Breaking the Carriage Apart
      (filmed in 1959)
• Act III Scene 2
      Sake from a Tea-whisk
      (filmed in April 1989)
• Act III Scene 3
      The Quarrel
      (filmed in April 1989)
• Act III Scene 4
      The Death of Sakuramaru
      (filmed in April 1989)
• Act IV Scene 1
      Mount Tenpai
      (filmed in April 2002)
• Act IV Scene 2
      North Saga Village
      (filmed in May 1972)
• Act IV Scene 3
      The New Student
      (filmed in April 1989)
• Act IV Scene 4
      The Village School
      (filmed in April 1989)
• Act V
      Extraordinary Events at the Palace
      (filmed in May 1972)

This extraordinary juxtaposition of filmings from 1959, 1972, 1989, 1996, and 2002 not only allows one to see a complete play that is almost never performed complete, it allows us to compare classic performances from across three generations.  The effect is intoxicating.

The box set includes a full copy of the script – in Japanese.  Fortunately, the DVDs include full English subtitles.  The box set is region-free and NTSC, so it can play on any American DVD player.  Because of the age of the films, all footage is in 4:3 format.

Most likely, this box set will be too expensive for casual purchase, but it is bound to appeal to aficionados.  But I do encourage you to ask your library to acquire a copy – watching this set allows you to experience something you are unlikely to ever encounter – a complete performance with expert troupes of this classic play.

Edmund Wilson’s Bible translation advice

Edmund Wilson, the 20th century’s most influential American literary critic, wrote about Bible translations.  You may have read one of his comments about the language in the King James Version, because it was cited by Alter and Kermode and in their Literary Guide to the Bible:

that old tongue, with its clang and flavor

(I am amused by the many bloggers who insist on adding a “u” to flavor in this quote – seemingly forgetting that Wilson was born in New Jersey and educated at Princeton – an unnecessary Anglicization!)

I reproduce below the entire paragraph in which this quote appears, from Wilson’s A Piece of My Mind.  Because it is a long paragraph, I have broken it up into smaller paragraphs here:

A similar revelation comes out of the Hebrew Bible.

The Hebrew religious conceptions, the imagery of the Hebrew scriptures have been an element of literature in English from the King James translation on.  This is, of course, especially strong in Milton, who knew Hebrew at first hand; but the pregnant phrases of the Bible, its apocalyptic visions, are a part of the texture of our language. 

The culture of no other Western people seems so deeply to have been influenced by these:  something in the English character, something mystical, tough and fierce, has a special affinity to Hebrew.  Yet the strong Hebrew strain in English is to some extent at variance with influence of the Greek and Roman tradition.  In proportion as one inclines toward this latter, one is likely to the resent the other.

In my own case, I followed, in my youth, the line of reaction then common against old-fashioned Bible-worship, the recoil from the rigors of Calvinism.  Yet my grandfather on my father’s side was a Presbyterian minister, though a very moderate one, and when my parents went to church on Sunday, they would leave me with my formidable grandmother, who undertook my instruction in the Scriptures.  These bleak and severe Sunday mornings, though they left me with a respect for the Bible, had the effect of antagonizing me against it, and this attitude was tacitly encouraged by the moral sabotage of my mother, whose family, once rigorous New Englanders, had scrapped the old-time religion and still retained a certain animus toward it.

At college, I was enchanted by classical Greek, and, though I made a point of reading through the Gospels, I told myself how immeasurably I preferred Socrates to Jesus.  Later on, I elected the second half of a course in Old Testament literature.  I already admired Ecclesiastes, and – though finding Ezekiel tedious – I tried to do justice to the Prophets. 

It was not til much later, in my fifties, that I acquired a little Hebrew, and for a third time, I had the experience of finding myself in contact with something in its pure and original form that I had previous only known in compounds or adaptations.  The strangeness of this element in English became a good deal more comprehensible when was able to take account, not only of the structural differences between the Semitic languages and the Teutonic and Latin ones, but also of the difference from our of the oriental way of apprehending the world that these structural divergences reflected. 

I have written about this elsewhere at length, so I merely want here to note that an acquaintance with the Hebrew bible is at once to make the biblical narratives sound a good deal more simple and natural – the archaic Jacobean English still today partly screens them from us – and to compel us to pay attention to certain fundamental discrepancies between the Hebrew way of thinking and ours.  The language of Jehovah and his worshippers, which seems in English grandiose and mysterious, may not, even in Gesenius’ dictionary, become to us readily intelligible and render itself in familiar terms; but here at least we can meet at first hand this vocabulary and these locutions, try to form some idea of their meaning to the men who first coined and employed them to deal with their objective and subjective worlds – or rather, with the moral continuum that embraced the phenomena of both.

It is useful to approach the Bible with a scholarly dictionary and commentary – for otherwise it is bound, more or less, to remain an esoteric text, a repository of tales for children, a dream book, a compendium of incantations.  The Jews – who have lost touch with the original text – have been interpreting it for a couple of thousand years in even more far-fetched and fantastic ways.  The Christians have been equally fantastic – beginning with the extravagances of Justin Martyr – in reading back into it the coming of Christ; and the old lady who was infinitely grateful for that blessed word Mesopotamia was only an extreme case of the Christian dependence on Scripture for this sort of consolation.

Some of the oddest features of the bible, as we get it through our Jacobean version, are simply due to mistranslations.  So Joseph’s coat of many colors was in reality a coat with long sleeves; so Moses had sprouting from his head, not horns,  but rays of light.  Yet the horns of Moses and the many-colored coat are as hard to get out of one’s head, unless one sees what they are in the original, as the images in nursery rhymes.

Many mysteries, of course, remain.  Some are puzzles of vocabulary or grammar:  there are, in the text of the Bible, something like five hundred words that do not occur anywhere else, and the copyists have made mistakes.  But it is difficult, also, to adjust oneself to certain fundamental features of the Hebrew way of looking at things, and, though there is constant speculation on these matters, they are now so remote from our habits of though that some scholars believe we must give them up.

In any case, we find here – with the language they have minted – the religio-legal codes and the lofty prophetic poetry, the wisdom derived form experience and the permanently significant legends, the influence of which, refracted by the organisms of other mentalities, have reached distant countries and distant times.

Here it is, that old tongue, with its clang and its flavor, sometimes rank, sometimes sweet, sometimes bitter; here it is in it concise solid stamp.  Other cultures have felt its impact, and none – in the West, at least – seems quite to accommodate it.  Yet we find we have been living with it all our lives.

Happy Birthday

2009 is the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare’s nasty little poems (all with twisted barbs) known as his Sonnets, and many organizations are celebrating the anniversary today, on this day celebrated as Shakespeare’s (unknown) birthday:  St. George’s Day.

Google UK has celebrated this convergence of celebrations with one of its clever doodles; this one reprising the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet:

(You can see this in color here)

To celebrate the day, here is one of the less nasty poems, although it still has its bitter thorn:

Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,
And each doth good turns now unto the other:
When that mine eye is famish'd for a look,
Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother,
With my love's picture then my eye doth feast
And to the painted banquet bids my heart;
Another time mine eye is my heart's guest
And in his thoughts of love doth share a part:
So, either by thy picture or my love,
Thyself away art resent still with me;
For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,
And I am still with them and they with thee;
     Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight
     Awakes my heart to heart's and eye's delight.

Bill Nye and the Fundamentalists

From the Waco Tribune (April 2006):

Audience members who expected to see Bill Nye “The Science Guy” conduct experiments and wow their children received quite a surprise Wednesday when Nye spoke at McLennan Community College. . . .

The Emmy-winning scientist angered a few audience members when he criticized literal interpretation of the biblical verse Genesis 1:16, which reads: “God made two great lights - the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.”

He pointed out that the sun, the “greater light,” is but one of countless stars and that the “lesser light” is the moon, which really is not a light at all, rather a reflector of light.

A number of audience members left the room at that point, visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence.

“We believe in a God!” exclaimed one woman as she left the room with three young children.

Nye also was critical of what he said was governmental agencies’ lack of action, even lack of understanding, in protecting the Earth from global warming and wasted resources.

Nye’s educational science show won 28 Emmy awards during its television run from 1992-98. . . .

How an Iranian Diplomat to the UN World Conference on Racism celebrated Holocaust memorial day

By shouting “Zio-nazi” at Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel: 

Article

You tube footage

My life (part 2)

Here is my dream from which I have only recently awakened:

I was serving on the tenure committee evaluating St. John Chrysostom (archbishop of Constantinople). 

Now, this dream was, as academic dreams go, a real humdinger, with many twists and interesting moments.  On waking, I wanted to blog all about it – but then I had a thought – the proceedings of a tenure committee are sealed – they are highly confidential.  So, I then find myself wondering – am I bound by a privacy oath that I took in a dream?  I haven’t exactly resolved that one yet.

So, you’ll all need to wait until a little later to see if I can release the committee’s recommendation.