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Showing posts from December, 2011

O2 (and all the others) are Useless

Every two years I switch to one of the other four UK mobile network providers because a) my memory of the last time I was one of their customers has faded, b) I have a mistaken expectation that they've done something in the meantime to improve their service, and c) I'm bored or angry with my mobile and hope that a new one might suddenly work better as a phone (why did I ever abandon my old Nokia?). We all know every mobile operator offers a patchy service in the UK. Most of their money goes into marketing. Clearly very little goes into increasing their coverage. What's even more annoying is that we've grown to accept this in the UK (where our declining economy has just been overtaken by Brazil!). Everywhere else on this planet the service is brilliant. We're told its crap because: a) we're all watching porn, football and soaps like Coronation Street on our mobiles, and that's used up the bandwidth (which of course is bollocks, because no-one CAN watch an

Jewish Laws. The Good, the Bad, the Ugly and the Odd

In researching my previous blog about using the fear of god to encourage moral behaviour, I came across a list of the 613 commandments which jews are meant to follow. Before I read them, I had assumed that most would be either anachronistic or simply arcane. However, several set me thinking that maybe the bearded ones were not as tyrannical or irrational as I imagined they might be. However, some of the laws do not stand the test of time, and some are simply unpleasant at best, and bordering on evil. The largest bunch of laws are to do with sacrificing animals. Who does it, when and with what type of beast. Why ancients thought that killing an animal in any way affected the way a deity might feel about them is mysterious at best. However, there is also a great deal of advice about helping the poor and less fortunate - although inevitably poor and unfortunate Jews are favoured over everyone else. Intriguingly there is even a law which had Shakespeare and his audiences known about - n

An Atheist Argues for Faith

I am an atheist. Not an agnostic, an atheist. THERE IS NO GOD. At least not a supercomputer-in-the-sky fairytale type of god. And certainly not one defined by a bunch of bearded blokes thousands of years ago. I'm not going to go into the arguments which support my lack of faith in there being any possibility for a deity (there are many better arguers for atheism around) suffice to say that I believe we all have the potential to understand every unexplained mystery. We are surrounded by stuff today that would blow the minds of those beardies for which they invented gods to explain, but where we now have scientific explanations (science means 'know', not 'have faith'). Where organised faith is concerned, I believe there are two types of people in this world. Those who need to ring-fence things they don't understand by assigning them to a god (who does the understanding for them - otherwise referred to as the 'god-of-gaps'), and those who refuse to assign