Religion

23Sep04 — 1

Unlikely Pleasures

Just back from Leasey’s where she didn’t have to strap me into the harness to watch a chick flick starring Cher. With my psychosexual make-up, the incantation “Winona Ryder plays a Jewish girl who desperately wants to be Catholic” is more effective in overwhelming artistic judgement than “Halle Berry runs around wearing a leather catsuit […]

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15Sep04 — 4

Virgin International

Some friends of mine are off on holiday to Rome later. As usual when anyone I know is going to a place with vaguely religious connections, I have asked them to bring me back a glow-in-the-dark virgin, an icon I recall with both spiritual and aesthetic horror from night stays at my Grandma’s in Preston. […]

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14Sep04 — 3

Putting A Bit About

Today’s featured Wikipedia article is about Jesus’s foreskin, or rather his foreskins because quite a few people claim to have had it/them. When I worked in a hospital lab I discovered that discarded foreskins were an excellent source of a particular class of cell called a fibroblast. This is one of only a couple of […]

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11Sep04 — 12

Science Fantasy Shakespeare

I suspect that I enjoyed and admired The Chronicles of Riddick so much primarily because I expected so little of it; I hope I don’t diminish anyone’s pleasure with this rave. Do not read about this film. See this on the big screen while you still can. It has been surprisingly unpopular and I only […]

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11Sep04 — 6

To The Point

Hak Mao pleads a lack of eloquence, but she says all that needs to be said today. I’m with her all the way—though obviously I’ll need to learn a bit of Cantonese and find some undiscriminating women first.

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09Sep04 — 0

Killing Muslims Again

88 percent of the population of Indonesia is Muslim. If you can’t kill a Jew or a Christian or an atheist, you have to make do. “Bloodied victims lay sprawled and screaming in front of the embassy, as dazed survivors desperately tried to locate colleagues and missing family members. A severed leg, human scalp and […]

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09Sep04 — 19

“Read By People In Museums”

I have a pretty strict “no ‘Blogging during business hours” rule, but this is ‘Blogging about the business. A colleague has just sent me this story about an “intelligent design” paper being published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. [You might need to register for free to read it.] I haven’t got the time to comment […]

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07Sep04 — 26

A Catholic Sociologist Writes

And overcomes my prejudices. Everyone (many Guardian contributors, for example) who thinks that US politics is dominated by a simplistic Right-wing agenda, sponsored by fundamentalist Christians, should be made to read this New York Times article that the Anonymous Economist drew to my attention. (S)he also sent this snippet from a meet-the-people piece, “In an […]

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30Aug04 — 9

Cults

There were two other things I enjoyed reading in the edition of The Independent‘s “Review” that I mention below: Andy Gill’s record reviews, of course—he has this anachronistic tendency to write about the music itself and listen to black artists (without making excuses for them)—and a review of yet another book by a middle-class mother […]

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16Aug04 — 0

Chance Would Be A Fine Thing

Today’s main link at the top of the front page of christianity.com says: “Don’t Miss… ‘The Wickedness Of Our Sinful Flesh‘” They are also offering a tape called “Sin In The Camp” for sale, which I think undermines some of those stereotypes of intolerant fundamentalists.

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15Aug04 — 4

Coming Out

Golan Cipel, the man at the centre of the sex scandal engulfing former New Jersey Governor James E. McGreevey declared to the press today, “I am a straight Israeli.” He continued, “Many people in the World today believe that there is something unnatural about my nationality; some even refuse to believe that citizens like me […]

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12Jul04 — 1

Hidden Among Us

At least coloured people have the community-spiritedness to make their status as such more-or-less obvious, thereby sparing innocent bystanders unnecessary unpleasantness and their enemies the inconvenience of having to mark them out with little stars—or bigger swastikas. (The photo accompanying that article reminds me that it would have been helpful to all the budding neo-Nazis […]

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08Jul04 — 0

The Cycle Of Vileness

This week the west bank of the Thames was witness to yet another of the Blogosphere's attempted character assassinations. It is believed that the revered leader of the Humafis group, the blind cleric Sheik Mohammed Blunkett, was intended to be the victim of what the government of Blogland admits is an official policy to stop […]

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30Jun04 — 1

“Cynical”

People who love English because the language can be precise and powerful can't protect it from people who love English because they love the sound of their own voices speaking it. Words like “disingenuous”, “chaotic”, and “appalling”, for example, have distinct and useful meanings. To the journos and pub bores and politicians they have become […]

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12Jun04 — 0

So Mad It's Good

You will never believe who owns the “jihad.net” domain. A bunch of obviously talented and intelligent people—refugees from the newsgroup “alt.dinosaur.barney.die.die.die”—have constructed a vast fantasy universe around the idea that Barney the Dinosaur is not a boring but harmless children's television character; he is, in truth, “the demon B'harne”, a threat to all mankind who […]

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10Jun04 — 2

Sympathy For The Devil

Imagine you are Satan, Father of Lies, the Tempter, the Old Gentleman, the Archfiend. You are planning your biggest head-to-head with your former employer, the Almighty, since that discussion on the clifftop with ol' JC. You aim to bring the whole breadth of humanity to the edge of Armageddon. To marshall your demonic hordes in […]

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01Jun04 — 1

Innocence

The biggest 'Blog in Britain is written by a prostitute. One of the biggest mainstream US news stories about 'Blogging broke when an intern sleeping with US government employees for money was outed by another 'Blogger. When it comes to Weblogs, the Anglo media have one thing on their minds and it isn't the potentially […]

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13May04 — 0

Jesuits Go Boldly

For a long time, the Vatican has had a theological position on extraterrestrial life. There is even a Graham Greene-meets-Arthur C. Clarke novel about the implications of our encountering intelligent aliens. Today, Slashdot links to an interview with the Vatican astronomer. After outlining some of the possible scenarios for such a meeting, he goes on […]

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09Apr04 — 0

“Judeo-Christian”

There’s a thoughtful, topical and free article over at The Economist at the moment, all about the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. (Following on from my rant about The Passion, you should note that it contains this paragraph: “One American Catholic and former priest has gone much further than his Church. In his bestselling book […]

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03Apr04 — 0

Very Busy So Short, But Important, Post

Jew there. Explanation here. UPDATE: This article seems to have become subscription only, so you might be interested in a (free) ‘Blog entry at JewSchool. You might need to scroll down a bit from the target of the link or do a “Find in Page” for “Google Bomb”. In short, if you search for “Jew” […]

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