Not so much a train of thought, more a replacement bus service of godless waffle, jokes and memes with a snifter of travel, wine and craft-beer related stuff on the side..
The Jesus and Mo cartoon this week is bang on the money WRT Saudi Arabia and human rights abuses. I've blogged about this many times before, but it seems particularly relevant at the moment because the Saudis have just been appointed to head the UN Human Rights Council (an already debased body) The hypocrisy of this decision need hardly be pointed out, according to Amnesty International the Saudi regime is one of the worst for freedom of expression and religion (or none), torture, discrimination and Women's rights ergo they don't belong anywhere near any human rights council.
Call me old fashioned, but I always think that you can judge the strength and moral standing of a political system by correlating the amount of covering up and killing that goes on within it's borders; in the case of Wahhabist Saudi Arabia (among other theocratic/dictatorial regimes in the Middle East) that's an awful lot. If it weren't for the natural resources beneath that particular part of the planet (i.e. pure chance) then the story would be so, so different, hypocrisy only surpassed by a seemingly criminal ambivalence toward health and safety.
“Over billions of years, on a unique sphere, chance has painted a thin covering of life—complex, improbable, wonderful and fragile. Suddenly we humans (a recently arrived species no longer subject to the checks and balances inherent in nature), have grown in population, technology, and intelligence to a position of terrible power: we now wield the paintbrush.”
—Paul MacCready, Jr., “The Case for Battery Electric Vehicles” (published in The Hydrogen Energy Transition edited by Daniel Sperling and James Cannon, 2004).
The idea of scary computer technology that replaces Human beings has been the staple of Sci-Fi stories since the genre was invented, having worked in the computer industry for my entire career and also having dabbled a bit with AI in a professional context I can say with some degree of confidence that we're a long, long way from the Hollywood version of artificial intelligence. In my reckoning there are much more immediate dangers right now from the "old-world" human inventions like burning fossil fuels, religious extremism, bad politics, greed and ignorance etc. rather than the new.
That bastion of human rights abuse, Saudi Arabia, has been in the news again recently, this time sentencing a 17 year old boy to death by crucifixion (WTF?) for seemingly nothing more serious that demonstrating against the totalitarian regime there and having an uncle (also scheduled to be executed) that has seriously fallen out with the ruling crime family. Not only are they planning on crucifying this unfortunate lad, when they're through doing that they're going to behead him. We can only assume it's "just to be sure". Not only has this entire "legal" process been conducted behind closed doors and in secret, confessions have rumored to have been extracted using torture.
If it wasn't for oil, regional politics and the arms trade, this backward and culturally toxic country would probably be facing sanctions up to their agals (if it existed at all). The paradox is that whilst social media is awash with liberals whining about the treatment of Muslim schoolboy Mohamed El-Hassan Mohamed who got arrested in Texas for taking a homemade "clock" that looked just like a bomb into school, I would bet a million dollars hardly any of them would have heard of this poor guy. On the one hand you have a clearly opportunistic fraud who was out to cause trouble and on the other you have someone with, you know, actual liberal principals - it's such a screwed up world we live in.
Some days I hear and see so much gullibility underpinned by arguments from authority and plane old "happy talk" from apologists of one stripe or another, corporate, religious and political, that I just need to unwind with something short, sweet and economical from the Hitch, a cold beer on a hot day, in word form.
“The gods that we've made are exactly the gods you'd expect to be made by a species that's about half a chromosome away from being chimpanzee.” Christopher Hitchens
Jesus and Mo satirises the unavoidably divisive nature of most religions; he's not wrong especially when you look at what's going on in the Middle East at the moment.
Ever wondered what our Solar system would look like if you shrunk the Earth to the size of a marble and then placed all the other planets on their respective orbits to the correct scale. Well you can't do it in your front room, nor in a sports hall, for an accurate representation you need the Black Rock desert in Nevada, some 4WD transport and of course, some marbles.
Apple software upgrade to iOS9 in iPhone 5S doesn't work and turns your phone into a brick, wastes hours of your life and makes small children cry, OK I made that last bit up but still, the rest is true.
I see that the new boy on the block, Jezza Corbyn has upset a few people for not singing the national anthem at a Battle of Britain remembrance day ceremony yesterday. Personally I don't see what the fuss is about, I couldn't care less. If you think about this rationally (instead of like a petulant child) then it makes perfect sense, he's a republican and an atheist and our national anthem is a boring dirge that grovels to both Gods and Monarchs, hardly surprising behaviour. I would have had less respect for him if he had sung it, I'm damn sure he wouldn't have meant it as I'm sure many others didn't either, respectful, contemplative silence seems wholly appropriate. In actual fact, berating people for not singing a song that panders to a Christian God that a most people don't believe in and a monarchy that many people don't agree with is in itself insulting and opposes the traditions of tolerance and respect for freedom of conscience that this country is supposed to hold dear. I'm sure many of the combatants in WWII didn't conform with these authoritative institutions either, however it didn't stop them serving their country just as it doesn't stop atheists and republicans deeply respecting their sacrifices today, freedom was what they were fighting for after all.
Oh and another thing, it's about time we had a proper secular anthem in this country, one that celebrates the actual achievements of real people in our country and not one that panders to outdated parasitic authority figures, real or imaginary.
If there's one thing we learn as we travel through time on our little spinning planet it's that nothing is forever; change (mostly unexpected and unpredictable) is the only constant in life.
We need only look at the news everyday to observe this fact, for example, I find myself asking the question today, what lasts longer, an Australian prime minister or a Rowntrees fruit-pastel? In our own parliament change has come in the form of a completely overhauled and mostly unknown (to me at least) "eclectic" set of people who now represent the opposition to the incumbent Government.
For people fleeing war and people looking for a quick buck, change is afoot. Last week Europe was an open door with people cheering at railway stations, this week, not so much. For many people the most unwelcome kind of change has visited them, people who were just driving to a football game on the A27 or making a pilgrimage to Mecca or fighting for ISIS in a Syrian city or just sitting at their desk in an American university, the result the same, extinguished before the end of their natural spans. How might we deal with this apparent chaos, randomness and seemingly malicious nature of nature? People find different ways of course, all of these news stories have thrown up different examples of coping strategies which prompted me to write this post and talk about how I personally find some of these strategies much more satisfying than others.
For many/most religious people our reality is reconciled by inventing an alternate reality, an unconvincing imaginary one where few of the natural rules of our universe need be obeyed. An example of this would be the Imam in Oxford who reconciles the crane collapse in Mecca that killed a hundred people, including a father of four from Bolton, by claiming the deceased was "blessed" because he will "go straight to heaven, no question" (actually there are lots of questions about "heaven"). So, the pervasive religious strategy is to move the problem into the realm of the unfalsifiable, i.e. impossible to prove wrong. For me, and millions of other people, this is a deeply unsatisfying tactic; wish-thinking by another name, a wish for certainty, but a wish that is delegated into the future perhaps even an abdication of responsibility, i.e. someone is actually responsible for this particular accident.
A much better and more satisfying strategy in my view is to embrace change, accept the evidence of our eyes and our reason, i.e. that there is no overarching purpose in the universe and that we create our own. Reality makes much more sense if you accept that any wish for an external unchanging framework in which we play some bit-part is just an emergent property of our consciousness; a product of the chemical and electrical processes in our brains interacting with our environment. In other words we might be happier if we can overcome this natural desire for future certainty and instead, learn to live in the moment.
Of course, living in the moment is a very difficult and challenging thing for evolved primates to do, in many ways it goes against our nature, we're pattern seeking mammals after all. We are easily obsessed and distracted by unimportant things and being social animals we care far to much about what other primates think about us; we love group-think. But, on the other hand this highly evolved social nature enables us to care for others and have empathy without which we would have gone extinct millennia ago.
In my own experience I have found that embracing ideas such as illness not being a punishment, make your own purposes, this life is all we get or that we are related to every other living being on the planet has been liberating. Thinking this way certainly facilitates the idea of living in the moment which when you fleetingly achieve it, really struggles to be beaten.
So, this question had me thinking today, if God created the Sun on the 4th day (from Genesis) "And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night, the stars also."
How the feck was it the 4th day?
Anyway, I quickly realised the true answer is most likely that the authors of Genesis made the whole thing up or alternatively stole the idea from the Babylonians, who also made it up.
Apparently I'm not the only one that reached this conclusion, there are some letters for sale at the moment from that famous naturalist and prolific letter writer Charles Darwin on this very subject. The sellers expect to fetch £50k for one that says:
“Dear Sir, I am sorry to have to inform you that I do not believe in the Bible as a divine revelation & therefore not in Jesus Christ as the son of God. Yours faithfully Ch. Darwin”.
I'm not sure I'd pay £50k for something so blindingly obvious?
Here's an interesting thought experiment; let's say the Earth is faced with some cataclysmic event that will destroy everything, including all scientific knowledge. But, you are able to send one single sentence of information forward into the future for an unscientific descendent species to discover, what would you send?
Artificial selection, germ theory, atomic theory, gunpowder all useful snippets of knowledge in different ways. There would be quite a few possibilities but I thought the one above was good, it's easy (relatively) to do and is one of those foundational things that would lead to all kinds of other discoveries and advances; in terms of the usefulness of a single sentence extremely good value for money!
The topic of change (and no change) has loomed large in our political lives over the last couple of days; yesterday MP's voted not to create a new law on assisted dying, i.e. a law that would have made it legal for doctors to assist people who have reached the ends of their lives, often suffering terribly with incurable conditions, and that wish to choose the place and time (and dignity) of their own death. My own view is that we should have such a law, it seems to me to me the moral thing to do and this decision is disappointing for all of us, after all, we're all going to die. It seems obvious to me that having such a law would not alter the number of people dying but would reduce the number of people suffering.
The other kind of change is complete change, and it seems that the Labour party has voted for that. Jeremy Corbyn has been elected the new leader of the opposition party (announced today) against the advice of many party sages and to the surprise of almost all political commentators. Corbyn is probably the most left leaning leader this party has had in many years, perhaps ever, and seems to have spent most of his years as a politician in opposition to his own party let alone the actual opposition. Anyway, I know very little about the man and have not heard him speak much, but from what I've read about him he seems to be one of those highly principled (academic) politicians holding views that are utterly impractical and out of touch with the main stream of UK society (apart from his atheism of course), it will be interesting to see how things pan out for him; I suspect many more center leaning Labour supporters are fearing years in the political wilderness from this point on.
In memory of the date today a little cartoon that depicts how events on this day 14 years ago made me feel (I was working in New York at the time) For me it was a tipping point, a stark realisation about the nature of blind faith and what it can make some people do and I still feel as strongly as I did then.
And yes, before anyone says it, I do realise religion isn't the only source of division and extremism in the world but it's one of the biggest and most pervasive and utterly central to what happened then and what continues to trouble many parts of our world today.
It's been a fascinating week in the rich story of human evolution; results and findings were announced by a team working in South African of a new species of early hominid named "Homo Naledi". The remains of around 15 individuals were found back in 2013 in a deep cave that's only just accessible through a tiny 18 inch gap, the conclusion is that it's likely these early hominids were disposing of their "dead" away from everyday life, perhaps to prevent scavenging by animals or possibly as some kind of ritualistic behaviour. We will probably never know the full story but never the less such behaviour so early in our evolution will almost certainly revise opinions about the rough elapsed time and path taken for Homo-Sapiens to walk out of Africa, perhaps by millions of years.
As you can see in the photo above, either this is the worst lunch box ever or there are many new prehistoric bones to now be studied and compared; it seems that some features of Naledi are like modern humans (the feet for example suit walking upright) but the brain cavity is much smaller and the hands although modern in proportion have slightly curved fingers which is reminiscent of modern apes like chimpanzees a truly intermediate species, I wonder if they can get DNA from any of the teeth, that would be quite something.
No doubt the coming months will see interesting revisions to the overall scientific consensus regarding the detailed timeline of human evolution and also no doubt we'll also see creationists contorting, twisting and selectively quote mining in order to fit this fantastic discovery into their perverted narrative (yawn) - interesting times.
Stunningly clear and obvious message from Jesus&Mo (as usual); why would an omniscient being choose such a hopelessly error prone way of passing on a message so supposedly important?
"Mysterious ways" would certainly be one possibility, as would a capricious deity but non-existence is much more likely based on the evidence we see in the world.
Bertrand Russell’s Ten Commandments for Living in a Healthy Democracy
1: Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2: Do not think it worthwhile to produce belief by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3: Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.
4: When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavour to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.
5: Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.
6: Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
7: Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8: Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9: Be scrupulously truthful, even when truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.
Some fairly mundane announcements from Apple yesterday about their new and improved product lines; basically a bigger iPad (with an overpriced keyboard) a faster phone and yet another TV/Movie streaming box - it's cool, but I do wonder why so many people get so excited about this stuff?
The women's marathon world record holder Paula Radcliff is receiving a lot of heat in the media at the moment all because some blood test data was leaked (stolen) to a newspaper who then implied that some of the results suggested that a "household name" was involved in doping. Later a parliamentary committee chairman suggested that a British marathon winner was implicated in this story (he may as well have named her).
I don't know whether Radcliff took drugs or not, she should certainly be assumed innocent until proven guilty but I am pretty sure that her current approach of refusing to release her data and simply gazing, wide-eyed, into the camera and assuring us that she is "clean" will not do. Unfortunately the huge financial rewards available to top athletes (of all sports) these days brings with it a responsibility to show (beyond reasonable doubt) that cheating is not a factor in any success. As has been seen from assertive, media-savvy characters such as Lance Armstrong among others, simply saying you're clean (in an assertive manner) is no guarantee of fair play. I fear Radcliff needs to show (and explain) her data. She claims it could be misinterpreted, which may well be true, but this could be minimised by getting a suitably qualified expert to present it on her behalf. It would be very much in the broader interests of athletics generally that this matter be resolved one way or another, whenever there are gaps in our knowledge people have a tendency to fill them with all manner of fiction and malice.
Lot's of hot air being expended in the USA at the moment over the case of Kentucky clerk Kim Davis. Davis refused to issue a marriage licence to a gay couple (something she is legally obliged to do) because she is a Christian; what seems like an incredibly simple choice to most non-religious people, i.e. do your job or quit has been blown up out of all proportion by wanna-be theocrats and Republican presidential candidates like Mike Huckabee. Last week Davis was held in contempt of court for refusing to issue licenses to certain couples (on repeated occasions) and was locked up for a couple of days; she was released today and treated like a hero by her sheep-like religious supporters. They claim this is a case of religious freedom, most sane people immediately realise this is a case of a bigot who wishes to impose her personal beliefs on everyone else in defiance of the law of the land and against the sense of morality and fairness of the majority of the population.
Not only is this odious official a bigot she is also a hypocrite; the ancient book that she claims to be adhering to (i.e. the Bible) does indeed label homosexuality an abomination (in several places), but it also forbids divorce and adultery, both instructions Davis chooses to ignore; she has been married 3 times and had children with a married man whilst married to another, a pretty crappy Christian if ever I saw one.
Astronauts in the ISS are watching three hurricanes chomping up the Pacific ocean at the moment; it's a first that they've seen three at the same time. Combined with data showing lowest ever Arctic ice levels and the warmest year (average) ever recorded I'd said something is heating up our atmosphere, wonder what that could be? (American politicians talking out of their backsides perhaps?)
This little story caught my eye today. We've all heard that well known curmudgeonly question common at late summer BBQ's and picnics "what exactly are wasps for?" which is a question that could equally be applied to the fly, the mosquito and the midge. Well, it seems that the venom of a wasp in Brasil has proved pretty good at zapping cancer cells and yet leaves healthy cells completely intact. The article explains how the chemicals in the venom attack the cell membranes at certain weak points allowing the contents of the cell to flow out, therefore killing it. A fascinating study and one that may well put the bad press around this daily mail bogie to bed for good!
I watched an ITV documentary (in 2 parts) at the end of August called "School Swap", it was basically an experiment where the headmaster and a couple of kids from a private school swapped places for a week with the same from a state school. Normally I wouldn't go out of my way to watch a reality TV programme like this but in this case I had a good reason. The private school that was featured was called Warminster School, which I attended from 1975-78, so I was intrigued to see how the old place had changed and see what it might be like now.
The first programme was about the kids from Warminster travelling up to a comprehensive school in Derby for a week, I thought there might be more resentment of the "toffs" in evidence (you know what teenage kids are like) and especially since it was up North (albeit the soft-North) But, the kids actually seemed to have more in common than you would expect a couple of the boys actually struck up a decent friendship, I guess kids (particularly boys) tend to gravitate toward certain things, (Xbox, sport, banter, girls) the playing field seemed pretty level on that score. On the academic side though it was clear that the private school kids were much more confident and articulate than their state school colleagues, their attitude towards learning was generally more healthy but not perhaps as much as people might think. One of the girls attending the state school was a recent immigrant from Syria and completely out-shone (academically) her buddy from Warminster (who seemed pretty clueless!) The big surprise of the episode was when one of the private school boys attended a Maths class, a subject that he struggled with and for which he was in the lowest set at Warminster. The state school teacher rated him much, much higher and made the claim that if he were his pupil he would expect an A grade!
The second programme was much more interesting for me as it was the reverse of the first, i.e. the state school kids visited the private school so I had fun trying to recognise bits of the dorms and classrooms as the camera followed them through their daily routine. A lot was made of the grounds and the facilities and the place has changed a lot since I was there (all weather pitches, modern classrooms, IT, proper canteen etc.), but the feel of the place seemed the same (it's essentially Hogwarts!) Barring the impact to their senses of being woken up at the crack of dawn and working an extra 3 or 4 hours a day ("prep" in the evenings etc.) the state school kids seemed to get on just fine. The amount of extra-curricula stuff (like sports) was a revelation to them ; one of them (Brett Riley) ended the show saying he really wanted to attend the school and apparently a place has since been offered, I wonder if he'll take it?
**UPDATE: apparently Brett took the place. I wish him the best of luck, work hard, have fun and what's the worst that can happen?
At the end of the program I came away thinking that kids are kids, broadly the same raw materials; how we treat them, teach them and encourage them makes most of the difference in terms of outcomes.
Another outspoken rational thinker and critic of superstition and idolatry was murdered in cold blood on Sunday in India; it seems that religious fanatics on the sub-continent are determined to stub out all free-thought and criticism aimed at their primitive beliefs. Any murder, of anyone, is a tragedy to someone and the only consolation we can take from this particular murder is that these countries are clearly entering some kind of end-game with militant religion and theocracy. When your opponents have nothing left but guns and knives with which to silence you, then you know you occupy the moral high ground. This is how totalitarian systems work, and liberals everywhere (religious or otherwise) should stand in opposition.
A lot of people are huffing and puffing in the news recently about Jeremy Corbyn and comments he made back in 2011 about Osama Bin Laden, many are reporting that he said he thought the death of this terrorist leader was a "tragedy" prompting an obvious outpouring of indignation. What he actually said was that it was a tragedy that Bin Laden was killed and not put on trial; I think he's right about that. I have no qualms about killing terrorist murderers but Bin Laden was obviously a clever man, skilled at convincing people to do obscene things in the name of religion, there may have been something to learn from him that would help us counter radicalisation in the future?
Then again the film and media rights were probably already negotiated long before the Apache helicopter rotors had even stopped spinning.
I was glad to see that tradition was upheld this bank holiday weekend, the weather was miserable, it started raining Friday and is still raining! I did manage to watch Metalica at the Reading Festival (on TV) it was a good show, very polished, very corporate; but I fear the old timers may have finally lost their hold over the younger fans, scanning the audience faces most of the people up the front looked over 40, nice to hear them do my favorite Thin Lizzy number though (Whiskey in the Jar).
This cartoon from the excellent XKCD reminded me that the stock market seems to be behaving like a rodeo bull at the moment. If only I had a spare few mil to play around, it's times like these that big bucks are made, what do we reckon Tuesday is going to be an up day or a down day, my money is on up down, but I could be wrong.
I took the plunge a few weeks ago and did something that I've been thinking about for years, I had a go at making my own beer!
Being a fan of Brewdog beers generally and Punk IPA in particular I was pleased to see that an American company called the Brooklyn Brew Shop sold a complete kit that included all of the ingredients for this legendary craft beer. I snagged one from the Brewdog site and one rainy Sunday afternoon had a go at putting it all together.
Gone are the days of canned home brew, the gut rot that we used to drink as a students after chucking out time; these days the cool kids are all into "all-grain" brewing which is much more authentic and (hopefully) produces a much better result.
The kit contained almost everything you need, the barley, the hops, the yeast, a fermenting vessel, siphon, thermometer and some cleaning chemicals; the only thing missing was some big pots to do the mashing and the boiling. The process is reasonably simple, you add some malted barley to some hot water and keep the temperature at around 65 Celsius for around an hour (basically porridge!) then you filter the liquid (which is now full of sugar from the grains) into a boiling pot; boil for another hour whilst adding hops at various intervals then cool and filter again into a fermenting vessel and add some yeast, then put somewhere warm and dark and wait two weeks! Once two weeks is up then you transfer the fermented beer into bottles with a little honey (to carbonate) and wait another 2 weeks; my first effort will be ready next weekend although I had a sneaky try of the uncarbonated version which tasted really authentic.
I fear this might become a new (time-consuming) hobby; lot's of gear, science and unfettered geekery, sounds right up my street, official tasting notes to follow!
Another nice cartoon from the excellent Jesus and mo. strip - as supernatural claims disappear into an ever diminishing plug hole I wonder if they swirl clockwise or anti-clockwise, we clearly need to get a top theologian onto that question.
More citizen gun crime in America; it's baffling to most Europeans why so many Americans in feel so threatened by the idea that lethal weapons should be controlled in their country. Anyway, this time it seems that a local TV station reporter and her cameraman were gunned down live on air while doing an outside report in a small town in Virginia. The motive for the crime is not known and it's also worth noting that the report was not coming from anywhere dangerous or remote, it appears to be completely random; seems like if the cops don't get you the nutters with guns will!
Plymouth church organist Robert Burgess-Moon has found Jesus, apparently (if you squint hard enough) you can see his face on this 1950s drinks cabinet in his house. Burgess-Moon is quoted as saying
"We were quite shocked really, it was just not something you expect, it’s like a Holy Spirit cabinet now"
More Islamist trouble in France on Friday as a gunman threatened to unleash his AK-47 on a crowded high speed train travelling from Amsterdam to Paris. Fortunately a couple of the passengers had other ideas and whilst the terrorist was fiddling with his bullet clip they rushed and disarmed him, they then beat him unconscious and tied him up until the train reached the next station. Two of the heroes were US soldiers on holiday in Europe and one of them was injured in the scuffle with a knife, unfortunately one other passenger was shot but hopefully will live. I hate to imagine what would have happened had these army guys not been in that carriage at that time, does the good luck of the people on that train cancel out the bad luck of the people killed on the A27, no, it's just random, no one ever wrote a fable about all the times the hare won the race.
The word brave doesn't do these guys justice, how long will it be before we have marshals on trains as well as planes?
Lot's of news today about the horrific air crash at the Shoreham air show yesterday. It has to be a mind mindbogglingly small probability that you will being crushed and burned in your car or on your bike by an 8 ton vintage jet aircraft but the poor people on the A27 at that moment were victims of just this. A few meters either way and the outcome would have been completely different; I guess that's what it means to live in a random universe governed only by the laws of physics and kinetic energy. There probably isn't much more to say about this accident, horribly unlucky for all involved, hopefully pilots can learn from it and hopefully air-show organisers will think a little bit more carefully about vintage planes doing aerobatics in built up areas from now on.
I've been in France with my family this week taking a little break from the rat race; more specifically in the South West of France near Toulouse visiting some friends who have a lovely renovated farm house down there. At the weekend we visited a nearby town to check out their annual wine festival and sampled local food and wine while the kids had great fun at the travelling fun-fair that had been installed for the day. The town is called Madiran and is famous for a particular variety of grape called "Tannat" which produces highly tannic wines, French AOC rules stipulate that wines from Madiran must contain 40% Tannat to be labelled as such and most of those wines satisfy the internal market and don't often end up in UK wine shops or in restaurants here, it's a shame because some of them are really very nice. In the picture I've snapped our little stash of bread, cheese, fruit and local wine* for a couple of nights in with good company, funny films and fiendish card games.
* Apart from the one with the yellow label which is from Pomerol in Bordeaux. I found this one going cheap in a supermarket in Auch and just had to try it (it's really expensive in the UK).
The title of this post is a deliberate misquoting of the famous line from Dostoyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" in which Ivan (one of the brothers) is supposed to say "If God does not exist, everything is permitted". Many religious apologists use this line as a way of making a claim that without a belief in "God" (of some flavour) then people would just behave like animals, raping, stealing and murdering etc. It's a stupid argument and neglects to acknowledge the necessary evolutionary adaptations favouring cooperation, required for social species like ours to thrive. Not to mention our obvious instincts for empathy and fairness which are universal, innate and shared to some degree with most of the great apes.
In actual fact the the opposite of this quote most accurately reflects reality; one only need look at what ISIS in Iraq are doing to see that if you believe you have divine permission (as written in your 7th century holy book) to rape, steal and murder then that's exactly what you do! This utterly shocking article in the New York Times tells a tale of how members of this barbaric movement are using the Koran to justify the systematic rape of children, slavery and murder of non-believers; much like Christians used to do before the obvious insanity of theocracy was driven out of Europe (mostly) by relentless secular and scientific progress.
Heroes come in many different shapes and sizes, here's a hero, his name was Khaled-al-Asaad, an 82 year old scholar of archaeology in Iraq who was murdered by ISIS because he refused to disclose the location of artefacts hidden to prevent them being destroyed or sold to fund this thuggish army and its perverse time-travel experiment (i.e. what's it like living under the most barbaric form of 7th century Islamic theocracy). Unlike most so called "scholars" in his region Khaled was a proper scholar; he had read more than one book.
Quick business lunch with a potential client at the Old Red Cow in Smithfield Market today; decent selection of craft beer to peruse and a tasty pulled pork sandwich; must make a note to revisit this place when I don't need to concentrate so much!
Another secular blogger and Atheist Niloy Neel was hacked to death with machetes at his home in Bangladesh yesterday. Niloy is the fourth secularist blogger to have been killed in Bangladesh this year and so far the authorities have charged no one for these killings (that they are publicising).
There exists a list of 84 secular and atheist bloggers (not all are atheists) that was originally draw up by Islamic groups in Bangladesh in 2013 and circulated with a view to getting these people arrested for blasphemy; all of the murdered people so far were on that list. Bangladesh is supposed to be a secular country, that's clearly a joke, it is obviously a deeply superstitious and insecure country that has in it groups of people (almost certainly Islamic) intent on extinguishing dissenting voices, voices that simply ask for a level playing field (legally) among all religions and none. Niloy himself was not from an Islamic background, he was born into a Hindu family and also campaigned for equality between the genders and the rights of indigenous peoples. Previously he had asked for police protection and at the time of his slaughter his wife was also present in their apartment, we can only imagine the horror for both of them.
It's difficult to know what to do in response to such unnecessary barbarism, I suppose all we can realistically do is lobby and give support to help to keep these atrocities in the public eye as best we can; ultimately the religious barbarism landscape is a very busy space.
It's a very old debate and probably not that interesting outside of the community of regular computer users but I noticed an interesting article in the technology section of the BBC news site today. It's discussing how vulnerable Apple Mac computers are to viruses and malicious software generally; apparently the answer is "very". For years now consumers have been spoon fed the line that Mac's are the cool choice and PC's are for geeks (i.e. technologists) It's a quasi-religious argument, emotions run high on both sides. PC fans claim that their preferred platform is superior because of it's ability to be customised and its openness and Mac people (including many people in the industry who should know better) spout lines like "Mac's are better because they just work" (believe me, they quite often don't!).
It's all marketing (i.e. mythology), Mac's and PC's are both hugely sophisticated and complex systems, both have flaws, bugs, inconsistencies and vulnerabilities, both are infuriating in some ways and magical in others; both require a significant investment in time in order to use effectively and both are sufficiently rich and deep that it's unlikely that they would ever be completely mastered by a single person. In my work I need to use both platforms and that works just fine for me, I organise things so that there's little overlap or duplication and leverage the strengths of each platform to do tasks on it that are most efficiently done on that platform (for me!), i.e. Mac for graphics and mobile work and PC for programming and office tasks.
This non-partisan but factual account of reality is probably why I'm not in sales or marketing.
I read today on the BBC news site that Anjem Choudary, the poster child of Islamic buffoonery in the UK, is facing charges for "inviting support" for ISIS during a lecture. I'm not sure that this will be much more than an inconvenience to Choudary and probably qualify him and/or his group of dangerously deluded parasites for even more state benefits.
Most of the papers are showing pictures of Choudary in his religious uniform, beard and beanie (as per the BBC story) etc. but I prefer to think of him in the above picture which shows an earlier incarnation of the man in a less pious setting, I think I know which portrait is more reflective of his true character, if there were awards for hypocrisy then this bloke would be world-class (fortunately there aren't and he most definitely isn't).
So this is the magic stone that Joseph Smith used to help translate Egyptian script on a set of gold plates that he found in the woods in up-state New York. According to Smith (a convicted fraudster) God himself dictated the words to the book of Mormon to him via this stone (called the "seer stone") which he held inside a hat and stared at. In a bizarre twist God apparently spoke English to Smith but in an early 17th century dialect (i.e. in the style of the King James Bible). This amazing tale is the basis of a Christian sect that has roughly 14 million followers (mostly in the USA) but as is usual with religious relics of this kind (throughout the ages) whenever they fall into the public domain they mysteriously lose all of their special powers.
To modern ears this story seems ludicrous, I'd go so far as saying completely bonkers; but behold the power of isolation, peer pressure and childhood indoctrination. Not only is it amazing that so many people still believe/follow this blatant man-made scam but Mormonism is one of the few religions that has a foundational pillar able to be disproved by modern science. In concocting his myths Joseph Smith made some claims that were foolishly specific and falsifiable, a schoolboy error when founding a new religion.
In his story Smith claimed that American Indians are descended from a lost tribe of Israel who left the Middle East in 700 BCE; according to his tale this tribe then built a boat (presumably a very big one) and travelled to America. Ancestral DNA evidence shows this to be false, American Indians descended from Paleo-Indian tribes migrating from Asia across the Alaskan land-bridge at least 13,000 years ago (the age of the oldest human remains found on the continent). I believe Smith even claimed that Jesus himself also travelled to America, but since we have no evidence that Jesus even existed, that one is harder to falsify.
Bizarre little story last week about a man in Texas (where else!) who noticed an armadillo in his yard and did what seemingly comes naturally to a lot of Americans these days and took a pot shot at the unfortunate animal. One of the 3 bullets fired ricocheted off the armour plating of this creature and hit the gunman in his face, he was later air lifted to hospital, the fate of the armadillo is unknown.
I'm trying to think of a clever pun at this point but can't, so I'll just leave this here and back slowly away with eyes slightly wider and jaw slightly more agape than normal.
Well, it's the 1st of August already and I felt a bit chilly this morning as I was exercising, it made me think about how quick this Summer has gone so far, then again they all feel pretty speedy these days. Still, Saturday evening is here to be celebrated and I have a new beer to try which is always a cause for celebration (in my head at least)
It's a session IPA by a producer called "Cloudwater Brew Co." and has a lovely Summery label design. It's a typical IPA in a modern hoppy style, 4.8% ABV and very easy to drink. Some grapefruit and mango flavor with a fairly serious hop backbone, bitter indeed but with enough fruit and malt in the background to carry it. Recommended, although I haven't seen it in many shops and I only have one small bottle, must look out for this one in future.
