"Son" gods, like Dionysos in Greece and Osiris in Egypt, also made their appearance in the age of agriculture. Like storm gods, they were dynamic, but not quite in the same way. Their role was rather to suffer and die. The so-called mystery religions, which were enormously popular in the ancient Mediterranean world, centred especially on these deities, which in name were vegetation gods but figured more prominently as dramatic, divine saviors. In these gods especially, Eliade discerns an important psychological aspect of religious symbols. They not only tell us about the world and the sacred but also show "the continuity between the structures of human existence and cosmic structures." Their myths do not just reflect the cycles of life and death in nature; they reenact as well the great personal struggle that takes place in the life of each human individual: the drama of birth, life and death as well as the hope of rebirth or redemption. No symbol, says Eliade, manages to bring divine life so near to human as the figure of the savior-god, the divinity who "even shared mankind's sufferings, died and rose from the dead to redeem them." Precisely because of his marked "humanity," this type of god plays a crucual role in the history of religion."

- Daniel L Pals, Seven Theories of Religion; The Reality of the Sacred, Mircea Eliade

***

I finally got down to sending my Powershot A70 in for repair. It turns out that it's a known problem, so they replaced my CCD for me for free. It was ready in 2 days, and they even offered to mail it to me, so I have no complaints, except that they didn't mail owners of the camera to let them know about the free repair policy.

I noticed that at the Canon service centre, they used Epson printers. I asked why and was told Canon didn't manufacture that sort of printers (the sort from the old days where the paper is advanced by means of a conveyor belt pulling it along using the holes in the side of it).

***

I was forced to use an iBook G4 for a period of time, and the touchpad was ridiculously hard to use. Pushing my finger down hard didn't work. Neither did pressing the touchpad lightly. The owner of the iBook suggested I use my middle finger - he said it was easier. How appropriate.

Oh, and the lack of a delete key was annoying (technically, there's a delete key, but it's a backspace in disguise so deleting text is a pain).


Meanwhile, a friend's Macintosh laptop dropped from the level of the cushion on a chair to the floor, and not only did it spoil, the hinge connecting the screen to the rest of the laptop came out. Such shoddy manufacturing, tsk tsk.

[Addendum:

My Little Bird: "i heard an interesting anecdote from a project mate at an IT show - a mac whore/salesman was saying how durable the ibook was and smashed the ibook he was holding to the floor - the ibook refused to boot up (although it remained in one piece) - the project mate walked off as he was still (frantically) trying to reboot it.

oh please add that this intelligence feed is from a mac user.
in contrast to a mac whore"]