A Time of Magic

The sheer scope of the text book for my archaeology course is unbelievable.

It starts from 6 million years ago and runs right through to the 19th century. Not in massive detail to be sure and even when it really gets underway (around 12,000 years ago) it skims over vast tracts of human history. Darned impressive nonetheless and absolutely packed with information on just about every corner of the world.

Supposedly during the course I’ll have gotten through about half of the 784 pages. That works out at something like 30 pages a week which sounds fairly manageable though it’s pretty hard going at the moment with so much new terminology. Some of that terminology is starting to sink in though and I now know what palaeolithic and neolithic mean which seems like a good start.

We’ve been keeping more of an eye on our spending than we normally would of late and it’s interesting to observe just how many changes to prices there have been in the shops lately.

Whilst I couldn’t claim to remember all the prices of everything there are a number of things that I’ve noticed moving in peculiar directions as the weeks have went by. Lucozade for instance has a seemingly endless series of different offers with six packs starting off at £2.99, going down to £2 in some places then back up to £2.99 and then to “2 for £5″ (ie £2.50 each). Obviously a case of the shop or supplier experimenting with the price to try and find what will make the most money for them but the problem is that it’s showing clearly that the higher prices are bringing in a profit so canny shoppers just wait ’til the price goes down.

Even more confusing is one of the milk drinks that the kids like. This comes in two places in the shop in bottles that are identical apart from a single word being added to the bottles in the fridges which seemingly is enough to add 30% to the price even though the contents of the other bottle are identical.

As we’re in the midst of the Pope’s visit to the UK, it has set me thinking about all the problems that new technology must create for the church.

Whilst we might laugh at the mess they got themselves into over Copernicus and Galileo over the issue of the Earth no longer being at the centre of the universe and moons appearing through telescopes which weren’t recorded, there are even more of these fundamental problems arising in the present day. Personally I think that the biggest of these is that in many cases death isn’t permanent these days but that’s something that the church seems largely to have quietly accepted. Recently though there’s been the addition of the creation of new life which seems like something that the church would have issues with but seems to also have ignored.

I suspect that their problem is that there are so many instances of what would previously have been classed as miracles which occur pretty much every day nowadays that they don’t get as worked up about such things as they would have done in earlier times.