This essay spectacularly failed to place in the Bodley Head/Financial Times competition of last year. It was written to be non-academic and readable, so I hope someone enjoys it.
It is mostly about the internet, although in quite wide terms. The Snowden Revelations now show a lot of it is mislead, but not irrelevant . Hopefully the thing overall is entertaining, if you are an especially bored person. Continue reading
Loyal readers will remember two previous fracases with Lord Carey, former Arch B of C. It appears he has failed to read those posts, or was not convinced by them, for he wrote a piece, entitled “The PM has done more than any leader to make Christians feel they’re persecuted” in the Daily Mail on Friday.
“At least I’m not the baby-eating bishop of Bath & Wells.”
The Abu Qatada Saga has been in the news again recently for allegedly breaking his bail conditions. We are talking, in case you were wondering, about the Palestinian-Jordanian Islamic cleric resisting extradition to Jordan, not Abu Hamza, with whom he is often confused, who has hooks for hands and has already been extradited to the United States. Here is a helpful story from the Express about his use new sporks.
To continue by inauspicious run of linking current events to topics I’d probably discuss anyway, British readers will have heard about the case of Sarah Catt, who terminated her foetus in the last stage of pregnancy and has been jailed for eight years. The prosecution (‘administering poison with intent to cause a miscarriage’, a law from 1867) and sentencing are interesting for a number of reasons. Medical abortions performed before the 24th week are perfectly legal, and a woman performing one on herself would not expect serious prosecution. In the UK there were 189,100 legal terminations in 2009 and 195,296 in 2008 (ONS).
Foetus art is pushing boundaries almost as much as Rihanna
This is a complementary post to this one, which criticised the kind of ‘atheist religion’ 
espoused by Alain de Botton. The linked post excellently covers my dissatisfaction with
the ‘big issues’ and the problems in these men’s approaches. I, then, will widen the net and direct my considerable anger at day-to-day life. Continue reading
The ‘Slippery Slope’ is one of the most interesting types of argument, because it is neither consistently valid, or invalid. When claiming:
If A (proposal) happens, it will cause B, which in turn will cause C,… which will cause Z.
Z (outcome) is clearly undesirable, and should not happen.
Therefore A (proposal) should not happen. Continue reading
I read two things recently. One was A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, available in all good bookstores, and quite possibly most less-good ones. The other was an erotic/bdsm short story, available on the internet (to which I’ll link you if you message me.) Continue reading
At a guess, I’d say that most people who read my suggestions for tweaking democracy will have some ‘little quibbles’, hmm?
Well that’s good, because I had a few of my own. Might give those of you who thought I was 100% brilliant a pause for thought. Go ahead, criticise me!
1.) His argument is rubbish!
Yeah, awkward. Continue reading
Lots of the shit I lament in earlier posts is human. We can’t eliminate ‘people being affected by language’ or ‘people having cultural points of view’ without fundamentally changing what humans are, or by eliminating ‘people’.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t go some way in alleviating & ameliorating the situation, at least insofar as politics is concerned. Continue reading
We got there in the end, didn’t we?
What a triumphant intermediate conclusion that was – the thinking behind most votes resembles a stenchful mire, all bubbles and floating lumps. Yuk! Continue reading
Unhappiness is treason.
Mostly buffoonery.
Robert Peal on education and reform
Haywire Thought 