I am a points whore Please comment on my haiku You can find it here

I recently received as a gift a box set of DVDs of the US TV series Bones , described as a kind of " sexed-up CSI " They make for fascinating and enjoyable viewing. Like so many of these highly successful American TV shows, Bones also seems to say a lot about what kind of society the US is, and what kind of people make up its TV audiences. Two threads seem to run through each episode. One is the implied sexual tension between the tough, no-nonsense, averagely smart, but handsome FBI agent Se...

My confident prediction for the winners of the 2006 FIFA World Cup: 'The Blues' will win!!! (However, whether that is 'les bleus' or 'gli azzurri' remains to be seen ... )

As far as the events unfolding in Iraq are concerned, I remain an agnostic. I thought at the time (on balance), that the decision to invade was a mistake, not because it was undesirable to get rid of Saddam Hussein, or that he hadn’t provided more than enough provocation to warrant attack, but because I was sceptical about how clearly the ‘coalition’ had thought about what was to come next, following Saddam’s miltary defeat. More importantly, I had (and still have), real concerns about the us...

After reading on JU about the “furor” surrounding the release of the movie based on Dan Brown’s book The Da Vinci Code , I have to admit that I initially thought that it was simply another episode in America’s curious culture war in which American christians are pushing themselves to the fore as a new oppressed minority, battling against secularist ‘persecution’ and ‘slander’. However, a just rebuke to this idea from Bakersteet caused me to look into the matter more carefully and I found tha...

Last month British Foreign secretary Jack Straw said that it was "inconceivable" that there will be a military strike on Iran and dismissed as "nuts" a a report that George Bush was 'keeping on the table' the option of using tactical nuclear weapons against Iran's nuclear plants. Tony Blair, in a recent cabinet reshuffle, has just fired Jack Straw. Make of that what you will... The new British Foreign Secretary is Margaret Beckett, the first woman to ever hold the position. She was also br...

Recent postings on JU have expressed frustration and annoyance with what has been seen as a fundamentalist hijacking of the Christian religion, while the fundamentalists in reply claim to be doing no more than expressing the original purity and power of the Christian religion as it was known to those who encountered and followed Jesus of Nazareth. My own view on the matter is that this Christian Fundamentalism, far from being a renewal of the faith in its pristine original purity, represents ...

Recent postings on JU have expressed frustration and annoyance with what has been seen as a fundamentalist hijacking of the Christian religion, while the fundamentalists in reply claim to be doing no more than expressing the original purity and power of the Christian religion as it was known to those who encountered and followed Jesus of Nazareth. My own view on the matter is that this Christian Fundamentalism, far from being a renewal of the faith in its pristine original purity, represents a...