Torchwood

Russell T. Davies's Doctor Who spin-off got off to a great start on Sunday. It's been scheduled post-watershed, so the content is slightly more mature, while retaining the camp inventiveness of the parent show. This will distinguish it from US precedents like The X Files and Bones which have taken themselves a bit more seriously.

The revived corpse which confirmed in despairing tones that there is nothing after death was one of its more startlingly adult moments.

Jim Holt's review of The God Delusion is being talked about across the blogosphere. I will have get my own perspective on it out later, but with reference to that Torchwood scene, I did enjoy Holt's reflections on the implications of nothingness after death:

"If the after-death options are either a beatific vision (God) or oblivion (no God), then it is poignant to think that believers will never discover that they are wrong, whereas Dawkins and fellow atheists will never discover that they are right."