Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini is moving slightly towards sensible by saying that condoms are acceptable when one partner has HIV and using a condom will prevent the other from getting an HIV infection. Heretic! Seriously, though, Martini is a smart chap - check out the series of letters between him and Umberto Eco. 
It's a good sign when someone you read supports things you find abhorrent. It proves that we're both human. Well, Lee is in the "immigrants are bad" camp. For shame.
Peter Wilby in the TES: "Parents think faith schools deliver better academic results and better discipline. Since no one ever claimed that religion makes you more clever, we must assume the faith schools' X-factor is the discipline and the improved results follow better behaviour. It is, after all, a truism that religion makes you a more moral person."
Pat Hayes has a good profile of the good Dr. Barbara Forrest. I particularly like the "Southern magnolia routine" bit about her making Bill Dembski shake her hand, especially after she's written a book tearing him down. Nice.
Cute kitties and a techno-design moral to boot.
I guess us young folk aren't so bad after all.
If we're a minority, do we get special rights?
Web 2.1 has AJAX blinkin'.
Peter Wall: "Arguing the public into supporting libraries based on imagined effects of increased literacy and economic driving requires the assumption that people who seek the information and knowledge stored in libraries will use it for predictable, safe, and socially acceptable means. But the great value of libraries is that they provide only the fuel for intellectual stimulation, with no expectation that the intellects so stimulated will perform in any particular way. That is freedom and it is dangerous."
I've switched to Feedburner. Please change your subscription to feeds.feedburner.com/TomMorrisOPML. You can also subscribe by email on the sidebar. It's a daily email with an unloaded version of my mind, or something.
Slacker Manager has a guide to avoiding office politics. I wish I could avoid office politics, as it's dull and generally results in intelligent and mature people leaving their jobs because they can't cope with the levels of bullshit and hypocrisy coming from people who should know better. That is personal experience, and I wish I wasn't rule-bound not to tell you about it. It'll have to wait for a month or so.
Ian has set up a PledgeBank asking employers to stop witholding tax. Good idea, but they'll need more than 5,000.
BNP 
David Aaranovitch has an article on the BNP then a kooky response from the editor of 'Freedom' magazine. The Freedom which Freedom supposedly purports to give is nonsensical. Liberty is where it's at, kids, and liberty has to be shared out among everybody, not given out on the basis of racial prejudice and whining about multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is the best thing the left have done, just as market capitalism is the best thing the right have done.
If we should be booting people out of Britain, it should be racist BNP thugs-in-suits not hard-working immigrants. I want the openness which the BNP want closed. Let me explain.
Openness of mind. The BNP seek a system whereby anything that does not conform to a very arbitrary standard of "Britishness" is booted out. Whether that's people, goods, business or, at the root, ideas. They want a Britain closed in mind. They oppose drug liberalisation, continuing the biggest human rights tragedy in the Western world - the ill-fated and thoroughly evil 'War on Drugs' policy. More harmless pot smokers will be locked up in prison, drugs will still be dealt in back alleys by nasty people with knives and guns rather than in Boots and Superdrug where they should be and drugs will still be produced by criminals rather than chemists.
Openness of markets. The BNP publicly state that they want the Government to run gas, electricity and water, as well as an "economic nationalism which means putting the interests of British workers and British business first". This goes straight against the principles of laissez-faire capitalism and globalisation which is enriching everybody, providing greater opportunity and social liberation. The marketplace valued the contribution of women while polite society shunned it. The marketplace is the ultimate egalitarian, and the best method by which liberty spreads.
Openness of borders. Migration is good for everybody involved in a free market society. Businesses can be more productive by employing people with the right skills for the right money. Immigrants bring intellectual and financial diversity. Open border policies prevent people smuggling. The market will find a natural limit for immigration, and it'll be based on need and a lot more compassion than these racist fools.
