Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor says respect atheists.

We must be tret with ‘deep esteem’, quoth the Cardinal (who hid a paedophile priest from the law when he was Archbishop of the Diocese of Arundel, btw. Fuck all respect for the law, then, eh, Cardinal?)

On he blithers ” Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor called for more understanding and appreciation between believers and non-believers.” Jolly good! You can believe that Jesus is the son of a loving God who let his parthenogenetically conceived bastard son be nailed to a cross for our sins, was resurrected after 3 days, and giving his disturbed follower Peter and his corrupt successors a teaching magisterium to interpret God’s word to the faithful.

You believe that, but keep it out of my life, out of kids’ schools and out of public policy and we’ll get on just fine. Even though I think it’s babbling from the padded cell.

And then he says…” a ‘hidden God’ was active in everyone’s life.”

No, Murph (it was in a miserable grey church of yours in Godalming, Surrey that I finally lost my faith by the way) you say respect us, then respect what we know: there is no God, revealed or hidden.

Update: welcome to those of you from Greg Laden’s recommended reads the last time he linked to me was when I blew a gasket about religion, too.  Now pop over to Gruts‘ natural history lovechild  The Red Notebook and follow the link to hear Dawkins tearing the BBC’s leading ‘Rottweiler’ interviewer a new one over his kid gloves treatment of religious interviewees. A delicious three minutes of radio.

Some British climate change denialists

made great play of the Heartland Institute’s conference and its article: “500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares” (caps rage theirs).

Some of the listed scientists have contacted the Institute and given them beans at being misquoted and their work misapproriated. Story of an eminent scientist thus traduced and links here.

A few annoyed scientists write:Why can’t people spend their time trying to identify and evaluate the facts concerning climate change rather than trying to obscure them?” — Dr. James P. Berry, Senior Scientist, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute

They have taken our ice core research in Wyoming and twisted it to meet their own agenda. This is not science.”
– Dr. Paul F. Schuster, Hydrologist, US Geological Survey

Please remove my name IMMEDIATELY from the following article and from the list which misrepresents my research.”
– Dr. Mary Alice Coffroth, Department of Geology, State University of New York at Buffalo

(H/t the splendidly hatted Island of Doubt)

Quote mining and misrepresenting science is straight from the creationist playbook of dishonest tactics. What strange habits these brain donors learn from one another in bed.

Flood!

the ITV filum of the book.  Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.  CGI does not plot and character replace.

Gardening

is bloody knackering.  They never tell you that in the Sunday supplements.  And the weeds are already back, laughing at me.  Bugger this, I’m off to buy poisons.

Science:

Chad Orzel is talking sense about science communication at Scienceblogs.

Meanwhile Jeremy Clarkson is making a tit of himself about science in the Sunday Times (and I like the man’s irreverent style, I suppose it was inevitable that one day looking at a day’s science output would strike him as being a good idea for a column).

US eyes boom in nuclear reactors.

An unfortunate headline from the BBC.

Food poisoning

is no fun.  Well, sitting on the loo with the world falling out of one’s arse is no fun.

Now, visiting London as I have been one eats out: breakfast at 8 am at a good friend’s home seems blameless - toast and marmalade.  Lunch: sloppy giuseppe pizza at Pizza Express Euston Road. Unlikely as a source of food poisoning.

6.45pm, roast veg and stuff sarnie Foo Go sarnie bought from WHSmiths Kings Cross Station (for later), 6.50 a Mexicana Bagel bought from Ixxy’s franchise, King’s Cross, eaten at 7pm, the sandwich eaten at 8.30.  I suspect it’s one of the last two that is the source of my current unpleasantness.  This will probably be over by the morning, but I’ll be contacting Camden (?) Council’s Environmental Health and King’s Cross management in the morning.

Someone has not been washing their hands, and my arse is running like a glassblower’s nose.

Kate Rusby…

another of the generation of superb female singer songwriters that Britain is producing with seemingly insolent ease. Up there with Eliza Carthy and Karine Polwart, and that’s exalted company. Just listening to her CD Awkward Annie, and if I hear a lovelier song than High on a Hill this year I’ll be surprised. Pleasantly, obviously. Kate Rusby website here.

Oh, listening on, Awkward Annie is just superb. Not a mediocre track on it and the musicianship in her band is just take-my-guitar-outside-and-smash-it fantastic.

Humphrey Lyttleton has died.

The world is a worse place for his passing. Great, great jazz musician* and superb host of BBC Radio 4’s ‘I’m sorry I haven’t a clue.’ If you haven’t heard Humph get a laugh by saying nothing, you haven’t heard true a master at work. If you have time to spare and want a guaranteed belly-laugh, go to the Clue site and listen to a some clips.

BBC obituary here.

* In a slightly spine-shivering PS, I borrowed one of his CDs from Whitby Library yesterday, got home to hear of his death.

Nature red in beak and claw.

Standing at the kitchen window, a blackbird perches on the window ledge. A bang, for a fraction of a second there’s a raptor staring in then it’s off down the drive, a blackbird in its talons. It didn’t have a restful lunch: a second blackbird flew into a nearby tree, gave it the verbals then attacked it and drove it out of the garden. Sorry the photo’s manky - compact digital camera with lots of zooming and cropping, but I’m sure you get the idea.