Listen above to my interview today on RTE’s Drive Time, about how to exercise your legal and constitutional right to opt your child out of religion class. Also, listen below to another interview on the same programme, with parent Ciara Roosli.
Homework pass for going to Mass?
Listen above to my discussion today on Newstalk Radio, about a Catholic school in Ireland that is giving homework passes to children who attend religious ceremonies, and refusing them to children who do not attend religious services.
Silver medal for Game Changers movie
I have mixed feelings about James Cameron’s powerful movie the Game Changers, which I watched yesterday. It makes a convincing case for athletes to switch to a plant-based diet, to benefit their sporting results, general health, and even sexual performance.
It follows James Wilks, a US military instructor and former UFC fighter, as he recovers from a serious injury that left him unable to train for six months. He finds a recent study that concludes that, contrary to accepted wisdom, Roman gladiators ate little to no meat.
Remembering Marc Bolan
Glam rocker Marc Bolan might now be preparing for his 72nd birthday, if he had not been killed in a car crash on this day in 1977.
His music with T. Rex permeated my last years of primary school, from Get It On and Jeepster, through to Children of the Revolution and 20th Century Boy.
Gareth Thomas is yet again a hero
It is great to see the positive public reaction to Gareth Thomas, former captain of the Welsh rugby team, announcing that he is living with HIV. While celebrities are of course ordinary people, their announcements can have a big impact on public perceptions of HIV and funding for HIV research.
The world’s happiest countries
Monty Python once recorded a song about the joys of visiting Finland. It has the underwhelming chorus of “Finland, Finland, Finland, The country where I quite want to be…”
But Michael Palin’s lyrics have proven to be prophetic, as Finland is the happiest country in the world, according to the 2019 World Happiness Report.
How do Christians justify morality?
David Quinn has published a blog post on the Iona Institute website
It is a response to my post titled How do atheists and Christians justify morality, which was a response to his earlier post titled The naïve morality of many atheists.
Two weeks to Dublin Vegfest
It’s just over two weeks until Dublin Vegfest, on the weekend of 28th and 29th September, in Griffith College on the South Circular Road. For me, the most important aspect of my veganism is animal rights, and that cause is always well represented at VegFest.
I believe one of the greatest injustices in our world is how we treat nonhuman animals. Every year we kill over 50 billion farmed animals, and up to a trillion fish. These sentient beings suffer unjustly for our convenience, and our slaughter of them is an ongoing moral atrocity.
The ongoing impact of 9/11
On the morning of 9/11 my late wife Anne was working in Leinster House as a parliamentary personal assistant. She rang me to tell me to turn on the television. She had an intern from New York working with her. As the Twin Towers collapsed on global television, the intern was devastated, not knowing whether any of her family or friends were among the 3,000 people murdered. Many of the mourning families will never see the bodies of their loved ones.
Should religion be taken out of schools?
Listen above to my discussion yesterday on the Niall Boylan Show, on Classic Hits FM, about whether religion should be taken out of schools. The discussion was in the context of the Islamic Foundation of Ireland applying to be patron of a new secondary school.