Category: Society

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.  

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. 

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?

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:

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?

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.

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.

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…

Well, I think it has to be the opening sentence of Sam Harris’ response to the Edge challenge. I quote:

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.

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.

I didn’t hear it myself, but apparently Queen Beatrix’s Christmas message this year underlined the importance of free speech. But then she went and blew it by adding that of course no one has the right to insult anyone else. Er, then it isn’t really "free speech" is it, Beatrix? Silly woman.

…I wonder why can’t we just lighten up a little? There’s a rather depressing firestorm broken out in a small corner of the Blogosphere over transgender. In particular whether transgendered people support the patriarchy or not. A good, but rather worthy, discussion of the minutiae can be found here.

 

Basically, from my point of view, either we treat transgender people as people or we don’t. And depressingly, there are a number of people, who call themselves feminists, who don’t. Pot, kettle, black, sistas.

 

But, by way of lightening up, as a result of exploring the various discussion threads, I came across this totally politically incorrect, but oh so brilliant video from the Scissor Sisters: Filthy Gorgeous.

 

Thank god for art, and outrageous camp. Amen.

Jon Ronson is an excellent writer who seems to specialise in describing the stranger shores of the human species. His The Men Who Stare At Goats, for example is a book both hilarious and chilling about some of the bizarre characters in the US military. Well worth checking out.

 

If you’ve never read any of his stuff, then here’s an excellent introduction in today’s Guardian. It’s an article in which he describes his visit to North Pole, Alaska. Truth is stranger than fiction, and Ronson’s deadpan descriptions of the people and the place are terrific, in all senses of the word.

As the old joke says, the majority of those who use natural family planning turn out to be parents… Never a truer word was spoken… And don’t even begin to ask about the appallingly stupid dandelions versus thornless roses that also figure in this vacuous nonsense.

That bizarre piece by Ziauddin Sardar that I mentioned recently has garnered support from (to me) an unexpected quarter: Sunny Hundal. Fortunately, J. Carter Wood from Obscene Desserts is at hand to unpick the arguments.

Same old, same old… Meh, what can I say? It’s my species… But why is it usually the male that is the mishuggenah?

 

(hat tip to Onegoodmove for the link)

Mind Hacks has an entry on Professor Temple Grandin. It includes a link to the BBC Horizon programme made about her. Unlike many of recent Horizon programmes, this particular episode is well worth watching. Grandin is a fascinating individual, and her insights from her position of standing somewhat outside of the "normal" human perspective are valuable and revealing.

How will you react upon seeing your death come into view? It’s a question I’m often asking myself these days. I hope that I will be able to approach it with a similar reaction to Coboró’s father.

The current events in Ipswich are depressing enough, but what makes me want to fling a boot through the TV screen at the moment is the way it is being reported.

 

Somebody in the BBC TV News department has had the slimy idea of having the TV News anchorman do his broadcast from outside the police headquarters every night. He’s backed up by TV news journalist Richard Bilton doing his best Uriah Heep impersonation giving reports that reek of false emotion in order to pump up the story.

 

And the language that everyone uses… It degrades the women ("girls"), whilst simultaneously pumping up the perpetrator(s) into mythic proportions ("the ripper"). A couple of examples: "Prayers will be said at the weekend for the prostitutes and their familes" and the chief investigating officer who refers to the murdered women as "girls", but to the perpetrator(s) as "person or persons unknown". Italics mine. He also "pointed out that due to their transient lifestyles he could not be sure what most of them were wearing on the nights they vanished". That’s simply gratuitous. If I lived alone, and vanished one night, it would be unlikely that the police would be able to state with confidence what I was wearing on the night I vanished either, but I certainly don’t live a "transient lifestyle".

 

Luckily, I’m not the only one who has noticed the use of language. Twisty, as usual, has her finger on the patriarchy’s pulse.