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A wonderful antidote to fundamentalist theological lunacy and indeed religion in general is the book God Is Not Great by the late Christopher Hitchens. In particular his account of the beginnings of Mormonism is so funny (and he tells it straight) that it is barely believable that that religion...

Sploo, as for the "B" argument I too cannot believe that it was zero but I can't believe that it was all either. We will indeed never know. I'm glad you raised intelligent design as it immediately puts us in safer waters. I find it endlessly amusing (as I would religion if it didn't lead to so...

OK but I think that what we can all acknowledge is that there is a tendency in the real world for people to only cite the evidence which supports their case and not the bits which their case can't account for. Your hypothetical example is easily dealt with by producing the known and proven...

The problem with what Woody says is who gets to decide which opinions are half-arsed etc? The best line on this that I was taught at school and that I try never to forget is that your opinions are only as good as the evidence you have to back them up. In using the "B" word (I wish he hadn't :D )...

I have direct experience only of the Army: yes you do largely know what you are getting yourself into and yes you can walk away from it (obviously according to the terms and conditions of employment). Yes you can be confronted with potentially lethal situations which to the untrained civilian...

Thanks, Andy. My eyes weren't deceiving me then.

TN, you're getting at what I was on about. If everybody is a hero for doing what their jobs routinely demand of them, what do you call somebody who does indeed go above and beyond? I reckon that coppers and firemen routinely have bravery (by the standards of Joe Soap sitting at his computer in...

Hang on a minute, one of the great problems with the public climate in recent years is the attempt to close down dissenting voices, usually in a rude and intolerant way. The point of a democracy is that everybody gets their say as long as they are not lying or being obscene or are advocating...

I saw a picture of a bloke doing letter carving and it looked like his chisel was bevelled on both sides (like an axe, effectively). Were my eyes deceiving me? If they are used for letter carving, what are the advantages of that design?

This is from today's Daily Telegraph: Australian astrophysicist gets four magnets stuck up his nose while trying to create anti-coronavirus device He was taken to hospital after trying to create a device that would prevent people from touching their faces There have been many tales of bravery...

Come on lads, you're being a bit slow on the uptake. That thing is obviously designed as the latest must-have jewellery accessory for those rapper chaps (the "c" is silent), clearly to be worn on a half inch thick chain around the neck. How else are you going to be able to wear so many diamonds...

Woodbloke: You won't believe this but I do all that already! :D I should add that I have no problems in keeping a straight line from front to back with either my western saws or my Japanese saw. The problem is that I drift a bit to the right as I work down through the cut. That said, I have...

This enforced idleness could turn out to be really useful. That's spuds sorted out, then. What are the chances of getting the really big things sorted out: a. Milk in first or second. b. Dark matter. c. Jam or cream first on the scown. d. What's beyond the event horizon in a black hole...

Thanks for that view. It's fair, informed comment and particularly useful for trying to come to a balanced viewpoint.

I think it turns on the fact that the Armed Forces are self-selecting, the wish to serve your country being a very big factor. I imagine there's a fair bit of selflessness in the emergency services. For instance I've only known a few coppers but they all were really motivated by trying to stamp...

To stay with you slightly off topic, I remember when I was in the Army talking to people who had been involved in providing cover during a strike by both ambulancemen and firemen in (I think) the 80s. The Army got the task and did the obvious thing which was to set up an ops room to coordinate...

I picked up one of those rip/cross cut double sided ones and I practice with it by using it whenever I need to do a crosscut which can then be trimmed up on the shooting board. I find it goes through some woods a lot quicker but it doesn't do anything about my tendency to drift a bit to the...

Here's a paragraph written by a doctor in an article in the Daily Telegraph: Medically, fighting an epidemic by suppressing it through draconian restrictions of liberty achieves the opposite of herd immunity. It ensures that the majority of survivors have no immunity and so are at just as much...

Would it be worth your while buying him, say, a comic novel, something which he could "wallow in" but would make him grin a bit?

I think that the jury will be out until the whole thing has died down. Suppose the Swedish approach turns out to be relatively successful? Can it be compared to the UK because Sweden doesn't have a seriously massive city like London? I've also started wondering that given that many people don't...