Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

  • What Do These Religionists Understand Of Atheism?

    Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has a regular column in the Independent newspaper. This week, it was titled: What Do These Atheists Understand Of Religion? I must say, after reading it, and counting to ten several times over, that I really think the title should have been reversed. Ms. Alibhai-Brown seems to have no understanding of what atheism is, and constructs a series of strawmen in an attempt to prove her case. And I do get tired of ad hominem attacks of Dawkins when it is seems clear that the attackers, such as Alibhai-Brown, appear either not to have read his books or continually mis-state his positions. I felt like banging my head on my keyboard when I read the climax of her piece with yet another appearance of the nonsense trope: "Fundamentalist atheists want to replace old religions with their own". 
     
    Her nonsense has been thoroughly dissected by the comments here. I particularly like this one – a measured response to Alibhai-Brown’s fevered rhetoric. And of course, the ever-dependable Ophelia Benson has comments of her own on the piece. I do like her summary of one of Alibhai-Brown’s more stupid propositions as a piece of kack. A good old-fashioned slang word correctly used to describe the argument as the great big steaming pile of ordure that it is.

    2 responses to “What Do These Religionists Understand Of Atheism?”

    1. Gelert Avatar
      Gelert

      Yes indeed. Not a good article, with many flaws and many things easy to disparage I agree. However, the one problem remains that both sides of the argument do have their own blind spots and arrogance. Both do speak of an understanding they do not have as if they did.  Comments such as this one:
       "No they just want to gaze at their navels and feel all warm and fuzzy" (comments) – are equally fascile and ignorant, and make judgements about other people, and what their ‘point of view’ involves. Like all such debates, it’s a shame both sides cannot have a dialogue without falling into such inanity.

      Reply
    2. Geoff Avatar
      Geoff

      Put it down to sheer exasperation at some of the things that the other side comes out with 🙂 

      Reply

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  • Virtual Life

    I’ve just come across a reference (on Virtual Philosopher) to a recent discussion on BBC Radio between Professor Susan Greenfield and Ren Reynolds about the rise of virtual social interaction sites such as Facebook and SecondLife. There’s also a link to the MP3 of the discussion. I must have a listen. Like Professor Greenfield, I worry whether people who lead virtual lives impact their capability for real-world interpersonal relationships. The other side of the coin, as Nigel of Virtual Philosopher says, is that people like me who don’t participate in these virtual worlds will increasingly be seen as the odd ones. Move over, dinosaurs, here I come. 

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  • Making Slime

    When I was young, I was fascinated by odd materials such as Potty Putty and Slime. If you’re interested, here’s chapter and verse on how to make your own Slime… 

    One response to “Making Slime”

    1. Gelert Avatar
      Gelert

      At last!!! A recipe…… 

      Reply

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  • Some Things Never Change

    And while today we celebrate the fact that 50 years ago a committee reached a sensible decision (with one out of the thirteen members being the exception), it is perhaps only right to point out that even today, in certain places, falsehoods abound. This is what I call corruption of children. 

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  • Mabel’s Murky Past

    I see that the Wikiscanner has claimed another victim – this time Princess Mabel.  

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  • Soccer’s Murky Secrets

    I’ve never been a football fan; probably to do with the fact that I hated playing it at school. So I don’t generally follow events in that world. Still, the increasing involvement of Russian billionaires in English football is an intriguing development. It’s one that I didn’t give much attention to until I read this piece by Craig Murray on Alisher Usmanov and Arsenal football club. Murray blows the whistle on Usmanov’s disturbing background. 

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  • It Was 50 Years Ago Today…

    … That the Wolfenden Report on homosexual offences and prostitution was published in Britain*. While it recommended that homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence, it was to be a further ten years before the law was changed to reflect this. I see that the BBC is commemorating the anniversary with a week of broadcasts relating to gay lives. On Wednesday, for example, BBC Four will be broadcasting Consenting Adults, a play about the Wolfenden Report and the people involved in it. Should be worth watching. Today’s Guardian also has an article by the playwright about it. 
     
    * Some sources quote the date of publication as 4th September 1957.

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  • Sinbad Stops

    I see that Kerwin Mathews, the film actor, has died at the age of 81. While he appeared in a number of terrible films (e.g. Octaman), he was also the lead in two of Ray Harryhausen’s wonderful fantasy films: The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and The 3 Worlds of Gulliver. It’s for those films that I will remember him, particularly as Sinbad. Even at the tender age of 9, I realised that my feelings toward this handsome and dashing man were a tad more complicated than just hero worship. The obituary and this potted biography also report that Mathews is survived by his partner of 46 years, Tom Nicoll. So he was gay as well. That, I never knew.

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  • The Power of Prayer

    I’ve never been convinced that praying produces any results other than assuaging the conscience of those doing the praying. However, Pandemian hits upon a possible reason as to why praying is pretty pointless:  
    Maybe, with God being as vain as he is, he can’t be bothered to get out of bed and perform even the most unobtrusive piece of divine intervention unless he can be sure of a certain amount of dedicated worship from people that fully appreciate him. A casual approach to asking for what you want won’t work – he must be persuaded and flattered like an underage girl in a Miss Selfridge boob tube in a provincial disco at closing time.
    Hmm, it’s possible, I suppose. Alternatively, he may simply just not exist. Mind you, I was rather taken by Pandemian’s transcript of Jesus and his Dad’s somewhat dysfunctional home life. 

    12 responses to “The Power of Prayer”

    1. Brian Avatar
      Brian

      Such diatribe is usually the product of a mediocre mind that lacks the imagination to see that faith has validity for others, and that the nature of God might extend beyond his slobbish anthropomorphic depictions.  If one sees prayer only as a gimmee list, then yes, it’s pretty pointless, but they who hold faith to be a quid pro quo are always bound to be disappointed, because they expect faith to provide them with some kind of product.  I sit in my garden in the evening doing the crossword and am in awe at the wonder of nature and bees and and am grateful that the flowers I planted gave them a source of food.  That is a kind of prayer to me, that I am grateful for the gift of a green thumb and that I can use it to give back to nature.  Prayer is a conversation you have with your own faith, whatever form that takes.  To dismiss it out of hand is to dismiss the validity it has for others, and is frankly narrow.

      Reply
    2. Gelert Avatar
      Gelert

      Interesting Geoff, except – Madeleine McCann was probably dead before the end of the next day. If she is not, she may yet be found, but I guess she is. In this case, the prayers will be helping the people giving them to deal with their emotions, and do no harm.
       I find the tone of this writing: "the child is blonde, middle class and extremely photogenic and as we all know God hates paedophiles almost as much as men with long hair, sodomy and shops opening for more than six hours on a Sunday." is really rather unintelligent to my mind, and has nothing in it that I recognise in my own belief.
      Belief isn’t about any of that – and its wrong to confuse God – with what people make of ‘him’ or reduce ‘him’ to. I suspect Geoff, that God is part of the wonderful stuff that so fascinates you about the universe science and all that we don’t know yet, is bigger and smaller than people make ‘him’ and very far removed from any of that sort of tosh. I have certainly found it so.

      Reply
    3. Geoff Avatar
      Geoff

      It’s humour… maybe not to both of you, but to some. Humour is also a way that some have of dealing with the fact of a pitiless universe. As I’ve said before, I’m a six on the scale of the theist/atheist spectrum. I see no evidence for a god or gods, and have absolutely no time for any of (what seems to me to be) simply spurious mysticism. Sorry, but I’m narrow that way. 

      Reply
    4. Brian Avatar
      Brian

       Geoff, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply you were narrow.  I just thought the quotation unreasonably dismissive.  I shall repair to my cell for ten How’s Your Fathers and a dozen Bloody Marys.

      Reply
    5. Geoff Avatar
      Geoff

      The 10 How’s Your Fathers is a just penance; a dozen Bloody Marys will probably give you alcohol poisoning, so I’d be careful if I were you… 🙂 

      Reply
    6. Gelert Avatar
      Gelert

      I’d rather dumpt the bloody bit – I hate tomatoes in drinks – they belong on a plate. Geoff – as I once said to Bri – if you have no evidence, then you are absulutely right not to ‘accept’ it. I also know there is a lot of mystic tosh out there, which I try to avoid. I just sometimes feel that its a shame that seems to be that some commentators  seem to see. What does the ‘6’ on your atheism scale mean?  Interested to know, if you don’t mind indulging me. 

      Reply
    7. Gelert Avatar
      Gelert

       There’s no e in tomatos is there?

      Reply
    8. Geoff Avatar
      Geoff

      Gelert, er, and you teach children? Your subject is? Certainly not English as she is writ I would venture to guess… Yes, the plural of tomato (just like potato) has an ‘e’ in it. 🙂 But then I suspect that you’re just pulling my leg, because I’m easy that way… 
       
      The six comes from the 7-point scale along the theist/atheist spectrum proposed by Dawkins in The God Delusion. It’s clearly a continuous spectrum, but Dawkins proposes the following six milestones along the way:
       
      1. Strong theist. 100 per cent probability of God. In the words of C. G. Jung, ‘I do not believe, I know.’
      2. Very high probability but short of 100 per cent. De facto theist. ‘I cannot know for certain, but I strongly believe in God and live my life on the assumption that he is there.’
      3. Higher than 50 per cent but not very high. Technically agnostic but leaning towards theism. ‘I am very uncertain, but I am inclined to believe in God.’
      4. Exactly 50 per cent. Completely impartial agnostic. ‘God’s existence and non-existence are exactly equiprobable.’
      5. Lower than 50 percent but not very low. Technically agnostic but leaning towards atheism. ‘I don’t know whether God exists but I’m inclined to be sceptical.’
      6. Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. ‘I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.’
      7. Strong atheist. ‘I know there is no God, with the same conviction as Jung "knows" there is one.’
       
      So, where do you put yourself?

      Reply
    9. Gelert Avatar
      Gelert

      Whistles briskly on the subject of English as she is writ….. moves on……
       
      I would say Geoff, that I am a 1 – but perhaps you would not recognise me alongside any regular 1 as they are normally encountered. Interesting though, because there is a bit of the 2 there also – likely due to my healthy scientific scepticism and interest in the human mind and its workings. It could possibly all be nonsense – but I am positive due to the evidences I have had that it is not. Does that make sense to a 6? 

      Reply
    10. Geoff Avatar
      Geoff

      Gelert, it makes sense – but naturally I would be curious as to the nature of your evidence. For my own part, in all my 58 years, I’ve never seen/experienced anything that I would count as reliable evidence to demonstrate anything that would shift me to a lower point on the scale.  

      Reply
    11. Gelert Avatar
      Gelert

      Geoff – that would be too long a tale to tell here in your comments section, it is more than one single thing, and over many years.
      On this subject though – and given my interest in the mind and its wonderful workings, I have another question for you – divorced from religion (I believe –  you perhaps may not divorce it if you believe it all stems from the same point which some claim is all neurological I am aware)  – but what do you think of other experiences? It seems to be that some people never experience anything outside the concrete and measureable, and others do, in many ways. My own family contain specimens of both. My mother puts it all down to ‘that part of the family’ and says she has never had any such experiences, the rest have, since childhood.  (having said that, she did the other day).  I won’t yet say what, but I am referring to things outside the accepted norm – while yet not wanting to go down the James Randi path of fakers, table rappers, and recognisable daftness.

      Reply
    12. Geoff Avatar
      Geoff

      Gelert, what do you mean by "other experiences"? It’s a bit difficult to respond to your question without having some idea of what experiences you are thinking of. It could be anything from being able to successfully predict the future, or luck at cards, more than mere chance would allow, or proven telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, dowsing etc. etc. Whatever the nature of the experience, you know that the first thing I will ask is: how good is the evidence for your claim?

      Reply

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  • Craftmanship

    Here’s an example of model-making using paper, snap-fasteners and chopsticks that leaves me shaking my head in wonder at the sheer skill and artistry involved. 
     
    (hat tip to Paper Forest) 

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  • The Mikado Strikes

    This sounds like something dreamed up by Gilbert & Sullivan’s Mikado (A More Humane Mikado…). Some amputees have not so much a phantom limb as a phantom John Thomas… which stands to attention… Life is so unfair. 

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  • I Can’t Wait…

    …For Tim Burton’s upcoming version of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. Apparently, the executives at Warner Bros are a tad upset at the amount of gore that Burton sloshes around – but damnit, that’s the whole point of Sweeney Todd. Mumpsimus has more. Like him, I can’t wait to see if Burton delivers. The actors are good, no, the actors are great (Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall amongst others) but Sweeney is an Opera, and it requires singing…

    2 responses to “I Can’t Wait…”

    1. Brian Avatar
      Brian

       Angela Lansbury singing Try A Little Priest  is one of the most glorious moments of music and lyrics I have ever heard!

      Reply
    2. Geoff Avatar
      Geoff

      Locksmith… 

      Reply

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  • Corncrakes

    In the past week, I’ve had two sightings of a pair of birds. The first time, I saw them strolling through the garden, bold as brass, looking for insects, and then yesterday I saw them in the adjoining potato field. At first I took to be partridges, but now I believe them to be corncrakes. The colouring wasn’t right for partridges, and they had the long necks characteristic of corncrakes. Needless to say, my camera wasn’t to hand on either occasion, so I can’t provide visual evidence. I also haven’t yet heard their eponymous, and distinctive, "Crex crex" call. I’ll have to go out early one morning with a metal comb and a pencil to imitate it, and see if I can lure them in…

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  • Jealousy

    OK, so I know that it is very shallow of me, but I can’t help feeling a teeny bit jealous of Phil.
     
     

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  • Hello

    I notice that the last entry I wrote on the blog was on the 28th. This is just a note to say that I’m still here, but that things are a trifle busy. Nothing untoward, but I also need to wait for my muse to return. In the meantime, here’s an image that resonates with me.
     
    20070830-1111-57 
     
    It’s a dead shrew that I found on the path through the woods that I take when walking the dog. Shrews have a short and hectic life in comparison to our own. I wonder what it felt in the brief interlude between being here and not here. I also wonder what my summary will be for my own brief sojurn in the light. 

    6 responses to “Hello”

    1. Brian Avatar
      Brian

      In the year or so that I’ve been coming here, Geoff, that’s the closest you’ve come to seeking answers to the eternal.  What use a summary except to identify ones life beyond our demise?  However, as for the shrew, I doubt he thought very much beyond his next meal or chance at copulation.  I shan’t carry further any comparisons between you and a shrew, dear friend, but admit to curiosity as to what Martin would say ;-).

      Reply
    2. Geoff Avatar
      Geoff

      Huh? I am always seeking answers… but don’t hold out much hope of getting them. They are usually only to assuage feelings of ennui anyway… 🙂 That said, I revel in the ability of us humans to be able to think (at least sometimes) beyond our next meal or chance at copulation. As for Martin, he’d just go: "Tsk – it’s Geoff, what do you expect?" 

      Reply
    3. Gelert Avatar
      Gelert

      There’s something really profound about this image and I’m not sure why. Maybe its because its a shrew – so rarely seen, such a short life – and cute. It would be interesting to be able to live inside the mind of other beings for a short time – I’m not sure they’d be so very different, certainly a lot less full of bull, more direct, more honest. I guess we are all simply shrews – just hang around longer. Thanks Geoff 

      Reply
    4. Geoff Avatar
      Geoff

      Gelert, according to Thomas Nagel (who wrote a famous philosophical paper: What Is It Like To Be A Bat?) it’s probably impossible to experience the life of a shrew in any terms that we would able to understand… 

      Reply
    5. L Avatar
      L

      In the US, the dead shrew is called a "mole" The sure mess up my lawn sometimes.

      Reply
    6. Geoff Avatar
      Geoff

      Hi, bones3. Nope, that is not a mole (a member of the family Talpidae), it is really a shrew (a member of the family Soricidae). While there are some members of the shrew family that live permanently underground, this one certainly didn’t. It forages above ground for insects and grubs.

      Reply

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  • Computer Workstation Ergonomics

    Jeff Atwood, over at Coding Horror, has a useful summary of best practice when it comes to computer workstation ergonomics. I have to admit, I don’t have the same position as the drawings show – I’m hunched over the keyboard staring closely into the screens. I know it’s bad for me, but up to now, I’ve been too lazy to do anything about it. First thing to do is to raise the screens a little more – that’ll be another couple of packs of A4 paper stuffed under the monitors, then… 

    2 responses to “Computer Workstation Ergonomics”

    1. Gelert Avatar
      Gelert

      Lying by then, was so much simpler than explaining that I’d been grovelling in the dirt and darkness just to have a fag. I doubt they would have cared – the question is, why did I care? Why did I go to those extremes? I dunno. Part of me doesn’t give a hoot, part of me still has this pathetic need to be ‘liked’ maybe. Anyway, the whole thing was so bloody silly by then, the loo excuse seemed easier. 

      Reply
    2. Geoff Avatar
      Geoff

      For those who don’t understand what on earth Gelert is talking about, the background is here. 

      Reply

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  • Geek Humour

    While it’s clearly a joke, the phrases uttered by the "designers" of this world-shattering piece of software are terrifyingly like the sort of crap marketing-speak that I’ve come to know and loathe. 
     
     
    Nicely done.

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  • Drains

    Geoff Manaugh, over at BLDGBLOG, has an interview with Michael Cook about drains illustrated with some spectacular photographs. Do go and read it and enjoy the view. 

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  • I Weep

    Oh, Education, where art thou?
     
     
    (hat tip to A Gentleman’s C for the link) 

    3 responses to “I Weep”

    1. Andy Avatar
      Andy

      So, the stereotypes about the South and education are clearly unfair……  Actually she seemed more articulate that some of the people I met in Charleston.

      Reply
    2. Gelert Avatar
      Gelert

      Oh…….. my…….. God…….. is this really true? Wonderful. ty for this. 

      Reply
    3. Geoff Avatar
      Geoff

      Hand on heart, hope to die – I’m sure it’s true… Makes you proud to be human, don’t it? 

      Reply

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  • Eight Random Facts

    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…

    2 responses to “Eight Random Facts”

    1. Gelert Avatar
      Gelert

      Hahah. But I did so enjoy reading it. I make a habit of breaking chains too. Especially chain letters which go, ‘If you don’t pass this on to ten more people all your eyebrow hair will fall out in ten days.’  

      Reply
    2. Geoff Avatar
      Geoff

      Well, it beats plucking them… 

      Reply

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