From free speech and fascism to vampires via Moses and Macs: a little alliterative link love

This week’s round up begins with a bit of free speech and fascism. Iain Dale had one of the first responses to the BBC’s decision to allow the fascists to make fools of themselves in public. The reflections of one of the BBC’s own editors are also worth reading. Hey, they’ve regularly given airtime to left-wing fascist demagogues like George Galloway, so this is not quite the new departure it seems. (Oh, and here are a couple of thoughtful left-wingers chewing over the issues – Chris Dillow in particular makes me think about my instinctive free-speech response)

Sticking with a political theme, Marbury points to the most requested titles from the Guantanamo Bay prison library. There’s enough there to really get a right-wing fundie raging.

Moving on to a man for whom politics was indistinguishable from his religious vocation – we come to Moses, or at least Claude Mariottini’s spirited defence of Moses’ historical existence looking rather more like the figure of biblical narrative than the conspiracy theory versions of “historical detective” Graham Phillips (who has found the Grail, tracked the Ark of the Covenant to Britain, explored Shakespeare’s work as a spy, and identified Merlin as the last Roman ruler of Britain who discovered America. Just so you know!

Speaking of insanity and inanity, Loren Rosson compiled the top twelve ravings of the preacher they most like to taser, and thereby saved everyone from having to sit through more than flesh can bear.

In a bit of enjoyable geekery Rick Mansfield proclaimed the death of the Mac. We’re all next-stepping here.

Back in something looking a little more like reality, a lot of people have been continuing to blog on the NIV 2.0 or whatever. I’ve been enjoying Alan Bandy’s so far three-part series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

If you don’t catch Duane Smith’s blog, then you missed a truly wonderful quotation of the day.

I like the writings of my former teacher, so I was pleased to see Rob Bradshaw had two articles up from Anvil by John Goldingay.

Jim West noted the discovery of a very old synagogue in Migdal. I can’t quite work out whether the dates given (50BC – 100AD) represent the time when the IAA think the synagogue was in use, or the time span within which they think it might have been built. The longest post I’ve seen clearly thinks the former.

Now, I was going to blow Mike Bird’s trumpet, but he’s beaten me to it, so I’ll move on to my end-piece. (Actually Matt’s offering a good description – I guess the evaluation will come in part 2 or 3)

Whatever else you read in this selection, do take a look at Fred Clark’s fascinating theo-political reflection on why vampires are driven off by crosses.