Category Archives: ramblings

ramblings

Dreary Weekend

I don’t understand.

Why is it that Easter is always such a miserable weekend?

No, I don’t mean the weather. OK, so far today is dull and damp, but that isn’t always so.

Nor do I mean the fact that it isn’t the most joyous of Christian festivals. As a non-believer this weighs with me not at all, but I don’t dislike Easter on principle.

I’ve noticed, though, over many years, that Easter is somehow always a miserable, dull, boring, depressed and joyless weekend.

OK so as a culture (religious or secular) we’re not indulging in the festivities of Christmas. But Easter took over the old pagan Spring festival, when everything was growing again and there was more daylight than darkness. Even leaving the chocolate aside, there are flowers and cute Easter bunnies (which should really be hares anyway!). Despite the fact that I don’t do cute, that still ought to make Easter weekend joyful.

But it isn’t.

Why?

I don’t understand.

beliefs, ramblings

Cross Spotters

1 Comment

Oh dear! The Christians are fluttering in their olive trees again. Various clerics, most notably Cardinal O’Brien, Roman Orthodox Archbishop of all Scotland, are telling their flocks to wear a cross to signify their faith.

Why? Why do they have to be told? Are they sheep? [No, don’t answer that!]

And why do they need to do this? I don’t give a flying wombat what fictions you believe. I’m glad to say that’s your problem, not mine.

And yet most true believers already wear their faith on their sleeves and — very rudely — make sure we’re not allowed to forget it. But sure, if they want to wear an emblem, why shouldn’t they?** Who is to stop them going around adorned with badges and looking like a bus spotter? Moreover I’m sure the monasteries could find enough spare saints’ fingers for them all to have a few poking out of a breast pocket to complete the bus spotter look. The same applies to believers in any other faith, or no faith.

Most of us don’t need to advertise our beliefs on our lapels. But if others are sufficiently insecure in their faith that they have to remind everyone, including themselves, what harm? None really if they stick to just wearing a badge. But I bet they don’t. The harm is if, as so often, it becomes another nauseating means of proselytising beliefs. That’s something the rest of us have no need to do; indeed don’t believe in doing. We’re secure enough in our beliefs; beliefs which are personal and not to be imposed on others. We don’t need lots of other like-minded fools around us to convince us we’re right.

Yes, OK, fine if you want to wear a discrete cross, pentacle, Star of David, swastika or whatever on a chain round your neck. But is it just me who finds badges, bumper stickers, prayer beads hanging from driving mirrors etc. somewhat nauseating? And I don’t draw the line at religious symbolism. Badges for the Rotary Club, football club, train spotters guild are just as annoying. Why do we need to advertise our allegiances in this way? If we can’t spread our faith (whatever that is) by shining example then pretty poor show. Good works and humility, not faith alone.

Who are we to deny such poor benighted souls their comforts? Although can you imagine the outcry if they were forced to wear some identification, as were the Jews in Nazi Germany? They’d be up in arms quicker than a ferret down a drain-pipe.

Maybe I should have a supply of “There is no god” badges made? Or should we all have 42 forceably tattooed on our foreheads?

** There will always be employers who, rightly, ban jewellery for safety reasons. But that is really a side issue.

beliefs, current affairs, ramblings

Marriage

There’s recently been a lot of brouhaha over the UK government’s suggestion of making marriage available to (male and female) homosexual couples.

The Christian churches are up in arms because they see it as devaluing (or worse) the sacrament of marriage.

Put plainly, this is bollox.

Neither the church, nor any other religion, owns marriage. Arguably it may have done once, in the days before developed civil government, but no longer. In almost every civilised country there is a civil marriage option available as well as a religious one. The churches may have a ceremony which they call marriage. This does not mean they own the concept or the sole rights, although it does give them the right to choose who to allow to partake in their ceremony.

A heterosexual couple can have a civil marriage, so why can’t a homosexual couple? No-one is suggesting that the churches have to be a part of this if they wish not to. They are not to be obliged to marry homosexual couples and indeed they may choose (as they do now) who can marry under their aegis. Many heterosexual couples are denied a religious marriage for a whole variety of reasons.

And of course no couple has to marry or enter into any officially sanctioned partnership arrangement. And quite right too. So a coach and horses has already been driven through marraige as originally conceived by the churches.

I fail to see a problem.

There are couples who will choose a civil marriage and couples who will choose a religious marriage. Civil marriage will be available to all; religious marriage will only be available to those who can jump some arbitrary set of church defined hurdles. Just as now.

And come couples will choose to ignore the whole idea of marriage (by whatever name) and just live together. Horses for courses, and all that.

No change, really, except that the civil marriage net is being widened.

Although there is the suggestion of an anomaly with civil partnerships. As gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has pointed out the current proposals now discriminate against heterosexuals by allowing same-sex couples the option of marriage or civil partnerships but only marriage for heterosexual couples. Which is ludicrous!

I see no purpose in continuing with the civil partnership sham. Let’s drop it altogether and have just civil marriages. Either that or we have to keep both civil partnerships and civil marriages for all.

Or of course we could just ban marriage altogether — for everyone.

For other sane views you might like to read Betty Herbert’s blog, John Bingham in the Daily Telegraph and Marie Jackson on BBC News.

current affairs, links, ramblings

So You Missed … ?

More links to things you may have missed. Let’s start with some important items I should write whole blog posts about but just can’t stomach today.

Like I commented on Facebook, this first isn’t just wrong, or bizarre, or cruel, it’s obscene (and that’s not a word I use lightly or often). Georgia Rep Wants To Force Women To Carry Stillborn Fetuses … Like Cows Do. Maybe these loonies should be made to wear a stinking albatross round their necks. As has been said elsewhere if men had to endure half the things they impose on women better ways would soon be found, or minds changed. What price Christian charity? Again! Seethe!

Next, here’s an interesting alternative take on the validity (or not) of modern Christian claims of persecution. As it’s from the National Secular Society it’s probably as biased in the opposite direction! Caveat emptor!

Both of which remind me of this cartoon …

And while we’re on the church, let’s have an interesting sideways look from Friday’s FT, which shows just how bizarre is the Cathodic church’s attitude to gay marriage.

And here’s a worrying judgement handed down by the European Court of Human Rights, supporting the UK courts’ decisions, which appears to give the police carte blanche to do almost anything they like on the streets to restrict liberty, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and association. Very, very worrying.

And a final rant for today … this confirms what I maintained the other day that water companies are losing vast amounts of their water through leaks — possibly as much as 25%!

So now for an interesting piece of science. Apparently your soul is in your eyeballs. Yes really. Well actually it does make sense and does seem to agree with one’s intuitive experience.

So how do we think about nothing? This gives two totally different approaches.

And finally something rather splendid: an old church converted into a modern bookstore.

It takes the Dutch to find some good in Christianity. 🙂

current affairs, ramblings

Crossings Out

So the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Dr Rowan Williams, is standing down in nine months time. Appropriate timing? Is he being transmogrified into the Virgin Mary?

Meanwhile he has plenty of time to come out with a few more inanities.

Today, the day that he announced his pregnancy capitulation, he has said that wearing the cross does not offend non-Christians.

How can he possibly know? He isn’t a non-Christian.

Oh! Maybe he is! After all he’s Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s well known that Archbishops of Canterbury can believe six impossible things before breakfast. Recall too that memorable line from the Eric Idle version of the “List Song” in the ENO production of The Mikado:

Bishops who don’t believe in God
Chief Constables who do.

Full lyric here (complete with a couple of errors) and a video on YouTube (the list Song starts about 4m15s in).

people, ramblings

To Be or To Change?

Here’s Zen teacher Brad Warner on becoming something you’re not, but think you want to be. This is taken from his Hardcore Zen weblog.

[T]he effort to be something you’re not always seems to go wrong no matter what it is you want to be …

People who are working on fulfilling some image they have of a “nice person” are usually a pain in the ass. Their efforts to be like the “nice person” they’ve invented in their heads almost always get in the way of actually doing what needs to be done … The kind of forced helpfulness such people engage in is almost never helpful at all. It’s annoying. Sometimes it’s even harmful.

But those of us who realize that we actually aren’t as good as we could be have a real dilemma. What do you do when you recognize that you really are greedy, envious, jealous, angry, pessimistic and so on and on and on?

To me, it seems like the recognition of such things is itself good enough. It’s not necessary to envision a better you and try to remake yourself in that image. Just notice yourself being greedy and very simply stop being greedy. Not for all time in all cases. Just in whatever instance you discover yourself being greedy. If you’re greedy on Tuesday for more ice cream, don’t envision a better you somewhere down the line who is never greedy for more ice cream. Just forgo that last scoop of ice cream right now. See how much better you feel. This kind of action, when repeated enough, becomes a new habit. Problem solved.

Which is really very much how I felt at work, and still feel, about personal development. Trying to totally restructure someone to be different (say, totally embodying that great new sales technique) doesn’t work and is actually destructive of their personality. Indeed it is tantamount to brainwashing.

I need to be told about it, sure. Then I need to notice, in my own quiet way, the bits that work for me and try using them or incorporating them in what I do. That way I build on the existing strength of my personality, rather than destroying it and starting over.

No wonder I never fitted the company mould, and management didn’t like it!

Change not only has to come from within it has to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

ramblings, science

29 February

Today, 29 February, is a unique day. So unique it happens, to a first approximation, only every four years.

But that, of course, depends upon what value unique has in your philosophy.

Scientifically today is indeed unique, in the formally correct sense. There is no other like it, for it will never occur again, at least as far as we currently understand the laws of physics which govern our universe.

Why? Because time, that ethereal quantity we measure in todays and years, is unidirectional and ever progressing. This time, this very instant, can never occur again. Hence it must be that this, and every other, today must be unique.

Enjoy your once in a lifetime experience!

amusements, ramblings

All Over the Garden

Oh God it’s going to be a day of giant rhubarb news stories.

Following on from Chancellor Osborne’s apparently sudden realisations, our beloved Metropolitan Police have issued a list of plants we should all have to deter burglars.

Yeah OK, so far.

The news report finishes with the Met’s advice that Hedges and shrubs in the front garden should be kept to a height of no more than three feet in order to avoid giving a burglar a screen behind which he can conceal himself.

Leaving aside, for a moment, the implication that female felons don’t try to hide, there’s a problem with this. The list of suggested plants includes Gunnera manicata (above; deciduous and grows to 2.5m), Golden Bamboo (grows to 3.5m) and several conifers, none of which are susceptible to being pruned or trimmed successfully to under 1 metre nor are really suitable for the average suburban garden.

Duh!

<Paging Alan Titchmarsh>