Well, of course there won't be any...

... if you introduce yourself with "Hi, it's me... Poindexter! ":

THERE is no room for romance on board the cozy confines of the International Space Station, a NASA space shuttle commander said when asked what would happen if astronauts had sex in space.

"We are a group of professionals," said Space Shuttle Discovery commander Alan Poindexter during a visit to Tokyo, after a reporter asked about the consequences if astronauts boldly went where probably no others have been.

"We treat each other with respect and we have a great working relationship. Personal relationships are not... an issue," said a serious-faced Cdr Poindexter. "We don't have them and we won't."

Cdr Poindexter and his six crew members, including the first Japanese mother in space Naoko Yamazaki, were in Tokyo to talk about their two-week resupply mission to the International Space Station.

The April voyage broke new ground by putting four women in orbit for the first time, with three female crew members joining one woman already on the station.

Sex in space may appear out of bounds, but astronauts have been known to succumb to earthly passions.

In 2007 former NASA astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak allegedly wore adult diapers when driving hundreds of kilometres across the United States without bathroom breaks to confront a suspected rival in a romance with a fellow astronaut.

- "No space for sex in space, says shuttle commander Alan Poindexter", AFP (28 June 2010)

Finally... a reason for the enormous pendant on gold chain

Geoff Shearer, "Real estate agents use hypnosis to seal property deals", The Courier -Mail (10 June 2010), p 15.

Abrams tanks

Okay, so JJ Abrams and Damien Lindelof have renounced the Tower (thereby leaving Anton Yelchin as the sole link between Star Trek and Stephen King's Iliad of Gilead). But is there another producer/ director with the courage to do his dinh's will? Aha! Another there is! And it is... huh? Ron Howard?

Be careful what you wish for, perhaps. A cameo as his twinner, Arnie; Arthur "the Eld" Eldarelli; and "you have crossed the White and I, Chachi son of Chachi, consign you to the Black, maggot."

But aye, dear gods, not Tom Hanks as Roland...

UPDATE (1): Having now seen the first 11 minutes of Toy Story 3, I owe Mr Hanks a semi-apology. Seems to me that if you gotta see six-shooters versus laser beams on a train track crossing a vast desert, he's your go-to guy.

UPDATE (2): Although a second Hamm connection would have been too much Toy Story.

UPDATE (3): Javier Bardem, then. Sounding good. Especially appropriate for a knightly warrior named Roland to be played by someone born in Spain, even after it turned out that Chretien n'avait pas droit after all. And there's this...

... Another smallholder rose - Bucky Javier. He had bright little blue eyes in a small head that seemed to slope back from his goateed chin. "What if we left for awhile?" he asked. "What if we took our children and went back west? All the way to the west branch of the Big River, mayhap?" - Wolves of the Calla, Chapter 1.

Hanna-Barberism

Hunting Randall, are we...?

Dust gets in your spell-checker

The previously-observed, already-high degree of Stephen King/ Phillip Pullman convergence [*] has grown even higher of late. King writes about "The Good Man" and "the Man Jesus", so... what does Pullman title his latest novel? The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. I've not seen such shameless pilfering since Peter Jackson directed The Menacing Shadow of the Past (2001), Always Two Towers, There Are - No More, No Less (2002) and The Revenge of the King (2003), stealing from George Lucas the idea of having a respected Scandinavian actor speak the line "What does your heart tell you?" with a straight face. Having said that, ever since Doctor Who Season 2, Pullman has been much more sinned against than sinning in the pilfering department, so surely he's entitled to do likewise unto others and thus restore the cosmic balance.

Intriguingly, something about Pullman's Bultmannish new Anne-Rice-channels-Joseph-Smith pastiche seems to cloud the minds of the proof-readers:

'Like many atheists, the novelist Philip Pullman has emphatic and complicated religious beliefs. Pullman used His Dark Materials, his masterpiece trilogy, to deliver a savage beating to the Catholic Church (the thinly disguised "Magesterium" [sic] in the novels)...'

- David Plotz, "The Gospel According to Philip: Philip Pullman tries to repair the most sacred story ever written," Slate (2 May 2010).

... But unfortunately those dumb fundoes in Harry-Potter-burning flyover country won't appreciate Pullman's literary genius, because their too alliterate. Maybe Slate better install Firefox spell-checker in time for installment #627 of its "How Dumb Is Sarah Palin?!" series.

But let's not single out the Kinsley Report to pick on. Even The Australian itself has succumbed to Spectres munching on the brain cells, as the Millar told his tale:

'... Uncannily, in his new book Pullman seems to have been at work on the specific charges laid against the Vatican hierarchy. One wonders if Geoffrey Robinson [sic], the Australian human rights barrister preparing the case for Hitchens and Dawkins, will be able to put it any better than the speech Pullman scripted for "Good Man" Jesus, arguing against the establishment of a church in his name: "Any priest who wants to indulge his secret appetites, his greed, his lust, his cruelty, will find himself like a wolf in a field of lambs where the shepherd is bound and gagged and blinded... and his little victims will cry to heaven for pity, and their tears will wet his hands, and he'll wipe them on his robe and press them together piously and cast his eyes upwards".'

- Bruce Millar, "Double take," The Weekend Australian (1-2 May 2010), Review pp 4-5.

Great quote, by the way. It seems that Pullman - after so zealously thwacking the stuffing out of Inter-Testamental Judaism in His Dark Materials - has lately realised that this "Christianity" thingumajig offers a much more topical, and therefore more appealing, target for his neo-Voltairean pen. (We await with keen interest the Great Questioner's forthcoming The Charlatan and Impostor Muhammad Exposed and Refuted, due in late 2013 or early 2014, dependent on publishing schedules.) So Pullman is now zeroing in on one of Christianity's chief weaknesses, as previously noted by Nietzsche and Marx: that the Sermon on the Mount constitutes unilateral disarmament by the exploited, ordering them to turn the other cheek to their exploiters rather than resisting them. Vide GK Chesterton's Jake Halket, the radical trade union leader who confronts Father Brown in "The Ghost of Gideon Wise" (1926):

[Someone] had uttered some casual and conventional phrase about "Heaven forbid" something or other, and this was quite enough to set Jake off with a torrent of profanity. "'Heaven forbid'! and that's about all it bally well does do," he said. "Heaven never does anything but forbid this, that and the other; forbids us to strike, and forbids us to fight, and forbids us to shoot the damned usurers and blood-suckers where they sit. Why doesn't Heaven forbid them something for a bit? Why don't the damned priests and parsons stand up and tell the truth about those brutes for a change?..."

The word "Christian" appears, I think, exactly twice in the Dark Materials trilogy and there are no references to Jesus at all that I remember. Many of PP's Christian critics have viewed this as an implicit admission by him that Jesus won't fit into his imaginary universe, and that this is a flaw in his theology. Yet this seems too easy. How hard would it have been for one of the rebel Angels to tell Will or Lyra something like:"There was another angel, two thousand years ago, whom the Authority loved dearly, even like his own son. Yet when this angel sought to intercede and plead for mercy on the humans' behalf, the Authority had him tortured to death on a cross. And then promoted Metatron as regent in his place." Bang! Then at one blow, you've made Pullman's God even nastier and more malevolent than the Christian God. (You've made him, in fact, into the Arian/ Jehovah's Witness God). Pullman would have deflected the "But what about a merciful, humble Jesus?" counter-argument using a variant of Rita Brock's and Brian McLaren's " cosmic child abuse" interpretation. So Pullman could have: why didn't he? Was he saving his ammunition for this book instead?

[*] King and Pullman have similar views about organised religion: ".... God o' the Cross was just another religion which taught that love and murder were inextricably bound together... in the end, God always drank blood" ("The Little Sisters of Eluria"). Interestingly, though, while they agree that three centuries ago Everything Changed, they disagree strongly on whether the Enlightenment/ Scientific Revolution was a Good Thing. Pullman sees it as the start of humankind's war of liberation against its angelic oppressors, and the dawn of the "Republic of Heaven", while King labels it "The Age of Poisoned Thought." - ouch.

Robots and Jedi

Sell on Michael eBay!

'[US] FEDERAL regulators should address the "casino environment" on Wall Street where computerised high-frequency trading can trigger market-shaking turmoil, a US senator says. Senate Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd pointed to the new phenomena of automatic programs - trading robots - buying and selling stock in nanoseconds as a possible cause of last week's meltdown that was felt around the world....'

- AFP, " The 'robots' that could ruin Wall Street" (10 May 2010)

Help us, Obeid/ Whan/ Kenneally! You're our only hope!

'Army reservist Christian Emmery, who turned 20 several weeks ago, is standing as Labor's candidate for the southern and far-western NSW seat of Farrer, a safe Liberal seat held by frontbencher Sussan Ley. Mr Emmery said he was single, lived with his dad in Albury and worked at the local Coles. The self-confessed Metallica fan is active on Facebook, where he lists his religious view as "Jedi"....'

- "Labor's Jedi knight Christian Emmery wants your vote," Daily Telegraph (9 May 2010).

UPDATE: And from the land of Lucas and Hamill... "Only a master of evil, D'Ath!" (Yes, that is exactly how it's pronounced in Australian). - The Senate will not sit still for this...

... while agreeing to an NYT interview that gets posted on the - what's that phrase? - "World Wide Web." Yep, that'll work

'Min Liu, a 21-year-old liberal arts student [Do conservative arts students exist? - ed] at the New School in New York City, got a FaceBook account at 17 and chronicled her college life in detail, from rooftop drinks with friends to dancing at a downtown club. Recently, though, she has had second thoughts. Concerned about her career prospects, she asked a friend to take down a photograph of her drinking and wearing a tight dress. When the woman overseeing her internship asked to join her FaceBook circle, Ms Liu agreed, but limited access to her FaceBook page. "I want people to take me seriously," she said. The conventional wisdom suggests that everyone under 30 is comfortable revealing every facet of their lives online, from their favorite pizza to most frequent sexual partners. But many members of the tell-all generation are rethinking what it means to live out loud....'

- Laura M Holson, "Tell-All Generation Learns to Keep Things Offline," New York Times (9 May 2010), p A-1.

Walt's and my Tilda

'If one were casting a Hollywood film about Australian politics (an unlikely project), it would be hard to go past Philip Seymour Hoffman for the part of Kevin Rudd. (Don't you love these games?) Tony Abbott would be harder, but I think I'd go for William H Macy. George Clooney might be credibly disguised as Malcolm Turnbull and Tilda Swinton would be a natural for Julia Gillard...'- Evan Williams, The Weekend Australian (24-25 April 2010), Review p 19.

Oh, yeah, Swinton as Gillard is a no-brainer (see photo). Throughout Lion, Witch & Wardrobe I kept waiting Jadis the White Witch to start expounding on school rankings and the repeal of WorkChoices, and expecting the line " I have no children of my own" to be discreetly dropped from Anne Peacock's script.

Casting other State and Federal politicians in Baz Luhrmann's forthcoming History of the Australian-Speaking Peoples should be straightforward. Obviously, you'd cast Danny de Vito as John Howard. I mean - obviously. For Brendan Nelson, either Billy Bob with his Mr Woodcock 'do or else whoever played the President in X-Men 2. Likewise Callum Keith Rennie as Anthony Albanese; Liev Schreiber as Teevee Goneboy; Tom "Forrest Gump" Hanks as Chris Pyne; Seth Rogen as Barnaby Joyce; Eric Bana as Laurence Springborg; Humphrey Bogart as Rob Borbidge; Lance Henriksen as Bob Carr; Ian McKellen as Bob Hawke (sorry, David Field and Richard Roxburgh); Greedy Smith as Paul Keating; Gina Riley as Anna Bligh; Antonia Kidman as Paula Wriedt; Jake Gyllenhaal as Cameron Dick. No obvious matches, unfortunately, for Australia's own "Charisma" Carpenter.

But... the rest of the Evan's casting? Macy as Abbott, while Daniel Craig still draws breath? And how could anyone could go past the world's second most famous Kevin as Rudd himself?

PS: No, not Sandra Bullock as Sarah Palin. Wendy Hughes.

PPS: Robert Duvall as François Mitterrand.

PPPS: Wm H Macy can still get a slot... as David Laws.

Deep cleavages in the societal compact

The text of this editorial is worth reproducing in full, partly to spare readers from opening a page with graphics that are definitely NSFW, but also because it's not every election that one sees John Locke quoted to defend topless "Page Three" photos against a renewed Clare Short-style ban:

SIXTEEN Page 3 Girls in all their glory represent the very image of freedom in this country. But if Labour or the Lib Dems win the election, this could be the last time they are allowed to pose together. MPs Harriet Harman and Lynne Featherstone will move swiftly to change the law and ban Page 3 forever. Our national treasures - who even enjoy the Royal seal of approval from our future King Prince Charles - will be no more. And at a stroke the very liberties that put the Great into Great Britain will be torn asunder. The radical ideas of the 17th-century philosopher John Locke helped shape our freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights and, later, America's Constitution. Lib Dem frontbencher Featherstone was cheered by women's rights activists when she declared she would "love to take on Page 3". But our Poppy said: "The basis of Lockean thought is his theory of the Contract of Government, under which all political power is a trust for the benefit of the people. His thinking underpins our ideas of national identity and society. Please don't let those who seek to ban our beauty win. Vote to save Page 3!"

- "Save these girls from dole queue", The Sun (6 May 2010).

(In classic Murdoch tabloid style, every sentence was a separate paragraph in the original. No, don't click the link to check. Take my word for it.)

(No, I found it by clicking on a headline titled "Keep These Girls Off the Dole Queue" in the "UK Elections" section of Google News. Why, what did you think?!!)

One suspects that, uncoached, "Poppy" would be more likely to free-associate "Hobbes" with "Miranda" than "Thomas", and "Locke" with the Smoke Monster, but still... If we can't rely on Prince Charles as our Supreme Arbiter of acceptable standards of sexual propriety for British women, who else is left?

PS: This is not, in fact, the only result that Google gives for "laws of england bare breast", although it doubtless gets more traffic than Sir William's Commentaries these days.

"Abbotar"

One is Cameron's political fantasy... The other is a largely CGI sci-fi movie that has nothing to do with Anglo-Australian conservative parties.

No Moses in this one...

Grand harmonic convergence...

... of two separate blog posts:

'... According to the unsworn declaration, Bombshell says, "I do NOT have a swastika tattoo on me."..."

When the watch says, "It's Time..."

RIP Lady Sonia (or Sonia Lady) McMahon... you knew there would be a superhero angle on her death, though, didn't you...

Mungo, mungamus, mungant

"It was left to a more literate conservative, Sydney Kings School headmaster Tim Hawkes..."

Take that, stupid illiterate conservatives!

"... to point that just 39 of the 237 content areas in the [national schools] curriculum contained any reference to Aboriginals [sic]..."

- Mungo MacCallum, "When a problem comes along, you must whip it; whip it good," 16(10) The Northern Rivers Echo (18 March 2010), p 16.

Do go on, Mungo, keep us informed whether these illiterate, hangover-from-the-1950s conservatives also complained about the Curriculum's coverage of Negroes [sic], Jewesses [sic], and Asiatics [sic] too.

UPDATE: Some free counsel for literate conservatives out there. If your blurb introduces you as "Director of [the? Boris and Natasha, call office] Melbourne-based Education Standards Institute", you don't want any genitive mutilation in your very first sentence:

"There’s nothing new in the Australian Education Union’s campaign against the Liberal Party and it’s attack on Tony Abbott...."

Moreover, if Star Wars had been made...

... by this George Lucas - if Mayhew, Mark/Luke, and John had joined forces with the other Fisher and Cushing - then the Marvel (1977) graphic novel of A New Hope, the one with Obi-Wan Kenobi on the cover, [1] would not have Luke (extracanonically) channelling Luther. [2]

It might also have been drawn by someone who had actually seen the movie... [3]

----------------------------------------------

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Of course, had you asked a newsagent in 1977 for a copy of "the graphic novel of A New Hope, the one with Obi-Wan Kenobi on the cover," she or he would have looked at you blankly until you translated this into "the comic of Star Wars, the one with Ben Kenobi on the cover."

[2] C/f both Luther Coy "Luke" Perry and Luther "Luke Skyywalker" [sic] Campbell.

[3] That's not snark... at least, it's not merely snark. When the Brothers Hildebrandt were commissioned to paint the SW:ANH movie poster - a change from these telempathic twins' usual shtick of bronzed dragons, buff elves, etc for gaudy covers of fantasy novels written by blokes named Terry - they hadn't actually seen the film either (this was pre-Internet, remember, and even largely pre-VCRs) and had only some still photos to work from. Hence the iconic 1977 poster of Luke wielding a cross-shaped lightsabre (Krull meets Braveheart), his muscled chest popping out of his tunic, Leia hanging off his leg (ahem), and Darth Vader looking like a robot dog in the background. Still, better than a green Vader who looks more like Bug from The Micronauts... The Hildebrandts may have produced a different sort of poster if commissioned by The Other George Lucas.

PS: In 1979, I read in a primary-school English textbook (American, printed in one of those exotic-sounding seats of publishing houses like Engelwood Cliffs) a story about two modern Amish kids going to a State Fair. Being barely-assimilated Pennsylvania Dutch, they referred to their parents as Moeder and... Vader. Huh? I thought, THIS is a Star Wars spinoff?! (not wholly implausible - these were every bloody where in 1979), but then I checked the publication date (1960s), and eventually deduced that Vader, like German Vatter, is cognate with English "Father". Boy, thinks 1979 me, what a funny coincidence! The Dutch word for "Father" is spelled like the name of "Darth Vader", whose name obviously symbolises something quite different - "Dark Invader." (I was among those who subscribed to the "Vader is really an alien overlord, with an oozy green head under his helmet" theory).

PPS: Then, in early 1983, just as fandom everywhere were buzzing with speculation about how Revenge - err, Wrath - err, Return of the Jedi might be resolved, I read somewhere (StarLog, maybe? Like I keep saying, this was pre-Internet) the perfect theory. It was set out at length, and this is my paraphrase of what I remember of it, though over 27 years I would not rule out the possibility that some of my own speculations have gotten enmeshed with it. I can't find it on the Web but I think it's too good to slip down the memory hole that awaits all paper-based fanfixes from pre-1998. I would claim at most only some claim of the credit.

Okay, goes like this:

Obi-Wan's and Leia's passing reference to the Clone Wars was not, as we all assumed back then, just another piece of Lucasian colour thrown into the dialogue - like "the Spice Mines of Kessel" or "wrestle a Gundark" - to give a Nivenish depth to his imagined galaxy. Rather, there had in fact been Clone Wars before the rise of the Empire; these might possibly have been important to the back story (- ya think?!); and they might have involved clones. Like the name says. (How long was the Hundred Years War again?)

Vader was not Luke's original father, but an evil clone that Senator Palpatine secretly made from the modified DNA of Anakin, a good man who was the greatest Jedi warrior and star pilot ever known. (Post-prequels, you could embellish this by having Anakin defeat Jango Fett - the template for the original clone troopers - and thus convince Palpatine that Jango was only the second-greatest warrior in the galaxy after all).

Palpatine got himself elected President of the Galactic Republic (refer Alan Dean Foster) and then declared himself Emperor and used the evil Vader clone to defeat all Jedi who resisted. When Skywalker père found out that Palpatine had misused his genetic stock in this fashion, he came out of retirement, left his new wife and baby son Luke in hiding with his brother Owen on Tatooine, clipped on his lightsabre again, joined the nascent Rebellion, and tried to kill his own clone (is that suicide, or filicide?). But Vader killed Anakin, by feigning sympathy to the Rebellion to trick him into lowering his guard (Vader would have all of Anakin's memories up to the time of cloning).

Which means it was true in a very real sense that, as Obi-Wan told Luke, "He [Vader] betrayed and murdered your father."

But also that it was true in a very real sense that, as Vader told Luke: "No, Luke. I am your father."

So that, at the end of Return of the Jedi, Luke manages to overpower and disarm Vader, and has him at his mercy. But he realises that the clone, even though corrupted, is still an exact copy of his father and "there is still good in him". So Luke spares Vader's life, and thus escapes ensnaring by the Dark Side. Palpatine mocks him and brings on the Force-lightning, but Vader rises up ("Respect for human life is not a weakness!") and turns against his own dark master. Cue Ewoks drumming on helmets, etc.

Okay, it's elegant, and has an "aha" moment as good as Éowyn telling the Nazgûl Witch-King "I am no man". (Which was a nice Wagnerian allusion - we know how much JRR loved those - but it did (a) depend on the old "Here's an ancient prophesy that a seer once uttered out of the blue, which doesn't relate to the rest of the plot but solves this particular dramatic tension quite nicely"; and (b) sit uneasily with Tolkien's frequent old-school use of "Men" throughout The Lord of the Rings as a synecdoche for "humans"/ "homo sapiens" in general... ("The Age of the Elves has passed! The Age of Man begins! Wait, sorry, Éowyn, the Age of Woman won't be for another 5,217 years after that.")

It also elegantly explains who "The Other" is (it's obvious that "Hey, guess what, it's Leia and she's Luke's sister, not that she actually does anything" was pulled out of Lucas' ass some time around September or October 1982 - you can't tell me otherwise he wouldn't have cleared his throat in 1979-80 and said "Uh... Leigh? Lawrence? This smouldering kiss that Leia gives Luke in Empire, Scene 10... Can we, uh, make that a hug...") AND also why Yoda was coy about explaining The Other's identity to Obi-Wan (maybe Kenobi didn't realise Vader had been cloned from Anakin; maybe Palpatine kept it top secret, but Yoda sensed it and guessed, which was why he wanted Luke to be ready for the dilemma it would present... Luke may have the fighting strength to kill Vader, but not the emotional cojones to be a virtual patricide).

But all that will now have to wait until Star Wars gets re-imagined, and that usually takes about two decades since the last original episode aired. So, 2025...

''Jesse James, it was a fact, He stabbed Sandra in the back, By sneakin' round with some be-tattooed hussy...''

One really needs to click on the link to see and appreciate this gal's tatts.

Sara Nathan, ''Sandra Bullock pulls out of The Blind Side premiere in UK as tattoo model claims she had affair with Oscar winner's husband Jesse James,'' Daily Mail [UK] (18 March 2010)

Sandra Bullock as a lass, was in Demolition Man
But as she grew up, her roles became more choosy
Told her agent, "Be selective - I can play a tough gal detective,
Or even rom-com heroines named Lucy."

But Miss Bullock with her men, she'd get burnt again 'n' again
Her problem was, she wasn't very fussy
Jesse James, it was a fact, he stabbed Sandra in the back
By sneakin' round with some be-tattooed hussy

CHORUS:

Oh, Jesse had a hide to go cheatin' on his bride
And she ought to Bullock-whip this damn impostor
That dirty little coward! while his wife was with Ron Howard,
Emotively acceptin' of her Oscar...

Now Jesse he was bold, cut right from the K-Fed mould
And clearly was a dodgy stupid donkey
But Miss Bullock she was smitten, and (as all the tabs have written)
Thanked the gods at least he weren't Matthew McConaughey

Though Sandra Jesse trusted, came the day that he got busted
And at last she was aware of Jesse's sin
He'd betrayed her indiscreetly - so she whispered, smiling sweetly,
That "I'm gonna put a needle through your skin"

CHORUS:

Oh, Jesse had a hide to go cheatin' on his bride
And she ought to Bullock-whip this damn impostor
That dirty little coward! while his wife was with Ron Howard,
Emotively acceptin' of her Oscar...

Another Hart-Fuller debate; or, [N]orm is [N]orm?

Either some poor academic's Jurisprudence I exam paper leaked into the In-World's reality, or else I have been mistaken and "Norm" is not a first name as such but a title that one adopts upon assuming an office, like "Pharoah" for ancient Egyptian kings, "Caesar" for Roman Emperors, and "Anna" or "Kate" for female Labor politicians (depending on whether born before or after 2 December 1972).

"PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd is at the centre of a fierce debate over whether parents of bullying victims should confront the mums and dads of their child's tormentor. ... Queensland Association of State School Principals president Norm Hart said he agreed with most of Mr Rudd's comments but urged parents to be sure they had the full story before contacting another student's family. ... Queensland Secondary Principals Association president Norm Fuller said he understood what Mr Rudd was saying, but he also held concerns some parents may react violently to the intensely emotional issue...."

- "Experts slam Kevin Rudd's advice on bullying," Courier-Mail (4 March 2010)

Strictly evidence-based

'... I am trying to call attention to the elephant in the room that everybody is too polite - or too devout - to notice: religion, and specifically the devaluing effect that religion has on human life. I don't mean devaluing the life of others (though it can do that too), but devaluing one's own life. Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end. If death is final, a rational agent can be expected to value his life highly and be reluctant to risk it. This makes the world a safer place, just as a plane is safer if its hijacker wants to survive. At the other extreme, if a significant number of people convince themselves, or are convinced by their priests, that a martyr's death is equivalent to pressing the hyperspace button and zooming through a wormhole to another universe, it can make the world a very dangerous place. Especially if they also believe that that other universe is a paradisical escape from the tribulations of the real world. Top it off with sincerely believed, if ludicrous and degrading to women, sexual promises, and is it any wonder that naive and frustrated young men are clamouring to be selected for suicide missions? There is no doubt that the afterlife-obsessed suicidal brain really is a weapon of immense power and danger.... To fill a world with religion, or religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used...'

- Richard Dawkins (Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, University of Oxford), "Religion's misguided missiles: Promise a young man that death is not the end and he will willingly cause disaster," The Guardian (Saturday 15 September 2001)

'The gunman who went on a deadly shooting spree at a Finnish high school overnight posted a video clip on the video-sharing site YouTube that signalled his intentions. The video, entitled "Jokela High School Massacre - 11/7/2007," was posted within the past two weeks under the pseudonym "Sturmgeist89", who identified himself as Pekka-Eric Auvinen, 18... In his profile posted alongside his YouTube videos, the teen describes himself as an "cynical existentialist, antihuman humanist." "I am prepared to fight and die for my cause. I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see [as] unfit, disgraces of the human race and failures of natural selection," he wrote... In another video, he sports a tee-shirt with the text "Humanity is Overrated."... "I don't want to be part of this ... society," he wrote, criticising "corrupted governments" and the "rule of idiocracy [sic {sic}]." "I am ready to die for a cause I know is right, just and true ... I will rather fight and die than live a long and unhappy life"...'

- AFP, "YouTube gunman kills eight at school," ABC News (8 November 2007)



UPDATE #1:

"... Of course, it is not unusual for homicidal maniacs to cite great writers when seeking to justify their crimes. The Chicago spree-killers Leopold and Loeb (the models for Hitchcock’s 1948 film, Rope) claimed Friedrich Nietzsche as their muse, as did the Moors murderer Ian Brady. Other deranged misfits have nominated Albert Camus, Jean Genet and André Gide. But it may take a keener intellect than was possessed by Harris, Klebold or Auvinen to negotiate such a reading list. The basics of evolution are much more accessible and are taught in every high school, so it should not be surprising that Darwin seems to be emerging as the inspiration for the more dim-witted schoolboy sociopath..."

- Dennis Sewell, "Charles Darwin and the children of the evolution: The naturalist outraged the church, prompting a bitter debate that still sets creationists against evolutionists. Now a sinister link has emerged between his work and the recent spate of high-school killings by crazed, nihilistic teenagers," The Sunday Times (8 November 2009)

UPDATE #2:

Now that's cosmically bad timing for a boast of this sort:

"Something you will never see: an atheist boarding a plane with a bomb strapped to him, waving a copy of On The Origin Of Species, before he blows himself up in a violent attempt to further his cause. So says David Nicholls, the head of the Atheist Foundation of Australia..."

- Jacqueline Maley, "Atheism's true believers gather," Sydney Morning Herald (13 February 2010).

If CS Lewis had converted to a religion other than Anglicanism…

Everyone wants to claim CS Lewis - from Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, though Southern Baptists (apparently Wheaton College has a shrine to the master on its grounds), to Mormons. But what if he had actually converted...?

Baptist: The Wise Man (Or King)'s Nephew

Brethren: The Last Battle (Of This Particular Dispensation)

Eastern Orthodox: The Ornately Bejewelled Silver, Gold, Diamond And Lapis Lazuli Chair... So Beautiful... How Could It Possibly Be Evil?

Lutheran: The Voyage (Not Being A Pilgrimage or Any Other Specie of Good Work) Of The Dawn Treader

Presbyterian: Junior Vice-President Caspian

Roman Catholic: In The First Place, Treating Of The Lion; In The Second Place, Treating Of The Witch; And In The Third Place, Treating Of The Wardrobe

Uniting/ Unitarian: The Horse and The Companion Human Accompanying Her or Him