Abstain from… Texting.

Apparently, it’s Lent, again. That time of year I look forward because, they tell me, it’s a time when Christians give up things (although, I heard a priest on the radio just the other day insist that it’s also about taking up “better” things… sounded suspiciously like spin to me, but what do I know?) The idea of giving up something because it is part of some sort of religious festival doesn’t really appeal to me, naturally, my being an atheist — but it can be rather entertaining watching from my unabstemious (if there is such a word) vantage point.

Especially when presented with the ridiculous prospect of Bishops in Rome calling on Christians to give up mobile telephones and texting!

Of course, I’m sure we’ve all at one time (!) been annoyed by people using their mobile phones at the most inappropriate times. But the very notion that a tool for communication should be “given up” for a Christian holiday, or for any other reason, for that matter, strikes me as quite simply absurd.

As a priest points out in the video clip, he can use a text message to give advice to his parishioners. He sees the value. It isn’t a replacement for other forms of social interaction, it’s merely another way of keeping in touch, communicating, sharing, laughing, crying, arguing, debating — and, yes, sharing crude jokes, of course. It isn’t something that needs to be given up by most of us. My mobile phone is with me almost constantly. Data flows back and forth in numerous forms — telephone calls, text messages, emails, Twitter messages and so on — and my life isn’t tainted by it but, rather, enriched.

It’s all too easy to condemn communication because it involves a relatively new and speedily developing technology, because “the kids” are obsessed by it. But talking, whatever form it takes, is about sharing — about giving and receiving, learning (sometimes) and, quite often, growing.

It’s about the promulgation of myth and, also, the undermining of it. It’s one of the things that makes us human, and just because we’ve found a new way of doing it, it doesn’t make it bad.

If you really want to give up something worthwhile for Lent, I have a suggestion… but I’ll keep it to myself, because you’ve probably already guessed what it is, anyway. 😉

© 2009 Gary William Murning

All Hail the Strawmen!

Whilst catching up with the posts at homoeconomicusnet, I came across a piece that John had written on the sorry excuse for a journalist, Quentin Letts. As John points out:

“[…] he [Letts] has written a book on Fifty People Who Buggered Up Britain. He rails against the removal of corporal punishment from schools, that Britain is broken and the European super state is coming, when what we need is some more church going.”

Richard Dawkins is, of course, on the list at number 30.

What a complete and utter buffoon this Quentin Letts is! The last time I was truly miserable I was in a church! Admittedly, it was for a funeral service, but I found absolutely no comfort in the surroundings, the mythos behind them — and certainly not in the bumbling bloke in a frock up front.

I was an atheist long before I even knew who Richard Dawkins was. But Richard certainly reinforced my ability to argue from a position of a lack of belief. And in so doing he did not weaken my happiness. With books like Unweaving Rainbow, he did, in fact, the exact opposite.

Quentin Letts is unoriginal, facile, thick as pig-shit and clearly deluded in more than one sense of the word. And he isn’t funny.

(I bet he’s really ugly, too.)

© 2008 Gary William Murning

Search Engine Terms.

I’m sure it’s nothing new to anyone out there who’s been online for any length of time, but people search for the strangest things. From ways to blow up cars to Elvis Presley reading lights. Today, however, one search term really made me sit up and take notice.

Someone had actually hit my site after searching for…

… “una stubbs upskirt”!

I mean, no disrespect to Una Stubbs, but why would anyone want to look up her skirt? And, perhaps more to the point, who would want to? Cliff Richard reminiscing about the happy times they had whilst filming Summer Holiday, perhaps? Or simply someone with an Aunt Sally fetish?

Whoever it was, they’ll have been disappointed; I’ve searched everywhere and still haven’t been able to find a single upskirt Una Stubbs shot!

I did, however, find a girl called Abby who wanted to sell me her used panties.

I blame the credit crunch.

(And, for the record, no I didn’t!)

© 2008 Gary William Murning

The Best Way To Blow Up a Car.

Anyone who has been blogging even for a brief time will tell you that some of the search terms used to arrive at one’s blog can, to say the least, be rather… well, odd. I monitor mine constantly in order to ensure people finding my site are, largely, getting what they want from it. So when I see the phrase “semiautobiographical” in my search engine term list, or “Kafka and the doll”, for example, I get a nice warm fuzzy feeling knowing that I have helped someone along their way with, perhaps, that vital piece of information they may have needed.

Today, however, I was a little surprised to see among my search engine terms the phrase — or, rather, the question — “What is the best way to blow up a car?” I looked at it, nestled between “deal or no deal June 11” and “current affairs in biology”, and thought, That’s interesting. And it was. There’s no disputing that. So interesting, in fact, that my highly creative imagination started working overtime and I found myself dictating the same question into Google — knowing that the question would not have been answered on my blog, but fairly sure that there would be many, many answers to it out there.

And, sure enough, there were a few! Being an extremely responsible blogger, however, I’m not going to post any links to what I found. Suffice to say, I can now break into, hotwire and blow up a car.

In theory, at least. I mean, me blowing up a car…? The very idea. You just know something’d go wrong… right?

Let’s Pimp Again…

Carrying on from here, few more of my favourite blogs…

1. Rambling On. Lottie and her very precise Virtual Bitchslaps (and more!).
2. Hayley’s Online Soapbox. A very refreshingly sceptical and investigative approach to the “paranormal.
3. Andrew’s Tech Blog. Newly discovered. A wealth of techie info from a very nice guy whose brains I want to pick 🙂
4. Richard Dawkins’s “In the News” Section. News stories with on science, atheism and religion.
5. Wired Science. Science blog network from Wired.
6. On the Road Again. My stand-up mate, John.

[Please be aware that not being included in the list does not necessarily mean your blog falls into the “badly written blogs that claim to speak with authority on subjects they quite clearly know nothing about” category.]