Today is World AIDS day. Wear your red ribbon, or better still, give a donation to an AIDS charity. As I said three years ago, it’s also a day to think about some lost friends: Kerry, Lance, Eric, Humphrey, Peter, John, Kingsley, Graham, and Neil. I’m sorry that you’re not around with the rest of us today.
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Out On A Spree
I can’t do justice to expressing my thoughts on recent events in Mumbai, so I’ll let Ophelia do it for me.Today’s Observer carries several pieces about them. I found those by William Dalrymple and Jason Burke to be the most illuminating. That by Maninee Misra less so.Leave a comment
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The Leaked List
Yes, I know I have a warped sense of humour.The maker of the video mashup talks about it here. Worth reading. And I’ve not seen Der Untergang, so that’s an ommision I will proceed to rectify as quickly as possible. Ganz’s incarnation of Hitler is clearly something to experience at first hand.Leave a comment
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There’s Bugger All Down Here On Earth
After a day browsing the internet, that final quote from one of the best songs of science is what sticks in my mind.Leave a comment
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Death Comes to the Birdfeeder
Being Winter, I’ve hung up a birdfeeder outside my study window. It gets lots of visitors, generally members of the Tit families. Yesterday I was working away when suddenly I caught a flash of something whizzing past the windows, and the thump of at least one bird hitting the glass. A Sparrowhawk (an adult female, I think) had spotted the possibility of lunch and successfully captured a Great Tit. She took it a few yards away to under a Pine tree where she devoured it at her leisure.
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An Interview with Jacques Vergès
Der Spiegel has a fascinating interview with the attorney Jacques Vergès.Vergès: I believe that everyone, no matter what he may have done, has the right to a fair trial. The public is always quick to assign the label of "monster." But monsters do not exist, just as there is no such thing as absolute evil. My clients are human beings, people with two eyes, two hands, a gender and emotions. That’s what makes them so sinister.I think that is an accurate summary of what we are dealing with. One end of the bell-curve of humanity. It’s an interview that is worth reading and pondering on.(hat tip to Mike Tidmus)Leave a comment
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Big Hands
Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C# Minor is a tricky piece to play, not just for the necessary speed and precision for the allegro section, but also for the chord stretches. At the peak of my piano-playing ability (when I was 17, sigh) I could manage a passable stab at it. As Igudesman and Joo demonstrate, there are other ways of achieving those stretches…The Wikipedia entry doesn’t mention it, but I’d always understood the piece to represent a burial where the unfortunate occupant of the coffin is not in fact dead, and the allegro is the frantic scrabbling of the interred trying to escape before succumbing to the inevitable…(hat tip to Raymond Chen for the link)Leave a comment
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A Little Levity
This interview with Sarah Palin, with its background counterpoint of turkeys in their death throes, is like something out of Monty Python. My jaw is still on the desk.Leave a comment
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A Right Charlie
I must confess that I have little time for the British monarchy, although strangely enough I do feel better disposed towards the Dutch monarchy. Thinking about it, it’s possibly because of the individuals involved and of what they say and do. Prince Charles, for example, has always struck me as a strikingly stupid man, who if it were not for the fact of his birth, would be put in the category of those tiresome people who write endless letters in green ink to newspaper editors.Leave a comment
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The Spectacular Sea-Slug
Carl Zimmer, over at The Loom, has a couple of fascinating posts on the Emerald Green Sea Slug, which turns out to be something from science fiction – practically a plant/animal hybrid. Wonderful.Leave a comment
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Euthanasia
Jesus, Mo and the barmaid discuss the question of euthanasia. Needless to say, I’m with the barmaid on this one.Leave a comment
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God Trump Cards
New Humanist publishes its religious trump cards, illustrated by Martin Rowson. I’m closest to the secularist/atheist/humanist figure, but I don’t have that wimpy beard in real life. I agree with my mother who once opined that she could never trust a man with a beard – he’s sure to have something to hide…Leave a comment
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Presidential Origami
God, after the last few blog entries I needed a laugh, and Presidential Origami did it for me. But perhaps it’s just gallows humour after all…Leave a comment
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Dark Reflections
Johann Hari has another powerful piece of writing – this time about a series of documentaries – that does nothing to dispel my pessimism. Kasim Abid’s Life After the Fall in particular makes it easy to despair.Leave a comment
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Dumbing Down Nature
I’ve always found Natural History a fascinating subject. And I used to look forward to natural history programmes on the Beeb. The zenith of such programmes was of course anything that had the magic name of David Attenborough associated with it.
Alas, the BBC seems now to be determined to plunge to the nadir with programmes such as Ocean, which started last night amid much trumpeting. Sample: “[the series] seeks to provide a better understanding of the state of our oceans today, their role in the past, present and future and their significance in global terms”.
Dear lord, but it was dire. The science was dumbed down practically to oblivion, being shouldered out of the way by lots of material designed to show that the cast and crew were having an awfully big adventure. Science for the “me, me, me!” generation… I note that on that web page showcasing the cast is a quote from explorer Paul Rose: “We are here to understand the Earth’s oceans and put them on a human scale”. Perhaps it’s just me, but that quote seems to make no sense whatsoever. Still, I see that I wasn’t the only person who gets irritated by this dumbing down of science, this review by Sam Wollaston pretty much sums up the programme as the pile of tosh it was.
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The Big Necessity
Another book for the reading list: "The Big Necessity" by Rose George. Johann Hari explains why its author should feel flushed with success. Hopefully her consciousness-raising is not just a flash in the pan…Leave a comment
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Swinburne’s Turtle
Richard Swinburne is the Emeritus Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at the University of Oxford. He apparently sees the Anthropic Principle as a convincing argument from design for the existence of God.Fortunately, Tom Rees is on hand to point out the flaw in the good professor’s argument. Far from being "an enormously powerful argument for the existence of God" as Professor Swinburne asserts, it seems to be on the level of there being turtles all the way down…Leave a comment
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The Roots of Language
An interesting article in today’s Guardian about Daniel Everett’s encounters with the Pirahã, an Amazonian tribe with a unique language. Sent as a missionary to convert the tribe to Christianity, he ended up not only rejecting his faith, losing his marriage, but also calling into question the Chomskyan orthodoxy of a universal grammar being the cornerstone of all language. Fascinating.Leave a comment
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