Kuwaiti tv sounds like fun – like Oprah but more intense.

Kuwait TV Host Sheikh Tareq Al-Sweidan: “We have a question for the viewers at home, not in the studio, and they can respond with a text message. What is the best way to deal with apostates who converted from Islam? You have three possible responses. The first is through dialogue only. The second option is killing them, and the third option is to leave it up to the legal system.

Don’t you wish you could watch tv shows like that? We have a question for the viewers: What is the best way to deal with apostates who converted from Southern Baptism? You have three options. You can chat, you … Read the rest

I’ve just read Bernard Suits’s The Grasshopper. I first heard of it and realized I wanted to read it a month or so ago when reading a piece by Simon Blackburn for the next issue (the tenth anniversary issue, number 40) of The Philosophers’ Magazine. In answer to a question about ‘the most under-appreciated philosopher of the last ten years’ he said ‘Inevitably, it is probably someone of whom I have not heard. But a little known and now dead philosopher called Bernard Suits wrote an absolutely wonderful book on the notion of games and play, called The Grasshopper, published by Broadview Press. I do not think I have ever met more than one person who has heard … Read the rest

Howard Jacobson is a bit harsh but he’s right.

[I]t is irresponsible, so many years after Don Quixote messed up everything he touched, and when there is no shortage of international report, to be quite so determinedly unaware of where you are and what you’re doing and what the consequences might be. And that irresponsibility is compounded when you come home having narrowly escaped a lashing or worse, tell everyone what a great time you had and how lovely the people are, and express the hope that what happened to you won’t put anybody else off going.

I had the same thought, and I don’t suppose I’m the only one. No, thanks, I don’t think I will rush off … Read the rest