Category: Uncategorized

In view of the fact that Microsoft has effectively killed off the use of Windows Live Spaces as a worthwhile blogging platform, I’m stopping this blog and moving to a new address on the web.

My ramblings and rantings henceforth will be found at the new Geoff Coupe’s Blog, which has the www address of http://gcoupe.blogspot.com – so please update your bookmarks and RSS feeds if you wish to continue receiving transmissions from a slightly deranged mind.

Update 28 September 2010: Since I wrote the above, I’ve been waiting for Microsoft’s other shoe to drop. Well, today it did. As you can see, I have migrated my old blog entries from the now-defunct Windows Live Spaces across to WordPress. However, I will continue to use Blogger for my new entries at least for the time being.

Update 2: Well, I decided to stop using Blogger, so I’m back here on WordPress…

…to fit a false argument. Oh dear, I seem to be very negative today, what with pointing out Madeleine Bunting’s tripe, and now I feel impelled to do the same for Andrew Brown. Well, it’s not as if he doesn’t have a track record.

He’s written a piece on the “New Atheists” (oh, noes, not that meme again…). As soon as I read this bit, I thought, “Er hello, you’re either stupid or disingenuous…”:

The ideas I claim are distinctive of the new atheists have been collected from Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Jerry Coyne, the American physicist Robert L. Park, and a couple of blogging biologists, P Z Myers and Larry Moran. They have two things in common. They are none of them philosophers and, though most are scientists, none study psychology, history, the sociology of religion, or any other discipline which might cast light on the objects of their execration. All of them make claims about religion and about believers which go far beyond the mere disbelief in God which I take to be the distinguishing mark of an atheist.

Well, that’s interesting. “None of them philosophers”, eh? Well, passing over the fact that Harris has a degree in philosophy, where’s your mention of philosophers such as Daniel Dennett or A. C. Grayling, who I would have thought are prominent in the list of atheists in the public eye? Note, not “New” atheists… No doubt they conveniently slipped his mind.

Fuck it, he’s not worth the effort. Let P. Z. Myers deliver the flensing of Brown instead.

Update: And here is Ophelia adding some worthwhile points.

That seems to be the gist of the Pope’s Christmas message. On the one hand, I can understand that he is what he is, an old fool who has little understanding of what it is to be human, because his rational mind has been undone by his upbringing. But on the other hand, he is, for better or worse, the spiritual leader of millions, and his idiocy will be the cause of yet more totally needless angst.

By coincidence, one of the Christmas cards we received this season was from a family in which the mother was a former pupil in Martin’s ballet school. In the letter that accompanied it, she writes of the experience that the family is going through because one of her children is unsure of whether he is a boy or she is a girl. The family are doing what they can to support the child, and help him/her come to the best outcome.

The last thing that family needs is ill-considered hypocritical nonsense from an old fart who wears white dresses, red Prada shoes and expensive rings. If there is an abomination around here, it is him.

Over at Obscene Desserts, John Carter-Wood muses on the pleasures of Advent calendars, and, in particular, on the unfolding story that is contained within one that he purchased at his local supermarket. Do go and read about the adventures of Otto, who clearly is up to no good, and who, one suspects, is going to come to a sticky end.

John draws the parallel between these modern day toys-with-stories and with the Germanic tradition of the tales of the Brothers Grimm and Heinrich Hoffman’s Struwwelpeter (in English translation known as Shockheaded Peter). I had both books as a child, and Struwwelpeter in particular scared the living bejeesus out of me.

When in 1999, I saw the junk opera Shockheaded Peter at a performance in Amsterdam, all the old feelings of being simultaneously both scared and exhilarated came flooding back. It’s a great shame that a video recording of the production was never made, it was a terrific production (in all senses).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOVSp-fYUQc

At least the music from the production is available on CD. Aurally, it’s just as strange and scary as the opera was visually…

My understanding of economics is pretty basic. I can understand, and try to follow, the financial principles espoused by Mr. Micawber in Dickens’ David Copperfield:

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

I really think that that is all one needs to know, anything more, it seems to me, gets closer to religion and blind faith. So I can’t say that I’m much surprised by the current crisis in the financial markets.

In an attempt to understand the causes, I’ve been reading two analyses of the events. The first is an article in Edge written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb called The Fourth Quadrant. I will forgive him the air of "I told you so" that permeates the article, he’s somewhat justified in having it. After all, it was he who wrote back in 2006:

The government-sponsored institution Fannie Mae, when I look at its risks, seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, vulnerable to the slightest hiccup. But not to worry: their large staff of scientists deemed these events "unlikely."

However, his analysis goes into dizzying detail about statistical theory and how people misinterpret statistics and probabilities. I’ll probably need to read the article several times before I can come closer to understanding what he is saying. But even after all that, I can’t help feeling that he’s shining the light of reason in the wrong place. That was brought home to me when I read John Carter Wood’s article over at Obscene Desserts. Like me, John finds the workings of high finance rather mysterious. He quotes from an article in the New York Times:

The mortgages, with an average size of about $450,000, were Alt-A loans — the kind often referred to as liar loans, because lenders made them without the usual documentation to verify borrowers’ incomes or savings.

And then, without the benefit of graphs or statistics, John gets to the root of the matter:

Let’s just pause here for a brief moment. Just for a measly few seconds.

Please just consider that last sentence, the one in which it is pointed out that lenders gave people mortgages worth an average of nearly a half-million dollars without even checking how much they earned or how much money they had?

Is this for real?

Because if it is, I can only say: What–please pardon my French (you know, I’ve been spending some time there)–the fuck?!

It seems to me to be all too easy to label the shenanigans on Wall Street and in other financial centres as “a crisis too complex for easy fixes”. John’s put his finger on it, the world’s economy is seemingly run by a bunch of greedy wankers. Micawber’s principles should never have been forgotten.

Yesterday, I had a day out. I travelled to Utrecht to attend a conference, which was held to inaugurate the opening of the Center For Inquiry Low Countries. The CFI is a sort of secular humanist think-tank. Its mission statement is to "promote and defend reason, science, and freedom of inquiry in all areas of human endeavor". To that end, it sponsors research in three main areas:

• Paranormal and Fringe Science claims
• Religion, Ethics and Society
• Medicine and Health

Frankly, I’d not heard of this organisation before. The only reason I had heard about the conference was via the philosopher Stephen Law’s blog, from which I learned that he was going to speak at the conference. Since I find Law a terrific writer on philosophy (his book, The Philosophy Gym is very good), I thought I would attend the event.

Chaired by Rob Tielman, emeritus professor of sociology at Utrecht University, the conference kicked off with a presentation by Paul Kurtz on "Planetary Ethics". Kurtz is both professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo and the chair of the Center for Inquiry. I’m sure that the content of his talk was probably familiar to many of those in the room, but for me, it was the first time I had come across the word eupraxsophy. It summarises the secular humanist approach to life, one with which I find myself aligned with.

A side note: I was struck by the fact that of the 100 or so people in the room, a good proportion of them were my age or older. True, there were some young people, but they were in the minority. The old folks also seemed to be those who had been active in organised humanism for a long time. Me, I’m with Groucho Marx; I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept people like me as a member. Organised humanism smacks to me of ersatz religion, something that I approach with extreme caution. But, back to the conference…

Following Kurtz was Azar Majedi, with a passionate speech about the need to combat both the "War on Terror" and what she terms "Political Islam". She sees that the War on Terror and Political Islam are both feeding each other, increasing the power and influence of both, and calls for a "third way" to cut the Gordian knot. At a personal level, that third way can take the form of speaking out against both TWOT and PI; e.g. refusing to demonise Muslims (something which I note is depressingly on the rise here in the Netherlands) and supporting women’s rights.

Historian David Nash gave an overview of the history of the concept of Christian Blasphemy from the Middle Ages onwards. He made the interesting point that Blasphemy started out as almost a "public nuisance" crime, a way for the community to police anti-social behaviour; but then by the 18th century it evolved into a way for the state to pursue political dissidents. Nowadays, the state is extremely reluctant to pursue prosecutions for blasphemy, but it remains an avenue for the individual. He also made the point that, as a result of the Gay News trial in 1977/8, the law actually reverted to a form that existed before reforms in 1884. Thank you, Mary Whitehouse, you interfering old trout. As Nash said, maintaining the law on blasphemy will continue to wage war on artistic expression, wit and irony.

Following on from this point, the conference also marked an opportunity to have the formal opening of the Virtual Museum for Offensive Art. Joep Schrijvers was involved in the setting up of the Museum, and he introduced us to it. He also made the point that, in the chain of artistic production, (from the idea of the artist, through production of the work, publication/exhibition, and finally review/reaction to the work), he is seeing evidence that censorship is moving up the chain. We’ve had examples in the Netherlands of censorship at the point of exhibition (the Gemeente Museum in The Hague refusing to display work by the Iranian artist Sooreh Hera, for fear it would "offend certain groups"), but Schrijvers also mentioned censorship at the point of production.

Stephen Law opened the afternoon sessions with a couple of points drawn from his book: The War For Children’s Minds. First, he distinguished between the Liberal and Authoritarian approaches to moral authority. Secondly, he highlighted the myth, so prevalent in Authoritarian pronouncements that Liberals are moral relativists. He, by the way, would classify himself as a Liberal, who dismisses the "politically correct baloney" of moral relativism.

Herman Philipse, Research Professor in Philosophy, Utrecht University, chose as his topic the question of whether there was a war between science and Christian theology. The elegantly-suited professor gave a clear discourse on the topic in a patrician manner (and I do mean this in a complementary way). His conclusion? The "warfare" view is correct at the epistemological level. That is, "gods" are spiritual powers, incarnated or not, which cannot be discovered by biological research. The (alleged) sources of religious knowledge therefore have to rely on methods of communication such as receiving revelations, dreams or prayer-tests (1 Kings 18). Science and scholarship have thus far revealed these sources to be illusory.

Floris van den Berg outlined a proposal for a moral secularism in the form of a thought experiment. It seemed to me to be simply illustrations of "putting yourself in another person’s shoes" and applying the Golden Rule to the result, but perhaps I was missing something. Clearly, I would not like to wake up one day and find myself as a gay man in Saudi Arabia, ditto for waking up as a woman. And as for a lesbian, with a physical or mental disability in that or a similar country, well, yes, it would not be good. But then, many years ago, I read Charles Beaumont’s The Crooked Man, so this thought experiment did not perhaps have the power for me that it would for others…

Austin Dacey, author of The Secular Conscience, gave a thought-provoking talk on how the common secular viewpoint that "religion should be a private and personal matter" is not only unsustainable, but wrong. He argues that "divisiveness" is not unique to religion, and therefore not sufficient to ban religion from the public square. Neither, in his view, are the subjective experiences of religion a sufficient reason for a ban. Surely, he argued, the principle of "freedom of religion" must allow believers to speak their conscience. It’s a good point; but as he pointed out, religion should not also get a "free pass" to the public square – blasphemy laws and similar special protections must also be done away with. I see that Steven Poole has compared Dacey to a cross between John Stuart Mill and Melanie Phillips. Likening someone to Mad Mel is not an enviable comparison… Personally, I found him to be a cross between Evan Davis and Pim Fortuyn (in looks, not in views, I should stress; although perhaps Steven Poole hints otherwise). And I did find his talk to be excellent.

Norm Allen spoke of his work with secularist groups in Africa. It was interesting, and there are obviously huge cultural issues involved, but I’m afraid that I kept on having flashes of how similar his talk was to one that would be told by a missionary retelling his stories of the folks that he had met on his mission to bring the word of God to the poor people in Africa. Except in this case, of course, it was told through the prism of the Enlightenment. The basis may have been different, but the cadences and the styles were eerily similar…

Then came an extra speaker, not included on the original programme. This turned out to be none other than Ibn Warraq. He used his time to look at the reactions to recent events at the United Nations, where the whole concept of Freedom of Expression has just been turned on its head. He read out Roy Brown’s comment on the amendment to a UN resolution of Freedom of Expression, and the reaction of other groups (including Islamic NGOs also expressing their dismay).  As I noted at the time, the UN has just signed the death warrant to Human Rights. Ibn Warraq, it would seem, agrees.

Alas, I had to leave before the final panel session, in order to catch my train back to the depths of the Achterhoek. However, I really enjoyed the day. There were some good speakers, and interesting topics to think about.

I’ve been somewhat distracted of late and neglecting my blogging. Nothing untoward. Part of it has been because of building work here at the farmhouse, part of it is because the garden is waking up unseasonably early from its winter sleep. But part of it is because I have acquired a new toy.

I’ve been longing to get a Tablet PC for some time now. Ever since I had the chance to play with the first Tablet PC that HP brought to the market back in 2003. Needless to say, that first model had limitations, but now with the latest generation of models I feel we are at the point where it’s worth my investing in a tablet for myself.

I’ve gone for the latest HP Tablet for the consumer market: the HP TX2000. This entry is being blogged on it using the handwriting recognition capabilities of windows Vista – which I have to say are quite scarily impressive, even with my appalling handwriting.

Thanks to its wireless capabilities I can now use the Tablet in the house and garden, and even listen to music that is being streamed from my music collection held on my Windows Home Server. At the moment I’m being serenaded by Cecilia Bartoli giving her all to Vivaldi. Bliss.

The Paleo-Future blog has a 1967 clip of Walter Cronkite interviewing biologist James Bonner who describes a modest proposal for eugenics. Somehow, I think the chances of implementing the proposal are slim, let alone whether it would actually work in practice.

But it does raise the question of whether examples of "unconscious" eugenics have occurred in the past. There’s a rather intriguing new theory from Gregory Clark, professor of economics at the University of California at Davis. His theory posits that the enabler of the Industrial Revolution in Britain was not changes in institutions, but changes in human behaviour, powered by the sons of the wealthy, who outbred the poor. The theory is documented in his book A Farewell to Alms, and links to reviews can be found here. Needless to say, it’s controversial.

Professor Clark, who is an engaging speaker, outlined his theory at the recent Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0 conference. His presentation starts about 1 hour 38 minutes into the video of the afternoon sessions on day 1.

His presentation is followed by another good one, this time delivered by Deirdre McCloskey, Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English and Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She describes herself as "a postmodern free-market quantitative rhetorical Episcopalian feminist Aristotelian woman who was once a man."

I’ve been tagged by one of the memes currently doing the rounds of the Blogosphere. The vessel by which the meme reached me is J. Carter Wood, over at Obscene Desserts. The meme challenges me to name eight random facts about myself, and then in turn tag another eight victims. Oh dear, the potential for the pretentious/boring index to reach new heights is dangerously high. Well, here goes:

1. I despair about saying anything of interest when I realise that a Google search on the phrase "eight random facts" produces 123,000 hits.
2. I still carry a faint scar that is now all but hidden in my left eyebrow. It’s the result of being hit and being tossed into the air by a car when I was about four or five. A lorry driver had stopped to let me cross the road, and a rather impatient motorist behind him decided he would pull out and overtake at speed to show his contempt for the lorry driver. Metal met flesh, which subsequently met asphalt face down. For years afterwards, I had nightmares of cars trying to run me over. I would hide in the dark shadows of alleyways, as the cars purred hungrily past, and would occasionally glimpse the sight of a lorry that carried an industrial sized meat grinder that was spitting out blood-drenched human bones. I was a somewhat over-imaginative child.
3. One of my prized books is the facsimile fourth edition (published in 1972) of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley. In 1972, I was living in Blandford Forum, which had a tiny bookshop run by a pair of little old ladies. I saw the book there and fell in love with it. It was priced at £12 (€18 or $24) – an impossibly huge sum for me at the time. In today’s money, that translates to between £106 and £230, depending on the indices used. I would go in there every Saturday for weeks and gaze longingly at the book. Finally, I succumbed and handed over my hard-earned cash. The little old ladies were pleased for me as well – one of them clapped her hands in delight; not because she had sold the book, but because she knew that it would be treasured.
4. Le Morte d’Arthur is the book I am holding in this portrait of ourselves painted by Mary Grooteman.
5. After leaving my parents, I have lived in a dozen places that I called home. Perhaps the most unusual was the caretaker’s flat in a disused hospital in London, which I inhabited for a short time with my then boyfriend during the late 1970s. I was into my roller-skating craze at the time, and we used to practise skating through the dimly-lit corridors.
6. During my time with Shell, business trips harvested a total of 45 KLM houses (they are given to passengers who fly intercontinental First or Business Class flights). They now sit on top of the bookcase in the study.
7. Now that I’m retired, people keep asking why I am not travelling the world. I point to the 45 KLM houses on top of the bookcase and say that I am now more than content just to potter in our garden or cycle in our area. I feel that I am just as much on vacation, and with a smaller carbon footprint to boot.
8. I once had to take part in a team building exercise at work where we each had to make three statements about ourselves. Two were to be true and one was to be false, and much team-building, and of course, fun (because where would we be without fun?) was supposed to occur over the discussions about which were true and which were false. My three statements?
   1. "I’ve made love to a woman".
   2. "I’ve made love to a man". 
   3. "I’ve had my tonsils taken out".

Dear me, but it took a while before number three was identified as the false statement… 

I have failed to find a further eight victims to pass on this meme to. Those who spring to mind have already done it. So think of this of a bonus random fact – I make it a habit to break chains…