On Friday night we went to see Jools Holland and his Rhythm & Blues Orchestra at the Centaur venue at the Racecourse.
Jools and the gang were on pretty good form, though they looked more comfortable and relaxed than really trying hard. Maybe that was due to the relatively cosy nature of the venue, with everyone pretty close to the action.
Vocally, the normal Ruby Turner appearance was OK, though this time he added Louise Marshall who had a very good voice, and Lulu appeared to add some sparkle.
Unfortunately, we were level with the stage at one side, and the sound reproduction was really not very good, rendering most of the singing, and the band when all playing together, very muddy. Still, a good time, and Martha and Fionna enjoyed boogie-ing.

Maggi Dawn writes in a post called “Facebook. Tried it, didn’t like it.”:

Honestly, I have a life already. You wanna say something? Just send me an email or ring me up like you did before.

She’s definitely not the only one saying this. So I’m not going to get started with it either, and I’ll stick to the current options …

In a nice link (I hope) from my previous post about Religion, I’m writing this on board a Virgin Atlantic flight to the US. It has a rather superior seat-back entertainment system than the British Airways flight I last took. That had to be rebooted three times before it would work, which thankfully the Virgin one didn’t suffer from. It has a rather more interesting map display, amongst which it tells me the direction of Mecca relative to my seat, and exactly how far away it is (currently 11292km)!

Another thing BA could learn from Virgin: have lights in the loos that gradually get brighter, rather than suddenly coming on full when you lock the door. It makes quite a difference when all’s dark in the cabin.

God’s Obituary was published in the Economist in 2000. In a commendably open way, it’s changed its mind, with the latest issue carrying a Special Report on Religion that’s usefully long enough to avoid some common knee-jerk analysis.

The main point is that world politics cannot be understood now without understanding the interplay of religion in its moderate and fundamental forms. It develops the theme by realising that the decline of religion in the public sphere, in the 20th century is increasingly obviously an aberration not the norm, much to the exasperation of the liberals who thought they’d killed God off.

There are some encouraging notes (to me):

And there are some well-observed cautions as well, such as:

This latter point provides opportunities as well as threats. A combination of the need to be “tolerant” (which is becoming seen as ‘not expressing an opinion that others might disagree with’) with pluralism, makes those who want to talk about the core Christian beliefs in public a target for the political correctness police. After all, there are just as large areas of agreement between Islamic and Christian Theology as there are points of agreement. As far as I understand it, the concept that Jesus could be God’s Son is as good as blasphemy to a Muslim, yet is the core truth to Christians.

When will we start seeing Vicars, Priests or Chaplains jailed for speaking out Christian beliefs? I’ve heard predictions it will happen in the UK by 2020. Which is an interesting thought as I start to write my sermon for December on “Suffering for being a Christian” …

The fog brought on by the fireworks and bonfires had an unexpected benefit …