大象传媒

A couple of commenters have challenged my claim that can constitute torture. There is plainly some debate about the definition of torture -- and about whether certain "softening up" techniques constitute torture. According to the UN Convention defines torture as

[A]ny act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.

Sleep deprivation, sometimes combined with forced standing for days at a time, has been used by various state agencies in order to extract information from suspects.

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In a public meeting this week, Rudy Giuliani offered this moral guidance on the definition of torture:

But they talk about sleep deprivation. I mean, on that theory, I鈥檓 getting tortured running for president of the United States. That鈥檚 plain silly. That鈥檚 silly.

The audience . But how many people are really in any doubt that slare a form of torture?

I witnessed a rare ecumenical protest staged earlier today outside Belfast City Hall. Protestant and Catholic Anti-abortion campaigners gathered to mark the and to explain to members of the public why they believe it would be wrong to extend that Act to Northern Ireland.

Jim Dowson, the leader of the organised the protest. On display were some extremely gruesome pictures of aborted foetuses. I asked Jim if he was concerned that young children might be distressed by these images as they walked past City Hall with their parents. He explained that some children actually walk up to the images and kiss them, then ask their parents what happened to the babies in the pictures.

Needless to say, this was an extremely emotive protest and it is an intensely emotive debate. The Northern Ireland Assembly debated the issue of abortion on Monday. On tomorrow's Sunday Sequence, we'll debate the question with Jeffrey Donaldson MP MLA, who spearheaded opposition to any extention of the Abortion Act to Northern Ireland during that debate. He'll be joined by a leading pro-choice campaigner within Parliament, the Lib Dem MP Dr Evan Harris, Audrey Simpson of the Family Planning Association and the commentator and educator Michelle Marken.

The distinguished Irish historian is my guest next Wednesday at the first of a new series of lunchtime talks at Queen's University. The series is titled "Out to Lunch with William Crawley" (details ), and the idea is very simple: I interview some leading academic, cultural or political personality in the company of more than a hundred lunch guests, who also have the chance to put questions and engage in conversation. The whole thing was inspired and developed by Lynn Corken, and it's already proving enormously successful. I am delighted that has agreed to be my inaugural guest; I, like man others, am a great fan of his books. Lynn tells me there are very few tickets are left for the the first event; but you can still chance your arm. Lunch is included and tickets are available from the Queen's University

I've begun work on the next series of The Book Programme. Padraig Coyle is the producer for this new run of programmes and he's already lined me up some fascinating guests. Marianne Faithfull talks to us about the second volume of her autobiography, Paul Merton waxes lyrical about his passion for silent comedy, Max Hastings explains how he managed to tell the story of the Battle of Japan in less than 700 pages, and Tony Benn ... is Tony Benn. The new series begins on Saturday 10 November. The variety of guests (and books) is one of the strongest features of the Book Programme. Listeners also tell me they love the home visits, when I descend on a well-known personality's home and see what's on their bookshelves. Look out for my visit to Gerry Adams in this series.

There's a little overlap between books and the Belfast Festival tomorrow night, when I chair a conversation about politics and "Loyalism" featuring three authors with new books to talk about: in the Elmwood Hall. Steve Bruce and I have already been e-mailing each other to work out what precisely we all might mean by the term "Loyalism".

I'll be interviewing Alexander McCall Smith in the same Festival venue next Thursday night. Don't even try to get a ticket -- it's completely sold out. I recently made a visit to McCall Smith's home in Edinburgh in the company of Siobhan Savage, one of our Festival Nights producers, to interview the creator of . You can see that interview on next Tuesday's programme.

Burma's Prime Minister in exile, , will visit Belfast on Thursday as the guest of Dr Win will be speaking at the Queen's University Students' Union at 6.30 pm. See for a briefing on the recent pro-Democracy protests in Burma.

I'm confused. Speaking to a packed Carnegie Hall in New York on Friday night, J.K. Rowling "revealed" that , the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, . (And, in fact, that Professor Dumbledore was infatuated with Gellert Grindelwald.) But why didn't Rowling mention that Dumbledore is gay in any of the seven Harry Potter novels? After a heptalogy of speculation by fans, she now lets the wizard out of the closet during a book tour? Can you do that? I suppose if you are J.K. Rowling you can do what you like, but surely literary characters (and their personality traits) exist on the page. It seems pointless to invent significant chatacteristics for characters and reveal them to the public after the book series is complete. Peter Tatchell, while welcoming the outing of Dumbledore, asks why Rowling didn't make his sexuality explicit in the novels. Good question. Was she nervous about a possible backlash from some conservative Christian groups who were already unhappy about what they saw as the glamorisation of the "occult" in the children's series?

Incidentally, while at the Edinburgh Festival this year I caught a glimpse of It's a kind of Reduced Shakespeare version of all the Potter novels, and it's terrificially good fun for the entire family. Sustained laughter all the way, even from the non-Potter-heads in the room. Let's see if Jeff and Dan do a quick rewrite now to include a gay character when they bring their production to this year's Belfast Festival.

Greetings from the lobby of the Burlington Hotel in Dublin. I'm here for the evening, along with some of my colleagues from Radio Ulster, for this year's PPI Radio Awards. These are the Irish equivalent of the UK Sony Awards, and this is the first year that broadcasters from Northern Ireland have been eligible for awards. for the specialist speech programme of the year category, and Radio Ulster has pulled off, in total, in this first year of entry. So, the dinner suit is in the trouser press (well, half of it is anyway) and I'm just about to abandon blogging for the day to enjoy a pre-ceremony drink with our team of nominees. Then it's on to the gala dinner and awards ceremony (hosted by ). It promises to be a fun evening. If we win, I'll let you know. If we don't, I'll never mention it again.

Update: It was a great night for Radio Ulster, with wins for McLean's Country and Stephen Nolan (many congratulations to both Ralph and Stephen). Alas, Sunday Sequence lost out to RTE's Mind Matters programme. Dara O'B was a superb host: he started with a terrific stand-up session and the tone was set for a great evening. The Irish radio awards are much more informal than the UK Sony Awards -- it felt like a group of old friends getting together (which is essentially what it was).

On November 24, Archbishop Se谩n Brady and, for the first time in hostory, Ireland will have three living cardinals. The Irish Catholic primate will be one of my guests on this week's Sunday Sequence. A full list of the 23 prelates to be created cardinals at the Novemeber consistory is contained in the Vatican press release below.

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"Television is more interesting than people. If it were not we should have people standing in the corner of our room." One of thousands of great lines authored by the writer and broadcaster Alan Coren, who's death has just been announced. A former editor of Punch and The Listener, he is probably best known these days for Call My Bluff, The News Quiz, or his Times column. Alan Coren was one of the great British satirists of the past four decades; not least because his wit was undergirded by an extremely sharp intelligence (he was a graduate of Oxford, Yale and Berkeley).

The story goes that Coren once complained to his agent about his books not selling very well. His agent informed him that there were only three subjects currently selling well: golf, cats and Nazis. Coren dutifully entitled his next book "Golfing for Cats" -- and had a swastika put on the cover.

In January, he joined the cultural battle over religious symbolism in his Times Notebook:

No transport is easy, these days. In Tuesday鈥檚 Times we learnt of a poor sap who is suing Qantas for chucking him off its London plane because he was wearing an anti-Bush T-shirt. And had it been a cross? A Rastafarian wristband? An Old Etonian tie? A white yarmulke open to doubt as to whether he was the Pope, and thus likely to offend atheist passengers, or merely an Adelaide rabbi supporting a Plymouth Brother鈥檚 right not to appear on CCTV because God had forbidden his image to be graven? Do I believe in Donald Rumsfeld? I do not know, and if I did, I wouldn鈥檛 dare say. I know only that every day brings more things we do not know we do not know.

The wife of a Church of Ireland bishop . Bishop Richard Henderson's wife Anita was received into the Catholic Church by the Bishop of Killala, Dr John Fleming, at a private ceremony last weekend. I've just spoken with Dr Henderson on the phone. Understandably, he and his wife regard this as a personal matter and they are not doing interviews with the press. (Though they appear to have .) Alan Harper, the Archbishop of Armagh, : he simply emphasises that he believes in freedom of religion. The Primate also notes that this personal matter may produce some "awkwardness". Perhaps he has in mind the fact that some commentators have explained some of the Church of Ireland's demographic decline in recent years (at least in part) in terms of inter-marriage?

Update: In reply to some commenters who have questioned the appropriateness of reporting this story, it's worth noting that the story was made public on Monday by the Church of Ireland in a by Bishop Henderson and the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr John Neill. This story has been widely reported locally and across and Ireland, and by both and Anglican news services.

The London Science Museum has cancelled a scheduled public lecture by Dr James Watson, the Nobel prize-winning discoverer of DNA, after he made a statement Dr Watson was due to give a talk at the museum on Friday.

A spokesman for the museum said the comments by the 79-year-old scientist had "gone beyond the point of scceptable debate". In an interview with the Sunday Times, Dr Watson explained that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really ... "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true".

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The Vatican has just announced that the Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, Dr Se谩n Brady, is to be made a cardinal. The Consistory -- the ceremony at which Dr Brady will be created a cardinal -- will be held in Rome on 24 November.

The Irish writer Anne Enright has just been awarded the Man Booker Prize for her novel . This was the highlight novel of the last series of our 大象传媒 Radio Ulster Book Programme. I am delighted for Anne Enright -- and I hope this prize will bring her work the attention it rightly deserves. I am certain the Booker judges wrestled for days over thie choice, with individual judges switching to-and-fro as others made counter-arguments. My pick would have been Animal's People, but I feel no disappointment at all that the judges have chosen such a wonderful novel as their winner.

, the 大象传媒's Writer in Residence at Queen's University, chaired a very lively eve-of-the-Booker-Prize event last night in the University's Harty Room. I was on the panel championing by Indra Sinha. This is Indra Sinha's second novel and explores the impact of a -like chemical tragedy on the life of a young Indian man and those around him. Animal, the central character, is a remarkable creation -- the embodiment of the central question of traditional theodicy.

If I was foolish enough to try to sum up the book by means of a clich茅d literary comparison (and, yes, I am indeed that foolish), I'd say: Bleak House meets The Naked Lunch. The book is filthy -- appropriately so, given the context -- and, as a New York Times critic has put it, "scabrously funny". Animal's People is careful not to force philosophical questions on the reader; but those questions nevertheless angle their way into your encounter with Animal on most pages. What does it mean to be "human"? What is "justice"? And how is it possible to maintain faith in a God who seems absent when he is most needed? I wish Indra Sinha well at . The other contenders are . The favourite is still Lloyd Jones for his wonderful novel Mister Pip -- and it is absolutely wonderful. I wouldn't be surprised if carries off the 拢50,000 prize, and I wouldn't be at all disappointed. Nor would I be surprised if Anne Enright wins for , which is a work of mesmerizing poetic beauty. If there is any literary justice in the universe, one of those three books will win. (Not that I'd want to overstate the point.) What about Ian McEwan, I hear you ask? I enjoyed , and considered it (alongside The Gathering) a strong contender some weeks ago. But that was before I had encountered the beguilingly unforgettable Mister Pip and the filthy-mouthed Animal and his people.

Disability charities are extremely worried by the legal precedent that could be set by the case of the 15-year-old . Katie's mother, Alison Thorpe, has asked doctors to give her daughter, who has cerebral palsy, a hysterectomy to prevent her from starting menstruation because she is concerned that Katie would be confused by periods and they would cause her indignity. Doctors appear to support this request, but are now seeking legal approval before carrying out the surgery. On today's programme, from the UK Disabled People's Council argued that doctors should delay any surgery until we see the impact of menstruation on Katie; and she spoke passionately about the dangerous precendent that could be set in this case if doctors are permitted to perform a sterilisation that is medically unnecessary. It's likely that a judge will take the final decision, but that is not without controversy in itself: Is a court the appropriate venue for resolving this kind of moral dilemma?

The first

Mark Patterson of 大象传媒 Radio Foyle usually has a tanned face from all the he does. But today, his face is, I suspect, flushed with terra cotta. Mark and I are old mates, so I can write this with impugnity. According to the front page story in today's Irish News, he was merrily doing his bit as stadium announcer at the Brandywell on Tuesday for the Eircom League cup final between Derry City and Bohemians when he was asked to make an announcement about a car that needed to be moved. He dutifully read out the car registration number three times before realising that it was his own car. Ouch. In his defence, Mark has explained to The Irish News that he's only had the car for a month. Whatever the explanation, it's a classic self-imposed Gotcha moment.

It started off as a touring lecture -- with accompanying overhead projections at first, then it became a lavishly illustrated PowerPoint presentation. It then became an Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth. Now, Al Gore's climate change lectures have earned him a Nobel Peace Prize. He shares this year's award with the . And he wins the prize in the same week a disputed the authority of nine scientific claims made by the film and required schools to offer guidance about those claims when the movie is shown.

Precious Ramotswe, Isabel Dalhousie, and Professor Doctor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld. What do they all have in common? They are all the creation of an African-born Scottish law professor who started writing novels in his 50s and is now a bestselling novelist. I speak, of course, of Alexander McCall Smith -- Sandy to his friends -- who will be visiting Belfast A return visit, in fact, since he lectured in Law at Queen's for a short time in the early 70s. The big screen soon beckons for Precious Ramotswe, the heroine of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency: a movie by Anthony Mingehella is now in post-production. I'll be interviewing Alexander McCall Smith at the Festival event; but I'll be visiting him at his home in Edinburgh tomorrow to film an interview for this year's 大象传媒 Festival Nights programme. If, as some suspect, Alexander McCall Smith is himself the template for Mma Ramotswe, then his home in the Merchiston area of Edinburgh could well be the headquarters of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. It's a theory.

This week in Birmingham, Alabama, the "new Atheist" Richard Dawkins the Christian apologist John Lennox. John Lennox, who hails from Armagh, is Reader in Mathematics and Fellow in Mathematics and Philosophy of Science at Green College, Oxford, and author of Lennox's book is one of the most interesting and thoughtful replies to Dawkins's claims in The God Delusion -- which may explain why Dawkins agreed to public debate. We broadcast a 20-minute interview with John Lennox about his book just a few weeks ago on Sunday Sequence. On tomorrow's programme, Mattew Wells presents an exclusive report from the debate.

An analysis of the current situation facing the worldwide Anglican Communion, courtesy of Dave Walker's .

William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, describes Gordon Brown as a "calculator", rather than an instinctive politician. There will be much calculating this weekend as the Prime Minister It looks like we will know this week if the PM is planning an election in November, but after weeks of speculation it could hardly now be described as a . There is, of course, no constitutional necessity for any election at this point, though there may be a perceived political need for one.

All the talk about a "mandate election" is evidence of the Americanization of British politics -- Prime Ministers are not, technically, elected in the UK's constitutional monarchy -- and one might expect that process to continue under Brown's leadership. After all, Gordon Brown likes to speak of "the British People", much as US politicians like to speak of "the American People"; his attempt to develop a cabinet of "all the talents" is a lunge towards the bipartisanship that is much-favoured in American politics; and Gordon's big conversation about constitutional reform includes a discussion, at least, about the introduction of a written constitution.

Now seems like a good time to ask whether we should remove from future Prime Ministers the right to determine when an election may be called, with the introduction of .

Update: 6pm. Gordon Brown an Autumn election.

The winners of this year's were announced last night at a ceremony at Harvard University. Details . The Prizes celebrate actual research likely to make the public laugh and think simultaneously. This year's winners have not disappointed us.

A team from the University of Barcelona have discovered that "rats are unable to tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and somebody speaking Dutch backwards" -- and their efforts have been rewarded with this year's Linguistics Prize.

The Medicine Prize was shared by Brain Witcombe of Gloucestershire Royal NHS Foundation Trust and Dan Meyer for their insightul examination of the health consequences of swallowing a sword. Their research has proved that "swallowing many swords, strangely shaped blades, or being distracted when swallowing, could cause injury ... [and that] ... sword swallowers should not swallow swords if they already had a sore throat." Amazing.

I've saved the best for last. This year's Ig Nobel Peace Prize goes to the US Air Force Wright Laboratory "for instigating research and development on a chemical weapon that would provoke widespread homosexual behaviour among enemy troops". I kid you not -- the US Air Force has been spending tax dollars trying to create a chemical bomb that turns the enemy gay.

To mark , 大象传媒 Northern Ireland has displayed some poems by on translink buses and bus shelters across Belfast. It was the brainchild of Mark Adair, 大象传媒 NI's Head of Public Policy and Corporate Affairs, who is a great champion of Ulster poetry. MacNeice was an excellent choice, of course, since this year is the centenary of his birth, he is a local writer who is now enjoying greater international attention, and (like Paul Muldoon) is a former 大象传媒 arts producer.

I took part in a photoshoot today to launch the event. So if you are one of those members of the public who looked bemused as a photographer and cameraman encircled me at a bus stop near the City Hall, that's what we were doing. We had a perfect Belfast moment when one lady, standing at the bus stop holding bags of shopping, having studied our photoshoot intensely, asked her friend, "In the name of God, what's goin' on there?"

It's good to see poetry breaking out of libraries and classrooms and finding its way into other areas of life. At its best, poetry moves us to see the world differently and can take us on all kinds of personal journies. I hope we begin to see many more poems on our buses -- and in other less-traditional venues. Poetry can slow us down, quicken us up, make us think, prompt a smile on a shopper's face, trigger a conversation between strangers, turn a bus into a memory, and is a perfect antidote to the at-times stupefying effects of all-encompassing commercial advertisements.

and have "poetry on the move" projects; indeed, the centenary of MacNeice has already been marked by the inclusion of his poetry on this year. Belfast has been slow to mobilize its poetic heritage; but the city is gradually discovering the importance of public art (and art in public), and the writing arts are increasingly taking to the streets.

Who would want to be a Man Booker prize judge? I'm taking part in panel event at Queen's University later this month -- a discussion/debate about the shortlisted novels -- and I'm reading my way through all six shortlisted titles in preparation. Well, four of them -- I've already read Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach and Anne Enright's The Gathering -- so it's hardly a mountain-climb. But finding time to read a prescribed list of books alongside all the other things I'm doing (and the other books I'm reading for various programmes I present) can be difficult. Imagine working through box-loads of books for months, compiling lists, comparing and contrasting sometimes extremely different types of novels, and then meeting to argue about which is the "best" novel (whatever that means). I suspect that many Man Booker judges need a sabbatical from reading (and treatment for eyestrain) after the winner is announced.

I'm trying to keep an open mind, but I tend to love everything Ian McEwan writes, and The Gathering, by Anne Enright, was one of my favourite new novels from my last series of The Book Programme. , the 大象传媒 Writer in Residence at Queen's, is organising the panel event and has asked me to introduce Indra Sinha's novel Animal's People to the intellectually chesiled gathering on October 15th. I'll post some notes about that as I go. In the meantime, feel free to post your reviews of the six shortlisted titles here.

If you can't bring yourself to read six books before the prizewinner is announced, try this -- The Guardian's

, one of the scholars who recently left Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, in controversial circumstances, has written of the recent statement by The House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church (USA), which they call 鈥淎 Response to Questions and Concerns Raised by our Anglican Communion Partners鈥�. A metaphor-rich money quote:

The sad fact is that, on any careful objective reading of the HoB statement, the glass is nowhere near either 鈥榟alf full鈥� or 鈥榟alf empty鈥�. It may appear to be so on first examination but in fact once one has removed the froth there is little nourishing left in the glass. To change the metaphor, what is being offered here are essentially the same TEC sweets the Communion has been offered over recent years only now in a more attractive wrapping and with a stronger sugar coating. It is becoming increasingly clear that the American church has already walked too far apart from the Communion and too much of it sincerely believes that it has walked that way led by the Spirit. As a result, despite much prayer and great effort by many, what has been offered by its bishops to the Communion is 鈥榯oo little, too late鈥�.

Is this the greatest vegetarian in the history of the world? It's called Gryposaurus, a new species of dinosaur that's just been reported in the science journals. (Full taxonimic name: Gryposaurus monumentensis: "Gryposaurus" means "hook-beaked lizard"; "monumentensis" was chosen to honour the monument where the fossils were found.) Fossils of this remarkable dinosaur, which lived about 65-80 million years ago, were found in 2004 in the Utah desert. It was 30 feet long, had 800 teeth (yes, 800!), and had extremely powerful jaws which enabled it to strip woody trees. Whether the dino also sliced up meat as part of its diet remains unclear; until evidence emerges to the contrary, I'm claiming the Grypo as one of my vegetarian forebears! The find has in the

from the Creationist organisation Answers in Genesis brings his supporters on the recent Northern Ireland "Creation(ist) row". He's clearly pleased at his reception by Lisburn City Council, which has controversially voted to encourage schools in their area to make pupils aware of "alternatives to evolution":

On Saturday, September 15, I was presented with an attractive gift clock by the Mayor of Lisburn, Councillor James Tinsley, who made a brief speech welcoming Answers in Genesis to Lisburn as providers and preachers of biblical truth. (By the way, over the years, Ken Ham, AiG鈥揢.S. president, has conducted several meetings in Northern Ireland which have drawn large crowds, and those seminars have helped create a groundswell of support for the deemphasizing of evolution as 鈥渇act鈥� in govenment-run schools in the country.)

American presidential candidates are used to dealing with The Character Issue", but Rudy Giuliani must be the first to face The Cellphone Issue. The Republican candidate has been interrupting speeches -- some nationally televised -- to take calls from his wife Judith. He's been doing this against advice from his staffers, who have told him that his antics are alienting audiences. And now, America's political pundits are debating the likely political ramifications. Fox News has even commissioned a poll (and they are reporting that 9 per cent of Americans disapprove of the the behaviour). Now, the former mayor risks being branded " Case in point:

On one occasion, after taking a call from his wife, Giuliani apparently noticed that his audience was less than impressed, and attempted this rhetorical rescue mission: "I've been married three times ... I can't afford to lose another one. I'm sure you understand."

There's another possible explanation for this very odd behaviour. Perhaps Giuliani is expecting to lose the nomination and is positioning himself for a new career -- starring in cellphone commercials?

Ned Sherrin , aged 76 years old. His 大象传媒 obituary describes him as a "humorist, anecdotalist, raconteur, impresario, producer, presenter, playwright, actor and author" -- which comes reasonably close to capturing his extraordinary versatility. I first became aware of Ned Sherrin in 1986, as a teenager at school, when a friend told me I just had to listen to Loose Ends, his weekly arts and entertainment show on Radio 4. I was hooked immediately, one of yet another generation of Ned Sherrin's fans. Last year, I -- and the rest of the Loose Ends audience -- became conscious of Ned's worryingly frequent coughing as his voice cracked during links. By October, he was off-air, diagnosed with . The diagnosis was soon changed to throat cancer.

Here's a little reminder of Sherrin, the larger-than-life TV host, in full voice: from We Interrupt This Week, a popular American quizshow broadcast in 1979.