A Thinking Man

The desire for extreme control is both sad and frightening. 
It is sad because it reeks so much of insecurity.  If I am insecure I have no confidence that any difference will not threaten or destroy me.  I have to control every aspect of my universe - know where everything is, know what everyone is doing.  There can be [...]

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I recently read a true account of some appalling goings-on - at least, appalling by my standards, though to the people involved they seemed ‘normal’ and justified.  Here’s what happened.
A group of people were going about their ordinary lives, looking after their houses and land, bringing up families, when along comes

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A belief is a powerful lever.  Once you have it and pull it, the lever brings into being all kinds of consequences.  If you believe that people go to hell unless they share your faith, you may be driven to go abroad in an attempt to convert the world.  If you believe people who leave your [...]

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The UK press has been excited in the last couple of days by the fact that the Metropolitan Police have been found guilty of endangering the lives of the public.  The police broke the health and safety laws (such irony) in the shooting of the innocent terror suspect, Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes.  After the trial [...]

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I have recently finished reading Sam Harris’s “The End of Faith”.  It has been widely acclaimed as a passionate call to the West to wake up to the dangers of irrational thinking, with a special warning about the dangers of Islam.  It was compelling reading, rich in illuminating factual illustrations, and was argued with the cogency that [...]

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Mina Ahadi, an Iranian exile now living in Germany, is a woman who has spent her life opposing the mistreatment of women by the Iranian clerical regime. 
Mina was at university in 1979 at the time of the Iranian revolution and she was soon noticed by the authorities because she began to organise demonstrations opposing the compulsory veiling [...]

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I still get a slight shiver when I remember what happened at JFK Airport.
A year after 9-11 I travelled to New York with three friends.  We arrived at JFK tired from the six hour flight, and then stood in queues, for what seemed like ages, while some very severe looking men with guns surveyed the lines [...]

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Somebody tried to tell the emperor (well, the president to be more accurate) that he was wearing no clothes.  He just smiled, said that he was, and that the thousands of people watching him just could not see properly.
Personally, I think that it was right to give Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a platform to speak [...]

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It’s now official. You don’t need the store cupboard anymore. You can have time off work to have sex. Well, at least you can if you live in Russia.
The governor of the central Russian province has urged couples to skip work on Wednesday to make love in order to boost Russia’s low birth-rate. The population [...]

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Ok, it took me a long time to get round to it, and I know that the whole of the rest of the Western World did it ages ago, but I have just finished reading Richard Dawkins’ ‘The God Delusion’.  Whatever your faith or none, I can thoroughly recommend the book.  I chuckled my way [...]

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