I can’t tell whether this Onion article was a prediction or is just a recent satire:

“My fellow Americans,” Bush said, “at long last, we have reached the end of the dark period in American history that will come to be known as the Clinton Era, eight long years characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas. The time has come to put all of that behind us.”

Bush swore to do “everything in [his] power” to undo the damage wrought by Clinton’s two terms in office, including selling off the national parks to developers, going into massive debt to develop expensive and impractical weapons technologies, and passing sweeping budget cuts that drive the mentally ill out of hospitals and onto the street.

Quick! Name a heroic action in World War I. I bet you can’t.

Modern European attitudes to war and nationalism were largely shaped by that most patriotic of wars.

Passchendaele, The Somme, Verdun, Galipolli. The names of the battles are associated in our minds with tragedy and disaster. The names of the generals will forever conjure up images of incompetence. Even the names of the poets - Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves - cry out to us with sadness and pain.

Hostilities in that terrible war ended at 11 minutes past 11 o’clock on the 11th of November, 1918. On Sunday, at that same time, there will be a parade followed by a remembrance service at the granite war memorial that stands in the corner of every common, in every village in Britain.

My grandfather, who fought in World War II, took me to the service every year when I was very young. When I was older, I led the parade as the senior cadet in the Senior Service and, later still, I marched with real soldiers and sailors in the huge parades in the Navy towns of Plymouth and Portsmouth.

The sound of a bugle playing The Last Post still tugs at my tear ducts and I still can’t say the prayer that follows the two minute silence without my voice breaking.

They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.
Amen.

According to this essay in conservative journal, The National Revew,

“If everyone were in control of his appetites, there would be no need for the government to be involved in endorsing some sexual relationships while withholding endorsement from others.”

in other words,

The conservative case against redefining marriage is based on the observation of human vulnerability to temptation. Haggard confirms what we’ve said all along. It is pervasive moral weakness that makes such things necessary.

Go down, Howard Dean, go down!

So, Pastor Ted…

Is he:

1. someone who believe what he preaches?
2. someone who does not believe what he preaches but believes that the world is better if his flock believes it?
3. a complete con man?

My Cynical Caesars Theory would suggest 2) but in the Pastor Ted’s case, I’d put my money on answer number 3).

Watch this spooky video at YouTube in which Richard Dawkins interviews Ted Haggart. A couple of years ago, a video like this would have terrified me but, more and more, I feel that the danger has passed.

We’ll know more on Tuesday.

I did it. I filled the gaping whole in my life and replaced my B52s album.

I have listened to that album several thousand times over the years and I could never figure out what that second song was all about. It’s gratifying to find out that it was utter nonsense all along. It’s just a bunch of random girls names. The chorus is just “names. names. names.” or something.

I am still not smart enough to embed videos. When I tried, it completely trashed my website. Wordpress doesn’t seem to like the object tag. You’ll have to go all the way to YouTube to watch the B52s on SNL.

The B52s were the Salvador Dalis of post-punk. Ever wonder what it was that fell in the deep to be mistaken for a rock lobster? It was an ear lobe.

Speaking of Salvador Dali… How many surrealists does it take to replace a light bulb? Eight. One to hold the giraffe and seven to fill the bathtub with brightly coloured machine tools.

Muriel Gray doesn’t like the word Bright either, so she has coined her own word.

Here’s what I believe as an Enlightenist. Atheism is not a driving concern, since belief in God is of little consequence. After all, if there is an interventionist God then there would be continuing demonstrable evidence of such, which there most certainly is not, and if there is a creator God who is non-interventionist then he neither requires nor merits worship, and if there is no God at all then so be it. Therefore you could happily suspect that there might be a non-interventionist God of sorts that could eventually be discovered scientifically and still be an Enlightenist. Since no action needs to be taken until such an unlikely discovery, it doesn’t matter. Now let’s move on.

Practical stuff. Now, having coined a term, she writes a manifesto to go with it.

Enlightenists believe in the awe-inspiring, wonder, beauty and complexity of the universe, and aspire to unpick its mysteries by reason, constant questioning, observation, experiment, and analysis of evidence. The bedrock of our morality is empathy, from which logically springs love, forgiveness, tolerance and a profound desire to make a just, egalitarian society and reduce suffering. The more knowledge a person has, the more they question and understand the real world, and the more they are required to analyse what is true then the greater the increase in empathy. Enlightenists care and wish to do good not because a vengeful God tells them to, but because intelligence suggests it is the only and the right thing to do.

Now she thinks that she is entitled to charter schools too (in the UK, public schools can hook up with a religion and exclude people not of that religion).

So there we have it then, that’s the belief manifesto. Now, where the hell are my bloody state-funded schools? We’re always told about the high performance of superstition schools verses non-denominational ones, but we know that’s because any parent willing to pretend to be religious to get their child in is a parent interested in their child’s education, and involved parents equal successful children. Can you imagine the unseemly scramble for places if we were to be granted a state-funded Enlightenist school? Children would be welcome from any religious or ideological background, with the parents only having to fulfil the brief of allowing their children to be taught in the Enlightenist manner.

All entirely sensible if you ask me.

I wish Muriel were running The Brights instead of Mynga. Then I could call myself an enlightenmentalist or something.