Discovered a neat new game over at Eric Meyer’s. (No, not that awful Four Things meme that currently lukewarm.) He got it here, but I’ve no idea where or how it began, and that's perhaps as it should be. The idea is simply to Google "Unfortunately YourName".

Unfortunately, Jeremy only knows ho...

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Over at ongoing, Tim Bray takes time out to point to some slightly funnier religious cartoons. (No point echoing his links; go see for yourself.) And along the way he makes the not unreasonable point that ...

“a lot of people in Arab dictatorships genuinely have no notion that a press can be...

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Can we, please, stop fretting about which human vilenesses are, or are not, the product of religion? Neddie, as ever sensible (though not sensitive) gives Richard Dawkins full reign and allows him to explain the whole Devil's Chaplain bit. The Viscount Lacarte likewise. The point being that if s...

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Friends have suggested that this candid shot was snapped while I was “working” on my recent spell of “duty” travel. I have more hair than that.

The fuss about the cartoons continues unabated, and a pox on both their houses, say I. It seems quite likely that the original Danish paper was being just a teeny bit xenophobic, perhaps even (gasp!) deliberately trying to stir up trouble. “Scratch a freedom-loving Dane,” said a colleague who has spent considerable time there “and you find a racist xenophobe”. Not that that constitutes evidence. And as for the Muslim reaction, well, if they wanted to be further reviled as crazed intolerant lunatics, they could hardly have done better. Clearly deeper forces are at work, using and inflaming passions on both sides. How much simpler, and possibly more effective, a Muslim boycott of all Danish products. Like, er, Danish Bacon. How much simpler, and more effective, a simple statement of support -- we laugh at all your gods -- in the freedom-loving European press, rather than a reprint of the cartoons in question (which don’t even sound all that funny).

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