Brief notes
I’ve been a bit remiss recently, and haven’t been blogging as much as I used to. Yes, the Song Of The Day feature continues unabated but where’s all the other good stuff? Well, to try and put that right, here’s another in my series of Brief Notes. This one is a bunch of news stories that have caught my eye recently, for one reason or another.
File under tolerance
A number of stories over the last few days have highlighted the lack of tolerance of other people’s views / lifestyles / religions / whatever that exists in society today. Which, really, is not a very cheerful thought and doesn’t inspire hope for the future.
A priest in London has come under fire for suggesting that all gay people should have their backsides tattooed with the words “Sodomy can seriously damage your health”. He maintains that he was being satirical, attacking the militant promotion of homosexuality by groups such as Outrage. The type of viewpoint that insists everyone is gay, they just don’t know it yet.
While Rev Mullen’s words might have been a little ill-thought out, is his stand against militant gay groups necessarily wrong? Shouldn’t those on both sides of this argument be able to see the other’s point of view?
Priests are not having a good time of it just lately; Yvonne Hobson, a parish priest in Cornwall, has received death threats simply because she’s a woman priest. Not exactly the peace and love that religion supposedly teaches us, is it? Why does the fact that Ms Hobson is a woman affect her ability to be a priest, or her ability to believe in God? I know they can be a bit insular down there in Kernow, but even so…
Once again, Muslims are getting their knickers in a twist - this time over a novel. Seems that we can’t say anything about their faith - good or bad - without them wanting to firebomb the infidels. As with so many religions, the fundamentalist view seems to be the only one that hits the headlines, and the millions of peace-loving Muslims across the world are tarred with the brush of their violent, bomb-happy brethren.
Every religion has been guilty of this at some point in history, but the modern world offers much greater capacity for death and destruction than existed at the time of the Crusades. Again, isn’t religion, belief in God, supposed to be about peace, love and understanding?
Even Corrie has had to pander to minority opinion recently, after they received complaints about a Scottish character suggesting that he could never support Rangers. Apparently, Rangers fans - being the delicate, sensitive souls that they are - felt hard done by over this, and Corrie bosses have changed future scripts to remove similar references.
Two things about this: first, it’s only television - it’s not real! Second, why is television programming being changed according to the wishes of a very small percentage of the viewing population? I don’t watch Corrie and couldn’t care less about Rangers, but what worries me is the trend we seem to have at the moment to not want to upset anyone, however much of a minority they might be. TV is already bland enough, if we continue on like this there won’t anything left to watch, no programmes out there to question what is happening in the world, no hope for the future.
We’re all green
Starbucks have come under fire again (they must be used to it by now), this time for wasting millions of litres of water every day. Apparently, staff are not allowed to turn off taps that are used to clean spoons; this helps to reduce the growth of bacteria and helps the global chain to achieve health and safety standards. I’ve never been in a Starbucks (because I have a kettle at home and know how to make a cup of coffee for myself), but I can’t imagine that the experience is worth the waste of so much water.
Lung disease is set to kill 83 million people in China over the next 30 years, according to a recent study. Mainly because of widespread use of wood burning stoves for heating and cooking and the fact that the Chinese smoke one third of all the cigarettes in the world.
China has a population of just over 1.3 billion people, crammed into a land mass of about 9.3 billion square kilometres (as opposed to the US where 303 million people live in about 9.1 billion square kilometres), so you’d think they might be glad of the extra room.
Got him at last
We all knew it had to happen some time; OJ has finally been thrown in jail. Not, as you might expect, because they’ve found some way to find him guilty of his wife’s murder after all these years, but because he committed an armed robbery.
But we all know that really he’s been put away because no-one ever believed he was innocent of his wife’s murder.
Not our fault
Apparently, the fact that they shot an innocent man seven times in the head, on a crowded London tube train, is not the fault of the officers with the guns, nor of the Metropolitan police as a whole. It’s the fault of the nation for not preventing the 21 July bomb attempts of which Mr de Menezes was suspected. And, just to make sure that we all feel re-assured, it has been said this sort of thing could happen again. Is DAC Cressida Dick living up to her name?
And finally, a Max Moseley story
Max has been in the news again, saying that Formula One needs to drastically cut costs if it wants to remain credible. Which I think is a bit much, really, coming from the one man who has done more than any other person (except perhaps for Bernie Ecclestone, who insists on taking the sport to tracks that even Ferrari don’t like) to make Formula One a laughing stock across the world.
If Max wants to make F1 credible again, then he should stand down as president of the FIA.
So here it is…
This seasonal survey has found that more than 25% of all UK adults don’t know where Jesus was born. They are also lacking in knowledge when it comes to other aspects of the Nativity.
I’m sorry, but when did it become required to have in-depth knowledge of fairy stories?
Brief notes
Just one of those round-up sort of posts that I do when I haven’t got too much to say about a subject.
1. In Formula One the off-season shenanigans continue, with Renault sure that they’ll get Alonso back for 2008, but the man himself not saying. Speculation is high that in 2009 he’ll be driving a red car. Meanwhile, Ralf Schumacher is touting for the McLaren drive by singing their praises, as well as testing for Force India, the team who have taken over Spyker. Finally, Pro-Drive will not be competing in 2008 because of a question of legality over their use of McLaren “customer cars”. Do we think that someone out there doesn’t like Dave Richards?
2. Arrington’s having a pop at PayPerPost again - in fact, a couple of times over the last few days. As a much better writer than I once said “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Is there something going on between PPP CEO Ted “Whoo” Murphy and Mr A? I think there could be. And Scoble used the ‘e’ word again in a recent blog post to describe PPP. Let’s get real, people, shall we? It’s only blogging; it don’t mean nuthin’.
3. If you’ve got a Canon camera of a certain vintage (go to this page and look for Case Id 37383 for details) you could be at risk of a fault that will stop the CCD functioning properly. Thankfully, Canon are offering free repairs for the fault (via an authorised Canon repair centre) and - having got my camera back today - I can confirm the service is speedy and the work excellent.
4. Eastbourne Borough are STILL unbeaten in the league - 16 games into the season - and are tussling with Lewes at the top of the table. The Boxing Day game between the two sides could turn out to be a promotion decider.
5. Once again, the tolerance of one culture unto another never ceases to amaze me. This time it’s the Sudanese, who have been rioting in (appropriately) Martyr’s Square, calling for a British schoolteacher to be executed because she allowed her class of six and seven year olds to name a teddy bear Mohammed. It’s good to know that all the different races and religions in the world continue to get along together so well.
6. There’s supposed to be a big announcement tonight by the British Inventors Society that will change the face of the world by introducing “something” that could produce climate-safe energy at 80% less cost. Think this is one of those wait-and-see type of things; after all, another British invention was supposed to revolutionise personal transport, but most people won’t have ever seen a Sinclair C5!
Update: 7. Forgot to say that The Wolf’s Howl passed a milestone of its own this week - it now has over 100 posts! Yay!! The first was on 21 March, and this one is number 106. That makes an average of one post every 2.4 days, which is a better rate than I ever expected to be blogging at. Whether it’s worth reading is another issue entirely, but then you’d be a better judge of that dear Reader than I would be.
At it again
I’m not a big fan of religion - any religion, I make no distinction’s - because I see it as a arbitrary construct by man that places “the church” between humans and their God. Let me make it very clear I do not want to stop anyone believing in any God they wish to; that’s for each of us to decide. What I’d like to see is for religion to stop trying to tell us what we should be doing, saying and thinking and just let us get on with it.
I’ve already commented on the recent case of a Jehovah’s Witness mother who died giving birth because her religion forbade her to accept a blood transfusion. Now, today, we have the (admittedly not as tragic or heart-wrenching) case of Philip Pullman being attacked for being pro-atheist and anti-Christian. It seems that the trilogy of books His Dark Materials are a thinly veiled attack on religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular - at least according to America’s Catholic League. Their spokesperson is urging people not to see the film (premièring today in London) that is based on the first novel, and wants parents to keep their children away from the books.
The Golden Compass joins a long list of films that have upset people (who often haven’t even seen the film) based on the portrayed attitude to religion. Prime examples that spring easily to mind are The Last Temptation of Christ and Monty Python’s Life of Brian; but what everyone seems to forget with all of these things, and which seems to have been forgotten once again, is that we live in free society (supposedly) where we can believe what we like: if I want to believe the earth is flat, that’s up to me. If I want to believe in God, that’s also up to me. And so is not believing in God.
What the Catholic League should be doing is saying to people who go to see the film or who read the books, “OK. That’s one point of view. But we’ve got another one which we think is better. Let’s tell you about it”. Isn’t that the Christian thing to do?
Only if we encourage debate and the exchange of ideas and belief systems can we possibly hope to live in a peaceful world. Getting all territorial over what is, at the end of the day, just a transient entertainment seems the wrong way to go.
Another viewpoint
As you may or may not know, this blog is mirrored at Blogspot (http://wolfiebhowl.blogspot.com if you’re interested - there are occasional articles that don’t appear here) and my last post about Jehovah’s Witnesses and blood transfusions got a comment over there that I think is worth reproducing over here:
This WatchTower Society requirement that Jehovah’s Witnesses must refuse to accept any blood transfusions dates back only to 1945. Misinterpreting the Old Testament prohibition against eating animal blood as a routine food item, the WatchTower Society began teaching in 1945 that receiving a blood transfusion was “eating human blood”. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that receiving an infusion of human blood into their body’s circulatory system is scientifically the exact same thing as eating or ingesting blood into their body’s digestive system.
“A patient in the hospital maybe fed through the mouth, through the nose, or through the veins. When sugar solutions are given intravenously it is called intravenous feeding. So the hospital’s own terminology recognizes as feeding the process of putting nutrition into one’s system via the veins. Hence the attendant administering the transfusion is feeding the patient through the veins, and the patient receiving it is eating through his veins.” — The WATCHTOWER magazine, July 1, 1951.
Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse to acknowledge that when human blood is transfused into their body’s circulatory system that the transfused human blood remains to be human blood and continues to function as human blood. Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse to acknowledge that if blood is eaten, then the ingested blood enters the body’s digestive system, where the blood would be treated by the body exactly the same as it would treat a hotdog, a potato chip, or any other food item. Ingested blood would be completely digested and broken down into proteins, carbohydrates, fats, and waste; which are then either assimilated or excreted by the body.
The WatchTower Society uses scriptures which speak about the blood of slaughtered animals to teach Jehovah’s Witnesses that blood is “sacred” because blood is the “symbol of life”. Then, the WatchTower Society turns around and requires Jehovah’s Witnesses to sacrifice their own “life” to maintain the alleged “sacredness” of a “symbol” of the very thing they are sacrificing — their life. Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse to acknowledge that the WatchTower doctrine on blood moronically places a higher value on the SYMBOL than it does on the THING SYMBOLIZED.
In fact, the Old Testament scriptures permitted the eating of unbled animal meat, which the Bible treats exactly the same as eating animal blood itself. In isolated occasions, when humans needed to eat unbled meat in order to sustain their own human life, the Mosaic Law permitted such, but then required the eaters to fulfill the requirements of being “unclean” for a few days. Thus, the Bible recognized that the sustaining of human life was more “sacred” than maintaining the sacredness of animal blood. To do otherwise would be doing exactly what the moronic WatchTower Society does. It would make the SYMBOL more SACRED than the THING SYMBOLIZED.
In fact, the WatchTower Society is leading Jehovah’s Witnesses to disobey GOD and violate the Holy Scriptures in one of the most serious ways possible. Because humans were created in GOD’s image, GOD considers human life sacred. A Jehovah’s Witness who sacrifices their SACRED LIFE in order to maintain the sacredness of a SYMBOL of that SACRED LIFE varies little from those who profane life by committing suicide. Those Jehovah’s Witness Elders who teach and police this moronic doctrine vary little from common accessories to murder. The Bible is fairly clear in how GOD views murder, and how He deals with Murderers.
This moronic twisting of scripture would be laughable if not for the fact that it has lead to the pointless deaths of numerous Jehovah’s Witnesses in the past, and it will continue to lead to the pointless deaths of many more Jehovah’s Witnesses in the future.
SUMMARIES OF 300 JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES LAWSUITS & COURT CASES
The following website summarizes over 315 U.S. court cases and lawsuits affecting children of Jehovah’s Witness Parents, including 200+ cases where the JW Parents refused to consent to life-saving blood transfusions for their dying children:
DIVORCE, BLOOD TRANSFUSIONS, AND OTHER LEGAL ISSUES AFFECTING CHILDREN OF JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES
http://jwdivorces.bravehost.com
Whether you’re like the goldfish and believe in God (”There must be a God; who else changes the water?”) or whether you’re like me and everyone I know who went to a Church school and don’t believe in God, can you explain why a family would let a young mother die? Belief in God is ordained by God; religion is created by man. Let’s remember the difference and not let things like this happen again.
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