Boiling frogs

I discussed before the chronic insomnia of at least three of my friends and family. In today's Guardian, there is a piece about Alan Berliner who made a film about his insomnia and almost perished in the attempt. Well, maybe not perished so much as nearly went mad.
I was particularly fascinated by his analogy of boiling a frog,

"As Wide Awake progresses, he becomes increasingly sleep deprived, a condition he likens to boiling a frog slowly, - a frog constantly adapts its body temperature so it would not realise it is being cooked alive - "I look dreadful," he keeps saying."

I find it rather comforting to know that, although I assume it only applies to the amphibious type of frogs. Not that I'd ever want to actually boil the other kind however much they had pissed me off.

I'm not a big fan of gory horror films, the type that rely solely on blood and guts and no plot. Some years back, I watched the original Hellraiser film and it frightened me half to death, clearly good at what it set out to do, blood, yes, gore, tick, but also plot.
I was nonetheless rather surprised at myself for renting the most recent Hellraiser film, 'Hellworld'. I think it lacked the slow burn of the first film and in fact had succumbed to the formula of recent horror, bunch of teens have sex and get horribly dismembered, but it did have a little twistette at the end. And it did have Lance Henriksen which I think adds a certain expectation of underlying unpleasantness.

You know that e-mail that does the rounds every six months or so, the one where you get to have your intelligence rated based on how many letter 'f's you can spot in a sample of text? The trick is that no-one sees the word 'of' so everyone ignores the 'f's in 'of' until the second time they get the e-mail.
Well something like that is going on here, only no-one is learning from experience.

I'm trying to get my head round this.
Now the Pope, went back to Germany whence he came and there he made a speech.
In it, he refers to a text he has read recently which quotes a 14th Century Christian emperor who claimed that the Prophet Mohammad had introduced only evil and inhuman ideas into the world in that he stated that what Mohammad brought to the table that was new, was the idea of spreading faith by the sword, thus even the 14th Century bloke wasn't claiming that Islam itself was evil and inhuman, just the suggested method of spreading it.
Pope Benedict then goes on to discuss this question in quite an interesting way, and with particular emphasis on the nature of God and the nature of Soul.

Completely out of character I know, but certain non Christian factions seem to be able to read this as 'the Pope says that Mohammad was evil'.

Pakistan, joined later by Iran, Turkey, Egypt and the British council of Muslims, has called for the Pope to apologise for hurting the feelings of Muslims. That seems to be after the Vatican had already issued a statement saying that there was no intention to offend the sensibilities of Muslim believers.

The Archbishop of Canterbury said,

" "The Pope is a distinguished scholar and one unlikely to say offensive things," he said. "If he quoted something said 600 years ago, we should not assume that this represents the Pope's beliefs about Islam today.

"Muslims, as well as Christians, must learn to enter into dialogue without crying foul. We live in perilous times, and we must not only separate religion from violence but also not give religious legitimacy to violence in any shape or form." "

Exactomundo my friend, exactomundo. But here's the thing, here's what's bugging me as well as the selective hearing involved. If all these religious leaders can stand up and have a go at the Pope for something he didn't actually say, why the feck can't they all stand up and stop the atrocities which are being committed in the name of their Faith?
Or am I missing the point entirely and they don't actually want it to stop ?

Where there's no sense there's no reason. Is that why you can boil a frog without them noticing? Oh no, it was because they upwardly adjust their own body temperature, I must pay attention.