Ophelia, over at ButterfliesAndWheels, reflects on the language used by pressure groups opposed to stem cell research, and wonders whether they mean what they say. She has a point.
Category: Society
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The Evil Within
Theodore Dalrymple considers the question of whether evil is instrinsic in the human condition. And comes to the conclusion, which I share, that it is a component that cannot be easily dismissed.(hat tip to Normblog) -
Virtually Unreal
On the day when Niall Stanage weighs in with a rather silly piece on the danger of Second Life (clue: the backstory has nothing to do with Second Life whatsoever), Not Saussure points us towards the true surrealness of the phenomenon. -
Pocket Money
This is prompted by From the Heart of Europe.Count all the euro (and related) coins in your pocket – not by how much they are worth, but by which country they come from. (The full list of coins showing which ones come from which country can be found in many places, including http://www.euro.gov.uk/eurocoins.asp)Germany: 6Netherlands: 3France: 1Italy: 1Finland: 1Now, which country do you live in? GermanyObviously it helps to do this meme if you live in Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Monaco, San Marino, the Vatican, Andorra, Montenegro or Kosovo, but people outside those enchanted places can play too. -
Noaberschap
One thing we’ve noticed since we moved to this part of The Netherlands last March is that the sense of community is still pretty strong around here. There is the local custom of Noaberschap (neighbourliness), where neighbours are expected to help each other out when necessary. We were touched when the young farmer across the field formally asked us if we would be Noaste Noabers (literally closest neighbours) to him and his girlfriend. This means that we are responsible for organising the rest of Herman and José’s neighbourhood in times of celebration or need (e.g. weddings or funerals). Hopefully, it’ll be the former, rather than the latter.We’ve just had the first celebration. Today was the day when Herman officially became the owner of the farm. So yesterday, the rest of the neighbourhood was at our house painting signs and making paper roses to decorate a pair of fir trees.
Then today, while Herman was at the notary to sign the papers, we set everything in place to officially welcome Herman and José to the neighbourhood.
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The Sound of Silence
I hope that this will be my last comment on last week’s gay rights versus religious rights debate in the UK, but I couldn’t help but raise my eyebrow in a very ironical fashion when I read the piece by Giles Fraser, the Vicar of Putney, in today’s Guardian, entitled Atheists: the bigots’ friends.While I grant him the point that many Christians are fully in support of gay rights, it does also seem that most of them have kept pretty quiet about it recently. And then again, there’s the rather telling point that of the 26 Bishops who sit in the House of Lords, only five of them were present in the debate last week, and of them, only one(!) voted against the motion to deny equal rights to gay people. So that leaves four of them who are quite happy to have discrimination continue, and potentially there are a further 21 of them who would agree with them.But then again, perhaps Giles Fraser doesn’t think that the Bishops are representative of the views of many Christians. If so, it’s a peculiar state of affairs indeed.Update: Ophelia, over at ButterfliesAndWheels, has a little chat with Giles. -
Parent Power
I see that a parent in Seattle has been initially successful in his attempt to prevent local schools from showing the Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth. He’s clearly in full possession of the facts and an intelligent rationalist:"Condoms don’t belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He’s not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. "The information that’s being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. … The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn’t in the DVD."Wonderful.Update: Apparently Frosty has been moved to give us a deeper peek into his rationale (and I use that word advisedly) behind his objections. Stop digging, Frosty… -
Stereotypes Only
A somewhat disturbing story in the Guardian today about the treatment meted out to Joanne Lees by the media. Her crime? She’s a woman in control of her emotions, instead of the tearful victim the tabloids want. There’s more than one Nicholas Hellen out there… -
Matching Pairs
I am like Diamond Geezer, I hate shopping for clothes. Fashion is probably the 13th worst idea in the history of the world. -
Synthetic Controversy
Not Saussure has an excellent entry discussing the recent Gay Rights vs Religious Rights issue that’s arisen in the UK over new laws to ban discrimination against gay people. His point is that some of the objections to the law seem fantastical in the extreme, usually a sure sign that a synthetic controversy is being whipped up.I found it interesting that some of the objections that had been raised had already been dismissed in a previous debate in the House of Lords, and yet they are still circulating in the media (even popping up on the BBC TV News last night) as though they were valid. Obviously, you can’t keep a good meme down.In the event, the attempt to derail the bill was defeated in the Lords by a majority of three to one, so sanity has prevailed. It’s good to see that the UK has now reached a point (in banning discrimination on the grounds of race, religion, sex or sexual orientation) that the Netherlands reached in 1983. Better late than never, I suppose. -
Dangerous Historian Apprehended
The American Historical Association has been holding its annual conference in Atlanta. During the conference, Professor Felipe Fernandez-Armesto committed the heinous crime of jaywalking. For this, the former Oxford don was thrown to the ground, handcuffed and kept in a cell for eight hours while the authorities decided what to do about him. Watch the interview with this urbane man here, and marvel at the subtle policing that citizens and visitors to Atlanta can experience. -
12 Bad Ideas
Fred Halliday posts his list of candidates for the world’s twelve worst ideas. He hits the target pretty well, I’d say.(hat tip to Ophelia, over at Butterflies and Wheels) -
Guess Who?
Chris Clarke, over at Creek Running North, sets a quiz. Go and see if you can guess who he is talking about. I confess I didn’t know the answer. Oh well, Chris has given me another recommendation to be added to the list of books that I still have to read. -
The Secret Life of Brian
I see that someone has added the Channel4 documentary about the circumstances around the making of The Life of Brian to YouTube. Perhaps it is in contravention of copyright, but this is an excellent documentary about the ongoing tussle between free speech and causing offence, and I for one, am glad to see it reaching a potentially wider audience.I am pleased to see that the documentary has extracts of a famous (at the time) discussion between John Cleese and Michael Palin (representing the forces of comedy) and the Bishop of Stockwood and Malcolm Muggeridge (representing the forces of Christians against blasphemy).Mervyn Stockwood represents the sort of secretive homosexual that I am grateful never to have been; that final comment in the interview about the Python team having received their thirty pieces of silver is truly beyond contempt. And I well recall the one occasion that I was in the physical presence of Mr. Muggeridge. It was when the Festival of Light (organised by the National Viewers and Listeners Association) was at its peak in the 1970s, and it had a public meeting in Bournemouth starring Mary Whitehouse and St. Mugg. I went along to hear what they had to say. What I heard disgusted me about the organisers and people such as Muggeridge involved in that eruption of hate speech. I felt physically sick at being in a large hall and listening to the baying of people led on by the platform speakers who had no compunction about uttering slander and lies. Even now, at a distance of thirty years, it disgusts me. And these were so-called Christians. -
Choosing the Moment
I’m a believer in free speech and so forth, but sometimes I find myself having a sharp intake of breath. This morning, for example. I was reading yesterday’s Volkskrant (one of the Dutch broadsheet newspapers) over breakfast. I leafed through the magazine, and was suddenly confronted with a selection of images taken by a police forensics photographer during the course of his 30-year career.The images (both black and white and colour) showed a series of bodies at the scene of their deaths, either by crime or suicide. I found the images shocking and unbearable to look at. I suppose part of it was that I was unprepared to see them.The reason for the article is that there is an exhibition of the photographs opening in Amsterdam. And while I have no objection to the exhibition as such – after all, the images are of real events taken by a photographer in the course of his job – I do question the judgement of the editors in reproducing some of them in a colour supplement delivered to thousands of homes without warning. After that sudden intake of breath, I chose to skip the article and continue with breakfast, but the images that I saw remain. I can choose for myself whether to go to the exhibition, or buy the coffee-table book, just as you can choose whether you want to watch the video report (Bloedige tafelren op de foto) on the Volkskrant web site. I suppose what I am objecting to here is the removal, by the editors, of that ability to choose the moment, and the opportunity to prepare myself for the experience. -
A New Forum
Inayat Bungawala waxes ecstatic over the fact that a new online forum to discuss Islamic issues has been set up. "An opportunity to exchange views online with senior religious figures in Saudi Arabia ought not to be missed" as the byline to the Guardian article has it.Oh goody. Here’s a question for you: Where in the Qur’ân and Sunnah does it tell us that homosexuality is unlawful?Although I note that homosexuality was misspelled as homoseuality on the site – a simple oversight probably, and unfamiliarity with English perhaps, or the inability to get good typists these days. Anyway, it’s good to know that the answer comes from the Fatwa Department Research Committee – chaired by Sheikh `Abd al-Wahhâb al-Turayrî. And I’m sure he’s a lovely man. So, what do they say?Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) made it clear that homosexuality is a sin and specified the punishment for the deed: “Whomever you find doing the act of Lût’s nation, then kill both parties.” [Sunan al-Tirmidhî]Here, our Prophet (peace be upon him) clearly states that the punishment for this sin is death.Ah, I see. You do realise Inayat, that this does rather put a strain on my ability to have any sort of meaningful dialogue with your friends at the Islamtoday web site? Not that, I suspect, you give a damn about that. Anyway, moving on, let us return to the rest of the answer:Even if none of this evidence were available, homosexuality would still be forbidden, simply because Islam expressly forbids any sexual contact out of marriage.Oh, well, that’s clear then. But hang on, I am married. To a man. So homosexuality is OK then as long as it is within marriage?Allah, in the Qur’ân, also strictly defines whom we can marry. Allah states for the man all the women that he is prohibited to marry and then says that others are permissible, while continuing to refer to those with whom it is lawful by the feminine gender. Therefore, men are restricted to marrying women and women are restricted to marrying men.Bugger. I should just go and kill myself now. No, I’ve got a better idea, Inayat. You can take your Islamtoday web site and stuff it where the sun don’t shine. It has nothing to do with humanity, but everything to do with superstitious nonsense. -
Learn Mandarin
Stephen Walli, a colleague from the days when I used to represent the company I worked for in IT standards organisations, has a most interesting post on his blog. It contains his reflections on his recent visit to China. Bottom line, learn Mandarin now.He’s probably right, although I suspect that my capacity to learn Mandarin has long since gone. But perhaps I should re-read Lucian W. Pye’s slim volume: Chinese Negotiating Style – Commercial Approaches and Cultural Principles. I see that Amazon.co.uk is currently offering it at the princely sum of 50 quid. Clearly, market forces are starting to bite. I’m glad I got my copy long before the Chinese economic boom started to get serious. -
Another Poll
I see that there’s been another poll of 1,000 US citizens asking about some of their beliefs. Apparently, according to the news story, 250 of them anticipate that the second coming of Jesus Christ will occur this year. There must be some mistake, surely? 25% of US citizens can’t be this deluded?I do hope that it’s a case of misreporting. There’s no sign of the poll as yet on the Ipsos web site, but I’ll keep an eye out for it to check the facts for myself… -
My Epitaph
Well, I think it has to be the opening sentence of Sam Harris’ response to the Edge challenge. I quote:No one has ever mistaken me for an optimist.Yup, that fits me like a glove. And while I luxuriate in the feel of that description, may I take this opportunity to direct you not only to Sam Harris’ reply to the challenge, but to other responses that seemed to me to have something pertinent to say about our brief strut on the world’s stage. Daniel Everett, for example, Geoffrey Miller, Simon Baron-Cohen, Clay Shirky, Martin Rees, or Gino Segre. Then there’s the current sniping between those who believe in string theory and those who don’t. Bring on the Large Hadron Collider, I say. Hopefully that will settle some arguments.But, at the last, no matter how pessimistic I may feel, I wouldn’t want to share the optimism of Rudy Rucker. It seems closer to Woo-woo than serious optimism. -
Questions From The Edge
The online magazine Edge asks a question of its contributors each year. The question for 2007 is What are you optimistic about? Why?The answers start here. And I wish I could share Daniel Dennet’s optimism, but I am much more pessimistic than he is.
Geoff Coupe's Blog 