“I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to too.”
Three years ago, almost to the hour, legendary comedian Mitch Hedberg was found dead of “multiple drug toxicity” including heroin and cocaine, in his New Jersey hotel room. Now, this may seem like a strange thing for me to write about. […]

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Tom and Stephanie sat on the grass in the Minneapolis sunshine, gazing lovingly into each others eyes. They were always glad of the short time they could spend together away from their spouses and kids. Tom regarded his family life as being “in a life I don’t want to be in” and dreamed of being […]

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“I’ve only been on this website about a day and a half but I bloody love it.”
This quote today from Joe, a reader who’s been dominating the comments sections over the past day or so. Welcome, Joe. Our traffic is twice what it was this time last year; thank pure, straightforward logic for […]

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I was called these things in this exchange at Will & Testament after giving my opinion about a subject with which I’m intimately familiar: the British addiction to pomp and ceremonialism.
My friend William Crawley did a fantastic job of hosting for the BBC a live 90-minute program covering the Royal Maundy Service in Armagh, Northern […]

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Anyone who lives in Britain is probably well acquainted with the “Chugger” phenomenon. Since I’m not sure if our transatlantic friends have “chuggers” or not I’d best spell out what they are. “Chugger” is short for “charity mugger”: people who work for charity fundraising companies and hang out in the street trying to make money […]

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Wired asked their readers to submit self-portraits and published the top ten as decided by readers. This is one of them. (I wonder what we’d see if we asked our own readers to do the same?) 

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With Easter upon us we enter one of the most religious periods on the year and, as with Christmas, we are treated to endless debates about the historicity and meaning of the events being celebrated. I’ve given our religious brethren a bit of tough time over the past few weekends so thought I’d turn my […]

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The events leading up to this case include a resident of Washington D.C. who challenged the city’s law banning handguns in the home for self-defence on the basis that the law is unconstitutional. Now the US Supreme Court has heard arguments for the first time on what the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution […]

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Back in October, I wrote a brief post on a piece of music that Stephen and myself have been getting into again this week. For this reason I’ve bumped it up again, the original post below (slightly edited) and then some links you can use if you like it as much as we do.
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This […]

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There hasn’t been much by way of weird news this week so I thought I’d go Monty Python on you all:
“And now for something completely different”
I ordinarily hate spam mail and all that other crap that gets forwarded around the planet mostly from people I don’t know terribly well, but I thought this was funny […]

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Belfast has a brand new shopping centre called Victoria Square and my wife and I went to see it last Sunday. What an amazing piece of architecture, absolutely state of the art and modern. In light of this new development local commentators have been babbling on about how Belfast is now a truly modern European […]

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Spitzer’s Sin has been of great interest to me, for a host of reasons. One of those reasons is obvious to our regular readers: we’ve always argued that prostitution should be protected in law as a legitimate right (and I recently wondered if banning it may be unconstitutional, a case I’d love to see […]

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If I ever saw an advertisement in which libertarians were portrayed as ugly numb-skulls with small penises (including the women) would I be offended? No, not even a little bit. I respect the rights of all people to express themselves and speak their mind, and I’m not going to get all emotionally upset about it. […]

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Recently I’m pleased to see that a number of stories I have written about have panned out the way I argued that they should. I found out yesterday that another story went down the only rational path available. I wrote about gambler Graham Calvert taking a bookmaker to court for breaching it’s duty of care […]

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Steve Chapman summarises my position exactly on Spitzer’s Sin: “I understand why Spitzer’s alleged hiring of a call girl was stupid, selfish, reckless, immoral and a betrayal of his family. What I don’t understand is why it was illegal. …. Some brilliant lawyer ought to ask the courts why the state may ban […]

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When he wrote the Ten Commandments on a few chunks of rock held by a young Charlton Heston, God’s omniscience let him down and he neglected to mention a bunch of stuff that was sinful. Thankfully we have the Roman Catholic Church to help us out. As if 10 Commandments and 66 books of the […]

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The Belfast Telegraph printed another letter of mine today. It was a response to an Irish Language enthusiast pontificating about “Irish language rights.”
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/letters/article3509436.ece
In her letter (Write Back, March 5) Janet Muller talks about language rights and, in particular, Irish language rights, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she already has the right to speak and […]

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It’s been tough to find the time to blog recently, but so much is happening that I’ve been dying to talk about.
Take Spitzer’s Sin, for example. An LA Times editorial argues that the New York Governor - who is a customer of Kristen the sex worker - is actually “…evidence of a nationwide [resurgence] […]

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Writing to newspapers is a little hobby of mine, and I’ve enjoyed a good hearing from one local paper in particular, the Belfast Telegraph.
My most recent offering was published today: a reply to journalist Alf McCreary about public funding for the Ulster Orchestra. I can’t find his original article on the newspaper’s website, nor my […]

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We all have our own “nightmare” scenarios: places we never want to be or things we hope never happen to us. A few of them might be:
1. Being caught masturbating by your mum
2. Dying and then finding out that Muslims were right after all and you’re now going to spend eternity burning while drinking boiling […]

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