Nottingham

View from Castle Rock

One of my favourite movies from the 90's is Robin Hood Prince of Thieves with another great Bryan
Adams sound track. The scenes set in the castle, a particularly medieval one was where the Sheriff of Nottingham threatens to cut out his cousin's heart out with a spoon if he fails to capture Robin again, made us strain to see turrets as we crossed the midlands.

We drove past the impressive vista towards Belvoir Castle, this was rebuilt four times due to war and fire, the current home of the Duke was built in the early 1800s. As we entered Nottingham we found the brown tourist site signs to follow to the castle but were disappointed to find no medieval turrets built by the conquering Normans because this too had been destroyed in the Civil War. All that is left is the castle walls and the outside gate house. The 17th C ducal mansion on the site has been turned into a museum with an excellent interactive display of the history of the area. On the bottom floor is an area of Robinhood dress ups and games for the kids.

The view off Castle Rock is impressive, anyone marching to attack from the south would have been seen days before arriving. The story of Edward II's betrayal by his Queen Isabelle and his son's revenge after capturing her and her lover by sneaking into Nottingham Castle through the caves and secret passages is intriguing. Tours are taken through these rocky tunnels.

The gardens around the castle are beautiful and were the perfect spot for a picnic on the fine summer day that we visited. A statue of Robinhood was outside of the grounds and rubbed shiny with all the visitors having their photos taken. Although historians have searched through acres of documents and found a wide collection of Robins there seems to be no evidence of Robin of the hood being a real philanthropist or sharp shooter.

Not somewhere we'll visit again too soon - don't talk to me about the hire car GPS woman! Getting back to Cambridge from the midlands was three freeway tricky.

Atlantis in Dubai

The arrivals halls in Dubai were the largest – emptiest – quietest places I have ever been to. The signage was clear, the train fast and efficient and the pillars sparkled. We sped through customs but were pulled over for bag x-rays just before we got through the exit.

The taxi to Atlantis cost 120Dh and the driver, Malek from Pakistan, pointed out amazing things about the garden of skyscrapers that stretch from the Airport to the Palm. He said that the oldest tower is only 20years old. It is like architect heaven where they were invited to come here and draw up their most outrageous designs and make them happen. The Towers are well spaced so the blinding sun still shines down to the avenues and footpaths. 

The tallest building in the world (Burj Kalifa) holds 7 world records for tall things including the longest elevator ride and the highest outdoors observation deck. It has tourist access to the 120^th floor, if you book ahead and are given a time of entry it costs 125Dh (about 50AUS) but just turning up will set you back 400Dh (130AUS). The twisty tower is still being built but looks amazing.  The police and fire stations are works of art and the cops drive lambourgines! The ADCB bank has the motto, ‘Long Live Ambition’ - this seems to sum up the attitude of the UAE’s efforts to bring Dubai into the modern world with style and beauty. The Metro stations look like golden nautilis shells and the above ground train lines were smooth and elegant, let’s hope NSW manages to do something as nice on the Norwest line! 

There are sea and ship motifs and themes on many of the buildings both in form and in finishing – the most famous is the Burj Al Arab.  Looking like a giant sail jutting out into the sea on a man made peninsula it claims to be the most luxurious hotel in the world with private butlers for every suite and optional Rolls Royce or Helicopter transfers.

The Lobby of the Atlantis Hotel - Dubai

We choose to splurge at the Atlantis. The rooms and the restaurants were all expensive but for a special treat for a couple of nights it was fabulous. The huge cutout that separates the two towers dominated the scenery from the time the taxi turned off the freeway and onto the Palm stem. Entering the lobby was a feast of colour and welcome air conditioning, a blast of scented air hit us in the airlock between roasting and cool. The brilliant glass sculpture, coloured glass spiral light fittings around the space, mosaics of nearly every major sea myth known to man around the walls in primary colours and the vibrant floral designs were such a contrast to the sand beige of the country outside it literally took my breath away.

Slide down the pyramid.

Guests have free access to the water park on the grounds that is so long that using the complimentary buggy service along the private beach road to get from one end back to the Royal pool beach side of the lobby was very useful. They are still building and in a couple of years there will be circular hydro slides suspended 200m up in the air. The most daring ride currently is the Drop of Faith, which is a 27m high, open air slide, I had my face so covered in spray that I didn't even see when I slid through the aquarium near the end. The kids assured me that multiple turns were required to get your brain organized enough to wave at the sharks as you whizzed by. The tube rides seemed soft and lazy but be wary of the travelators that take you up to ‘The Plunge’ if you don’t like to drop so fast that the tube comes off the slide!  Survival hint – wear footwear at all times, the pavers are so hot we all felt as if we had blisters on our soles. Many people wore their jandals like bracelets because you can get on and off rides at many different places. It was 48 by the pool and 23 inside the Hotel – as we approached the internal doors we felt the temperature dropping.

Aquarium inside the Atlantis

Inside the hotel is a huge Aquarium. Entry to the Lost Chambers is free to guests and has wonderful floor couches to lie on and stare up into the water world full of colourful fish and the relaxing light of water after a day in the water park.  A one-hour scuba dive in the tank is definitely something we will do if ever we are lucky enough to be able to return. This was very reasonably priced as was the Royal Dolphin experience that we enjoyed. Having a pair of dolphins pull you through the water as you grabbed their dorsal fins or pushing your foot to surf you back to the beach was amazing, they are so strong that Petal’s board was only just in the water. The trainers told us interesting things and were very careful about how and where we stood or trod water to protect the dolphins. Dolphins lose their entire top layer of skin every 2hrs and have a smiley face so that any water that washes into their mouth can pour out to stop them drowning.

Dolphin Surf

Dolphin beaks are  incredibly hard.

Dolphin Rescue

Paradise Desert for Lollyholics

Both the breakfast and dinner banquets at the Kaleidoscope restaurant were amazing. At breakfast there was a table pushed around a corner that had pork sausages and bacon but everything else on offer was Halal and absolutely delicious. Because it was Ramadan while we were there many Moslems were eating there to break their fast. Not eating in daylight hours during this month of celebration is so much harder in the Northern hemisphere where the days are so long. There were so many cuisines available to try, yet the two youngest of our group came back mostly with offerings from the chocolate fountain, the castle of lollies and the desert bar.

We ventured out from Atlantis in the complimentary shuttle to the Mall of the Emirates that houses Magic Planet. This area includes acres of games and rides and neighbours a ski run with nearly 23000 square meters of snow all year around, they even have penguins and little toboggan runs for the tiny kids, ski suits supplied. Inside this mall the decorative details were just beautiful and I think every major store on the planet was there somewhere. Giant stuffed giraffes and real sized stuffed elephants in the toy store windows were gob smacking.

Waiting for the Shuttle

An arcade game - killing Zombies?

Looking up at the Mall of the Emirates

The Swarovski store was asking a lot less for their jewellery and figurines than I had paid for a thank you gift just before leaving Aus. The jewel shops were amazing, their windows sparkled more than any I have seen and huge sapphires, emeralds and rubies were set in rose, yellow, white gold with diamonds all the colours of the rainbow. The settings were delicate and creative with a lot of emphasis on plant motifs, the variety of topaz rings, bracelets and necklaces made it seem not such a disappointing birthstone after all. None of us dared to check out the prices.

We left with no bags having only spent money on experiences and we had a great time.

We caught the metro on to the biggest human mall in the Universe – Dubai Mall. The walk from the metro station to the actual mall was all undercover but was so long that it had travelators. There are great photo opportunities of Burj Kalifa through fairly clean windows. The Mall itself was very quiet with all of the food outlets closed because of Ramadan, they open at sunset and close between 1-3am during the holy month. Tourists are asked to have their knees and shoulders covered and there are large fines for playing rock or pop music out loud.  Officially, swearing in public is punishable by a public beating with a rod. We decided to catch the shuttle back from Dubai Mall to Atlantis. If we visit again we will check out the Aquarium, the Ice rink, the Souk Hall and the waterfront restaurants in view of an enormous fountain.  Entry to the Burj Kalifa is also in the Dubai Mall.

Leaving the Atlantis was efficiently organised with help from the bellhop button on the room phone and the friendly staff on the front desk organised a minivan to the airport so we didn’t have to travel in two taxis. After our late night swim, one of the family needed ear drops but there was no pharmacy. Luckily the couzies had some so the flight to the UK was more pleasant.

Jellyfish in the Aquarium

Lobsters climbing over a walkway

We had a great couple of days but the most special thing about it was that we spent them with family. Visiting new places with people whose company you enjoy is always really special and can make the drabbest of places a palace. Not that the Atlantis needed much help!  It was a funny feeling leaving knowing that we weren’t going home for a couple of years.

Detail of the lobby glass sculpture

The Couzies on Magic Planet

Last swim in the Royal Pool

Twin Couzies in front of the twin towers

Glitz and glitter everywhere

A Long Farewell

3 ½ weeks is a long time to take to leave. I’m sure that although our family and friends will miss while we are away on our Adventure, they were probably quite pleased for the leaving to be over.

It started at school with a most unusual assembly.

 
Willow’s Faux Formal was a much more exciting affair the following Saturday night.

Next it was a goodbye from church and the girl’s baptisms with many more farewells – at such an emotional time – the tears flowed freely as the holidays were beginning and it really was the last time to see some dear friends for a while. We were so blessed to have some of our NZ family come and share the day so we could have some time with them again face to face instead of face to book before the big move.

Handing over my messy classroom to the new teacher was a mixed blessing then saying farewell to 3 skip loads, stuff whisked off to garage sales and a kerbside pick up was a relief because it just didn’t have to be packed or wrapped. The wooden pods were driven off with all our household possessions to a warehouse somewhere for safe keeping until our return.

Petal’s mates spent an evening together imbibing huge quantities of sugar and watching movies. Good friends are the hardest to leave behind.

20 cartons, M’s bike and the girl’s guitars were carried away to be shipped to the UK and Pete’s Ute was borrowed to take the plant boxes and dinner sets over to Finch Pl to await our return.

The hardest was saying goodbye to Lala and Bunty as they were rehomed and taking Sharna and Charlie’s belongings to Nana who has kindly adopted them. The bearded dragon is in a friend’s lounge. The willy-wagtails and fairy-wrens couldn’t care less as long as the bugs keep dying in our pool.

Our last Sabbath saw another farewell, a wonderful lunch with the Wanderers and a very disappointing rugby game shared with our precious Freshwater cousies. On Sunday night the kids had their last Rowan Atkinson fan club meeting with a pack of close friends re-watching Beans, Adders and skits. Meanwhile the adults went out and left them to order their own pizza while we went to an Italian restaurant which was a great last supper with our mates.

An intrepid crew of cleaners and gardeners whooshed through the house fare-welling the last of the grubbiness of moving and finally a big white truck pulled up in front of our house and other people’s things filled the space we have called home for 8 yrs.

At the airport a rowdy get together of friends and family made our final curtain call feel like a party and kept the tear ducts all but checked.

Two days with the Cousies half way to the UK was a great way to celebrate a closeness that doesn't fade with distance.

48 degrees around the Waterpark.

It took us a long time to leave but we have finally arrived and are so lucky to have the Vicarage at Watford open for us as we transit from Heathrow to Cambridge.

Taking Lulu and Chester for a walk.

Cheers to the blessing of friends and family. Life is pretty wonderful with their care and affection always there.

Belated Birthday Backfire

Warning - Content is a bit on the nose and may offend some readers.
Purpose - Penance for the title.

Gas cloud birthday cake topper
Cat's Eye Nebula from zazzle.com.au

Many people who are alive today don't know when their birthday is.  It would seem that most adolescent Indonesian fishing boat crew on their way to this big brown land have no idea what year they were born let alone the month and day - the immigration dept. resorted to wrist x-rays at one stage to measure growth in order to determine whether these young boys were old enough to be charged with people smuggling or not. When living in poverty, life is counted in the days it takes to get the next meal; years really are a luxury.  In ancient Hebrew(1) and neolithic European(2) cultures children weren't even named until they had survived their first year.  Their life rather than their birth was celebrated.

Those of us who live in a culture of specialised skills and an economy functioning well enough to allow for social welfare, certainly know our birthdays. Birthdays are then a celebration of not only the life of the aging one but also of a life lived in security and plenty.  So there is really no excuse for us first worlders to forget our brother's birthdays!

But I did.

On the first of every month I try to recall whom of the family and close friends are celebrating, a bit tough for those born in the lower numbers, so every couple of days in early May I thought of my brother, my niece(18yrs) and my Gran. When a school meeting was booked for the 29th I wondered whether I'd have to go or would have to do the birthday call in the morning to avoid the rush.  My brother and his Fiancé even came and stayed with us for a few days but I wasn't organised enough to have pre-prepared the card and gift designed to show 'see I know who you are and what you might like'.  My husband gave him a CD(3) with 99 different flatus - they both were cracking up (hear Beethoven's 5th as you never wanted to hear it) - I should have put a bow on it right then!

Dear Bro - this quote then is my belated birthday gift to you because you know I hate this word and shake my head at the simple toilet humour children and men delight in, yet here it is celebrated for your enjoyment.

"As you may have guessed, ‘fart’ is not the medical word for the gross/hilarious act of passing gas. The medical term for gas released from the intestinal exit is ‘flatulence.’ ‘Fart’ is a slang term coined in 1632 (yes, even back then people farted). The Oxford English Dictionary defines the transitive verb form of ‘fart’: To send forth as wind from the anus. The word comes from the Old English word ‘feortan’ which means ‘to break wind.’ The OED mentions that the word ‘fart’ is ‘not in decent use.’ However, it has still been used by great English poets, like Geoffrey Chaucer."(4)

The urban dictionary(5) has a very long creative list of terms for this organic reaction which may also provide some entertainment - matching the terms with the tracks on the CD might liven up a rainy afternoon. Sorry soon to be wife.  Following is your card greeting -

Happy Birthday to you,  Keep your wind in the loo,  

Don't ask me to pull your finger,  Cause you might do a ....

My brother is big hearted, rumbles like an approaching train as he prepares to .... laugh his big belly, ear splitting guffaw which we all love and will always lend a hand.  I hope my penance has provided some material to get those wheels on the track without the need for the whistle!

References: 

1 http://www.kotapress.com/section_articles/childDeath/other/historical_death.htm  Joanne Cacciatore

2 http://www.academia.edu/532382/WHEN_THE_BOUGH_BREAKS  Anna Waterman and Jonathan Thomas

3 Pull my Finger: The Fart CD - Release date April 13 2000

4 http://www.omg-facts.com/Other/The-Word-fart-Comes-From-An-Old-English/55768#WR1WLtDYVrXvB9CK.99 

5 http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fart

6 http://cheezburger.com - image

Reading Now: The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, Pocket Books 1999
Observations that are a little confronting in this open account of a teenage boy's coming of age who is a bit special and thinks things like this:
"(I) put my head under my pillow and let the quiet put things where they were supposed to be." p28
"I read a book and I think I am the people in the book. Also when I write letters, I spend the next two days thinking about what I figured out in my letters." p31
"There is this one photograph of Sam that is just beautiful. It would be impossible to describe how beautiful it is, but I'll try.  If you listen to the song 'Asleep' and you think about those pretty weather days that make you remember things, and you think about the prettiest eyes you've known, and you cry, and the person holds you back, then I think you will see the photograph." p51

All for One and One for All

The idea of community, so entrenched in the legend of the Three Musketeers, is globally appealing and may be the reason for so many film adaptations of Alexandre Dumas' novel. Like all good narratives the baddie is rich and powerful, a bit sleazy and has some great, teeth grinding lines - 'All for one and more for me'. Cardinal Richelieu gets his comeuppance in the end at the hands of the young King with heroic support from his handsome Musketeers. Of course according to the book and the films, every one lives happily ever-after.

If only our problems were so easy to recognise and finish off in real life. 

The big news in Australia this week was the death of Hazel Hawke.  Damien Murphy wrote a piece for The Sydney Morning Herald that demonstrated how a woman who had chosen abortion to allow her boyfriend the freedom of overseas study and multiple cosmetic surgery to maintain an acceptable appearance for the wife of a Rhodes scholar climbing the political ladder to its zenith, was steely in her resolve to do the right thing by the people in her mostly absent husband's electorate. 

Order of Australia 2001
Image from abc.net.au

This biography was new to me, the divorce for a younger woman blasted across the front pages of greedy magazines and the onset of dementia were all I had been previously aware of.  I am fascinated by the juxtaposition that this woman's life became. Her appeasing choices and lack of self esteem in her early years is in total contrast with the strong family ties she held together through humiliating headlines, and the amount of plaques bearing her name chosen by everyday people in everyday places because of their respect for her hard work and dedication to their improved communities.  It is inspiring how such strength developed from such meekness. 

I am assuming that her early decisions were the result of pressure from an ambitious partner but it is possible that she was just as ambitious and chose for herself; what's the old saying about behind every good man?  Perhaps she always had the steely resolve to do what 'needed' to be done. Or perhaps she was bullied into it and hindsight drove her to fight for others in later years.

Also in the news this week are the results of a study about rising numbers of Aboriginal deaths in custody. It was announced and quickly passed over for the next headline in the TV news I watched. The article in the SMH was hard to find and didn't tout the name of a reporter or even the name of the lead researcher.  The report was cloaked in anonymity, AAP was listed as the source and the Australian Institute of Criminology as the researcher. Why does no one want to stand up and be noticed about this sick and sad issue in our community?

Death in Custody
Trevor Nicholls 1990
treatyrepublic.net

The study showed that these deaths are not caused by police brutality where bad cops can be sacked, they are not caused by hangings where cells can be changed but by 'natural' causes: the effects of poverty and alcohol abuse. Ultimately they result from lifestyle choices but what lack of community makes these choices so common?

In the same week the lead vocalist of 'Power and the Passion' and 'Dead Heart' is desperately trying to drum up support from the states who have not signed up to the Gonski report driven changes for needs based funding of Aussie schools. "Education is the passport out of poverty for many indigenous students, yet we are still leaving thousands of kids behind,'' Mr Garrett said. "NSW has shown the way by signing up to our plan and delivering a better deal for almost 54,000 Aboriginal students in that state." in smh.com.au by Michael Gordon.  Isolation, loss of culture, substance abuse, poor nutrition and financial ignorance could be reduced by education which in turn will reduce the numbers of indigenous criminals and deaths in their communities whether behind bars or not.

photo:Glenn Campbell in theage.com.au

Why do some individuals in our community appear to be worth so much more than hundreds of others.  Why do we want to read and talk about one but strive to ignore many?

 At least  Dumas gives us food for thought and a little hope with the words "The merit of all things lies through their difficulty."  Perhaps he meant that the worth of something may be measured in how hard we are prepared to fight for it.  

Swords out - protect the defenseless and honour those with the strength to hold to what is true.

Reading:
Peace at Last - article from The Age by Lindsay Murdoch 2007
"TWO years ago gang violence made the Aboriginal community of Wadeye look like a Third World refugee camp.

"My tears are never dry," indigenous elder Theodora Narndu said at the time.

Elders say few solutions proposed for Wadeye addressed the complex problems that arose from having 23 combative clan groups brought together in one community, when a Catholic mission was set up in the then Port Keats in the 1930s.
"Things are pretty good here at the moment … there's not the trouble like before, the kids are going to school, there's less problems with drinking. Buildings are going up. Looking out from here, I feel as if I know more and am ready to deal with the issues," Mrs Narndu said."

Unseen

Two of my nieces were in their school's biannual musical over the last week. My eldest niece(who is now my work colleague - on the payroll at the ELC) accompanied my daughters and I to watch it. I think I must have missed bits of the show because the girls were in the chorus and usually on opposite sides of the stage which meant my focus was constantly flickering across the leads to keep an eye on their perfectly timed moves.  Well that is my excuse for missing the huge visual metaphor of the staging design!

The musical was Godspell and the characters were mostly dressed in construction worker get up, with hard hats and tools. A collection of parables are sung and spoken with Judas eventually betraying the overalled Jesus to the suited up architects(Pharisees & Sadduchees). The orchestra, lighting and sound were great, the staff and students should be very proud of their work but it wasn't until the next morning that I suddenly realised that the set was a metaphor for the plot.  The chorus spent all non singing and dancing time bringing in prefabricated walls, windows and doors which they clipped together as they sung their harmonies until the interior of a church was obvious. The stories and musical numbers were Christ building His church.  The architects who were focused on the buildings also missed the plot, for church is people not walls. The distraction of what made the who unseen.

After Godspell with our stars!

How often do we miss the plot because we don't notice what? How often do we miss opportunities to build people up because we don't notice who? 

As a child I was taught to pray my own prayers in private.  This form of meditation I think encouraged self reflection and often bought solutions to the tricksty social dilemmas that a nosy child worries about. I always prayed for what suited me but living on a farm soon taught me that different people would be praying for different weather at the same time - eventually I decided that God set His natural laws at creation and they ran their course. 

As a teen, watching the starving Ethiopians on the news every night, I lost any belief in an interventionist, personal God and struggled for years to reconcile the idea of people attributing a needed car space becoming available to answered prayer and innocents suffering. I felt that I needed to choose between being part of an experiment in free choice that was going horribly wrong observed by an uncaring God or the possibility that God didn't exist. Science saved me. The constant patterns and beauty from under the microscope in my biology classes to radio telescope visions of space, spoke of a designer. 

Going back into the Gospels I eventually saw the parallel between Judas and those disappointed in unanswered prayer on their terms. Judas believed by forcing a confrontation between Christ and the Pharisees he was going to see the Messiah he had always believed in, the general of an unstoppable army that would conqueror the world and return the promised land to God's people.  His limited concrete view of his world stopped him seeing the much bigger battle that Christ had come to fight.  In Hebrews 11 faith is named as the conviction of things not seen yet as concrete beings we need to see to believe.  How often does our infantile faith waver when it rains on days we plead for sunshine? How many have cut God from their lives because their pain and suffering have not been relieved? How many of us delight in the abstract but demand personal physical proof of God?

Nick's DVD

At school this week our Chaplain showed a clip from Nick Vujici's testimony. He said that through his battle of reconciling his birth with no arms or legs, his hardship and the idea of a loving God he came to the conclusion that "God changes me not my circumstance". Since Jesus' ascension and Pentecost, God has been present on Earth as the unseen Spirit. If invited the Holy Spirit will intervene in us.  I believe that He will guide our thoughts, motivations and responses.  He is the ultimate cognitive therapist.  

How do we see the unseen? Our kindness, our integrity, our involvement and  perception will not heal the ravages of our genes or alter natural laws or remove the consequences of our and other's choices but it will bring a little bit of heaven to those that our life impacts. Your face can show God to those you see everyday.

2 Corinthians 4:18 - ... look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are transient but the things that are unseen are eternal.

Reading Now: 
Sylvester by Georgette Heyer, Assumptions we make about what is happening in other people's heads cause such stressful social interactions.
Behavioural Assessment of the Dysexecutive Syndrome 

Barbara A. Wilson, Nick Alderman, Paul W. Burgess, Hazel Emslie and Jonathan J. Evans

Predict everyday problems associated with the Dysexcutive Syndrome - a new to me diagnostic tool of the unseen cause of debilitating symptoms in a couple of students at school.

Genes vs Ideas

One of the most common shapes to appear in History textbooks is the pyramid. I'm not referring to the mud or limestone monuments from Mesopotamia or Egypt but the social hierarchy diagrams that consistently appear in the introductory pages about each culture.  This constant social pattern followed by humans over time is more likely why real Communism has never succeeded, the ideal of equality in economy and status just doesn't suit the majority.  Perhaps this is also the reason humans have always sought God. In modern times celebrity takes the place for those who worship at the mall. We seem to need someone on top.

An evolutionary biologist, Mark Pagel, has suggested that this tendency for the majority of humans (base of the pyramid) to be followers and copiers rather than innovators and creators has most likely contributed to the survival and development of our race. Perhaps the Tall Poppy syndrome so abhorred by Gifted and Talented educators is really a societal trigger to ensure that the only 'big ideas' that get through are those that society needs in spite of the nerd that proposes it.  Could TED Talks be the gong sounding the end of our species by giving a world wide stage to too many innovators and creators? Will scattered groups following many different intellectual enthusiasts destroy the cohesion of the masses by eating away at the base of the human pyramid? Nazis and Witch hunters certainly thought so.

Perhaps though another explanation for the pyramid is the cooperative nature of humanity, the ability to work together, to specialise and to share.  The plight of consumerism and greedy financiers certainly appear as if our society has become self gratifying to the point of destruction but the steady growth in the amount of charities listed for tax benefits could be looked at with an optimistic eye.  'Mark Pagel and his team's study into the proto-Eurasiatic language, as the mother for over 700 living languages, have identified a group of words in use today that have survived from this ancestral language. "I was really delighted to see 'to give' there," Pagel said. "Human society is characterised by a degree of co-operation and reciprocity that you simply don't see in any other animal. Verbs tend to change fairly quickly but that one hasn't." '(Read in David Brown, Washington Post article in smh.com.au, May 7 2013) 

The day after Human's arrived in God's creative application of His natural laws (Day 6, as Moses recorded for a society that had to be given a book of health laws because they didn't have enough science to stop dying from trichinosis and dysentery) He rested. This act introduced the cultural evolution to Earth. The Sabbath was designed for relationships and contemplation. In Genesis 2 the world's first language lesson is recorded, like all good language teachers God started with nouns. This gift of language gave power to the cultural evolution because thinking is useless without communication. This was given within an environment of free choice and stuff happened. Genes had done their job and now ideas flourished. Some good and many so bad that God had to ensure humanity's future opportunities with a flood. Generations later the idea to beat an imagined wrathful God, with all remembrance of the rainbow and its promise laughed at, a mighty tower was built.  

This earliest pyramid recorded in the Bible was accomplished  by a large group of cooperative humans, specialised in a variety of skills and lead by a charismatic innovator at Babel.  Humans had been told to go forth and multiply but had only fulfilled the second part so God scrambled their tongues, the original language perhaps lost. As those who understood each other formed new tribes and dispersed to look for their own place, the ideas of flood, God and language went with them.

Truly new ideas are rare and precious.  Hopefully these gems by scientists, philosophers and artists add beauty and strength to the cultural evolution began by the one who's laws guide natural selection.

Jesus about his disciples in Matthew 26:41 'The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak'
Paul talks of a similar battle between ideas and selfish disposition in Romans 7.

Hoping to read:
.

Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind by Mark Pagel.

A fascinating, far-reaching study of how our species' innate capacity for culture altered the course of our social and evolutionary history.  A unique trait of the human species is that our personalities, lifestyles, and worldviews are shaped by an accident of birth—namely, the culture into which we are born. It is our cultures and not our genes that determine which foods we eat, which languages we speak, which people we love and marry, and which people we kill in war. But how did our species develop a mind that is hardwired for culture—and why?

Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel tracks this intriguing question through the last 80,000 years of human evolution, revealing how an innate propensity to contribute and conform to the culture of our birth not only enabled human survival and progress in the past but also continues to influence our behavior today. Shedding light on our species’ defining attributes—from art, morality, and altruism to self-interest, deception, and prejudice—Wired for Culture offers surprising new insights into what it means to be human.