Truth...

Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat-tails. - Clarence Seward Darrow, 1857 - 1938

A confusing Feast...

Having several fairly boring tasks to do at work today - folding brochures, opening mail - I brought my cd player to work with me and have been listening to John Barrowman music, among other things.

One of the other things I was listening to was the audiobook The Feast of the Drowned by Stephen Cole. I enjoy the story and I particularly love David Tennant's lovely voice doing the reading, but... there's a problem. My cd player has a damaged button. It's stuck on 'random play'. This is fine for music but I'm getting the chapters of the book entirely out of order, which makes the book a rather surreal experience.

I think I'll go back to the music and try to remember to bring a different cd player to work with me tomorrow.

Capitalism and morality...

An interesting case. Basically, at a lake in Saskatchewan, a cabin is for sale to the public, located on land leased to a Christian group, and its real estate listing stipulates that it will only be sold to a 'practising Christian'.

So: is this discriminatory? Well, yes, obviously. But do the owners have the right to be discriminatory - to say what sort of people should buy the cabin, in terms of religion? If it were a racial issue, the answer would be clear-cut. But discrimination in terms of other factors - age, say - is often allowed with housing. Would it be different if the building was a house, a permanent home, rather than a presumably recreational cabin?¹ Does a person of any religion have the right to buy any property, or does the seller of any property have the right to sell only within the parameters of religious denominations they prefer?

I'm trying to consider this without my own prejudices against religion coming into play, and it's a tricky one still.

I think if I were the judge of the case I would say that they have the right to sell to anyone within their group, or to advertise the cabin in their church newsletters, but once they offer the cabin for sale to the public, in a public listing, they can't discriminate by religion, as a matter of equal rights.

¹ Mind you, at $179,000.00, it doesn't sound very rustic to me.

Happy Birthday...

David Tennant turns 36 today. (Or maybe 936. Rumour has it.)

I hope he has a fantastic day, and fantastic year to come. He's done so much to enhance my life over the past year or so.