Evolution slowly creeps into our Catholic home….

We caught the final 20 minutes of David Attenborough show Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life earlier. Obviously it was quite wonderful. I doubt there’s a moment of television with David Attenborough that isn’t in some way worthwhile.
Just before the end of it there’s a 6 minute or so animation that should really be shown in every school. It’s a stunningly concise explaination of evolution and certainly had Molly’s attention.

So this could be the first chink in that Catholic armour. She’s already planning where she’s going to put the BBC / Open University’s free Evolution poster.

It’s on the BBC iPlayer right now here. But the amazing Tree Of Life video is on You Tube here.

Jeremy Clarkson and the BBC under attack

The whole Jeremy Clarkson thing is getting a little stupid really. Okay, so he called Gordon Brown a one-eyed Scottish idiot who lied, but is it really worth the absolute outrage we see from every media outlet?

At most it’s just a stupid comment but it’s being blown out of all proportion. “Linking disability with incompetence” was one quote I heard. Surely I’m missing something because that’s absolute rubbish. If I were to say I think Jeremy Clarkson’s an obnoxious, arrogant, boorish lanky fool would everyone suddenly complain that that was somehow discriminatory? Can we not say anything critical about anyone anymore? Can we not just be scathing and a little nasty about people? It’s certainly not even implying that Gordon’s loss of sight in one eye has anything to do with his idiocy or his lies. And to try to make the connection is just someone trying to stir up trouble.

Surely Gordon Brown has bigger problems to concern himself with. Surely he must have a thicker skin than this? Not if the sycophantic, desperate to please Scottish Labour MP I heard on Radio 5 this morning was taking an official party line. MP Gordon Banks described Clarkson’s comments as “unforgiveable”. He was probably going to go on to describe Clarkson as somewhere to the right of Hitler and guilty of every serious unsolved crime of the last 50 years, but he ran out of time.

At most Clarkson’s comments were slightly nasty. He was right about the Scottish after all. As for the idiot and the liar comments – that’s going to depend on what you think of Brown and Labour – but I’m sure there’s no shortage of people in agreement. I suppose the one-eyed comment was a little harsh. But somebody really needs to take a step back and ask exactly where we’re drawing the line about this sort of thing.

Are we working our way towards a country where we’re only allowed to be bland and uninteresting lest we offend anyone? Or maybe it’s just the BBC that they want to be like that. In the wake of Ross and Brand it seems the knives are out for Auntie. You can see a point in the not too distant future where there will be nothing but a diet of Question Of Sport, Strictly Come Dancing and re-runs of The Good Life on the BBC.

Now, I like Clarkson in Top Gear. But I imagine I’d dislike him intensely in real life. And I imagine he wouldn’t think too much of me either. And that’s not a problem because isn’t that rather the point? Do we really want to live somewhere where no-one is allowed to speak out? Free speech has to include the right to be a pompous, arrogant git.

Hope in today’s world?

Bloody hell, who’d have thought it? The Internet will probably roll over and die at some point today with the weight of the entire 8 million people in Washington DC uploading the back of someone’s head and a flash of car or the sleeve of a sharp suit to You Tube.

But it’s an infectious thing this feeling of hope and change isn’t it? Although whenever I start really thinking this could be something special I just have to reach back into the memory and start playing the first few bars of “Things Can Only Get Better” to bring me back down to earth. Please, please, please let Obama be better than Blair, please let him live up to this hype and hope.

That would be nice.

Someone fancy pointing out to the Pope that it’s the season of goodwill to ALL men?

Christmas time. Goodwill to all men. Peace and happiness abounds. And then the Pope comes along and spreads a little nastiness around. I listened to the reports on the news of his speech comparing the threat of homosexuality and trans-sexuality to the threat of environmental destruction of the rain forests with mounting anger.

It seems that this Pope is far less concerned with the very real threats of world hunger, war and the general shittyness of the planet than he is with the prospect of who you’re having sex with. And this isn’t one of those where the apologists can start wriggling around trying to explain away his words, telling us that Catholic doctrine tells us homosexuality is not a sin, just homosexual acts and The Pontiff himself seemed to deliberately keep his words as wooly as possible but all that means is that it’s an attack on all gay and trans people around the world. And that means he’s attacking some of our dear friends. All of the news reports concentrated on how angry he’d managed to make Gay Rights groups. But if you’re anything like me, you’ll be fuming as well. He’s managed to offend millions of right thinking people around the world with his close-minded backward views.

Worse for me is the fact that both Louise and Molly are Catholic. Louise is old enough and smart enough to realise the ridiculousness and mean-spiritedness of his words and Molly really hasn’t bothered to listen to it, since she’s busy getting excited about the mythical old bloke coming down the chimney laden with presents.

Of course, at the moment God and Santa, together with the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy are all equally real to her. And now, more than ever before, I’m determined that they’re all going to become equally fictional to her in time. There’s no place in Bruton mansions for the hideous close-mindedness of the Catholic Church. The Pope’s statement on homosexuality doesn’t directly affect us but it does mean that several of our friends, who Molly loves dearly, are now considered far more dangerous than global warming. Try explaining that to a child.

Far easier to simply explain that the Catholic Church is a backward, evil organisation that belongs in some prior, less enlightened century and has no place in the world today. Because that’s what I’ll be doing when she starts asking about it.

Remember Remember The Fifth Of November….

(From Moore & Lloyd’s V For Vendetta)

Vote if you can…..

The reason us Brits take such an interest in your elections is because whatever flavour of politician you vote in it’s going to have a massive impact upon the world as a whole. Some of those concerned may have a grasp of international politics below the level that my 9 year old has, but once you elect the idiots they’re effectively in charge of a good portion of the world.

Of course, the one crumb of comfort we take from it all is that you can’t vote for George Bush again. Although I’m sure there are some of you that would love to.

So get out and vote if you can. We’re watching…..

EDIT: 05 Nov 2008. Well done America. Almost makes up for that morning the world woke up to find out you’d elected Bush Jr a second time.

The Atheist / Agnostic Bus

The Atheist Bus? I’m with Neil Gaiman on this one – “There’s probably no God” says Agnostic to me rather than Atheist. But a fine piece of advertising nonetheless

Weekend Event part 2: Molly’s First Holy Communion

A long time ago, I booked up to head off to the Birmingham Comics Show for both days and looking forward to a great weekend of catching up with old friends and making new ones whilst surrounding myself in comics.

Then the priest went and changed the date for Molly’s first Holy Communion.
See here for details on my thoughts on this. I shant bore you with them here.

Basically, for Louise, it’s very important. For me it’s essentially meaningless and a waste of time but a nice excuse to see Molly doing something nice. For Molly it’s just a day out in a pretty dress with friends and family and a party thrown in. Okay, perhaps that’s a little harsh. Molly does believe in God and wants to do the Communion thing. But like I’ve said before she may believe in God, but she believes in Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy as well. By the time she’s 12 I expect all three to be exposed for the nice stories that they are. Of course, I’ll actually miss the other two.

But today was all about Molly feeling special. Which is why I was sat last night in a Diamond retailers drinks event (more on which later in the week) having an orange juice and working out how long it was going to take me to get home and how many stops i’d need to just stay awake. In the end it took 3 hours. I got home around 2am.

Oh joy. Up at 9am. Tired, tired, tired, tired. Shower. Tired still. Get dressed. Still tired.
You get the idea.

Visitors start arriving at 10 and we head off to the church for 11. As cynical and nasty as I am about the whole Catholic Church thing, it was a wonderful day. Molly wore a beautiful dress, behaved wonderfully and basically made us so very happy.

Even the sun shone all day for her. But then again, when she’s around it always does, whatever the weather.

I always thought a Gold medal meant more than a Bronze medal. Not in America it seems.

Caught this via a comment on Radio 5 and then the Guardian blog. It seems the American media have decided to play around with the established way of presenting the medal table at the Olympics. Compare & Contrast time:

Figure 1: The BBC Medal table:

Figure 2: The medal table from NBC Sports:

Notice the difference? (Aside from a slight difference in numbers due to screen grabs at different times that is)

The USA appear to be on top on the NBC medals table, yet they’ve only got 26 gold medals ads opposed to China’s 45. It seems the US media have decided that a Bronze is equal to a Silver or a Gold medal and are working out the medals table by total medals won, which puts the US in front with 80, compared to China’s 79.

It’s just silly and childish frankly.

Bill Gates and the greatest tech hack ever

Anil Dash: Bill Gates and the greatest tech hack ever. The article starts:

Bill Gates has pulled off one of the greatest hacks in technology and business history, by turning Microsoft’s success into a force for social responsibility. Imagine imposing a tax on every corporation in the developed world, collecting $100 per white-collar worker per year, and then directing one third of the proceeds to curing AIDS and malaria. That, effectively, is what Bill Gates has done.

And then goes on in similar vein. I’m no Microsoft apologist or a particular fan of the great corporation and I use windows more by laziness and by default than choice necessarily, but I just don’t think you can make a good argument against what he’s trying to do now with the Foundation.

(via Pete Ashton)