Pooh, a bear of Very Little Brain returns

7240383A new book has been written by David Benedictus. I read an extract on Sunday.  It doesn’t quite match the same tone and whimsiness of the A.A. Milne classical stories. It has the basic character traits right (which would be difficult to get wrong, since they’re so thoroughly outlined on websites.)

Favourite original quotes, which I got from here:

“It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like ‘What about lunch?’ ”
— Winnie the Pooh

“Just because an animal is large, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t want kindness; however big Tigger seems to be, remember that he wants as much kindness as Roo.”
— Winnie the Pooh

“If you live to be 100, I hope I live to be 100 minus 1 day, so I never have to live without you.”
— Winnie the Pooh

It’s about the return of Christopher Robin (the real one died in 1995). I will definitely get it. Am struggling to get through Tony Abbott’s Battlelines at the moment. A bit yawnful.

A copyright-free pic by Spictacular. Tigger, Kanga, Edward Bear (Winnie-the-Pooh), Eeyore, and Piglet.
A copyright-free pic by Spictacular. Tigger, Kanga, Edward Bear (Winnie-the-Pooh), Eeyore, and Piglet.

Police are spying on us

Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House on an overcast day.
A mega-crim's getaway boat? Or just part of the NSW ferries service? It was suitably dark and overcast at the Dangerous Ideas conference.

David Mutton, who was the NSW Police’s chief psychologist for 11 years, is now a lecturer at UWS in forensic psychology. “Crime pays,” he said, conceding he’d made a good living out of it.

He was speaking at the Dangerous Ideas conference at the Sydney Opera House. Mutton said that most people think it’s OK if the police spy on lots of people because “if you’re not doing anything wrong, it doesn’t matter”.

But then he gave us an example of how a “cleanskin” (innocent person) can be under surveillance for being unwittingly associated with a criminal — eg. the criminal’s accountant or former school friend. He told a story of how a woman at a bar could get involved with a criminal, unknowingly, and then all her activities, including bedroom gymnastics, would be caught on film, phone, email etc and observed/cheered on by the surveillance team.

Also, if you’re a cleanskin, you can be called in and be forced to tell the truth and spill your guts about anything you know (under pain of five years’ jail if you lie or refuse to talk). These meetings are kept secret (you hope!).  “There’s no right to silence,” Mutton said, despite your innocence and lack of involvement.

By monitoring phone conversations, police psychologists can detect criminals’ vulnerabilities and use that to derail them, particularly in interviews.

Continue reading Police are spying on us

Christopher Hitchens: Religion poisons everything

Christopher Hitchens, left, and Tony Jones.
Christopher Hitchens, left, and Tony Jones.
Jones (left) and Hitchens leave the stage.
Jones (left) and Hitchens leave the stage.

He’s an amazing speaker — was the opening address for the Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Sydney Opera House. I couldn’t take notes cause they turned down the lights and I can’t recollect his whole arguments — he’s extensively thorough on each point, with numerous tangents. So these aren’t his exact quotes — there’s a telecast on the ABC site.

I’d thought there would be argy bargy as I saw some Traddies in the foyer (traditional Catholics) but only the MC, Tony Jones, was asking questions.

Hitchens covered the angles of “I don’t need supernatural supervision to do good deeds” and gave an example of how he likes to donate blood.

Also, he said religious people have to accept that the Abrahamic God took a long while to intervene in people’s history — only 3000 years ago — and yet there had been a lot of wars and raping and kids killed before then. He said that had to be acknowledged, andhe doesn’t buy the arguments: “God’s ways are greater than ours, He works in mysterious ways, his ways are opaque.”

Continue reading Christopher Hitchens: Religion poisons everything

Christopher Hitchens on Q&A

He’s a brilliant debater. He knocked Fr Brennan off his perch (who chaired the Human Rights Consultation and came up with — nothing. Hardly surprising that a Catholic priest would decide we shouldn’t have any human rights charter).

Hitchens is paying a visit during the churches’ $1.5 million campaign promoting “Jesus”, which runs until the end of October.

There were so many highlights — read the transcript here, or watch it.

Hitchens on Mother Teresa: … Mother Teresa was endlessly praised for work that most of the time she actually never did. I went to watch her very closely in Calcutta. You don’t mind that she thinks that what Bengal and Calcutta mainly needs is a campaign … against birth control and family planning. Has anyone here ever been to Bengal and concluded that’s what it really needs? That’s what she was really campaigning for … She gives a wonderful impression of being a charitable person. So what Indians need is more missionaries to cure poverty, when everybody knows there’s only one cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women, which means giving them some control over their reproduction. You name me … a Catholic or Muslim charity that goes into the fields determined to secure the empowerment of women.

Jesuit Fr Frank Brennan on the topic of gays: No, homosexuality is not a sin. It’s a disposition. If you want to argue about whether particular homosexual acts are appropriate for an individual in a moral context, that would require a pastoral discussion with that individual.

I think that’s misleading. The Catechism of the Catholic Church  says:

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex.  Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,140 tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.”141 They are contrary to the natural law …  Under no circumstances can they be approved.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.