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Showing posts from August, 2010

Saturday Supplement

This is Virtual Methodist's electronic equivalent of those glossy supplements you get in weekend newspapers that take a full week to get through... at least in this household... Its a few of the more developed stories I've come across this week which are too long for a FB post and which I haven't had time or inclination to post on myself. The first involves story of Mary Bale, a 45-year-old bank clerk, and former church choir singer,dropping a cat into a wheelie bin... Now given what happened to our cat while on holiday (and I'm not blogging about that yet... still too angry) I can understand some of the outrage, but I'm with Will Crawley who is bemused by the wholesale hue and cry in the media given the other, bigger issues in the news. One of those issues has dominated Will's blog, and the Northern Ireland news this week, that being the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman's report into the Claudy bombing back in the very darkest days of our most recent Troub

Stars and A-Stars, The Few and The Many

Last Friday was the 70th Anniversary of Winston Churchill’s famous speech to the House of Commons in the midst of the Battle of Britain referring to the fighter pilots of the RAF saying: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” A number of historians have questioned whether or not that was strictly accurate in historic or military terms, suggesting that the image of the heroic few of fighter command being all that stood between Britain and invasion by Nazi Germany, was a myth sold by Churchill as a morale-booster, in the same way that the disaster of Dunkirk was repackaged (or spun) by him and others in the light of the heroism of the "little boats" (even though the "little boats" only helped a minority of those evacuated from Dunkirk. I wonder whether subtleties of that part of the Second World War was on the history syllabus for A or AS levels? Those results came out last week as well (with GCSEs to follow this week). As ever t

Coming out of Holiday Mode

I've been back from my summer travels for a wee while now and back at work for a few days, but I've had a lot to clear up both personally (I'll rant about that in due course) and in terms of the usual backlog of emails and paper, so I have hardly looked at the blog in ages... So I thought I would dip my foot in the water by sharing a few interesting links that I've come across in recent days... Some I've already posted on FB, but most of them demand more attention than I ever give to something over there. Most are of a theological bent, but some touch on my other diverse interests. On the theological front, Patrick Mitchel picks up on Ben Myers thoughts regarding theology in the blogosphere and applies them to denominational theology in Ireland. It will be interesting to see how this develops. Meanwhile, Karen Spears Zacharias (don't know if she's a relation of Ravi) has written an interesting piece on the hoary old subject of militarism and nationalism in A

I Can Feel It...

You certainly never get entertainment like this on the Belfast buses... Cheers

For all you Failures out there...

A little motivational gem courtesy of my friend Chuck Hoffman in the US. Cheers

A Darwin Award Contender?

A few weeks ago I was invited to a community consultation looking at the problem of motorcycling and alcohol among young people in the local area. Judging by this video they have a similar problem in parts of Germany. The title of this posting comes from the website (and subsequent book and movie) dedicated to those who have either attempted or succeeded in removing themselves from the gene pool. You will be pleased to know that none of those involved in this video actually did remove themselves from the breeding population. Or perhaps not... Cheers