grahambinns.com

Well, it doesn't entirely surprise me that someone lumps us atheists into that category, but still. Birmingham City Council has put in place software that blocks people from looking at atheist websites whilst allowing some other belief systems through (link, via Pharyngula:

The authority's Bluecoat Software computer system allows staff to look at websites relating to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other religions but blocks sites to do with "witchcraft or Satanism" and "occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism".

The irony of atheism being categorised with mysticisms of any kind nonwithstanding, this is plain, old fashioned discrimination, which I hope will be dealt with in due course:

National Secular Society president Terry Sanderson said the city council's rules also discriminated against people who practise witchcraft, which is also classed as a legitimate belief.

He said the society would initially contact the council and ask for the policy to be changed, and otherwise pursue legal action.

From Thaindian News (via Willow and Leather), comes this piece of stupidity:

A small fabric bracelet is England cricketers' latest secret weapon that has boosted their performance levels.

The Trion-Z 'magic' bands are being tried by the team after cricketers James Anderson and Stuart Broad said they were huge fans of the bracelet.

Using incredibly high-powered magnets, the bracelets are medically proven to increase blood flow around the body, improving concentration levels and rates of cell-regeneration.

Now, you and I, dear reader, both know that the chances of these bracelets having actually been tested using real science - controlled double-blind tests, wide-ranging studies, peer review, etc. - are about the same as the chances of the Flying Spaghetti Monster visiting me in the middle of the night and telling me to spread pastafarian peace amongst all the people of Lancaster.

The story, however, goes on:

England bowler James Anderson said: I have found great benefit during recent tests. These bands made me feel energised and I was able to cope better with the long training sessions.

Now, I know that the media is given to quoting people without actually waiting for them to actually say anything, so I'm perfectly willing to believe that he didn't say this.

At the same time, though, it made me wonder: Shouldn't professional sportsmen and sportswomen be banned from promoting this kind of quackery? They are highly-paid, in the public eye and, ostensibly, are supposed to be role models for a whole generation of youngsters. That means that they shouldn't behave like whinging little kids on the field of play, they shouldn't take drugs and they shouldn't promote expensive rubbish that purports to do something that it almost certainly doesn't.

Answers in a comment or by email to blog <AT> grahambinns <DOT> com if you please.

Ah, but there may be an explanation:

The Trion-Z bracelets, which cost around 18 pounds, use medical grade magnets to maximise blood flow and are up to 100 times stronger than other magnetic bands, The Sun reported.

The Sun reported. So perhaps - and there's a good chance of this - this is just patent bollocks cooked up by the Sun. Would anyone be surprised? I wouldn't.

So, it turns out that the story that I blogged about the other day has even more to it than I thought.

Rather than try and summarise the matter here - for I don't fully understand it at the moment; it's late, I'm tired and I'm busy watching the fantastic An Inconvenient Truth. Instead, I'll let Terry Sanderson of the Grauniad explain pretty much my feelings on the matter here.

More over, I learned this evening via the ever-wonderful Pharyngula that on Friday morning's Today Programme Richard Dawkins managed, in three minutes, to not only rip holes in Murphy O'Connor's comments but to also slam John Humphrys for his attitude when interviewing religious figures.

Now, I personally dislike the way that John Humphrys interviews people. I find him arrogant and irritating and particularly dislike the way he interrupts people when they're actually trying to answer the question (I have no objection to him interrupting people who are trying not to answer the question). So it did give me a little tingle to hear Dawkins tying him up in knots. But more important than that was that Murphy O'Connor said this of reason leading to terrorism and oppression, which Dawkins pointed out:

Danger because, if you go just by reason, I think, without faith, without belief in God, you can imagine, for instance in the last century, some of the faith(less), or supposedly faithless societies - people, whether it's like Hitler or Stalin, bringing up - having a country in which, if you like, a God free zone, a dictatorship ruled by reason, and where does it lead? To terror and oppression.

Which is so eye-crossingly stupid I can't even find it in myself to be seething mad about such a statement. Still, I'm sure that plenty of people will be mad on my behalf.

richarddawkins.net has clips of Dawkins' interview with Humphrys, the BBC Radio News item about the Cardinal's speech and an interview by Humphrys of the Cardinal himself (in which, to be fair to Humphrys, he does give the Cardinal a harder time than one would usually expect). You can find them all here. Enjoy.

A big sorry to the LiveJournal users who just got spammed by a double-post from the photo feed. The hack that I wrote to pull the Flickr feed into the blog post stream isn't smart enough to cope with the idea that an image might change (though in this case I don't think it could have been avoided).

Ah well, we live, we learn. We should learn not to hack at things willy nilly. But it's so much fun.

So, the Met have created some new anti-terrorism posters, one of which is this gem (via BoingBoing):

Because nothing could possibly go wrong with that in London could it? What with all the tourists and all...

The problem here is twofold:

1. The police are trying to make people think cynically about an activity that is carried out by thousands of people in the capital every day.
2. People - and it's very important to remember this - are, by and large, idiots.

Now, I'm not saying that anyone will necessarily heed these ads but, if someone does, I wonder how long it'll be before being a brown-skinned, bearded tourist in London becomes a lot less fun.

Also, as has now been pointed out at length, letting "experienced officers" decide what action to take didn't work out so well for Jean Charles de Menezes.