Category: Society

It is exactly one year ago that Theo van Gogh was murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri. At the moment, there is a remembrance event going on in the Linnaeusstraat in Amsterdam. In a typically satiric touch, in place of a bunch of flowers there is a pot with a cactus plant on the spot where van Gogh was shot and had his throat cut by  Bouyeri. There will be further events throughout the day.

 

Van Gogh was no saint, but no-one deserves to die in the manner that he did. Bouyeri has no remorse.

 

 

Danah Boyd, over at Apophenia, comments on an emerging phenomenon: the use of social networking services to act as sites for mourning and remembrance. What struck me about the example she uses (the online social profiles of Christine Dao, who has just died in a car crash), was the tone and the manner of Christine’s friends when leaving their messages of remembrance on her profiles. Not that they addressed her directly, as though she still lived – that’s a fairly common thing – but the casual, almost flippant, tone of most of the messages. These are young adults, for the most part (Christine was 20), but the comments seem to me like the equivalent of children’s finger-paintings. Are young adults really this immature these days?

I don’t know if you’ve been following the Operation Eden blog, but if not, please go and read Clayton James Cubitt’s entry for today. It’s a story that shows how simple acts of kindness can do good. It makes a pleasant change when at times it seems that the only stories I hear are of man’s inhumanity to man.

Interesting item about Mumbai over at the WorldChanging blog. As Suketu Mehta writes in his book: "Bombay is the future of urban civilization on the planet. God help us."

… because Ophelia over at ButterfliesAndWheels is in a foul mood. And you know what? I agree with her 100%. I really am beginning to wonder whether the legacy of the Age of Enlightenment is well and truly dead, and we are rushing pell-mell into a new Dark Ages.

Seven years ago yesterday Matthew Shepard was murdered. His mother writes about it here, and asks whether things have really changed that much for the better in the US.

There’s currently a debate about euthanasia going on in the UK. The Archbishop of Canterbury has recently weighed in on the debate. I think Ophelia, over at Butterflies and Wheels, puts her finger squarely on what is wrong with his argument.

Go and read the words and look at the souls of the people in the photos. Now.

Sometimes, I feel I’m on the same wavelength as Charlie Brooker. The good thing about not having children of one’s own is that when one does borrow them to indulge oneself in the role of jolly uncle, one does so safe and secure in the knowledge that one simply returns them if they become tiresome. 🙂

Reading that Arnie has vetoed the bill reminds me of the US telephone company offering cheap long distance calls to people who oppose same-sex marriages. Feministe has the link here – a recording of Eugene Mirman talking to the operator. Give it a listen – it’s worth it. And if you’ve ever wished that you could combine your hatred of homosexuals with a low-cost long distance calling plan, United American Technologies is the telephone company for you.

Dutch Railways has finally got around to issuing an apology over its role in deporting 100,000 Jews from the Netherlands to the Nazi death camps in WWII.

I’ve always planned to be cremated when I go, and have my ashes dumped on some unsuspecting rose bush. But now, from Sweden, comes news of an alternative to cremation: freeze-drying and vibrating the resulting corpsicle into powder. The result is a better form of compost. Good news for rose bushes everywhere…

Richard Dawkins pens an ironical piece on gerin oil addiction in this month’s Prospect magazine. Worth reading.

Chris Clarke over at Creek Running North reminds us that there are a number of anniversaries associated with September 11. In 1973, September 11 marked the day that President Salvador Allende of Chile was overthrown in a coup backed by the US. Clarke writes movingly in his post of the last days of Victor Jara.

 

Having read that post, I happened to look up at the bookshelves above my computer monitor, and there in sight is a copy of Platform for Change – a book by the cyberneticist Stafford Beer published in 1975. Beer was invited by Allende to implement his ideas on operational research and cybernetics into a real-time computerised system – Cybersyn – to run the Chilean economy. The coup, led by Pinochet, dismantled the system, "disappeared" 3,000 Chileans and imprisoned and tortured 27,000 more.

 

Stafford Beer ends his book with an ironic comment on a lecture he gave in February 1973 on the Chilean experiment. He repeats unchanged, apart from the typographic layout on the page, a quotation from that lecture given seven months before the coup:

Dammit – I missed it – it was yesterday! Well, I don’t think the neighbours would have been too impressed had I entered into the spirit of it, anyway.

 

(hat tip to Orac)

… c’est la même chose.

 

I grew up in the days of the Little Red Schoolbook – a book originating in Denmark that gave sensible and straightforward advice to teenagers on sex and growing up.  It was roundly castigated when published in English in the 1970s by do-gooders, Bowdlerisers and religious conservatives in the UK, and finally legally suppressed. In America, history is repeating itself 35 years later…

A pessimistic column from Timothy Garton Ash, writing in today’s Guardian. His thesis is that the veneer of civilisation that we human animals possess is thinner than we think. While recent events in New Orleans may have been the catalyst to his thoughts, recent history has provided plenty of other examples as evidence. He worries that, as we move further into the 21st century, the pressure on the veneer will increase, not decrease. I can’t help feeling that he’s right. As the old saw has it: a pessimist is an optimist who is in full possession of the facts.

…and there are screams from souls at the end of their tether. The latter comes closest to describing this posting from Bellatrys…

This is heartrending.