Scottish Wolves

There is a story on the BBC website (link) about a plan to release wolves back into Scotland to control the deer population. Nobody has suggested releasing bears, as far as I can tell; maybe bears are more dangerous than wolves.

Warning - Graphic

Note - avoid if you don't like blood, or if you are Lucien.

This news article on the CNN website essentially shows Shiite Muslims in Iraq assaulting their children and each other with large knives in the name of religion. It is pretty horrible and just one more terrible example of the extreme behaviour to which people can be driven by their irrational beliefs.

Evil deeds on the train!

As I write this, I'm sitting on the train to Waterloo in a section of the carriage with eight other people, all of whom are asleep. The temptation to clap my hands loudly and shout out is almost overwhelming!

A Blog by Email

Google's Blogger has finally left Beta and it is, definitely, very cool. One feature, which I'm testing with this post, is the "Post by Email" tool which should do exactly what it says on the tin.
 
In the US, mobile phone subscribers have an even better feature which is "Blog by Mobile Phone", a tool that allows you to publish images and text to your normal blog straight from your phone. Very neat, and I can't wait to use it. In the meantime, we have blog by email which is almost as good but doesn't include images. Go Google!

Controversy

There seems to be some debate over the satirical status of the TinySaint website linked below. Ko says it is satire, I think it is a genuine believer (although I hope Ko is right).

To settle this, I have sent TinySaint the following email. I will post the reply, if I get one.

Hi,

Stumbled across your site via a link from the Richard
Dawkin's Foundation (great site, by the way - well worth a
visit).

Just wanted to say that your satirical lampooning of
ridiculous Christian beliefs is very nicely done. Keep up the good work! I
particularly like the way you list some of the Bible's most bizarre and
unpleasant verses as "Unrelated deep thought".
Brilliant.

Cheers, James

More news as it comes in...

The Joy of Socks

One of the banes of domestic life is the regular sock-pairing chore. Trying to match and sort 3 dozen black socks into matching pairs is no easy task and it drives me up the wall.

Happily, I now have a solution. Serialised socks. The cost of weaving is so low that custom weaves are relatively inexpensive so my idea is to produce two socks with the same 12 digit number woven into the sole and then sell them as a pair. Each 12-digit number is used only for one pair so, when you come to sort them, it is simple to match them up. Genius!

Satire? Unfortunately Not...

I found a link to this page on the Richard Dawkins Foundation site in a post on the forum. At first, I thought it was a satirical swipe at weird fundamentalist Christians (which is to say, pretty much all Christians) who are able to believe the most absurd things in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Having read to the bottom of the page, however, I think the author is probably a fairly devout Christian himself and he just isn't able to think through his arguments in a sufficiently critical fashion.

Have a look at it, if you're after a bit of a laugh. His explanation of why Christian faith is "right" while all other faiths are simply wrong is particularly good and his patronising attitude towards atheists just finishes off the page delightfully. This guy is so good at believing vacuous and bizarre untruths that he should be in Government.

Snow

Today is the first time this year that we’ve had snow on the ground in the South. As normal, the snow is only on cars and at the edges of the road (it’s too warm for a blanket) but that was enough to cause delays on the roads. As I travelled north towards London (on the slow train, having missed the fast train due to the traffic) the blanket of snow has got steadily heavier; at Hook the snow covers everything, albeit only lightly.

Note to self for future – never miss the 07:08 fast train in favour of the 07:23 slow train; it adds an hour to the journey and the reduced stress of a near-empty train doesn’t make up for this

Rights

The spectacle of the allegedly moral archbishops, both Anglican and Catholic, requesting freedom to discriminate against homosexuals, shows just how far the organised Churches are from being the moral beacons they claim to be. I have yet to hear their arguments for these exemptions (except that they would be on grounds of “conscience”) but I imagine, when you get right down to the biblical level, the justification will begin with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

For those unfamiliar with it, the story of S&G is a fairly average example of Old Testament prejudice and unpleasantness. In the story, the men of Sodom ask Lot to hand over the male visitor to his house so that they might sleep with him (Biblical metaphor for gang-rape). Lot refuses saying that this is immoral and against the rules of God; instead he offers the men his two daughters, “who have not known the touch of man” but the men cannot be dissuaded. Lot is then warned by angels to leave the city because God is going to destroy it to cleanse the evil from it.

The story goes on and becomes even more unpleasant, but these are the essential details and they form the basis for the Church’s moral objections to homosexuality. The problems of this will be obvious to every right-thinking person, but let’s list them anyway:

1. God is aghast that men might want to sleep with men and he punishes the city, including the presumably innocent women and children, by burning it to the ground.
2. God allows Lot to escape with his family and in doing so condones the act of offering young girls for gang-rape.
3. Having forbidden anyone to look back at the destruction of the city, God then turns Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt for committing this apparently minor crime.
4. The Church, realising that some aspects of the Old Testament are not appropriate moral touchstones, adopts a pragmatic “pick and choose” attitude where some stories are adopted and others ignored.
   

Having discarded some stories from the Old Testament, the Church has set a precedent and can now build a set of moral guidelines that match today’s Zeitgeist and reflect the realities of modern life. They choose (and it is important to note that it is a choice, not something forced upon them), however, to maintain their position on homosexuality regardless.

The next step, I think, is for the Church leaders to document their argument from first Biblical ‘principles’ so that the rest of us can see exactly how their opinions have been formed. After that it should take any competent disputant about 10 minutes to demolish their position.

Oh, and for what it’s worth, let’s re-write the legislation currently proposed to prevent religious organisations from engaging in any sort of discriminative behaviour; the current law allows them all sorts of protections that nobody else is allowed. If the religious wish to be consulted on moral or societal issues, they must play by the same rules as everyone else and demonstrate the same minimum standards of behaviour. Freedom of religion, yes; freedom to persecute, no.

Update: There are also passages in Leviticus which appear to condemn homosexuality but Leviticus is so monumentally weird that no right-minded person would accept it and it can therefore be ignored.

O'Loan Report

On Monday evening I had to endure two particularly difficult radio interviews. The first was with Lord McGinnis, who tried to defend RUC collusion with Loyalist murderers; his argument that times were difficult held no water whatsoever. The second was with Gerry Adams, a man with whom I’ve never previously agreed, taking a moderate, sensible and well-argued line over the issue; his point that, had the murders taken place in London instead of Belfast, Governments would be falling, was well made.

In the light of the most recent report into the failings of the RUC, three things must now happen:

1) The rules regarding handling of informers and investigation of suspected criminal offences must be followed; there can be no leeway given to individual officers to break or ignore the rules.

2) The people responsible for the repeated failure to follow the rules (Special Branch officers, senior policemen, politicians, judges etc.) must be punished; there can’t ever be circumstances where the police (and thereby the State) are allowed to collude with criminals in order to assume the roles of Judge, Jury and Executioner.

3) The murder investigations, abandoned to protect police informers, must be reopened and the guilty brought to justice.

Throughout the troubles in Northern Ireland, it was alleged that the underlying cause was inequality of justice for the Catholic minority, who suffered discrimination and victimisation by the state and the Protestant majority. The O’Loan report shows just how serious were the grievances of the Catholic community and it’s findings cannot be ignored or swept under the carpet; they must be acted upon, and quickly.

Singapore

Singapore was great - definitely a place worth visiting even if you don't have a good reason for going (we did). It's clean, safe and fun, particularly if you like shopping.

Dave and June's wedding went well - we had a fantastic time - and we've got a few photos which I'll try to post later as soon as I can work out how with this system.