Short and sweet

In Which Two Jerks Needle Each-Other To Little Effect

From: David Thorne
Date: Wednesday 10 March 2010 7.12pm
To: Darryl Robinson
Subject: Permission Slip

Dear Darryl,
I have received your permission slip featuring what I can only assume is a levitating rabbit about to drop an egg on Jesus.
Thank you for pre-ticking the permission box as this has saved me not only from having to make a choice, but also from having to make my own forty five degree downward stroke followed by a twenty percent longer forty five degree upward stroke. Without your guidance, I may have drawn a picture of a cactus wearing a hat by mistake.
As I trust my offspring's ability to separate fact from fantasy, I am happy for him to participate in your indoctrination process on the proviso that all references to 'Jesus' are replaced with the term 'Purportedly Magic Jew.'
Regards, David.



And then "hilarity" ensues.

Not so plastic Bertrand

Stumbled upon (in the way that one does these days - this is the internet) a quote by Bertrand Russell. His is a name I'm ashamed to say that is familiar to me but I have no real idea about who he was, just a general impression that he was a philosopher.

I found some other quotes of his and was bowled over, he was clearly a very impressive thinker indeed and a cursory glance at wikipedia shows him to be a very impressive person too.

I'd be proud of a single one of those quotes if it had been an original thought of mine but what endears me the most is the number of them where he expresses doubt. What if I'm wrong? Perhaps I misunderstand... I must accomodate my own fallibility... in this regard I'm overjoyed to hear of a serious thinker that allows for such possibility.

One of the things that depresses me about the contemporary comment culture is the requirement to take a side. Hard. Are you a Climate Change Denier? Pro Choice? You want the terrorists to win? We're being served up life as binary and falling for the idea that we need to take a side and start firing salvoes. This is not a debate this is a way to calcify and entrench thought.

On pretty much any subject I'm a roiling mixture of half-formed ideas and supposition and the sooner I can admit it the better - lets face it I know jack shit and what's more the absolute conviction of the true believer is abhorrent whatever the fuck they believe in.

Bertrand Russell doesn't have a seminal novel or a greatest hits CD so if anybody can recommend me a good way to get to know more about his work please let me know.

When Christianity Is UnAmerican

There is a growing chasm between the values of America’s founders and the values of the theocratic Christian right, who claim that their version of authoritarianism is a more authentic interpretation of American values than the Enlightenment values so cherished by our nation’s forebears. But their values are irreconcilable with those of America’s past. Hence they are not giving a more authentic interpretation of American values but replacing those values with an entirely different doctrine, while attempting to transfer the prestige of the label American to their own antithetical doctrines. This prestige is not theirs to own, however, as it comes from the very principles they reject. As with all of the debates they have undertaken to win their culture war the Christian right’s pundits control the cultural conversation by controlling the discourse -- shifting the meanings of words to reflect an agenda alien to the referents that once gave those words their meaning. The best way to stop this abuse of language is to refuse to accept their terms, and to demand that they define them before deploying them in new contexts with new referents.