A little pun for the weekend sir?

1. A vulture boards an aeroplane, carrying two dead racoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, "I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger."

 

2. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says "Dam!"

 

3. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

 

4. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, "I've lost my electron." The other says "Are you sure?" The first replies, "Yes, I'm positive."

 

5. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication.

 

6. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. "But why?” they asked, as they moved off. "Because," he said, "I can't stand chess nuts boasting in an open foyer!"

 

7. A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to Spain; they named him 'Juan'. The other went to family in Egypt and was named 'Ahmal'. Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, "They're twins! If you've seen Juan, you've seen Ahmal."

 

8. A group of friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened up a small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town, to 'persuade' them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he'd be back if they didn't close up shop. Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that only Hugh can prevent florist friars.

 

9. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and, with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him a 'super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis'.

 

10. And finally... there was the person who sent ten puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.

Blair "believes" so that's ok then

I've just been watching the Iraq enquiry on the BBC web site and listening to our ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair giving evidence about the various components and decisions of the lead up to the invasion of Iraq and subsequent fall out etc. Something that comes up over and over again is the phrase "I believed", for example "I sincerely believed the threat of WMD was real", even other ministers are getting in on the "belief" game, I heard one of the ex-cabinet on the radio the other day defending the ex-PM saying (in effect) the war was warranted because Blair "sincerely believed" there was a threat.

Surely this whole thing is about evidence, not belief? The question on the table is was the war justified and legal based on the evidence available, not what any particular person "believed", sincerely or not. I see this tactic used by religious people a lot (obviously the trick is not lost on Blair), i.e. they wish to blur the distinction between evidence and belief, to elevate the role of "belief" up to the same status as evidence. Some of them even go as far as to say that belief actually is a form of evidence, a sub-set of it or an alternative to it. To the scientific brain this is preposterous, and any rational person can see that "here be dragons", if you can justify actions based on "belief" then you can justify anything. It seems like there are almost two kinds of brains out there and perhaps why some people simply cannot "believe".

iPad, another Newton?

So, we now have a new iGadget for some to obsess about, the iPad a new piece of kit from Apple that looks like an iPod Touch with growth hormone problems. Sure it looks sexy, and as usual the marketing surrounding it was flawless in execution, however being the geek that I am I feel the need to point out a couple of (what I think are) serious omissions.

- No USB, sorry apple I can't live without this, for reasons of resilience most stuff I value is on USB sticks or drives so not being able to access them directly means I can't use this device for anything other than the pre-canned stuff you spoon feed me.

- No SD slot, again my camera puts photo's onto SD cards (among other devices) if I can't access them directly then this device would slow me down and waste hours of my life watching progress bars

- No multi-tasking, this isn't an issue for simple applications but I'm not a simple application user so again, this rules the device out for a large swath of things I'd want to do with it to justify the price tag.

- No Adobe flash support, come on Apple get over your little spat with Adobe and support the most ubiquitous graphical presentation vehicle in the world, it's just childish.

All in all a massive "so what" on my new gadget-o-meter, it will be interesting to see how this plays out..

Do we need Humanist chaplains?

Why?

Was my first reaction on reading this story in the Guardian yesterday. The proposal is that several Humanist Chaplains currently resident at universities in the US are potentially headed our (UK) way to offer their kind of non-theistic social services at universities here. The main subject of the story is a chap called Greg Epstein he is a humanist chaplain at Harvard, I've heard him speak a couple of times on various youtube videos and he seems sensible enough, Greg says that the services he offers are quantifiably different from those received through psychotherapy, counselling and mentoring, this leaves me wondering what they actually are, is he like rent-a-mate?

The clear danger or perhaps hidden agenda here is that humanism camouflages itself as "religion" in order to be better accepted that it becomes one. I'm not convinced, it seems to me like an attempt to sneak something in under the radar although I'm struggling to see what "it" is exactly, perhaps I'm being over cynical (doesn't sound like me?) but from 30,000ft this smells like the same kind of snake oil as the other side sell?

God needs help from Google?

I saw this little story on the wire today it's about the Catholic church (or more specifically the Pope) urging it's clergy to engage with people via new media, specifically by blogging. Clearly there is concern that the instruments of these powerful organisations are being overtaken by modernity and apart from the charity aspects of their activities they are being seen as less and less relevant by young people. I also read a piece last week in the Times about the church of England and it's latest round of attendance figures showing a big slump again. Whilst for an atheist like me this is kind of good news a trend which at least in part is going in the right direction it also gave me pause for thought. I would much prefer the sanity and benignity of the CofE to the insanity and violent fascism of Islam (which is growing) so I can't be too smug about it.

I welcome the idea of making religion more transparent; I believe the followers of religion could all do with a reality check in terms of what the dogma of these organisations really means, why it exists, how they evolved and how it's all justified (or not). In the end I suspect what will become clear is that ultimately the whole thing boils down to people, some are interesting, persuasive and utilitarian, and some are not. Ideally increased transparency will expose the underpinning mythologies to be false, primitive and irrelevant by comparison to the humanist angle, just as rationalists have pointed out throughout the ages.

So, religions need to communicate what they really stand for, are they parasitic, self-serving and divisive or utilitarian, rational and relevant, please blog and show us the money..

Friday smut..

A Cadbury related theme...

Mr Cadbury met Ms Rowntree on a Double Decker, it was just After Eight. They got off at Quality Street, in front of the Fisherman's Friend pub. He asked her name, "Polo, I'm the one with the hole" she said in a quiet Wispa. "I'm Marathon, the one with the nuts" he said! Then he touched her Creme Eggs. They checked into a hotel, he slipped his hand into her Snickers and felt her Milky Way. He fondled her Flap Jacks and she rubbed his Tic Tacs. It was a Fab moment as she let out a scream of sheer Turkish Delight! Sadly 3 days later his Sherbert Fountain started to drip. It turns out Ms Rowntree had been with Bertie Basset who had Allsorts!

The most expensive substance ever?

So, what would you think would be the most expensive substance ever, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Mars Rock?
No, none of those things, it's homoeopathic medicine.

Boots the chemist sells arnica (a treatment for bruising) for a fiver, the active ingredient is so diluted that it would take the combined wealth of every human being that has ever lived in the history of the planet in order to buy one single molecule of arnica from Boots. This scam is so ludicrous that even Boots have come clean saying that there is no evidence to suggest that homeopathic remedies are efficacious but they will sell them if people believe they work.

If you are interested in seeing the maths behind this mind boggling concept then its here.

The bible... condensed :)

Quick... stock up on fruit and nut..

Unfortunately it looks like Cadbury will be taken over by food giant Kraft; the end of an era for sweet toothed people the world over. No  longer will we have the faultless milky chocolate of the flake and the button but the ignominy of plastic cheese.. No longer the cultural anarchy of viral gorillas but the corporate sterility of humourless American capitalism.



A sad day indeed.

Do blonds really have more fun?

Mildly interesting story on the BBC today about blonds, according to a recent study researchers found that blonds tend to be more aggressive and get on faster, they also found blondes were used to getting more attention and being treated better by others.

I can kind of see this, perhaps it's like the Queen thinking the world smells of wet paint, i.e. positive reinforcement leads to modified behaviour because of a heightened sense of entitlement. Perhaps some women out there who have been "both" blonde and not blonde can confirm if people treat them differently or not?

(Other than talking more slowly of course.... sorry I couldn't resist ;)

Avatar

Went to see James Cameron's latest block-buster Avatar on Saturday, 5 stars, a really good film.

The movie seems to be full of sub-plots that relate to all kinds of current issues, environment, US arrogance, genocide (the persecuted aliens sound just like native American Indians for example), rationality vs. superstition and so on, but don't worry about all that the film is just a glorious spectacle. It completely immerses you in a wonderland of fantastic imaginary worlds, animals, characters and state of the art CGI that you simply forget is CGI after a while.

Can't wait for the next one!

Mass overdose, of water

Here's an interesting approach to the whole "homoeopathy" debate, on Saturday 30 January, over 500 British sceptics will put the efficacy of homoeopathic medicine to the test by taking a mass overdose of the diluted "remedies". It's being organised by Merseyside Skeptics as a protest against Boots and their continuing insistence on stocking homoeopathic "medicine". Although, thinking about it, when homoeopaths claim that the more dilute something is the more efficacy it has then presumably taking nothing would be the ultimate overdose? anyway it should raise awareness in any case.

One of the arguments that we hear from the government and others about homoeopathy is that if there are no side effects and placebo occasionally does some good then where's the harm?

This is a fair point and addressed in this recent article by Simon Singh, the basic argument is that it's not the "water" that's the problem here it's the people, i.e. consulting a homoeopath is not a substitute for consulting a proper doctor. Like it or not, there are all kinds of wild claims being made for H2O "memory" remedies that are downright misleading and dangerous, the following extract is from the article and tells of some research done by a hypothetical student regarding travel precautions when visiting countries where malaria is common.

Perhaps the greatest danger occurs when homeopathy replaces a conventional treatment. I first encountered this problem in 2006 when I tried to find out what homeopaths would offer to a young traveller seeking protection against malaria. Working with Alice Tuff and the charity Sense About Science, we developed a storyline in which Tuff would be making a ten week overland trip through West Africa, where there is a high prevalence of the most dangerous strain of malaria, which can result in death within three days. Tuff, a young graduate, would explain to homeopaths that she had previously suffered side-effects from conventional malaria tablets and wondered if there was a homeopathic alternative.

Before approaching homeopaths, however, Tuff visited a conventional travel clinic with exactly the same storyline, which resulted in a lengthy consultation. The health expert explained that side-effects were not unusual for malaria tablets, but that there was a range of options, so a different type of tablet might be advisable. At the same time, the health expert asked detailed questions about Tuff's medical history and offered extensive advice, such as how to prevent insect bites.

Next Tuff found a variety of homeopaths by searching on the internet, just as any young student might do. She then visited or phoned ten of them, mainly based in and around London. In each case, Tuff secretly recorded the conversations in order to document the consultation. The results were shocking. Seven out of the ten homeopaths failed to ask about the patient's medical background and also failed to offer any general advice about bite prevention. Worse still, ten out of ten homeopaths were willing to advise homeopathic protection against malaria instead of conventional treatment, which would have put our pretend traveller's life at risk.

The homeopaths offered anecdotes to show that homeopathy is effective. According to one practitioner, 'Once somebody told me she went to Africa to work and she said the people who took malaria tablets got malaria, although it was probably a different subversive type not the full blown, but the people who took homeopathics didn't. They didn't get ill at all.' She also advised that homeopathy could protect against yellow fever, dysentery and typhoid. Another homeopath tried to explain the mechanism behind the remedies: 'The remedies should lower your susceptibility; because what they do is they make it so your energy – your living energy – doesn't have a kind of malaria-shaped hole in it. The malarial mosquitoes won't come along and fill that in. The remedies sort it out.' 

In one case reported by the British Medical Journal, a British woman who relied on homoeopathy instead of medicine, travelled to Togo and caught malaria, she had to endure months of intensive treatment for multiple organ failure. In this case, the placebo effect offered no protection. That's the harm.

Followers of this religion really are downtrodden...

Some Hindu insanity floated through my conciousness today via this youtube video, it shows some religiously inspired simpleton in  Bihar India who thinks his God approves that he tramples on young children and babies; even more surprising is that people turn up to let him do this to their children (and film it!). In the best tradition of respecting stupidity simply because its called "religion", a priest and a top politician from the area defend the practice on this little TV piece.



How parents can listen to their babies scream whilst this so called "blessing" takes place is beyond me. Fortunately there are some rational people in India, two days after this interview went out the holy moron responsible was arrested and the practice stopped.

Giving without "God"

Following the recent earthquake disaster in Haiti the folks behind the RD.NET web site have created a donation portal so that people can give money to either the Red Cross or Médecins sans Frontières. Funds will be channelled through these non-affiliated (to religion) aid organisations, I used it today and can confirm it's quick and easy to do. I suppose if it encourages faithless people who might otherwise be reluctant to channel money through religious organisations then all the better.

We have already seen some religious responses to this disaster, they range from humanitarian and practical to bat-shit crazy; in my view the more practical aid like medicine, food, shelter etc. we can get to these people as soon as possible without the extra baggage associated with some organisations the better but I don't suppose the people on the ground really care where it comes from. I know if I were in that position trying to feed and care for my family then I wouldn't either.

Something new every single day..

Years ago when I was a young boy I used to be interested in bird watching, probably the obsessive compulsive in me, anyway my son is quite interested in nature and animals these days and it's kind of awoken the interest again. I was sitting in my car yesterday in a traffic jam (snow woes) and a little flock of Redwings settled on a bush right next to my window and I watched them for about 5 minutes until the traffic moved on. I don't think I've ever seen one of these birds before, in fact I wasn't 100% sure they were Redwings until I checked it later at home, it's amazing how something new crops up every day no matter how old we get.

Here's a picture of one, in case you were wondering what they look like.

Robinson shoots... and misses

Good old Rev. Pat Robinson, US Television evangelist and creepy old liar for Jesus passed judgement on the current emergency situation in Haiti yesterday, apparently they deserved what they got and it's all due to a pact with the Devil made 200 years ago in order to secure freedom from French colonial rule.

It's amazing that people still give this man money (net worth > $200M), and somewhat scary that what he says is still regularly broadcast to millions via the 700 club program. If the ramblings of this addled old huckster annoy you then focus on giving some cash to a suitably secular charity in order to help with the earthquake relief effort, perhaps the Red Cross or someone with more local knowledge like Partners in Health.

Another scary side-fact is Robinson campaigned for (but lost) the nomination for Republican presidential candidate in 1988, I guess his hotline to God was down for maintenance that year.

Jesus updated for the Wii generation..

If like me you have kids of a certain age, or are just a fan of the Nintendo Wii, you'll know that one of the big games at the moment is Super Mario (cool!) I came across this little hand made animation today which made me smile (I remember doing hundreds of these at school in the corners of every new exercise book I could get my hands on).

What if Jesus was Mario, would it go something like this?



Thanks to skepchick for this little gem...

God bless you please Mrs Robinson

Wow Iris Robinson, wife of beleaguered Northern Irish politician and DUP leader Peter Robinson, is clearly a "goer" as they'd say in Monty Python, no need for a nudge and a wink it seems as she has confessed to an affair with a then 19 year old dude (now gay icon) whilst her husband is under suspicion for dubious financial dealings, dinner parties round their house must have been a hoot! what would Ian Paisley say?

In a juicy twist of irony Mrs Robinson is a paid up evangelical Christian who I spotted back in 2008 when she stuck her pious head above the parapet by referring to homosexuality as "an abomination", lecturing others obsessively about "family values" and advocating psychiatric treatment for gay people in order to "cure" them of their condition. Now clearly we're all entitled to our mistakes, however in time honoured tradition if you don't practice what you preach (or in Mrs Robinson's case stick your deluded "opinions" where they're not welcome) then when you get caught with your knickers around your ankles then I feel other people are fully entitled to call you a rancid homophobic bigot.

Ugly beliefs held by ignorant people.

Please, rational people of Northern Ireland (you know who I'm talking to!), give these pillocks the boot along with all the other hate filled religious nut jobs that do nothing but feather their own nests and supply constant embarrassment and impediment to the splendid progress you've made in the last 10 years.

All hail NewsBiscuit..

Pope unites with Dawkins to decree: ‘It’s the people that claim to be ‘a bit spiritual’ that are the real pain-in-the-arses’

Head of the Catholic Church Pope Benedict XIV has joined with leading evangelical atheist Richard Dawkins to declare that, while they may have their differences, the one thing that ticks them off more than anything else is people who, in a debate on the existence of an omniscient creator against the idea of a universe controlled by immutable scientific laws, will, ‘start getting mystical about life forces, and presence, and trees, for heaven’s sake’.

Addressing the hundreds of millions of Catholics around the world, Pope Benedict forthrightly acknowledged that while the Church was a bit slow in recognising the scientific findings of Copernicus and Galileo in the past, at least they didn’t claim to have a scientific mind while still checking their horoscopes in The Mirror. Then, to a great fanfare of incense and dry ice, Pope Benedict was joined on the balcony by Professor Dawkins, who delivered a searing indictment of everyone that has ever had a dinner party conversation about his book ‘The God Delusion’ but concluded that despite the drawbacks of organised religion ‘there must be something out there…’. His concluding remarks ‘shit or get off the pot, for Christ’s sake’ were greeted by an enthusiastic high five from the Apostolic See.

The collaboration between the two men, previously in fierce opposition, led to questions being asked about a possible shift in the thinking of the Pope, which were quickly downplayed by the Vatican: ‘In an ecumenical world, the Catholic Church has always strived to find common ground, but in answer to the many enquiries we have received, I can confirm that the Pope is indeed still Catholic, and that this detente extends only so far as mutual contempt for people willing to give homeopathy a go who also get pissy about the idea of water being turned into wine,’ declared spokesman Monsignor Flavelli, ‘and as to the Church’s views on the eternal souls of atheists, and whether we think they’re ultimately going to burn in hell with the Jews, Muslims and Methodists? Well, as we like to say here in the Vatican, ‘is Professor Dawkins a gobby trumped up zoologist?’"

Reproduced from the newsbiscuit

New UK Atheist resource

Spotted this yesterday http://www.atheismfront.com/ I haven't had a chance to look too deeply yet but its good to see the momentum for people thinking about these things seriously is translating into tangible resources in terms of debates, films, TV, WEB etc.

On a related theme I read a statistic that 500,000 people have watched the Intelligence squared video of the Catholic debate last November featuring Stephen Fry, wow, that's a lot of people for a fairly marginal topic, just goes to show what a big celebrity can do for something like this, fortunately the majority of decent comedians like Fry are on our side already :)

I believe it, so it must be true...

If you have ever debated a creationist or someone who believes in intelligent design (same thing really) then this amusing little cartoon animation will be totally familiar to you, the only common fallacy they missed was the "teach the controversy" one, all the others are present and correct.



In a similar vein here is another example of an epic fail, Christian parents from the USA preventing their child going on a field trip with school because of their own perverted adherence to Iron age myths, poor kid.

Here (below) is their rationale for stultifying this child's education, repeated in case you're finding it difficult to read their hand-writing.

“Note: Just to let you it is not that we don’t believe in things like that, it is just misleading when you talk about it being billions of years old, when we all know that the world is only about 6,000 years old. So why would I pay so that you can misslead my children, your world is just a revolving(?), ours has a start and an end. God created the world. He created animals and man all in the same week. It was also Adam who named all the animals, they will do the essay ‘Rock and Minerals’ but it might not be 5 pages long, and about billions of years, it will be according to the Bible.”

I find it strangely inconsistent that Christians like this (generally) object to abortion with the argument that all clumps of fertilised cells belong to God and aren't the Mother's "property" to do with what she will. But then as soon as that child is born it suddenly reverts back to the status of property to be indoctrinated, moulded and shaped into whatever bizarre flavour of whichever sect of the particular branch of Abrahamic faith the parents happen to have been  indoctrinated into themselves, go figure?

Oh snow is me..

Unusually for the South of the UK we've had a major dump of snow in the last 24 hours (for us at least), suffice to say that everything has stopped working and it's only the internet that seems to be keeping people going (how things have changed in the last 10 - years!) Here is a picture of the top of my wife's car this morning, a good 10 or so inches I reckon and its still going strong.

The kids are overjoyed of course, most years we make a single sorry snowman out of our entire garden's worth of snow. Today we're on our third already and have hardly scratched the surface, my back yard is starting to resemble the terracotta (snow) warriors!

Blood in the streets

This picture made me stop and think, its a group of Shiite Islam believers celebrating "Ashura" in Baghdad at the end of December, you can see more alarming images and read about the history of this ritual here. It made me think and made me sad, not just because of the naked barbarity of it but because of the thought that these people have done this for a thousand years and it has not made one iota of difference to their lives, they are still relatively poor are starved of education and opportunity and are subdued, or worse persecuted by other more powerful sects and nations. All this kind of thing seems to do for them is perpetuate what I think is an oppressive and stultifying meme through the use of indoctrination, ritual and social pressure, an example of "faith" in action?

I suppose you could argue that it binds them together, a show of solidarity perhaps, but personally I can think of better and more positive ways of achieving the same thing without the abuse. Anyway, each to their own I suppose, but it made me think that if people can happily perpetrate acts of violence like this on themselves in the name of their religion then it must be a small conceptual step from here to more outward facing violence against members of out-groups or rival sects. It would seem reasonable to extrapolate a (potential) path from one to the other if faith is able to suppress reason to this extent.

Great balls of fire!

Kepler rocks! The new NASA space telescope has only been operational a couple of weeks and it's already found five new exoplanets.

Unfortunately NASA left the naming of these planets up to the office junior whilst everyone was on Christmas break, so we've got Kepler 4b, 5b, 6b, 7b and 8b, must have taken hours to come up with those! Anyway, unimaginative naming aside this is a fantastic result, it's look ever more likely that planets orbiting stars are a common thing in our universe which, if true, means that statistically the chances of a planet somewhere having the right combination of distance from its star and elemental composition for life is good. Kepler 4b, 5b, 6b, 7b and 8b look too hot to nurture the kinds of life that we have on Earth but it seems like the more we look the more we find so hopefully it will only be a matter of time before we find some planets in the "goldilocks" zone.

I thought it unlikely that we would find such a thing in my lifetime but I'm not so sure now!

Closer to heaven?

Love the new tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai has clinched it at a breathtaking 828 meters, the previous record holder in Taipei was a mere 508 meters. The building looks stunning, a glass and steel monument to what modern engineering techniques, materials, design and about a billion dollars can achieve. An interesting side note is that several "tallest" buildings in the past have been opened in recessions, i.e. the Empire State in the great depression and the Petronas towers during the 1990s Asian financial crisis, perhaps its a good indicator of when to sell, i.e. as engineers start putting up the scaffolding for these record breaking buildings and then buy again once they are opened?

The building boasts 160 floors and half a million square meters of space; the highest inhabited space and the highest swimming pool and of course the highest mosque. I suppose if the plot of that great 70s movie Towering Inferno came true and the water from the pool didn't extinguish the flames then you could always undergo a quick conversion just before kissing your butt goodbye, very handy!

For those who don't get vertigo here is a little video from the scaffolding at the very top, gulp, just don't look down..

Tiger's got wood..

Loved this little piece on Fox news yesterday, according to "senior political analyst" Brit Hume in order to be properly forgiven for an inability to keep things in his pants Tiger Woods the world famous golfer needs to convert to Christianity and forsake all of this Buddhist crap that he believes in, I bet he's really grateful for that little gem of advice.



You've got to hand it to these Christians though, it's more about the "forgiving" part than the "sinning in the first place" part, clearly an ideal religion for the morally weak among us.

Vote BNP or get a prick in your ear..

For all those people out there who claim that religion is "harmless" and only exists to do good in the world check out this lunatic harmless old fellow. Devout Christian and artist Jack Lewis, is convinced that only a vote for the BNP will help reverse a trend in politics to deliberately marginalise Christianity that has been spitefully enacted over recent years. Posting on a Christian radio web site he makes claims about "British" culture, immigration, homosexuality and all the usual fundamentalist canards, here is an example of the kind of quality of thought on offer,

"Christianity is no longer a sacrosanct way of life. We have a Government that is obsessed with homosexually (sic) and political correctness and would like to teach children as young as seven what anal and aural (sic) sex is under the guise of ’sex education’"

Now I want to know where I can get some of this "aural" sex, it's clearly a much more exciting secular alternative to "Christian rock"?

Jack the lad goes on to say,

"Under Labour’s new equality laws, Christians are going to be sitting-duck targets for atheists … However there is a political party that openly supports Christianity and its values and that is the BNP. The problem with this suggestion is that the BNP is perceived as being racist. The BNP has been demonised by the media who in turn have convinced the public into believing that they are racist. This is just simply not true and even if it was true, would that be harder to have to live with than what we have to put with today?"

"Targets for Atheists", I wonder if his faith is so weak and indefensible that he thinks a few Atheists by force of reason and words alone can rock it to it's core?

What's more baffling is why he thinks that sex education is worse than racism? that one takes a bit of computing time, perhaps I'm not comprehending this "aural" sex thing properly and its something to do with black people supposedly having more rhythm?