My inability to find a supermarket open after 4pm on Sunday has led me to dwell instead on religious matters. As someone who used to be a fervent believer in the Bible, it never ceases to amaze me how easily I once overlooked certain obvious nonsenses in the whole thing. I mean, for example, take the original "Fall", i.e. the famous Adam and Eve thing.
"And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. ... And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." - Genesis 2:8-9,16-17.
1. If God didn't want Adam to have the knowledge of good and evil, why plant the tree in the garden?
2. If Adam doesn't have knowledge of good and evil, how's he supposed to know that disobeying God is wrong?
3. If Adam "in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die", why did he not die for another nine hundred and thirty years (minus the length of time (no more than 130 years) spent in the garden before eating the fruit)?
Now, we all know what happened next:
"Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which [is] in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree [was] good for food, and that it [was] pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make [one] wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they [were] naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons." - Genesis 3:1-7
4. The implication in verse 1 is that God did not make the serpent. If not, who did? And if he did, why did he make such a sneaky creature and why did he not warn Adam and Eve not to listen to it? (Omniscient God, surely could have seen that one coming?!)
5. The serpent is always made out to be the deceiver, so how come he's the one that tells the truth?! As the serpent told them, "your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." ... "And the eyes of them both were opened". God himself confirms what the serpent told them:
"And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." - Genesis 3:22-24.
6. If Adam was to die the day he ate the fruit, why the need to keep him away from the tree of life?
7. If Adam only "[became] as one of [God and ???]" after eating in the fruit, in what capacity was he created "in the image/likeness of God" (Genesis 1:27/5:1)?
8. Given the presumed perfection of Adam and Eve, made by God himself, the fact that they now knew about nakedness, their obvious inability to resist any form of temptation, and the lack of contraception... how did it take 130 years for them to make a baby?!
Answers on a postcard please...
I can't help but feel that far from the eating of the mythical fruit, the real "Fall of Man" was when widespread brainwashing with this nonsense became the norm in Western civilisation.
Monday, 7 April 2008
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
The Dragon Palace, Chinese Restaurant
Yesterday we went out for dinner to celebrate Caitriona getting a job. (Yay!) We went to a Chinese restaurant in Southampton, called The Dragon Palace.
It looks a bit cheap on the way in as you have to go up two flights of fairly basic stairs that look like a fire escape. Once you get to the top, though, the restaurant itself is fairly well decked out. Most of the customers were Chinese, which is always a good sign.
The best thing about it, I think, was that it felt like it was a social hub for the Chinese community in Southampton, with a fair amount of coming and going and happy chatter. There was some kind of party going on in a small room off the main restaurant, near where we were sat. This was fun except for the occasional wail of karaoke that made it as far as our table!
The Dragon Palace does an evening eat-as-much-as-you-like buffet. We intended to order from the menu, as buffets aren't always that great, but it turned out to be a really good deal; it wasn't a buffet in the all-laid-out-and-help-yourself way. Instead, you simply ordered whatever you liked (basically a choice of the entire menu) and paid for anything you didn't eat. You could keep ordering little and often, if you liked. We just had starters and a main.
We had one of my favourite foods of all time: crispy aromatic duck pancakes with hoisin sauce. Mmmmm... And one of my other Chinese favourites, crispy seaweed. Not sure exactly what they do to the seaweed (fry it sugar?) but it's very tasty! The hot and sour soup was also very good. All-in-all, well worth a visit if you're ever in Southampton looking for Chinese food. Another time, we'll have to go for dim sum!
It looks a bit cheap on the way in as you have to go up two flights of fairly basic stairs that look like a fire escape. Once you get to the top, though, the restaurant itself is fairly well decked out. Most of the customers were Chinese, which is always a good sign.
The best thing about it, I think, was that it felt like it was a social hub for the Chinese community in Southampton, with a fair amount of coming and going and happy chatter. There was some kind of party going on in a small room off the main restaurant, near where we were sat. This was fun except for the occasional wail of karaoke that made it as far as our table!
The Dragon Palace does an evening eat-as-much-as-you-like buffet. We intended to order from the menu, as buffets aren't always that great, but it turned out to be a really good deal; it wasn't a buffet in the all-laid-out-and-help-yourself way. Instead, you simply ordered whatever you liked (basically a choice of the entire menu) and paid for anything you didn't eat. You could keep ordering little and often, if you liked. We just had starters and a main.
We had one of my favourite foods of all time: crispy aromatic duck pancakes with hoisin sauce. Mmmmm... And one of my other Chinese favourites, crispy seaweed. Not sure exactly what they do to the seaweed (fry it sugar?) but it's very tasty! The hot and sour soup was also very good. All-in-all, well worth a visit if you're ever in Southampton looking for Chinese food. Another time, we'll have to go for dim sum!
Sunday, 27 January 2008
Winchester
Today we had a little day trip to Winchester (on the bus). Winchester is lovely - a good mix of fairly narrow streets and old buildings, with great shops and nice places to eat. We'd been once before, to the Christmas Fair in the Cathedral grounds, but it was raining that day, so not quite so good for wandering around. Today was lovely a sunny, so much better for aimless meandering.
We had lunch in the Pitcher & Piano - part of pub chain that I last encountered when I lived in Nottingham. The Winchester Pitcher & Piano was not quite as grand as the Nottingham one, which is in an old church, but the food was very tasty. I had a lamb burger. Yum. Good chips too - you could tell they were once potatoes.
Instead of dessert, we got some lovely chocolates from Montezuma's. This shop is great and sells really tasty chocolate. I can particularly recommend Montezuma's Revenge (Dark chocolate, lime & chilli) and Tiger Tiger (Dark chocolate & vanilla).
We had lunch in the Pitcher & Piano - part of pub chain that I last encountered when I lived in Nottingham. The Winchester Pitcher & Piano was not quite as grand as the Nottingham one, which is in an old church, but the food was very tasty. I had a lamb burger. Yum. Good chips too - you could tell they were once potatoes.
Instead of dessert, we got some lovely chocolates from Montezuma's. This shop is great and sells really tasty chocolate. I can particularly recommend Montezuma's Revenge (Dark chocolate, lime & chilli) and Tiger Tiger (Dark chocolate & vanilla).
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
Sue
Sue is a Tyrannosaurus in The Field Museum - the largest specimen found to date, I believe. (Obviously, there are more Sues than this, but it is the Tyrannosaurus Sue to which I refer.) She is pretty big as you might imagine. (At 12.8m long, I doubt that any of the other Sues are bigger than her.) Sue's head has a display case all to itself in the museum (shown) and the one on the rest of the skeleton is a reconstruction (as are many of the other bones).Right now, I am drinking from a Sue mug, bought in the afore-mentioned Field Museum. Like Sue herself, this is rather giant. Nice.
Just do it!
I'm one of life's procrastinators. I'm especially good at "activity displacement" - the performing of any task except the one that needs to be done in order to avoid doing something I don't want to do. Unfortunately, while stuff does get done, this means that I build up an accumulation of things that I don't want to do. Invariably, these are far worse in my head than in reality, and the days of thinking about how I don't want to do them sum up to more discomfort than just doing them in the first place.
Today, I just said "stuff it" and did a bunch of things I'd been putting off for ages. Now they are done and I can forget about them! Hoorah! It's much better to be a doer than a procrastinator. I suspect that this new attitude will only until bedtime but nevermind, eh?
Today, I just said "stuff it" and did a bunch of things I'd been putting off for ages. Now they are done and I can forget about them! Hoorah! It's much better to be a doer than a procrastinator. I suspect that this new attitude will only until bedtime but nevermind, eh?
Saturday, 29 December 2007
The Oar House
On Thursday we went to The Oar House in Howth, for the second time (www.oarhouse.ie). This is a fantastic (primarily) seafood restaurant on the West Pier of Howth, Co. Dublin. (Ireland.) This restaurant is great! It is definitely on my list of things to do when visiting Dublin. (If I still lived there, it would be on my list of things to do with visitors to Dublin but, sadly, I only discovered it a week or so before I moved back to England!) If the weather is good, then have a lovely day wandering around Howth and the headland, or visiting Ireland's Eye, before retiring for some top nosh. (Ring ahead though to book a table!)
The fish and chips (pictured) are exactly how fish and chips should be. The only problem with them - and I say this having grown up in a British seaside holiday town - is that they might make all future fish and chips from other places rather disappointing! The Buffalo prawns (a bit like buffalo wings only in prawn form) are an absolute must-have. If you are alone, get them as a starter. If you are with someone else, as I was, I suggest getting a main course portion of buffalo prawns and a main course portion of something else (we had the always excellent Smokies) and share them between you. This way you get a couple of great sides too - the Sweet Potato Mash and Home Cut Chips work well with the Buffalo Prawn/Smokies combo.
The fish and chips (pictured) are exactly how fish and chips should be. The only problem with them - and I say this having grown up in a British seaside holiday town - is that they might make all future fish and chips from other places rather disappointing! The Buffalo prawns (a bit like buffalo wings only in prawn form) are an absolute must-have. If you are alone, get them as a starter. If you are with someone else, as I was, I suggest getting a main course portion of buffalo prawns and a main course portion of something else (we had the always excellent Smokies) and share them between you. This way you get a couple of great sides too - the Sweet Potato Mash and Home Cut Chips work well with the Buffalo Prawn/Smokies combo.
Monday, 24 December 2007
Are FlyBE xenophobic?
We suffered at the hands of another "Fly mayBE" mishap today. Our plane was cancelled due to "operational reasons" following fog. Fair enough, perhaps, except that why was it only the international flights (Dublin, France, Channel Islands (semi-International)) that were cancelled, when everyone else - most of whom could have got a bus/train instead - got to fly (albeit late)? Why do FlyBE have it in for their foreign passengers? Or do they simple have a strange policy where the more inconvenient a cancellation will be, the more likely it is to occur?
A mystery. My advice, though: avoid FlyBE unless you have no other option. They are very unreliable and seem to have very poor contingency plans for when things go wrong. Which, in my experience with them over the past year, they do quite often!
A mystery. My advice, though: avoid FlyBE unless you have no other option. They are very unreliable and seem to have very poor contingency plans for when things go wrong. Which, in my experience with them over the past year, they do quite often!
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