Andy Sennitt has a nice article about the fact that media advertisers in The Netherlands seem to think that life ends at 50. I don’t think that it’s just here in the Netherlands; advertisers (it’s those damned marketing people again!) seem to spend a disproportionate amount of their budget chasing the yoof market. While shallow youth may be more easily swayed, they probably don’t have the disposable income that us oldies have…
Category: Society
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Cultural Collisions
Idle Words has a quite marvellous post reporting on a public lecture given by the great Jane Goodall in Beijing. One feels for the translator (but not too much). And as Maciej Ceglowski (the brain behind Idle Words) says:You get the impression that her tolerance for human imperfection comes from having seen some very dark things, and not just from our own species. After studying chimpanzees for over ten years and coming to see them as peaceful and benevolent animals with a bit of a temper, Goodall witnessed a four-year chimpanzee war of extermination, and discovered a mother-daughter pair who liked to kill and eat babies. To someone who always had higher expectations of chimpanzees than people, the petty hypocrisies of Western consumerism or even Chinese repression must seem like small potatoes in comparison. Her resilience and optimism are remarkable; they reminded me of how many times I have been content to adopt a convenient pessimism in the face of the terrible environmental damage taking place, and made me ashamed of it.Amen to that. -
Two Data Points
The first is a photo I took today in the gardens of a Dutch Manor House:
The second is one that Mike Caine, one of my contacts on Flickr, took during a visit to Poland:
One is a creation by humans to speak to our shared humanity, the other is a creation by humans to deny our shared humanity. -
Losing Liberty, Drip By Drip
There’s the transcript of an excellent speech by Henry Porter reprinted in yesterday’s Independent. His theme is his concern that the current British government is mounting a sustained attack on civil liberties. I must say, when I listen to, or read, the twaddle that Tony Blair comes out with on the subject, that I think Porter puts forward a very good case.(hat tip to CuriousHamster over at A Big Stick and a Small Carrot for the link) -
Will You Help?
Doug Ireland posts a plea for help for an Iranian gay man who has had to flee the country. Check it out, and help if you can. -
Makeup or Makeover
Zephoria, over at Apophenia, draws our attention to a video that highlights the manipulations that are done in the name of beauty. Surprisingly, the video was made by a cosmetics firm. Perhaps they are having twinges of a guilty conscience. Unlikely, I know, but one lives in hope. -
More Money Than Sense
Obsession is a strange thing. I suppose the saving grace of this is that while someone thought that a model of a fictional form of transport was worth half a million dollars, it was an obsession that did not cause the ending of another human life. But it’s still a case of someone having more money than sense. -
Irony Is Lost On Alton Verm
I swear, you couldn’t make this up if you tried, because you would be thought of as pushing things to a ridiculous level. But no, Virginia, there are people in this world like Alton Verm, who clearly has had an irony bypass operation at some point in his existence. I particularly like the tidbit that he wants to ban the book even though he has not read it. -
Atheist Fundamentalism
David Byrne, over at his journal, has an interesting entry about a public discussion between Sam Harris and Oliver McTernan. While I’m all for cheering Sam Harris on, I share Byrne’s misgivings over Harris’ support for torture. That is never excusable. -
There’s A Moral Somewhere…
I suppose the saving grace of this is that apparently Matt McAllister did this in the name of a good cause as well as breaking a Guiness [sic] World Record. Although frankly, I think the Japanese video on how to fold a T-Shirt in order to minimise your global warming footprint is probably the more useful to know about. -
More TED Talks
I see that the TED web site has more TEDTalks up online as videos. See and hear some interesting people expound their ideas. People such as Richard Dawkins, David Deutsch and Dan Dennett. There are also those who seem to me to fall more into the class of fashionable gurus, but, hey, here’s your chance to make your own mind up about whether they are simply would-be emperors clothed in fabrics woven out of hot air. -
The Atheism Tapes
Dr. Jonathan Miller did a series of programmes on atheism for the BBC a couple of years back. What I hadn’t realised until today is that the material of conversations he had with philosophers and atheists that had ended up on the cutting room floor for the original programmes was subsequently issued as The Atheism Tapes. These can be found in Google Video.I’ve just watched the conversation with Richard Dawkins, and am now about to listen to Daniel Dennett. Good stuff. -
Interview With Vikram Seth
Vikram Seth, along with others, recently signed an open letter directed to the Government of India and the Delhi High Court, asking it to repeal Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. This section prohibits sexual relations between men as well as other “unnatural” acts.In the light of that action, Outlook India has an interview with Seth asking him about how it feels to be bisexual and living in a country where his sexual orientation is proscribed by the law. While there are some rather cliche-ridden questions, Seth answers well, and at length.(hat tip to Sepia Mutiny for the background on Section 377 and the link to the interview in Outlook India) -
Heading For The Abyss
"Even if Homo sapiens survives, civilisation may not". The cheery words of James Martin, who is worried that his prediction could occur as early as this century. His new book (out today) sounds like one that I should put on my "want" list, misanthrope that I am. -
Sloppy Thinking
Ophelia, over at ButterfliesAndWheels, quite rightly skewers some extraordinarily sloppy thinking by The Guardian. Journalism is going to pot. -
To Hell In A Handbasket
Stories like this fill me with a deep depression about the incapability of the human species to improve its lot before it cuts its collective throat. -
Sweet…
…that’s this photo of David Birch – a most unusual Carnival Queen. Good luck to him. Also, there’s this rather nice story in The Guardian about it.
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