I am very pleased to note that we seem to be entering a new phase in the embryonic Atheist renaissance going on currently. There has been talk for some time within Atheist circles about how we can raise public consciousness for our themes and ideas, until now this has been quite a challenge for those wishing to steer down a more political and influential path.
Exciting times.
I recently stayed at a “family friendly” hotel in Fowey in Deer in the headlights – This group is clearly identified by the daft grin that seems permanently welded to their faces, soppy dopes who seem to walk around with their heads tilted at a 45 degree angle inanely smiling, then saying “ah”, as young Tommy projectile vomits semi-digested stringy cheese all over your new suit.
Clearly hybrid configurations are possible, i.e. Paranoid mothers and Psychotic fathers; amusingly though this simple classification seemed to cover it.
Our main family holiday this year was to spend a week at Fowey Hall in Fowey, Cornwall; the Hotel is now part of the Luxury Family hotels group, see here this is a small group of select hotels in the UK that specialise in child friendly “luxury” holidays that cater for families that have young children who want 4/5 star accommodation, food and service but also need childcare, children’s facilities and organised child oriented activities. A couple of years ago we spend a long weekend at the Moonfleet Manor hotel which is also part of this group so it was interesting to compare and contrast these two establishments. Generally the pattern of activity flowed pretty much the same for us on most days; a hearty breakfast was followed by putting the kids into the club for a couple of hours at around 10am; this was nice as it allowed us adults to chill out over a cup of tea and a good read of the papers etc. (although the last Harry Potter book came out this week so that featured high on the “to-do” list of most people). After picking up the kids at midday we usually headed out for the day, things like beaches, attractions, parks and organised outings were in order along with a spot of lunch. Typically we got back at around 5pm when kid’s dinner was served. The hotel offers the concept of a separate children’s dinner from the main “adult” dinner, this was an extra charge, but at £7.50 per child offered reasonable value and certainly a convenient way to maintain “home like” eating schedules, we took advantage of it every night. In-between kid’s dinner and adult’s dinner several activities were on offer, games (i.e. Xbox, Playstation, Monopoly etc.) and (weather permitting) outdoor sports like football, cricket, badminton etc. although this is one area where the facilities were particularly poor, cricket was 4 stumps, one adult size bat and a tennis ball (hardly suitable for 5 year olds); football was a ball and the same 4 cricket stumps for goals. The “sports” were supervised by hotel staff (usually a solitary young member of staff) mostly they seemed pretty disinterested in the whole thing, which often degenerated into chaos as the older kids pummelled (figuratively) the younger ones, inevitably it ended in tears. After bathing and settling the kid’s down to sleep we prepared ourselves for dinner; each room has a listening device connected to a central console in the reception, the idea is that if your child cries out or makes a noise then the staff come and get you. This seemed to work ok, luckily neither of ours gave us any trouble (must be all that sea air!); human baby sitters were available but at extra cost, since we ate in the hotel every night we didn’t really need them. Overall this was a good, not great, holiday, the kid’s really enjoyed it and we genuinely had time to relax and recharge. The location (i.e. Fowey) was lovely, the views were great and there was plenty to do and see in the surrounding area. In terms of the hotel itself I’d say the following, Excellent things Good things Poor things 
The main building of the hotel was originally built in 1899 by Sir Charles Augustin Hanson, 1st Baronet of Fowey and Lord Mayor of
The presentation of the food was very good; the quality was generally good although some dishes were a little bland (i.e. the tian of crab starter), the desserts were the highlight for me, generally they were excellent. The wine list was limited to around 50 bins and hardly any well known producers; I think they had tried to “represent” every conceivable country and grape so that people could at least find one thing they recognised; however in doing this it was a kind of “jack of all trades” but master of none. I found it very difficult to select wines from this list, the mark-ups seemed inconsistent and I suspected that the wines were chosen for their “margin potential” rather than their quality. This is not a hotel for wine geeks; they even committed the cardinal sin of advertising one vintage and serving another. One night I ordered a 2000 Stags Leap Petit Syrah (£59), this is a £20-25 pound wine (retail) but 2000 was an excellent year in Napa so I thought I would splash out; when the bottle arrived it turned out to be a 2004, when I mentioned this to the waiter he looked at me as if to say “so what it's the right wine isn't it?”, for a wine geek this is about as bad as it gets. The Bordeaux and Burgundy selections were poor, fringe/unknown producers, poor vintages and 5X+ mark-ups, Italy seemed reasonably represented but again, no one I’d heard of, South Africa & Spain seemed the best value with the rest a real mixed bag of odds and sods.
If I had to compare Fowey with Moonfleet Manor I'd say that Fowey was definitely better for (adult) food and dining, childcare and general location/atmosphere however I think Moonfleet scored better on facilities for sports and games, having a large indoor sports centre all of its own.
It’s a well known phenomenon that when a restaurant is able to claim “the best” of something and that claim is replicated in a few trusted places in the media it really doesn’t matter how many Michelin stars it has or indeed where it is, it will always get a regular stream of customers eager to “try” whatever the superlative item is and thereby judge the claim for themselves, La Tupina is such a place. The item in question at this particular establishment is the ubiquitous “chip” (or French fry). It seemed strange to me that a restaurant in a back street of Bordeaux, France would claim to offer the best chips; surely that honour would fall to a suitably endowed Belgian or English café, mais non!, and I during my recent visit to this fair city I couldn’t miss the opportunity to try them.
How to describe La Tupina, well, imagine a Provençal kitchen complete with roaring fire, chequered table cloths, suitably rural paintings and decorated plates nailed to rustic stone walls (a little worse for wear). Then picture every nook and cranny of those old walls filled with dusty old bottles of exotic looking fluids and shelves lined with Armagnac stretching back to before the First World War and you are just about there.
Quickly and efficiently an appetiser of bread, charcuterie, raw vegetables and what can only be described as an assortment of “pork scratchings” appeared with this we started to understand what this place was about. The deep fried meat wasn’t actually pork; it was duck fat or skin deep fried until crispy and coated something nice, yum, but not for the feint hearted! After finishing our starters (not that memorable) and an appropriate break the mains arrived, the lamb looked wonderful, almost black in colour still on the bone with some kind of wine based sauce which it had obviously been basted in; had it really been roasting for 7 hours, well a single touch of my fork practically melted it, I have never tasted such tender and flavoursome lamb superb. I didn’t actually try the duck, it looked good however my wife thought it was just OK, nothing special. Now for the main event, the chips, these weren’t your average MacDonald’s fries or even premium M&S oven chips, oh no, hand cut, irregular shaped fantastically crispy "door stops"; deep fried in duck fat over the open fire in tiny iron skillets, boy oh boy, these were chips with secondary flavours; crispy, ducky, creamy in the middle, salty with a finish of pure wood-smoke, I could have eaten many times my own body weight of these. Were they “the best”, well, I’ve had some great chip experiences in
In a recent TV interview Jack Straw the ex UK foreign secretary and current MP for Blackburn was discussing the recent attack on Glasgow airport; he proposed that we [the public] should not associate this atrocity with any particular religion, HUH?, run that by me again, so the fact that a flaming lunatic jumps out of his crashed jeep was shouting "Allah, Allah" doesn't some how give the game away? does Jack think that the public are so stupid that they haven't already made that obvious and unequivocal link already?
He went on to say that Islam is a "wonderful" religion; hold on a minute, is this the same Jack Straw that just last year declared that Muslim women shouldn't wear the veil because it is "culturally divisive". Lets get this straight, when a religion inspires you to run through a crowded airport "on fire" its "wonderful", but when it inspires you to throw a sheet over your head it's divisive... sorry Jack I don't follow your logic there.
In my opinion the only sane thing that anyone can hope for is that (religion or no religion) rationality will prevail and that in the end the Human "prejudice gene" that seems to precipitate all cults and religions will be consigned to the "junk DNA" of our descendants. Come on natural selection, do your thing (hold on, maybe it already is...)
Here are the tasting notes for all the wines I tried (some at the château and some over dinner/lunch) - scoring using a "Parker" 50-100 point score. I have tried a couple of vintages Lafon Rochet and always found it to be a reliable and interesting wine. The quality of this estate seems to be steadily increasing, the 97 was above average, the 2000 is really good and this 2001 is also excellent VFM at around £22/bottle. Dark, complex and full bodied. Black fruits and earth on the nose, good mouth feel, reasonable finish, soft tannins with a slightly "dusky" feel to it, drinking OK now but plenty of life left in it yet 5+ years [89+] Pleasant nose of red berries, some “greenness”, lively in the mouth, fresh good finish; would appear to be good VFM at £20/bottle, 5+ years left probably with some improvement [87] This was my fourth outing for the grand vin of this Pauillac 5th growth, although that classification is a bit of a joke, it should be more like 2nd these days, I've previously tried the 98 which I thought was good, and the 2000 which was great, this was somewhere in between. Cassis and red fruits on the nose, medium depth, not as lively as the 2nd wine of the same vintage and perhaps a little closed at present? Probably wise to wait 5 years or so for this one although I doubt it will ever become a blockbuster like some of their better years i.e. 1989, 1996, 2000 etc. but I'd be happy to own some never the less 10+ years [88] A wonderful discovery for me, unfortunately they only make 1500 cases a year. So refreshing, citrus fruits, well integrated oak, some sweetness (apparently there is some Muscadelle in the blend) Medium bodied, aromatic and went superbly with the langoustines in a rich sauce that I had with it. I imagine that this has some legs too; it seems to have plenty of body to last and improve over time 5+ years [91+] Quite similar to the second wine of Lynch-Bages from the same vintage; fresh, up-front nose and taste, also quite tannic with a reasonable finish so I would imagine there is no rush to drink this. Value wise, at around £11 this seems ok but certainly not at the same QPR level as a lot of new-world Bordeaux look-a-likes, 5+ years [88] Ch. Pichon-Longueville Comtesse de Lalande 2004, Pauillac Bright red colour, fairly dull nose but there is fruit there, cherries, cassis and cocoa. Big disappointment in the mouth, chewy, slightly bland with strong dry tannins, clearly very young and potentially closed down at the moment? I’d give this plenty of time to come around, only because of the good name of the estate rather than any special tasting insight on my part, but at £55/bottle I won't be stocking up on this any time soon. 10+ years [88+] Nice nose & deep colour, red fruits, tobacco, earth. Smooth accessible, drinking well now but will certainly improve. Around £35/bottle which I suppose is about right for a 2000 2nd wine from a top estate, went very well with the beef fillet I had with it, got better over the course of the meal (2+ hours) in the decanter. 10+ years [90+] Tight upfront fruit on the nose, wood, resin, red berries, bright red in colour. I would imagine that this would be a splendid food wine for “lunching ladies”, not too heavy (12.5%), accessible but more serious than most roses. I’ve not tried too many wines from Fronsac, but this is a good one IMO, around 10 euros 5+ years [88] Blackcurrant and red fruits on the nose, wood & vanilla evident, good rich colour but a lighter style of Saint Emilion, well balanced for such a young wine, overall not too shabby for an average year. 5+ years [88+] Typical Very nice nose, blueberry/vanilla, yum! Perhaps a little unbalanced at this stage but nothing unexpected, tannic but definitely good fruit under that, should improve and last for a good few years, great value at around 20 euros, but might be hard to find in the UK 5+ years [90+] Tight, slightly green, nice fruit but difficult to get past the initial attack which is a bit harsh. It will probably settle down a bit with time 5+ years but not something I’d rush out to buy [86] Ch. Franc Mayne 2001, “Dull” is my overriding impression of this wine, small nose and weak in the mouth, finish not bad but very tannic; at over £20/bottle I’m really not impressed [84] Tried this one 5 years ago and I thought it was very poor, perhaps this wine needs a long time to come around? This showing proved much better than the previous one, but still only an average wine in my view [82] Ch. Le Bon Pasteur 1997, Pomerol I was talked into buying this by our waiter at a restaurant in St. Emilion after my first choice wasn’t available, I wasn’t keen since it cost 90 Euro, I’d never tried it before and my impression of 97 right bank wines is not great, anyway, I caved and I’m glad I did, this was really nice. Good nose, smoky, cherry, black current, smooth, balanced and very well integrated oak. Full bodied and showing well, interestingly it improved over the course of the meal as well, suggesting it has legs left yet. 5+ years [91] Fugue de Nenin 2006, Pomerol Second wine of Chateau Nenin, first time I’d tried this in fact I hadn’t realized Nenin even had a 2nd label. Barrel sample, so pretty full on, bubble gum nose, plenty of fruit, strong tannin fabulous colour, I think this will be a very good wine, early drinking but complex enough, 10+ years [88] First sampling for me of Nenin, I like it. The 2004 is still very tannic, pretty much what you would imagine the owners of LLC would produce from Pomerol. Good dark colour, black fruits, plumy, fleshy, long finish. 10+ years [89+] Chapelle de Pontensac 2004, Second wine of Chateau Pontensac, my first sampling of this wine, superficially simple in colour and nose but actually some structure here, a “classic” claret style as you would expect from the LLC stable 5+ years [88] Ch. Pontensac 2006, Subtle nose (more so than the second wine), great colour, still very tannic as expected and very classic in style, quite austere but I like that; Opened out noticeably over the course of 10 minutes in the glass revealing cassis, earthy notes and some dark fruits, I suspect this will be a very nice wine in 5-10 years time [89+] Clos du Marquis 2006, St. Julien One of my favorites and certainly one of the best 2nd wines of the Clos du Marquis 2004, St. Julien Classic CDM, still way too young to drink, this needs at least 8 years to come around and gain the complexity that is evident in the raw materials now. Dark ruby in colour, red berries, earthy, tobacco on the nose, very fine for this price point but still a little “tough” and tannic for all but the most devoted of fans. 10+ years [90] It was a real privilege for me to taste a barrel sample of the grand vin, particularly from such a good year, my absolute favorite The second wine of Chateau Lascombes, I was interested to try this since I visited this estate just after the take over and the 2000 vintage heralded a step change in quality at this 2nd growth Margaux. I liked it, not huge, fairly “international” in style but pleasant with a pork fillet for lunch. Light ruby in colour, red fruits and slightly spirity on the nose, smooth in the mouth, medium finish, altogether not too shabby. 5+ years [87+]
I recently had a long weekend in
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/01/nflood201.xml
Its official, the “right reverend” Graham Dow (aka the Bishop of Carlisle) knows the actual mind of God.
This extraordinary revelation means that Dow now knows how God wants us all to behave, what we should do in our bedrooms and with whom, what constitutes “good” behaviour, what constitutes “bad” behaviour and how God would like us to treat Planet Earth. Dow has also been informed by God what the punishments for indiscretions to these rules are and to whom those punishments are currently being administered, in fact he is so sure about all of this that he is willing to spill the beans in a national newspaper. Of course, the precise details of how this "revelation" process actually works are scarce, but clearly any man that dresses in a frock and walks around with a bent stick has a certain gravitas that demands ultimate respect, so who are we to question him?
Now then, this good ol’boy of the Anglican Church calmly and confidently brushes aside the combined life time’s work of hundreds of climatologists, meteorologists, environmentalists and countless scientists from dozens of disciplines to pronounce that the reason for the recent flooding in northern parts of the UK is that (wait for it) his "God" is displeased with us for being nasty to the planet and tolerating gay people. (Thank goodness I don't live in Brighton, so much water and so much "life-style" in close proximity, that's just got to be asking for trouble!)
Genuinely ignorant people find stupid reasons for phenomenon that they don't understand or can't explain, this basic human behaviour is common to us all, we crave explanation and would rather make something up than have none. In atheist circles this kind of reasoning is generally known as the "argument from incredulity", i.e. I have no clue how this works so therefore "God did it"; but this is worse, this is institutionalised ignorance. In Dow's case, he has the privilege of a first class education and a public platform provided to him by two millennia of persecution, extortion and tyranny by various Christian religions, more worryingly he is supposed to be a "leader" to quite a few C of E faithful, and yet clearly the man doesn't even know what he doesn't know!
Great job Graham, really insightful, but next time, before you try and explain an act of nature, try reading a few books first (preferably ones that are less than 2000 years old) then you might actually start to discover why climatic or natural events like floods, hurricanes, tsunami, tornadoes and the like really happen. Guess what, your "God" turns out not to be involved at all.
There is a case in the high court (UK) at the moment playing out in the media involving a Christian girl who claims that she has been discriminated against because her school does not allow her to wear a “chastity ring” (on her finger) as jewellery breaks school uniform rules. Her argument is that this ring is somehow part of her faith and that since the school allows children of other faiths (i.e. Muslims, Sikhs etc.) to wear specific articles then she is the victim of discrimination. I can only fantasize about how much this case is costing; apparently she is being “funded” by private sources (her father is some kind of minister so I’m sure the congregation has been dipping into their pockets), but I’m pretty sure the school will need to be defended from public funds.
Putting aside for a moment the “playground logic” transparently on display here, i.e. those nasty Sikhs can wear their trinkets but us good Christians can’t wear ours; It seems entirely possible to me that this case is some kind of pre-meditated religious stunt as the "offence" claimed by the defendant seems so utterly trivial; the father of the girl more or less admits as much by saying “there are bigger issues at stake” also, somewhat surprisingly, the father happens to be the UK distributor of these (US supplied) rings in the UK. However, before the cynic in me takes over I think it would be interesting to try and explore what these “bigger issues” might be and so I thought I would try and outline my perspective on what I have seen in the media so far in order to attempt to make some sense of this.
Firstly, let me give this family the benefit of the doubt; i.e. that this is not some cheap marketing stunt to promote the sales of this particular line of jewellery, that said, what other reasons could they have for wanting to take this case to court?
They are clearly religious people, in fact their whole livelihood seems to depend upon the Christian religion since the father is a minister/preacher and apparently has at least one side line business of selling these Christian “chastity” rings (not sure what particular flavour of Christians they are, but that’s not relevant to my argument)
Since their livelihood depends on religious faith then clearly they have a vested interest in ensuring the survival and one would assume expansion of their particular religion. The girl claims to follow this same religion also, she claims to have “always been” a Christian. I can only conclude that since it is unlikely that her religious beliefs were planted in her as a zygote then I must assume that her family indoctrinated her in it from birth onwards and that they probably all feel as if they are showing solidarity for "their team". I would certainly not find it credible to think that her religiosity is identically aligned to that of her parents (and presumably her family & peer group) through pure chance?
So far I have not heard any “evidence” (i.e. the substance of legal argument) for any physical necessity for wearing this ring, for example she is not saying it is essential for her blood circulation or that it alleviates her arthritis or perhaps if she removes it her finger will fall off, the argument is clearly that she wants to (or must?) wear this adornment because of her “faith”. Therefore, the crux of her argument seems to be that all faiths should be treated equally, i.e. if Sikhs can wear bangles, then Christians should be able to wear rings. Superficially this seems to be an argument about “fairness”; could it be that simple? Unfortunately, I think not.
I think there is enough evidence in the press and the literary world currently to assert that Religion (certainly in the UK & USA) feels under attack from secularism and atheism; there seems to be a real shift in the zeitgeist going on at the moment (see previous post) the publication of half a dozen books (Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Harris et al) criticising religious concepts are topping best seller lists around the world, and the media has subsequently grasped the topic in true Pavlovian style. The bottom line is that there are many intelligent, coherent and thoughtful people bashing the whole notion of religion right now and I think this case is partly a knee-jerk response to that movement. As an aside, it seems incredible to me that a few books can shake something so supposedly “true” and so engrained, but clearly their cages have been rattled, perhaps their sensitivity belies a fundamental weakness in their position (as an atheist I sincerely hope so) or perhaps it is only the fringe elements of religion that feel exposed, who knows, but I’m not naïve enough to realise that the old adage of “any publicity is good publicity” applies also.
Beneath all the rhetoric, it seems clear to me that what these people are arguing for is the notion that “faith” trumps democratic rules, of course in this I am assuming that the school rules were arrived at democratically, and certainly no one so far is arguing that they weren’t. Because of this we also have to assume that they believe that all “faith” (as opposed to religions) must be treated equally; otherwise presumably they would be advocating elitism for their own faith which I’m sure good Christians would not do. This raises another question in my mind, exactly what is this “faith” concept that these people seem to fling around so liberally, well, since they cannot provide any concrete reasoning that wearing these adornments is physically needed then I have to assume that what they mean by faith is a belief in something with no “worldly” evidence or justification for it, i.e. “I believe this, well, because I do and I don’t have to provide any justification for it other than I consider it to be true”, seems unavoidably childish to me, but OK let’s run with it.
So, they seem to be advocating a principal which says, anyone can have a “faith” that something (anything?) is true, all faith is equal and that a faith is important to those that have it such that there needs to be outward & visible “signs” to everyone else that they have that faith. Consequently everyone else in society has to somehow recognise and respect faith, seemingly, just because it is called a “faith” and regardless of whether the actions or statements precipitated by it break democratically derived rules or not.
Hypothetically then, if I subscribed to the “Jedi” religion (as all good star wars fans should) then it clearly becomes my inalienable right to wear a cape, long boots and a light-sabre to school as an outward sign of my faith. Of course if anyone else objects to this then I don't need to provide any evidence or justification that Jedi religion is true or that these adornments are necessary I can just say "back off, it's my faith". Fantastic, now anything is now possible, if people disagree with me then I can say my faith (being divinely authorised by Yoda of course) necessitates me to lock them up and torture them until they take the Jedi oath, perhaps threaten their families or steal their money, invade their countries, enslave their people, oh, hold on, that's already been done before hasn't it.
Is this attitude really what the human race needs or wants at this point in the 21st century, isn’t this just divisive, infantile and irrational?
Obviously I am exaggerating to make a point here but it seems obvious to me that “faith” in this case is aligned with more mundane concepts such as status, wealth and politics, clearly these people want to protect and expand their livelihoods, clearly they want to promote their own religious “club” against competition with other clubs, clearly they feel that their community should have some special “status” in our population over and above normal democratic representation. None of these desires needs to invoke anything supernatural to be understood by everyone else, they are transparent and obvious, wrapping it all up and invoking “faith” to get your own way, seems to be totally contrived and dishonest to me.
However, what really keeps me awake at night are the more sinister (and conspiratorial) conclusions I could draw i.e. that the "faithful" (in all their wonderful diversity) are working some kind of political campaign against the secular and the godless, perhaps they have reached some kind of tipping point and are pushing back against democracy in the name of their "faith" based world-view. The minions of religion are heading the rallying call and rising up against the gains of democracy, science and the enlightenment of the last 400 years; perhaps they really do want to drag us all back to the theocratic dark ages? I think there is tangible evidence of this in the USA, gladly less here in Europe, however I don't think anyone would dispute that there are real problems ahead in the Arab/Iranian world.
If such trivial erosions of common sense, as superbly demonstrated by this case, somehow aggregate (planned or not) then I believe we are in danger of providing a slippery slope for the cult of "faith" to subvert our hard won secular system and wither our own "rational" brains. I feel it is time in this country (UK) that we had a clear separation of church and state, if we regress backwards at this point and cave in to the irrational demands of the faithful then all I can say is, (ironically) God help us.
Anyone who follows the literary scene cannot have failed to notice the recent surge in books on Atheism, or tomes that criticise the notions of religion and god. Previously marginal Authors like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens and Victor J Stenger among others have all contributed to a noticeable shift in the moral zeitgeist towards rational thinking and the principals of the enlightenment. The perspectives vary, Dawkins and Stenger hit the subject from a scientific promontory (although Dawkins is somewhat more poetic than most scientists I know); then from the intellectual stand we have Hitchens, a hard drinking, straight talking Oxford man; an ex-brit (now a US citizen) who woos American audiences with his plummy accent, photographic memory for pithy quotations and withering put downs.
The objections fall under a couple of main “themes”, although all the arguments are rich and deep and need to be given the benefit of some time to sink in; Here I attempt to summarise them (in no particular order)
On the opposing team we have had a string of rebuttals from religious writers of various denominations and flavours attempting to disprove, dissuade and generally divert attention from these outpourings, without any noticeable success in my opinion.
Generally their arguments fall into predictable intellectual buckets, something like,
This covers the main points (that I can recall), of course there are plenty of more complex philosophical points of view that professors of divinity and followers of every hue trot out to refute the logic of the Atheist position, but frankly I don’t understand them, or more accurately, they make no sense to me.
I find this debate a fascinating one; not just because I am an Atheist, but simply because I am a human being trying to make sense of the world just like everyone else and I really care about the truth. I think this is an important debate, plenty of people I know have a dismissive approach to it, i.e. “who cares, people can believe whatever they like kind" of attitude. For years I adhered to this viewpoint however recently (and particularly since I have had children of my own) I see the faith based dogmas of the world encroaching everywhere, religious faith (of all kinds) seems to be resurging around the world and I think polarising societies wherever it surfaces, suicide bombers, civil war, persecution, anti-science, pseudo-science, hucksterism the list goes on and on. Of course bad people do bad things; I’m not saying that all religion is de-facto a bad thing but I am starting to think that the negative aspects outweigh the positive ones.
If I had to recommend a book from this list (or two) then I would have to steer the reader towards Dawkins and Hitchens, I believe that these two authors provide the largest spread of mainstream ideas from the scientific and humanist camps, the titles in question are “The God Delusion” (Dawkins) and “God is not great” (Hitchens); both well written, thought provoking and utterly compelling.
Apparently climate change is a "political" issue, according to Mark Squires, the administrator of the
A recent thread started by UK "wine anorak" Jamie Goode on the subject of climate change and it's affects or otherwise on vines and the various wine growing regions of the world was suppressed (removed) by Squires who responded with the following reply to Goode,
'To answer your question, global warming is not a legitimate topic for discussion on a wine board that bans politics. No one knows how it affects wine. From week to week you hear that the vineyards will be (a) colder or (b) warmer. Be that as it may, it is a very political discussion in any number of contexts. If you do not agree with that, that is most certainly your right. But it is my right to run the board...'
Since when did physical climate phenomenon become "political", the very fact of suppressing the thread is a political statement in itself. Of course one could argue that this is an American board and Squires is clearly biased in that regard, but still, this organization is happy to take money from clients all around the world where is their representation?
I have cancelled my own subscription to this organization.
The eternal dilemma; anyone who's ever written software faces this dilemma all the time, that is,
Do you write down (on paper) what you (or someone else) are going to do and how it will work or do you just write it (in code)?
There are tons of development methologies, approaches, styles out there in groovy world of software development, but none I have ever read or used is very clear about this important point, to spec or not to spec, that is the question. To be honest I don't subscribe to any formal approach, I tend to use my experience and "gut" to guide me these days, however one thing is for sure, I try not to do too much of either. I find that if I write too much specification then I end up taking too long and get things wrong (aka analysis paralysis), its hard to get the big picture from a 1000 pages of spec. Also if I write down every microscopic detail of how I want something to work then what's left for someone else to do, IMO creativity in software development is an important part of enjoying it. If I don't write enough specification then I end up taking too long often with an experimental mess that's expensive to maintain at the end of it. Detail is needed to explain the why and the how, especially when it's not the designer themselves writing the code.
Well, my latest masterpiece has reached that point (again), the point where I think I have written enough spec. to start writing some code, the approach I take is to write specific and targeted fragments of code (usually the hardest or the least clear parts of the design) This process is always time consuming because its difficult to write something that actually works to the point of being useful, without a lot of supporting stuff around it; so quite often I end up spending more time writing things to create data and meta-data so that I can actually write and test the thing I wanted to in the first place. However expensive though, I find this a critical process; I often *need* to write code in order to establish how I'm going to design something, there is just no other way (without unlimited time that is) Having written code to the point where I am clear in my thinking (this usually involves showing other people!) I will often then revert back to the specification and change and/or complete it.
A trendy word for this process is "prototyping" or iterative development (sometimes called RAD) On the surface it seems like an obvious way to tackle complexity, however a lot of "day-coders" I have known never really "got" the point of the prototype, they mostly thought it was a waste of time, why prototype surely you are clever enough to get the spec right first time? well, no, actually I'm not, neither were they. In my view the point of a prototype is to prove a design feature (either logical or physical), nothing more, nothing less. It is however skill based, i.e. you have to know what you are doing to use it successfully; in my time as a programmer and manager I've seen some hideous products emerge from aimless prototypes or more commonly, chronically disfunctional components that emerge from hopelessly simplistic screen "mock-ups" that were supposed to tell the coders what a system is logically supposed to do. Prototyping and iterative development are things that unfortunately have a bad rep in some quarters, usually because of good old fashioned arrogance (we don't need no stinking prototypes), done right though I believe it's the best approach.
Although powerful, I find this iterative approach requires a lot of discipline; the desire is often strong to simply push on with the code and forget about the spec altogether; this is usually a bad thing in my experience. It's good to write down your design; often it's not until you do this that you see the holes (at least before a coded version is complete, by which time it's too late!), in any case, you should be able to write it down, if you can't then something is wrong. The other good thing about doing things this way is that you actually end up with something that you can show other people; it's often hard to articulate what something will do to either technical or non-technical colleagues, the prototype is a vehicle to do that, but beware, make sure it doesn't become the rod that these same people beat you with when V1 is completed.
My "golden rules" of prototyping
1. A prototype should have some specific "point"; otherwise its just an excuse to cut code too early; a prototype of the *whole* system is pointless
2. Prototype logical or physical things, what or how, don't confuse the two, make sure you know what it is you are testing and that you capture the answer (ideally back in the design documentation)
3. Prototypes are not a substitute for design docs (specs) - unless the prototype is so broad and deep that the spec is not needed (rare, see point one)
4. Prototypes are not excuses for not testing things properly; just because your design held water with 5 transactions doesn't mean it works for 5 million.
5. Sometimes prototyping is harder than just cutting code, clearly if you always get things right first time then you don't need to bother.
6. Make sure the people you show your prototypes to understand what they are looking at and what you expect them to do/say - prototype is not equal to a finished product minus some smoothing of rough edges.
7. Prototypes must have secretive and alluring code-names; dagger, bart, helix, google etc.
Over the years I have worked for several such organisations and all have had all of these annoyances (and many more), interestingly most have been really financially successful (what does that say about their markets?) These days I'm very glad to be out of "sterile happy talk" hell, I do however feel slightly hypocritical, the money I made from these essentially "stupid" companies has enabled me to recently create and fund my own software company, so, I get the chance to do it "my way"; let's hope I don't end up eating my own words, we shall see.
