Alarm

Is there anything more disappointingly annoying than waking up warm and in the dark, checking the time to see it's one minute before the alarm is meant to go off, then do you wait, switch it off , get up or what? I waited.

Continuing on "The God Delusion" and the treatment of atheists is absolutely disgusting bry religious zealots and idiots. We are seeing this is the USA today where Christianity has been engineered as a power grabbing money making machine and woe betide anyone who questions it. One example was an atheist who wanted to protest against a faith healer who was telling diabetics to throw away their insulin and cancer sufferers to stop their treatment and pray for a miracle. He contacted the local police department about protection from the faith healer's supporters and was threatened in no uncertain terms by everyone in the police department because he was questioning "god's work".

I keep using a lower case "g" for god because in my sixty one years I have yet to see any evidence of a god, though seen plenty of evidence of the harm caused by religion.

It looks like another cold but bright day today and I was surprised to see that I was up to series five of "Parks and Recreation" so still 55 episodes to go but a lot nearer the end than I thought, and thoroughly enjoying it.

So this weekend Sky Arts are screening a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the film of "Quadrophenia" and to be honest I have never watched it, although I love the album and thought the classical version with Alfie Boe in the was very good. I will be recording all the Sky Arts programs and will get round to watching the film which one of the many unwatched films in my DVD collection.

So we will go for a live take of "The Real Me" the opening song from the the "Quadrophenia" album.

Answer

I am enjoying, if that's the right word, "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins but seems to be more against  organised controlling religion and by extension the monotheist "god" which is the focus of most religion. I'm a tenth of the way through the book and think that at some point he will take aim and my own belief that evolution won't waste our consciousness but I have no evidence or reason to believe that, but you can never satisfactorily prove the non-existence of something, and also the fact that we cannot explain something means we have not found the answer. I couldn't really explain how a plane flies but it's not supernatural, magic or the will of god.

Also I wonder if Richard Dawkins would have a problem with people who worshipped the Earth and believed when they die become one with the Earth. He couldn't really argue with the basic premis.

Often religion is a search for "the answer" and two books spring to mind that provide the solution.

The first being Douglas Adams' "Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy" which gives that answer as 42 but the tells us you need to know what the question was.

The next is "Venus on the Half Shell" written by Philip Jose Farmer under the pseudonym Kilgore Trout, a creation of the amazing Kurt Vonnegut. Basically the protagonist is searching for God to ask, in his opinion, the ultimate question:

Why are we born to suffer and die?

Through many adventures he eventually comes face to face with God and asks his questionand God answers:

Why Not?

A great ending to the book.

And just a thought, why doesn't the Christian God have a proper name? It's like calling your dog Dog (ironically a palindrome of God) and what the heck is the Holy Ghost ?

So what to go with this morning , maybe "Converted" by The Alabama 3 from "Exile on Coldharbour Lane" which my friend Tom glared at me as they broke into the chorus "Let's Go Back To Church* but by the end of the gig even he was converted.

Follow

Just a short post about an odd thing. I didn't really use twitter until Google ditched Google+ and I looked for new ways to share my blog post as Facebook also seemingly stopped feeds. I'm not sure how many I followed or how many follower I had (this blog after twelve years has FIVE followers) so I am not the most popular person on the planet, but I am sure I had about seventy followers and followed a similar number of people.

Every few days I get a new follower but the number of followers I have seems to remain at a constant 77 (just checked it's now 78) which is a lot more than this blog (despite it's now daily 1-1.5K visits (and yes I know a lot will be robots and apparently French people (Merci, Merci pour les visites)  so overall that is a success and it's only since sharing the blog on Twitter that these visit spikes took off. Below are two images showing the spikes and the fact that France is the source of a lot of visits.

Big In France

Big In 2019

So since twitter , Feedburner picked me up and that I think is the main reason for the reason hike in hits. I would like to hit 300K by the end of the year and at the current rate that could happen by mid October , but that is assuming I sill get over 1K hits a day.

So I though I would just post this listening to the Giorgio Moroder album "Deja Vu" , and while it's OK it's not as adventurous as I expected although "74 is the New 24" is quite good and the first song that would fit with the "From Here To Eternity" album which is one of my favourites. That was followed by an excellent take on Suzanne Vega's "Toms Diner" with Britney Spears, which shows it's always good to listen to a whole album. Not as good, in my opinion, as "From Here To Eternity" but more than listenable with some good points.

I've also realised that Giorgio Moroder's moustache is almost as iconic as Frank Zappa's (see below)

So "74 is the New 24" would be a good one to share with you and the video is cool too.

Enjoy your Sunday.

Atheist

I'm currently reading "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins and the foreword tells me that anyone reading this will be an Atheist if they finish it. This is the sort of evangelical preaching that annoys me about Richard Dawkins. I ton't like being told I am wrong without empirical evidence and I almost want to say I believe in God just to spite him.

I was made to go to church  by my parents until I was ten then it was my choice. I went to Catholic schools and some teachers every week tried to trip you up on what had happened in mass and certain pupils would tell teachers that you hadn't been to Church which resulted in various fors of denigration and punishment.

Jesuits taught me at secondary school and some of them were extremely logical by admitting that only faith could justify their position. That earned my respect because they were fine with people who were "unbelievers" .

Through my life I have come across lots of great religious people and none of them have tried to convert me.

In 62 years I have seen no evidence of God but I am always open to be proved wrong, that's PROVED wrong not told I'm wrong.

And I do have faith, faith that the sun will rise, faith that the light will turn on when I flick the switch, faith that the kettle will boil when I switch it on, a little less faith that I will get a phone signal or Amazon Prime will work when I want to watch a prong.

Because of evolution I believe that our minds continue after death, so it doesn't really bother me, but evolution tends to keep the good adaptable bits and in a lot of humans the mind is the most interesting and flexible part.

So "The God Delusion" is four hundred pages and quite a large book so think this will take me about a month to finish.

I'm still getting a thousand hits a day on the blog so the Feedburner thing  (something to do with syndicated content) is still working although a side effect is lots of visits from France for some reason though I can't say I'm complaining.

To go with this I'm going with "Faith" by George Michael just because I like it.

Morning

Is Saturday better than Friday? Friday has the anticipation of the two day weekend combined with the fact that it's the last day of work , whereas Saturday you can get up when you want , you don't have to go to work but you only have one more day before Monday comes around. This is not true for many people who work in retail, banks , call centres and the like so apologies to all those.

I once read of an American car shop who noticed that most of their sales came on Friday afternoon and Saturday so they changed their working week from Monday to Friday to Friday to Monday (that doesn't seem to make sense but it does) so employees went from a five day week to a four day week for the same pay and profits increased. This model wouldn't work for everything but is definitely an example of how you should always look to improve situations in a way that benefits everybody.

As I said I finished "Brief Answers To The Big Questions", the final Stephen Hawking book in around a week and it is a very interesting, easy and thought provoking read which I would recommend to everybody. My next book is going to be "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, a far heavier tome but I do like Dawkins' sensible and logical arguments although he does, ironically, get a bit evangelical at times. Still I will see how it goes.

I;ve been enjoying the single "Ibtihaj" by Rapsody with GZA . I though "Ibtihaj" was some kind of acronym but it's actually the name of Ibtihaj Muhammad, the first female Muslim-American athlete to earn a medal at the Olympics. The chorus, male backing vocals sounds like a eerie Bowie song like say "The Bewlay Brothers". It is a great sound and I heard it again on Radcliffe and Maconie on 6Music this morning but Chris Hawkins has also been playing it.

Take a listen and definitely check out the books.

Enjoy your Saturday.

Friday

Yes it's the 13th and had an early night last night . The Feedburner feed seems to be dropping off but this time may be because I haven't posted for a couple of days through essentially laziness, apathy and tiredness.

Last night I watched at excellently subversive comedy  film called "The Brand New Testament" which relocates God to Brussels and he is nothing but a git , and his rebellious daughter is brilliant , there are some very funny scenes especially after she escapes through washing machine after Jesus advises her what to do is a very small cameo and God's wife follows the evolution of her personal copy of "The Last Supper" painting. Really enjoyed that.

According to the doctor I'm getting old but in very good condition so all is fine on that front.

I could go on about it being the 13th but I've written about that in the past here so today will be just working before the weekend and picking up my pre ordered copy of "Hypersonic Missiles" by Sam Fender on vinyl and signed by the lad himself from Beyond Vinyl.

After yesterday's rain it looks like another summery day though no doubt it will be cold, it is Autumn after all, not Summer any more.

So it's Friday , the weekend is nearly here so what do we go with. As it's the 13th we'll go with Beck, Bogert and Appice's cover of Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" for no other reason than I 'm too lazy to think of anything else.

Today could be a lazy day.

Phone

I've just watched a short series on Amazon Prime called "Silent Eye" and it was shot on a Samsung Galaxy S8 (see here) . I remember seeing the film "Tangerine" that was shot on an iPhone and it's quite amazing that we still refer to this devices as "phones" . They can do everything in a hand held package.

I still think they are not ideal for watching a big film, but when they work on normal or holographic projection even that might be just another thing to do. As yet we can't use them to teleport (like Star Trek tricorders and communicators) but how near might that be, although that is something that has always philosophically confused me. If you are teleported then you need to be deconstituted and reconstituted so is the reconstituted you really you?

Obviously reading Stephen Hawking has got me (over) thinking big thoughts, but that is not a bad thing, and I've included "Star Trek Dreaming" by Spirit from "Future Games" for your enjoyment.