Tuesday Titter

From the excellent xkcd, must have been epic..

Contrasts

Photo taken by one of our mates on our recent trip to Cambodia. It's a Buddhist monk taking a breather in front of the magnificent Angkor Wat temple complex, I love the way the bright colour of his garb contrasts with the centuries old grey stone of the buildings, the passing of time captured in the image of an instant.

New Style Alert..

There's a new style of beer in town, it's called a "West Coast Pils" and is an unholy cross between a Pilsner (Lager) and a West Coast IPA, something that on paper probably shouldn't work but I thought I'd better put the research hours in and find out what all the fuss is about. This particular incarnation, made by Siren, is called "Staccato" and is constructed via a clean base of lager malts and yeast but made dry and crisp with a dry hop of Citra, Mosaic, El Dorado and Nelson. 

Now, in traditional lager brewing you don't normally see these kinds of aromatic hops, nor do you see any kind of dry hopping, nor too much bitterness. This beer has all of those things, characteristics normally found in West Coast style IPA's and Pales. It's a good mix in my estimation, a nice beer, easy drinking and packed full of flavour. I can see this appealing to people who are hooked on the crisp, dry style of modern lagers but are wary of newer aromatic/fruity American style IPA's and also people who are IPA addicts but who've not delved into lager in all it's forms. This is a compromise between the two worlds and perhaps a gateway into new taste experiences for people on both sides of the lager-ale divide?

Hospitality success..

There are many hospitality venues really struggling at present, there are many reasons for this including rent increases, labour costs, costs of raw materials increases, energy costs etc. but I must say that there are some hospitality venues that just seem to get it right! I think it's worth pondering, for a moment, why some venues succeed and some don't are there any patterns or correlations in what they're doing and could the less successful places learn a thing or two from the more successful ones?

The photo (above) is a little place called "The Bear" a pub close to Paddington Station in London, somewhere I hang out in from time to time when I'm waiting for the next train home, this picture was snapped last Thursday (early evening) and shows the place rammed with after work drinkers and queues at the bar 2 or 3 people deep. Why is this place (apparently) so successful when pubs in my home town struggle to attract one or two people on a Thursday evening and others simply don't bother opening during the week.

There could be many reasons of course, location is pretty important clearly, being in London and close to such a big rail terminus is obviously advantageous! Many tens of thousands of people pass through every day especially on Thu/Fri when drinks after work are still common. Interestingly though, most of the people I talk to who live around my part of the world and who use Paddington Station regularly have never heard of The Bear. There's probably a small amount of passing tourist trade also, which you won't see in the burbs but it's probably not significant. Then there's the old booze-food dichotomy, i.e. are you a pub or are you a restaurant, clearly there are different demographics for either or both.

I think the main key to success is to specialise, the old saying "jack of all trades, master of none" is particularly appropriate here. Many of the pubs in my locale feel they need to do everything, food, drink, dog walks, quiz nights, fortune tellers, you name it and guess what, they do none of those things well. There are a few pubs around here that are head and shoulders above the others. For example, the Fox & Hounds in Caversham and the Nags Head in Reading, these two are packed out every day of the week and both of them specialise in beer. It seems obvious (to me at least) that there's a certain demographic that goes to the pub for good beer, and who want there to be wide and deep interest in that beverage, i.e. by having a large selection of continually rotating taps from a multitude of producers. Doing this holds the attention of the beer geek, and there are enough of them around these days to support many such establishments, The Bear is such a pub, it doesn't do food and only accepts cards but the people who hang out there don't care about that, they're there for the beer.

Clearly it's not only beer that's a draw, many people, in fact a majority probably, don't care about the beer, they're happy to drink Guinness or Peroni everywhere they go and never change. That demographic is probably more interested in the food offerings, that's great, but the pub needs to differentiate itself on it's food! I went to a pub in Weybridge, Surrey the other weekend and sat down to a meal with a couple of friends. The beer choice was awful, nothing but mass produced industrial beer like Madri and Timothy Tailors etc. but that was tolerable we were primarily there for the meal. When the food came out it was also awful, bland, predictable and clearly pre-packaged and heavily processed, and probably re-heated in a micro-wave oven! The bill came to around £40 a head with a couple of pints, truly rubbish, I will never darken their door again! Moral of the story, if you're going  to do food, make sure it's memorable, distinct or even just good value.

So, in summary I think that there may be many reasons for a pub to be successful and it's important that any particular establishment understands those dimensions and chooses to be "good" at one or two of them according to the demographic they wish to service. A few weeks ago I went to a pub in London for lunch after watching my Daughter run her first half marathon, I blogged about it here, it had clearly decided to specialise in both beer and food together (it was packed out), both were outstanding, great choices, highly memorable food and although relatively expensive (£50 a head) the cost is not the thing I will remember about it, and I'll definitely be back!

Too much information?

I made some oat cookies the other day, with raisins and prunes, they turned out all right I reckon, keep you nice and regular too (too much information?)

Bristol day trip

We spent a lovely day in Bristol yesterday (Saturday) My Son was down from Scotland visiting his girlfriend who's at university there and so my Wife and I hopped on the train and met them for lunch. Of course no trip to this city is complete without a swift half in King St somewhere and my Son and I grabbed a cheeky one while the girls went shopping. I snapped the picture above while sitting and chatting with him, it's a medieval building housing one of the landmark pubs of Bristol, the Llandoger Trow (some kind of boat apparently)

For lunch we tried a new (to us) restaurant on Corn St. called Mowgli (see picture below). Indian street food in an upmarket setting, it was very nice, lots of small plates in a kind of tapas style, bit expensive though at around £40 per head. After lunch we worked off the ample food by taking a walk up the hill to Clifton to have a look around the markets and take in the relaxed Saturday afternoon vibe, we were also treated to a tour of the various "student" pubs that they frequent which was nice. The kids were staying in Bristol so later in the evening we bid our farewells and walked back to the station to grab the 8pm train back East, lovely to catch up with everyone and a great day out!

Karma

Amusing to see that Humza Yousaf's political fate may now lie in the hands of Ash Regan, the woman who left the SNP in disgust at its plans for gender self-ID. What with the crazy hate-speech laws in Scotland and the silly 20mph speed limit in Wales it looks like some recent progressive ideas are about to take a beating!

Kernel TTO

The Fox & Hounds in Caversham had a Kernel tap takeover yesterday (Friday) these are as rare as rocking horse sh1t so I just had to pop in on the way back from town and try a couple of beers that I'd never had before. I can confirm that they were all up to the usual Kernel standards, i.e. completely banging! I only had an hour or so to kill but had four halves in all, of the following ales,

Pils Rakau - classic pilsner but with NZ hops, crisp and floral

Citra, Galaxy, Ella, Vic Secret Pale Ale - Dry with citrus and melon, quite bitter, addictive

Galaxy Mosaic Pale Ale - Wonderfully balanced, stone fruits, orange, superb

Table Beer - Sampled on cask rather than the usual keg, soft, fruity, clean, excellent.

Some great beers on offer, shame I could only stop for a couple but I had to get the train home, the full list is pictured below..

Still on the tread-mill

So, I made it! Since my last post on this subject I've passed the 2000 successive days of completing the full set of exercise goals in my Apple fitness app. That's roughly five and a half years of dedication to achieving a minimum level of steps, calories and minutes of exercise every day. 

I must say, as might be expected, doing this has become somewhat of a "habit" these days and the daily programme has evolved to becoming 30 minutes of weights, 20 minutes of yoga followed by a brisk 8k walk (sub 10 minute km's, usually around midday) I think the hardest thing about this schedule is simply getting a coat on and going out for a walk when it's hissing down with rain and blowing a hooligan, which let's face it, has been an alarmingly high number of days so far this year.

Friday Smirk

This week's J&M cartoon, up to the usual high standard, pointing out what should be obvious to most thinking people, i.e. that not all religions are the same and the beliefs and practices of followers is quite often in conflict with modern post-Enlightenment values like equality, democracy, liberalism, tolerance and progress.

Life returns

I've blogged a couple of times now about a little pond that I walk past almost every day. I'm not sure it's a natural pond as it first appeared as a sales gimmick for a housing development (outside the sales office), then a couple of years later (once all the houses were sold) it was completely dug up and the plastic liner removed. Six months after that the water had returned and ever since then (about a 18 months ago) it's been regenerating itself with plants, reeds and depth. 

I noticed today that the little pond had some higher order life going on too, a family of ducklings (four of them) have moved in and judging by the size of them they must have hatched in the pond somewhere (although it's hard to see where, it's so small!), anyway ducks means that there's enough plant and aquatic life to sustain larger animals and that probably also means fish eggs being transported from other ponds via birds feet, I can't wait to see more critters on my daily walks as things develop. 

Strange Times

There's a sad trend going on in our town at the moment, and I suspect many other towns across this country? Shops, cafes, pubs and restaurants in the town centre are closing their doors at an ever increasing rate and being replaced by things like private GP surgeries, clinics (of various kinds) and barbers (??), I think our little town has at least 10 places where a bloke can get a quick hair cut! 

I guess people are suffering from ever increasing rates and rents and struggling to make a living on low margin businesses like retail and hospitality. The other dynamic that's happening is the seemingly total disintegration of the NHS, we've gone from (in 2018) being able to get a GP appointment the same morning as you call, to not being able to get anyone to answer the phone in a whole morning!

I guess that people are feeling the pinch and going out for food and drink a lot less than pre-covid and those businesses are getting squeezed. Private health establishments (pay by appointment) seem to be popping up everywhere, I suppose they're servicing a desire for decent response times (or even just some response) for our community health issues.

Our communities seem to be changing and I couldn't honestly say it's for the better. Will we all end up huddled around our TV's waiting for food deliveries, house by house not ever venturing out unless it's to visit a private dental clinic which we've been saving up for the last 6 months, strange times.

Earth Day

What with Earth day being yesterday and all, here's a nice photo of Mount Fuji with a shooting star, the patience required to get shots like this is slightly mind boggling..

Going to 11

One of the beers that my local craft brewery (Siren) created to celebrate their 11th birthday back in March was a Helles (lager) called "Times Eleven", I tried one at the weekend and it was delicious! It follows on the heels of a similar beer they made for their 10th birthday called (unsurprisingly) "Times Ten", a crisp, bready floral beer in the traditional German style, but this one goes to eleven...

Threatening Intellect

Thinking about Hitch being posthumously 75 last week I came across this on the interwebs the other day, decent likeness I thought. It also captures something of his somewhat threatening (to many of our religious brothers and sisters) intellect, good effort!

Monday Mirth

When it's cold enough to see your own tweets..

Re-balance needed?

You would have thought that with all the problems this country has at the moment, political division, corrupt ministers, decline of the NHS, cost of living crisis, housing crisis, bankrupt councils, climate change etc. etc. that we should be prioritising the issues we tackle somehow, rather than getting collective knickers in a twist over more mundane and subjective matters that, frankly, no one gives a tinker's cuss about. Apparently not. 

The Portman Group, an organisation set up to "encourage responsible drinking habits" has this week upheld a "complaint" against the Beak Brewery (Lewes, Sussex) from a single member of the public, that the "bright, cartoon branding" on their cans may have particular appeal to under-18s. It's amazing that anyone would reach this conclusion, and even if they did, so what, I'm sure lots of things appeal to under 18s that they can't have (legally) How about if your product artwork appeals to "everyone" - surely that just means it's good? I'm deeply suspicious of this organisation, as a famous person once said, if you want to know what really motivates an organisation then just follow the money! The Portman Group is funded by a cabal of huge beverage companies, including Diageo, Asahi, Heineken and others, all of whom have many reasons to cause problems for small independent firms that threaten their dominance and produce "disruptive" products that large numbers of people prefer, it's an age old tale.

Beak is a small independent firm that's been in business just over 10 years and this artwork has been their trademark in all of that time, all of their cans feature similar styles of art which is produced by a local artist. This is the first "complaint" about it ever (this says a lot IMO) and now they're going to have to bear the expense and inconvenience of changing all of their can art, probably scrapping a load of existing labels and reacclimatising their growing customer base. One of the criticisms levelled by the Portman Group was that the font used was "similar" to that used on the Mr Men cartoon series, FFS, it's a font, no one cares about a font!

Small businesses in this country have a hard enough time surviving as it is, particularly in the hospitality sector, they certainly don't need this kind of distraction and expense on the basis of a single anonymous complaint by a random member of the public (once in ten years of trading). In contrast this same organisation dismissed a "complaint" by someone that a pump clip from Twickenham Brewery showing a naked woman for a beer called "Naked Ladies" (ah those rugger buggers) was perfectly fine, while I have no problem with the image (it's a cartoon!) the dissonance (or discrimination?) on display is palpable.

This kind of pedantry and woke BS is indicative of how large corporations these days seem to "woke-wash" many things that they do while all the time acting in their own fiscal interests. This obviously has an unrepresentative and often corrosive influence in the town square and many people believe a re-balance is needed. Fortunately we're starting to see things change, with the recent rulings on medical interventions to do with gender dysphoria and things like the recent win by Katharine Birbalsingh over religious interference in schools, different areas of discourse but similar problems of the unscientific  (i.e. based on feelings rather than facts) activism (or corporate interest) of the few affecting the many. I hope this bounce back continues, we need strong laws on important matters in our society but these laws should sit on a solid foundation of facts, evidence and experience not the balance-sheets of huge conglomerates, personal fetish or individual feelings.

Dan Dennett

Sad to learn today that Dan Dennett the American Philosopher died yesterday. Dan was one of the original "new atheists" along with Dawkins, Hitchens and Sam Harris. Back in the day I very much enjoyed his debates and lectures, particularly on the topic of evolution and his book titled "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" was a banger, I must re-read it!

Saturday Smile

Observing celestial events in the UK be mostly like...

Friday Smirk

 

J and M pointing out one of the core principals of religious faith over the ages, i.e. if the incoherency of your position is threatened by evidence or logic... get violent.

Cambodia - Part 3

Siem Reap wasn't a huge place, no modern glass and steel towers on the skyline but it did have quite a large number of hotels, bars and restaurants for the tourists visiting Angkor Wat. The picture above is a pano taken from our hotel room which was on the fourth floor of the building, in a suburb of the town, it was evening time when this was taken but it was still over 30 degrees.

The food and drink was a little bit more pricey in town than previously in the big cities, I guess that was because of the higher ratio of tourists to locals, it felt really expensive after our trek through Vietnam and Phnom Penh but actually it was still pretty cheap, here's a typical menu from a mid-range restaurant (prices in US Dollars)

Even though we were in the middle of Cambodia in a small town I still managed to find some craft beer! There was a little bar by the canal that runs through the centre called "Embargo" that's run by an English bloke who brews his own beer as well as stocking some of the more popular Vietnamese craft brews (like Heart of Darkness) it was a great little spot, and the beer was cold and tasty! (see picture below)

One evening we decamped (via tut-tut) to a local hall/theatre where we were treated to some local music and traditional dance, it was a very touristy affair with quite a few people, but it was enjoyable and the buffet was amazing. I snapped a few pictures (see below) everyone was impressed with the bright colours of the costumes and the extraordinary finger bending!

The night life in Siem Reap was quite vibrant but also quite seedy, lot's of balding middle aged European blokes cruising around trying to pick up Asian girls (and/or boys?). It was sad to see but inevitable I suppose when you have such a wealth gap. I do wonder though, some of the girls must be quite disappointed when they ultimately find out that the bloke they latched onto is a divorced plumber from Rochdale, still, hopefully some find what they're looking for. There's one street in the town named "Beer Street" (I'm sure it's not really called that) where all the action takes place after dark, I snapped the picture below, it looks colourful but in reality was like running a gauntlet of people trying to sell you things, we walked through it one night (on the way home from a restaurant) but didn't spend any time there.

One point of interest, the coloured cubes hanging from the overhead wires were for the local beer which was amusingly called "Krud", I guess it's an acquired taste.

We enjoyed our stay in Siem Reap and it was from there that we left for the journey home. There were two legs to it, first a flight from Siem Reap airport to Saigon and then direct from Saigon back to Heathrow, London. The airport at Siem Reap was quite a surprise, it was brand spanking new and looked fabulous, however there was no one there, completely empty. Apparently built with Chinese money in the pre-covid tourist boom it's utility has somewhat waned since then, I snapped the picture below to show the main terminal building with not a soul in sight (except my Mrs)

The flight to Saigon was short, less than an hour, and pretty soon we were back in the maelstrom that is Ho Chi Minh City airport. After spending all our left over currency on things we didn't need we went down to the departure gate and waited to be called to board. Fortunately everything was running on time and we left around Midnight on our Boing 787 back to London (see below).

Our flight landed a little early at Heathrow T4 and our bags came through quite quickly so we shuffled downstairs to the train station and hopped onto the Elizabeth line to take us home, this involved a quick change at Hayes which proved to be quite a shock to the system! It was only 7am so on the platform it was overcast, grey, freezing cold and drizzling, a rude awakening after the heat and sunshine of Asia,! Anyway, it was good to be home and we were happy to have banked so many amazing sights, smells and sounds on our travels, I wonder where we'll go next?

Hitch @75

 

Christopher Hitchens, contrarian and public intellectual, author of many books and debates on subjects that interest me would have been 75 this week (he died in 2011). In such troubled times his clarity of thought and ability to articulate complex issues is sorely missed, many of his musings on people like Putin and situations like Gaza turned out to be bang on the money.

Cobb

Stunning photo of the Cobb in Lyme Regis during a recent storm (Ciarán, Nov 2023), it's amazing what new images become possible with cheap drone technology that only a few years ago would have required a helicopter and cost thousands.

Cambodia - Part 2

 

After the horrors of Phnom Penh it was nice to get out into the countryside for a bit. Siem Reap is the location of the famous "Angkor Wat" temple complex and was the capital of ancient Cambodia from around 1150 to the 1600s. Over this long history it was attacked, sacked, rebuilt and extended many  times and there are many hundreds of ruined temples and buildings in the surrounding jungle. The picture above is the one that most people will be familiar with, it shows the main temple at sunrise, it's a magnificent structure and contains some fascinating insights into both Hinduism and Buddhism having transitioned in it's lifetime from one religion to the other, somehow managing to merge ideas from both. We visited a couple of different places while in the area but the main temple was probably the most impressive, you can't climb the towers anymore (too many visitors causing too much wear and tear) but you can wander around freely pretty much everywhere else.

The picture above shows the temple at Bayon, this is another complex at Angkor and is often called the "smiling faces" temple as it consists of many stone towers most of which have a smiling Buddha carved into the stone. This temple, built in the 12th and 13th century, looks like it's more degraded that the main Angkor Wat structure although you can still wander around most of it to look at the wall carvings and internal corridors and rooms.

We also visited the temple at Ta Prohm which is another large complex built in the early 13th century, which in its time was a centre of Buddhist learning and built entirely without mortar. This temple is mostly famous these days for being the one used in the film "Tomb Raider" and features many old silk-cotton trees whose roots, looking more reptilian than plant, are slowly penetrating the stones and breaking the temple up, see picture below.

I couldn't leave Ta Prohm without snapping a picture of the famous spot where Laura Croft did her thing, so here it is in all it's glory (below)! Although I have seen the film I couldn't remember the scene, personally I thought the place more reminiscent of the monkey palace sequence from Jungle Book!

There were some amazing structures to be seen, far too many to put here but here are a few shots that show some of the interiors of the various temple complexes.

After some sweaty excursions (the heat was fierce) to the various wonders of the Angkor temple complexes we retired to the nearest large town of Siem Reap, where we were lodging, for some refreshment and entertainment, more in part 3.

London Stories

Interesting visual effect of reflective sheeting on the walls of an underground tunnel in Bermondsey station, reminded me of the hall of mirrors at the fair..

Dallas vibes

It was very noticeable last Friday that Reading town centre is looking more and more like Dallas every day, let's hope that the locals embrace the changes as readily as the property developers seem to. The new Siren tap room should be ready in May and will be located on the ground floor of this shiny new glass and steel tower. It'll be good to have another decent independent food and drink venue to visit in town, most of the current corpus seem to be national or international chains, which range from not that interesting to truly hideous.

Boys Night..

Called up an old mate last Friday for a pint and we headed into Reading to the Nags head for a couple of scoops and a good old chin wag. Luckily the Nags had a Verdant beer on cask, called "Future You" it was a fruity West Coast pale ale at around 4.5% ABV, a completely lush session beer, so good I had two! It was a beautiful evening (for a change) and so we sat outside for a bit. After the Nags we headed over to the Castle Tap as they had a live band on (more of a practice session) which was good for an hour or so, then down to Brewdog for burgers and chips and then home on the train. A thoroughly enjoyable evening!

Cambodia - Part 1

So, having left Saigon we headed to the Cambodian border, a couple of hours by bus got us there, the heat was fierce and the border process slightly intimidating but after a payment of $25 and lots of passport stamping we got through without any issues. On the other side of the line we picked up a new bus and headed on toward Phnom Penh the capital city. It was a three hour journey to the city from the border so around half way we stopped at a roadside café and market for refreshments, the snacks were somewhat interesting, mainly insects including spiders, crickets and meal worms I snapped some pictures (see example below) in case people didn't believe me, and no I didn't try any although you could pay 10p and hold a large hairy spider (alive) for photo's, it had to be done..

When we arrived in the city we checked into our hotel and freshened up a bit, later on that evening we took a rickshaw ride around the city, it was slightly terrifying being at traffic level but we did see some interesting sights and got our bearings a bit. After the bike ride we stopped off at a river side restaurant and had some food, unbelievably the food in Cambodia was even cheaper than Vietnam we got back to the hotel at around 9pm, it was still very warm outside but luckily our room had A/C so we slept well ready for a full itinerary the next day.

Most people know about the terrible Pol Pot regime in Cambodia and the killing fields (1975-79) etc. Near to Phnom Penh there are a number of sites preserved from that time including one of the killing fields and also a political prison where people were tortured and abused before they were sent to the killing field, all pretty grim but the people there seemed quite happy to show tourists around and explain the ins and outs of the whole thing, it's amazing how resilient the younger generations are in this country and how keen they are to move on and develop their economy, even if it means dredging up an unpleasant and violent history for the entertainment of ignorant tourists.

The first stop was a "killing field" (there were over 200 in the country) This is where supposed enemies of the regime were sent and killed, the one nearest to the city (in a suburb) was where some 20,000 (est) people were dispatched and the site was hidden away from sight in an old (walled) Chinese cemetery. In the middle of the site there was a large memorial building and inside that were the skulls of all the bodies exhumed from their shallow graves (see above), displayed in a rather stark and confronting way, it made you think!

These bodies were dug up in the 90s and after a while the people doing the excavating gave up, even though they knew there were many more graves. The decision was taken to let the remaining bones lie in peace and to convert the whole site into a memorial that could be visited by people (and tourists like us) As you walk around the place there are still traces of bones and clothes sticking out of the ground and there's a designated walk-way so that these remains aren't disturbed however it's apparently common for things to emerge after heavy rains, it's hard to hide the truth for too long.

Visiting the killing fields was a sobering experience and the history of how it happened very interesting, the question on everyone's lips though was why and I suspect that that will never really have a satisfactory answer. The next place was the old prison in Phnom Penh, it's a building that used to be a school and was constructed in a colonial style (probably by the French) it was another grim place, many people died here in unspeakable ways, from that whole period there were only 7 survivors left to tell the tale, four of whom were children.

The picture above shows the outside of one of the blocks (there were 5 blocks) and the picture below shows the inside, each cell was about 10ft by 5 ft and there were six prisoners to a cell.

After the prison we decamped back to the hotel for a rest and a shower, everyone was pretty quiet and it wasn't until much later that evening that people started talking about what they'd seen.

That evening we took a boat into the middle of the Mekong river (which is still huge at Phnom Penh) and watched the sunset (see above), the new glass and steel office buildings silhouetted in the heat haze. I wasn't sure what to make of this city, we'd only spent two days there and we'd seen some horrific historical sites but you couldn't help but notice the development going on, there were some huge new office complexes being built and the place had a hurried energy about it, the speed of development was epitomised by the wiring in the streets, I just had to snap the picture below, how they ever diagnose faults here I can't imagine!

We left Phnom Penh the next morning and settled in for the long ride to the ancient capital of Cambodia, Siem Reap.

Richmond

Richmond bridge looking fine in the afternoon sunshine today..

Culture and Religion

Having visited Asia recently I've been thinking about the slippery idea of "culture", here are some thoughts on the matter.

Clearly the culture in places like Vietnam and Cambodia is different from the culture here in the UK although it's not difficult to see the similarities and overlaps, in fact when you interact with "normal people" these differences evaporate pretty quickly, particularly when faced with day to day human survival issues such as crossing the road or acquiring food and water. Thinking about this ephemeral thing we call culture naturally leads one to ponder the nature of our own culture, what is it, how would we describe it and what is it's purpose?

Many people would invoke religion at this point, i.e. we live in a "Christian culture", even uber atheist Richard Dawkins claims that he's a "cultural Christian" What he means by this is that his culture, i.e. the one that raised him, has been largely shaped by Christian dogmas and although he "doesn't believe a word of Christian claims" he still likes singing hymns, the architecture of medieval cathedrals and the emphasis of tolerance and liberalism in the modern Christian zeitgeist (as opposed to past horrors and atrocities). Of course things like art and music, i.e. the aesthetic side of culture are our attempts to represent the existential side of culture, for example in pre-history when culture was simply hunting and gathering then our aesthetic preoccupation was to paint the prey animals we hunted on cave walls.

So what is culture and how is it different from religion?

Culture seems to be the hard interface between existential and survival practices diversified by geographical separation (i.e. environment), i.e. how we organise our societies to do critical things like reproduce, build shelters, provide food, fight, wash, fashion clothes and so on. Religion on the other hand seems to be a mash up of the attempt to codify an existing culture, also with the added layer of human imagination of things "unseen" which add another (superfluous) layer to our real-world survival practices. Religion seems to attempt to provide supernatural reasons for natural, cultural practices. For example, we kill animals and eat their meat but religion might add that you mustn't eat meat on Fridays, only fish, because this makes "god" happy. Edicts like this have no survival value but give religion (and more importantly clergy) power over ordinary people's lives and therefore access to valuable resources. It also makes social primates like us feel warm and fuzzy, i.e. that we belong to and are valued by the tribe, however at the base of things religion simply brings artificial compulsion to culture rather than being a necessary part of it.

The evolutionary benefit of culture, and also religion, is obviously therefore to do with group cohesion, it's more likely any individual will survive better if the group stick together and collaborate in acting out survival tasks (especially conflict with other groups over resources) We even see this rule in many animal species, for example birds flock, wildebeest herd, insects swarm and fish shoal to increase the survival chances of the individual. Geography plays a critical part in this, the obvious fact is that culture changes over time as we learn better survival practices, communities that have no contact with each other diverge in their survival practices and therefore in their cultures too. Cultures also feels evolutionary pressure from the imaginary layer of religion, which causes divergence between geographically separate groups as it moulds itself over pre-existing religions and unforeseen survival pressures in parts of the world that are remote from the source of the religion. You can see this in Buddhism as it morphs from Myanmar through Thailand and Cambodia and up to Japan (many differing survival pressures across these differing geographical environments)

I think it's useful to separate religion from culture and the inability to do this seems to me to be a frequent source of conflict. It's valuable to understand pure culture, i.e. food, language, survival tasks, aesthetics etc. when you find yourself in the geographical location where that culture has evolved. Usually it makes obvious sense to eat foods that are easy to obtain, communicate using the local languages and to take heed of effective ways to avoid getting stung, bitten or otherwise consumed by local predators. The religion bit doesn't really add anything useful to this other than for intellectual curiosity. Understanding which fruits can be eaten and taste good in the Cambodian jungle enables better survival in that place, but understanding that the people there believe that they can commune with their ancestors using a stone shrine draped in colourful silk is of no practical use unless those same people are going to harm the unbeliever for not believing the same. Unfortunately violence is the main vector that religions use to spread and gain power (it's always been about having more subscribers than your competitors!) and this fact has served to blur the distinction between culture and religion over many centuries.

There are many thought experiments that we could do to clarify this distinction between culture and religion, for example do we think that there would be the same conflict and hatred between Israelis and Palestinians if those two groups were both atheistic. Their cultures would clearly be so similar, i.e. essentially Mediterranean, with food, cooking, language, clothing all evolving from similar roots. It's only the imaginary religious layers that are radically different (precipitated and perpetuated by ancient wars between geographically separated tribes, Europeans, Jews and Arabs).

On the one hand I'm pessimistic about our inability to separate culture from religion, especially in the Middle East, it seems as though the centuries of indoctrination that the people there have had into the Islamic cult has managed to blur the distinction to such an extent that people there find it impossible to accept that there's a difference. How much better things would be if the people that live in that part of the world recognised that they possess (or could) the same culture and have much more in common that is different. On the other hand I am optimistic, I witnessed in Vietnam and Cambodia the effect of technology in bringing people together, i.e. providing a common cultural stake in the ground. The cultural quanta of using WhatsApp (other social media platforms are available) to communicate is consistent the world over and the instant translation of different languages smooths out many potential misunderstandings and facilitates productive collaboration. Let's hope that the forces of cultural unity can evolve dominance quicker than the forces of cultural division, it seems to be going in the wrong direction currently.

Friday Smirk

Jesus and Mo pointing out one of the main pillars of religious "faith" i.e. that evidence is not required to believe (in fact it's positively avoided)..

Mango Soup

Tried one of these last weekend, it's a new beer from the holy union of Verdant (Cornwall) and Green Cheek (California) It's the second iteration of their "Cheeky DIPA", I tried the first one last year while on holiday in Falmouth, Cornwall. Suffice to say that this one is easily up to scratch with that! It seems that pretty much everything Verdant do these days is excellent, or maybe that's confirmation bias at work, who knows, anyway this one's a banger in my humble. Thick, mangos, citrus, peachy and dank, the flavour saturation here is amazing (I mean just look at it!). It weighs in at 8.4% ABV so a serious drink, perhaps not one for the feint hearted, a DIPA for Verdant fan boys, excellent work!