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Today I had some astounding news flow into my timeline. Essentially the big Don wants to land a helicopter on the UNESCO listed ancient site of Masada, on the ancient ruins of Herod’s desert abode, the site of the last stand of the Zealots and long abandoned home to some Byzantine monks. All because he doesn’t want to catch the cable car which goes for a few minutes to the mount.

It is an amazing site which should be protected. Yes it is his right not to catch the cable car, but it is also right for the Israeli Air Force (AIF) to do all that they can to protect the ancient site. The sites from antiquity are not to be risked and should be protected, no matter what the politics of the day dictates.

Here are some photos from my visit a few years ago of what Trump is going to miss out on. Hiss loss.

The notorious cable car.

View from the cable car to the Masada platform.

An alternate mode of transportation, if you like a walk.

View from the summit.

One of the stunning mosaics which survive.

The only type of flying that is allowed on the summit is by these guys.

Here you can see the black line which designates the rebuilt section of walls by archaeologists.

Old school wall paper.

This demonstrates just how weak some of the walls are.

Windows to nowhere.

An ancient ingenious way to provide holy water to the mikvah inside the room.

View from the summit.

Some graffiti, antiquity style.

Another one of the mosaic floors.

When you’re in a place that has no moisture, 42 degrees and extreme heat cameras can do odd things. Like this!

Under floor heating in one of the baths.

The once in a lifetime visit was truly amazing, if you want to visit the ancient palace, or anywhere else in Israel for that matter, hit up Ze’ev Gal-on on Facebook, he was the perfect guide!

Masada Madness Today I had some astounding news flow into my timeline. Essentially the big Don wants to land a helicopter on the UNESCO listed ancient site of Masada, on the ancient ruins of Herod's desert abode, the site of the last stand of the Zealots and long abandoned home to some Byzantine monks.

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One shot. One opportunity.

One shot. One opportunity.

A Dwarf Wizard, Goliath Bard, Lizardfolk Barbarian and a Half-Elf Ranger all walk into a town. A sheep holding a scroll in it’s mouth approaches.

That is the premise to the one shot my Dungeons and Dragons 5e group played last night. It is the first adventure produced by Winghorn Press called The Wild Sheep Chase (Available here), it is perfectly laid out and timed for a group of four level 5…

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Welcome!

Well, it has been a while. Life has certainly got away from me, concentrating on working hard as a PhD candidate, father and gamer of course. You gotta be the very best, like no one ever was 😂

In recent weeks I’ve been considering restarting my old blog over at Medium. However that was too formal and far more organised than I liked. The blank page is always daunting and when compared to other…

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Seinfeld Season 1 Episode 1 “The Seinfeld Chronicles” aka “Good News, Bad News” Dir. Art Wolff Written by: Larry David & Jerry Seinfeld July 5, 1989

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Cutting #AustralianAid will make us the least generous we’ve ever been. Time’s running out. Can you #StopTheClock? http://thndr.me/0Q8DD7

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Churches on the edge of nowhere

Extreme settings featuring places for God

Making a space away from the world and going to the edge of nowhere is an endeavour to embrace a quiet, devotional space that we can dwell on the unexpected and uncontainable enormity of God.

Buzz Aldrin on the surface of the moon with the ‘Eagle’ lunar module, the furthest place of worship on the edge of nowhere on 20 July 1969. Photo Neil Armstrong: Apic/Getty

For many of us new calendar Christians this week marks the start of the Christmas period with an intensive period of fasting, reflection and building of excitement towards the celebration of Christmas day. The main focus of any fast, which is also the focal aspect of this period of reflection, is to bring the adherent closer to God. Whether it is through quiet or intensive prayer of hesychasm, or actions of kindness towards each other through charity, humanity has consistently stepped towards the edges of what we can grasp in a hope to experience the Divine.

Cue Buzz Aldrin. Yes that moon guy. He takes out the award for the sharing of Communion furthest from.. well anywhere. On the 20th of July 1969 after their first steps on the moon surface Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin returned to the lunar module where Aldrin sat in quiet reflection. According to his own words he:

“In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the Scripture, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing’.” — Buzz Aldrin

Until we send humans to Mars this is unlikely to be topped. This doesn’t mean that there are no noteworthy places on earth that are on the edges of everywhere where worship is generally unexpected.

The Orthodox world is often thought to centre on its old home of Constantinople and is limited to the Byzantine Empire’s boundaries. Greece, Serbia and Russia are thought of as the natural home of Orthodoxy but globalization provided the opportunity for the spread of people, particularly after the two great wars, leading to the opening of Churches in far away lands. Cambridge in England and Edinburgh in Scotland both house Orthodox churches. These are hardly on the edge of society but when we consider the divisions of the East and West Church it was not that long ago that it would be inconceivable that the places not only are in the same cities as Catholic and Protestant churches but also inhabit the old buildings which housed the western churches.

About as far away from Cambridge and Edinburgh you can get. King George Island, Southern Ocean, Antarctica.

Antarctica is one of the last places on earth where humans have not filled from coast to coast. Due to the insufferable weather conditions this is unlikely to change any time soon however the in the vastness of the Southern Ocean in an archipelago of islands that reach like an arm from the freezing continent there is a very unexpected site. King George Island is part of the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica and is home to the Russian Bellingshausen Station. In 2004 construction of the Russian Orthodox Trinity Church was completed which was funded by a collection in Russia for the ‘Temple for Antarctica”. It is a functioning open Church that can only fit about 30 adherents inside. Due to its location near South America services are share the language of Russian and Spanish and Baptism takes place in the Southern Ocean. Just to highlight just how amazing the location of this construction is, here is a picture of some penguins hanging out near the church. Never would have thought I’d be able to write a sentence like that!

Penguins of Antarctica, the more frequent visitors to the Trinity Church. Photo: http://www.nsad.ru/articles/nastoyatel-antarktidy

The stunning Trinity Church. Photo: Associated Press

Now back to the world as we know it. In places that are nevertheless inhabited and are far from the vastness of Antarctica silence and reflection was achieved historically by climbing to the sky. Saint Simeon the Stylite is best known for sitting on his pillar for 37 years until he left this world. His struggle for aesthetic life after standing constantly was not achieved due to the amount of pilgrims that sought his presence and visited the recluse. He decided to remove himself from the world and sat upon the pillar. The visitors continued to come however the place between the earth and sky is where Saint Simeon remained. Stylite monks then spread through the Christian world including in modern Georgia.

Icon of Saint David of Thessaloniki in a tree with Saint Simeon Stylites on his pillar.

The previously impenetrable Katskhi pillar. Image: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/22087826

The Katskhi pillar which stands as an outcrop from the woodland at its base was left unexplored and impenetrable until recently. This is due to its height and no clear way to climb to the top where the remains of a Church proudly touch the sky. Studies have shown the Church and hermitage was inhabited from at least the 9th century until the 13th century. Modern efforts have seen the Church rededicated and inhabited by a modern stylite monk Father Maxime Qavtaradze who now lives on the edge of nowhere reigniting the stylite movement in the a modern world where it seems impossible to find places of solitude.

“It is up here in the silence that you can feel God’s presence”. — Father Maxime. Image: http://www.eurasianet.org/node/61812

The DPRK, or North Korea, is also home to an Orthodox church. Commentators often debate the freedom of worship in the country however the church dedication is interesting to ponder. Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad consecrated the church of the Life-Giving Trinity in Pyongyang that is reportedly for Orthodox believers in the city and for Korean believers. There are fewer places on earth which have as tightly controlled boarders and the endeavours of Bishop Kirill is truly remarkable considering the geo-political relations of the DPRK in 2006.

Church of the Life-Giving Trinity, Pyongyang DPRK. Photo: http://nahshaus.ru/severnaya-koreya-2/

The cradle of civilisation of Ethiopia is likely to be a place which would be imagined almost antithetical to the common settings of Eastern Orthodoxy, however it is here that churches are not built up like the Katskhi pillar rather they are built down. The town of Lalibela is home to some stunning monolithic churches, which are churches carved out of rock. Monolithic churches are not unusual in the world but what makes Lalibela significant is the free standing structure of many of the 11 medieval churches that remain in service.

The house or church of Saint George, carved from one piece of rock. Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Bgag

The house of Saint George is probably the most stunning of these churches. It forms a 12-meter by 12-meter cross-shaped church perfectly cut down out of the rock. The interior of the Church was hollowed out to make an impressive marble carving of a giant church. The community of Lalibela has a continuous link to Christianity of the 3rd century and also has links to earlier Jewish settlement with some positing it hosted the Arc of the Covenant after the fall of the Temple. While the nation of Ethiopia is heavily populated the Lalibela example shows that Christianity is far from the concept of an Anglo-European endeavour and that African Christianity is in fact older than many European nations.

Starting on the surface of the moon and ending at the place where humanity is said to have originated shows that the houses of worship inhabit the most unlikely places on earth. The Orthodox churches that are built in these extreme locations are for the purpose of devoting a space to God in a area that is unexpected, providing a familiar home for worship. Further from this unexpected occurrence of worship in far away places I find it astonishing that Orthodox Churches are often in the most picturesque backdrops providing a sanctuary inside that matches that of the churches that many visit week in and week out. In visiting a local church it is tranquil to consider that they share so many similarities with these sanctuaries built on the edge of nowhere. Making a space away from the world and going to the edge of nowhere is an endeavour to embrace a quiet, devotional space that we can dwell on the unexpected and uncontainable enormity of God.

[bennbanasik]

Images of the leader, do they have a Genizah?

After reading a fascinating blog about the DPRK (North Korea) by Erick Tseng I stumbled on a little factoid of the little nation I hadn’t previously considered. Erick let me know about the treatment of images of their various leaders and the protocols of the image treatment. He witnessing these in his journey including during the plane ride and seeing citizens reading newspapers in the subway. The protocols include not folding the images and certainly not throwing them in the trash. It got me thinking about the similarity of treatment of articles considered holy for a variety of faiths.

DPRK veneration of the images of their leaders stems from the great appreciation felt for the leaders who personify a divine presence for their people. In the Juche system of DPRK the onus lies on the people who are seen as the drivers of history, the highest of these are the leaders. As such the images which are printed of these leaders are treated with upmost respect, care and are treasured. It is clear by a number of western visitors to the DPRK that the images are venerated, however it is unclear from the research I have done as to how they are treated after needing disposal. Nevertheless it has been reported that the images, known frequently as “No. 1 pictures”, are so well cared for leading to a major newspaper altering their folding process when printing a leader’s image and even the tragic death of an 9 year old girl who ran into her burning home to rescue the image of a leader.

A protocol surrounds the treatment of the images of the leader including placement high in a room ensuring that all others are lower and the enforced cleaning ritual which is checked by party representatives. It is often however a factor of life that the images are folded due to being printed oncurrency or printing in newspapers. What is totally unclear is where the images go after their use. Ritualistic treatment of images or documents is not a new invention in the world of religion. There are a few options for the DPRK leader pictures, all are incredible considering that every home, office and school displays the images of the Leaders Kim Jong–il and Kim Il–sung as well as the newspapers and other banners that adorn the spaces of the nation.

(The Quran is venerated so much highly that it cannot touch the floor. Image from Andrea Pistolesi/The Image Bank/Getty Images.)

In Islam the Quran (Koran) is considered to be a book of great holiness as it has the actual words of the prophet Muhammad. Due to these words being printed on a page the book is venerated and treated with utmost respect. The Quran, similar to the pictures of the DPRK leader, must be kept in a clean place. The discarding of the Quran after the book is old and falls out of use is done with great care. Three options are reportedly available of Muslim adherents in this event. The first is burial, it is a literal digging of a hole and burying. Like a loved one, the Quran is protected from the soil by ensuring that it is properly wrapped and away from regular paths which may be trod upon. If this is unavailable then a release of the ink from paper, then disintegration of the paper may be ensured by placing the Quran in running water. The last method is burning the Quran but ensuring it is done in a clean place and not with other refuse or rubbish.

The Quran veneration has a very similar thread to the treatment of the Torah in the older Jewish religion. Judaism celebrates the Torah as the word of God and as such the books and scrolls are cared for until they are no longer useable. At this point they are buried by a Rabbi in a cemetery or storage area of a synagogue. The collection place of these documents is referred to as a genizah or ‘bet genizah’, literally meaning treasury. The books are placed there to be stored away and rested. Therefore a need arose for each community historically to have a genizah to hold the holy books or scrolls and ensure proper treatment of the words considered holy.

(Rabbi of the Jerusalem Western Wall supervising the clearing of prayers for burial “….So between the stones of the wailing wall there are many notes, and if we want to allow other people to put their notes in we must clear out the existing notes. We keep the notes so no one can read them, these are notes between the man and his creator, we put them in bags and bury them on the Mount of Olives.”)

One community became very thorough at ensuring the documents were stored correctly, that was the Fustat Jewish community in modern Cairo. Dr Solomon Schechter came across the document store house of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in 1896 and took back over 193,000 documents to Cambridge. I’ll just reinforce that, 193,000 documents. It became clear that the Fustat community decided on keeping not only holy books or philosophical works from the great minds such as Moses Maimonides but also every document written in the Hebrew and the Arabic written in Hebrew characters.

(11th Century recipe containing mustard (خردل) and olive oil (زيت) with an address possibly from the original cook. Image from the Cairo Genizah.)

This collection includes some amazing documents including early works from Maimonides which were later edited but also a great deal of regular information. Recipes, shopping lists, settlement papers, even Arabic fables were all stored in the genizah waiting to be discovered. This community perhaps were a bit too meticulous in their collection of documents however it the scale of the operation would dwarf what would be needed by the DPRK as time goes on.

The treatment of articles in Judaism and Islam show a methodology of care for the venerated articles. As with these two faiths which have articles that fall out of use due to their age the DPRK will at some point face the same action on a mass scale. The images of the leaders will fade over time and may need to be replaced, we can only ponder as to how these will be treated. I do hope that the genizah of the images of the leader can provide historians in years to come a unique insight into this nation.

If you’d like to read the whole impressive article by Erick Tseng on DPRK (North Korea) then click here. You can also browse the Cairo Genizah at the Cambridge Digital Library by clicking here.

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Contentious candidates? USA has a way to go.

A candidate who claims that progressive taxes on the rich is socialism but then proposed a flat tax to tax the rich? Another who claims dealing withNorth Korea is best with Nukes? And who can forget the longest run up to the 2020 election, my man Yeezy? Has this Presidential race hit the peak of contentious candidates? I think not! America you have a long way to go.

The good ol’ US of A has had a number of outstanding individuals to hit the peak of impassioned, heated and down right cray-cray candidacies in the last few decades. Take Ficus, who Michael Moore stood for New Jersey’s 11th District. I’m not going out on a limb when I say the Ficus campaign stumped many, as it failed to seed a successful groundswell, particularly in the well rooted Democrat and Republican safe electorates. I’m knot joking at all! Haw-Haw… right, Dad jokes aside we’ll leaf this one alone.

Bob Quast is another outstanding example of a US candidate for 2014 Iowa Congress. He smiled when talking about blowing someones balls off and is ready to defend every article of that beloved constitution!

While those are some good solid examples of contentiousness we need to travel further afield to find some other Candidates who take the term ‘unique’ in a very literal sense.

Lord Toby Jug, not a real Lord nor a object to carry tea, but a serial campaigner and candidate ran for a number of seats for the UK ‘Official Monster Raving Loony Party’. While the party which scrapes in anti-establishment votes is not unusual or unique in terms of Jug, he was reportedly expelled from the party. This was due to an internal split with his attacks on UKIP leader Farage and his exception of media claims that UKIP are in fact loony. He now finds home in his new political party the ‘The Eccentric Party of Great Britain’.

Brits love their football, as do I, yet even I had not heard of the little known club of Hartlepool United F.C. which has its home in the small town of Hartlepool. The club sits in League Two in Britain, a place they pride after spending the majority of their 107 year existence in third division. Hartlepool was reportedly home to a recalcitrant monkey who was the sole survivor of an attempted invasion during the Napoleonic wars and was subsequently hanged for his unabashed Frenchness. The most sensible mascot then for the small Hartlepool United? H’Angus the Monkey of course!

H’Angus, or Stuart Drummond, decided as a stunt to run for Mayor of Hartlepool in 2002. Much to the exasperation of Labour the monkey swung to victory and famously declared a phrase that is unlikely to ever be matched “I am Stuart Drummond, I am the Mayor of Hartlepool, not the monkey”. Drummond was unable to achieve his non-core electoral promise of free bananas for schoolchildren but he reigned supreme of Hartlepool until a referendum ended the Mayoral post in 2012, 10 years after he was elected and subsequently re-elected twice, sans monkey suit.

Australia too has its round of eccentric candidates who are fielded from unexpected corners of the world. Take the Wikileaks champion himself Julian Assange, who I assume will get a copy of this in that giant techno-galaxy saved on some sort of hard drive in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Hi Julian! Anyway, Julian, an Australian, decided to form his own political party called the Wikileaks party in 2012 after hosting his own chat show on a Russian network. Needless to say he was not elected and may still be part of the ever expanding table cloth Senate voting paper that is one of the staples of Australian Federal democracy, along with the sausage sizzle supporting the local club of course.

Controversial or ill-advised candidates are not a new occurrence either. Take E.V.B. Sampson who ran in my own home area for the State seat of Wollondilly for the Independent Country Party. On a platform of appearing very Australian, so much so he decided in 1954 to parade his family in front of the new medium of television. Sampson was not elected and also couldn’t have his other sons with him because ‘too busy to be here’.

Finally a candidate from a galaxy far, far, away and further afield from Ukraine. The candidate for the mayor in the Ukrainian city of Odessa that takes the crown for the oddest is not the literal Peking Duck that ran against him rather it is the Sith Lord himself, Darth Vader. Launching his campaign that would doubtlessly end with annihilation of Alderaan, Darth saw the Lenin statue removal and replacement with a statue of himself.

So you see, dear reader, no matter where you are from in the world the candidates on the other side just get stranger and stranger. The likes of Bern, Carson, Hillary and Trump have a way to go before they take the mantle of controversy.

[bennbanasik]

Post Iwata will Ninty still have the gusto?

Overnight GamesIndustry posted a ponderance on the future console machinations of Nintendo. Regardless of their choice of the next console timeline it looks like the WiiU will be the worst selling console of the company’s modern existence, except for the calamity known as the Virtual Boy.

The traction lost on the console, which I was really excited at launch, is due not to the first party releases, nor third party uptake, I think there is something deeper there that I’ve noticed while playing games with my son.

Saturday playing games has almost become a religiously frequent event in my household. My son and I trawl through my collection and play random games much to our glee. The WiiU has been passed over for months now, instead we stick to the regular titles released on PS3 and XBONE. The decision to purchase a new game in store when looking at all three I seem to lean towards the Sony and Microsoft counterparts. What makes a good Ninty game for us is the uniqueness of Mario Party, the sublime Pikmin and competitiveness of Mario Kart. Rehashing works to an extent but we need innovation, something which lacks to break through the marketing glass ceiling for the new console. The king Iwata shaped the company on his philosophy, he lived and breathed it. The best selling Wii, which was technically inferior left many aghast, as for the DS? I was ridiculed when I picked it up at launch only to have those friends slowly turn their back on Sony’s handheld iteration to go back home to Ninty. In any case the WiiU is lacking what made the Wii and DS blaring successes, its a feeling, a vibe and Nintendo needs to get that back.

What happens now Iwata is gone? Will innovation be the key? I hope there is but as a warning, too much innovation can leave even your most loyal supporters seeing the grass is far greener on the other side. As a SEGA fanboy of the 80s and 90s I can never forget the confusion surrounding the 32X and Saturn release schedule. Money was short in my household and the choices made for game uptake at Christmas and birthdays set you up for the entire year. SEGA’s choice to release confusedly marketed, yet undeniably innovative left many people confused and looking over towards the marketing of Sony.

The future will no doubt be interesting for Ninty, here is hoping that under Kimishima that the innovation continues but not at the cost of those most loyal.

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Important Thursday afternoon work happening right here! #lego

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I still think that Soda Jungle 4 - Painted Swampland is the most beautiful level in any Mario Game #MarioBrosU #VanGogh

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End of #EdFringe festival. Was such a good time!

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Rosetta Stone in the British Museum #london

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Hung, drawn and quartered in #London

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Amazing lamb shoulder for lunch @berniebanasik and @jodiedench

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« Hi. I would like to request Never Thereby Cake.

Youtube url: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peU2rztucGk

Timing: 0:07 - 0:10 seconds, or between 0:07 and 0:15 if it will fit.

I have to ask.. on your precisions page you say, " - For God’s sake, send youtube links and proper timing ...

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Lecture by Amy-Jill Levine at the Emmanuel Synagogue in Sydney #ecumenical #jewish #christian