SpudsWorld

Hmmm ... very interesting ...

2006-04-11T14:11:00.000Z

Neurological scientists in America have published research that seems to confirm that so-called Near Death Experiences (NDE) have a biological basis after all, and in fact are related to the human ability to dream. While it's going to be massively unreasonable to expect that the motley collection of dingbats and fruitcakes who tout NDEs as "proof" of life after death to take this on board, this is the nearest thing we have to date to hard scientific proof that NDEs are an absolutely fascinating but ultimately solidly human, this-worldly phenomenon of the human brain, worthy of further investigation.

The study, in Neurology, compared 55 people who had had near death experiences and 55 who had not. Those with near death experiences were more likely to have less clearly separated boundaries between sleeping and waking, the scientists found.
People who have had near death experiences commonly report being surrounded by a bright light or gazing down on themselves in an operating theatre. Many of these sensations are also common to experiences of being in the dream state, or rapid eye movement (REM), stage of sleep, the researchers said.

Amen. Or something like that.

2006-04-08T22:12:00.000Z

The difference between theism and nontheism is not whether one does or does not believe in God. It is an issue that applies to everyone, including both Buddhists and non-Buddhists. Theism is a deep-seated conviction that there’s some hand to hold: if we just do the right things, someone will appreciate us and take care of us. It means thinking there’s always going to be a babysitter available when we need one. We all are inclined to abdicate our responsibilities and delegate our authority to something outside ourselves. Nontheism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves.

... Nontheism is finally realizing that there’s no baby sitter that you can count on. You just get a good one and then he or she is gone. Nontheism is realizing that it’s not just babysitters that come and go. The whole of life is like that. This is the truth, and the truth is inconvenient.

For those who want something to hold on to, life is even more inconvenient. From this point of view, theism is an addiction. We’re all addicted to hope — hope that the doubt and mystery will go away. This addiction has a painful effect on society: a society based on lots of people addicted to getting ground under their feet is not a very compassionate place.

Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

Thank ... er ... goodness for Sam Harris

2006-04-07T11:22:00.000Z

From the redoutable Truthdig:

Religious moderation is a relaxation of the standards of adherence to ancient taboos and superstitions. That’s really all it is. Moderate Christians have agreed not to read the bible literally, and not read certain sections of it at all, and then they come away with a much more progressive, tolerant and ecumenical version of Christianity. They just pay attention to Jesus when he’s sermonizing on the Mount, and claim that is the true Christianity. Well that’s not the true Christianity. It’s a selective reading of certain aspects of Christianity. The other face of Christianity is always waiting in the book to be resurrected. You can find the Jesus of Second Thessalonians who’s going to come back and hurl sinners into the pit. This is the Jesus being celebrated in the Left Behind novels. This is the Jesus that half the American population is expecting to see come down out of the clouds.

And if anyone is still unaware, Sam's The End of Faith is an absolute must-read.

Bravo

2006-04-01T17:46:00.000Z

Sometimes you find the best sites by accident, as was the case just now with the remarkably well-put-together Naturalism.org Three cheers, a pat on the back and a beverage of choice to all concerned.

Sheer brilliance

2006-03-28T16:56:00.000Z

I'm all for the brotherhood and we-guys-should-stick-together and all that, but I admit, we men can be so, well, obvious at times.

I've said it before ...

2006-03-28T15:16:00.000Z

... and I'm going to say it again. As a sometime semi-hemi-demi-professional writer, there are some pieces of writing that are so beautifully couched and, above all, so right that I almost - only almost, mind - feel like chucking in the sponge. Pieces of writing like this, for instance.

A treat for astronomy dweebs everywhere

2006-03-28T12:27:00.000Z

Nifty, huh?

Priceless

2006-03-20T12:40:00.000Z

Two Irishmen were sitting in a pub having a beer watching the brothel across the street.
They saw a Baptist Minister walk into the brothel, and one of them said "Aye, 'tis a shame to see a man of the cloth goin' to the bad."
They saw a Rabbi enter the brothel, and the other Irishman said "Aye, 'tis a pity to see the Jews are fallin' victim to temptation, so it is."
Then a Muslim cleric entered the brothel, and one said "Aye, there must be some very young girls in there."
Then they saw a Catholic Priest enter the brothel, and one of the Irishmen said "What a shame ... one of them girls must be quite ill."

Gratuitous Offence Day 2006

2006-03-16T18:24:00.000Z

One of the major stories in the news this week concerns six young men who volunteered to take part in the clinical trial of a new drug, suffered an extremely severe adverse reaction and within minutes became desperately ill. As far as I know the story broke yesterday. (Also here).

The story, in brief, is this:

The drug company Parexel have been testing a new anti-inflamatory drug which might be useful in the treatment of some forms of arthritis and leukaemia. The Phase I clinical trials were being carried out at the Northwick Park Hospital in North London. Eight volunteers were paid £2,000 to take part in the trial, but only six were given the real drug: the other two were given a harmless placebo. Apparently within minutes of receiving the drug, all six who had taken it were taken violently and disastrously ill with multiple organ failure, massive facial swelling and a host of other symptoms. At time of writing, of the six, four are seriously ill but relatively stable, two are critically ill. That the trials were in Phase I means that the drug would have already been tested on animals, presumably without any danger signs whatsoever, although there are dark rumours flying around that the drug had killed some of the animals If this - so far unconfirmed and uncorroborated - story is true, and if the description of those critically ill humans in hospital are anything to go by, the murder of such animals would have been vile indeed ... though not, needless to say, nearly so vile as those responsible.

Spud's view? Hard cheese.

Harsh? Callous? Heartless? Yep. Having a view of humanity that rarely rises above irritation and usually hovers somewhere between contempt and loathing, you'll have to excuse me if my sympathy tanks run dry on this one.

To believe that these individuals took part in these trials as a sort of noble sacrifice for the advancement of medical science and the betterment of humankind is so naive that I can't seriously believe that anybody thinks it could possibly be true. They did it because they were broke and were being paid substantial sums of money to be guinea pigs. There's nothing wrong with this. Most of us could do with a bit of spare cash; we all have to eat. Two thousand pounds might be loose change to some, but it would come in very handy for me right now and, I suspect, for you too. But let's call it like it is, and stop being so fucking sentimental about the six who remain critically ill. They're not heroes. They took a gamble, they rolled the dice, and they lost. They did it for the money - again, nothing wrong with that -, they were informed of the potential side effects, signed the consent forms, and events went against them. That's the way the cookie etc etc. If they survive, I doubt they'll go for it again, for sure.

These characters had a choice. I'll spare my sympathies for those who deserve it: the hundreds of thousands of animals in this country alone - billions worldwide - who aren't given the option to say 'no, thanks, I'd really rather not.'

Twat of the Week

2006-03-15T12:44:00.000Z

It might be a new feature, but frankly, given the sheer amount of twats and twatness out there, it may just completely overrun the whole damned blog.

But anyway, whether this becomes a permanent fixture or not, I can't let this one go by: Isaac Hayes, the musician-cum-voice of Chef on South Park for the last nine years has left the show in a sudden attack of religious sensitivity. Although the little guys from Colorado have spent the best part of the past decade laying into anything and everything sacred - religion especially -, now that it's the turn of Scientology (to which Hayes adheres), he's thrown a hissy fit and flounced out of the playground. Last November South Park devoted an episode to mocking the notoriously prickly and litigious Church of Scientology, including high-profile members (and I use the word 'members' advisedly) such as Tom ("Weirdo Clueless Wanker and Probably Closeted Queer") Cruise and John ("Fat Old Has-Been") Travolta.

Hayes himself gave the world the benefit of his wisdom when he said:

"There is a place in the world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards the religious beliefs of others begins. Religious beliefs are sacred to people [well, duh ...] and at all times should be respected and honored ... As a civil rights activist of the past 40 years, I cannot support a show that direspects those beliefs and practices."

In short, there is a place in the world for satire, but that place is not South Park, Colorado. I think my Pathetic-O-Meter just blew up.

Clearly Hayes didn't have a problem with the episode last December where a statue of the Virgin Mary 'miraculously' appeared to bleed until it someone observed that it was actually having a period. The episode aired in the USA on December 7th - the day before the Catholic Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

Now needless to say Pope-on-a-Rope crowd got on the case immediately, wrote their letters, talking heads on the TV, even got a scheduled repeat of the show pulled, which just goes to show how much clout you can have when the leader of your pack wears a dress. Reaction from Hayes? Guess.

That's right, a big fat zero, zilch, nada. Not unless, that is, you include Hayes's comments in an interview last January when, speaking about Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park, he said:

"Nobody is exempted from their humor. They're equal opportunity offenders (laughs). Don't be offended by it. If you take it too seriously, you have problems."

Oh yes; talking of civil rights activism ... perhaps just as interesting are the views of L. Ron Hubbard - the weirdo loony dingbat corrupt racist founder of Scientology - on our coloured brothers and sisters. Hubbard's first wife wrote to him complaining about how much housework she had to do: Hubbard replied:

"You shouldn't be scrubbing the floor on your hands and knees; get yourself a nigger. That's what they're born for."

Presumably Isaac ("Hewer of wood and drawer of water") Hayes was unavailable for comment.

Best comment of all come from Matt Stone, co-creator of the show with Trey Parker:

"This is 100% having to do with his faith of Scientology ... He has no problem - and he's cashed plenty of checks - with our show making fun of Christianity. [We] never heard a peep out of Isaac in any way until we did Scientology. He wants a different standard for religions other than his own, and to me that is where intolerance and bigotry begin."

Meow. As the T-shirt says, people who don't like having their beliefs laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefs.

Blogging For Dummies by the Dummies at For Dummies

2006-03-07T11:54:00.000Z

Wankers.

Read it and applaud

2006-03-05T13:54:00.000Z

JDHURF's magnificent definition, explanation and defence of secular humanism is the sort of superb tour de force writing that makes me seethe with envy (as a sometime writer myself) and almost weep with gratitude and agreement. And this from a 22-year old guy.

Just checking in

2006-03-05T13:46:00.000Z

Just a reminder (to anyone - if there's anyone! - out there in the Interwebernet world who might be following these ramblings) that I'm still alive, but busy with that mundane business called real life at the moment; blogging has been light and will probably continue that way for the next few days at least. But fear not: I'll still be around trying to bring you, my devoted readers (all both of you) interesting, hopefully enlightening and entertaining stuff worth sharing. So for the time being, until normal service is resumed, talk quietly amongst yourselves.

"Lots of people have sex" shock --- latest

2006-03-04T17:13:00.000Z

Sometimes some blog posts are so good in all senses of the word --- so well-written, so articulate, so learned, so wise, so right --- that they can stand on their own legs without further drivel from me. To wit this post from Jakobische Rants.

Wow

2006-02-27T23:04:00.000Z

Just how cool is this?

We're all Dakotans

2006-02-26T02:22:00.000Z

That's the title of the latest post by PZ Myers over at the almost indecently superb Pharyngula. I can't say that I am, personally: it's a bit difficult to be a Dakotan, even a symbolic one, when you're English. In England. But hey, I'm right there with you in spirit.

PZ's post refers to the grave situation in South Dakota, next to his native Minnesota: law-makers in South Dakota last Friday passed a law banning almost all abortions of any shape or form for whatever reason, going head to head with the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that helped to legalise abortion in the US.

Anyway, I guess I'd better go ahead and admit it ... I love many different blogs and I wouldn't dream of picking favourites, but on the other hand, I have to confess that Pharyngula is always my first port of call after booting up every day. A day without reading PZ's latest thoughts/rants on whatever takes his fancy wouldn't be a normal day; and there's something about this latest post that strikes me as an even better-than-usual example of just how good Pharyngula at its best can be. And that's very, very, very good indeed: PZ's worst (on an off day) is far above and beyond the best of an awful lot of other blogs. (To be sure, Pharyngula is one of those blogs - there are about half a dozen others at most - that seriously make me question my future as a blogger on a regular basis. Still, no bad thing to be kept on your toes, I guess). I've thought this for a long time: but now I think there's something different about this post in particular, a note of something deeply sad and heartfelt at the violence being done to reproductive freedom in the USA. I know that you don't have to be American to feel appallingly sad at this latest sorry development, because (a) I'm not American and (b) I feel appallingly sad at this latest sorry development. Although we have our share of creepy, wacko wingnut dingbat so-called 'pro-life' groups in the UK, the abortion debate doesn't happen over here. It's not something that ever rears its ugly head this side of the big spit, and for that I think I can be pardoned for referring to myself and a recent post, 'Over here, over there.'

Imperial of the perverse

2006-02-25T13:06:00.000Z

Yeah, OK, sorry about the title.

Lord Kinnock wants all of Britain's Imperial roadsigns to be changed over to metric by 2012, in time for the influx of foreign visitors coming here for the Olympics.

"Our Imperial road signs are perhaps the most obvious example of the muddle of measurements in the United Kingdom. They contradict the image - and the reality - of our country as a modern, multicultural, dynamic place where the past is valued and respected and the future is approached with creativity and confidence."

There's so much so wrong with this that I hardly know where to begin. If there's a 'muddle' about measurements in this country, it was inflicted by those who sought to impose the metric system upon a populace that never asked for it, didn't vote for it and, four decades later, still don't want it. Even the supposedly metric-educated youth of Britain overwhelmingly give their height in feet and inches, their weight in stones and pounds and distances in miles. It's not just young people: a vast majority of the population do it. And if the past is "valued and respected", why have so many influential figures and bodies - Geoffrey "Dead Sheep" Howe, the UK Metric Association amongst many other offenders - tried and are still trying to impose the metric system by force, backed up with the threat of legal penalties? Is this a sign of respect and value for our traditional weights and measures. According to Kinnock and his ilk, obviously.

Perhaps the most obvious sign that Kinnock is, as usual, talking bollocks is his inane comment that Brtain is a multicultural nation. Yeeeess, now let's take this nice and slowly shall we? Britain is a multicultural nation and uses at least two main mensuration systems (and others for more specialised purposes), so how is legally enforcing just one system and legally barring another aiding multiculturalism, pray tell? Perhaps somebody could explain what's 'multicultural' about just one, standardised, uniform system (and one that the vast majority neither want nor understand)?

Thank Christ this pillock never got within a million miles of Downing Street.

Thanks to the redoutable Mark Holland at the ever-brilliant Blognor Regis for this story. (Superb blog, maestro, like your style).

What price free speech now?

2006-02-24T18:23:00.000Z

In a sort of grotesque corollary to the recent Mohammed cartoons storm-in-a-teacup, earlier this week (sorry, but I've been busy, folks) the British historian and notorious Holocaust denier, 67-year old David Irving, was jailed for three years by a court in Austria.

Carefully-researched enquiry about the Holocaust in the spirit of an unbiased search for the historical facts of the matter is perfectly legitimate. It isn't, for example, Holocaust denial to want to know exactly how many people died in Hitler's genocidal drive for a racially pure Europe during WWII; to which racial/religious/social groups they belonged; where they came from; where they died; how they died. I would submit that this is all grist to the genuine historian's mill. Irving, on the other hand, is a thoroughgoing Holocaust denier.
At present, eleven countries have laws that make it illegal to deny the Holocaust, and of all places in the world anybody with more than two brain cells to rub together can understand why Austria and Germany are uniquely sensitive to this kind of thing. (Lest we forget, Hitler was dictator over Germany, but was himself Austrian).
Irving should not have been jailed because Holocaust denial per se should not, in my view, be a crime. To my mind the jailing of Irving is a disaster for three main reasons:

It is very likely that many who are outright Holocaust deniers or sympathetic to such views will see Irving as a martyr. Jailing him may cause him to be regarded in those circles as a hero of free speech unjustly silenced by those afraid of what they perceive to be legitimate debate on historical facts.
After the recent affair over the Mohammed cartoons, the jailing of Irving will provide ammunition to extremist Muslims the world over who will hold this up as an example of Western hypocrisy and philo-Semitism and anti-Islamism: publish 'offensive' cartoons of the Prophet and nothing happens. Deny the (largely Jewish) Holocaust and get sent to jail for three years. Some people claimed that republishing the cartoons was akin to throwing petrol onto a fire and then fanning the flames still further. I don't agree in that case, but in this I do. This will surely only whip up even more resentment and anger in that minority of fanatical extremist Muslims inclined to use violence to further their agenda. I can already see it being wheeled out in future culture clashes relating to free speech: "But remember what happened to Irving ..." I'm afraid that this will backfire on all of Europe, not just Austria. However understandable such laws might in theory be, Austria's (to me) senselessly over-sensitive, heavy-handed, clod-hopping, disproportionately punitive reaction is going to make all European nations look bad.
It is a blatant denial of a right that the secular, liberal West is supposed to regard as almost sacred: the right to free speech, freedom of expression. Irving's tawdry, distasteful, lunatic-fringe, wide-eyed, slobbering-dingbat views are just that, views, unsupported and uncorroborated by anything so pedestrian as a firm grounding in hard fact. I don't care how wrong, offensive, inflamatory or prejudiced his views are: he still has the right to express them. If he is wrong in stating his views in books and speeches, he should be shown to be so in the same manner. As the Holocaust is rather well documented and detailed by colossal bodies of evidence of all kinds, this is not particularly hard to do. It is my firm belief that anyone and everyone has a right to question and even deny the Holocaust. That makes them ignorant idiots who ought to know better. However, they can be shown the irrefutable, incontestable truth. If critics and/or deniers of the Holocaust are so wrong, you do not, in my view, jail them: you answer them with the evidence.

Irving is an idiot, a bigot and anti-Semite although, so I believe, a competent historian (you could say that he has a good mind wrongly used). Like all anti-Semites/Holocaust deniers et hoc genus omnes, I wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire. I'm not fully informed enough about his political views (if any), so I won't comment on that particular strand of his make-up. Perhaps equally bad, he is a slimy, duplicitious liar, with no compunction about back-tracking, suddenly changing his mind and claiming that black is white and back again when the facts go against him. So far, so vile.

The point is that none of that should make him a convicted criminal. I hold no brief for these brain donors and their silly, factually wrong, evil-minded, ignorant prejudices ... but I do hold a brief for their right to express them. Whatever else he may be, Irving has promulgated ugly and uncivilized opinions in a civilized manner: in books and through the normal avenues of academic discourse. In refusing to answer his ludicrous and contemptible racialist views in the same way, we - all of Europe, not just Austria - cannot now credibly claim the moral high ground. I fear that for the reasons outlined above, we have just shot ourselves in the foot very badly.

Over here, over there

2006-02-20T01:13:00.000Z

Some of my favourite blogs - those that contain some of the very best writing by magnificently talented, educated, intelligent people I admire tremendously on the most fascinating subjects, the ones that I visit at least daily [see the links] - concern the ongoing rumpus (if that's not the weasel word of the century) between religion and science, in particular issues such as the separation of church and state as it bears on the teaching of evolution in school science classes.

As the phrase 'separation of church and state' implies, to my knowledge without exception the most and the best of these blogs are, of course, American.

So I've been thinking about just why religion continues to be such a major headache in American society whereas here in the UK - in fact, in the whole of Europe generally - it's a total non-issue, something so tangential to the everyday lives of the great majority of ordinary people that it never even makes the radar screen. (A 2004 survey demonstrated that the UK is among the most secular nations in the world, with levels of religious affiliation comparable to Russia and South Korea). I've thought about this long and hard, and I believe I've come up with a coherent, cogent theory as to the existence of this colossal disparity. It is this: Europe is old enough to have grown out of religion; America hasn't yet had enough time. (OK, I know it doesn't sound like the most strikingly original or novel thought in the world, but bear with me: I'm going to expand. At length, he cackled). I don't mean this in any yah-boo-sucks way but as a simple statement of fact.

The essential point is that here in Britain - I'm speaking for Britain because it's my country, but generally the same goes for Europe as a whole - we, unlike America, have had long enough to do the whole religion thing and to get it out of our system. When Donald Rumsfeld rather sneeringly spoke of 'old Europe', although it was in a different context (support for the Iraq war) he was far more right than he knew. This is 'old Europe', and we're old enough to have run the gamut from mediaeval religious fanaticism to today's mood of 'tacit atheism', as a previous Archbishop of Canterbury put it. We've had our persecutions, executions, pogroms, reformations, counter-reformations and so on: we've pretty well done the lot. In 1555 in Oxford - one of the largest, most populous and most venerable English cities with a world-wide reputation for learning and scholarship - Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were publicly burned alive outside Balliol College. A year later Thomas Cranmer shared the same horrific fate. We've had our religiously-inspired Civil War where Charles I, ruling by divine right and appointed by God Himself, was executed by Parliament, and then there are the witch-hunts, vicious anti-Catholic, anti-Protestant then anti-Catholic persecutions. We've had the monasteries dissolved and churches sacked and burnt, we've had the blasphemy trials, we've had the heretics and martyrs ... in short, Britain is old enough to have 'done' religion and to have dispensed with it. Christianity goes back a long way: for convenience most date the Christianization of Britain to the year 597, when Augustine launched his mission to convert Aethelbert, the then King of Kent. But the mood of the country, now, is overwhelmingly secular. While the Archbishop of Canterbury is wheeled out for the great ceremonial occasions in British life (royal weddings and the like), active pursuance of and participation in religion is the activity of an exceedingly small minority of the general public. In many places church-going, where it still exists, is the province of the elderly and is unusual enough to raise eyebrows. To the vast majority, religion remains in the form of Songs of Praise on Sunday teatime and - arguably, and still in small numbers - midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Religious leaders, whatever glib and shiny trinkets they come up with to appeal to floating voters, have admitted defeat and given up the game.

It seems that the rot set in some time after we moved out of the mediaeval era and headed towards modernity. The British Isles produced only one indisputably great figure of the Enlightenment, the Scottish philosopher David Hume, perhaps the greatest thinker ever to have come from these 6,000 or so scattered islands (with John Locke possibly a close second): we never had the scintillating atheistical coteries such as the philosophes of France - Diderot, d'Holbach, Voltaire - or the sublimity of Germans such as Lessing and Goethe. Still, it can be argued - and by many it is argued - that in Hume we had all of that rolled up into one convenient package: Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion can still be read today for sheer pleasure (Hume remains a delight to read for style and elegance alone) as well as for its intellectually sophisticated but simply-expressed arguments against religion, arguments still quoted, discussed and debated to this very day. The British, arguably, were never good at religion: perhaps it's something to do with that stereotypical diffidence and reserve, the old stiff-upper-lip, but to many of us it always seemed a bit undignified. The Victorians were the last to wrestle seriously with the great questions of doubt and faith: people like Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, Tennyson, George Eliot and (obviously) Darwin and the like. The skirmishes in this country between Darwinism and theology were relatively bloodless, almost always conducted with appropriate gentlemanly decorum and were over in next to no time. If ordinary (if one can use that term) religious belief was always a little unseemly to the average Englishman, how much more so the frothy and spittle-flecked inanity of evangelical fundamentalism which manifests itself so prevalently in American society today.

The current American obsession with science v. Creationism and its bastard progeny, Intelligent Design, is all but unknown this side of the pond: only one example springs to mind and that concerns the Emmanuel College in Gateshead, north-east England, which attracted attention back in 2002 for supposedly teaching its students a Biblically literal account of creation. It's not the case that the war was fought and won: there was no war in the first place. It was the battle that never happened. No one calls for 'equal time' for Creationism any more than anyone calls for 'equal time' for the stork-and-gooseberry-bush theory of reproduction. The seeming American obsession with religion in all walks of life is apt to strike almost any Briton as peculiar in the extreme and, in all senses of the word, utterly foreign. And if that makes life (and blogging!) less colourful and less interesting, the payoff is in a stable, secular, more-or-less cohesive society not polarised along tribal religious lines.

People forget how young a nation America is in this context: barely two centuries, in fact, if we date the founding of America (more or less) as we know it to the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It seems to me a simple statement of fact that the US simply hasn't had time, yet, to grow through the secularisation progress that the old world has undergone. Lack of historical perspective and the sheer size of the US is apt to blind us all to the extreme youth of the nation: we in England were burning our heretics many centuries before America even existed as anything we might reasonably define or recognise as a society. Additionally, it is one of the supreme ironies of life that a society originally founded by religious migrants fleeing persecution in search of a new land that would enable them to practice their religion, a society with no established church and that prides itself on a strict wall of separation between church(es) and State is so throughly and deeply saturated in religion in so many facets of public and private life, yet lil' ol' Britain, with an established State church and a monarch who is titular head of said Church (the Defender of the Faith, no less), has swept religion aside.

So what strikes many in and outside of America as a perpetual clash of worldviews - the domination of theism in politics and education and the hard-fought battles and the hard-won victories to keep them secular - seems to be to be the growing pains of a still juvenile society, and I use the world juvenile in the literal, absolutely non-derogatory sense. If we play the long game and take what is - no pun intended - the God's eye view, I think it inescapable (and, obviously, worthy of rejoicing) that America will succumb to the same forces of secularisation that Europe has. In the long run - and I mean in two, three, four, five centuries from now - religion in the US will wither on the vine. The extremist trends in American society today - the ultra right-wing, evangelical/fundamentalist Christians - mean that it won't go down without a brutal and vicious fight, but go down it surely will. Half a millennium from now America may well be in the same position as Britain today. I only lament the fact that none of us will be around to see it.

This is a joke, right?

2006-02-17T18:08:00.000Z

It is, surely ... isn't it. Isn't it?

Privacy and liberty in Britain: RIP

2006-02-14T21:59:00.000Z

Last night the Government approved legislation that paves the way for initially voluntary but inevitably compulsory identity cards for British citizens, a process due to start in 2008. Although the last Labour manifesto pledged to introduce voluntary cards, to absolutely nobody's surprise the Government intended to renege on this until a revolt by the increasingly sensible House of Lords forced an amendment which stated that the cards would be voluntary and that a subsequent and separate Act of Parliament would be required to make the cards compulsory.
However, de facto compulsion is still on the cards (no pun intended). As of 2008, anyone applying for a new passport will automatically be compelled to be entered on the ID card database (either that or not have a new passport and never be able to leave the country again, which is what it boils down to). As of this morning, I am renewing my current passport. Based on last night's events in the Commons, it will be the last one I ever possess. In short, I have ten years to do all the world travel that I ever want to do.
Opposition seems to be hardening against ID cards, if the opinion polls are anything to go by, and of course I applaud that even though in most cases I think such opposition is wrongly-motivated, stemming largely from self-interest - it's a smokescreen to complain about the cost rather than the thing in and of itself: the tooth and claw attack on personal liberty that ID cards and the national database that would underpin it represents. I have no particular quibble with those who are against ID cards on the grounds of cost: I have no quibble with anyone who is against them for any reason at all - it's the being against them that's the main thing. But as far as I'm concerned, a useful litmus test of true opposition to ID cards comes in the form of the question: would you favour an ID card if it were entirely free, gratis and for nothing, and wouldn't cost you a copper coin? I am opposed to ID cards (but more especially the database behind it) on principle, not on grounds of cost. I would be opposed to ID cards if they were free: I would every bit as opposed if the Government paid us - let's say, £5,000 per citizen - to have one. I am against them in toto, full stop. The old phrase 'I wouldn't have one if you paid me' is, in this case, for me entirely and literally the case.
Although eighteen months old, this article reveals how we got rid of ID cards after the Second World War. I'd like to think that there are some lessons we could draw from this for our own times, but frankly I'm just not optimistic enough about the state of civil liberty in Blair's Britain to believe it:

"Compulsory ID cards are nothing new in the UK. They were issued to all British civilians during World War II. That is until one ordinary man said no.
Clarence Willcock, a 54-year old dry cleaner from suburban north London, must rank as one of the unlikeliest Davids ever to take on a Goliath.
Mr Willcock was stopped on December 7 1950 while driving his car along Ballard's Lane by uniformed police constable Harold Muckle, who demanded to see the motorist's identity card.
Mr Willcock refused ..."

" ... "

2006-02-12T20:53:00.000Z

Yes, it's the 'speechless' symbol again. Loath as I am to end the day on a bum note (especially after wishing Mr Darwin a happy birthday), but a story that I've just come across - where an American nurse has had personal property seized and has been threatened with the archaic charge of sedition for writing a letter to a weekly newspaper criticising Bush and his administration - has shocked and appalled me beyond all reasonable measure. Also loath as I am to use a tired old phrase such as 'read it and weep,' it is tragically apt here. Be afraid: be very afraid.

Happy birthday, Mr Darwin ...

2006-02-12T20:39:00.000Z

Today - Sunday, February 12th 2006 - marks the (or should I say what would have been?) 197th birthday of my great scientific hero, Charles Darwin: an event so significant to all supporters of science that in recent years it has been marked out as a special occasion, Darwin Day, today also called Evolution Sunday to celebrate the events held (especially in the USA) where churches and other religious organisations discuss evolution in the context of ther personal religious beliefs. As a non-religious man personally I have no particular truck with the religious side of things, but the Clergy Letter Project is an interesting and large-minded gesture in a land that has unfortunately become something of a laughing stock in recent years over the teaching of evolution.
Darwinism per se is dead and in fact has been since around 1900 or so, when scientists started to rediscover the work of Mendel, so to talk about evolution and refer to it as 'Darwinism' demonstrates either a perfectly natural ignorance of biological science (which is entirely forgiveable) or wholly unintelligently designed Creationism (which isn't). Things have come a long, long, long way: even Darwin himself wasn't a Darwinian, leaning towards Lamarckianism because in his day there was no knowledge of the actual means of heredity: Darwin himself new nothing of genes or DNA as genetics didn't really take off until the first quarter of the twentieth century, and the groundwork of modern evolutionary theory - often called the Modern Synthesis or the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis - was largely laid in the 1930s and 1940s, thanks to the shining work of geniuses such as (but not confined to by any means!) Theodosius Dobzhansky, Ernst Mayr, George Gaylord Simpson, Julian Huxley, J.B.S. Haldane and R.A. Fisher. You can't blame poor old Mr Darwin for being born too early: the fact that he got the broad outline absolutely correct, without possessing knowledge of the nitty-gritty details of exactly how it worked, is astonishing enough.
Nevertheless, although Darwinism effectively died with the man himself (more or less), there is another sense in which many of us are and continue to be profoundly, passionately Darwinians: that's in the sense of being similarly profound and passionate admirers of a colossal scientific genius, a superb naturalist who - it's not, in my opinion, too strong to say - made biology a soundly and roundly scientific discipline. It could not be otherwise: the idea of evolution underpins the whole - not part, the whole - of modern biology, and as Dobzhansky famously remarked, nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of it.
No scientist is a Darwinian, then, in the technical sense, but many of us - scientists and laymen like me alike - think of ourselves as deeply burningly Darwinian. Take the example of the great Niles Eldredge, whose beautiful essay makes the point far more eloquently than I can ever hope to. It's not just the fact that Darwin - especially in his masterpiece, the Origin of Species - was a superb writer who remains brilliantly and luminously, gorgeously, lusciously readable to the average reader to this day (though that in itself is a very great achievement), but the fact that after many years of painstaking observation in the field and deep thought he produced the overwhelmingly beautiful (and, let's not forget, fundamentally very simple) idea that modern biology sinks its roots into and is the foundation that modern biology has raised its edifice upon.
So happy birthday Mr Darwin: I shall be raising a glass or several of something to you tonight.

Just one more ...

2006-02-11T13:14:00.000Z

... about the Mohammed cartoons thingummybob. It's dragging on and on, and while I wouldn't say that the battle for free speech, freedom of expression and a free press is ever boring - worst of all, several people so far have lost their lives ultimately over a dozen cartoons, and I'm not trivialising that -, so far it looks as though anything you could say about the issue has been said by somebody, somewhere.

I fully expect to be proven wrong on that point shortly, however.
Nevertheless, having just spent a good deal of time looking through these cartoons with delight, I couldn't not post a link to this site, which contains the reactions of professional cartoonists all over the world to the assault on their art and livelihood, and above all their right to draw whatever they damned well please. It must be the front runner for one of the loveliest websites I've seen in some considerable time.

Bulletin

2006-02-08T22:23:00.000Z

The cartoon protests continue, and so do the deaths: three more Afghans died today in the ongoing rioting over (should I say allegedly over?) the so-called blasphemous cartoons of Mohammed. Meanwhile, Jacques Chirac replays World War II and does the good ol' appeasement tango.

Proving that backbone and liberal values aren't wholly moribund in la belle France, French newspaper Charlie Hebdo (that's its name, apparently) republished the original twelve cartoons and devoted its entire front page to a new one, which I'm happy to reproduce here. It shows Mohammed weeping, holding his head in his hands; the caption reads: "It's hard to be loved by such fools."
Quite.

Positive vibes

2006-02-08T14:47:00.000Z

Best wishes to my bestestestest buddy/mate/pal A.F. (no names, no pack drill without prior consent!), who's feeling under the weather at the moment. Hope you feel a lot better soon, cowboy. I know exactly how you feel.

Interesting times

2006-02-08T14:38:00.000Z

Apparently there's an ancient Chinese curse: 'May you live in interesting times.' Upon closer scrutiny this ancient Chinese curse appears not to be anything of the kind: the redoubtable Stephen DeLong has spent a remarkable amount of time and energy trying to find out exactly how this by now common phrase came about; you can read the results of his painstaking endeavours here. As far as anyone can tell at present, it actually dates back, not to Confucian Cathay, but to a 1950 science fiction story called U-Turn by Duncan H. Munro (a pseudonym of Eric Frank Russell).
But that's by the by. These are certainly 'interesting times'. Last week Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP and another member of said party were acquitted on charges of inciting racial hatred. Yesterday, the so-called 'radical Muslim cleric' Abu Hamza was jailed for seven years (eligible for parole in about two, apparently) also for inciting racial and religious hatred and incitement to murder. And of course, over everything stands the Mohammed cartoons business. Interesting, indeed.

Well, duh

2006-02-08T13:35:00.000Z

This, from of all places, the Kenyan Broadcasting Corporation. The story refers to the death of two protestors in the Afghan city of Mihtarlam, who died after the latest wave of violent rioting by extremists over the ever-rumbling-on cartoon rumpus. The relevant part I post here, with my bold type added for extra, sooper-dooper, 'triple quarter pounder with cheese and extra fries and super sized drink' emphasis:

They want to test our feelings, protestor Mawli Abdul Qahar Abu Israra told the BBC.

They want to know whether Muslims are extremists or not. Death to them and to their newspapers, he said.

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm jolly glad we cleared that one up.

Obligatory Muslim cartoons post

2006-02-08T11:54:00.000Z

The blogosphere has been whipped into a frenzy by the recent furore over the publication - initially in a Danish newspaper, and subsequently in other newspapers across Europe - of cartoons supposedly exhibiting anti-Islamic prejudice. I have to say that I have this latest controversy to thank for enlightening me as to one new fact about Islam that I hadn't previously known: that the depiction of Mohammed (or what is presumed to be Mohammed, as I'll elaborate on later) is the thing itself that is technically blasphemy. These cartoons don't show Mohammed raping a goat, picking his nose, getting pissed on Stella with his mates or tucking into a bacon sandwich, but according to the official party line the offence would scarcely have been any different: merely depicting Mohammed full stop is blasphemy, and that's all there is to it.
I haven't waded into the debate here as yet, but I suppose I might as well set down a few thoughts as they occur to me. I won't bother to go into the background, here, of how and why these cartoons came to be posted, as I think by now the details are sufficiently well established and most people know the genesis of the controversy. My initial thought, when I first searched for and found these twelve images was simply this: one of the dozen cartoons does indeed have the word 'Mohammed' written upon it - it's the cartoon that shows a fearful looking cartoonist, sweating, sitting at his drawing board, upon which is a very small picture of a bearded man and the caption MOHAMMED. The rest have no such identifying caption. The cartoons that I saw were all of pretty generic Arab-looking men: dark-skinned, heavy beard, turban, and so on. These might be stereotypical representations of Arab men, but stereotyping is hardly criminal. (Although it might be in Islam, for all I know). Given that nobody actually knows what Mohammed looked like - and his historicity is generally more or less agreed -, the thought came to me: unless you had been told that these cartoons were supposed to be of Mohammed, would anybody ever have actually known? I mean, would anybody have made the mental leap and decided that these images were supposed to be of Mohammed rather than any old Arabic Joe Bloggs, so to speak? I fully concede that my ignorance of the finer points of Islamic protocol might be at fault here, but I would have thought that the comprehensive ban on representing Mohammed pictorially would have ensured that nobody's very likely to know what the prophet does or doesn't look like. In my naive, simple-minded way, I'd have thought that if a cartoonist drew a picture of a generic Arab man it wouldn't become a cartoon of Mohammed unless you do something subtle such as write THIS IS MOHAMMED underneath it.

So. Was Jyllands-Posten right to publish these cartoons? In my opinion - this is my blog, so who else's opinion would it be, Sigourney Weaver's? - yes. Without any qualification or shadow of a doubt. To me, non-religious as I am, they were utterly inoffensive. They weren't particularly funny, as far as I could see. Nor were they very well executed; apart from one, which I did find very engagingly illustrated, they seem to me to be of no especial artistic merit. But these are side isues, distractions. This isn't about artistic merit or personal sense of humour. Yes, they were entirely right, and I abhor the nauseating moral cowardice of the British press (not to mention the government, but let's stick with the press for now) in refusing to re-print said cartoons in their uncensored entirety.

The sight of a relatively small number of extremist fundamentalist Muslim agitators holding violent protests was a sight that filled me with disgust: but almost as stomach-churning is the mealy-mouthed placation of the appeasers - those who prevaricate, evade and worst of all qualify their comments. I mean those who pay lip-service to the idea of free speech, freedom of expression and a free press, but then go on to say that the cartoons shouldn't have been published because of the offence they caused. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw - Straw by name, straw by nature - is an egregious example in this respect.
As I spend a lot of online time flitting about on message boards and debating circles, it's my unhappy lot to hear a lot of imbecilic so-called reasoning, but 'arguments' (I use the word for lack of a better) of this kind are almost beneath contempt. (Note, I do say almost). To say that we in the West respect and uphold these ideals - free speech, freedom of expression, a free press - but then go on to say that there are some things we cannot say reminds me of nothing as much as that part in Monty Python's Life of Brian - another controversial storm in a teacup in its day, and for exactly the same reasons - where Stan, a member of the People's Front of Judea (played by Eric Idle), decides that he wants to be a woman, and that from now on he wants to be known as Loretta. Why, asks somebody incredulously, do you want to be a woman? So I can have babies, he - sorry, she - replies. But you can't have babies, explodes John Cleese: where's the foetus going to gestate? In a box? The PFJ decide to have a vote and carry a motion that although Stan can't actually have babies, he - whoops, she - has the right to have babies.
This is so much like the current situation that I can only assume that the Python team were sending up another instance of the same line of reasoning back in 1979. The argument that you have the right to publish something but then can't actually publish it because of the offence that it may cause to some people, some of the time, is such an embarrassingly inane take on the situation that I find it hard to believe that supposedly grown adults can come out with such tripe. If you have a right to do something, exercise that right. I subscribe to the muscular theory of rights: if you don't use it regularly, eventually it'll waste away. Use it or lose it.
Similar intellectual detritus comes from those intellectual heavyweights who opine that freedom of speech doesn't include the right to offend. Well, actually, yes it does. Any freedom of speech that is truly free - and therefore worthy of the name - certainly includes the right to offend, cause upset, blaspheme, challenge, criticise, provoke and unsettle. It doesn't have to include these things, but it can do. Hard as it may be for some to wrap what they are pleased to call their intellects around, free speech is much the same as the right to abortion: it's an optional right to take advantage of when needed, not a compulsory duty to fulfill. You don't have to have an abortion if you don't want one, and you don't have to publish material that somebody, somewhere, might be upset by (and the odds of some dingbat, somewhere, finding just about anything at all offensive are pretty good): but you certainly have the right to, should you so choose.
So the short answer is: yes, the paper was right to print the cartoons. Muslims were offended, but tough. That's one of the penalties you pay for living in secular liberal Western democracies where we like these decadent godless ideals such as being able to think, say and write what you like. I notice that the protestors are presumably quite happy to take full advantage of other features of our societies such as the open-door immigration policy, the benefits and welfare system, healthcare and the like. (I'm thinking specifically of Britain here, but it applies to other European nations as well).
I have thought for a long time - probably since the Rushdie affair in the 1980s, but more than ever now - that Islam and the West are fundamentally and totally opposed and by definition in ideological conflict. (I really don't want to get into the whole qualification-making, death-by-a-thousand-cuts, watering-down-of-the-argument thing by saying that perfectly normal, peaceful, law-abiding ordinary Muslims don't count, as that's so obvious as to not need saying). Far be it from me to come across as a doom-monger, but if Europe as a whole backs down or gives way over this issue; if we apologise, grovel, appease and generally do the sackcloth and ashes shtick; if we capitulate, if we yield any ground whatever on some of the secular liberal values that we hold most dear, frankly, my dears, I really believe that we're screwed. We will deliberately and willingly put ourselves into an escalating round of moral blackmail on the part of a handful of extremist fundamentalists who will be so much more likely, and find it so much easier, to start rioting en masse, burning down embassies and possibly even killing the next time that they throw a paddy over some other piece of ephemeral trivia.
My suggestion, now, can only be that those Muslims who are unhappy about living in free, open Western societies need to be helped to remove themselves from the countries they clearly hate so much. And if that sounds to you like Enoch Powell-esque repatriation, you'd be 100% correct.

More to come later ...

" ..... "

2006-02-08T00:15:00.000Z

That's my symbol for utterly speechless, and believe me, I do mean: open-mouthed, Oh-my-God-I-can't-believe-I-actually-just-read/saw/heard-that speechless. I fear it may be used a great deal in this blog, especially if there's more of this to go round .

Blimey!

2006-02-07T23:51:00.000Z

I'm very far from alone here, it seems (however much it might feel like it at the moment, but hey, it's early days). While on one of my customary aimless meanders around the Web tonight I came across this page that reveals some interesting facts about the state of the blogosphere.

Bless

2006-02-06T23:07:00.000Z

It's good to end the day with a heart-warming story that sends you to bed with a smile on your face, such as this sweet little tale of devotion about a dog called Mears. OK, so I'm a sucker for happy ending stories with animals in, I won't apologise for it!

Wish me luck

2006-02-06T20:52:00.000Z

OK: so before Christmas I re-read a dearly-loved all-time favourite, Richard Dawkins's Blind Watchmaker; almost immediately afterwards I snacked on his River Out of Eden

Both books, I now see, were merely an entree to taking a deep breath, girding the old loins and embarking upon Prof. Dawkins's biggest work to date, The Ancestor's Tale, a 400-page plus voyage backwards in time through pretty well as much of the history of life on earth as we currently know. I've been leafing through the book for weeks, reading a passage here and there, but now it's time to be a man and chow down on the whole thing. Wish me luck!

Service with a sneer

2006-02-06T12:40:00.000Z

In the 'Live' magazine supplement that came with yesterday's Mail on Sunday (I only buy it for the £1500 prize crossword, I swear), there was a brief article by Dylan Jones on the much-vaunted differences in attitude and helpfulness and so on between American and British shop staff. The byline of the article (like all good bylines, duh) summed it up: "American shop staff and waiters can be sickeningly sycophantic, but at least they are not as arrogant and rude as the ones over here." It's a bit of a cultural cliche, but it appears to be true (and Jones has the advantage of me here, as I've never been to the USA) that whereas in America you get even the smallest item with a blinding flash of orthodontic perfection and a saccharine 'Have a nice day,' here in generally damp and overcast Blighty you get, at best, silent surliness, sometimes downright rudeness:

Like a lot of Brits, I have always loved the attitude to service in America, because there the onus is always on the server to ingratiate themselves with the customer. I don't care how insincere my waitress is when she tells me to 'Have a nice day' or ask how I am; I don't care how sycophantic she is when she reels off the specials likely a newly minted cheerleader on Prozac.

What's the problem with people smiling a little when they bring you a cup of coffee. Rather that than some surly, scruffily dressed lout who thinks that waiting on people is somehow beneath him.

Maybe a lot of Brits are like that, for all I know. I do know that I'm not one of them, and that - foolishly perhaps - I'd like to put my head above the parapet in defence of British surly rudeness. Perhaps it's because I don't share Jones's blithe acceptance of palpable and transparent insincerity: I'm either old-fashioned or naive enough still to think that when somebody asks me how I am, they genuinely want to know; if they say 'Have a nice day,' they more or less want me to have one. I do not appreciate these things being repeated by rote, parrot-fashion, to all and sundry, in exactly the same tone to me as the last customer, and to the one after me. You could hire a Japanese designed-and-built robot to do that, and for much less long-term cost to boot and with less offence caused.
Mr Jones thinks that in addition to horrendously unfunny sitcoms ('Chums' or 'Pals' or whatever it's called, or that other one, 'Chairs', or the other one, 'Phrases') and gun crime, we need to import another American product to remedy the situation:

The service industry needs to wake up and smell its over-priced, over-stewed coffee, and begin subscribing to the new American mantra, W-cubed. This stands for 'Whatever, Wherever and Whenever you want it', and has become the accepted catchphrase of American customer service from San Francisco to Long Island.

Three words: Oh. My. God.
So - purely personally, you understand - I would far rather tolerate some spotty, scruffy little oik who wouldn't deign to put my loose change actually in my hand, or some bored gum-chewing Vicky Pollard clone slopping my coffee into its saucer as she slams it on the counter over those newly minted cheerleaders on Prozac with the wholly unnatural teeth. I don't, really, expect Mr Patel to really care when I go into the corner shop to get a paper, a box of matches and two pints of semi-skimmed, or when the postman (who at the moment looks about 16) asks me how I am: to a large extent these pleasantries are automatic verbal tics that we all come out with, but there's nothing wrong with that. They pass the time of day, they initiate conversation and they oil the wheels of social intercourse. Nothing wrong with that by any means. What I do object to, unlike Mr Jones, is the nauseating sucking-up coupled with blatant meaninglessness that seems to be par for the course in American shop staff, waiters and so on. Mr Jones doesn't care how sycophantic they are. I do care how sycophantic they are. Ingratiation is bad enough in the more servile of domestic pets, let alone serving staff. If I'm faced with this stereotypical surliness, rudeness, "am I bovvered?" attitude that Jones complains about, do I take it personally? No. Anyone is entitled to a bad day. If people want to feel that waiting at tables and spending a day - in fact, every day - asking "Do you want fries with that?" is beneath them, fair play: it may well be. A smile costs nothing, it's true, and is far nicer than its absence or opposite: I'm not supporting the idea that serving staff should be rude and surly as a matter of course, I'm attacking the American ethos that the customer is still king even when he or she behaves like a total bollock and deserves a smile and a cheery greeting/leave-taking as of right when their behaviour to people who work in shops, pubs and bars and so on would, at least sometimes, rightfully warrant taking a baseball bat to their kneecaps before dousing them with petrol and setting them alight. (Ask anyone who's ever worked in said establishments).
So give me Vicky Pollard in the paper shop, generic fast food outlet (TM) or petrol station any day. If she's a rude, bad-tempered, discourteous little cow, fair enough: at least I'll know she actually means it.

Oh dear!

2006-02-05T20:36:00.000Z

Harsh, but somehow - sometimes, at least -, I have to agree with this opinion on blogs, I'm afraid.

The rest of the site is almost illegally funny, by the way. Especially the reasoned art criticism ... if you don't laugh till you urinate on the chair you're sitting on, consider the possibility that you may be dead. You may well feel as bad for laughing as I did, but I couldn't help it, honest ...

Here we go again ...

2006-02-05T20:17:00.000Z

This is my second attempt at a blog: my first ill-fated try (not here at the redoubtable blogger.com, and months ago), however well-intentioned, soon died an ignominious death due to lack of time and attention. Boo hoo.
So - still full of those good intentions that pave the road to perdition - I'll have a second bash. And not be so damned idle this time round, I hope.