Jamie123

It makes every bit of sense and is perfectly germane to this discussion. A crocodile keeper is responsible for making sure his crocodiles don't eat anyone. If he does his job well and no kids end up as crocky-din-dins then we rightly give him our admiration. Similarly a person who is afflicted with paedophilic tendencies has a responsibility to keep those tendencies in check so no one gets hurt. If he does this well then yes...I think he deserves our admiration. OK the analogy isn't perfect because: (i) A crocodile keeper has a responsibility also for keeping his crocodiles healthy; he could keep zoo visitors even safer by shooting all his crocs through the head, but that would only get him the sack. A "righteous" paedophile on the other hand would prefer to give up his paedophilic urges than merely to control them, but that is often not possible. (As Paul discovered with his "thorn in the flesh".) (ii) A crocodile keeper has likely chosen his profession, while for a paedophile (good or bad) it has probably been thrust upon him by his own childhood abuse. P.S. I'm not suggesting that Paul was a paedophile - only that what he refers to in 2 Corinthians 12 may have been something analogous to this.

I find your statement even odder: do you not find it admirable to resist evil because resisting evil is "about evil"? You might as well say that the crocodile keeper at the zoo is not to be trusted because his work is associated with crocodiles (which as everyone knows are dangerous).

I don't believe anything has ever been 100% accepted. (Except perhaps breathing.)

Last night on TV they showed Cyndi Lauper at the Glastonbury Festival. I asked my wife what kind of instrument Cyndi Lauper was playing. She didn't know. I asked her if it was a zither. She didn't know. I looked it up on Google today - it was actually a Appalachian Dulcimer (which is a sort of zither, so I was kinda right) She wasn't singing of Mount Abora though. She was singing "Time After Time". Aren't you glad I told you? Here are some dulcimers... And here's Cyndi playing the dulcimer (not at Glastonbury): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5ikJcGm7ps

"It matters not how strait the gate..." P.S. Actually (and this is drifting off topic) I'm not convinced that a consideration of the consequences necessarily has no part in deciding what is "the right thing". But we've had this argument before over whether it would be "the right thing" to steal food for starving children, given that it was a definite choice between that and allowing them to die. (My position then - as it still is now - is that would steal food if that was the only way I could keep my children, and I wouldn't repent of it afterwards as to do so would be to wish my children dead.)

Well you know how it is: we all know how twee the Irish are with their leprechauns and crocks of gold and their swinging shillelaghs and their love of fist-fighting. And we all love the Germans with their leather pants and their yodelling and their spicy sausages. Who doesn't enjoy Chinese dragons, and telling everyone they were born in "The Year of the Cat" (or whatever). Familiarity on the other hand breeds contempt :)

Ha ha - not if Mr. T has his wicked way!

And you think Great Britain isn't a melting pot also these days? For sure Americans relish the taste of "Germanness" at the Oktoberfest, wear green on St. Paddy's day and go to Chinese restaurants, but these are excursions away from the everyday norm. (Except of course for actual German, Irish and Asian émigrés and their descendants but these are sub-cultures.) I'm probably going to get roasted for saying this, but I've always seen "Anglo-Saxonness" as still dominant in the USA, just as it is in the UK. This won't last forever of course, and probably it shouldn't. It's a crumbling wall, but a wall nonetheless.

...and I wouldn't have predicted it in a million years. (Well maybe that's an exaggeration - let's say 10.) Great Britain is no longer going to be a part of Europe. Which it never was really, except on paper. We never even adopted that stupid annoying "Euro" currency. Aside from thinking that the NHS (our equivalent of Obamacare, which we've had since the 1950s and most of us use) is a "good idea", and not automatically equating "socialist" with "spawn of the devil", we've much more in common with our cousins over the Atlantic with those over the Channel. But I was still predicting an easy win for the Remain campaign. Just as I was also predicting an easy win for Hillary over Trump. Despite the fact that they look and act totally differently (and the fact that Trump is stinking rich), there's a good parallel between Trump and Farage. Both certainly want to keep foreigners out of their countries. So come November who knows...? Meanwhile here's a picture of Nigel Farage, about to win the "who can open his mouth the widest" competition...

Maybe you'd prefer this one of Hillary...

There, there.... Here's a nice picture of Richard Dawkins to cheer you up...

Just as Britannia once ruled the waves, England once led the world in football* hooliganism. Not any more though... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36515283 Admittedly most of the thugs arrested in France so far have been English, but that's because dodging the police is not so easy when you're tanked up with 8 pints of larger. The Russians on the other hand are as sober and clear-headed as any Mormon, and have well-rehearsed plans to melt away when "le gendarmerie" arrive. Nemesis is on their heels though: the news last night was that Russia has a "suspended suspension", and will be banned from the tournament if there's any more trouble. It'll be fun to see what happens now! * I'm talking about actual football here - where you kick the ball with your foot, and you don't pick it up with your hands unless you're the goalie - and not that weird game of Rugby where every player looks like the Honey Monster with a motorcycle helmet. The Honey Monster (inserted for reference)

Wash your mouth out with soap!

Not these days. I started voting Labour back in the 1990s, when Blair seemed a welcome change from John Major and the sagging remnants of the Thatcher administration (which itself had seemed so vibrant a decade before). I finally lost patience with Labour during the Gordon Brown years, when it was: "Let's ban everything we don't like the sound of, because it will make the world so much safer (say's us)!" Cameron doesn't seem to be so much of an improvement either so...eugh. The trouble with all these people is they're all politicians.

I'm certainly not voting for Donald Trump!!! (Nor anyone else in the US presidential election. I'm not an American.)

I always think of what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 12: I've read some theories about this that make it sound like something very noble. For example: "Paul felt guilty about people he couldn't reach with his message." But I think it more likely that Paul had some very ignoble sin in his life that he was constantly tempted towards, and sometimes (perhaps) he indulged in and had to go through lengthy repentance. This would have flown in the face of his message and made him feel a fraud a lot of the time, but it would also certainly have kept his feet on the ground. I like it that Paul shies away from specifics: it allows us to apply his experience to our own disgusting and embarrassing secrets. Whatever the thorn in our own flesh might be, we can see ourselves in Paul and take hope from what he says.

Two things I have in common with a lot of Mormons which not many other people share with me: An obsession with the minutiae of Tolkien's Middle-earth A love of "Rush" I always wonder why I feel at home here :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T17VzztS60M RIP Mel Smith - a very, very funny man. (He was wonderful as the torturer in The Princess Bride!)

I've known people who seem super-spiritual, go on about how close they are to God (though oddly they eschew words like "spiritual" and "religious") and are constantly ready to point out the faults in your life, and how if only you did as they did you would be so much better, happier, closer to God, just like they are etc...etc...etc. And yet when you point out faults in their lives immediately go on the defensive and claim you are not qualified to criticize them, you don't know what it's like to be them, you are not taking them seriously, etc...etc. If (like me) you are spiritually and emotionally immature and pathologically unsure of yourself, then they'll lead you a merry dance, building you up with assurances and knocking you down the moment you start to see through their disguise. It is definitely a form of bullying. But after a while you start to see these people for what they are, and how you own attempts to follow them have actually been a form of idolatry. It's like I said before about "heroes": remember from the start that they have feet of clay, and if they get angry or start "boo-hooing" when you point this out, either stand your ground or walk away.

One thing I've learned in teaching is that you very often meet students who seem to be totally "on the ball". They are always reading and quoting the latest articles - are very lively in class - ask lots of questions - seem totally up everything. You think "This guy/girl is going to get an A+ for sure!" And some of them do. But others do miserably badly in their exams. When you look at their scripts you ask "is this the same person?" People like this will naturally ace job interviews, but may not be offered many interviews on account of their low grades. When you are asked for references on them what do you go by? Neither dazzling charisma nor the ability to do exams are necessarily good indicators of a person's worth as an employee. I personally tend to go by my subjective feelings: a potential employer can look at the grades him/herself and balance them against my glowing comments.

It's like Charles Wesley said: Rejoice in glorious hope! Jesus the Judge shall come, And take His servants up to their eternal home. We soon shall hear th’archangel’s voice; The Trump of God shall sound, rejoice! It's all coming true!

Very amusing! But what if it's a map of Arrakis, Anne McCaffrey's Pern or Stephen R. Donaldson's "The Land"?

When I saw "Sir Gawain" I immediately thought "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", which I've always loved. I know it's totally off-topic, but these are the points I get from that story: Sin is insidious - you are always doing it in one way or another, even when you think you are "being good". There is always something a bit impure about your motives. It's like T.S. Eliot wrote about "...the shame of motives late revealed, and the awareness of things done to others' harm which once you took tor exercise of virtue." Gawain thinks he is "exercising virtue" when he pushes the temptress away, little knowing that that is not what the test was about. The paramount importance of grace: Gawain's escape from death is by grace alone. His sins should have condemned him to death, but he is nevertheless spared to make use of what he has learned and to become a better knight. Most importantly we are all in the same boat: Gawain returns to his friends in shame, but when he tells his story they see themselves in his place. When he wears the green sash as a mark of his disgrace, they do the same.

A couple of years ago I was in one of our school PC labs and there was a bunch of students gathered round one of the computers. There were wisps of what seemed to be smoke rising over them so I naturally thought the monitor was on fire. I rushed over to them. Me: There is smoke coming off that monitor! Turn it off! Now! (Students look at me as though I am mad.) Me: I SAW smoke! Turn this monitor off! Student: (mumbling) It's an e-cigarette. (Opens his bag a couple of inches, giving me a very brief glimpse of something, though I have no idea what.) Me: What? (I had then never heard of an "e-cigarette") (Students now go back to discussing to the program they're working on and start to ignore me.) Me: What the heck is going on here!!?? Student: (annoyed at the continued interruption) It's just an e-cigarette! (Gives me a slightly better look at it this time.) Me: Someone please tell me what is going on!! (Students are now ignoring me completely. I am extremely vexed. I go to fetch the lab superintendent.) Superintendent: Dr. (my surname) tells me there is smoke coming out of this monitor! Student: It's just an e-cigarette! I can't remember exactly how it ended, though I think there was eventually a ban on e-cigarettes in the lab. That sounds like a no-brainer nowadays, but e-cigarettes were so new back then that no one had ever thought of having a special rule forbidding them. But I am still shocked at how casually it was all taken. I daresay e-cigarettes are no more dangerous in the PC lab than they are anywhere else, but for anyone who (like me) started their career as an engineer, the sight of anything resembling smoke rising over any piece of electrical equipment is like a red rag to a bull! (Except possibly when it is disconnected and there is soldering going on - which there never was in that lab.)

I believe they were raw. They still had their shells on anyway.