John Walker's Electronic House

Rum Doings Episode 12

by on Jan.13, 2010, under Rum Doings, The Rest

In our first Rum Doings of 2010, we don’t discuss whatever happened to Britain’s supplies of salt.

Enjoying a cocktail known as A Snowball For The Year 2000, we begin with an excellent description of Nick from a listener, that sets us off onto a discussion of alternative ways of pronouncing words, and the definition of “enormity”, and why using Windows is like being a tourist in Egypt.

Then, as was perhaps somewhat inevitable, there’s discussion of the weather. And weather forecasting. We’re enormously right. Moving on to thunderstorms, you’ll understand this brings us to discussing the Scouting movement. Which of course leads into a conversation about breakfast cereals. And Victoria Wood. And Armando Iannucci. And Chris Langham. Ending on a teaser for the next episode! We’re a serial drama.

Email us! About anything you like. Who knows, in about two months we may read it on the podcast.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

As ever, we depend on you to promote this. Please, take the time to retweet it, tell friends, or post about it on forums, that sort of thing. Ooh, and write us a review on iTunes. That sort of thing is very helpful. Go on. For the children.

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5 Comments for this entry

  • James Campbell

    I’ve really enjoyed your podcasts so far but shan’t be telling anyone about it because I like to listen to and read things that nobody else does so I can steal jokes and anecdotes, pretend they’re my own and nobody is the wiser…
    Unfortunately following Mr. Walker’s shameless plugging on the RPS podcast this will soon be far too popular for me.
    Also I do not have any friends…
    Finally what is antitheistic nihilistic deism?

  • Nick Mailer

    Hello James,

    Thank you for your kind comments.

    There are two philosophies of God – deism and theism. Deism postulates a God who created the Universe, but does not speculate on the nature of this God. It also does not consider this God to be particularly involved in human affairs. Most of the founding fathers of America (like Benjamin Franklin) were Deists.

    Theism, on the other hand, is where one claims not only that God remains actively involved in human activities, but that one understands his intent (via the bible and so forth).

    To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens, it is one thing to believe that an intelligent being of some sort created the cosmos. It is another to claim that you know that He cares about whom you sleep with.

    Finally, nihilism is a philosophy which suggests that nothing has objective value or importance, and hence nothing “really” matters.

    So antitheistic deism is a deism that specifically and explicilty repudiates the “busybody God” aspects of theism, to a nihilistic end.

    I hope this helps.

  • James Campbell

    Afternoon Nick,

    Thanks very much that was very helpful. I must get round to reading Hitchens as I do enjoy the erudite and (perhaps ironically) dogmatic opinions he airs when I’ve seen him on television.

    Right I’m off to give you guys a 1 star review on itunes.

  • Nick Mailer

    If you give us a 1 star review, you’ll make Baby Jesus cry.

  • Mike Arthur

    Finally got round to listening to this. Just wanted to tune in and say I’m the one person who liked Another Day in Paradise by Phil Collins. I’d agree that it is massively overproduced and lyrically pretentious but I find it catchy and pleasing. This could be due to unavoidable nostalgia from my father playing it repeatedly in the car when I it was released (I was only 5 at the time) and I suspect it’s seeped into my nostalgia centres.

    I also do like his voice, it filled out a bit as he got older and I find it to be particularly emotive. His drumming skills are pretty good too.