Continuing to read the article reveals that Patriarch Kirill has made a number of statements that reveal he is no liberal.

In March 2007, Kirill objected to Moscow hosting a gay pride parade.

It is directed against the majority of Russian society.

We believe that the law should not interfere in citizens’ private lives.

You can sin if you want to, but you will answer to God.

However, if you are trying to propagate your sin by seducing and degrading people, society must oppose it.

Patriarch Kirill doesn’t want LGBT people discriminated against, but equally he doesn’t want them parading in Moscow, its the seducing and degrading he worries about. The propagation of sin is causing him sleepless nights.

I don’t think Patriarch Kirill fears these things very much. What Patriarch Kirill fears is that elements of Russian society will start to think that it is okay for LGBT to be open about their sexuality. They will see these LGBT people proud and happy about themselves and they might think that you can live a lifestyle which does not have the approval of the Patriarch and be a happy contented individual.

The Patriarch and his ilk in other major churches are not fearful of LGBT people themselves but rather they fear the possibility of society accepting them. This is why the Patriarch will oppose discrimination against gay people, but equally oppose them having a parade in Moscow. For society to become liberal and tolerant of LGBT people it means that it is adopting its own social values and not those of the church.

In the Pink News article Patriarch Kirill is quoted:

The task of the Church is to say that sin is sin. Otherwise, the Church is not needed.

If people start to decide for themselves what is sin and what is not sin then the Church is not needed. That’s what Patriarch Kirill fears.

I wonder why we get them in the first place. I haven’t used one in years. It just looks to me like an incredible waste of paper to keep distributing them to everyone willy nilly.

Reinforcing my point rather, I got two identical yellow pages recently. I put them straight into the recycling box as you can see in the pic.

Isn’t it crazy?

In this bizarre BBC news report Steve Rosenberg tells us what a wonder it is. It is a wonder that Steve Rosenberg could go through that script without laughing.

The room reminds me of that lift in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which keeps trying to keep its passengers calm but its efforts only infuriate them.

I had changed the settings on the iPod Touch so that it wouldn’t make any sound whatsoever when, for example, an email arrives or if an alarm goes off from the calendar. Also because the iPod Touch has, well, a touch screen, then it is completely silent, there is no risk of clicking or anything that maybe could be possible with a Blackberry.

For the actual business of note taking I found it to be very good. I used the standard notepad application that comes with the iPod Touch and then just emailed the notes to myself when the seminar was over. I found it rather liberating not having to hang onto a piece of paper or worry about a pen leaking in my jacket pocket. You could say, I guess, that I have the iPod Touch to worry about but I think one reason why mobile devices are so successful is that we rather like worrying about them.

I’m getting into the way of thumbing which, of course, Blackberry users have been doing for ages. Once you get used to it it is pretty fast. I don’t take copious notes (funny how lots of notes is always copious) but rather I just take down a few things that I want to remember.

Oddly enough while I think I’m okay with using the iPod Touch in a seminar I don’t think I could use it in a meeting with, say one or two people. I don’t know and when I next have one I might try this out. I guess it might be okay if I was having a meeting with Steve Jobs. The funny thing is that while I feel that people give you the space to write notes in a notebook, they will sort of slow down speaking for you in a small group, I would wonder if they’d do the same if you were thumbing into an iPod Touch or a Blackberry?

When I arrived at the seminar all prepared to use my iPod Touch for the first time I sat down and the person right beside me got out what was either an iPhone or an iPod Touch. I thought maybe I wasn’t going to be the only one taking notes on my iPod, but in fact my neighbour just put the iPhone or iPod Touch on the desk face down, then got out a sheet of paper and started writing notes on that. Thinking about it all later I wondered if it was an iPhone and she was recording the seminar? I sort of doubt it though.

I bought something in Boots, the chemist the other day. In US terms Boots is a drugstore, which we call a “chemist” in the UK. Boots is a very big and established chain of stores.

On making my purchase the cashier gave me a slip of paper telling me that I can Save £5 when I spend £30 on electrical beauty.

This gave me pause for thought, “electrical beauty” this is a new one on me.

On the promotional leaflet there is an asterisk after “electrical beauty”. I thought that this would lead me to an explanation as to what is meant by “electrical beauty” but at the bottom of the leaflet it says: “*Exclusions apply, see overleaf for details”.

I may not be the first to wonder about this one. Check out Electrical Beauty.