Monthly Archives: January 2011

RCMP apologises to Christians for arresting them at Christmas

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Hang on, that can’t be right; silly me, the RCMP apologised to Muslim terrorists for arresting them during Ramadan. Most inconsiderate.

From here:

On Aug. 25, the RCMP and Ottawa Police arrested two Ottawa men — Hiva Muhammad Alizadeh, Misbahuddin Ahmed — on terrorism-related charges. A third man, Khurram Syed Sher, was arrested elsewhere.

The next day, Aug. 26, the RCMP and city police staged a special, hour-long meeting with members of Ottawa’s Muslim community with the ostensible purpose of ensuring them that their community was not regarded with undue suspicion despite the arrests. However, at least one officer was heard apologizing during meeting for the arrests having occurred during Ramadan, which ran last year from Aug. 12 to Sept. 9.

UK: YWCA drops “Christian” from its name

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From here:

One of the country’s best-known charities has changed its name, losing the clearest link to its Christian roots.

The Young Women’s Christian Association has dropped its historic title after 156 years because ‘it no longer stands for who we are’.

Instead the organisation – which is mainly funded by legacies left by Christian supporters over 15 decades – will be known as ‘Platform 51’……

Its chairman is gay rights activist and former equality quango manager Helen Wollaston.

It seems to be turning into the Anglican Church.

Homosexual marriage propaganda exploits children

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It appears as if the makers of this video went out of their way to confirm in the minds of opponents of homosexual marriage, that they really are correct in their assessment that it sullies marriage, destroys families, threatens social cohesion and exposes children to abuse.

For advertising classes of the future, I can see it being preserved in digital aspic and occasionally paraded as a archetype of how not to influence people.

Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past

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At least, that’s what Dr. David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia said in 2000.

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.

Well, it didn’t snow in 2001, but after that in London:

January 2003, Snow brings chaos to London

February, 2007, Heavy snow forces school closures

October, 2008 London has first October snow in over 70 years

February, 2009: Heavy snow disrupts London travel

November 2010: UK snow: first flakes fall on London as Arctic weather spreads

December, 2010: Snow in UK, flights to London cancelled

January, 2011 Snow and sleet make for hazardous return to work

I understand that Dr. Viner has now taken up the more reliable vocation of tea-leaf reading.

Smoking

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I started smoking in university after reading everything I could get my hands on by Jean-Paul Sartre. I had come to the conclusion that God does not exist, life is meaningless and, in order not to go bonkers, man has to create his own meaning. I noticed that smoking provided meaning in two ways: first it gave smokers something to do with their hands when not otherwise occupied and, later, it afforded, as Anglicans are fond of saying, an even deeper meaning in the quest to give it up.

So I decided to start smoking. I smoked cigarettes, cigars, pipes and – other things.

A side benefit was that it annoyed a couple of Christians who inhabited the room next to mine in the university housing.

Now, of course, a person who smokes is a pariah whose standing is only a little above that of a paedophile: his compulsion must be indulged surreptitiously in dark dank alleys. Gruesome photographs of cancerous tissue have become the compulsory adornment of cigarette cartons – an attempt by government to expiate its sin of collecting so much tax from smokers.

Something I failed to consider in my existential smoking experiment was that I am allergic to tobacco; by the time I noticed, I was hooked and I spent a few decades exploring the second part of my theory.  I became an expert: I gave it up every couple of months without permanent success.

I became a Christian in 1978; one of my first prayers to the God I didn’t know was to give me the faith to believe that Jesus is who he claims to be – God – and to help me give up smoking; an odd combining of the transcendent and banal, no doubt but, nevertheless, that is what I did.

The next day I woke up with the certainty that Jesus is God, was born of a virgin, died for my sins and was bodily resurrected – I also woke up a non-smoker: I had no desire to smoke anything at all.

In the following weeks, the absence of any inclination to smoke confirmed my suspicion that something objectively real had happened to me.

Smoking had provided meaning in a sense I had not anticipated; a practical example of Romans 8:28, perhaps.

The incredible shrinking brain

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It seems that the human brain has been shrinking for the last 20,000 yerars.

From here:

It’s not something we’d like to admit, but it seems the human race may actually be becoming increasingly dumb.

Man’s brain has been gradually shrinking over the last 20,000 years, according to a new report.

The reason is obvious: it’s to make it fit into one of these:

How to sell Global Warming

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Apparently people are losing interest in global warming: it’s especially hard to keep up enthusiasm in the UK, which has had the coldest December for 120 years.

So, as the headline proclaims, Green Groups Try to Sex Up Climate Change: there’s nothing like a spot of scientific objectivity to get your point across. Thus we have pallid naked bodies strewn at random across what appears to be a large iceberg; at least we know the real reason why all the polar bears fled. You can see immediately how much more convincing this is than the usual boring old hockey stick graphs:

And then, for those who remain unswayed, we have Al Gore as Messiah:

The search for a new messiah: Just as Martin Luther King Jr. awakened the civil rights movement, the climate cause needs its own messiah, says environmental researcher Andreas Ernst from Kassel University. That messiah’s analogous message might run along the lines of, “I had a nightmare,” Ernst suggests. Al Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his film that jolted viewers out of their climate complacency, seemed to be successfully fulfilling this role for a while, but he has since all but disappeared from the public eye.

For die-hard sceptics unmoved by this barrage of dispassionate, empirical evidence, there is one last appeal from an organisation that has sexed things up like few others: the Anglican Church of Canada. The Rev. Stephen Drakeford in the Diocese of Toronto is preparing for a Green Lent (page 9):

The working group has been thinking and praying and planning since October about offering a green Lent. We are inviting people to fall in love with the earth again. When people fall in love, they do new (and sometimes crazy!) things: make sacrifices, change values, reorder their lives, and move across the country to be with another. What would happen if we really fell in love with God’s creation?

Naked bodies lying on an iceberg, Al Gore as Messiah, and falling in love with the earth during a green Lent. If that doesn’t convince you things are heating up, nothing will.

Diocese of New Westminster: St. Matthew’s Abbotsford; no room at the inn

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It seems that, at Christmas,  St. Matthew’s Abbotsford, a parish that voted 184 to 4 (with 5 abstentions) to join ANiC, wasn’t able to “accommodate” the Diocese of New Westminster’s congregation that continues to worship in the building.

From here:

The growing community of worshippers who attend the Sunday, 8am Eucharist in the Parish Hall of St. Matthew’s Abbotsford were eager to have the opportunity to celebrate Christmas together.

The Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC) congregation currently using the St. Matthew’s buildings did not accomodate the Anglican Church of Canada congregation but happily the Parish of St. Dunstan, Aldergrove stepped forward and offered the use of their sanctuary for a special Christmas Eve service.

St. Matthew’s trustee Carole Keighly reported that the service was a great success, no small credit to their hosts who made them feel so welcome.

The service was simple one. Archdeacon Beverly Stewart crafted an innovative service which included the administration of communion to each other and the singing of a number of traditional carols including Silent Night in English and German.

Following worship the congregation met for coffee (provided by St. Dunstan’s) and potluck brought by the St. Matthew’s congregation.

Randy Murray

What is not entirely clear is why the diocesan growing community of worshippers – all 12 of them – didn’t simply join in with the ANiC congregation. Perhaps they wanted to avoid the danger of spontaneous self-combustion – like vampires in the sunlight.

A story that brought tears to my eyes

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From here:

DERBYSHIRE, UNITED KINGDOM- A man cut off his testicles – then hurled them into a park.

A report in The Sun said that the 22-year-old is believed to have performed the DIY castration in an attempt to change his gender. He then flung his unwanted privates into Queens Park, Chesterfield.

The man, who was unnamed in the report, waited almost a full day before going to the hospital’s accident and emergency (A&E) unit. He reportedly told staff that he felt “a lot less pain” than he had expected.

Some dog owners have reportedly ceased walking their pets in the park, worried about what their dogs might dig up.

This is not as uncommon as I would have expected. The problem is rife amongst Welsh rugby fans – and I should note that this individual was treated at Heath Hospital, a stone’s  – or testicle’s – throw from where I used to live:

A Welsh rugby fan cut off his own testicles after his team beat England, police confirmed today.

The man was rushed to hospital after the incident at Leigh Social Club in Caerphilly, South Wales.

It was reported that the man told his friends: “If Wales win I’ll cut my own balls off.”

After the 11-9 victory in the Six Nations clash, the man is reported to have gone outside and severed his testicles before bringing them back into the club to show fellow drinkers.

A local was reported as saying that the man was on medication and should not have been drinking.

And Anglican vicars are discarding their testicles – those that have any – at an alarming rate:

The first Church of England vicar to undergo a sex-change operation returned to a warm welcome from parishioners on Sunday.

Around 100 people attended the service at St Philip’s Church in Upper Stratton, Swindon, Wiltshire.

The only sour note for the Reverend Carol Stone, previously known to her congregation as Peter, came with a critical outburst from one woman who was escorted out.

The other parishioners gave their minister a standing ovation.

One assumes they were standing in sympathy.

Atheism lacks racial and gender diversity

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From here:

(RNS) Alix Jules is an atheist, but for years he felt uncomfortable at gatherings of nonbelievers. The reason: he’s black.

“I got really tired of going back and forth to free thought events and being the only black person there,” said Jules, 36, who lives in Dallas. “It was not necessarily inviting. I just felt like an outcast … No one was reaching out to me.”

Last year, Jules helped launch a local initiative to address what atheists regard as an international problem for their movement: a lack of racial and gender diversity.

From the smallest local meetings to the largest conferences, the vast majority of speakers and attendees are almost always white men. Leading figures of the atheist movement — Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett — are all white men.

The obvious conclusion is that most women and non-white men have too much sense to believe in the non-existence of God. Good for them.