Cyber?

What the hell does "retrain for a job in cyber" mean anyway?

 

Monday Mirth - 19 Corvids

Yeah, completely agree about the crow thing, evil looking, noisy things, scary..

 

Hot-spots

Well, looks like the second wave of Covid is well and truly here. The Government are announcing some further restrictions on movement and activity later today and it's expected that hospitality venues will have to shut in certain "hot-spots" in the North of the country as they have done in Scotland. I feel sorry for many sections of our community, at one end of the spectrum, for many elderly people the whole thing must seem completely bewildering at times. I see older people wandering, slightly hesitantly, around in shops and town centres with masks at half-mast, they clearly don't "get it". At the other end we have students who were encouraged to head off to university and who find themselves locked up in their halls of residence with only chocolate bars and dried up sandwiches to eat. This period should have been the best time of their lives but turns out it could be one of the worst. I'm not keen on British Winters at the best of times, I have a feeling that this one coming is going to take the biscuit..

 

Peace and quiet..

Another beery post! It's Saturday evening and I'm cooking a pork belly on fennel for my wife and I, and, since the kids are either out or away at Uni we're splashing out on the fancy cuisine front. While the meat is roasting in the oven I cracked open a new Siren beer obtained from the brewery this very afternoon, as fresh as a daisy and a delightful mash up of intense hoppy/resin flavours with a core of soft orange and mango, decent bitterness too. This IPA (Far Above the World) is made using Australian Galaxy hops which impart very vivid flavours to a beer, usually in the orange/tangerine direction, although it depends on the treatment and style of course. Great start to the evening tho, and the food is smelling lush, it's just started raining here so we're looking forward to getting stuck into a good film and hunkering down on the sofa in peace and quiet (for a change!)..

 

TGIF

 

It's been a hectic week at work and so I was looking forward to chilling out with a beer last night. For a change I thought I'd go for a stout rather than the usual pale ale/IPA so I cracked open this little number from Siren. A stout that's seen some maple wood and aged in old rum barrels, the flavour pick up wasn't huge but there was a nice spicy/boozy background note in the beer along with the usual coffee and cream vibe. Just the job for a chilly Friday evening, I bought a few different stouts in the Summer and I reckon most will improve (up to a point) with a bit of age, should be a good Christmas!

Friday Smirk

J&M this week. Quote mining or in other words finding snippets of out of context text in books that seem to support your position appears to be how you're supposed to "interpret" holy scriptures of most religions these days. This is true even when the sentence following the one "mined" absolutely contradicts the claim, I guess you're supposed to simply ignore that part? It's easy! When debating with believers I always try to ask what or who is behind the so obviously man-made, parochial ideas in their holy books, I never get a coherent answer, leading me to the logical assumption that it's man-made "all the way down"..

 

Breakthroughs

So, it looks like there may be a decent amount of efficacy in a monoclonal antibody treatment for Covid 19. If clinically proven then this is a very interesting development, it's basically a chemical that binds to the surface of the virus and makes it unable to attach itself to the receptors on our cells effectively rendering the virus impotent. In advance of getting a vaccine this could give us a way of giving people a much higher chance of surviving an infection and therefore reducing deaths in the short term. It's exciting work and something I wrote about back in March, if correct it's a real breakthrough.

 

A Life Examined

Watched David Attenborough's file "A Life on Our Planet" recently, powerful stuff, the man has had a truly wonderful life, however, his main message made me very sad and melancholic. I do hope future generations will treasure our natural environment more than past generations have, I fear it's too late for the current incumbents to change their ways, the only hope seems to lie with our children.
 

Retirement postponed

It's good to have a sense of humor but seriously the hospitality industry is on it's knees at the moment. It seems likely that many small businesses will go under if current conditions prevail (or get worse) and there's no obvious solution in sight other than a mass vaccination program (fingers crossed that's soon). Good time to be hoovering up distressed assets I suppose. I bet the corporate finance guys are having a field day and I do wonder how this virus lead depression will affect property prices in places like London, especially as firms realise they don't actually need shiny office buildings quite so big anymore. It's hard to see how a general downward hit on real-estate valuations won't have an effect on pension funds in the short term, and there I was hoping to retire soon, oh well..

 

Blame game

 

So, the Government has screwed up again. We're told that 16,000 records of Covid cases were "lost" due to an IT "glitch", the second wave is clearly much further advanced than we were being told it was. It's interesting how the spin doctors position this kind of schoolboy error when it involves technology. There is an implied undercurrent that because it's "technology" that errors like this are unavoidable, hence the word "glitch" rather than "mismanagement" but it's just not true. Even the most junior IT practitioner with half a brain would tell you that any organization shouldn't be using CSV files and Microsoft Excel for critical data work, that's what DATABASES were invented to do over 50 years ago! Not only were this team using the wrong technology for the job but they were even using an out of date version of that technology, one that was current in the 1980's i.e. 30+ years old! Excel is a personal productivity tool aimed at small scale ad-hoc projects, not industrial-scale and mission critical data-aggregation tasks.

Having worked on many public sector projects over the years I used to be appalled at the mismanagement often on display there, the endless false economies and bad decisions driven by short-termism, politics and inertia. Tellingly though, I seldom found that the troops at the coal face were to blame, more often than not it was the management layer that was at fault and the most fierce criticism came from below; but unfortunately was invariably ignored and/or discouraged. Mind you, I have to say that often large corporates are just as bad, I've lost count of the number of times I've seen departments holding their most precious data in flimsy, poorly designed and insecure spreadsheets! Including sensitive data on you and I! I hope that the inquiry into this fiasco will uncover the true faults and not simply find someone junior to "blame", for something as important as this, something that really does affect the lives (and deaths) of people, a rich and advanced country such as ours can surely do better than this?

Monday Moaning

 

Well, well, what a miserable weekend for weather that was!

Birthday trumps

It's my birthday today so we went out for a couple of drinks with some friends yesterday evening to celebrate. Came across a new Siren beer (just when I thought I'd tried them all!) that's only available in keg, i.e. no cans. It's called "Flex" and is a West-Coast style IPA meaning it's clear (ish) and made to be sticky, tropical and piney with a healthy dose of bitterness running through it. This one was a beauty, just what was needed to get my birthday weekend off to the right start. Feels a bit weird this year as my Son is away at University for the first time and so won't be joining us later when we pop over the border into Surrey to visit family. Hopefully he'll face-time and join in virtually, although judging from dispatches from the front, I suspect the lure of his new-found social life may just trump us.. 

 

Friday Smirk

Jesus and Mo this week pointing out the common inability of many closed minded people to see their own biases, and their propensity to cherry pick certain world-view's in order to cling to them against an overwhelming body of evidence that shows them to be faulty.

 

Nitro nights

One of the new Siren beers tried during September. This one is called "Twin Flames" and is a classic red ale with added American hops. Made with caramel malts it tasted toffee sweet with malt and caramel flavours to the fore, but, with a nice background of citrus fruits and red berries from the hops added cold-side. This particular beer (like this one) has been dosed with Nitrogen gas under pressure (obviously the folks over at Siren have a new gadget!) and so with a million tiny bubbles erupting when opened its mouthfeel is really, really creamy (in a Guinness kind of way), good effort!

 

Random words..

Had an interesting discussion with my teenage daughter yesterday about language (she's just started A-Level English) We were talking about how language changes and how words I used regularly as a teenager she simply wouldn't understand, like the examples above. Of course this works the other way around too, she often uses words like "peak", "sick" and "slack" and even though I know the traditional definitions of these words the modern slang meanings were a complete mystery to me (until I looked them up on urban-dictionary!) It's a funny old thing is language, very analogous to genetic drift in living organisms, isolated populations, selection pressure and randomness all seem to have an impact. I wonder if the number of distinct languages has an optimum value for a given global population of if the path to homogeny is unavoidable?

 

The real Europe...

Fascinating run through the way in which Human projects and conquests ebb and flow over the years. I'm sure every empire, religion, king and culture thought they were the ones in their day, all were wrong the only constant is change. 

Ignoring good advice

In light of those people (including Government spin doctors..) that are inclined to ignore sound medical advice when it comes to preventing the spread of Covid-19 to those people likely to die from it , I'll just leave this little meme here for your contemplation..

 

Swing low..

There are some cracking low alcohol beers being produced these days! Here's one that I had a couple of weeks ago, it's called "Half Mast" and is from my local craft brewer Siren. At only 2.8% ABV you can happily quench your thirst on a warm day with a couple of these and be none the worse for it, they taste great too, very fruity and peachy in a modern "IPA" style, using the latest American hops (Citra, Simcoe and Eukanot). Long may this trend continue!

 

History

While in Winchester last weekend I snapped this picture of King Alfred the Great's statue in the late afternoon Sunshine. It inspired me to do a bit of research on the old geezer, interesting it was too. I never did History at school, I found it boring when I was young and so I hadn't quite realised that when Alfred was on the throne (of Wessex) the UK or even England as unified entities didn't exist as they do today. Our little Island was a patchwork of different kingdoms that were mainly ruled by occupying powers, they seemed to be in a constant state of flux and terror from incursions by Danes, Saxons, Celts, Vikings and various other opportunists, it must have been exhausting! It's interesting to note how the arc of history since those times has been towards unification of our territories and consolidation of power centrally, it's only recently that that tide has turned somewhat. Alfred is celebrated for helping to bring together the various kingdoms against the external forces wishing to occupy this island, for promoting education and instigating the rule of law. If he could see the trajectory of things now I suspect poor old Alfred would be turning in his grave, that is if he had one, it was destroyed in the late 18th century and his bones scattered by workmen building a prison. 

Such are the cruel twists and turns of history.

 

Lockdown laughs

Meanwhile it's 9:30 pm at the Pig & Whistle..

 

Marketing

Pork Wellington, pommes frites and a tomato reduction..

 

Rest-day reason

Yep, you do hear a lot of old tosh when it comes to certain "natural" substances and so called "cures".

 

Winchester walk

Lovely (albeit slightly chilly) walk in the sunshine around the water meadows of Winchester yesterday. Met up with some good friends for a nice long stroll taking in the historic sites around the river Itchen, it was glorious. Afterwards we headed into the city for some food and beverages, stopping at the craft beer bar "Overdraft" and then over to Rick Stein's restaurant for some fishy delights.  

We also had a look around the famous cathedral, I spotted some interesting (and apparently v. old) graffiti on the columns, see picture below..

A thoroughly good day out, great weather, scenery, history, food, company and beer. What more could you ask for?

 

Juicy jaws

I think I've found my champion beer of 2020, it's not a new brew for Verdant and has been around for a while, but this is the first time I've been able to get my hands on some as it's not unusual for it to sell out within hours of rolling off the line. It's haze for days and as citrus fruity as you could possibly want, oranges, grapefruit, tangerines etc. loaded to the max with Citra and Galaxy hops a complete feast for the senses, gonna need a bigger can..

 

Ban blasphemy

Heart warming letter to the President of Nigeria from the director of the Auschwitz museum regarding a 13 year old boy called Omar Farouq. Omar is claimed to have committed "blasphemy" during an argument with a friend and was sentenced by an Islamic court to 10 years in prison (yes in the 21st century!) - all cultures are not equal.

 

Friday Smirk

The ever perceptive J&M. I guess some people are just a little more "needy" than others..

 

People love to moan

 

So, the news is full of people moaning and bitching about the second wave lock-down rules, or claiming to be "confused". I suppose we should come to expect that a certain percentage of our society is always going to moan and bitch about things whatever the circumstances or "thing" under discussion, and another percentage are stupid enough to be genuinely confused (or uncaring/reckless) Populations tend work this way, it's analogous to the percentage of our society who are almost certain to die if they contract the disease itself.

I was listening to the new Times Radio news channel this morning and they were interviewing Mat Hancock. The interviewer said something like "so the worst case scenario is that restrictions will last beyond Christmas" to which Hancock replied "no, the worst case scenario is that you'll die from Covid-19", a good response (for a change) I thought, it bought a much more serious tone to the whole interview and some actual facts were discussed rather than the usual media tack of droning on endlessly about people's perceived "feelings" as if they were material to something like a virus. I'm getting tired of listening to English graduates (TV presenters) interviewing Lawyers (Politicians) on technical subjects; it's so refreshing to hear from a rational scientist talking about what we actually do and don't know rather than the endless interpretation and re-interpretation of people's supposed "feelings". The only safe bet in all this is that whoever we are and whatever side of the debate we fall, we all love to moan, including me!

Midweek Mirth..

Corona Lisa anyone?

 

Longer evenings..

Making the evenings last a little longer with a small outdoor fire, handy for getting rid of shredded paperwork too, can't have those "paps" going through my trash looking for juicy stories (chance would be a fine thing!) PS if you stare at the flames long enough you can see a rabbit's head, must have been channeling my inner "Bigwig"..

 

Old and New

Had a new (old) beer yesterday evening, it was one of my local craft brewer (Siren) standard or "core" beers, "Broken Dream" which is a coffee flavoured stout except that rather than carbonating the beer with the usual Carbon Dioxide gas it had been blasted with Nitrogen instead. The effect that this has is to permeate the liquid with really tiny bubbles (CO2 bubbles are much larger) and those bubbles add enormously to the mouth-feel of the beer. It was like thick, unctuous cream and really improved what is already a very good beer (it won the CAMERA 2018 champion beer of Britain award) As you can see from the photo the beer looks like a well made espresso with a perfect caramel coloured "crema"! Whatever will they think of next!

 

Windsor walks

Had a day off work yesterday (Friday) and my Wife and I took a trip over to Windsor which is a few miles from where we live. We parked up in the great-park and walked into town from there (about 4 km) Entertainment and exercise ticked off in one go! In the photo is the Eton bridge (1824), and glorious it was too in the late September sunshine! The river was quite busy, lot's of leisure boats milling around and quite a few tourists in the town as well which was surprising, anyway, we had a nice mooch and ended up in a relatively new and previously unexplored (for us) craft-beer joint on St. Leonards road called "A Hoppy Place". It was nice and fortunately almost empty which meant it was quite relaxing, had a couple of halves in there and then strolled back to the car, up the long-walk and through the park.

Here we are in "A Hoppy Place" sampling a couple of the brews they had on tap, on the left is a West Coast IPA called "Oregon Trail" made by Berkshire brewer Elusive and on the right another local brew by Siren called "Lumina" a beer that I've tried before. The Elusive brew was lovely, a classic pine and citrus combo with a solid core of bitterness as per the style, must see if I can grab some cans of this from the brewery shop!

Friday Smirk

J&M strip up to its usual high standard. If you are used to denying reality for a large part of your life then I suppose it's a only a small leap to thinking that the constraints of reality don't apply to you and it's therefore unavoidably upsetting when that belief is shown to be false..

 

World class waffle

Just about sums up my view of many of the TEDx talks I've seen, for the most part they're not a lot more than sales and marketing pitches for technology companies really. Very high waffle factor and very little innovative content, a lot of trendy three-letter-acronyms and meaningless peacock words, and if I hear the phrase "world class" one more time I will have to throw my vegan bao bun at the screen..

Echos from the past..

Listening to the guff coming out of the Government at the moment around Brexit and Covid testing I am strongly reminded of this little insight into the mind of a master propagandist. This could have been written about both the UK and the US Government campaigning/pitching strategies today, quite sobering..

Favourite 45

Feeling very old today, one of my favourite albums of all time turned 45 years old today!

 

Is there life on Mars Venus?

 

There's an interesting story floating around today about a scientific observation that there's Phosphine (a gaseous chemical compound) in the atmosphere of Venus. The interesting bit is that the only we we know (other than in a lab) that Phosphine is made is via life processes (for example in the digestive tract of Penguins or via bacterial digestion) Since we're pretty sure that there are no chemistry labs or Penguins on Venus then perhaps there are microbes? Since the surface of the planet is far to hot to host life (400 degrees Centigrade) it's been postulated that perhaps the microbes are floating around in the thick clouds that shroud the planet at an altitude of around 50 km, it's plausible since the temperature at that height is fine for life as we know it (i.e. 20-30 Centigrade). The only problem with the life on Venus hypothesis is that the atmosphere is highly acidic, being made up of around 60-70% Sulfuric acid which is hardly conducive to living things as we know them. Maybe life has evolved there to be so different from life on Earth that such a hostile environment can be endured but it seems unlikely, or maybe there is some, as yet, unknown geo-physical process going on that produces PH3 (Phosphine) - time will tell.

Monday Mirth

 

I'm always on the lookout for a good pun. How about this one, "Fen Diagram" anyone?

Problematic history..

 

In an extraordinary move, Edinburgh University has symbolically renamed the "David Hume Tower" to "40 George Square" in response to a petition (signed by 1700 people) claiming that the comments of the philosopher 300 years ago on race cause "distress" today. Like most people of his age (i.e. 1700's) pre-Darwin and pre-Mendel their views on race were simply wrong, coloured by prevailing religious and cultural ideas and not facts regarding evolution and genetics, which confirm our close relatedness to all other peoples. For us to judge 18th century opinions from the comfort of the post-enlightenment 21st century is problematic, it would even be difficult to judge people's opinions from the 1970's without some account of context, so for that it's is difficult for me to see how we can seriously judge the feelings, opinions, intentions or recorded internal monologues of someone that far back in history. 

On the other hand I think it's much more valid to judge people (of any era) based upon their actions, so long as they weren't coerced, I think it's OK to have a pop at what they actually did. Hume is well known for being tangentially involved in the transatlantic slave trade, he is on record as being involved in at least one transaction regarding human slaves, albeit only from a financial involvement. For this I think it's perfectly reasonable for people today to criticize him and to perhaps avoid venerating his memory without that important caveat. Hume was clearly a great thinker (some might say genius) in many ways, his views on many things have molded our views on philosophy and ethics for at least a couple of centuries now and so that cannot be discounted. But, we must also accept the fact that he was clearly also an individual with moral flaws and certainly didn't always practice what he preached! It's a matter of record that he turned a blind eye to practices (i.e. slavery) which we can justifiably feel there is no way such an intelligent and well read man could not reason as being wrong, the question is, what would you or I have done in his place? We have no way of knowing, and put simply, that is the dilemma of every future generation to wrestle with.

Neo Normal

Since it was such a lovely evening last night we decided to have some drinks in the garden, I snagged a new beer from my local brewery (Siren) whilst there earlier in the day. It's a West Coast IPA called "Neo Normal" and features a brand new hop called "Talus" from the USA. It's always interesting when new hop breeds come along, this one is related to a favourite of mine called "Sabro" which I commented on last year and is similar in many ways except a lot more grapefruit'y and has a nice flower character to it, somewhat reminiscent of an English hop like East Kent Goldings. Anyway, we had a nice evening watching the Sun go down, didn't even need jumpers which is always a bonus in September!

 

Sunny Saturday

 

It's the weekend and my local brewery (Siren) have opened their tap-yard (out-doors only) for fresh beers. Now that my Daughter has a Saturday job and my Son is at University my Wife and I decided to partake of some afternoon beer buzz (albeit socially distanced and fully registered!) - seems like years since we had a Saturday afternoon to ourselves! Delightful it was too, a couple of fresh brews in the sunshine and a couple of vegan dishes from a street-food vendor. Let's hope that the current pandemic doesn't impinge too far into this simple pleasure as the Summer wains, I hear next week is going to be warm too!

Friday Smirk

Delightful little J&M cartoon for a misty Friday morning. Stupid is as stupid does, as Forrest Gump advises. It's almost always wiser to judge people by their actions rather than their words or appearance. But, clearly words inform and instruct actions quite a lot of the time and especially when those words contain threats from authority about eternal damnation and magical voices beaming instructions from the sky, our species is better off without "magic" IMO.

 

Numbers game

So the UK Government is laying down some stricter rules on how many people can meet up, the limit is now 6 people max. This means that my family can't have a get together for a while, or at least all of us at once! Luckily, we had one last bank holiday Monday so we can probably make that experience last, I wonder if pets count, we could always lock the dogs in the garage. It's a shame that we're experiencing a resurgence of Covid cases, I was kind of getting used to confidently going places again and I reckon this retrograde step might knock people back a bit. I remember back in the early Spring seeing a graph from Imperial Collage London about the likely waves that might hit us in terms of ICU cases, I posted it on the 18th of March and it showed a big increase over March and April then a lull followed by a smaller spike in September, seems like they called it correctly so far. If the rest of the prediction is accurate we should see another lull in October/November and then another spike in December/January followed by another lull until we get a vaccine. I guess it depends on what measures we're forced to take in terms of lock-downs and social distancing/PPE etc. but given that we may also get a Winter flu issue at the same time I can't help thinking that it's going to feel like a long Winter, think I'll get my Turkey order in now.

 

Male dominated Mid-Week Mirth

This is so true, not just Physicists either, I studied Engineering at Uni and it was true of us too, Male dominated subjects like these are a nightmare for increasing social intelligence, they should make at least a couple of hours a week studying a Humanities subject mandatory, mix it up a bit.

 

Minority-Majority

This seems like a truism, of course you could argue that this applies to most minorities given enough of an incentive, but, there's something exquisitely pernicious about a system that requires you to think a certain way about reality with no evidence whatsoever and claims that there's nothing you can do or learn that excludes you from submitting to whatever the prevailing mythology is, or else! On the other hand when faiths are in a minority (or emasculated by secular law) then they like to appear as puppy dogs, i.e. how could anyone possibly object to religion X, I mean just look at the charity, the architecture, the hymns, the pretty hats etc..

 

Bridging the generation gap

I took my Son up to his new digs at St. Andrews University over the weekend, boy, that was a long drive, 450 miles each way from my home in the South (Berkshire)! Haven't driven that far in quite a few years, pretty tiring but the roads were kind to me, not too busy and the weather was glorious. The picture above shows the return journey as I was traversing the Queensferry Crossing, a huge new bridge crossing the Firth of Forth that opened 3 years ago. I'd never seen it before but wow, what a stunner!

In order to break the journey up a bit we stayed overnight in the Edinburgh port area, Leith (see photo below), it was some nice father-son time just the two of us together on the long journey, a nice meal and a few pints by the old docks at the end of it, watching the world go by. 

He was feeling quite nervous about what was going to happen and where he was going to stay, making new friends and the whole future shock of having to fend for himself etc. So, we had a good old chin-wag about all of that, I hopefully put his mind at rest with tales of my own experiences in London, away from home as an adult for the first time in the big bad world (I loved it!). Neither of us had visited St. Andrews before and so only had Google Earth to go on, but, when we arrived the next morning, the Sun was out, it was warm and the town was buzzing with new arrivals, it was a beautiful place! Turns out that his rooms were really nice and right in the middle of the town, I was secretly relieved and he started to become excited! I must admit I felt a little envious, for all the great learning potential and fun ahead but, on the other hand, also a little dread for the lonely (long) drive home for myself. In the end the traffic was good to me again and I made the journey in a little under 8 hours, I decided that when the Sun is out the scenery in Scotland is very hard to beat.

Friday Smirk

J and M cartoon today, funny but with a serious underlying message (as satire is supposed to be) made in tribute to the innocent cartoonists who were murdered in cold blood by theocratic neanderthals in Paris, January 2015. Like most incoherent and badly reasoned ideas, the arguments for the Abrahamic God leave it's adherents with little else but threats of eternal torment and violence to convince people to submit to their superstitions, it's always been that way with all of them, some "prophets" are just late to the party.

 

One sided laws

 

The commencement of the trial of terrorists allegedly involved in the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris this week has raised the issue of blasphemy laws in the media again. Predictably those countries with regimes that are theocratic in character and, if truth be known, probably most insecure politically (i.e. Islamic ones like Pakistan) are up in arms about the re-publishing of the famous "Mohammed cartoons" by the satirical magazine. These states claim that these images offend "a billion Muslims" around the World, this is utter BS, 99.99% of those people will never even see these images and even if they did they would almost certainly be adult and rational enough to simply ignore them and get on with their day (as most reasonable Human beings would when faced with an abstract image on a piece of paper) 

It's the religious institutions (i.e. clergy) and the Governments propped up by those religions that are the ones who most often cry wolf in these situations, and frankly we should stand firm against them by asserting that we value our principals over their feelings. Freedom of speech and conscience are far, far more important than the personal beliefs and opinions of any frothing dictator, Pope, Imam or Bishop, under our system they can believe and say whatever they like, but the days when superstition has supremacy over reason should be far behind our species. 

Andrew Copson (Chief Executive of Humanists UK) put it well when he said on a TV interview today, 

"A Muslim is free to tell me that my beliefs are wrong, that there is a God and that Mohammed is his Prophet. A Christian is equally free to tell me the same in relation to their beliefs. Likewise, I am able to tell them that I think that they are both wrong. Together, as equals, we can have this debate.

What we cannot have is one side of that debate trying to silence the other by law, and that’s what blasphemy laws do. They sanction violence in the pursuit of that. That’s one of the reasons why it’s important for all civilized men and women to stand against blasphemy laws.”

Je suis Charlie

The trial of (some of) the people suspected of being involved in the 2015 terrorist attack at the offices of French satirical magazine "Charlie Hebdo" began today in that Paris. In an act of defiance the magazine republished cartoons that sparked protests in several Muslim countries. No doubt many religious apologists and Islamists will get upset again, that is their prerogative, but my view is that it's entirely appropriate for this organisation to do this, it's signaling an important secular and ethical point, that violence and terrorism should not prevail over freedom of conscience and speech. I was glad to see that President Macron defended the act, saying that it's not the place of the French Government to interfere with a free press, and I agree with him, it's a shame our own politicians here in the UK aren't as decisive in such matters.

The 2015 killings in Paris led to a whole slew of terrorist attacks in France, killing more than 250 people, we shouldn't forget that such acts aren't limited to "a few bad apples", views on blasphemy and what may be justified in the name of it are very widely held, especially in the Muslim world. A recent Pew poll showed that 86% of people in Egypt, for example, believe that apostasy (i.e. exercising the right of freedom of conscience by leaving a religion) should be punishable by death, that's over 80 million people! Egypt's top Islamic authority said (on Wednesday) that re-publishing the cartoons was a "criminal act", clearly opposition to freedom of speech and conscience hasn't budged in some parts. We're left with the rather ironic but profoundly obvious statement that the editor of the magazine, Stephane Charbonnier (Charb), made at an Associated Press meeting in 2012, he said, "I live under French law. I don't live under Koranic law." Unfortunately that system was unable to prevent his murder by Islamist thugs intent on imposing their medieval superstitions on us all through threats of deadly violence, let's hope the families of the victims are able to receive some justice soon.

 

Conscious?

Interesting thought experiment going on in our house this week, are animals conscious in the same way that we (Humans) are? The reason this particular debate was sparked was that we discovered a dead pigeon in our garden the other day, killed in a flurry of grey feathers by perhaps a fox or possibly a cat, certainly some unknown and deadly assassin. 

The interesting thing about this particular fatality was that the aforementioned pigeon had a long-standing partner and we regularly saw them together in the garden (particularly during lock-down), they were a breeding pair and have been resident in our garden for several years. The partner of the deceased survived the attack unscathed, and could be seen wandering around the garden seemingly "looking" for his or her lost other (pigeons mate for life). Now, you could argue that the remaining bird was simply plodding around the same territory as it was before looking for food as it would have done with it's partner, on the other hand it did look to us like it was lingering slightly longer at certain points and looking slightly more intently when passing the place where the dirty deed was done. Perhaps we are anthropomorphizing the situation or perhaps we are sensing a very subtle change in behaviour that represents a sophisticated consciousness at work. Perhaps we will never know, but in any case it's an interesting Biological and philosophical question for us to think about!