The Irish Times religious affairs correspondent seems like a nice enough chap and a decent writer/journalist too. He and Seán Moncrieff had a pleasant chat on Newstalk during the week, ranging over Catholicism, Christianity, the history of the Jews in Ireland, etc. Most entertaining.
Then Patsy said something which made me drop my monocle into my afternoon brandy.
When Seán politely broached the subject of McGarry's own religious views, Patsy freely admitted to being an agnostic because
it takes too much faith to be an atheist.
At which comment, both men chuckled condescendingly, mentioning 'aggressive secularists' in the same breath as religious fundamentalists.
I was stunned. My head began to spin. McGarry has been religious affairs correspondent for the Irish Times (the paper of record!) for the last 13 years. And he still doesn't know (Continued)
I don't pay too much attention to my own numbers, it's the same old crowd every week that drops in for a chat and a smart comment. Everyone else who skims this site seems to be afraid to open their mouths–I know you're there, I can see you!
But when I sought to check up on the pompous self-aggrandising of my old pub mate Bock (actually he's quite modest) I discovered that when it comes to sheer numbers, he now significantly outweighs the blogging guru himself Mr Mulley. I mean by at least two thirds, and in some areas he's more than doubling Mulley's figures. (Continued)
Last night I heard a drunk singing on the street as he went home. People don't seem to do that as much as they used to.
Does anyone else remember a chap they called Pavarotti who walked around Limerick singing fake operatic arias? He had a fairly large belly and always carried a lot of plastic bags (we don't see many of those nowadays either) but had a good clear tenor voice.
He's probably passed on or maybe up in St Joseph's on major amounts of Thorazine. (I'd say that Coco, the other stalwart of the streets, is definitely dead though!)
Imagine knowing how the internet is feeling? What mood it's in. With all our blog rolls, RSS feeds, newsletters and updates, we only scratch the surface of the web's daily condition. The underlying fabric is hidden.
I really enjoy watching the TED Talks from time to time. I recently saw Jonathan Harris giving a fascinating presentation about his website We Feel Fine. This project aims to condense the total output of the Blogosphere into a digestible, visual feast.
It's hard to describe what the site does, or what use it is, but the end result is unique, addictive, stimulating, beautiful and awe-inspiring.
It gives you a preview of uses to which future generations will put the internet. The interface of the world.
About this time last year, someone pointed me at a fairly long post called A Contemplation on Music by PreacherMike. It quotes a lengthy address by Karl Paulnack, director of the music division at Boston Conservatory to the incoming freshmen of 2004 (as far as I remember).
For musicians or lovers of music, it's a delightful and inspiring read–most especially for fellow atheists. Unfortunately, the godly-ones only see what they want to see, and got entirely the wrong end of the stick, as you can see in the twenty or so comments that follow the article.
I'm not much of a troll, but I do like to add my two cents to inane discussions of this sort, so I set out my stall in comment number twenty-one.
The flood of starry-eyed comments about 'manifestations of his divinely creative spirit' seemed to dry up immediately. Tumbleweeds drifted across the screen for about a month.
The only comment which followed mine is hilarious, and I think buttons up the debate nicely. Read the whole thing here.
I had the misfortune to hear a radio interview a couple of weeks back that was both hilarious and terrifying at the same time. On this little isle of ours, up north in Belfast to be exact, the Minister for Arts and Culture has recommended that the Ulster Museum include 'alternative views' on the creation of the universe.
Well, you ask, exactly which models does he mean? Newtonian? Lorenzian? Machian? All of these might deserve some mention as they each compete with the prevailing cosmological theory, famously known as the Big Bang.
But noooo.
He means the theory that 'God Did It.' Don't understand something? Who cares–God Did It. Not bright enough to challenge a mathematical genius like Lemaître (a Jesuit priest, no less) and formulate your own theory of the primaeval atom? No worries–God Did It!
While being interviewed on the Nolan Show (BBC Radio Ulster) Nelson McCausland, (Continued)
I wrote a draft of this post at the start of the year but eventually shelved it because I thought it mightn't hold much interest for the Plain People of Ireland. But now here we are, coming to terms with the horror of impending financial disasters as they spread across the Eurozone–and Bock talking about Armageddon–maybe it's time to catch up on what Uncle Sam has been up to.
You will recall that the U.S. gave as much as twenty-five billion dollars each to companies like Goldman Sachs, CitiGroup, J.P. Morgan, and Bank of America, for no particularly good reason.
This week, Jon Stewart of The Daily Show picked up on CNN's report of how these companies have been faring through the tough times, and highlighted their performance during the last quarter. It seems all of these companies have made a profit. Well, no surprises there.
But that's not all; they each had traded in the black for the previous 61 consecutive days, posting no losses whatsoever at any time, even when the Dow Jones plummeted a thousand points in just twenty minutes last week.
A thousand points, folks.
Meanwhile, J.P.Morgan still averaged profits of $118M per day. Do they know something we don't? Ha ha ha! Of COURSE they do. But here's something you may not know.
Casanova - Begins With C, Ends With 'You're Fired'
You've probably heard of the ongoing 'fruit-bat fellatio' case, where a UCC academic is in trouble because of extreme prudery. A behavioural science lecturer mentioned a humorous, but nonetheless scholarly, fruit-bat study to a female colleague and was immediately done for sexual harassment.
By some chance I'd already heard of the fruit-bat paper through Wired magazine's list of the 10 Most Absurd Published Scientific Papers 2009. Just like other enlightened Wired readers, I was amused and also fascinated by the study–and thus horrified by the recent events.
Bock has already taken a lively swing at it over at his place. He has published the original complaint over there too, and it makes for interesting reading. One section in particular caught my eye. (Continued)
Acclaimed television psychic Tony Stockwell is coming to UCH, Limerick on Sunday 16th May. Tony is of course a master manipulator and a complete fraud. So why am I advertising his show?
Well here is a video of Tony in action. He's good, he's got genuine talent. I haven't seen such calm, professional cold reading techniques in years. He plays the persona of the medium very well and is much less of an amped-up alpha-male, and thus far more likeable, than John Edward.
Watch the first six minutes of this video and come back for my analysis. I picked this clip practically at random, but more specifically because it's a long unedited read.
Did you count the questions/assertions? Well I did, there were twenty-seven. Wow! Twenty-seven distinct messages from the spirit world. I wonder how many of these were accurate and how many might have been educated guesses? (Continued)
Mike Ovey, of Oak Hill Theological College, set forth one of religion’s favorite fallacies — “absence of belief is a religion” — and added one I’ve never experienced — “faith is objective because it can be taught.”
Just let me say up front, I knew this would happen someday. A preacher was arrested in the UK last week for telling people publicly that homosexuality is a sin. He claims that he should have freedom of religious speech.
To begin with, there's no such thing as completely 'free' speech.
Actually, let me row back on that a little: you are free to say absolutely anything you want, as long as you have a tongue in your head and breath in your lungs. But of course there may be consequences arising from that speech. (Continued)
