Category: Society

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.

An advert that subverts your expectations. Nice one.

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.

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.

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.

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)

"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. 

Ophelia, over at ButterfliesAndWheels, quite rightly skewers some extraordinarily sloppy thinking by The Guardian. Journalism is going to pot.

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.

 

RIP Safia Amajan.

Sometimes, my old cynical heart gets touched by simple things, like Free Hugs.

 

(hat tip, once again, to Houtlust)

…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.

Not Saussure reminds us that statistics have a habit of turning around and biting those who wield them.

Johann Hari points out that the real message that Pope Benedict was attempting to deliver last week amounted to an attack on the Enlightenment. Not surprising, really. I expect nothing less from Ratzinger. He has the chutzpah to claim that "the free pursuit of reason will lead all people to a rational belief in the Christian God described in the Bible". Um, no, I don’t think so. Quite the opposite, in fact.

 

(hat tip to Ophelia over at ButterfliesAndWheels for the link)

I grew up with foodstuffs such as Robertson’s Jams (with their golliwog labels) and Camp Coffee. And I never gave a thought to the semiotics. Nowadays, of course, we must agonise over the possible offence that we may be guilty of giving. Sepia Mutiny has a wonderful post about the evolution of the Camp Coffee label, an evolution that has been driven by political correctness. And what I really liked about the story was the totally from the left field bit about the Major General Sir Hector MacDonald. We are everywhere and everywhen…

I mentioned the roundtable of Dropping Knowledge a while back, and mentioned my misgivings that it would be nothing more than a media event.

 

Well, I went back to the web site, and guess what? It was a media event. I love the chutzpah of calling this a global dialog. What I saw was 112 monologues. No dialogue was entered into. Colour me cynical.

British telephone directories dating back to 1880 are being put online. The service is being run by Ancestry.co.uk, whose managing director, Josh Hanna, gushes:

 

Usually I have a lot of time for Sam Harris. But in his opinion piece in today’s LA Times, he does really seem to have made a mountain out of a molehill. Luckily, Steven Poole brings it back to a more manageable chunk.

An excellent article by Timothy Garton Ash looking at Europe through the eyes of Ian Buruma and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I have Hirsi Ali’s book on my bookshelves, I await that of Buruma with anticipation.

If that’s a "gift from God", then I’m rather thankful that I’m an atheist.

This video is a small voice of sanity in an insane world. Go and watch it, now.