Dr Paul Allen

In 1878 Floyd Hatfield had a pig. Somehow this pig got a tiny bit of its ear bitten off or otherwise severed, or so Hatfield claimed. You see, on the other side of Tug Fork river in West Virginia lived a family called the McCoys. The McCoys notched their pigs’ ears in order to identify them. When Randolph McCoy saw the notched hog in a Hatfield sty, he accused Floyd Hatfield of swine theft. The matter soon escalated into a bitter lawsuit. Randolph McCoy took Floyd Hatfield to court over the issue, but the conflict was exacerbated because the local justice of the peace happened to be the honourable Judge Anderson Hatfield. He found no evidence that Floyd Hatfield had stolen the pig and ruled in favour of his kinsman. He wisely made his ruling based on the testimony of one Bill Staton, a relative of both families, and thus was seen to be impartial. The case was closed. Or was it? Two years later, Bill Staton was killed, supposedly in self-defence, by two McCoy brothers. Around that time ...

Image of Stephen Fry (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) STEPHEN FRY AND CANCER Stephen Fry was asked what he would say if he were "confronted by God ."   Fry replied, "I'd say, bone cancer in children? What's that about?  How dare you create a world to which there is such misery that is not our fault. It's not right, it's utterly, utterly evil.  Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain. That's what I would say." Interviewer: "And you think you are going to get into heaven, like that?"  Fry replied: "I wouldn't want to. I wouldn't want to get in on his terms. They are wrong. Now, if I died and it was Pluto, Hades , and if it was the 12 Greek gods , then I would have more truck with it, because the Greeks didn't pretend to not be human in their appetites, in their capriciousness, and in their unreasonableness.  They didn't prese...