Keep Christmas Pagan

A little bit of festive cheer for Cru-blog's secular readers. Have a good Christmas all!

Which way to look...?

I am generally of the opinion that what MPs do in their private lives is up to them. We should judge them on their policies. The ones they actually act on, not the ones they claim to believe in and then throw away. Something about the blossoming relationship between Lib-Demmer (and on policies I've always been reasonable favourable on the Lib Dems) Lembit Opik and one of the aptly-named musical duo The Cheeky Girls however is just a bit much. Not least his long-standing fiancee Sian Lloyd finding out about the relationship indirectly. How on earth are we supposed to take him seriously now?

Ripping Yarns

This article in the Guardian strikes me as compulsory reading...

Vice City

Well the papers are all over the "Suffolk Ripper". And I really don't need to say that the murders are horrific. What bugs me is the media's need to constantly refer to the victims by their occupation. The linked article is one of the least offenders, the tabloid are running with things like "5TH DEAD VICE GIRL FOUND". Now I often talk about prostitution on this blog and people post comments furiously insisting it's just a career choice and that some women enjoy it. Now firstly - all five dead women had serious drug habits, none worked the streets by choice and secondly - if it's just a career, like account manager or cardiologist, why don't we describe them as murdered WOMEN and mention that they all had the same occupation in a single paragraph later on in the article? Harold Shipman murdered old women but I never saw the headline "ten more knitters deaths to be reviewed in Shipman case".

Awards for effort?

There is a general fuss being made about Zara Philips winning sports personality of the year. People are complaining that she has had an easy route to the top. Well easier than many, sure, but it's not like Paula Radcliffe has to milk the family goat and cook chapattis on an open fire before she goes running. If the award is for the person who has worked the hardest then we'd have to start looking at people who put in hours and hours of time but then never made it due to injury or just not being naturally gifted enough. If Kelly Holmes had broken an ankle before the finals and come home without a medal would we have voted for her for trying ever so hard? No - the award is for winning stuff and frankly on that basis Zara is about the best we've got at the moment, unless you count Matt Dawson getting into the last three on Strictly Come Dancing...

I Don't Know about Agnosticism

An article on the BBC extolls the virtues of agnosticism. Sadly for a lot of us, simply "not knowing" just isn't a position that makes any sense...

I don't know if Mr Cru will buy me any Christmas presents, but I expect he will and I live my life assuming he will (i.e. by buying him some), I don't know if the next person to ring my doorbell will be coming to murder me, but I expect they won't (so I answer the door). In fact when it comes down to it I barely KNOW anything. We live our lives based on probabilities.

The evidence against God's existence is overwhelming, from the fact that globally almost all the major religions are totally incompatible to the extensive fossil record to the bizarre fact that all the so called "miracles" in the bible sound a great deal like natural disasters we can now explain scientifically. We may never know for 100% certainty that there is no God but we already know with 99.999...% certainty and we're getting more and more evidence all the time.

The trouble is when people say they are agnostic they seem to be saying that God's existence is 50-50, that the arguments for both sides are equally strong. From everything I've heard and read in my life there are no convincing arguments for God's existence. Accepting the idea that there is something intellectual about sitting on the fence is only going to slow scientific progress down.

International Cru on the World Service

Well I've been asked to go on the BBC World Service tonight and talk about perms. As in permanent wave hairstyles - they are celebrating their centenary this year. Now the trouble is we're doing it as a pre-recorded spot for World Today and it might go out any time between midnight and 8am, GMT. Still if Cru-fans anywhere in the world happen to have the radio on in the car or the alarm set to wake you up with some radio, please tune in. To supplement the radio jokes here's a picture of the first ever advert for perms, mmm amazing they ever caught on at all...

Guardian in the Dogg House

Sometimes you open the paper and then go back to the front page to check the title. I mean is this article about rapper Snoop Dogg really from The Guardian? It makes no mention of the fact that his idea of a song title is "Break A Bitch Til I Die", featuring lyrics like "Hos come, hos go, hos runnin ya slow, So keep her foot up in her ass, unless a dick in her throat". Instead The Guardian (yes, I know, The Guardian...) refers to him as "pimpalicious"?! Meaning what exactly? That there's something good to be said for making money from human traffiking, co-erced sex and prostitution? Please.