Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Year: 2007

  • Worthy of Tufte

    There’s a new version of the mammalian family tree that’s just been published, as a result of taking earlier studies and producing a "supertree" from them. Pharyngula has the details, and there’s a most interesting discussion developing in the comments section.
     
    The image that is used on Pharyngula is beautiful, and worthy of something done by the great Edward Tufte, but if you want to see the tree in its full, stunning, glory, then get the version that the BBC has published here and zoom in. I’d love to be able to print this out as a huge wallchart.

  • A Trifle OTT?

    A trifle over the top, was my reaction to the news that a Swiss man living in Thailand has been jailed for 10 years for insulting the country’s king. But it could have been worse – the judge wanted to impose a sentence of 20 years, but had a flash of leniency, because the accused pleaded guilty…

  • Sauce For The Goose…

    …Is not always sauce for the gander. I think Ronan Bennett makes a very good point in his article in The Guardian today.

  • The New Pope – The Starwars Version

    I’m pretty sure I’ve blogged about this before, but it’s just been referred to over on the New Humanists’ Blog, so I thought that was excuse enough to put it up again.
     
     
     
    It’s by Adam Buxton, and I think it illustrates how we humans love ritual, whatever the background…

  • Yet Another Debate

    It’s just like waiting for the proverbial London bus – you stand around for ages and ages, and then three of them come along at once. Here’s another debate about religion… This time between Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and AC Grayling versus Rabbi Julia Neuberger, Professor Roger Scruton and Nigel Spivey. The podcasts can be downloaded here.
     
    The trouble is that every speaker is like a blind man confronted with the elephant – they all define it in their own way, so they mostly talk past each other. There are some good riffs – Hitchens’ introduction is excellent, and Spivey’s in its own way is pretty good, but he did seem (to me) to confuse religion with creativity, and religion with patronage. Thankfully, Dawkins pointed out the latter confusion. I’m still listening so haven’t heard all the arguments, but it’s good stuff thus far…
     
    Update: I was not impressed at all by Neuberger or Scruton. If this is the best that those who believe that religion is a good thing, then the result that the motion that "we’d all be better off without religion" was carried does not surprise me one bit. 
     
    For: 1,205
    Against: 778
     
    The motion is carried.

  • The God of Eth

    Stephen Law has another excellent post over at his eponymous blog to get you thinking about the nature of god. It’s always seemed "patently obvious" to me that if such a being exists (I’m a six on the Dawkins scale), that it must be supremely indifferent of us. 

  • A Must-See Film?

    J. Carter Wood, over at Obscene Desserts, draws our attention to the oft-overlooked art of typography. It’s always seemed strange to me that something so ubiquitous can also be something so unnoticed – its effects being wrought often at almost an unconscious level, as if by some strange osmosis.
     
    Apparently, the Helvetica font turns 50 this year, and as JCW writes, there is even to be a documentary about it. And it’s feature-length, too. Ye gods – I can easily imagine dedicated typographers having the attention span to be able to sit through this (they seem at times to be a pretty obsessive bunch), but us ordinary mortals?
     
    Oh – and check out the article by Mark Simonson on Arial; it’s definitely worth reading. 

  • With Friends Like These…

    …Who needs enemies? That Mo, eh? What a card he is! Another brilliant episode in the ongoing story of religious folk.

  • The Perfect Man For The Job

    The director of HIV/AIDS at the World Health Organization has clearly the perfect name… He must be the right man for the job.

  • Cheddarvision

    As a restful alternative to the shenanigans of The Apprentice, you might want to try Cheddarvision…

  • They’re Baaack!

    Another bunch of 16 people whom I definitely wouldn’t want to bump into at parties has hit the screen tonight. Yes, the third series of The Apprentice has begun in all its tacky, toecurling glory.

    Apparently, all the candidates have left their previous jobs to take part in the show. I can’t think why. Probably that very thought was going through the mind of tonight’s – ah – victim, Andy Jackson.

    In fact, I can’t help but wonder why on earth anyone would want to take part in this at all. The process does seem to have a tendency to self-select the candidates who appear for the most part to have the most unappealing human characteristics. Speaking of which, it would seem that Tre Azam is easily the leader in the candidate from hell stakes on the boy’s side. I’m not sure yet about the girl’s side, but Gerri Blackwood has possibilities. 

    Still, I have to admit that it has all the appeal of a road crash. You know you shouldn’t look at it, but it has a certain morbid fascination, and you rubberneck as you drive past on life’s road.

    Update: Anna Pickard’s got a brilliant blow-by-blow blog of the opening episode here.

  • Another Debate

    This time it’s Dawkins and McGrath. I haven’t heard it yet – just downloading it now. I’m curious to hear whether McGrath comes up with anything better than hand-waving this time around.
     
    Update: Nope – he didn’t. He’s a prime example of an "Imperial Courtier" who dances round every utterance without voicing anything whatsoever of substance so far as I could discern.

  • The World’s Biggest Sundial

    The Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society draws our attention to the world’s biggest sundial – with a gnomon that is 155 metres (510 feet) high. 

  • Clippy Reincarnated?

    Some of you will probably remember Clippy – that obnoxious anthropomorphised cartoon paperclip that came with earlier versions of Microsoft Office. Thankfully, it has now been laid to rest in the latest version of Office. But don’t breathe too easily – the next generation of these assistants has just made her debut on MSN Messenger.
     
    Here’s Muse. And here’s her blog. Now run away. Very quickly.
     
     

  • Life Imitates Art – Part II

    Sometimes I think my head will explode. It’s likely to be triggered by an overdose of incongruity. Such as this: the video of Nigerian email scammers acting out the Monty Python "Dead Parrot" sketch in the mistaken belief that this will earn them a scholarship to come to the US to study film.

  • Life Imitates Art

    In a fine piece over at Ballardian, Simon Sellars muses on the parallels between a film made in 1974, modern suburbia in Australia, and the uncanny prescience of J. G. Ballard in describing it all. Worth reading.

  • Peanut Butter and Evolution

    I’m currently under the weather with ‘flu. So I’m not feeling particularly wonderful at the moment. A feeling that was not helped one jot or tittle by this pile of bollocks.
     
     
     
    There’s more where that came from apparently, but I don’t feel strong enough to wade through it.
     
    (hat tip to Richard Dawkins net for the link)
     
    Oh, and while we are on the subject of how stupid people can be. This example of motherly love takes some beating for the sheer banality of evil.

  • Happy Birthday, Richard!

    Richard Dawkins is 66 today. One digit short of the mark of the beast, in the eyes of some, no doubt. May he be around to celebrate many more birthdays…

  • Monkey Think, Monkey Do

    Emotiv Systems demonstrated a prototype of a new computer peripheral recently. It purportedly allows the wearer to think about actions, and for those actions to be acted upon by the computer. Watch the video to get a sense of this. I can’t help but feel that a) the learning/training time is going to be fairly long and b) the response time as evidenced from the video (presumably carried out by trained personnel) is slower than molasses on a cold day. Still, it will be interesting to see what actually arrives on the market.

  • The GP’s Brain Is Missing

    David Colquhoun has recently drawn attention to the shameful practice of some Universities offering BSc courses in homeopathy. Now, a doctor, Ann Robinson, responds in an article saying that there is no harm in it:  
    The big question here is not whether homeopathy works but whether it has enough of a scientific basis for it to be taught as a BSc degree course. I can’t really see the problem. We teach BA degree courses in media studies alongside traditional English literature. So why not homeopathy alongside medicine? 
    She clearly doesn’t understand the difference between a BA and a BSc – between the arts and science. Words fail me. However, allow me to quote one of the comments left by a reader of Ann Robinson’s article. "Medgirl" writes:
    "Says Ann Robinson: ‘Even the fiercest critics of homeopathy will agree that it does no harm – which is more than you can say about conventional pharmaceutical drugs.’
     
    I completely disagree with this statement. I studied medicine in India, where homeopathy is a very popular form of alternative medicine and has university-affiliated colleges offering degree courses. Students who cannot get into medical school often take up studies in homeopathic medicine.
     
    As an intern, I saw too many times the tragedies that homeopathic treatment led to. I can never forget a woman who was brought in on a stretcher to our surgical outpatient clinic. She was moments away from death and the most foul smell entered the room with her. When her relative lifted her sari, we could see one of her breasts had melted into a rotting mass, infested with maggots. The consultant, recognising yet another case of breast cancer left too long, said what had they been doing all this while, because this didn’t happen overnight. ‘She had a lump in her breast, and the homeopath treated it. He said it would get bigger, and then melt away, but with the melting she has become very ill.’ The surgeon told the family to take the woman back to the homeopath, that there was nothing we could do for her now.
     
    Maybe these cases were extreme examples, but I think conventional medicine has more of an ability to recognise its limitations."