101. The vanishing jihad exposés

Comment #63661 by stephenray on August 15, 2007 at 8:56 am

Answer to Russell's Teapot about reforming libel law in England.
Generally, over here, we prefer to err on the side of not condemning people to have to live with malicious slurs made without foundation. Of course there will be situations where that policy leads to an undesirable result, but that doesn't mean we should convert to a US-type of 'The First Amendment says I can say anything I like about you 'cos it's free speech' melée to replace it.
If you make allegations of financial impropriety about someone, it seems entirely reasonable that if you can't make those allegations stick you have to withdraw them.
Why did the writer or the publisher make the allegations at all if they weren't prepared to stand by them? Plenty of potentially libellous publications are made all the time in the UK by writers who have gone out and got the evidence to back up the allegations, and they don't end up in court. Nothing wrong with our libel laws.

102. Arrogance, dogma and why science - not faith - is the new enemy of reason

Comment #61850 by stephenray on August 7, 2007 at 6:05 am

The Bible provides a picture of a rational Creator and an orderly universe

103. A Designer Universe?

Comment #61612 by stephenray on August 6, 2007 at 2:32 am

Compared to the wafflings of idiots like the ID camp and religious apologists, this is clarity of thinking to be held in awe.

"Once you start trying to make small changes in quantum mechanics, you get into theories with negative probabilities or other logical absurdities. When you combine quantum mechanics with relativity you increase its logical fragility. You find that unless you arrange the theory in just the right way you get nonsense, like effects preceding causes, or infinite probabilities. Religious theories, on the other hand, seem to be infinitely flexible, with nothing to prevent the invention of deities of any conceivable sort."

"As far as I can tell, the moral tone of religion benefited more from the spirit of the times than the spirit of the times benefited from religion."

We should start a campaign to get more Nobel prize winners to write and speak about these issues. I see this comes from 1999 - a while before RD's nonsense burning reactor came fully on-stream.

104. God '08: Whose, and How Much, Will Voters Accept?

Comment #58084 by stephenray on July 23, 2007 at 11:00 am

The problem, it seems to me, is that it's perfectly reasonable to say 'If you don't believe in my god, you can't run my country.'

That's (one of) the problem(s) with religion.

105. The fundamentalist delusion

Comment #56488 by stephenray on July 16, 2007 at 2:55 am

The point is this.

Any discussion must proceed on the basis that each party has the right to a point of view, and to have that point of view *initially* taken seriously.

Discusser #1: "I have an idea about the greatest tennis player whoever lived."

Discusser #2: "Oh, Ok. I'd say it was Bjorn Borg. Who do you think it was?"

Discusser #1: "Lenny Bruce."

Now, that discussion need not go any farther. The idea that Lenny Bruce was a great tennis player is fatuous, and no-one needs to go to the trouble of investigating his sports career in detail in order to refute the suggestion. You simply respond 'Uh-huh. Hey, how about that global warming?'

Discusser #2 does not need to refute this bizarre assertion. He can simply reject it.

And it's the same situation with those who claim there is a supernatural sky being who guides the universe through every day. We can just say: "Fyeah, right!" and move on.

Of course, they are going to whinge about not being taken seriously, but hey! They shouldn't make preposterous assertions.

106. Hitler Was an Atheist Who Killed Millions in the Name of Atheism, Secularism?

Comment #56484 by stephenray on July 16, 2007 at 2:31 am

It doesn't matter precisely what Hitler believed. What is important are two things: 1) he never claimed to be an atheist, and 2) the Nazi programme was never predicated on atheist principles or considerations.

Therefore, Hitler and Nazism cannot be used to argue that 'terrible things have been done in the name of atheism', which is all that is important.

107. The Republican War on Science Rages On

Comment #55980 by stephenray on July 13, 2007 at 4:57 am

OK, I've had enough!

Will one of you 'Nobody uses the web 'cept us' bloody Americans explain what GOP stands for?

108. Won't anyone stand up for God?

Comment #54846 by stephenray on July 9, 2007 at 6:00 am

The writer misses an important point. Simply because it is possible to pose a question is not enough to make it a valid question.
As a kid we used to ask "What's the difference between a chicken?" to which the answer was "One of its legs is both the same." (Killing joke, eh?)

In the same way 'What is the purpose of existence?' is open to criticism for being meaningless. First it must be established that there *is* a purpose to existence. If anyone can do that, I'm game to discuss what that purpose might be.

Otherwise, it's trivial to criticise any author for not dealing with the question.

109. The Panel

Comment #53588 by stephenray on July 2, 2007 at 6:13 am

I'm glad someone else pointed out about UK mains current being AC; no electrons get back to the power station, do they? They don't move far enough. What's the frequency of mains electricity?

It's interesting, though, that it's one thing to know something (water/salt) and another to articulate it...

Deductions from Iain Stewart for "Different field from mine..."

110. Floods are judgment on society, say bishops

Comment #53586 by stephenray on July 2, 2007 at 6:04 am

HAH!!!

There ya go. Chalk one up for the Brits. Our loony churchman are just as stupid as the yanks.

111. Yes, the universe looks like a fix. But that doesn't mean that a god fixed it

Comment #53082 by stephenray on June 29, 2007 at 9:01 am

Here's the thing.

You sit down at a card table and get delivered a bridge hand. Looking at your cards, and being that you are a computational wizard, you quickly realise that the odds against that particular collection of 13 cards being dealt to you is billions to 1. Clearly that is so unlikely as to be impossible, so you conclude that there must be something going on that cannot be explained by chance alone.

This is the anthropomorphic principle. No point being amazed at the fine tuning of the twiddled knobs - if they *weren't* on that setting *we* wouldn't be here to think about it.

We are here, so the probability that the knobs will be set to produce a universe that produces homo sapiens is 1.

(credit to John Allen Paulos)

112. 'Purity' ring case in High Court

Comment #52466 by stephenray on June 27, 2007 at 4:43 am

Comment #51266 by Holy Roller
"Maybe we could start a 'Pink Ring Thing' (PRT) that would indicate the promiscuous behavior of the owner…at least then we would know where everyone stands!"

Mmm. I'm particularly in favour of women wearing such rings as it will save me a lot of hassle...

113. Doctors' beliefs can hinder patient care

Comment #52456 by stephenray on June 27, 2007 at 4:12 am

...two *parental units*? I know that Americans won't call something a spade when they can refer to it as an independent manual digging device, but *units*?

It's cant anyway. Nothing in his 'religious beliefs' (as far as I understand Christianity, which is pretty far) stops single persons from providing a home for children. He's just trying to impose his personal view of the universe on his patients.

Well, guys, don't go to these people, their income will plummet and they'll have a painful choice - their religion, or their income. Ho ho ho.

114. Religion - our maelstrom of ignorance

Comment #52120 by stephenray on June 26, 2007 at 8:09 am

In response to Comment #50038 by JRG:

Hitchens is mistaken. Hilton wasn't in jail for a trivial act, she was in jail for disobeying a court order. That's a big no-no in any country with the rule of law. She claims that she didn't realise that the order was still in effect, but that won't cut any ice either. If anyone subject to a court order could escape responsibility by asserting that they were too dumb to understand it, might as well not bother with courts in the first place.

I'm with Hitchens, however, in bemoaning the fact that it's the same nasty media that is glorying in her misery that thrust her in our faces at every opportunity over the last few years, and no doubt will again when she re-emerges.

I'm also with him that, in the end, any thinking person will find themselves talking about Paris Hilton only while simultaneously wondering "Who cares?"

115. Germany imposes ban on Tom Cruise

Comment #52077 by stephenray on June 26, 2007 at 5:23 am

Unless and until Cruise starts proselytising, the German authorities should leave him alone. Goodness knows scientology is complete and utter rubbish, but then, Catholics aren't prevented from filming in Germany and they believe in six impossible things before breakfast.

116. A Look at Regent University

Comment #46481 by stephenray on May 31, 2007 at 12:38 pm

Listening to stuff like that - people taking it as axiomatic, as natural as breathing, that they ought to subvert the democratic process in order to further their religious goals - should make people realise that RD, Hitchens and Harris are not being alarmist when they finger religious as a great danger. The people interviewed and mentioned here are not crazy, as for example would be the funeral protesters, just dogmatic.

I honestly don't know why Hollywood bothers making horror films. You guys are living one over there. A clown for president and rabid faithheads ready to scavenge what they can like pigeons in Trafalgar Square.

117. Groundbreaking Research Has Scientists Talking With Apes

Comment #46477 by stephenray on May 31, 2007 at 12:15 pm

Loved the researcher who says something like "Qualitatively, Kanzi's language is the same as mine. It's just a question of degree."

I wonder what he thinks 'qualitatively' means?

And, to add to the chorus, having an animal respond to a single word does not demonstrate that it understands english. My mothers dogs go berserk when someone says 'walkies', but talking to them about Harry Potter is not a particularly meaningful exercise...

118. 'Einstein - His Life and Universe'

Comment #44183 by stephenray on May 23, 2007 at 2:45 pm

What does it matter what Einstein believed about god?

He believed, he didn't believe, he believed, he didn't believe...

It is only enlightening about Einstein, it tells us nothing about the existence of god nor of the correctness of overlapping magisteria.

When reading RD I did think he got close to painting himself into a corner about Einstein in TGD. Yes, Einstein was the most insightful scientist of the century, probably since Newton. He was also brought up in a Europe which was even more strictly religious than today, and not even a giant intellect is guaranteed to shake off a childhood indoctrination.

119. A galactic fossil - Star is found to be 13.2 billion years old

Comment #44178 by stephenray on May 23, 2007 at 2:36 pm

Yah, my bad RickM, I forgot about iron+ elements being made in supernova.

The point you made about where it got its constituent material from bothered me, too. I didn't have time to read the whole article, but I assumed that they had some cross-check that eliminated the possibility that they were detecting the age of the heavy elements and not the age of the star.

However, one assumes that at least some of the stars in all galaxies are older than their galaxy, since it would not have been merely gases and dark matter that coalesced to form galaxies, but existing stars as well.

120. A galactic fossil - Star is found to be 13.2 billion years old

Comment #43988 by stephenray on May 23, 2007 at 6:12 am

They're being poetic, describing it as a fossil. It's a record of an earlier era.
What amazes me is that there were enough heavy elements around, 13.2 billion years ago, for the star to have any at all.
It's agreed - I understand - that for a substantial amount of time after the big bang, hydrogen and helium were rushing outwards, and for - I thought - a couple hundred million years the universe was dark, until the first stars started to glow. Anything heavier than helium was manufactured by nuclear fusion in the guts of a star, and released when the larger stars exploded at the end of their lives. Then and only then would there be sufficient heavy elements around to get incorporated in new stars.
Must have been a hell of a place, the milky way in those few hundred million years, stars surging into existence and sparking out and spreading the stardust of the periodic table throughout the galaxy...
...of course, it was just an afterthought on God's part 'cos he was focussing on ordering snakes to crawl on their bellies...

121. Prayer can improve physical health

Comment #43743 by stephenray on May 22, 2007 at 12:10 pm

Seriously, what is the point? Any newspaper prepared to run a story beginning:
"COMMUNICATING with God or other spirits can improve your physical health, Australian researchers suggest."
is just slop. Researchers 'suggest'. That's not their job. Researchers are to conclude, or to announce a lack of conclusion. Theoreticians 'suggest'. And the headline - no question or query there, just an assertion. Bleacchh.

122. Pick of the Week: The God Delusion

Comment #43609 by stephenray on May 22, 2007 at 5:29 am

Comment #43576 by SharrieG
"there seemed to me to be more rhetoric and suggestion rather than rigorous logic."

There's no need of rigorous logic. The most everyday logic disposes of the possibility of gods in less than a paragraph.

The problem is what to use to persuade the befuddled.

123. Goodness without Godliness

Comment #42879 by stephenray on May 20, 2007 at 4:00 am

Comment #42875 by Reg

Query: after your comment in response to the little boy's question, and Mum's reaction, did anyone get around to saying what *exactly* was blasphemous in your quip that other people made the same mistake? You didn't take anybody's name in vain, you didn't make any disparaging remarks about one or other of the trinity - so where was the blasphemy?

I'm confused. (As so often, these days.)

124. Four arrested in Iraq 'honor killing'

Comment #42876 by stephenray on May 20, 2007 at 3:53 am

Comment #42866 by davyB:
"I'd never of that religion. It's a hodgepodge..."
Aren't they all?

I can't think of anything less honourable than killing your sister/daughter/niece/cousin because she has done something you personally disapprove of. What possible honour could there be in coming from such a family?

There are those who say 'You cannot criticise such people because they come from different cultural backgrounds with different moral imperatives'.
Rubbish. If it means implying that my cultural imperatives are 'better' than theirs then I think the conclusion is inevitable.

125. Dobson, Armageddon, and Foreign Policy

Comment #42606 by stephenray on May 18, 2007 at 3:25 pm

I wish I could remember who wrote the notable science fiction story in which aliens built their picture of the human race from the radio signals that push their way outwards at the speed of light.

Any aliens listening to these two half wits have presumably turned round and are heading somewhere else, where there are signs of intelligent life.

126. Facing Off on Evolution

Comment #40812 by stephenray on May 15, 2007 at 3:13 am

"Comment #40444 by polishrequiem on May 14, 2007 at 9:51 am

When it came time to explain evolution Brian started on a good path regarding us all being transitional forms but then he dropped the ball and couldn't get it back again. The explanation of evolution just sort of fell apart here.
Too bad really"

If you look at the vidcap at the head of this thread, you can see precisely what the explanation is for Brian's verbal fumbling. His attention, as a non-puritan male, was clearly elsewhere!!!

127. Intellectual Diversity or Intellectual Insult?

Comment #38952 by stephenray on May 9, 2007 at 4:13 pm

Wow.

"Intellectual diversity" is a cloak term for "religious intolerance".

Orwell, where art thou when we most have need of thee?

America again proves that it is literally beyond satire in some areas.

128. The kiss that brought immorality debate to a head

Comment #37955 by stephenray on May 6, 2007 at 12:43 pm

One can only wonder why they are *so* frightened of women...

129. Now Muslims Get Their Own Laws In Britian

Comment #36715 by stephenray on May 2, 2007 at 4:46 am

It's nonsense.

For a start off, the jewish Beth Din system has been working in England for ages.

These work very similar to that, I would imagine, of the People's Court TV programmes, that is to say if both parties submit themselves to the authority of the 'court' in question, it becomes a species of contract.

Sharia courts would have no power whatsoever to implement their judgments if either party decides to go off to the County or High Court and make a claim there. Their decisions would be considered only in so far as it could be shown that both parties agreed to be bound by that decision.

If under the law of England a judgment differs from that of the sharia court, its decision will prevail. However, if both parties had agreed to be bound by the sharia court but the losing party then refused to abide by its decision, the other party might have an action for breach of contract.

In other words, (e.g.) whatever the sharia court says, you aren't divorced in England until a Court grants the decree absolute.

130. 4 Sermon for Matins: 'Dawkins and The God Delusion'

Comment #36682 by stephenray on May 2, 2007 at 2:32 am

You can't 'believe in no religion at all', you can't, you can't, you just can't.

There is a problem with this word belief, and I'm gonna have to do some grappling.

131. Convention ends with Satan and immigrants

Comment #36227 by stephenray on April 30, 2007 at 2:40 pm

"At the end of his speech, Larsen began to cry, saying illegal immigrants were trying to bring about the destruction of the U.S. "by self invasion."
"

Wha'fa?

pace Lewis Black: "It's a simple math problem. What quantity of what sort of drug would *you* need to be that deluded?"

He began to CRY? For goodness sake, what has America been doing to its children so they grow up this out of touch with reality?

132. Doctors Opposing Circumcision: An Appeal for Misha

Comment #32526 by stephenray on April 17, 2007 at 9:26 am

Urrrr...

...has anybody asked the kid whether *he* wants to join the jewish faith?

133. The Coulter Hoax: How Ann Coulter Exposed the Intelligent Design Movement

Comment #31112 by stephenray on April 11, 2007 at 3:27 am

Just been reading Coulter's biog on wikipedia.

You know what's astonishing? She appears to have been a top law student and highly regarded lawyer. And yet her political, social and scientific babblings show that she has no idea how to actually *think*. You know, identify the correct data and analyse it in order to produce useful information.

Did she go to a crap law school? No, that won't work, she clerked for a senior judge. Boy he must have wondered when he read her briefs, if she was as accurate and painstaking then as she is now. The *average* law students of my erstwhile acquaintance could out-think her, never mind the smart ones.

134. Praying for the Apocalypse

Comment #30822 by stephenray on April 10, 2007 at 2:19 am

What I like is the legend '"Left Behind: Eternal Forces" uses advanced graphics to depict a battle between good and evil' next to a picture which depicts the Statue of Liberty apparently within a few yards of downtown Manhattan...

Advanced but not very accurate, perhaps?

135. The Coulter Hoax: How Ann Coulter Exposed the Intelligent Design Movement

Comment #30819 by stephenray on April 10, 2007 at 1:57 am

Responding to Comment #30798 by crazy4blues:

Johnny Winter is a recovering albino?!!

That's great. He'll save a fortune in sunglasses...

136. Even non-believers must recognise the moral necessity of Christianity

Comment #30602 by stephenray on April 9, 2007 at 2:02 am

Oh, and atheist violence to believers.

Here's the thing. Taking, e.g., Stalin's Russia and Mao's China, there's no doubt that some of those who tried to espouse a faith were kidnapped or arrested, tortured, imprisoned, killed, sent into lifelong and misery-filled exile.

This, however, was not a function of what they believed, nor a function of what their oppressors did not believe. (At least, not at the institutional level.)

It was a consequence of the perceived need of the state to stamp out subversion, of which religious subversion was merely one variety. You can demonstrate this by pointing to the fact that many people who were victimised were not religious (or not more so than their fellow citizens) and they were 'oppressed' on other grounds - Solzhenitsyn, for example, in Russia and teachers in Mao's cultural revolution.

Religious pogroms, on the other hand, persecute their victims precisely because of their beliefs - vide what happened to the Cathars in Southern France.

Therefore the comparison between the murderous violence of the religious and the atheistic is (usually deliberately) misleading.

"The terror of death will always drive our species to search for an alternative."
...and that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is pretty much game over and why it is difficult to see religion ever dying out.

137. Even non-believers must recognise the moral necessity of Christianity

Comment #30600 by stephenray on April 9, 2007 at 1:50 am

"Prime Minister Salisbury said that anyone who expected the Christian ethic to survive Christian theology by more than two or three generations was deluded. He has yet to be refuted."

It's just a statement of opinion, I refute it thus - by saying 'He was wrong'.

What was it, 140 years ago? Given the times and the level of knowledge, it was a bit like a goldfish giving his opinion on the likelihood that the large shapes moving around outside its bowl were living organisms.

138. Dawkins says religion is 'like sucking a dummy'

Comment #28436 by stephenray on March 29, 2007 at 7:31 am

One doesn't debate 'Are we better off without god?', one debates the motion '...we are better off without god.'

If the article had been properly written it would have been possible to understand who voted which way, in the figures quoted at the end of the article. n votes in favour of 'Are we better off without god?' is an unresolvable conundrum.

139. Atheist banned from committee on religious education

Comment #27510 by stephenray on March 25, 2007 at 4:44 am

I dunno.

If we want to keep religion out of the science classroom, isn't this the other side of the coin?

I think we would all accept that atheism isn't a religion, so why should the religious let us in the RI classroom?

We have to challenge the unquestioning acceptance of the unchallenged position of religion in education, but attempts such as this may make a rod for our own backs...

140. What We Need More Of Is Science

Comment #26126 by stephenray on March 17, 2007 at 5:08 am

Thanks to Philip1978 for the YouTube link.

It was fascinating stuff. They really need a Goebbels though; as propogandists (nb the origin of the word propoganda makes it especially appropriate!) they need to learn a lot.

I loved the 'dumbest professor the world has ever seen' (my label) in episode 10, some guy who was a *Professor of Biology* in Tulane University but was floored by a student who asked him how 'simple probability' could account for development and evolution of proteins. Duh. When he works out the probability, he decides it must prove god exists. The real question is how somebody that headache-inducingly thick got to be a professor in the first place.

I also liked - in episode 11 - where the woman presenter completely inverted the principle of 'summary judgment'. I think even in the US the situation she referred to is called 'a plea of no case to answer', summary judgment is certainly different in England.
'No case to answer' only happens as follows: after the prosecution/plaintiff has presented its case **the defence** can say "Well, they simply haven't set out a case that needs answering, so can we all go home now?" What NEVER happens is that the prosecution/plaintiff is given the opportunity to say "Our evidence is overwhelming and the other side could not possibly have any answer, so let's skip the defence and rush to judgment."

Such a lot of effort and resources thrown in to fight a rearguard action against science. I don't know whether to be alarmed or saddened.

141. A 'Sad First' in the History of the Congress

Comment #25770 by stephenray on March 15, 2007 at 4:49 am

Unfortunately, two words spring to my mind and they are not comforting.

'McCarthy' and 'HUAC' are the words. "Witch-hunts" don't get called what they do by accident.

142. Evangelicals battle over agenda, environment

Comment #25544 by stephenray on March 14, 2007 at 3:47 am

Does anyone know of any scriptural authority for the assertion that an 'unborn child' has a 'right to life'?

'Unborn child' is a weird phrase, to my mind. Nobody looks at a pile of metal and plastic and calls it an 'unmanufactured car'. It is the act of birth that creates an animal.

How did Catholicism come to decide that the soul enters at the moment of conception? And why do fundamentalist protestants agree with catholicism on that and almost no other issue?

143. In Lice, Clues to Human Origin and Attire

Comment #25316 by stephenray on March 12, 2007 at 3:19 am

"...which provides free health care to gorillas in the wild..."

That's good thinking. Because if they were to wait for the gorillas to buy health insurance, it could take forever...

144. Out There

Comment #25315 by stephenray on March 12, 2007 at 3:17 am

IANAS (I am not a scientist, though IAAL - I am a lawyer) *but*...

...if dark matter and dark energy are so - um - alien that they don't react with the universe (that is, the relativity/quantum universe), why on earth should scientists believe that - if the LHC creates any - they will ever find out about it? It could be that popping baloons creates dark matter - how would we know?

(NB - deliberately silly analogy: it's a rhetorical device.)

145. Academy denies claims from job candidate

Comment #25088 by stephenray on March 10, 2007 at 4:02 am

Will somebody please suggest a way to stop these ignorant pillocks writing for the media these days from using the word refute (= 'prove wrong') when they mean 'reject'.

146. An apology to Peter Kay

Comment #25087 by stephenray on March 10, 2007 at 3:57 am

To do list:

Keep an eye out for Jeevan Vasagar's byline because it would seem that he - despite writing for the Guardian - is one of the legions of journos who don't give a flying f-spaghetti monster about accuracy.

Note the 'Peter Kay was unavailable for comment' bit. So, Jeevan - what did Richard Dawkins say when you phoned to put your planned story to him?

147. Long live satire

Comment #24599 by stephenray on March 7, 2007 at 2:14 pm

"freedom of expression does not constitute a freedom to offend"

Sorry, chum, but that is EXACTLY what freedom of expression constitutes. Otherwise, it would not be worth anything.

148. Why there are almost no genuine atheists

Comment #24596 by stephenray on March 7, 2007 at 2:11 pm

"Naturally it's considered quite rude to press people on such matters..."

Why 'naturally'? It seems to me perfectly ordinary to make people explain why the believe in stupid ideas.

"After all, the human race has existed for an eye-blink of cosmological time and will certainly cease to exist in another eye-blink or two.

The only response a genuine atheist would have to that fact is, so what? Which helps explain why there are almost no genuine atheists."

It's like a duck-shoot, only there are so many of the darn things that you spend so much time wondering which to shoot first you end up paralysed.

I'll content myself with writing that I utterly reject the idea that one cannot desire the longevity of the human race and be a 'genuine atheist'. Sexual reproduction makes us strongly desire the perpetuation of our genes, why shouldn't it be extrapolated to desiring the perpetuation of the very-closely-related genes that the rest of homo sapiens sapiens possess?

149. The Dawkins Confusion: Naturalism ad absurdum

Comment #23662 by stephenray on March 2, 2007 at 1:41 am

Good grief.

I stopped at the point where the writer failed utterly to accurately summarise Fred Hoyle's Boeing 747 analogy.

It's a bit rich accusing another writer of 'sub-sophomoric philosophy' whilst being unable to precis such a simple precept.

150. God, sex, drugs and politics

Comment #22617 by stephenray on February 20, 2007 at 12:25 am

It may sound horribly arrogant, but these people have never been taught (or have deliberately forgotten) how to *think clearly*. How else can you explain such lapses in judgment? The possibility that someone who is utterly 'innocent' (from this idiot Scarborough's point of view, I mean) being prevented by this drug from dying unpleasantly of cancer is clearly not something that has occurred to his labouring intellect.

But then, compared to an eternity of joyful communion with the white-haired old geezer, what's a few painful and miserable prolonged deaths by cancer?