Orthodox Jews With Peculiar Views

Sometimes, in fact very often, human religion sucks like a black hole. Listen to this and tell me whether or not you think these people are sick puppies.

A Jewish rabbinical court has sentenced a dog to death by stoning because they feared that the animal was a reincarnation of a lawyer who had insulted (probably justifiably) its judges about twenty years ago. The unfortunate animal had apparently wandered into the court building and had refused to leave. It gets worse too; one of the judges from the court in the ultra-orthodox Mea Shearim neighbourhood of Jerusalem even asked some of the local children to carry out the sentence. A court manager told an Israeli journalist that the stoning had been ordered because the court deemed it an appropriate way to 'get back at " the spirit that had entered the dog. Appropriate to order children to stone a dog to death? Someone please remind me. Is it 2011 AD or 33BC? By the way, you'll be pleased to hear than the dog escaped before the sentence could be carried out.

I much prefer the recent ruling of an Islamic court in Sudan where a man who was caught in a compromising position with a goat was forced to marry the animal. Apparently they are very happy and have just celebrated their third anniversary. They have two children who unusually for toddlers will eat absolutely anything. With Islamic courts' penchant for punishing women who have had the audacity to have been raped, it bodes well for Middle Eastern peace that extreme Islam and extreme Judaism have something in common - even if it is only lunacy.

On a far more important topic than the Middle East peace process I'm pleased to say that Badger's recent visit to the vet went well. Don't worry Badger fans, there was nothing wrong with him. He just had a general check-up and his toenails clipped. Of course he let me know how brave he was and reminded me that I had squealed like a girl and widdled on my female staff when I had the horse thermometer shoved up my bottom passage. However, I am reliably told (Actually not that reliably - it was my male staff.) that he sat there and trembled throughout the entire consultation, and he didn't even get the horse thermometer treatment, which is probably just as well since his eyes are already pretty bulgy.

Returning briefly to the subject of Islam and Judaism, I wonder what they're attitude to guinea pigs is. Does the fact that we have the word pig in our name make us unclean? Followers of these religion would do well to remember what anthropologists now believe is the probable origin of the thought that pigs and dogs are unclean. It is widely held scientific theory that both animals' intelligence were considered too closely related to that of humans and so, long ago it became taboo it eat them. In the meantime however, it has become apparent that the intelligence of both the dog and the pig has developed far beyond that of religious fanatics of all denominations.