“Just because he calls himself a Christian,” begins Bill O’Reilly, Fox News Political ‘commentator’, flustered with a typical rage, before stuttering…

“Mussolini called himself a Christian!”

Sally Quinn, of the Washington Post, spends most of her time with a patient smile on her face – it’s hard to tell if she’s flustered or grinning in disbelief at the complete absence of logic in O’Reilly’s rhetoric.

“There is no evidence this man followed the teachings of Christ! No evidence he had anything to do with the Christian faith.”

O’Reilly is referring, of course, to Anders Breivik, the perpetrator of the Oslo attacks in which over 70 people were slaughtered.

Quinn repeatedly attempts to correct O’Reilly, but he blusters on, constantly and consistently, interrupting her attempts to provide the evidence that O’Reilly (a Christian himself) claims doesn’t exist.

All this from a man who claimed, after the attacks on the World Trade Center, that “Muslims killed us on 9/11”.

Sally Quinn meekly attempts to raise a similar point – that O’Reilly, when referring to Fort Hood terrorist attack, was insistent on referring to Nidal Malik Hasan as a Muslim terrorist.

Incredibly, it gets worse.

“I’m saying he was a Muslim,” he shouts, interrupting Quinn, “because he carried a business card that said ‘soldier of Allah’!

“The guy in Fort Hood he was acting in the name of religion,” he continues. “He killed because he believed that Allah told him to kill. The guy in Norway – Jesus had nothing to do with it. He wasn’t even cited! Using the word Christian to label him is dishonest.”

It almost goes without saying: the hypocrisy is nauseating. The baffling, insidious endgame of the ‘No True Scotsman’ fallacy incarnate, with a touch of disingenuity chucked in for good measure.

If O’Reilly had taken the time to listen, Sally Quinn might have presented this, taken from Breivik’s ‘manifesto:

“At the age of 15, I chose to be baptised and confirmed in the Norwegian State Church,” wrote Breivik. “I consider myself to be 100 percent Christian.”

Or maybe she would have quoted Stephen Prothero, a religion scholar from Boston University, who stated that “[i]f he did what he has alleged to have done, Anders Breivik is a Christian terrorist”.

Yet, despite the fact that the mainstream media was terrifyingly quick to claim that the Oslo attacks were perpetrated by Muslim terrorists, no-one in their right minds is attempting to blame Christianity for this vile act of terrorism. Not for a second. It’s the hypocrisy that stings, the veiled xenophobia of the Christian right.

As Editor of the gaming website Kotaku Australia, I had the misfortune of being caught up in this maelstrom of hypocrisy when Jim Wallace of the Australian Christian Lobby – yes, the same Jim Wallace who tweeted that Anzac soldiers didn’t die for homosexuals and muslims – had the gall to claim that it wasn’t Christianity, or a twisted sense of justice that was to blame for the attacks. No – of course not…

The culprit? Those dastardly video games.

“If there are even a few deranged minds that can be taken over the edge by an obsession with violent games, claimed Wallace, in a statement published on the Australian Christain Lobby’s website, “it is in every Australian’s interest that we ban them.

“The studied indifference of this killer to the suffering he was inflicting, his obvious dehumanising of his victims and the evil methodical nature of the killings have all the marks of games scenarios.”

Again, assumptions that fly in the face of peer reviewed studies – a vast, vast majority of which state that games have no stronger an impact on our behaviour than any other type of media you wish to name.

Some perspective: there were roughly 50 references to video games in Breivik’s 700,000 word manifesto – mostly references to games he enjoyed playing in his spare time – one reference where he stated that Modern Warfare 2 was like a training simulator (a statement that any trained soldier would, and has, openly laughed at). This was enough for Jim Wallace of the ACL to openly call for the banning of any and all violent video games.

Despite the fact that Christianity was referenced over 2000 times in the same manifesto.

Despite the fact Breivik openly referred to himself as a modern day crusader, protecting Europe against “Islamization”.

Again – just to clarify – no-one is blaming Christianity. It’s the hypocrisy that stings.

And the ignorance; a hostile brand of ignorance that has become increasingly infused in the rhetoric of these middle-aged men who claim to represent the Christian faith across the media and in government – on television, in newspapers, in cabinet meetings across Australia.

Right now? When I think ‘Christian’ I think Jim Wallace. I think Bill O’Reilly. And that’s a real problem.

As someone married to a Christian – a reasonable person who gasped in disgust when I showed her the video featuring O’Reilly – I worry for the way that Christians are being represented in Australian and across the world. Mainly I worry about the people who are representing them.

It’s a narrative that has become increasingly dominated by an extreme right agenda, where the vocal minority scream and the rest cower in abject fear and embarrassment. People like Jim Wallace and Bill O’Reilly make it embarrassing to be a Christian.

For the life of my I cannot understand why moderate Christians – reasonable, rational Christans – allow themselves to be represented by people like Jim Wallace and the Australian Christian Lobby. Why they allow themselves to get caught up in this culture – this practiced ignorance, this hostile ignorance.

Jim Wallace should not be representing Christianity.

And Bill O’Reilly is not a Christian.

Sometimes it makes you feel clever. Pompous even. At times you’ll wear it like a badge of pride, or arrogance, depending on the gait of your swagger. Once in a while you might even use it to bloat yourself with an inflated sense of superiority. But every now and then it can be difficult not believing in God.

Sometimes even a lack of faith position takes faith.

I was sharing a chair lift with one of the prettiest girls I’ve ever met who isn’t my wife. A group of us had booked a lodge south of Sydney to go snowboarding and she had come along. Our group was a mish-mash of friends, family and people I’d barely met before in my life – this girl belonged to the latter. Usually such circumstances leave me about as sociable as a caged ferret, but sitting beside her I somehow felt like making the effort, so I did my best to strike up conversation.

The story she told me made it very difficult to not believe in God.

I'm usually as sociable as this guy, but never as cute

Until she was seven years old this girl lived with her parents in Siberia, in Soviet Russia. Her family, as you’d expect in communist Russia, were Atheists – a lack of faith position that was cemented when a pot of boiling tea was spilled on her lap when she was five years old, causing third degree burns, leaving scars that remain visible to this day.

What kind of a God would punish such a sinless child in this manner, her parents asked? She would have to endure these scars for the rest of her life – why would God punish someone so innocent.

She spent three months in hospital. The soviet doctors, in their misguided attempts to help, did a haphazard job of bandaging her wounds and, to an extent, left her in worse shape than when she came in. In the meantime her parents, despite their earlier lack of faith, eventually did end up turning to God, joining a Christian group that had recently arrived from America, settling in their hometown in Siberia.

Religion slowly began to become a part of her parents’ life, and as a result the mother started speaking to her daughter about God. After hearing the stories one night the little girl decided she would pray; naively believing that, if she just asked nicely, God would fix her, and she would wake up completely healed, as if nothing had ever happened in the first place.

Of course, that didn’t happen. The prayer ended and she woke up no different to the girl she was when she fell asleep.

But then, roughly two months later, the girl’s mother received a letter from her church group. With the letter was an invitation to send her daughter to America to receive the medical treatment she needed to fix her burns.  Everything would be paid for and, immediately after filling out the permission forms necessary to leave the Soviet Union, the girl left for Los Angeles, spending almost a year receiving the necessary treatment for her chronic injuries.

That step was the first in a sequence of events that allowed the girl and her family to eventually leave Soviet Russia and start a new life in New Zealand – some would argue it was the end result of a naïve childlike prayer. The girl is 24 now, and even though some scars from her burns still remain, she looks upon them as a reminder that no matter what happens God has a plan for her. These are the scars that brought her to New Zealand, the scars that bolstered her faith, scars that brought her entire family to grace and, ultimately, into the hands of God.

Some people spend a large portion of their time attempting to attach meaning to their life, but without doubt some moments have that meaning thrust upon them. Considering the girl’s circumstances, and what she went through, how could she not have a beautiful faith in God and the power of prayer? I can’t judge her for the strength of her convictions and the nature of her faith – I can only admire her for it.

Sometimes a strange chain of events has the potential to twist and conspire like a magic trick. Suddenly our pain and suffering acquires a deep, profound meaning. As Atheists we’re supposed to ignore that and put it down to chance, or coincidence – but during these moments that disbelief can become incredibly difficult. Sometimes a lack of faith position takes a lot of faith.

I was born in Scotland, and my wife was born in Chile, before moving to Australia as a child; but somehow, for some reason, we met in Japan. We both arrived in Osaka on the exact same day. We caught the same train to Nagoya and when I turned up for my first day of work I was amazed to find that we had both been assigned to the exact same school as teachers.

And as strange as it sounds, the first time I saw her, I had the weirdest sense that I knew her from somewhere; that I had met her before.

In Japan some people believe that couples fated to be together are tied together with a single red ribbon, that they pick up that string and follow it each to other. I cringed when I first heard the story, but sometimes I wonder about the circumstances, the incredible set of coincidences and decisions I made that led me to where I am today, to who I’m with today. Because sometimes we struggle to ascribe meaning to major events in our life, but every now and then moments have a profound meaning thrust upon them.

These pieces of inanimate technology are in LOVE

Sometimes I catch my wife questioning herself. She watches in church as partners get baptised into Christianity for the other and starts to wonder if she is doing something wrong. Could she be doing more to help change my beliefs – is my lack of faith somehow her fault?

She couldn’t be more wrong: the precise opposite is true. Meeting my wife, the series of coincidences that brought us together, and the beautiful way in which she lives her life as a Christian, has been, in many ways, the greatest possible test of my faith in a lack of faith.

As soft as it sounds, I often feel that being married to my wife – the process of finding her and the impossible path we followed in order to stay together – is like some kind of incredible miracle. It’s difficult not to see it as an act of God, or some supernatural force, but as an Atheist that is what I must do. That is what I believe.

At times it seems like an impossible, bewildering choice. Because of my wife, and the amazing life we lead, I sometime find it very difficult to not believe in God. But I have to show faith in my lack of faith.

Hey everyone! I was thinking about writing a new blog, but while I was trying to somehow jumble out the concept, I realised that it was an issue better formed as a question.

So here goes…

In my experience most people, as children, simply accept the information given to them as gospel. It’s only when they get a little older they start to question what they were taught. This process can end one of two ways – they either come out at the other end reinforced in their own beliefs, with a well reasoned out backbone to sustain that belief, or they begin to doubt what they were taught in the first place.

I was never really brought up in a Christian environment. I went to Church with my Grandparents a handful of times, and was always interested in spirituality, but always from the perspective as an outsider.

From that perspective I can look at certain aspects of Christianity and instantly understand them – prayer, ritual, community, love, do unto others, the sabbath, the health message, etc, etc – but there are parts that genuinely confuse me.

Perhaps the biggest of these is the nature of sin, and how Jesus dying on the cross has any relevance to my life. How does it change things? How am I ‘saved’ by this act? How does his death relieve me of the burden of sin?

With this Burning Question I really want you guys to help me understand this concept. I always ask this question to my Christian family and friends and I’ve never really had it answered in a way that clicked with me. The closest anyone has come was my wife’s Dad, who is a pastor, but even then I left a little bit unsatisfied.

I’d really love to throw it out to you guys:

How is Jesus dying on the cross relevant to my life, and how does it change anything? How does this give me eternal life, and how is this fair in the context of sin?

That’s my rambling question to you guys. It’s a really personal one for me, because it’s something I’ve never really understood. I’m really keen to hear what you all have to say on this issue!

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I’m going to let you all in on a secret. Actually, if I’m being totally honest, it’s not really much of a secret.

I’m a bit stupid.

When I was a kid I thought that, pre 1984, the entire world was devoid of colour. I thought everything was black and white.

And this was reinforced by the fact that my first memory, of my brother being born on Feb 2^nd 1984 when I was two years old, was in black and white. Except that it wasn’t really my first memory. My ‘memory’ was something I saw once in a photograph. A black and white photograph.

Yep. I’m pretty stupid.

When I was four years old I loved to watch my Dad polish his Doc Marten boots. I thought they were the coolest things ever. My Dad had only left the room for one minute, but that was enough time for me to forget that the bottle next to me actually contained boot polish. Enough time for me to mistake it for milk. Enough time for me to guzzle it all down heartily and almost poison myself to death in the process.

I spent a week in the hospital as a result of that little misunderstanding. Like I said, I’m pretty frickin’ stupid.

I leaned over roadworks trying to tag moving cars on a main road, because I thought it would make them chase me. I thought the moon was made out of cheese. I used to think that eating turnip gave me special powers that let me turn off the TV with my mind (my Grandad was quite adept at hiding the remote controller and pressing the off switch at the exact moment I squeezed my eyelids shut).

Yep. I used to believe a lot of things – a lot of really stupid things – and it got me to wondering: how can I be so certain of what I believe right now, this precise second?

I can’t. No one can.

The certainty with which some ‘atheists’ can bundle their way about town, their chests thrust out, declaring with no doubt or humility that God couldn’t possibly exist, believing themselves to be on the precise cutting edge of truth constantly, disturbs me slightly. The ones that openly call Christians stupid infuriate me even more.

Because I’m an Atheist, and I know for a fact that I’m stupid. And I also know for a fact that I’m not the only one.

Every time you hear someone ridicule or patronise someone who doesn’t believe in evolution, without knowing the first thing about evolution themselves…

That’s a stupid Atheist.

Every time you hear someone quote a rote-learned verse of the bible out of context to prove how backward/contradictory/unfathomable it is…

That’s a stupid Atheist.

Every time you hear someone trying to talk with authority about the dark, ‘hidden’ history of Christianity having seen nothing more on the subject than The bloody Da Vinci Code and that one documentary they slept through on the Discovery Channel.

That’s a stupid Atheist.

I know all of this because I’ve done each and every last thing on that list more than once during my short time on this planet…

And I’m a very stupid Atheist.

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Building a house of cards is no easy task.

It takes time. Patience. They’re extremely fragile. If one card slips or, worse, is torn out, the entire thing collapses underneath its own weight and inconsistency.

I often wonder about the nature of belief, especially the kind that leads to conclusions I find strange or illogical. Religion is attractive for a number of reasons – reasons that are easily understood. And so much of what is taught about religion remains relevant today; parables from the Gospel, the ten commandments, forgiveness. But how do Christians resolve the internal inconsistencies that exist in the bible, or rationalise the hurt their belief system has brought upon the world? How do they justify that which is completely irrelevant? The brutal, barbaric stuff.

I’ve watched plenty of Christians struggle with that burden – and I often think that the healthiest Christians struggle most – crisis’ of faith, unanswered questions, unresolvable issues. Abortion, rape, homosexuality, creation – taking the bible literally is dangerous, but treating it as anything other than the direct word of God is, for some Christians at least, a difficult pill to swallow.

Remove a single piece from the house of cards, and the entire structure comes tumbling down. Therefore it is up to Christianity to protect that structure. At all costs.

Plenty of Atheists will attack Christians for ignorance. They’re against Gay marriage because they’re backwards, they’re against abortion because they’re heartless; they don’t accept Evolution because they’re stupid.

Of course, that’s not (usually) the case. Christians are (usually) painfully aware of these issues. Far more than you or I. They struggle with these questions constantly. The bottom line is this: Christians are far from ignorant; they’re simply protecting their House of Cards. At all costs if necessary.

These guys: big ass house of cards…

Because building a house of cards is no easy task. The bigger the house, the more fragile it becomes. And if its foundation is built from half-truths and conflict, then that house of cards becomes more fragile still. Take out one single card, one single concept, one single tiny belief, and the whole thing comes tumbling down.

And this phenomenon is by no means exclusive to Christians – Atheists, Agnostics, Muslims, whatever, if they have a belief system, they have their very own House of Cards. The more bloated and inconsistent the belief system, the more fragile the house of cards; and the more vehemently said structure needs to be protected.

It’s the reason why certain debate topics are so emotionally charged – so much is at stake. Remove one piece from the house of cards and the entire structure becomes untenable. No one will abandon a single argument, or give any quarter, because to concede a single point would be tantamount to complete and utter surrender; the integrity of the whole would be in question.

And no-one wants their belief system to collapse; no one has the fortitude or time to rebuild.

Because building a house of cards is no easy task.

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Hey dudes. I thought I’d chuck up a quick question for you guys, which was inspired by a series of videos I started watching.

It’s a debate on a single topic: Is the Catholic Church a force for good in the world?

The debate was held between Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry versus Ann Widdecombe and Archbishop  John Onaiyekan. The former being against the notion that the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world.

It’s an interesting question, and I’d like to know what you guys think. I’ve posted one of the videos below for you guys to have a look at. Let’s hear what you have to say below and, as always, keep it clean people!

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Hey everyone, sorry I haven’t been writing as much. And yes, I’m aware you aren’t hovering over your keyboard feverishly, refreshing the home page every five minutes, but I weirdly feel like I should apologise anyway. Because I’m self-indulgent. And full of myself. And I think the world revolves around me. And I like to think you care.

But to be perfectly, I have been ultra busy. Going overseas for work, getting migraines that felt like my frontal lobe was being attacked by a cheese grater, visiting new born babies in ze familia, (I’m a first time Uncle!)

So yes, the last distraction was awesome, the others not so much – especially the cheese grater episode. Very painful.

Ever had one of these on your brain? Me neither - it was a metaphor.

But in-between it all I’ve been reading Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller, the novel for Stuck in Church’s first ‘book club’! I thought I’d give you guys a quick round up of what I thought, before throwing it out to everyone else.

I really enjoyed Blue Like Jazz for the most part.

Blue Like Jazz, from what I can see, isn’t the kind of book that will change your life. If you believe in God, it may reinforce those beliefs, but it isn’t evangelical in the sense that it’s trying to convince Atheists that God exists. It’s more of an exploration of what it means to believe in God, starting from that end point. Donald Miller doesn’t waste time telling people why he believes or what he believes, he instead talks personally about his own search for spiritual identity – which sounds wanky when I put it on the page like so, but in practice is quite enlightening.

It’s the honesty of it all that is particularly beguiling, the honesty that makes Blue Like Jazz worth experiencing. Anyone that’s ever drawn a breath can appreciate the search for identity and the utterly hideous mistakes that occur along the way. Most of us would like to burn that history to the ground, but Donald Miller is happy to lay it all out for you – like a parade of teenage polaroids – bad haircuts, rubbish beards, dalliances with fundamentalism.

Donald Miller. Not pictured: jazz hands.

When we ourselves look back at such photos, we’re not cringing at the clothes we wore, or the spots dotted on our forehead, most likely we’re cringing at the people we were, or the person we’ve become. We usually can’t look our former selves dead in the eye, but Donald Miller can. And I really enjoy the fact that Miller isn’t afraid to air that dirty laundry, because there’s common ground in it – I, at least, found a lot to relate to.

I think your own perspective will really affect how you read and enjoy Blue Like Jazz. I found certain sections irritating, specifically the section when Miller attacks the ‘trendy writer’ he visits at the cafe. Also, my blind hatred of hipsters often got the better of me, meaning that every time Miller referred to ‘Tony the Beat Poet’ I had to resist the urge to launch the book into the bath (which coincidentally I actually did with my missus’ copy of ‘Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’… by mistake, kinda).

To an extent a lot of the impact was lost for me. I’ve been married to a Christian for three years now, and I like to think the whole experience has taught me the tiniest bit of tolerance. If you had given me this book when I was 20, however, when I thought I knew better than everyone (and felt the need to shove it down people’s throats) I think I really could have gotten something from this book. As someone who had really never believed in God, and harboured a real twisted dark image of Christianity and all that it had come to represent, I probably could have learned something from Blue Like Jazz. As it is I really enjoyed the honesty, and would recommend it to anyone who wanted to learn something about the Christian experience.

Well, that was what I thought! What did you guys think? Let me know below!

“If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.” John 15, verses 19-21

“What does it mean to be ‘of the world’, and what does it mean to be ‘in the world’?”

I asked my wife this question, because, despite knowing Christians most of my life, I was unsure about what it meant exactly.

“She wasn’t happy,” I heard someone whispering once, gossiping idly about a mother’s reaction to her son’s marriage. “She’s too worldly. She’s of the world.”

Of the world. Worldly. It was a word I heard often amongst Seventh Day Adventists.

And for a religion constantly in fear of seeming ‘culty’, the phrase had always seemed, to me at least, a little… well, culty – like it belonged in a Scientology promotional video, featuring Tom Cruise and his terrifying smile, or as an excuse for extremists to lock themselves in a barn and start playing with matches.

Evil. Pure evil…

But at its root it’s something far more harmless, something that springs from the Seventh Day Adventist’s belief in prophecy. SDA Christians are, like most Christians, waiting for God, but they also expect to be persecuted in the lead up to the end of history, just before the second coming of Christ. Being in the world, but not ‘of the world’ basically means that while Christians should live, work and breathe in the same world as non-Christians, they shouldn’t necessarily participate in certain un-Christian activities.

Which is fine. Completely. But from how I’ve heard the terms used, it has become something different entirely. It has become a word Christians use to demean and demonise a lifestyle deemed ‘unChristian’.

In short, being worldly, in my experience, has become a euphemism for any activity Christians don’t approve of, no matter how banal or impotent. A polite synonym for ‘slut’, ‘drug addict’, or someone that just enjoys a drink every now and then. I’ve even seen people refusing to dance at a wedding because it was a ‘worldly’ activity. Such a shame that a word, or a phrase, designed to help Christians get through persecution is being used to persecute.

Kevin Bacon: you're six degrees from him

I wonder just how useful the phrase itself is. At the root of things it represents a desire to be like Jesus, who was not ‘of this world’, and that, of course, is fine; but it’s a testament to our ability to twist and manipulate language to suit our own selfish, insecure ends that these words are used in such a way by the vocal minority.

Words are powerful, and we should be careful with how we use them, and what we allow them to represent. When Jesus talked about being in the world and of the world, he didn’t use these words to discriminate, he didn’t use them as a means to judge. He used them as an example of how you individually should live your Christian life.

And embracing people for who they are, instead of judging them might be a decent start.

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I’ve been an atheist since I was nine years old.

One day I asked my Mum, do you believe in God? She said no. I asked why? She said, children starve in Africa. It barely registered at first; to me ‘children starve in Africa’ was a phrase used to make me eat vegetables before I could get ice cream. Nothing more.

I asked my Dad the same question. He said he didn’t know. Again I asked why? He said he didn’t understand God.

We prayed every day at school, in some classes more than others, with some teachers more than others. We went to Church on Easter and Christmas. The teachers paired boys with girls and we held hands together for the 900 metre walk from school to church. I shuffled in the pews, I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t listen to the reverend, and I stayed silent during the songs. I refused to bow my head during prayer; I had stopped believing in God.

At lunchtime I would scarper from friend to friend, whispering in people’s ears. Do you believe in God, I asked? Everyone said yes. I got agitated. Why, I asked? Children starve in Africa.

My Mum always said it was important to never be afraid to tell the truth. So it wasn’t long before I told my teacher that I didn’t believe in God, that I didn’t want to pray in class, I didn’t want to go to Church. She asked me why? I said, children starve in Africa.

I still had to go to Church.

Then I asked my teacher if we could have a class debate about God, and she said yes. I was so excited, now I could tell all my classmates that God wasn’t real, they didn’t have to worry about hell. They didn’t have to go to church if they didn’t want to, they could go out and play on Sundays. But they still had to eat their vegetables, because children starve in Africa.

My report card said, “Mark is a very opinionated little boy”. My Mum wasn’t angry – she was very happy. It was wrong to tell lies. And it was wrong to let lies be told.

I don’t think I’m all that different today. And I don’t think the world is all that different. I’m still an opinionated little boy.

And children still starve in Africa.

So it’s Thursday, so I thought I’d put up another question. So here it is:

How literally should we take the Bible?

I think this is a question that both Atheists and Christians can discuss. Because regardless of belief in God, the Bible is still something worthy of study, at least it is to me.

I personally find it a difficult one to answer, which is why I’m asking! I think the Bible is full of interesting truths, but if you want to follow it to the letter, your best course of action would be to join the Taliban, because that’s what you’d be letting yourself in for.

Anyway, keen to see what you guys think. Have at it everyone, and no calling each other idiots and suchlike!

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