Watching the skies

We just got back from a trip to Frome in Somerset. It would have been nice to wander around the town for a bit, but we started out late and had to get back to get dinner on.

Still, we got what we went for:



It's the Celestron Firstscope 114 - a 4.5 inch reflector - and it's Spud's first telescope.

He read my mind

You know what? I was thinking that Norm's series "The Momma 'n' Daddy Collection" was beginning to run the risk of getting mired in "family circle nostalgia". Mac (who is also a big fan of country music) suggested an antidote in the form of some lyrics from the Mary Gauthier album she bought earlier this year.

So, imagine my surprise when I checked out the latest post in the series to find that Norm has quoted the very lyric that Mac suggested.

Must be something in the air.

$100 bird

Like a lot of people, we’ll be eating turkey today. And what a bird we got!

This not just turkey: this is a free range, dry plucked, hand finished Bronze, reared on a balanced cereal diet, rich in oats and allowed to roam in cherry orchards and meadows.

Yep, once again, we went for a Copas turkey – they’re expensive but really good eating.

Yuletide Greetings

For non-religious families like us Christmas means a tree, presents and a family feast - it's not about cribs, carols and Christian rituals. Our festive traditions - the tree, the holly, the mistletoe - have pagan not Christian roots. Christmas is a flag of convenience for our mid-winter celebration.

I mention this because some people think there's something a little odd about non-believers celebrating Christmas. Or they think we've lost sight of the true meaning of it all. I don't think so. Like Scribbles says, the shoe's on the other foot.

Have a cool Yule.

Religious obsession

Fellow expat Scott Callahan notes the BBC's seeming obsession with overstating the role of religion in American society.

Though, to my mind, the BBC is not the worst offender, the Guardian has long pushed the same line. A while back, Mark Lawson was telling us that "The US is a theocracy suffering from galloping spiritual inflation." And, on Saturday, Harold Bloom chimed in with his observation that the Bush administration "daily fuses more tightly together elements of oligarchy, plutocracy, and theocracy."

OMG! With all that "daily" fusion going on, pretty soon we're going to end up with an oli-pluto-theo thingy. (I'm guessing that would be a Bad Thing.)

My blogson

No 1 Son has started his own blog. His first post is a condemnation of the evils of dog breeding and, by implication, pet breeding in general.

Do I have any advice for him as a novice blogger? Yes, keep those kind of views to yourself around cat bloggers - they'll tear you to pieces.

Bias and distortion

Scott Burgess at the Daily Ablution takes a well-aimed swipe at his favorite target:

[D]espite its all-too-frequently displayed anti-American, anti-Bush agenda, BBC News remains in large part a news organisation. And however flagrant its unabashed editorial slant, the Guardian is still, for the time being at least, a newspaper - if only barely.

The Independent, however, is neither.

Read it all.

Musical accompaniment

Mac just texted me to let me know it's Motown Night on RTE's Mystery Train. You can listen to the show here.

What you waiting for?

Angry headlines

Has anyone else noticed how "angry" the headlines at BBC News are getting, these days?

If you read their site on a regular basis, you might be forgiven for thinking that practically everyone in this country is angry about something or other. Even the clergy, it seems, can scarcely contain their rage.

Don't they know it's one of the seven deadly sins?

Oy vey and little fishes

It's a phrase my grandmother used to use in extremis. I haven't thought about it for years (and I've never heard anyone else say it) but it came back to me this morning when I read the latest pronouncement from the President of Iran.

The BBC reports:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has courted further controversy by explicitly calling the Nazi Holocaust of European Jewry a "myth". "They have created a myth today that they call the massacre of Jews and they consider it a principle above God, religions and the prophets," he said.
On live TV, he called for Europe or North America - even Alaska - to host a Jewish state, not the Middle East.

I expect a number of European commentators will rush to "contextualize" Ahmadinejad's remarks, explaining to us simple folk why we shouldn't be alarmed - though, somewhat surprisingly, Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian says he's not going to play that game anymore.

[E]veryone has their limits and last week I reached mine. On Thursday the president of Iran chose to stand with the cranks, neo-fascists and racists who deny the factual truth of the Holocaust.
"Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions of innocent Jews in furnaces," said Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "Although we don't accept this claim..."

Suddenly, the usual apologetics won't work. No one can say Iran's president was really complaining about Israel or Zionism, rather than Jews. No one can say he was talking about the west's colonial crimes. He was peddling, instead, one of the defining tropes of the racist hard right: Holocaust denial. It is a stance that seeks to deny Jews their history, their suffering, almost their very being. Like denying that African-Americans were ever slaves, it is a move made by those who wish only harm.

Intolerable cruelties

An editorial in today's Times of India addresses the case of an Indian in Saudi Arabia who has been sentenced to be blinded in one eye:

Fyodor Dostoevsky once said that the degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. The observation can be extended to crime and punishment as well.
That being the case, the punishment meted out to P V Naushad, a working-class Indian expatriate, by a shariat court in Saudi Arabia is a blot on the system of justice in that country.

The court has ordered that one of Naushad's eyes be gouged out as punishment for injuring the eye of an Arab in a scuffle. An eye for an eye is not just barbaric, but a perversion of justice.

[...]

The quest for a more humane definition of justice should not be debated as a clash of civilisations. It is just another, but an important and necessary, step towards the creation of a world that values mercy more than revenge.

Indeed.

Little Atoms redux

The Little Atoms radio show (broadcast fortnightly on Resonance 104.4 FM) features live discussions from a "Rationalist, Pro-science, Atheist, Humanist" perspective.

If you miss a broadcast, you can listen to it here. Previous shows have featured discussions with Norman Geras, David Aaronovitch and Harry from Harry's Place.

Well worth a listen.

Thought for the day

Recovery is not an event, it's a process.

The Best of British

Tim Worstall has the latest Britblog Roundup.

He's also has a thorough fisking of Madeleine Bunting's latest opinion: "Consumer capitalism is making us ill - we need a therapy state".

She may.

Snowclones

There's a rising tide of them, or something.

The Three Rs

Reading, writing, reproducing.

Religious strife

It's a couple of weeks old now, but this headline from the Times caught my attention:

"Church of England evil, say archbishops"

What, really, really evil? Who'd have thunk it!

It's all about "unrepented sexual immorality", seemingly.

Blogging the burka

Scribbles on the burka:

The burka isn't about modesty or religious expression, it's about obliteration of the self; a complete eradication of individuality. It is about making yourself a non-being. I will say it now, I still feel sick when I see a woman in a burka, not because I am racist, not because I have anything against Islam, but because any abuse of the self shocks and upsets me.

Me too.

Link via the inestimable Norm.

Go get 'em Mo

Maureen Lipman meets a Holocaust denier at a North London garden party.

Simply delicious!

Blogroll changes

OUT

A Small Victory: Michele has stopped blogging (never thought I'd see the day) but, as she said, she's been blogging a long time and "eventually long becomes long enough."

Cut on the Bias: Is on indefinite hiatus as Susanna struggles to get her doctorate back on track. Good luck with that.

The Daily Bread: Hasn't been daily for a while, and rarely features bread. Go figure!

Suburban Blight: Appears to have been blighted. A lot of folks are hoping Kelley's ok - me too.

IN

Tim Worstall: Compiler of the BritBlog Roundup and, of course, THE BOOK.

Four OUT and only one IN. Help! My blogroll is shrinking.

Harrumph

Excuse me, just clearing my throat.

It's been so long since I posted on even a semi-regular basis that I'm beginning to fear that I might have forgotten how to blog.

At least I'm not alone.