Second and Third Thoughts
“I believe that we are talking here not just about a defeat for Christian principles but also about a defeat for humanity,” Cardinal Parolin told reporters
via Vatican calls Irish referendum a ‘defeat for humanity’.
This is the attitude rejected by 62% of the Irish voters. Well done them.
For Stokes on 99, McCullum can only summon up two slips, a gully, and a regulation field. Stokes has slapped the funk out of McCullum. Bashed the attacking right out of New Zealand. It took him 85 balls.
via cricket with balls | just another bullshit cricket blog.
Another great post by Jarrod Kimber about a special innings.
You can stumble across all kinds of stuff on the web. I found this on God Told Me To Tell You, which seems to have had no activity since November 2011. Made me laugh.
This project is an attempt to explore the huge range of interpretations of Darwinism. To do this I’ve interviewed over fifty commentators: conservationists and creationists, bishops and biochemists, palaeoceanographers and Intelligent Design theorists, theistic evolutionists and a Bahá’í lecturer, sex researchers, mathematicians, ophthalmologists, linguists, evangelical Christians, philosophers, physicians and the Astronomer Royal. As a starting point, I asked each one the same question: ‘what does Darwin mean to you as an individual, and as part of humanity?’
via The Dissent Of Man by JF Derry: Unbound.
Sponsorship of this book seems to have stalled. I think it is a worthwhile project. Please consider offering your support.
I have no connection to the author except that I have also pledged.
On our short trip in and out of Skippers Canyon, we enjoyed one of the more dramatic landscapes of our visit to New Zealand.
Skippers Road, part of which you can see in the photo, is pretty scary. It’s not very wide with a long, bumpy fall off to one side. If you have a hire car, the insurance doesn’t cover you to drive Skippers Road.
Skippers Canyon (some part of it) was also use as a location in Lord of the Rings.
You can find some more of my photos of Skippers Canyon here.
Excellent piece on the six wankers…
Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner, Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Taiye Selasi and Francine Prose are very clever people. Kushner’s The Flamethrowers, for example, is one of the most dazzlingly brilliant novels in years. So you would think that at least one of them could muster a justification for their decision to withdraw from the forthcoming PEN gala, at which Charlie Hebdo will receive the annual Freedom of Expression Courage Award, that wouldn’t make you want to bang your head against your desk. Apparently not.
Explanations have come in dribs and drabs. The longest, and worst, was published yesterday by Francine Prose — a former PEN President, no less. It opens with a classic case of the Liar’s But, where the whole paragraph preceding “but” is disingenuous blather: “tragic murders”, “nothing but sympathy”, “abhor censorship”, blah blah blah. This is the language of the politician, not the novelist, lacking both intellectual honesty…
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Put another way, in a truly civil society the right to free expression trumps the desire of religious folks not to have their feelings hurt. The “offense” argument is, therefore, no argument at all; it is tantamount to a selfish, adolescent insistence on conformity, nothing more. The “offended” just have to grin and bear it. We left high school long ago. It’s time to grow up.
Bill Maher, American hero: Laughing at religion is exactly what the world needs – Salon.com.
⭐️ Another great article by Tayler.
oddrops 