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Tuesday, October 6, 2009

You would need to be an Octopus



On the weekend we went to see the Schatzkammer (Treasure Chamber) where all the crown jewels and robes and paraphernalia are kept. This is part of the KHM.

Schatzkammer

It is an astonishing collection of fabulous stuff including some robes that look so dusty I sneezed just looking at them through glass.

They were very grubby and obviously haven’t been cleaned for many years.

And I just don’t know how you could clean them. You certainly couldn’t afford to send them to the dry cleaners in Vienna – you would have to sell the jewels to pay for that!

I am glad Cate doesn’t wear stuff like this. It would be hell to iron. I have enough difficultly with some of her frilly stuff – and just hate the shirts that have elastic sides.

You would need to be an Octopus to be able to hold these on the ironing board and get the iron onto them without them springing all over the place. Whose idea was this?

In fact whose idea was it that you can take a frilly piece of cotton, add elastic sides and then charge €160 for it – and then get someone to actually pay the money. Holy Toledo that is one smart Dude!

I don’t iron her crushed linen things – but this offends my sense of aesthetics as I hate crumpled clothes. The fact that they are supposed to be like that doesn’t make it any better and I am always reluctant to hang them on her wardrobe as they look sort of…unfinished.

However – I am making progress as since being here I have stopped ironing underwear. This was a significant wrench and required great willpower – but I managed.

We also went to the Jewish Museum which is unlike any Jewish Museum I have ever seen – and is absolutely incomprehensible.

It looks like it was done by a hare-brained temp from the Tate Modern who stumbled onto a box of Barbie Dolls and Smurfs when she was high on Cocaine – and scattered them randomly throughout the museum.

Makes no sense whatever to me and I probably need to go with a guide who understands these things – or is high on Cocaine.

The following from the Sydney Morning Herald is just too good to let go:

“Almighty row over ethics class in schools

ERIK JENSEN
September 26, 2009

THE State Government's religious education advisory panel will fight a pilot program that offers ethics classes to primary school students who opt out of scripture.

Instead, it will continue its support for a policy that prevents students who opt out from having any instruction, and specifically no ethical instruction, during the time set aside for scripture each week.

In some schools, that leaves as many as 80 per cent of students excluded from education for an hour each week - despite reviews dating back to 1980 recommending the policy be amended.

The pilot, developed by the St James Ethics Centre, is fully funded and was endorsed unanimously by the Federation of Parents and Citizens' Associations of NSW in July. But it must still be approved by the Minister for Education in consultation with a religious advisory panel.

''It doesn't have the support of the religious community, that's just a pragmatic reality,'' the acting chairman of the Inter-Church Commission on Religious Education in Schools, Reverend Mark Hillis, told the Herald. ''I don't see how having a small interest group coming into a school and ramping up things helps.''

I would like you to reflect on that last sentence:

''I don't see how having a small interest group coming into a school and ramping up things helps.''

This is a man who teaches Mumbo Jumbo in schools suggesting that teaching children about Ethics is ‘a small interest group coming into a school and ramping things up’.

When I see stuff like this it makes me want to sob.


2 comments:

  1. Of course Jim is suspicious of any group called the 'St James Ethics Centre'!

    Do you think the Education Minister, Carmel Tebbutt is game to approve the program? After all, public schools are supposed to be secular!

    ... and 70% believe in euthanasia but God's got control of our dying, as well as our education.

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