Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Year: 2007

  • Neighbourhood Bike Ride

    Yesterday, Martin and I went out on a 40 Km bike ride with forty other neighbours, young and old. It’s an annual event organised by three of our neighbours, who plan the route, including stops at cafés along the way, and who shepherd their flock safely throughout. It’s a great day out, a chance to socialise with the neighbours while enjoying pleasant scenery along the way.
     
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  • Pepys’ Slide-rule

    I didn’t know, but apparently Samuel Pepys was a 17th century geek; besotted with his slide-rule. I learn something new every day.

  • The Unlightenment

    Charlie Brooker has a real talent for rants. His latest on Woo is a masterpiece… 
    Welcome to a dangerous new era – the Unlightenment – in which centuries of rational thought are overturned by idiots. Superstitious idiots. They’re everywhere – reading horoscopes, buying homeopathic remedies, consulting psychics, babbling about "chakras" and "healing energies", praying to imaginary gods, and rejecting science in favour of soft-headed bunkum. But instead of slapping these people round the face till they behave like adults, we encourage them. We’ve got to respect their beliefs, apparently.
     
    Well I don’t. "Spirituality" is what cretins have in place of imagination. If you’ve ever described yourself as "quite spiritual", do civilisation a favour and punch yourself in the throat until you’re incapable of speaking aloud ever again. Why should your outmoded codswallop be treated with anything other than the contemptuous mockery it deserves?  
    Preach it, Charlie, my boy!

  • Meat Paste Sandwiches

    Clearly, I’m approaching my sell-by date. I am old enough to recall those little glass pots of meat paste, and I honestly did enjoy levering up the little tongue of metal that released the metal seal around the top, before levering off the lid to expose the full glory of the meat paste waiting to be spread on my sarnies.
     
    Not so, Harry Pearson. To him, the glories and subtleties of meat paste remind him of the stuff ‘made from the bits dog food manufacturers reject because it is "a tad too stinky"’.
     
    What a fool. Clearly he is a young whippersnapper, unable to appreciate what we went through in our youth.

  • Louis CK Learns About Catholicism

    If you enjoy the type of humour that infuses Jerry Springer: The Opera, then I think that you will enjoy this. If, however, you have a sensitive skin, then don’t watch it – you’ll be offended. Me? I laughed like a drain, but then I’m a pervert. 

  • Out of Jail

    A couple of months back, I blogged about the news that biologist Marc van Roosmalen had been jailed by the Brazilian authorities for 16 years for allegedly failing to apply for a license to keep 28 monkeys at his home. Well, there’s some good news; he’s apparently been freed from jail while awaiting his appeal to come to trial. 
     
    I still think that there is something odd going on. Van Roosmalen doesn’t deny that he was looking after the 28 monkeys, but he claims that it was the Brazilian authorities themselves who asked him to do so after they had been confiscated from poachers… I also notice that the Dutch authorities are claiming that because van Roosmalen has been naturalised as a Brazilian citizen, they can’t do anything for him. Odd, since van Roosmalen still holds a valid Dutch passport, and a Brazilian living in the Netherlands can hold dual Dutch and Brazilian nationality…

  • Perseids Ahead

    This weekend sees the peak of the annual Perseid meteor shower. More information here. 

  • Copenhagen

    Tonight saw the last part of Jim Al-Khalili’s stunning three-part series on BBC Four on atomic physics. It was excellently done. But the main reason for this blog entry is that I happened to watch the film adaptation of Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen beforehand. I’d not seen this before, and I am completely bowled over by it. It is, on the face of it, a simple three-hander; three actors playing the Danish atomic physicist, Niels Bohr, his wife, and the German atomic physicist Werner Heisenberg. It is based on a brief meeting between Bohr and Heisenberg in Copenhagen during 1941, and Frayn has used this simple fact to spin a marvelous exploration of human motivation and potential outcomes.
     
    The film adaptation is very well done, and the actors are top notch: Stephen Rea, Daniel Craig and Francesca Annis. Absolutely superb, and the implications of what might have happened in the meeting are mind-blowing. If you haven’t seen this film, go forth and do so at the earliest opportunity. Simply amazing. 

  • Unsettling

    Even though I don’t suffer from coulrophobia, I found this picture to be rather unsettling. It brought back memories of the fun Larry Cohen film It’s Alive! back to me, although without the black humour. The reality behind the picture is more akin to the quiet horror brought to our attention by Zuzu… 

  • Human Stories

    Chris Abani perfectly illustrates the power of stories to make us reflect on our humaness. 

  • Dancing Robot

    The Japanese continue their fascination with all things robotic with this one, demonstrating its prowess at traditional dance. I doubt whether it could do Hip-Hop…
     
     
    More about the background here. 

  • Joe Orton

    Today marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Joe Orton, killed by a series of hammer blows from his lover Kenneth Halliwell, who then promptly took an overdose. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has an excellent entry on Orton, penned by Michael Arditti, no mean slouch himself as an author. That link, by the way, will only work for this week, as the ODNB only allows permanent access to its entries for subscribers, so get it while it’s hot. Alternatively, if you want a longer biography, then pick up a copy of John Lahr’s excellent Prick Up Your Ears, or see the film of Alan Bennett’s adaptation of the book (also called Prick Up Your Ears).
     
    And on the subject of six degrees of separation, I met Elena Salvoni and her husband, Aldo, a couple of times when I dined at the L’Escargot restaurant in Soho many years ago. Elena was the formidable manageress of the restaurant at the time, and a great Soho character. The Salvonis were the immediate neighbours of Orton and Halliwell. As Lahr writes: "Orton was killed between two and four in the morning. The Salvonis, whose bedroom was adjacent and who were awake, heard no struggle or argument".

  • Wilders Strikes Again

    Every country has its share of politicians who display signs of being either loons or would-be demagogues. Here in the Netherlands we have Geert Wilders, who yesterday called for a complete ban on the sale of the Qu’ran or its use in mosques. Well what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, I say, if you’re going to ban the Qu’ran, then logically you should also ban the Bible, which is also not short of toe-curling passages and injunctions to kill the non-believer. But, of course, the publicity-hungry Mr. Wilders and his sympathisers can’t see that particular beam lodged firmly in their eyes. A more measured response came from Afshin Ellian, advisor to ex-Muslim Ehsan Jami, whose beating-up outside of his local supermarket apparently initiated this wild idea from Wilders. Ellian pointed out that instead of banning the book, firmer measures should be taken against the radical imams and mosques that use the Qu’ran to spread hatred.

  • Keep Trying Those Buttons

    Brian Sack, over at Banterist, has a nice little video skit: Switching to a Secure Frequency. I have had days like that sometimes. 

  • A Late Night Tonight

    Oh dear, it looks as though I’ll have a late night tonight. First up is Dangerous Knowledge on BBC Four, starting at 23:05. The documentary will look at the work and lives of three brilliant mathematicians and an equally brilliant physicist: Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing. And then at 00:35 tomorrow morning is another chance to see Derek Jacobi in Breaking the Code, which is an excellent film adaptation of the stage play about Alan Turing.
     
    Black coffee and matchsticks at the ready…  

  • Excising Evolution

    I don’t watch much Dutch TV, I find little of it to be worthwhile; and I certainly don’t watch any of the output of the EO (Evangelische Omproep), the religious broadcasting company here in the Netherlands. So I missed the fact that the EO had licensed David Attenborough’s great Life of Mammals series. The EO has both broadcast it, and made it available on DVD with Dutch dubbing and subtitles.
     
    But the real news is that the EO has also excised any references that Attenborough makes to evolution. Here’s two examples, shown in a side by side comparison:
     
        
    While I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at this, I still find this pretty disgusting behaviour by the EO. More examples of this rewriting of reality to fit their creationist folklore can be found here.
     
    (hat tip to Phil Plait, over at The Bad Astronomer, for drawing my attention to this)

  • Apostate Attacked

    Hopefully this is not a portent of things to come, but the news that ex-Muslim Eshan Jami was attacked outside a supermarket near his home last Saturday does not leave me feeling particularly confident about the future. I’ve just got a copy of Paul Sniderman and Louk Hagendoorn’s When Ways of Life Collide, an examination of multiculturalism and its discontents in The Netherlands. The thesis is that the Dutch social policies that were designed to protect the distinct way of life of Muslim immigrants and promote tolerance are in fact breeding intolerance on both sides.
     
    Time will tell.

  • Deventer Book Market

    Last Sunday saw the 19th annual book market held in the town of Deventer. There were 878 stalls set out in the town. If they were laid end-to-end, that’s six kilometres of stalls groaning with books. I managed to pick up some bargains: The Science Book for €5 and a hardcover first edition of Robert Nye’s Merlin for €4. There was one stall devoted to pop-up books, which are a particular weakness of mine. They had a nice example of a pop-up devoted to the works of Alfred Hitchcock, and another that had pop-ups of six of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses, but alas, the prices asked I could not justify to myself. Frankly, Amazon is far cheaper, even with the postage. And then there was the stall that had an amazing book on Magritte, a snip at €225 in place of the original price of €995. I left that one behind as well.
     
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  • Watch The Skies

    Setting out on Sunday morning to go to the Deventer Book Market, I noticed these rather unusual (at least to me) clouds in the sky. The tops seemed to be the usual fluffy stuff, while the undersides were being drawn out into wisps. I’ve not seen this before.
     
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  • Stuff and Nonsense

    I don’t read the UK newspaper The Daily Mail. As a matter of fact, I don’t think it’s fit even to wrap fish and chips in either. This does have the fortunate side effect of ensuring that I don’t often come into contact with the opinions of its resident columnist Melanie Phillips, usually because when I do, I am left gasping for breath at the spittle-flecked lunacy of her opinions. 
     
    Still, every now and then something that Mad Mel writes is picked up and displayed elsewhere, usually because someone else also can’t believe the stuff she churns out. Here’s a good case in point. She apparently believes that science, not faith, is the new enemy of reason. Head on over to the link and read the full thing. You might also peruse the comments, which fall into one of two categories: a) detailed rebuttal of her harebrained arguments or b) an expression along the lines of "who is this idiot?" (for the best answer, see comment 58). I’ll just leave you with a taste of her tripe…
    Science cannot explain the origin of the universe. Yet it now presumes to do so and as a result it has descended into irrationality.
     
    The most conspicuous example of this is provided by Dawkins himself, who breaks the rules of scientific evidence by seeking to claim that Darwin’s theory of evolution – which sought to explain how complex organisms evolved through random natural selection – also accounts for the origin of life itself.  
    Needless to say, Dawkins has never said any such thing. Mel then goes on to waffle about Intelligent Design and the Cambrian Explosion. The only things that she makes abundantly clear are the depths of her ignorance and the idiocy of her claim that science is the enemy of reason. As the first comment notes, her homework should be to read The Ancestor’s Tale.