Notes, journal, diary, blog, arguments, beliefs, cogitations, comments, considerations, contemplations, criticisms, daydreams, deliberations, engrossments, musings, opinions, phlogs, poems, points, rantings (occasional), reflections, ruminations, satire, wit, and pensiveness of a thinking man.
Posted in Censorship, Faith, Government, Human Rights, Law, Morality, Religion on Mar 14th, 2009
A new proposal from Islamic states was circulated amongst Geneva diplomats last week as they attended the current session of the UN Human Rights Council. It is entitled “Combating defamation of religions,” and mentions only Islam. If adopted it would define any questioning of Islamic dogma as a human rights violation, which would intimidate dissenting [...]
Posted in Censorship, Faith, Government, Human Rights, Humanity, Morality, Religion, Society, Terrorism on Feb 15th, 2009
As the debate about the British Government’s refusal to allow Dutch MP, Geert Wilders, into the UK to attend a showing of his controversial film ‘Fitna’ has raged, I have wanted to write, but found myself unable to do so. It has taken time for the dust to settle in my head. Part [...]
Posted in Faith, Health, Human Rights, Morality, Relationships on Feb 5th, 2009
Community nurse Caroline Petrie, a Christian nurse from Weston-super-Mare, has been suspended for offering to pray for an elderly patient’s recovery. She asked the patient if she wanted prayer after she had dressed the patient’s wounds. The patient complained to the North Somerset Primary Care Trust. The nurse was suspended, without pay, on [...]
Posted in Education, Human Rights, Humanity, Morality, Relationships, Religion, Society on Jan 23rd, 2009
Some time ago I wrote about the case of Anna Ciriani (What has sex got to do with it?) who lost her job as teacher in Italy because of her extra curricular activities as an internet porn star. I argued that provided that these activities didn’t interfere with her classroom professionalism and delivery, that she should [...]
Posted in Education, Health, Human Rights, Morality, Relationships, Religion on Jan 16th, 2009
Teenagers who take the pledge to remain virgins until they are married generally fail to keep it. And they are less likely than those who haven’t taken the pledge to use contraception when they do break their vow.
Janet Rosenbaum, a post doctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, used data from [...]
Posted in Creativity, Humanity, Morality, Philosophy, Relationships on Jan 8th, 2009
Several years ago when I first started working with clients via telephone I did briefly explore the use of equipment to record telephone calls. There were two reasons for this: 1) the ability to listen to, and analyse calls afterwards would be likely to enhance the quality of future sessions; 2) in the event [...]
Posted in Human Rights, Humanity, Law, Morality, Society on Dec 7th, 2008
Lynchings may have a long history, but I dislike lynchings.
Premeditated mob violence meting out extrajudicial punishment is frightening. From my youth I remember vividly the look of terror on the face of a soon-to-be ‘burning necklace’ victim in a news clip about the violence in Soweto, and I remember thinking, “Whatever this man may [...]
Posted in Humanity, Morality, Society, Television on Nov 24th, 2008
I hate bullying and hypocrisy.
Now that the furore is dying down, I feel compelled to vent my feelings about the John Sergeant debacle that has dominated the UK press in the past week.
[YouTube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HP_DXrr4cWA]
For those of you who don’t know, John Sergeant started life as a comedian when an undergraduate at Oxford, and grew into a [...]
Posted in Government, Human Rights, Isolation, Morality, Religion, Society on Nov 14th, 2008
Just two sour footnotes after the genuine joy and sense of hope that many of us liberals felt after America had the sense to vote in a Democrat for President (especially a black one).
The first sour note comes from a South Carolina Roman Catholic priest who has told his parishioners that they should refrain from [...]
Posted in Faith, Humanity, Morality, Relationships, Religion on Nov 10th, 2008
Yes, it’s musterbation again! No, no, no, NOT masturbation, but MUSTerbation! I’ve written about MUSTerbation before (though judging from my blog search stats, thousands of people think masturbation is spelt with a ‘must’.)
Quite simply, MUSTerbation is when human beings decide that something has to be done or stopped at all costs. It is [...]
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