Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Year: 2007

  • Vote Now

    It’s time for the New Humanist’s Annual Bad Faith Award. Go and cast your vote now. A glittering lineup (apart from the obvious Groucho Marx touch of Richard Dawkins’ nomination to the list). It’s a difficult choice. I almost went for the Bishop of Carlisle, but he’s clearly deluded. In the end I went for Archbishop Francisco Chimoio on the grounds that he is more likely to have actively done harm to his flock by claiming that condoms are deliberately infected with HIV.

  • Church of Books

    Now here’s a bookshop that I simply have to visit… Glorious.

  • Law and Lawson

    There’s an interesting debate shaping up over at Stephen Law’s blog about whether faith schools are a good idea. Law’s position is that, too often, children at such schools are not exposed to critical thinking on the faith of the school, or even taught comparative religion. He’s had a response from Ibrahim Lawson, the founding head teacher of Islamia School. So far, I am more persuaded by Law’s arguments than by Lawson’s. No surprise there, then.
     
    Update 13 December 2007: Is it just me, but isn’t this response from Lawson just obfuscating hand-waving?I feel that I want to take a large needle and prick a windbag full of hot air. Appalling.

  • Artificial Stupidity

    In addition to Muse, Microsoft had the bright idea of adding another Artificial Intelligence bot to its Windows Live Messenger service. So last week, Santa Claus made his appearance. Unfortunately, it appears as though this particular Santa Claus is rather a loose cannon, and not particularly child-friendly. The Register has the details.
     
    One thing though, I see that the Register was alerted to this by someone whose 11 and 13 year old nieces "do not still fully believe in Santa Claus". This I find bizarre – it implies that the older one gets, the more fully one believes in the man in the red suit. Even if the whistleblower meant it in the reverse sense, I’m still somewhat surprised – I twigged that Santa was my parents at a much earlier age, and we lived in much more innocent times then…

  • Bringing Statistics Home

    The Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics has done something rather interesting and scary with its census data. You can now use Google Earth to check out census data at the level of neighbourhoods across the country. Hours of fun and sombre reflection.  

  • The Pullman Interview

    Here’s an excellent interview with Philip Pullman conducted by Peter Chattaway, a film critic and self-proclaimed religion junkie. I found myself nodding in agreement at a number of points in the interview, particularly where Pullman expounds on his feelings towards those slippery customers: spirit, spiritual, and spirituality. I also found it interesting that Pullman places himself in the panpsychism camp – I’m firmly across the road waving the emergent phenomenon flag.

    I see that Chattaway refers to a tiresome piece by Daniel Moloney in which he wrote (amongst other guff): "if the Christian myth actually is true, you would expect a gifted storyteller trying to tell a true story to arrive at many Christian conclusions about the nature of the world we see." Chattaway and Moloney both fall into the trap of seeming to believe that the Christian myth is all there is. They don’t seem to be aware that the same archetypes occur again and again in myth; not for nothing did Joseph Campbell title one of his books The Hero With A Thousand Faces. Pullman rightfully acknowledges that he is a child of his upbringing:

    My answer to that would be that I was brought up in the Church of England, and whereas I’m an atheist, I’m certainly a Church of England atheist, and for the matter of that a 1662 Book of Common Prayer atheist. The Church of England is so deeply embedded in my personality and my way of thinking that to remove it would take a surgical operation so radical that I would probably not survive it. 

    But that doesn’t prevent me from pointing out the arrogance that deforms some Christian commentary, and makes it a pleasure to beat it about the head. What on earth gives Christians to right to assume that love and self-sacrifice have to be called Christian virtues? They are virtues, full stop. If there is an exclusively religious sin (not exclusively Christian, but certainly clearly visible among some Christians) it is the claim that all virtue belongs to their sect, all vice to others. It is so clearly wrong, so clearly stupid, so clearly counter-productive, that it leads the unbiased observer to assume that you’re not allowed in the religious club unless you leave your intelligence at the door.

    Go and read the rest – it’s worth it.

  • The Temples of Damanhur

    Old cynic that I am, I can’t help feeling, as I explore the Temples of Humankind, that it’s all a bit twee and very kitsch. Yes, it’s an amazing accomplishment, but it doesn’t make my heart sing. I note that even in the Hall of the Earth – the temple dedicated to the Male Principle – the main figure is depicted without genitals. That just about sums it up for me – no balls.

  • How We Die

    That’s the title of a wonderful book by Sherwin Nuland. I came across Nuland a little while ago when a talk by him was posted on the TED blog. As I said at the time, the talk is well worth watching and listening to. It brought tears to my eyes.
     
    As a result, I sought out a book by him: How We Die.
     
    I’m still reading it, but I am here to tell you that Nuland writes from a heart that is full of compassion, yet is realistic enough not to paint life in false colours. It is an amazing book. I have the feeling that he tells the truth, no matter how unpalatable that is. Yet he tells it in language that shows humanity, even at the direst end.
     
    There are chapters in the book that spell out just what will happen when you have cancer, or AIDS or Alzheimers. He takes you to the brink of the pit and turns your face to gaze into its depths, but the strange thing is that having shown you the horrors, the reader (or at least, this one) comes away strengthened and ready to face what life (or rather, death) might bring.
     
    I am reminded of this book because I was watching the John Grierson Awards on BBC Four, and Paul Watson won the Grierson Trust Award, in part for his documentary: Malcolm and Barbara: Love’s Farewell. I have not seen the whole documentary, only parts, but what I have seen only underlines that I would prefer to see the heartbreaking truth of things, rather than obfuscation and false colours. Truth matters, however uncomfortable it may be. In googling for the documentary, I came across this hit on the Orthfully Catholic blog that seems to me to miss the whole point so completely that it almost beggars belief. It’s a complete travesty of what Barbara Pointon was experiencing. That’s why I get so angry with religion, and the people who espouse such views.

  • Never Let Me Go

    That’s the title of a haunting book by Kasuo Ishiguro. I mentioned it here. I see that it’s cropped up again on a couple of blogs in the last week. First, Jean Kavez mentioned it over at Normblog, and now Philip Ball mentions it over at Homunculus. My take on it was the same as that of Ball. It’s not really about science and cloning at all. It’s about what it means to be alive and fully human. It is an astounding piece of writing. If you haven’t read it , then you should.

  • World AIDS Day

    I should note that today is World AIDS Day. While some things have changed for the better since the syndrome began to be noticed, some things have not, as Ben Goldacre notes. As he says, AIDS quackery is still very much with us.

  • A Server In The Home

    I see that Microsoft has started tongue-in-cheek advertising for their Windows Home Server. Not bad, I rather liked the children’s book:
    When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much,
    the daddy wants to give the mommy a special gift.
     
    …So he buys a "Stay-at-Home" server.
    There’s actually quite a serious point being made here. How do you market something like Windows Home Server to the consumer? The team behind the Windows Home Server discuss it over at their blog.
     

  • A Storm in a Teacup

    The case of Gillian Gibbons is a salutary example of how truth is stranger than fiction. I admit, that when I saw the headline that people were demonstrating against her sentence of 15 days for allegedly insulting Islam, I thought: at last, people are coming to their senses. But no; it turns out that the demonstrators want to have her executed. I’m sorry, but I am going to turn into a cranky misanthrope, if this is the best that my species can muster.
     
    I trust that at least Khalid Al-Mubarak is reflecting on his ill-chosen words that the whole affair is simply a "storm in a teacup". But I leave it to Mo to point out the idiocy of the whole affair.

  • Immanence

    Here’s a nice post from Ebonmuse that captures the feeling of connectedness with the world without the pollution of religion.

  • Cost/Benefit Analysis

    Here’s a terrific little video on a quick and dirty analysis of Climate Change, and what we should do about it. Needless to say, I support his argument. I really don’t want to live in the world of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and neither would I wish that on our descendants.
     
     

  • Ramachandran Webcast

    I see that VS Ramachandran is giving a talk at the Royal Society tonight. Even better, it will be webcast. I’ll be watching.

  • DG’s Classical Music Store

    I see that Deutsche Grammophon has launched an online music store. It’s notable for a number of things:
     
    • it offers MP3 format without the curse of DRM (Digital Rights Management)
    • the music is encoded to a very high quality (320 kbps instead of the more usual 192 kbps)
    • the catalogue inludes recordings that are no longer available on CD.
    The current catalogue contains 24,000 items, and the prices are reasonable. This is the first online music store that I’ve seen that I really feel tempted to buy from. Up until now, I’ve always resisted buying just bits (that is, MP3 files) – I really wanted the security of atoms in the form of a physical CD as well.
     
    Update: Hmmm. Perhaps it’s because it’s the day of launch, but the web site is extraordinarily slow. It’s also very clumsily designed (IMHO) – new windows pop-up all over the place. I note that they also offer a promotion of one free track if you register before next February. Trouble is, they tell you to "enter your promotion code" when you check out the "free" track. It may be another teething problem – but I don’t seem to have got the promotion code… This experience is turning out to be frustrating and infuriating. Not a good sign for the success of DG’s venture…
     
    Update 2: I was sent a message by one of the worker elves on the DG site, who provided me with a promotion code and encouraged me to try again. This time, I got as far as being told that the link to download my track had been sent in an email to me. Trouble was, it didn’t arrive. At least, not until 14 hours later. That seems to be rather a long delay for an online purchase experience. I hope that DG were just experiencing pressure from a large number of visitors. I’d hate to think that this is the norm. In any event, I do tip my hat to the person who took the trouble to try and help me out. That is good customer service and I appreciate it.

  • Reality

    Jesus and Mo discuss the wilful ignorance of second-year students at Dundee University. Emily Mackie, get a life – no, first get an education, then you might understand what life is about.

  • RIP Verity

    Damn, Verity Lambert has died. While she’s best known for producing the first two series of Doctor Who, she left her mark on many other notable productions in British TV. She will be missed.

  • Launchball

    From the first time I visited it over fifty years ago, the Science Museum in London’s South Kensington has been a favourite haunt of mine. It’s just revitalised a gallery – Launchpad – and celebrates with an online game: Launchball. Very addictive.

  • Asylum No More

    The UK seems to be moving towards having a tough stance on asylum-seekers, and to hell with the consequences. The Independent reports on two disturbing cases (Maud Lennard and Meltem Avcil), and Craig Murray reports on an even more disturbing third case (Jahongir Sidikov). Today I don’t feel proud of being British.