Magic Statistics

I never thought I'd live to see the day.

Following intense US pressure, the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday issued an unprecedented condemnation of Monday's Hizbullah attacks on northern Israel.

This condemnation - slamming Hizbullah by name for acts of hatred - marked the first time the Security Council has ever reprimanded Hizbullah for cross-border attacks on Israel. The condemnation followed by two days a failed attempt to get a condemnation issued on Monday, the day of the attack, when Algeria came out against any mention of Hizbullah in the statement.

When asked what changed from Monday to Wednesday, one diplomatic official replied: John Bolton, a reference to the US ambassador to the UN.

Thank you, John Bolton, for pressuring the UN to speak the truth about Hizbullah terrorists. One man can make a difference.

via Gates of Vienna.

Last week Kate McMillan of small dead animals exposed a Saskatchewan government online poll as a fraud. She hit a nerve, apparently; she was then attacked by Minister of Learning (say what?) Andrew Thomson. A member of the opposition defended her in the Saskatchewan legislature.

Mr. D’Autremont: — Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In today’s world almost everyone has heard of blogs. Even the Minister of Learning has heard of them. Last week he even quoted from one of the more prominent blogs that reports on Saskatchewan issues.

The minister took issue with smalldeadanimals — one word — .com blogger Catherine McMillan’s opinion that our leader, the member for Swift Current, is the real thing. Mr. Speaker, the minister said that he thinks that bloggers are totally irrelevant. The Minister of Learning, during his Speech to the Throne on November 14 said, and I quote:

. . . but I will tell you that the Saskatchewan people that are going to . . . the polls in the next election are not going to be swayed by . . . small dead animals.
. . .
The minister may be interested in knowing that smalldeadanimals.com had more than 1.2 million hits, averaged 4,000 a day and 29,000 a week.

Way to go, Kate! That'll learn Andrew Thomson.

Umberto Eco is depressed by moderns who fancy themselves rationalist but in reality are deeply superstitious.

The ideologies such as communism that promised to supplant religion have failed in spectacular and very public fashion. So we're all still looking for something that will reconcile each of us to the inevitability of our own death.

G K Chesterton is often credited with observing: "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." Whoever said it - he was right. We are supposed to live in a sceptical age. In fact, we live in an age of outrageous credulity.

The "death of God", or at least the dying of the Christian God, has been accompanied by the birth of a plethora of new idols. They have multiplied like bacteria on the corpse of the Christian Church — from strange pagan cults and sects to the silly, sub-Christian superstitions of The Da Vinci Code.

Mr Eco, however, admits "I was raised as a Catholic, and . . . I have abandoned the Church". A critic of contemporary irreligion who laments the decline of traditional religion, but he himself rejects the church. Hmmm . . . where have we seen this before?

The collect for today, the 1st Sunday in Advent, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious Majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.