Lashings of extraordinary writing in Hitchens’s cancer piece in Vanity Fair. For one thing, there’s the opening, about waking up in a New York hotel room.

have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death. But nothing prepared me for the early morning last June when I came to consciousness feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse. The whole cave of my chest and thorax seemed to have been hollowed out and then refilled with slow-drying cement.

That final (frightening) sentence is an homage to a parallel scene in Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim, about a much younger man waking up with a hangover. It’s a set-piece about what a hangover feels … Read the rest

Sorry posting is a bit light. I’ve been busy trying to pull knives out of my back (no use, they’re stuck), and now I have a sudden avalanche of subbing to do for The Philosophers’ Mag and a mere few hours to do it in, so it’s hard to find a spare moment.

Will try to do better.… Read the rest

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei says music is permitted but bad and nasty.

Khamenei said: “Although music is halal, promoting and teaching it is not compatible with the highest values of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic.”…”It’s better that our dear youth spend their valuable time in learning science and essential and useful skills and fill their time with sport and healthy recreations instead of music.

Because…music, while permitted, is not a healthy recreation. It’s a recreation, but not a healthy one. It’s permitted, but it’s ungood. Why? Well because it’s pretty, and pleasurable, and emotive, and often sexy, and often exciting. We can’t be having any of that. It’s not healthful. Or useful. Or good. Or compatible with the highest … Read the rest

Comment is Free Belief asks “Can we choose what we believe?” Usama Hasan answers briskly right from the outset.

God exists, obviously.

Oh; all right then! Nothing further to think about. He goes on to point out that the Qur’an says so, and give the sura where it says so. Then he gets to the thinky part.

God is a given, and our lives are an opportunity to learn about and experience God in countless different ways because the universe is a collection of theophanies: God’s infinite variety of names is manifested throughout the diversity of nature that includes our complex, intertwined lives.

He forgets to explain how he knows that.… Read the rest