To Hell in a Handbasket

Chris sent me a link to the above, a review of the PC game Dante's Inferno, not because I'm likely to buy the game but because it contains a number of caustic comments on the theme of God and is, like all Zero Punctuation's reviews, highly amusing ... if a bit like playing a 33rpm brain recording at 45 rpm* by mistake. In fact Zero Punctuation's style is reminiscent of my Embittered Smartarse Crush of the Year 2010: Charlie Brooker.

Here he is on My Super Sweet 16 ("I think this might be an Al Qaeda recruitment film"):



I did read Dante's Inferno, btw, sometime in my teens when I had time for that sort of thing. (How? How did I have time to read?) I skipped all the boring crap about Italian politics of course, and just remember the horrible tortures and Dore's amazing illustrations.

Talking of going to Hell ... PZ Myers, one of the US's more prominent atheists, has stuck his neck out and confounded the critics who whine "You're always picking on Christianity. You wouldn't dare blaspheme against Islam," by doing just that last weekend. Now - fairly obviously - one of the reasons people are wary of being rude about Islam is not that it's more morally unassailable/likely to be true, but that while brain-dead Christian fundamentalists often send death-threats, they rarely follow through with action - whereas the Muslim version do. It's a simple case of self-preservation (and preservation of family, friends and colleagues). So Myers, whose physical location is well-known, certainly has balls. I admire what he did - though I suspect the governing body of the university where he lectures probably put their collective head in their hands.

I hope he's going to be okay.

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*Doesn't that date me?