Category: Society

There’s an interesting series of programmes (Dubai Dreams) on the BBC at the moment that centre around the building boom currently underway in Dubai. Today’s entry on BLDGBLOG is a pair of "before and after" photos that really bring home the scale of the building boom. There’s also a pointer to the Pruned blog, where the "is it all going to end in tears" question is raised. In some ways, Dubai is only Shanghai, but with the volume control turned up even higher. But I can’t help feeling that the whole edifice is constructed on the notion of cheap oil. I see no evidence that the skyscrapers and other buildings are being constructed to be energy efficient. What are the air-conditioning bills like now, and what happens when the cost of energy rises as it inevitably must?

I see that the Vatican is about to release its document that will explicitly bar gay men (women obviously can’t apply anyway) from entering the priesthood. Apparently it will also bar those who "support ‘the so-called gay culture’" as well. Um, what is this ‘gay culture’ of which they speak? It seems to me that it is one of those silly phrases that apparently has meaning, but which, when examined closely, disappears up its own rhetoric. It’s like that other fabulous beast: the ‘gay community’. Both phrases conjure up an image of a monolithic club to which all gay people are automatically members. Message to the Vatican: gay people come in all shapes and sizes, with all sorts of beliefs and behaviours. In short, we are indistinguishable from the rest of humanity because, shock, horror, we are humans too.

 

No-one in their right minds talks about "the left-handed culture" or the "redhead community" as though the group of people that are left-handed or the group of people that are redheads share anything other than the attribute that defines their group. A group is not the same as a community or a culture – but this is clearly a concept that has escaped the authors of the Vatican’s document.

I never got to know this young man, and now it’s too late. Life is a lottery, and some draw the short straw through no fault of their own. If life was fair, there would be a special circle of Hell reserved for his health insurance company.

…between reality and virtual reality. This story, about someone who has bought a virtual space station inside of an online game, simply proves to me that I was born in another age, where fantasy was fantasy, reality was reality, and never the twain should meet.

Through a chance posting on Usenet, I came across a site that I had not seen before: the Homocaust. It’s a site that collects together the history of the gay victims of the Holocaust. It’s a good site, full of information and links to further resources, and appears to have been a labour of love by Lewis Oswald, who has his own site here.

I usually have a lot of time for Giles Fraser, team rector of Putney and lecturer in philosophy. His occasional columns in the Guardian often contain a lot of common sense (which, as everyone knows, is not very common these days). However, his latest column seemed to me to fall below his usual standard. He seems to be claiming that us atheists are not self-critical enough, and even worse, we are somehow not trendy and fashionable enough.

 

Being the dilettante that I am, I was wondering whether I should comment on the column, but Ophelia, over at ButterfliesAndWheels, has come thundering into the fray with a vitriolic response. Over to you, Ophelia…

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.