Taken from a much longer article.  He burps and farts and booms.  Bless my soul, what a character he is!  He lives in America now and he is evidently admired for doubting the existence of god, among other things.

“Everything on North Korea and Iran is in one of these,” Hitchens said, pointing to a standalone bookshelf during a tour of his ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

"Each life converges to some centre
expressed - or still
exists in every human nature
a goal

Embodied scarcely to itself - it may be
too fair
for credibility's presumption
to mar

Adored with caution - as a brittle heaven
to reach
were hopeless, as the rainbow's raiment
to touch

Yet persevered toward - sure - for the distance
how high
unto the saints' slow ( Read more... )

Suicide victims who were abused as children have clear genetic changes in their brains, Canadian researchers reported on Tuesday in a finding they said shows neglect can cause biological effects.

The findings offer potential ways to find people at high risk of suicide, and perhaps to treat them and prevent future suicides.

And, the researchers said, ( Read more... )

Most Russian and western observers see the man who has just been elected Russia's new president as at best a relatively liberal figure, if not a faceless opportunist. Some think Dmitri Medvedev will be merely a second Putin, whose election just means more of what we have seen during the last eight years. But Medvedev’s early political biography, as ( Read more... )

Type your cut contents here.Archbishop's Lecture - Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious Perspective

Thursday 07 February 2008

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams gave the foundation lecture at the Royal Courts of Justice

The title of this series of lectures signals the existence of what is very widely felt to be a growing ( Read more... )

Some of the principal Enlightenment thinkers who regarded beauty as subjective took this very fact to be a reason for applauding the human mind, on the ground that it is praiseworthy and admirable to impute beauty to things. Hume held such a view, and it was central to Francis Hutcheson's aesthetic theory. They thus made taste a key concept in ( Read more... )

.. my sympathy [for the Jews] does not blind me to the requirements of justice...

I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the ( Read more... )

 Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable:

Mother Teresa, Bill Gates,Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it’s an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American ( Read more... )

It may be somewhat late in the day, but I am pleased to announce that I am now Amy Winehouse's greatest fan.  (No, not the creepy Steven King type)  Let's get real.  I have heard her version of "Monkey Man".  It was enough to make me want to follow her for ever.

Speaking of Steven King, I cannot be alone in finding The Mist just a bit lame.  They ( Read more... )