Bah!

I really can’t believe that the press doesn’t have more important issues to broadcast and write about. Both NRK, and Aftenposten, most commonly perceived as Norway’s ‘most serious’ (although one may wonder) television channel/newspaper respectively, had the royal family’s visit to church amongst their headlines. I have begun to realise that — even in Norway, most commonly thought of as quite secular — religion has an (inappropriately and undeserved) unprecedented hold over the population at large, but to have this as one of three main headlines on the afternoon news is a bit much, especially when war rages in the rest of the world — wars that have their origins in the same reason the royal family went to that church: religion.

As has the general curriculum of the Norwegian School. Read this; it is appaling. That this has gone unnoticed and without protests and consequences is simply awful; part of that child indoctrination of religion, and the — completely unfounded and ridiculous — notion that you cannot have morals if you are not religious, in this particular instance Christian. If this is so, how are most religious people able to go pick and choose among the preachings of the Bible, if their morals are installed in them by that same book!? How, indeed, if not because they have got their morals from some secular source, such as evolution.

‘Christian morals’ indeed!

Couldn’t resist

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself;

You could give Aristotle a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his being. Aristotle was an encyclopedic polymath, an all time intellect. Yet not only can you know more than him about the world. You also can have a deeper understanding of how everything works. Such is the privilege of living after Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Planck, Watson, Crick and their colleagues
-Richard Dawkins

An update of sorts

My, it’s been long. I’ve found - as I always have, really, whenever in the past I’ve taken up keeping a journal or a blog – that long mental conversations with oneself eradicates much of the need for writing one’s thoughts and feelings. Or whatever. So, an update:

• If I were an American, I’d vote for Barack Obama (not a very big surprise)
• I hate Sarah Palin
• In fact I rather violently dislike fundamentalist religion
• I vehemently dislike – and scoff at – creationism and intelligent design, which means I believe in the fact of evolution
• I’m an atheist with a professed fondness and admiration for Professor Richard Dawkins (who’s far from arrogant, by the way)
• I really rather like the book The God Delusion
• I have NOTHING against most religious people, nor do I critisise them. I am not, however, overly fond of their beliefs
• Atheists most certainly do have morals
• If you’re wondering what I really think about Sarah Palin … I think she is a pro-life (and from me that’s an insult), anti-science, deluded, delusioned, irrational, creationist, eucaryot-cells-worth-more-than-living-life, terribly awful, moose-killing, rifle-fetished, fundamentalist Evangelical Christian arrogant arse. The same goes for many other people, like Ted Haggard, George W. Bush and others like them
• Evolution is not accidental
• “Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators” – Richard Dawkins
• I’ll be studying English literature next year
• There almost certainly is no God

And that, I believe, is it! =)

Irelande douze points

I couldn’t help but post this. It’s Ireland’s Eurovision Song Contest entry.

Oh, I come from a nation
What knows how to write a song
Oh Europe, where oh where did it all go wrong?
Come on!

Irlande douze points

Drag acts and bad acts and Terry Wogan’s wig
Mad acts and sad acts, it was Johnny Logan’s gig

Shake your feathers and bop your beak
Shake ‘em to the west and to the east
Wave euro hands and euro feet
Wiggle in the air to the turkey beat

Irlande douze points
Irlande douze points
Irlande douze points
Do the funky beat
Come on

D O B double B L E, yeah…

Hello Abba, hello Bono, hello Helsinki
Ola Prague, hello sailor, c’est la vie
Auf Wiedersehen, Mama Mia, and God save the Queen
Bonjour Serbia, good day Austria
You know what I mean

Shake your feathers and bop your beak
Shake ‘em to the west and to the east
Wave euro hands and euro feet
Wiggle in the air to the turkey beat

Shake your feathers and bop your beak
Shake ‘em to the west and to the east
Wave euro hands and euro feet
Wiggle in the air to the turkey beat

Irlande douze points
Irlande douze points
Irlande douze points

Irlande douze points
Irlande douze points
Irlande douze points
Do the funky beat
Come on

Give us another chance, we’re sorry for riverdance
Sure Flately, he’s a yank
And the Danube flows through France
Block vote, shock vote
Give your twelve today
You’re all invited to Dublin, Ireland
And we’ll party the Shamrock way

Irlande douze points – Irlande douze points
Irlande douze points – Irlande douze points
Irlande douze points – Irlande douze points
Irlande douze points – do the funky beat
Come on

Irlande douze points, Irlande douze points

Eastern Europe, we love you
Do you like Irish stew?
Or goulash as it is to you?
(Irlande douze points, Irlande douze points)

Listen Bulgaria, we love you
Belarus, Georgia, Montenegro
Moldovia, Albania, Croatia
Poland, Russia, Ukraine
Macedonia, love you Turkey
Hungary, Estonia, Slovakia
Armenia, Bosnia-Herzegova
And don’t forget the Swiss

 

Fiend Fyre

There’s a fire in the city of Oslo, right now, but it’s not on the news yet, nor on the Internet. Which, of course, leads me to wonder what it can be.

 

Don’t you think the joker laughs at you?

I was going to post something quite different, but thought better of it; not yet. As for now, I haven’t really got anything else to add. No overly philosophic ramblings today, I think…

Or maybe that was naïve of me. After all, I’ve always got something to express my prolixity about. I just hope it isn’t too soporific.

Perhaps not. Another day, when I’m not continually veering off on caprices.