Real awesome..

I had a holiday in the USA last month and spent some time in Yosemite national park and while there did some rock climbing with my kids (nothing too dramatic); for us even small achievements felt thrilling. However, whilst out one day we spotted some "proper" climbers on "El Capitan" (see above image) which is a famous climb in the park. Photographs can't do it justice but I snapped a couple of shots in an attempt to show the true scale of the feat being accomplished.

There are three pictures at different levels of zoom showing a climber about two thirds of the way up the 3000 foot face. It takes around 3-4 days to complete the entire climb meaning this person probably has at least a day and a night left to do and will sleep (anchored by ropes) whilst clinging to the vertical granite face. The physical exertion required to do this is off the charts, not only is the climbing very physically challenging a climber has to drag up all of the equipment, food and water required for the entire duration of the climb (that's about 80kg of water alone!); having struggled (pathetically) up a few hundred feet of a much simpler face I'm left with a deep respect for the people that attempt this and a feeling of real awe at the majesty of nature.

Want ice with that?

I'm sure science geeks everywhere have been captivated by the recent ESA achievement of placing a spacecraft (Rosetta) in orbit around comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko at a distance of over 350 million kilometres from Earth. The early photographs of the object against the black featureless backdrop of space make it look small but in reality this object is massive, roughly 2 miles across and weighing approximately 10,000,000,000,000 Kg it would make a pretty impressive splash if it ever hit our planet.

For a better sense of scale someone has created the above picture showing what this comet would look like against the backdrop of the city of Los Angeles, now that's a big lump of ice!

Angry of Mayfair here...

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

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

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

Now where are those blood pressure tablets..

Google mysteries

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

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

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

Sour as grapes

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

land of make believers

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

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

Unequal equivalence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and so on...

It's written in the stars

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

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

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

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

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

Friday factoid

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

It's not just me that thinks that..

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

Different similarities

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

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

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

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

Could they tell the difference?

Summer listening

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

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

Friday smirk

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

Chalk meets cheese

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

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

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

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

Bootstrapped morality

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

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

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

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

Movies that are less likely than reality..

Sound plausible?

Things I hate

Made me chuckle..

Burning desire

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

Mind viruses

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

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

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

Creationism, football and ancient willies

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

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

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