Angry of Mayfair here...

I was disgusted to watch a sickly performance on the news last night by Dr Kent Brantly the US Christian missionary doctor who, thanks to a vastly expensive experimental drug and the advanced medical/logistical resources of the USA, survived an infection of the Ebola virus. The thing that upset me was the sheer arrogance of the little speech he gave, the crass solipsism that spewed from his mouth denigrated both his profession (and the scientific bedrock it sits on) and the 2000+ African victims of this terrible outbreak. At the same time as religious people of all stripes are getting agitated and vocal in large numbers over Richard Dawkins' harmless ethical masturbations on Twitter we have some Christian nerd preaching on prime time TV that the reason he was cured of Ebola was because people prayed for him and *his* God answers prayers, in fact he went so far as to say "God saved my life" and deserved "glory and thanks". To use an American expression, what a complete douchbag.

Where was his malicious "God" when in terror and ignorance those poor African parents prayed for their kids, where was he as they haemorrhaged and writhed in agony as their vital organs shut down, and why the fuck did he create such a virus in the first place? What a vile and immoral view of the world these "Christians" have. Did those African victims not pray hard enough, did they receive the wrong theology?

No of course not, this smug Christian WASP survived because he is rich and American, they died and continue to die because they are African and poor, no mystery, no puppet master in the sky, just evolution, chemistry, biology, society, technology and money, that's what determines the outcomes here.

Now where are those blood pressure tablets..

Google mysteries

Someone pointed this out to me today (click the image for a bigger version), I thought it was just a joke but then when I actually searched for Greggs on Google it's real!

It's either very clever or very dumb marketing or nothing to do with the company at all, bearing in mind they're based in Newcastle, I can't quite decide which.

*Update @16:00* It seems to have disappeared now ;)

Sour as grapes

It was a bit of a slow weekend so to liven things up a bit I visited a cheese & craft beer shop in Reading (The Grumpy Goat) and picked up an interesting cheese and a couple of beers to try. In the picture above we have a flavour sensation from one of my favourite London breweries (The Kernel) called "London Sour", and wow, they're not kidding! Made in a unique style the flavour profile is more like a young Chenin Blanc wine than a beer, citrus, sour and acidic with the faintest hoppy undercurrent. This is definitely not for everyone but at 2.5% ABV it's something you could drink quite a lot of if you fancied a session on it. The closest thing I've tried that's anything like this is a Belgian Lambic beer, but that was much sweeter. If you're looking to truly experiment with the flavour of your ale then look no further!

land of make believers

So I read this morning that Baroness Warsi, the Minister of State for Faith and Communities has resigned because she's unhappy with the Government policy on Gaza. It's nice that she is finally showing some backbone however Warsi is a politician I have strongly disagreed with in the past. She always struck me as anti-secular and anti-atheist, an apologist for religious vested interest, a token Muslim in an invented (and unnecessary) position. I could never understand why a secular country needs a minister for "faith", to me it's like having a cricket coach in a football team, admirably inclusive but ultimately academic.

Hopefully the Government will not replace her. From my perspective we need fewer two-faced, unelected, superstitiously inspired lawyers in the corridors of power, not more; maybe she should consider a job as a Middle Eastern peace envoy, surely there are some vacancies coming up soon?

Unequal equivalence

A couple of stories and the associated ripples in the chatter-sphere caused me to pause and think about the concept and utility of equivalence last week. Firstly we have the entrenched and on-going conflict in Gaza and Israel. The conflict isn't new of course, but I've seen some interesting twists and turns as media heat has increased, many people on both right and left of the political landscape seem to be lobbing ever more extreme emotional labels around in order to articulate their views on this war. Secondly, there was an altogether less important but related micro-storm on twitter as Richard Dawkins made a comment about equivalence in crime which many people got upset about, I suspect for similarly entrenched reasons rather than purely rational ones.

Israel are trying to destroy Hamas who are in turn are trying to destroy Israel, both sides are killing people in order to achieve their goals, this shouldn't be a surprise, that's what we do in war. Israel has overwhelming fire-power and consequentially Hamas will not win the battle, however, Israel will not win the war (by inspiring a whole new generation of enemies) a depressingly desolate landscape. The more pressing question for both sides is whether world opinion will constrain Israel somehow before they are able to achieve their tactical goals against Hamas.

Dawkins, on the other hand, only caused a flood of ire; with a tweet that said "date rape is bad but stranger rape at knife-point is worse". He claims that he was trying to illustrate a logical point, i.e. that comparing two things doesn't imply endorsement of either and also that for practical purposes (i.e. legally) it is often necessary to compare things that we would rather not compare because the subject is too emotionally loaded rather than being logically and ethically impossible to do so (of course our legal system already does these comparisons all the time). Dawkins could have chosen a better forum to make his point, but on the other hand I'm not sure why people feel that any topic (within the law) should be out of bounds on a system where you must "follow" someone to see what they've written, people do seem to go out of their way to be offended.

The parallel I'm trying to draw here is that when discussing Israel and Palestine it should be quite reasonable and rational to discuss the behaviour of both sides and to debate their relative morality without necessarily endorsing either, we need to take this approach or disappear in a pointless froth of absolutism and emotion. Perhaps because of the perfect storm of taboo subjects like religion, the holocaust and anti-Semitism very few commentators seem able to get past hopelessly simplistic sectarian and historical polarisation, something new is needed but unfortunately I don't see any light on the horizon.

When a BBC interviewer asks an Israeli spokesperson, "why are you killing children?" it seems to me that the same fallacy of equivalence is being used to make a rather cheap dramatic point. Bombs are ambivalent when it comes to the bombed, a child seeking missile has yet to be invented, a more useful line of debate would be to ask why certain places can't be reserved for "innocents" to shelter and those places should not be targeted or used by either side. Of course, a question like this is NOT an endorsement of what Israel is doing generally, that's the point. When some right wing blow hard like Sean Hannity prevents a Palestinian spokesperson from speaking during an interview by shouting the same pointless questions (when everyone knows the answer) we see the same problem, pointing out Israeli injustices against Palestinians is not an endorsement of Hamas terror.

Here are the kinds of questions and thought experiments I would like to be debated more widely,

We can (and should) debate the morality of using overwhelming force in self-defence or to achieve political goals, but how can we single out Israel for doing it when we are perfectly happy to do it ourselves. It's exactly what we did in Iraq (with UN sanction), Afghanistan, the Falklands and everywhere else we've fought, in fact wherever our Government thinks we cannot achieve overwhelming advantage (militarily) we simply do not fight, no matter how disagreeable the regime or need to prevent injustice (for example Syria, Ukraine, North Korea, Iran etc.)

Is it morally right to wish for the destruction of a state and a people, is it possible to negotiate with an enemy who is sworn to commit genocide against you as opposed to simply making you surrender.

What is the role of fundamental Judaism in this conflict, would Israel be better served by NOT being a "Jewish state" but merely a secular democracy, is it moral to invoke a subjective entity (like a deity) in order to make a "claim" on physical resources, like land?

What would happen to Jews if Hamas had all the weapons? Is Israel morally superior to Hamas in that it treats human shields as a deterrence (albeit an imperfect one) whereas Hamas actually aim to kill as many Israeli people as possible; imagine the ridiculousness of Israelis holding up their children as shields.

Since Hamas spent their time building tunnels rather than bomb shelters (as the Israelis did) then isn't it unavoidable that the casualties will be disproportionate, is this the fault of Israel?

Should Israel be blamed for developing a an effective rocket defence system, does this diminish the moral case for self-defence?

Where are the 000s deep protests by the left in Western countries about ISIS in Iraq who are crucifying people at the side of the road, do they care about Muslim on Muslim violence?

What is the role of powerful Christian Zionists in the USA in funding and supporting (beyond reason) Israel in a deluded belief that stoking the fires of violence in the "holy land" will accelerate the second coming of Christ?

and so on...

It's written in the stars

Member of Parliament David Tredinnick is fast becoming a target for ridicule since he "came out" at the recent Glastonbury festival and announced that he thinks Astrology would be a good complement to real medicine and if used widely would reduce the burden on the NHS, a view that he confirmed in a BBC interview. Tredinnick is well known for his views on pseudo-science, being a fan of Homoeopathy and herbalism, in the immortal words of Tim Minchin we already have a term for "alternative medicine" that has been proven to actually work it's called "medicine". If you're looking for a succinct and humorous response to this silly man then look no further than the good Beaker folk over in Husborne Crawley.

Astrology is of course complete poppycock (to use a scientific term); anthropomorphic nonsense invented at a time when our species didn't even know that the Earth revolved around the Sun. In fact, in 3000 BC, when Astrology was invented (approx.) we didn't even know what stars and planets were let alone how they influence our chances of meeting tall dark strangers or developing irritable bowels. It's quaint how ancient peoples used their imaginations make up stories to explain things that were, in their era, otherwise inexplicable. Coincidently I've been away on holiday with my family for the last couple of weeks and one of the places we visited was Yosemite national park in California, USA (highly recommended!). One night we attended a talk on the stars. We joined a group of other tourists and all went out into an empty meadow, lay on our backs and looked up at the night sky.

The night sky in Yosemite is staggering (see picture below), the light pollution is practically zero and the sky was clear enough to see the milky way (something really hard to see in the populated SE of England).

The talk was fairly simplistic (from a science point of view) and slightly "new-age" in that the presenter focused on many of the myths and legends about the constellations from the Greeks to the Romans through to more modern interpretations from native Americans, all very poetic and quaint but in terms of utility complete poppycock (Ursa Major is a grizzly bear with a saddle - really?). Like Astrology, which rests upon such ancient stories, they are of no use whatsoever in predicting the future or assisting in healthcare, if they were we'd all be mega-rich and living to 200 by now. 

The coolest thing about the talk (apart from the view itself) was that our presenter used a powerful green laser to point out various objects in the sky, I'd never seen this done before and it was really impressive. What became clear to any reasonable person listening was that the universe is vast beyond our everyday comprehension and Science, specifically Cosmology, has allowed us to understand an unprecedented amount about what it's all made of and how it works, a truly awe inspiring feat bearing in mind that pretty much everything we see is beyond our ability to study directly because it's too far away. The real poetry and power of our appreciation of the stars is in our ability to reason about what we observe and figure out what is really going on and not simply fantasize about them. The fact that we are all made from atoms forged in the nuclear furnaces of stars like the ones we see in the night sky means that we are all inextricably and directly linked to the universe and unlike our general fascination with dot-to-dot puzzles this is, in some sense, a truly "spiritual" fact about us. I'd call it a "spiritual fact" not because it's in any way supernatural but because it transcends our individual, petty, parochial needs and disagreements and gives us all a kinship that if we took more care to understand might make our brief existence more fulfilling and relegate our reliance on the various "imagined" crutches of destiny, Gods and spirits in the sky to the past. Of course there's plenty that we don't understand yet about our Universe, dark energy for instance, but for some of us that's a positive thing, a challenge, something to aim for, real purpose. So, rather than filling these voids with childish imaginings of giant animals in the sky we should relish our opportunity to discover reality, and put aside childish things.

Friday factoid

If this illustration makes you feel slightly uneasy then you are exceptionally rational; most of your fellow Sapiens believe that the whole universe was crafted especially for them...

It's not just me that thinks that..

Writing a blog is quite an interesting experience, you never quite know whether what you've written makes sense to other people or if you're so far off wandering the fertile valleys of your own version of "la la land" that even the trolls and nutters are narrowing their eyes in bafflement. I read a story today about a complaint against the BBC being upheld over an interview they did on the today program that pitted the intellectual viewpoints on climate change between a leading climate scientist and Nigel Lawson. The complaint was that this paring promoted a "false balance" between an actual expert and someone being paid by vested interests to take a contrary view. I am pleased to discover that I noted exactly the same problem when I first saw the program back in February and blogged about it at the time. Such insignificant actions in pointing out anti-science, anti-evidence lobbying may not solve the problem of man-made climate change but at least I can conclude that senility has not quite set in just yet.

Different similarities

The problem with complex evolved human brains is that two people can look at the same scene and interpret it in two entirely different ways depending on the particular wiring of their respective neural networks; as determined by genetics, upbringing and education etc. Brains are "plastic" like this, they develop in an infinite number of subtle ways and even the exact same input stimuli (sights, sounds, smells etc.) prompt entirely different responses, no two brains are the same. More often than not this variation is something to be celebrated and enjoyed, after all, it's the basis of creativity and learning to which our greatest achievements as a species can be attributed.

However, when it comes to deciding important policy that affect other people's lives in significant ways it's clearly desirable (from the perspective of the people the decisions affect) for decision makers to approach the evaluation of the options from an objective perspective rather than a subjective one. Unfortunately, that's a hard thing for evolved brains to do and requires significant effort and training; shedding our biases even for a short while is difficult. Sometimes deeply held views can seem so concrete, so immovable and so compelling that not only would people rather die than abandon them, they would also rather die than simply examine them critically. Even people who claim to be "rational" often fail to grasp this basic human trait, they don't (and are often unable to) see themselves as others see them. Facts and ideas become blurred and interchangeable, in-groups become intellectual echo chambers that simply reinforce established dogmas, and nothing from the outside can penetrate and influence.

Take a look at the picture above, two people who are genetically related and almost certainly share more traits and behaviours than they are probably even aware of. Both love their mum and dad, feel pain, digest food, appreciate beauty, fancy Justin Bieber, bleed red when cut and both would claim that their positions are rational and "true". Yet for the rest of us in theological no man's land these two intellectual positions remain diametrically opposed; two people who may even think that they would rather kill or die than abandon their deeply held beliefs.

Then imagine being an alien crossing the vast expanse of space for a million years to land on Earth with no pre-knowledge about any of the historical, cultural or theocratic underpinnings of these two world-views.

Could they tell the difference?

Summer listening

I'm thoroughly enjoying the new Linkin Park album at the moment, a welcome return for them to the distinct sound of their early ground breaking work (like Hybrid Theory) IMO. A fusion of throat grabbing guitar riffs, punk-like energy, an electronic backdrop overlayed with rap, thrash as well as more conventional lyrical delivery; featuring Chester Bennington banging out some ultra-high-emotion vocals (how that guy doesn't burst his vocal chords I don't know) It all sounds chaotic but works surprisingly well if you run with it. Some familiar themes covered, war, death, morality and rebellion, all good, solid rock and roll fayre. Particular favourites would include "Guilty all the same", "Wastelands" and "A line in the sand", no real lemons.

Don't bother with Coldplay get this instead; if you want more moshing (and interest) in your summer soundtrack that is.

Friday smirk

Who says that all miracles ceased when we invented cameras...

Chalk meets cheese

One of the topics that regularly interests me sufficiently to create a blog post or two is the divisiveness of religion. The fact that, as a species, we seem hell bent on dividing ourselves up into ever more balkanised groups by creating and following intellectual positions based on nothing more than stories is fascinating and scary at the same time; a majority of people on our planet seem to need to identify with a particular sect or tradition and there may well be sound evolutionary reasons for doing it (particularly when you look at the benefits for the in-groups). We can observe this process going on all around us, all the time, ever more splintered and pedantic shards of ideas popping up and becoming recombined in different assortments wherever people gather together and tell their children stories. Sadly, it's one of the top reasons for suffering and conflict in the world, you need only look as far as Protestant v. Catholic, Jew v. Muslim, Sunni v. Shia, Sinhalese Buddhist v. Hindu Tamil ad infinitum to see that people love to be tribal.

Religion isn't the only cause of tribalism of course, I was reminded of this last week whilst watching the Glastonbury festival on TV. The headline act on Saturday night this year was a little band called Metallica, a heavy metal group that have been hammering out head-banging riffs since the early 80's and have risen to the top (30th overall in terms of record sales) of the heap to become a global brand. Glastonbury is supposedly an all inclusive event, the organisers take every opportunity to make this point, i.e. that every shade and flavour of musical taste is represented. The small flaw in this inclusive vision has been that over the 40 odd years the festival has been running the list has never included a heavy metal band, until now. Like women voting and eating prawns on a Friday apparently the inclusion of this band in the line up was "controversial" to some festival fans; a clear contradiction that eerily mirrors the contradiction in religions like Christianity and Islam that preach inclusive things like "God loves everyone", and then discriminate against gay people or people of the "wrong" gender, the evidence is that tribes tend not to encourage inclusiveness.

Metallica are huge and certainly don't need Glastonbury, in fact you could argue that in reality it was the opposite, i.e. Glastonbury needed Metallica. The interest and publicity generated from the billing must certainly have done the festival PR efforts no harm at all. In the end the band were superb; regardless of whether people like the genre or not, it would be hard to deny the professionalism, musicianship and showmanship they delivered; long standing fans were not surprised. The more interesting facet of the event for me were the responses afterwards. The next day I read a number of reviews and monitored the twitter feed, the comments could be divided into three distinct camps, the fans (I include myself in that group) loved it; that group used words like loud, indulgent and unapologetic (in a positive way). Then there were the people who hated it, they said things like loud, indulgent and unapologetic (in a negative way); then there were the people who had their minds changed, they said things like "not as bad as I was expecting", "pleasantly surprised", "might even buy one of their albums now" and so on. In general the positive outweighed the negative by a healthy margin. Some people will never be fans, that's clear, but a lot more people had their eyes opened to new potential; all of which is great for the band, great for the genre and also great for the festival, a win-win-win you could say.

I'm sure there are valuable lessons in inclusiveness, tolerance and open-mindedness for all of us here; I only wish that instead of kidnapping and killing each others children in the name of ancient stories and mythical promises, people in some parts of the world would just stop for a minute, extract their heads from their arses and listen to the beat and rhythm of the other side for a while, who knows where that might lead.

Bootstrapped morality

Theists often use the argument that without some kind of super-being (invariably their own particular Deity) there could not be Human morality and we'd all be running around raping and murdering each other; after all, if there's no God then where do we get our sense of right and wrong from?

For atheists this question seems to have a simple and frankly obvious answer, i.e. we get it from ourselves, the thinking goes something like this.

Evolution equipped us (over time) with a basic set of "rules of thumb" that enabled the successful survival of tribes of social primates, if we hadn't thrived then we simply wouldn't now be discussing it. Over time and in recent history our development of "cultures" has sculpted all of the various refinements, deletions and additions to this basic set, particularly the religious dimension of culture. So, we would contend that although religion has certainly refined and influenced our morality over the years, it did not originate it. The reason I conclude this is simply an examination of the evidence, i.e. look around, the world is exactly as you would expect if this hypothesis were true and exactly NOT how your would expect if there were a single Deity dictating objective morality from on-high. There are some simple, self-evident facts that support this idea, for example over time our view of morality changes, we no longer think it's OK to keep slaves whereas years ago we did. Different cultures develop subtly different ideas of what is moral, usually conforming to parochial power struggles and practical geographical needs. Human beings develop very similar ideas about morality even when they are isolated from each other, many indigenous peoples in remote parts of the world have very similar ideas to Christians, Jews and Muslims about things like stealing; despite knowing nothing of the existence of those religions.

This is not a new argument or a new viewpoint of course, many philosophers and theologians have debated the ins and outs of where morality comes from for millennia, but for a lot of people the concept of subjective morality seems to be an intellectual road-block, they just can't grasp it without the idea of a celestial dictatorship entering into the frame somehow. I came across the following photograph the other day which made me think about how the concept might be explained to such people, I think it fits the atheist viewpoint (and our experience of reality) particularly well.

Movies that are less likely than reality..

Sound plausible?

Things I hate

Made me chuckle..

Burning desire

Here's a photo that caused my eye brows to raise slightly today, it's a photo of a couple whose wedding in Oregon was interrupted by the fire brigade who advised them to evacuate because a nearby wild fire was out of control and moving their way. Apparently all the guests evacuated but the photographer managed to snap some cheeky shots of the bride and groom with the raging inferno as a backdrop, not exactly your average run of the mill wedding album! I wonder what their first song was ... something by Johnny Cash perhaps?

Mind viruses

Here's an alarming story that's doing the rounds at the moment, it's about a Nigerian man called Mubarak Bala who has the misfortune to live in an Islamic region of Nigeria that has implemented Sharia law. Having openly declared himself to be an Atheist (sensible chap) his family had him committed to a mental institution where according to leaked accounts he has been beaten, drugged and held against his will; he may now even face a criminal conviction of some kind for apostasy (leaving his religion).

Such is the insecurity of the religious mind that unless checked by secular law seems to invariably end up implementing "groupthink" by force. This was obvious in the past and is still very evident in places where religion remains firmly in control, places like Sudan, Malaysia, Iran, Mississippi , Tower Hamlets and of course Nigeria. Many religious people hate it when atheists (particularly Richard Dawkins) use the term "mind virus" or "mental illness" to describe their intellectual position. I can understand how that might sound unnecessarily harsh even offensive to some, but in secular countries it's just an opinion that can be engaged with or ignored, for an Atheist like Mubarak Bala in a theocratic state it's a punishable crime. This is an important distinction many apologists gloss over when claiming persecution. If you zoom out and review sectarianism against the backdrop of the thousands of cases of imposed religious "groupthink" like the examples given here; it does in fact look from the outside just like some kind of infection presenting identical symptoms and behaviours, an infection that branches and evolves over time. The analogy can be stretched further if you consider how religion spreads in the vast majority of cases, i.e. by childhood indoctrination or outright conquest rather than by individual free choice.

Hopefully now that this man's case is being made public by secular campaigners here and elsewhere the Nigerian government might be embarrassed into action, although I'm not overly optimistic; there seems to be almost as many sectarian problems in that country as there are in Iraq and Syria at the moment.

Creationism, football and ancient willies

If you're upset about England being bundled out of the World Cup last week then don't despair, here's some good news. The Government "clarified" it's policy on teaching creationism recently by updating the current guideline to include all current free schools and academies, the official line is that creationism cannot be taught as science anywhere. This is a victory for secularists who have been campaigning for this for a while now. The Government claim that the move is merely a clarification but it seems clear to most campaigners that it's plugging a big loop-hole that is being cynically exploited in many religiously oriented academies up and down the country.

Belief in creationism is stupid, believing that the whole universe was created about 22,000 years after the Germans invented the first sex toy (see image below) is daft, but if consenting adults wish to believe such nonsense then (in a free society) they are perfectly at liberty to do so, however, people drilling such stupidity into children under the protective cover of "science" is an abuse, we have criteria by which we define what is and what isn't science, creationism is definitely not science.

For those interested in ancient sex toys then this 28,000 year old phallus was discovered at the Hohle Fels Cave near Ulm which is situated between the German cities of Stuttgart and Munich. It's purpose can only be speculated on but I reckon it's pretty certain that Louis Suarez is feeling just like one right about now.

Whine about wine

Interesting article on the BBC site today about how much restaurants often mark-up the price of wine. Of course with all of the multifarious troubles going on in the world today what us rich (relatively) first worlder's pay for fermented grape juice in restaurants is fairly well down the list of United Nations concerns but never the less some of the mark-ups discussed would bring a tear to any news weary eye. Apparently (and topically) the new luxury hotel owned by Andy Murry (the tennis player) is charging £1800 for a bottle of 2002 Lafite Rothschild (a crap vintage BTW) whereas the same bottle at the Berkeley Hotel in London is a mere £990, the same wine retails for around £400 and could probably be bought at auction for even less. Most people would never dream of paying this kind of money for wine (neither would I!) but my point is not about the price, it's about the mark-up, i.e. it seems unlikely a small Scottish hotel near that well known tourist hot spot (Dunblane?) is actually providing £900 worth of "added value" to a commodity product; more likely, they are relying on the fact that most people visiting such a place either haven't got a clue about wine, are on company expenses or have more money than sense.

Many restaurants including Murry's hotel regularly mark-up wines by 4,6 or even 8 times their retail price. Many other products are similar, fashion goods are often 3 X wholesale and groceries 2 X, not to mention drugs and things like sunglasses but it's hard to think of anything with such a difference between the price in one outlet versus the price in another often only separated by a hundred yards of high street. Many would say "so what", restaurants should be free to charge whatever they like for the products they sell, fair enough, at the top-end at least, restaurants seem to be testing the limits of that theory just fine; but what does it say about an organisation that treats it's customers with such contempt that they are content for them to pay 6 times more for a product than any other retail organisation, who would happily sell the exact same bottle and still make a productive margin on it. I've heard all the arguments about there being no margin on food and how horrifically expensive those sommeliers salaries are, but such excuses don't wash with me; more than quadrupling your money for nothing more than a bit of storage space and washing-up glassware is pretty good business in any book.

Being a wine enthusiast it's frustrating in the extreme to visit restaurants that are charging £50 for a bottle of wine I know full well is available at a supermarket down the road for £10, it sucks all the enjoyment out of the experience for me and even though the food might be brilliant and created by the most talented kitchen team, I still feel ripped off. I have a personal rule these days; if I know a mark-up is more than 3 X retail then I don't buy the wine, if there's no wine left on the list to buy then I stick with beer and never visit that restaurant again. (having said that the mark-up on the beer, percentage wise, is probably even worse!) I would much prefer to visit a restaurant that keeps it's wine mark-ups between 1.5 and 2.5 X and spend more on a much better bottle than spend less on a bottle with a higher mark-up, up to a point, quality is more important to me than price.

Restaurant wine is a luxury product (in the UK at least), the selection and buying of which intimidates most people; however it can also be a wonderful companion to a meal with friends or family, a talking point, a binding agent and a source of pleasure that remains in our memories for a long time. Excessive profit taking is throttling the pleasure out of dining out; with the recession, the rise of craft beers and the industrialisation of eateries that's going on in our high streets it's time for independent restaurant owners to think again on wine margins, the current upward trend and shrinking market is ripe for disruption by someone who recognises the value of quality.

Statistics for the superstitious

An old one but a good one.

Whose country is it anyway?

Lot's of chatter around at the moment about who we are and what kind of country we live in. I'm not particularly keen on labels or broad categorisations when it comes to people because what you normally find is that sets of things made from DNA bigger than one never contain members with identical properties; however many people cannot seemingly function without labels and some have labels thrust upon them by the labellers. Nowhere is this labelling imperative more visible than in the fields of politics and religion, both fields of discourse dominated by "words" over substance and whose worldly power is directly linked to the cardinality (size) of their sets. Generally I couldn't care less how people labels themselves, I try to deal with people based on what they do and what they say rather than on what they say they are. Unfortunately this isn't always possible, at the intersection of religion and politics we have a critical pinch point. In America they figured this out over 200 years ago and the founding fathers of that republic came up with the "separation clause" in their constitution that enshrines the following eminently rational rule,

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ..."

Contrary to what many believe this clause is not there to protect the rights of the majority, it was made to protect the rights of minority religions (and those with no religion) so that they cannot be bullied by the state into doing things or paying tithes outside of their conscience; regardless of which particular group has a majority of followers at any one time.

Here in the UK we unfortunately missed this common sense boat and we still have a state religion that wields power in this world (as well as the next) This has always been justified on the basis that it's supported by a majority of Christian people who live here; even though the quantification of this has traditionally been based on "labels" rather than actual votes. Even as recently as April this year our Prime Minister made the claim in public that Britain is a "Christian country" and in the process upset a lot of British non-Christians who dispute the truth of such a claim and who fear that a desired wall of separation between church and state in the UK will now suffer further delays in planning permission rather than getting on with laying the foundation stones as they'd all hoped for in the 21st century.

Labels are unreliable and imprecise but at the intersection of religion and politics they are seemingly the only quantification we have with which to debate such questions. The latest Government census on the subject (results in the picture at the top) would suggest that on purely numerical terms the "no religion" label is now the majority (by 9%), even if this is not exactly the case (allowing for the imprecision of labels) then the official state religion (Church of England) at 16% is definitely not. On this basis alone it would seem to me to be worth revisiting this question, but with all of the recent controversies around religious bullying in state schools, teaching religious ideas (like Creation) in science classes and discrimination cases in courts I would argue that the mandate for a properly secular constitution now is stronger than ever.

Teaching nonsense

Feeling drained of enthusiasm this morning after watching people on Newsnight last night talking about creationism in UK schools. I saw this cartoon and it summed up a lot of things people do in life in an attempt to get a quick fix, an easy answer or a free lunch, unfortunately just because you want something to be true it doesn't make it so, even if you really, really, really believe it.

Paradise is like faith schools, i.e. selective

For those affluent Westerners who refer to the Maldives "a paradise" (for obvious reasons) here's a story that might make you rethink your view. There seems to be a double standard operating in this tiny island state, on the one hand rich scantily clad tourists are welcomed with open arms to it's hotels, resorts and beaches to spend their money on leisure, alcohol and trinkets; on the other we have a brutal theocratic undercurrent of intimidation, discrimination and violent crime against minorities. At the root of all this is religion and Islam in particular (no shit Sherlock) and a Government that seems hell bent on denying that there's even a problem; it seems hard to see how there isn't trouble ahead for this country. On second thoughts though, maybe all the persecuted people could come to the UK where tolerance and diversity rules and get jobs as school teachers, oh, hold on a minute.

It's not easy being Ann Widdecombe

Ex-Tory politician and Christian apologist Ann Widdecombe reckons it's easier to be a Nazi than a Christian in England these days. In a radio 5 interview she claimed the following...

"Christians now have quite a lot of problems, whether it's that you can't display even very discreet small symbols of your faith at work, that you can't say 'God bless you', you can't offer to pray for somebody, if it's an even bigger stance on conscience that you're taking, some of the equality laws can actually bring you to the attention of the police themselves."

"So I think it is a very difficult country now, unlike when I was growing up, in which to be a Christian, an active Christian at any rate." 

Christians also faced a "sort of atheism" that "wouldn't once have been said". There used to be a view that "we've all got freedom of conscience, we've all got freedom of expression", she said. 

"In the 1950s when plenty of people had lost lives and limbs and loved ones to the Nazis, it was still possible to be a Nazi in this country. 

"When we were engaged in the height of the Cold War, when there were all those weapons lined up on the borders of the Warsaw Pact countries pointing straight at us, you could still, in this country, proclaim yourself as a Communist, you could still stand for Parliament for that matter as a Communist. 

"You wouldn't get in but you could stand. You could sell the Morning Star on street corners. 

"We have always respected, no matter how strongly we felt as a nation at the time, we've always respected the right of people to their own views and I do feel nowadays as a combination of political correctness and equality law and all the rest of it, we've started suppressing the expression of conscience."

It's harder to decide what will have a smaller cultural impact, this childish, foot stamping rant or her undignified appearance on strictly; in the interests of equality I am obliged to laugh equally at both. I find it hard to believe that someone like this, who is famous for having a mouth like the Mersey tunnel in receipt of a privileged and elite education i.e. better equipped than most to field a decent argument (if she had one) would feel that she couldn't say "God bless you" whenever the hell she liked, who would stop her?

Much like the recent row about intolerant and extreme Muslim influence in UK schools, religious people have gotten used to the idea that whatever they do so long as they invoke the concept of "faith" (or conscience as she puts it) should be unconditionally respected and immune from ridicule or criticism. Widdecombe chooses to focus on things like wearing jewellery to work and hurt feelings but I'd respect her more if she called out other things millions of religious people think are kosher because they are "faith based", like, discrimination, child abuse, gender segregation, homophobia, extremism, anti-science education, jihad and so on. Unfortunately for whining apologists like Widdecombe rational people are no longer willing to give automatic respect to infantile belief systems just because the adherents demand it, just like strictly, if your Pasodoble isn't up to scratch then best not take it onto the stage wearing sequins and Lycra, people will only laugh at you.

The Elephant in the classroom

Following the recent scandal and subsequent political angst regarding the role of Islam in certain schools in the Midlands and elsewhere isn't it just a matter of common sense that religions (of all stripes) are not the kinds of organisations that we want influencing and running schools, regardless of the education that can be had at some of the better ones, it's like putting the big cats in charge of the small mammal enclosure at the zoo, proselytism and dogmatism are embedded in the core of their nature and purpose. A secular approach is the surest way to minimise disadvantage and division in society.

Quality reporting

It would seem that the good old Daily Mail is up to it's usual tricks, completely inverting the truth of something in order to score cheap popularity points with it's readership; who (judging from the comments at least) seem to fall for it hook line and sinker. Poor old Dicky Dawkins is getting it in the neck for supposedly making a comment at the Cheltenham Science Festival along the lines that fairy tales and believing in Santa causes children harm, you can imagine the headline... "Dawkins wants to ban Christmas", "Dawkins the grinch". Disappointingly I heard the same story repeated on radio 4 this morning on my way to work and I'm sure there are many who would love to believe it; headlines like this confirm their pre-existing prejudices about him and scientists in general, and lets face it, much like immigrants and benefits cheats the Daily Mail in particular thrives on this kind of confirmation bias. In reality though this reported position really doesn't square with what the man actually says.

A couple of years ago he wrote a whole book on myths and legends, comparing and contrasting them with scientific explanations for things (like evolution, cosmology, physics, geology, chemistry etc.), it's a nice book, aimed at 12 year olds and has even been turned into an iPad application. Over and over again the book describes his view on myths and legends, that they can be beautiful, poetic, descriptive and useful in the teaching of morality. This morning he has been tweeting what he actually said, i.e. the exact opposite of what the article claims, i.e. that fairy tales are charming and useful tool in helping children grasp the basics of critical thinking from an early age. From my own experience with my own children this is exactly right, Santa Claus, three little pigs, goldilocks (among many other stories) are great vehicles with which to delight them in their early years and educate them later on as they become able to reason about reality and understand the underlying "human" truths in such stories (many of which are extremely unpleasant!). I suppose the old adage about no news being bad news may have a ring of truth to it; but then again, we all know the moral of a Daily Mail story don't we children...

Update: if you want to listen to what Dawkins actually thinks about myths and fairy tales then listen here..

Hitch

I just came across this wonderful short documentary about the late Christopher Hitchens, it's not a commercial endeavour just something put together by a fan never the less it's well made and engaging. It left me feeling sad that "Hitch" is no longer here but at the same time encouraged by its summation of just how much impact he had in a relatively short period of time.


'The Hitch'- Christopher Hitchens documentary from Kristoffer Hellesmark on Vimeo.

As Hitch himself once said (something like)... it's a disturbing thought that one day we all have to "leave the party", not because we want to stay at the same party for ever but because we know in our hearts that it's going to go on perfectly fine without us.

Moral Authority?

Lot's of people are commenting on revelations from Ireland today that over 800 young children and babies who died between 1925 and 1961 at a Catholic institution were dumped in a disused sewage tank and their bones remain there to this day. The children were born to unmarried mothers which seemingly had a bearing on their value in this warped sub-culture, presumably the nuns who ran the establishment were implementing the Christian idea that the sins of the father (and Mother in this case) must be born down the generations, why else would they not simply refuse to participate in such barbarity and blow the whistle?

What could I possibly say that hasn't already been said about this organisation and the moral values it holds, every which way we turn we seem to find the tell-tale fingerprints of hypocrisy and corruption, it's almost like their ethical foundations are based on the primitive urges of evolved primates and whose dogmas only survive through indoctrination, fear and ignorance. Unfortunately, the religious majority seem unable (or unwilling) to draw the most obvious conclusion from this simple observation, as I reported the other day another flavour of Christians have been attempting to disrupt a major engineering project recently because they are concerned about the sanctity of dead people whose graves might be disturbed without appropriately qualified clergy whispering magic incantations over them; and they wonder why rational people don't believe a word of it.

The reign in Spain

Interesting news yesterday, the King of Spain (Juan Carlos) has decided to abdicate and hand over the Spanish throne to his son (Felipe). Spain has no specific laws to cover such a scenario and the Government there are rushing through legislation that enables the accession to happen. It's a shame that this seems to be a matter of process and not approval, the Spanish people have a golden opportunity to re-evaluate the purpose and desirability of a medieval institution in the 21st century. You would have thought that with all of the recent Iberian economic woes and the reported excesses of this unelected family (elephant hunting in Botswana) that the time should have come to seriously reconsider upgrading the whole shebang to a republic with an elected and accountable president. This is no guarantee of clean living and stellar representation of course but (with a proper constitution) at least you can get rid of a president at the ballot box without too much trouble. This situation is very relevant to our own monarchy of course, Queen Elizabeth II is reaching an age when she will need to step down and hand over the palace keys to Prince Charles. I doubt whether the suckers subjects who fund this glittering circus will get any say in it, we'll just stump up the cash, buy coronation tea pots and wave our little flags as usual; no one will ask why.

In my experience people who receive wealth and power without having to earn it seldom value it and no matter what invisible friends they think they may have, human beings tend not to be exceptional, special or superior to anyone else unless they put the effort in.

Over my dead body

It looks like the Church of England has entered the fray regarding the new high speed rail line between London and the North of England (HS2). Apparently the Arch Bishops Council has announced that it's opposed to the line being built for a number of reasons, primarily that graves along the route will be desecrated. It's an interesting angle, you'd think taking a position that places the interests of dead people over living people would seem fairly negative but clearly death is a particular concern of the complainants. The logic (not that logic has a big role to play in this) seems to be that since people have been buried in "consecrated" ground then they would be upset if their remains were disturbed and moved elsewhere. Somewhere in that sentence the fact that these people no longer exist seems to have been lost; even if the Christian view of what happens after death is true (pretty unlikely) then the remains are still just "empty vessels", I'd be fascinated to hear how theologians would explain previous owners of these bodies could be upset or disadvantaged if what's left of the lifeless remnants of their bodies are moved or even destroyed (by cremation for example). Now I can understand living relatives getting upset if undue irreverence were shown during the moving process but it must be impossible to lift a single sod of earth on this crowed little island without disturbing the residual molecules of some long since deceased Neanderthal, Pagan, Roman, Viking, Saxon or other immigrant worker, perhaps they can give the decomposed corpses jobs collecting tickets, might breath a bit of life into the whole thing.

Helpless?

Following the recent mass shooting in California I've been following the usual outpourings of political hand-wringing and intransigence from the pro-gun lobby in the US media. I heard some red-neck on the news yesterday claiming that gun control was pointless as there was nothing that could be done to prevent such massacres. This is coming from the only developed country in the world where these things regularly happen (roughly 2 every month for the last 5 years) I don't understand this, the last time innocent US citizens were attacked (2001) by irrational, arbitrary and deadly violence the Government rallied and sent the most powerful military force in the world into 2 foreign countries, utterly overwhelmed the incumbent regimes, spent a trillion dollars and (for better or worse) set those entire nations (millions of people) on a new political and cultural course. Yet, on the issue of gun massacres in their own country these same constituents are "helpless"?

Holiday weekend

It was a holiday weekend here in the UK and to celebrate this I took my family to Oxford for the day on Sunday to have a look around the natural history museum and to treat them to lunch out. We had a really fun day, the weather was sunny and warm and the museums were interesting and uncrowded. My son snapped this picture of a procession of skeletons of related species, for some reason I was reminded of our political landscape, a procession of old fossils giving every illusion of movement but going nowhere. I couldn't help but reflect on the many famous historical personalities who have graced these hallowed University halls over the centuries, they would surely have disapproved of our current crop of lacklustre leaders.

Agonising

Can't help but be shocked by the recent shootings in California, not that mass shootings in the USA are particularly rare or this one any worse than any other but this time the media seem to be giving a lot of air time to one particular father of one of the victims who I feel will become somewhat of a media star over the coming weeks. Ricardo Martinez appears to be an articulate and educated man, he speaks with passion and intelligence and it's clear to see why the TV stations love him. What makes him unusual is that he isn't afraid to place the blame where he believes it needs to be placed, at the hands of the (craven) politicians and the NRA (National Rifle Association) and he's doing that with a lethal combination of emotional authority and clarity. I suspect many American liberals will feel energised by his grief, I certainly do and I'm not American nor do I have a vested interest in American gun control save a heart felt empathy with Mr Martinez as a father. Hopefully something positive will actually happen now but knowing how entrenched the political positions are over there around this topic I strongly suspect it may not.

Voting day blues

So we're supposed to vote in local and European elections today. I'll be wandering over to the polling station later to put some crosses in some boxes. I must say I'm finding it very difficult to be confident about any particular party this time, the choice seems to me to be between a cluster of inept extremists and a fuzzy haze of shallow media types, maybe I'll have a revelation while I'm walking over there.

At least I don't live in the USA, over there the choices seem even more polarised. Recently I saw the results of a Pew poll that rated the various desirable (or otherwise) presidential attributes, the results aren't surprising but are strangely alien to an upstanding European, like me.

Serving in the military seems to be the most popular attribute for a President, an optimist would like to think this means strong, honest, dependable etc. but if it were me I'd be nervous about someone who was warmongering, detached from reality and dogmatic. Being a Governor or a business executive were second and third in desirability which seems sensible, at least it demonstrates experience of leadership, then at the bottom of the list are Atheists, apparently the least desirable kind of presidential candidate! It appears that you can betray your spouse, take drugs and have no experience of holding office and still be more suitable to hold office than someone who simply doesn't believe in fairies; I think I'd find it even harder to find a viable candidate in a society that was as insecure as that.

Serious politics

The spoofs are much better than the real thing, and truer.

Cultural evolution

I saw a couple of stories over the weekend that made me think about that thing we call "culture".

First we have the story about Iranian actress Leila Hatami who was greeted at the Cannes film festival by festival president Gilles Jacob in the classical French manner, i.e. with a peck on the cheek (one, two or three depending where you come from). Nothing earth-shattering about that you might think, but then the Iranian "culture ministry" criticized the greeting claiming that it was an affront to the chastity and dignity of Iranian Woman and had tainted the image of Iran to the world. For what it's worth to the people of Iran my immediate thought when I saw this picture was, how nice, an Iranian acting like a normal human being for a change and taking part in a healthy exchange of artistic excellence between nations, but  then I guess I'm an optimist like that.

I also happened upon some unsavoury pictures of the annual cull of pilot whales and dolphins in the Faroe Islands. I'm no tree-hugger when it comes to the consumption of meat and the management of livestock but even so the images were disturbing. People offer many excuses and reasons for this act, culture, tradition, food, rites of passage and fishery management but for me it simply boils down to some obvious facts, these animals are highly social and intelligent and dragging them into shallow water and dispatching them one by one with knives and hooks is not a humane way of killing other sentient beings, whatever the reason.

Both of these stories have supposedly immutable "culture" and tradition at their root, but as we know from history, culture is a transient thing, the nature and content of culture changes over time like water flowing from its source to the sea, there are many twists and turns, the pure spring water becomes diluted as it follows its course, sometimes the whole course itself is altered by the effects of larger forces, I concluded that evolution and change is the only "culture" that truly defines human beings.

If your traditions stink, change them.

Pot, kettle, pink..

I had to laugh when I saw this story, talk about a group of people with an identity problem, no, not the Austrian drag queen who recently won the Eurovision song contest, I'm talking about the Russian Orthodox Church's who's chairman of information said of that victory,

"Yet on more step in the rejection of the Christian identity of European culture and a sign of the world's moral decline and part of the aggressive assertion of Western cultural norms"

Clearly the ROC is opposed to bearded men who wear dresses, oh, hold on a minute...

People that live in glass houses etc..

Why bother..

People often ask why atheists and secularists bother to point out and criticise religious excess, contradiction and general lunacy, after all why waste time on something that you don't even believe is true?

I'm sure there are many reasons but I think the main one is this, Human beings (and I include myself in that set) have evolved to feel empathy and to abhor unfairness, we can't help ourselves, it's a biological condition of being a social primate. Of course there are exceptions to this, psychopaths have defects in their empathy systems (of varying degrees) and people can easily be indoctrinated to feel indifferent or even hostile toward those who aren't within whatever "in-group" they've been indoctrinated into, religious or otherwise. Even though millions of people live in secular countries today where discrimination based on religion (or lack of it) is a moot point, I would argue that for a lot of people religion (or the local interpretation of it) is a major justification for injustice, still.

I can only speak for myself on this but I suspect a lot of like minded people feel the same way, the reason I keep banging on about religion and the effect it has on the world (as I see things) is because of stories like this, a pregnant Sudanese woman (Meriam Yehya Ibrahim) who is sentenced to death for her religious views, she's not an Atheist, she's a Christian; but has the misfortune to live in a backward Islamic culture. This kind of thing is not an exception, it's the rule for a huge number of people on our planet and seemingly will remain so all the while people reject reason, secular justice and freedom.

Many a true word..

Yep, sounds about right to me..

Freedom to be a bit dense

A couple of stories perturbed me last week, first there was one about a guy who got cell time for posting an offensive tweet about the murdered teacher Ann Maguire and then there was the DJ on radio Devon who played a 1932 version of the song "the sun has got his hat on" that has the n* word in it. Two different stories both with pretty severe outcomes for the people involved.

In the first case you have someone who is an idiot, his adrenal glands are too big and his frontal lobes are clearly too small but since Twitter is an opt-in kind of platform (i.e. you have to follow someone) I don't see what a person could possibly tweet that would warrant a jail sentence perhaps if they actually organised some kind of violent or harmful event in the real world then maybe but failing that, sticks and stones etc. In the second case the DJ in question claims that he didn't realise this word (latterly adopted as a racist insult, among other meanings) was in the song. This seems perfectly plausible to me, certainly not something worth losing your job over.

I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that liberal relativism and free speech aren't good bed fellows, if we have to ditch one of these to get back to a sensible level of personal accountability then it's the former that needs to go, anyone who disagrees will offend me greatly.

The good old days...

It makes me cringe sometimes when I hear people bleating on about how our "modern society" is going to the dogs and everything was so much better and people were so much nicer in the past. This trope is a particular favourite of religious apologists of course who like to make an illusionary linkage between morality and their particular deity. I suppose the logic goes something along the lines of - my religion is correct and is synonymous with good morals and there was much more religion in the past, therefore there was much better morality in the past. It's a fallacy of course, religion has very little to do with actual morality as the statistics on crime, homicide and death in conflict since the middle ages clearly show. Simply by virtue of there being so many different flavours with strictly parochial goals it's clear to see that morality is not God given, it's a human construct, something that changes and evolves as our different societies evolve and our local interests change; it's important to be vigilant, values can go down as well as up.

Any notion of increased violence in the world over time is complete bunkum, in the developed world (and most of the undeveloped world) the statistical rate of violent death has declined hugely over the last few millennia, this is a fact when measured properly, i.e. as a rate per head of population. For example the homicide rate in five European countries runs from 100 per 100,000 head of population in 1500 through to approximately 1 in 2000 (Eisner 2003) The execution rate in the USA starts at 80-90 per 100,000 population in the 1600s and is now bubbling along at much less than 1 (Espy & Smykla, 2002) The world (on average) is currently enjoying record low values of crime, death and homicide.

Of course if you want a glimpse of what things used to be like when theocracies based upon ancient scripture ruled the roost then take a look at Nigeria, religiously inspired groups of extremists are terrorising Northern parts of that country by kidnapping young girls, converting them to Islam and then selling them off to the highest bidder as wives, sex workers or just plain slaves. Some might say "what has this got to do with religion", everything in my view. It might be fair to say that this kind of barbarity has nothing to do with religion as practised today by educated people (of any faith) who are products of increasing state secularisation and the enlightenment. However, just look at the Bible and the Koran to read about the morals the Abrahamic God(s) supposedly espoused. People at that time treated prisoners, slaves and Women as property, it was quite acceptable, the stories and texts simply codified those values and called it "revelation", anyone can see precisely where these repulsive ideas come from. The Boko Haram  terrorists are simply taking a literal view of their spiritual hand book which to be fair clearly condones this kind of behaviour and has probably been drummed into them since they were small children. Christians shouldn't be feeling smug at this point either as the old testament of the Bible condones this exact same thing as well (Deuteronomy 21:10-14).

I'm sure the good people of Nigeria can defeat these terrorist gangs, especially with the help of American technology, but the problem is a much wider one than this localised issue, we not only need to defeat such people where ever they terrorise innocents, we need to defeat their literalistic ideas too.

Schadenfreude

It's terribly un-English to kick a man when he's down, but in this case I sense the exception makes the rule.

Great hopping lemons

Tried a new beer last night from local brewer Siren Craft Brew, it's called Limoncello and really does have lemons in it! When I first sipped I winced, so sour, but like a good margaritas it kind of grows on you with every subsequent sip, after a while the hops start to come through and the underlying 9% ABV begins warming your cockles. Probably not something I'd want to drink regularly but I can imagine that on a hot day with the right food, good company and a tall cold glass this original and unusual beer would be just the ticket.