Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Year: 2012

  • Hamza Kashgari

    It is one of life’s ironies that at a time when Baroness Warsi frets about the rise of “militant secularisation”, she is ignoring the very real danger of militant religion. Just one example:

    Hamza Kashgari is under threat of execution by the Saudi authorities for blasphemy.

    There’s been a petition set up calling for his release. Please sign it.

    Apparently, there’s also been a Facebook page set up to support him. I don’t do Facebook out of principle, but I understand that it has something like 2,500 signatures. I note in passing that at the same time that the Baroness talks about a rise in secular intolerance of religion, the rival Facebook page set up calling for retribution against Kashgari for tweeting about Mohammad has 22,500 signatures.

    The Baroness chooses to ignore examples of the real intolerance of freedom of expression (and human rights) by religions and speaks instead of chimeras. Phrases such as motes and beams spring to mind. Perhaps she should pause for a moment and give some thought to the plight of a fellow Muslim.

  • “Militant Secularisation”?

    I see that Baroness Warsi believes that Christianity in the UK is under threat from “militant secularisation” and worries “that at its core and in its instincts it is deeply intolerant”. Music to the ears of the Pope, it would appear.

    It seems to me rather that the established religions are finding that they are no longer getting a right to control in the public sphere, and are finding it hard to adapt to being given an equal voice alongside everyone else.

    Personally, I have no problem with the established religions putting forward their points of view – that’s what it means to live in a secular society – but they, in turn, should accept the fact that some of their views will attract ridicule and robust rejection. So it’s no surprise that the Baroness is attracting much of the same for her ridiculous hyperbole: Ophelia and John are both worth reading on the subject.

    The Baroness is behaving like a bully, and is being called out on it.

  • Swings and Roundabouts

    Almost two years ago, I wrote a blog post describing what I used to build my Home Theatre PC (HTPC). I’ve been pretty happy with the result. Over the course of that time, I’ve added a Solid State Drive (SSD) and reinstalled the Windows 7 operating system onto it. That had the result that the startup time from turning on the HTPC to seeing the Windows Media Center display on the TV was reduced to one minute. I’ve also upgraded the MyMovies and TotalMedia Theatre applications to the latest versions.

    The upgrade of TotalMedia Theatre from version 3 to version 5 has proved to be a problem. On my system, TMT5 does not perform satisfactorily at all. There is some sort of interaction between TMT5 and the software drivers of the ATi Radeon graphics card going on. With the latest version of the software drivers (Catalyst 12.1), I was getting bad video stuttering in the Blu-ray playback every 40 seconds or so. When I rolled back to an older version (Catalyst 11.4), then the stuttering went away, but then after about an hour or so, video playback of a Blu-ray movie would come to a juddering halt. I’ve tried all sorts of combinations of software settings in both the graphics software drivers and in TMT5, but nothing has helped.

    While I’m not the only person who is experiencing problems with TMT5, it’s clear that we are in the minority. I’ve got a support ticket open with Arcsoft’s Customer Support, and although there have been a couple of new software releases for TMT5, neither of them have helped me.

    I’ve been looking at alternatives to TMT5, in order to be able to play Blu-ray movies. While there are a few, they all come with their own set of issues. Either they don’t integrate into Windows Media Center (WMC) – they compete with it in terms of functions, or they don’t integrate with MyMovies.

    For example, I’ve been taking a look at the JRiver Media Center. This is a total solution, replacing Windows Media Center, TMT5 and MyMovies in their entirety. JRiver Media Center is capable of handling Blu-ray. I must admit, on my HTPC it appears to handle them flawlessly, a pleasant change to the current disaster of TMT5. But if I adopted JRiver Media Center, I would also be moving away from WMC and MyMovies, and I do like the user experience of that combination.

    JRiver Media Center has been around since 1998, and is currently on version 17 (!). It looks to be a very good product, well-supported, with an extremely enthusiastic user community of more than 26,000 members, some of whom are contributing plug-ins for the main application. However, I’m not sure that I want to move to it. It’s a personal thing, I know, but as I say, I feel very comfortable with WMC and MyMovies.

    An additional wrinkle is that Windows 8 is expected at the end of the year – and the Consumer Preview will be released on the 29th of this month. The WMC community, myself included, is wondering what will happen to WMC in Windows 8. Opinion was divided between those who think that we’ll see a totally new version and those who thought it would be dropped altogether. Microsoft has now promised that some form of WMC will be present in Windows 8, but it’s anybody’s guess what it will turn out to be. A related question is whether Microsoft will provide native support for Blue-ray in Windows 8 itself; either as a standard component in Windows 8, or as a downloadable plug-in available for purchase via the forthcoming Windows Store. If so, then I may be able to simply rely on Windows 8 and WMC. I’m hoping that there will be something in the Customer Preview to clarify my options. It seems to me that my options are:

    1. Roll back from TMT5 to TMT3 (to get Blu-ray playback working at least reasonably well), and hope that a future version of TMT5 will fix my current issues.
    2. Change over from WMC and MyMovies to JRiver Media Center (at a cost of $50).
    3. Hope that Windows 8 will provide a WMC that is capable of handling Blu-ray playback natively (however, I suspect that acquisition cost will be at least $100).

    I’ll continue to play with JRiver Media Center for the remainder of the trial period of 30 days, but I suspect that, in the end, I’ll go with option (1) to begin with, and maybe move to option (3) in a year or so’s time.

    Update: Having completed this post, I suddenly had a thought – what if I removed the ATi Radeon graphics card, and went back to using the integrated graphics on the Intel Core i3 530 processor? I originally had problems with the integrated graphics on the Intel, but Intel just released a new set of graphics driver software last month.

    So I’ve just pulled the ATi graphics card, and installed the new Intel graphics drivers. They seem to have improved the situation – I no longer lose the signal from the HTPC if I switch inputs on the TV. The other issues are still there (slow HDMI handshake and losing the Denon on-screen display if I use the xvYCC colourspace), but I think I can live with them.

    I’ve reinstalled TMT5, and now the Blu-ray playback is as smooth as butter; no stuttering. I’ll have to do extended tests to make sure that all is well, but it is looking good at the moment. So my option (1) has become: carry on with TMT5, using the Intel integrated graphics of the i3 processor. I don’t need to switch to JRiver Media Center, and I can explore Windows 8 at my leisure.

    The moral of the story is: HTPCs are still for enthusiasts who are able to roll up their sleeves and fiddle about – that’s what they have to do. Plug and Play? Forget it.

  • Out On The Ice

    A few minutes walk from our house is a field that gets turned into an ice rink during the Winter when it’s cold enough. Temperatures this past week have been sufficiently low enough that the flooded field has become the much hoped-for ice rink.

    I went down there yesterday at around lunchtime, and already people were there practising their skill at ice skating.

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    I suspect that now, on a pleasant, but cold, Sunday afternoon, there will be hundreds of people there.

  • Japanese Archery

    I often drop by Jeffrey Friedl’s blog. He’s a computer scientist living in Japan, but in addition to this, he’s a keen, and talented, photographer, and his blog usually has stunning images of Japan and Japanese society.

    He recently attended a Japanese Archery contest for the first time, and has written a number of blog posts about the experience. Do go and take a look; I suggest you start with this one, followed by this and this. There are others in the series as well.

  • If You’re Not Angry, You’re Not Paying Attention

    That’s the culmination of an excellent speech and article by Maryam Namazie. Please, just go and read it. Her argument rings true.

  • I Don’t Believe It!

    You know, when I was at university, in the dim and distant past, back at the beginning of the 1970s, the LSE (the London School of Economics) was viewed as a hotbed of student activism. So recent events at the LSE have left me completely at a loss.

    It appears that there has been a mass invasion of politically correct body snatchers that has resulted in a Students’ Union that has completely lost the plot about what free expression and the ability to criticise means.

    Maryam Namazie points out the obvious: the LSE SU is supporting criticism of religion, just not that of Islam, which gets a free pass from them.

    It would never have happened in my days at Uni. What on earth is wrong with the students of today?

  • Burka Ban

    Five years ago, I thought that news that the Dutch government were considering a burka ban to be a very bad idea.

    Fast forward to today, and now the current Dutch Cabinet has voted in favour of the ban, despite advice from its most important advisory body, the Council of State.

    As I said five years ago, this is taking a sledgehammer to crack the metaphorical nuts of between 150 and 200 women in the whole of the Netherlands (population: over 16.7 million):

    While I happen to think that the garments say more about the odd ways in which women are viewed by one religion (and gawd knows, it ain’t the only one), I don’t think that banning them is going to help one bit towards the avowed intent of integration into Dutch society. It’s more likely to drive the “us and them” wedge further into this society’s hearts and minds.

    What would be far more helpful is for public order to be preserved by coming down hard on extremists such as the Islamists who attempted to break up a public meeting in Amsterdam last December.

  • The Science Delusion

    There’s a book review in today’s Guardian. It caught my eye, because the book’s title is The Science Delusion, which sounded rather provocative.

    Turning to the review, I saw that it was written by Mary Midgley, and my heart sank. I read the review, and she likes the book. That settled it for me. The book, by author Rupert Sheldrake, is probably tosh, and not worth getting. She also ends her review with a not-unexpected swipe at her bête noire, Richard Dawkins.

    I see that Dr. Adam Rutherford has felt moved to add in the comments on the review:

    I’ve read this dreadful book, and fail to recognise any of it in this review. It is, I’m sorry to say, drivel. Drivel that stands in opposition to Dawkins’ work to cynically promote Sheldrake’s many times debunked fantasy supernatural gubbins. If there is a philiosophical point therein, I missed it for all the tales of dogs who know when their owners are coming home, experiments abut the Nolan Sisters and Sheldrake’s woo phlogiston which he calls Morphic Resonance.

    A couple of years ago, I wrote this piece on Sheldrake, which applies to this current book too. A book for ignoring.

    Based on my previous exposure to both Midgley’s and Rutherford’s work, I judge Rutherford’s opinion to be the more sound. The book is almost certainly tosh and I definitely will not be buying it.

  • De Botton’s Folly

    A few days back, I wrote that I was not convinced by Alain de Botton’s presentation of his Atheism 2.0 thesis, and even less impressed by his use of a false categorisation of Richard Dawkins.

    Now I see that de Botton is back in the news today. He’s announced that he wants to build a “temple for atheists” in the City of London. It is to be a 46 metre tower, costing one million quid. According to the Guardian’s report, the tower is:

    to celebrate a “new atheism” as an antidote to what he describes as Professor Richard Dawkins’s “aggressive” and “destructive” approach to non-belief.

    Sigh. More false categorisation. As Dawkins has apparently said:

    “Atheists don’t need temples,” the author of The God Delusion said. “I think there are better things to spend this kind of money on. If you are going to spend money on atheism you could improve secular education and build non-religious schools which teach rational, sceptical critical thinking.”

    I can understand the tower as being a piece of public art (although hopefully not paid for by the taxpayer). The tower serves no purpose other than being a Folly, in every sense of the word.

    In passing, I note that the Guardian couldn’t resist a quote from the Rev George Pitcher:

    “This is a more constructive atheism than Dawkins, who is about the destruction of ideas rather than contributing new ones.”

    Ah, yes, the good reverend has previous form in such remarks.

  • “Verging On Fascism”

    There was unease last week in Amsterdam’s Orthodox Jewish community when it emerged that their nominal Chief Rabbi, Aryeh Ralbag (who lives in New York), stated that homosexuality was an illness that could be cured. As a result of this patent nonsense, the Chief Rabbi found himself suspended by the community.

    Now the US-based Committee for the Declaration on the Torah Approach to Homosexuality, which includes Rabbi Ralbag as one of its members, has opined that it is “shocking” that a chief rabbi in the Netherlands has been suspended for his statements on “centuries-old religious truths”, and that this action is “verging on fascism”. Welcome to Planet Godwin.

    I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. They are no different to the Catholic Church or Islam in their touching adherence to ancient and false beliefs about human sexuality. But what really raised an eyebrow was the report that

    …the rabbi believes his life would be in danger if he came to the Netherlands.

    Ralbag told the NRC newspaper: ‘I have strong indications that my wife and I would not be sure of our lives if we came to the Netherlands now.’ He declined to say what the threats were but did say he took them ‘extremely seriously’, the paper reported.

    I’m sorry rabbi, but you really are living in another world if you think that to be the case. The Amsterdam Orthodox community, and the rest of us, are merely pointing out what an idiot you are. Idiots don’t deserve death, they deserve education.

  • Atheism 2.0? Dear God, No…

    Alain de Botton is a philosopher. He recently gave a talk at a TED conference where he proposed “Atheism 2.0”, a form of atheism that would reject all deities and supernatural acts but cater to the “ritualistic side” of some atheists.

    It sounds like an appalling idea to me. I see that Jerry Coyne, over at Why Evolution is True, finds the idea to be “a facile attempt to appropriate the trappings of religion as something essential to an atheist world”. As Coyne says, “What we need, as sociological studies indicate, is not stained glass, potted lilies, and a gasbag orator, but a society that cares about its citizens”.

    In fact, I like some rituals, such as walking the dogs in the woods, or going to the theatre or listening to a concert; but the idea of elevating those ad-hoc activities into prescribed rote and trappings is simply a bad one, and has nothing whatsoever to do with “atheism”.

    What really irritated me about de Botton’s performance in this TED talk, is that he opens it with a thinly-veiled sneer at Richard Dawkins, saying that “many [people] who live in North Oxford” simply find religion ridiculous. De Botton then has the effrontery to go on to say that:

    I’m interested in the kind of constituency that thinks something along these lines: that thinks, “I can’t believe in any of this stuff, I can’t believe in the doctrines. I don’t think these doctrines are right. But,” a very important but, “I love Christmas Carols, I really like the art of Mantegna. I really like looking at old churches. I really like turning the pages of the Old Testament”.

    So de Botton has created another Dawkins strawman by his sneer, because, in fact, Dawkins is in just the kind of constituency that de Botton claims he is interested in. Dawkins is on record as recognising himself as a cultural Christian, who loves listening to Carols, and who, in The God Delusion (p.344 in my hardcover edition), writes:

    …an atheistic world-view provides no justification for cutting the Bible, and other sacred books, out of our education. And of course we can retain a sentimental loyalty to the cultural and literary traditions of, say, Judaism, Anglicanism or Islam, and even participate in religious rituals such as marriages and funerals, without buying into the supernatural beliefs that historically went along with those traditions. We can give up belief in God while not losing touch with a treasured heritage.

    I should note that I’ve read very little of de Botton that I have been able to nod my head in agreement with, or indeed, take seriously. Give me Daniel Dennett any day…

    On a side note, is it just me, or has the quality of TED talks gone down the toilet in recent years? There was a time when I enjoyed listening to them, but these days they seem to contain a high percentage of woo-merchants doing their happy-clappy schticks.

  • A Reminder of Magic

    There’s a wonderful article in today’s Observer. It’s by Susannah Clapp, and it’s reminiscences about her friend Angela Carter.

    Carter was a brilliant novelist who died of lung cancer ten years ago at the young age of 51. As Clapp says:

    She was 10 years too old and entirely too female to be mentioned routinely alongside Martin Amis, Julian Barnes and Ian McEwan as being a young pillar of British fiction. She was 20 years too young to belong to what she considered the “alternative pantheon” of Iris Murdoch, Doris Lessing and Muriel Spark in the 40s. 

    I see I have twenty-two of her books in my library, a couple in multiple editions. Time to go back and re-read them, I think. Meanwhile, if you’ve never heard of Angela Carter, do go and read the article, and then get one of her books: I suggest either Nights at the Circus or Wise Children.

  • Forced to be Sterilised

    There are times when the law goes beyond being “a ass” as Dickens’ Mr Bumble famously said, into realms where the law is simply anti-human.

    I was amazed to learn this week that Sweden requires, under force of law, that its transgender citizens be sterilised. I was prepared, at first, to think that, OK, it’s a quirk of the law that no-one could foresee, but now that we are in the 21st Century, it will be changed tout suite.

    Not a bit of it.

    The Christian Democratic party in the Swedish Parliament, being key to the coalition, are against any change to the law. As an aside, I am really not surprised that it’s a political party with religious roots that is insisting on this barbarism – ‘twas ever thus.  However…

    As the Human Rights Watch organisation states:

    The Swedish transgender law stems from 1972 and is out of step with current international best practice and understandings of Swedish obligations under international human rights law.

    In July 2009 Thomas Hammarberg, the commissioner for human rights of the Council of Europe, made the observation about the forced sterilization requirement that in reality the state prescribes medical treatment for legal purposes, “a requirement which clearly runs against principles of human rights and human dignity.” This was followed up in the extensive report on human rights for LGBT people in Europe that the commissioner published this summer. The commissioner there recommends Council of Europe member states to do away with all physical requirements for people who want to change their legal gender.

    In March 2010 the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe recommended to member states, including Sweden, that requirements, including changes of a physical nature, for legal recognition of a gender reassignment, should be reviewed in order to remove abusive elements. The Committee recommended that member states should take appropriate measures “to guarantee the full recognition of a person’s gender reassignment in all areas of life, in particular by making possible the change of name and gender in official documents in a quick, transparent and accessible way.”

    I am mindful that the situation here in the Netherlands is not so far in advance of that in Sweden; however, the Dutch government, a coalition of the conservative Liberal Party and the Christian-Democratic party, has publicly acknowledged that its transgender law violates international human rights law and has published a law proposal which does away with the forced sterilisation requirement.

    Here’s Georg Elfvelin asking for your support to help change the Swedish law:

    And here’s where you can sign a petition to Sweden’s Prime Minister. I hope that you will.

  • Dedicated Comic

    I see that yesterday’s Jesus and Mo is dedicated to Rhys Morgan, Jessica Ahlquist, One Law for All, and Salman Rushdie. Quite right, too.

  • Time is Money

    When I was growing up (many years ago), there used to be a saying: “If you want to know the time, ask a policeman”. Presumably it started when most people did not carry around timepieces of their own, whereas policemen were issued with them as standard equipment.

    These days, it would seem, that London’s policemen consult a higher authority: the “Speaking Clock”.

    Guess how much they spent ringing the Speaking Clock for the time in the past two years?

    Just a staggering £35,000. The mind boggles. Particularly when they could have got the time, for free, from their mobile phones to atomic clock accuracy…

  • How Did He Do It?

    If you saw last night’s Sherlock episode (The Reichenbach Fall – note the singular, by the way, a nice joke), you’ll know what I’m talking about. If you didn’t, and don’t want spoilers, then stop reading now.

    …

    I suppose, in a way, with a title echoing the climax of the original Conan Doyle story The Final Problem, which features the Reichenbach Falls, it was obvious what was going to happen; but the question is: how did he do it? There are lots of theories floating around, and while I’m unsure of the precise mechanics, I’m fairly sure of the following:

    • Molly was in on it (and what a wonderful character she has proved to be throughout the two series)
    • John Watson was not.
    • Mycroft may have been.
    • We did see a live human being jump (he was moving his arms to control his balance), and I am sure it was Holmes.
    • Watson was knocked over by a bicyclist in the period between seeing the jump and running to Holmes’ body. That is certainly significant.
    • Watson feels for Holmes’ pulse, and presumably doesn’t find one. Holmes was shown earlier playing with a squash ball. Could this be the old “squash ball in the armpit to stop the pulse trick”?

    Some viewers have complained that we shouldn’t have got obvious confirmation that Holmes faked his own death by seeing Holmes alive in the closing seconds, but I thought it was a good plot device:

    • It confirms to the viewer that Holmes is alive and sets the ball rolling on “how did he do it?” Great for the next series…
    • It gives extra poignancy to the fact that we now know that Holmes has heard Watson’s eulogy to a friend that he supposes is dead.

    The writing and the acting of this series has been outstanding. Hats off to all concerned.

  • Just Wait…

    I mentioned a few months back that I was being tempted by the Samsung Slate PC Series 7 that is now available in a few markets around the globe. Now that CES 2012 is in full swing, a whole slew of new Tablets is being shown there. While most of them are running Android, it’s clear that some of them are being shown in anticipation of Windows 8, which could be available by late December this year (the first public beta will be available next month).

    One such Tablet is the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 – and this looks even more interesting than the Samsung.

    Really, the best course of action for me is to sit tight and wait. It makes no sense to rush into a decision at the moment. And I have to say that my desire to get a new Tablet PC to replace my now-defunct HP TX2000 has abated considerably since I got my Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone. I’m able to use it to do many of the things that I was persuading myself that I would need a new Tablet PC for. Not all, but sufficient to relieve the pressure and turn the “need” into a “rather nice-to-have” sensation.

    I’ll revisit the situation at the end of the year.

  • The Joy of Books

    What books get up to at night.

    I sometimes wonder what happens in my library deep in the night as well.

    (hat tip to Matthew Cobb over at Why Evolution is True)

  • A Dastardly Plot

    I know that there are some intelligent churchmen around, but I do despair when I read bollocks like this:

    The Spanish Catholic Church is also concerned about homosexuality. During his Boxing Day sermon, the Bishop of Córdoba, Demetrio Fernández, said there was a conspiracy by the United Nations. “The Minister for Family of the Papal Government, Cardinal Antonelli, told me a few days ago in Zaragoza that UNESCO has a program for the next 20 years to make half the world population homosexual. To do this they have distinct programs, and will continue to implant the ideology that is already present in our schools.”

    It, quite literally, beggars belief.

    Update: Benedict also talks bollocks. Sigh.