Nick's Blog
Hail To The Blog!
20/1/2009 @ 16:44
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That BBC Barak Obama inauguration coverage in full, transcribed here:
"President Barak Obama, borne from on high by a score of golden angels playing harps, swore the oath of office on Abraham Lincoln's bible, now bound in Lincoln's own preserved flesh, to become the 44th President of the United States"
"His Supreme Holiness, President Obama, stood before the crowd of 100 billion, some of whom had been queuing up in Washington since November, and sent forth streams of healing throughout the multitudinous crowds whilst 20 virgins clad in diaphanous gowns danced in worship of the new President, who will surely now solve every problem in the world with just a wave of his hand...so mote it be."
"Whilst cartoon animals frolicked playfully at his feet, President Obamatron repeated his election manifesto that change is coming to America and the world and no matter how many times he has said it in the past, it still sounded like the sweetest honey lovingly caressing around the ears. He repeated his promise to heal the sick, purify all water and turn base metals into gold and at that moment in his inauguration speech, the entire world's air forces flew overhead in a perfectly symetrical heart formation whilst lambs lay down with lions on the White House lawn."
"Obama then waved to the crowd, who had by now stripped themselves bare and were cavorting in joy, peace and love followed by a delegation of the Supreme Galactic Council who had chosen this moment to reveal themselves to the Earth and declare Obama Galactic President for life."
"Whilst the Tron progamme completed its mission to liberate the Incom computer network, King Barak I said to the world's press "My presidency will be about harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding, no more falsehoods or derisions, golden living dreams of visions, mystic crystal revelation and the mind's true liberation, truly this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius""
"As the usually cynical press corps of the world broke down in tears and hugged each other, declaring that they would no longer write anything negative or stretch the truth, Obama forgave them all, verily. And as the crowds all cheered saying 'Hosanna In The Highest', President Barak "Pure Love" Obama thanked the crowds, gave them a rendition of 'Hey Jude' on the piano and reformed The Doobie Brothers before heading off to his first official engagement of his Presidency, a meeting with the Prime Minister of Belgium."
The Blog Delusion
12/1/2009 @ 13:54
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ah, Richard Dawkins. He's been around a bit of late, hasn't he?
Now I'm not going to use this blog entry to either promote religion or atheism or argue that God is right or wrong or actually exists. I just don't have the bandwidth to accommodate all the arguments and counter-arguments on that one and I just know it will spark a flame war.
Instead, I'm going to highlight some issues I've noticed in recent weeks about yer man Dawkins himself and some of the things he's said.
It struck me the other day just how militant atheism has become in the last couple of years: From "The God Delusion" through to "Jerry Springer: The Opera", atheism is the new Methodism so to speak but what attracted my attention recently was someone, a friend and colleague of Dawkins, was on the radio the other day demanding that "Thought For The Day" on Radio 4's "Today Programme" be dropped from the schedule.
Now if you're allergic to Radio 4 and are just not up early enough for The Today Programme (hello all you English Literature students out there!), Thought For The Day is a 3 minute long segment where a religious official; a vicar, priest, monk, rabbi, imam, mullah, grand poo-bah etc, talks about an issue in the news from their religious perspective. Now the representative from the Humanist Association wants that segment banned from the airwaves as it promotes religious bigotry and is out of place on a public service broadcaster.
My opinion is...."come on, it's only 3 minutes long!". Radio 4 broadcasts pretty much 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The Today Programme is 3 hours long. Therefore Thought For The Day takes up 1/60th of the Today Programme's airtime and 1/560th of Radio 4's entire weekly output. So it seems a bit mean spirited to begrudge that amount of time...time that could be spent on another news item and giving it all of 3 minutes in depth coverage.
But then again, reading Richard Dawkins you get a that moment in any of his works where he veers off from his analytical scientific explanations and into pure anti-religious tirades. They're not even smooth segues when he does it...more like this:
"Newton's second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system which is not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium...unlike those Christians! Ooh I wish they were isolated and approaching entropy! I hate them! I really hate them!"
One of the more contentious things he said last year was that he thought baptism and christenings were akin to child abuse. I doubt Dawky is reading this but if you are, Professor, then may I put it to you that there are children out there being beaten, sexually assaulted, malnourished, abused and mutilated by perverse and savage adults and it's a great insult to them and to people who work to fight child abuse to suggest adding child baptism into that category. Oh, and it's a great insult to all those families who do christen their children or have a dedication ceremony in their particular faith. And as he never goes near a baptism or christening or bar-mitzva how does he know exactly that its child abuse?
The irony of Richard Dawkins is that he has become a humanist version of an Old Testament prophet. He rails against un-unbelief, has unshakeable confidence in his message and effectively calls all people who have spiritual faith heretics...or whatever the atheist term for a heretic is. He is the atheist Billy Graham! I wonder if anyone has ever told him that?
And the guy can't help himself either. If he's sat next to a bishop or vicar, he can't help but slam them for their beliefs. I wonder if he's like that on busses and trains? Does he just launch spontaneously into a tirade the moment he sees someone reading "The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe?" or "The Catholic Herald"?
In conclusion, I think Dawkins should just calm down a little bit. 3 minutes of Thought For The Day isn't going to propel the UK into a Fundamentalist state. Sprinkling a bit of water on a baby's forehead isn't going to lead to the rise of a new Taliban. If he were to look around the world he can see nations where thought and expression are ruthlessly supressed...both by religious and secular governments. He should be thankful that he lives in a society where his opinions can be shared...but gracious enough to accept that religious people can share their thoughts as well.
Happy New Blog
03/1/2009 @ 14:37
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ah, 2009. What excitement there's been this year already...and by excitement I really mean "good crap, nothing in my house works anymore".
Remember my little central heating problem? Well, that got worse in the last 10 days. It went from "ooh, it's a bit chilly in here" to "I'm going to need another woolly sweater and a packet of extra strong mints" then to "I cannot actually feel my fingers anymore" to "I'm changing my name by deed poll to Nick Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes" and then to "h-h-h-h-holy c-c-c-crap i-i-i-it's f-f-f-f-feckin' f-f-f-f-freezing in here!" before it got so cold I had to shoot and eat a Husky, cut off two gangrenous toes and declare myself the last survivor of the Franklin North West Passage Expedition.
And it's like some great malevolent force has decided that NOW is the time to make my boiler go phut. Two weeks before or after Christmas would have been ideal (if I had to book a date where a key component of my house would cease to function) but no, smack bang in holiday season in the land of double time rates and "oooh, we can't send anyone out to fix your problem for another 4 days".
Added to that problem was my oven dying as well. The only other source of available heat decided to come out in sympathy with the boiler. Fortunately, I knew the theory of changing an oven heating element so I crawled into the large oven and with a lot of cursing, grazed knuckles and lost screws I managed to replace it. One observation I made whilst doing this was that it's a very poor and uncomfortable way of doing yourself in...sticking your head in an oven. I have no idea what Sylvia Plath was thinking but she just made life more awkward for herself by choosing death by oven if you ask me.
So for now I have an oven and a precariously balanced hot water boiler...I'm just waiting for the toilet to break now.
