sex and death

Wolfsangel book review

2011-02-18T21:42:00.001Z

Wolfsangel is the first fantasy novel by Mark Barrowcliffe under the nom-de-plume MD Lachlan. M.D. Lachlan obviously loves Norse mythology and is an ex-roleplayer (he also wrote the Elfish Gene). Both of these things endeared the book to me before I’d even opened it, since I too love Norse mythology, and play role-playing games. In fact I learned a lot of my Norse myths from role-playing, and I’m guessing that M.D. Lachlan did too. However, I didn’t actually read the book for quite a while, since the publicity emphasised that it was about werewolves, rather than Vikings. This conjured up (to me at any rate), visions of Lon Chaney-esque wolfmen baying at the full moon before getting their come-uppance from a suitable bit of silver.

This isn’t that sort of book. Instead it evokes the bleak landscapes of the Norse sagas, with violent death and evil seidr magic constantly threatening, and indeed, killing most of the books characters. The wolf in question is the Fenrisulfr, the spawn of Loki, enemy of Odin, the hanged god, battle-bold and one-eyed. And the seidr – the dark and dangerous runemagic of women - is suitably filthy and murderous. Something no Aesir-respecting warrior should dabble in.

In fact the story begins when King Authun the pitiless, a Viking Jarl, leads his berserks on a raid to kidnap a magical child on the basis of a witch’s prophecy. Even the men who survive must sacrifice themselves for the king’s prophecy to be fulfilled. In fact he finds two children. Things go downhill for Authun after that.

The main characters, Authun, his kidnapped sons Vali and Fealig, and their shared love-interest Adisla are well drawn and easy to sympathise with, and the story is suitably complex and involving. It has a strong sense of time and place, and I particularly like the fact that the author has translated a lot of the Norse words, as this is the way that the Norse would have actually heard the legends. I love the way that, for example, Fenris is tied with a cord called Thin to a rock called Scream. It’s all very redolent of the sagas.

So if you like Vikings, magic, death and accomplished storytelling, this is the sort of thing you’ll like.

Open Letter to Ed Vaizey

2011-01-30T14:52:00.001Z

Dear Mr Vaizey,

I understand that you are meeting with internet service providers to discuss how the industry can better support parents and help them ensure that their children cannot access pornography.

I am the parent of a young child, and I would like to emphazize that I do not in any way support this initiative. The suggestion by Claire Perry MP, to switch the default setting for internet pornography in to our homes to off, and implement an opt-in system, is idiotic, and betrays a deep ignorance of both the technical workings of the internet, the dangers of censorship, and the psychology of sexual behaviour.

in detail:

1. It will not be possible to achieve. The use of proxy servers, ftp, file-sharing, texting and good old email will mean that any child except the terminally stupid who wants to access pornography will be able. This will be an embarrasing and public failure for your government. Do you really want to be less popular than you are at present?

The ban on child pornography is only effective because all parties, internationally, agree that child pornography is undesireable, and actively police it. There is no such agreement over adult pornography, inded the top 10 search terms on google each day have the word 'porn' in them. People like porn.

2. Who will decide which sites are pornographic? Automated technology works poorly, and the experience of those that have had the internet censored in their countries is that it is not long before dissenting political views and human rights violations are being hushed up too. Do you really want to put us on a par with China, the middle east and North Korea?

3. Contrary to the misinformation being offered up by people such as SaferMedia, wider availability of pornography actually reduces the number of sex crimes. Please actually take the time to look at real evidence, such as the studies from the Czech Republic, Japan and Denmark, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101130111326.htm rather than simplistic moralisation and political point scoring of SaferMedia. Tightening up on pornography on the internet will lead to more women being raped and sexually abused, not less.

I had hoped that this government would be less stupid and authoritarian than the last one. I voted for you on that basis. My hopes so far have not been realised.

Yours Sincerely,

Imagining the 4th dimension

2008-10-23T10:20:00.002+01:00

Ever since I was little, well fairly little, inspired by the writings of A.A. Attanasio, I have tried to imagine higher-dimensional shapes. Shapes like the lovely hypercube:

Dimensions is a lovely project which takes you through the maths of higher dimensional shapes, without overwhelming you with detail. It's all done through animation, and you can watch it online. Don't be a flatlander. JFDI!

Agnostic buses

2008-10-23T09:50:00.002+01:00

The two things that you need to know about the atheist bus campaign (to which I've dutifully added my tenner) :

They were hoping to make £5,500, but have in fact made over £75,000 in the first couple of days.
The CiF comment thread now has 1739 comments on it. More than I've ever seen on a CiF thread.

Yay atheists!

The buses are actually agnostic, apparently because Transport for London advertising rules don't allow people to be definite in their unbelief for fear of causing offence to religious people. Considering the enthusiastic response to the campaign, there are obviously a lot of atheists out there who might be offended by those adverts which definitely proclaim their belief.

I'm not overly bothered about this, being a bit of a 6 myself on the Dawkins Scale, although it would have been nice to have slogans that were a bit more 'in your face'. Maybe next time.

Bryan Appleyard doesn't like it though.

recording the creation of the worlds first fascist democracy.

2008-09-28T18:15:00.000+01:00

Via England Expects, a blog now sadly defunct owing to the actions of some petty eurocrat, I found this google map of England which records:

"A geographical view of both the public and the personal effect of State sponsored fear and distrust as seen through the twisted technological lens of petty officials and would be bureaucrats nationwide."

according to its creator, Hieronymous, who is busy recording the creation of the worlds first fascist democracy.

Worth a look.

Don't talk to the police

2008-08-28T18:17:00.000+01:00

The Times today reports that the Home Office is putting forward a new set of proposals aimed at locking more of us up. Presumably in "titan" jails. The meat of the proposal, according to the Times, is as follows:

Ban on post-charge questioning to end
Children to be interviewed without parents being present
Courts to be able to draw an inference of guilt if a suspect refuses to take part in an identity parade or answer post-charge questions
Shopping centre “jails” to hold suspects accused of low-level crime for up to 4 hours while they are processed by police
Non-police workers such as park wardens to be allowed to detain registered sex offenders
Police to be allowed to question suspects for longer before bringing charges

All this opens up the unsavoury prospect of the police being able to question people repeatedly for months on end whilst they are awaiting trial, children being bullied by adults in uniform, and park wardens beating up suspected nonces ("it was reasonable force, guv").

What is of most concern is that courts will be able to draw an inference of guilt if a suspect refuses to answer post-charge questions. This completely reverses the burden of proof, implying that you are guilty if you refuse to answer questions designed to entrap you.

The video below, despite being American, explains exactly why you should never speak to the police, even if you are as innocent as the day is long:

Fat camp, here I come

2008-01-28T13:56:00.000Z

From the Daily Telegraph we have the following UK government proposal. They want companies to be able to provide tax-free incentives to their employees to encourage them to lose weight.

I spot a business opportunity here. Suppose I run my own company (which I do) does this mean I can pay myself to get thin and claim the tax back? Tax free skiing holidays on health grounds beckon as well.

Would I have to pay the tax back when I almost inevitably put all the weight back on (as 19 out of 20 dieters do)? Or can I just make a pledge to improve things and keep paying myself tax free. Sounds like a winner to me.

Mind you it's a mystery to me why doctors invariably prescribe diet and exercise to lose weight when, long term, the vast majority of their patients will fail to lose weight that way. It's as though I went in with a headache and they gave me a pill with the advice that there's only a 1 in 20 chance that it would fix me up. I wouldn't be very satisfied with that, and I don't suppose many others would either. Yet people simply look shamefaced as their disgustingly obese BMI is read out and promise to try harder.

I think this is because being fat is regarded as a moral weakness (especially by some young people) , rather than simply being the result of us being anatomically cavemen with a metabolism tuned to make the most of scarce food resources. The only problem is that we're living in a culture in which tasty nutritious food is all around us. It's not about willpower, it's about biochemistry.

H/T to Mr Eugenides for this one.

Achieving my Apotheosis

2008-01-18T12:07:00.000Z

With yet another h/t to Surreptitious Evil it appears that I am a Nerd God. I always though of myself as more of a bacchanalian pagan God. However nerd is good too. I really must put some sensible posts up...

UPDATE: Oh wait. Actually I'm not as nerdy or dorky) as all that:

Elsewhere

2007-12-01T18:16:00.000Z

More of my childish, ill-formed and unimaginative thoughts can be found in this thread on the Sophistry of Liberty over at the Devils Kitchen. Hopefully this will prove that I'm not someone else.

My brain hurts

2007-12-01T17:35:00.000Z

With a h/t to Surreptitious Evil, the reading level of this blog has been determined to be:

So welcome morons, cretins and assorted preschoolers to this cornucopia of speculation on the ontological and existential paradigms which bedevil our existence.

What a Wanker

2007-11-19T19:24:00.000Z

I had a brief pointer to people having sex with their cars in a previous entry. That was pretty risible, but at least the folk involved were left alone to get on with their vehicular onanism. By way of a follow-up we now have have someone actually getting punished for pleasuring their bicycle. Of course what we actually have is a man pleasuring himself with said bicycle. Another way of looking at this is that a man was having a wank, by himself, in a locked hotel room.

For this Robert Stewart got hauled up in front of the local beak, Sheriff Colin Miller, who put him on probation for 3 years, and on the Sex Offenders Register for the same amount of time. He's now a convicted criminal, and officially a nonce. He's doubtless had his DNA taken by the police, and his job prospects ruined.

All for having a wank. In private.

It's not Mr Stewart who is the wanker here.

Fine Upstanding Mafia

2007-11-10T11:05:00.000Z

My impression of the mafia was that they were all getting people to say hello to their little friends, and snorting enough blow to kill an elephant. However, it seems that I was wrong.

They apparently have 10 commandments just like the christians. I guess its their catholic Italian heritage coming through. The BBC lists them here. Lots of stuff about being nice to each other and their wives.

Charmingly old-fashioned, I thought.

Muslims just don't get it.

2007-11-10T07:35:00.000Z

I read this article on the BBC site, nodding my approval of things like:

"If your community is perceived in a very negative manner, and poll after poll says that we are alienated, then Muslims begin to feel very vulnerable," he said.
"We are seen as creating problems, not as bringing anything and that is not good for society."

All very fair and reasonable. I agree with him that there's too much demonisation of Muslims, and far too much stereotyping. He follows on:

"Some of the Muslim principles can help social cohesion - family, marriage, raising children with boundaries, giving to the poor, and not being too greedy," he said.

Again, I found this hard to disagree with. These are principles which our culture tries to live up to, but often fails. They're a little old-fashioned, maybe, but none the worse for that.

And then he says this:

He also suggested restrictions on drinking alcohol in public places should be introduced, to follow on from the introduction of the smoking ban.
...Britain should embrace "assisted" marriages - the term he said he preferred instead of arranged marriages - as well as making abortion more difficult and encouraging more modesty.
"You shouldn't be revealing your body so much that it can be tempting to other people," he said.

Essentially he is against things like the freedom to marry who you want and get drunk occasionally. He is against the freedom for women to wear what they like, and have control of their own fertility.

They just don't fucking get it do they? This is what makes them foreign. This is what makes them alien. I'm saying 'them' in a perjorative manner here because these are cultural, not individual differences, which make them Not Like Us.

These things are intrinsic parts of our culture, like it or not. They are markers for deep underlying principles which underpin much of our way of life. Principles that people have fought and died for over the last 1000 years, such as the primacy of the individual over government, and particularly equality for women in all spheres of life.

And I'm afraid that until they understand this Muslims will continue to be regarded with suspicion.

Update: He likes book-burning as well.

Evolution in Action

2007-11-05T14:13:00.000Z

here.

Nonce Sense

2007-08-03T16:40:00.000+01:00

Lots of fuss about Chris Langham, after his conviction for 'creating' kiddy porn, although he got off the charges of actually having under-age sex. As one is obliged to do these days, I must first state my position on this. As Mr Langham once apparently said, I like children, although I couldn't eat a whole one. Actually that's not true. I don't really like children. They're nasty, smelly, annoying creatures who seem to do little except demand things and put sticky wrappers into your hand when you're not expecting it. I have one of my own. I know.

In other words, I'm not a paedophile, and I don't really understand people who are. I would no more want to have sex with a child than I would want to screw my car. This may come as a shock to the powers that be who believe that all men are latent peadophile rapists, just waiting for their perverted lusts to be triggered by a picture, but that's the way it is. I'm just not interested in children.

However, I was swimming this morning at my local pool when my eye chanced on an attractively pneumatic black woman frolicking in the water. Mmm, nice, thought my lizard brain. Not that I would have done anything about it, being happily married and a geek, but any man who says he doesn't look is a liar. Then her mum got into the pool and I realised that she was about 14. I was discreetly leching at an under-age girl. That makes me a paedophile, surely?

Well, not in Spain or Japan, and possibly not in Germany, or a host of other places.

It seems to me that whatever the legal age of consent is, someone who wishes to have sex with someone else who is pre-pubescent has something wrong with their brain. From an evolutionary perpective I can't think of any way in which this would be a useful adaptation*. They're just broken.

This is completely different from someone who wishes to have sex with someone else who is post-pubescent, but below the legal age of consent in their particular locality. That's entirely normal behaviour. Healthy young women are the ideal mate, from an evolutionary perspective. They are strong, fit and fertile. Society recognises this by encouraging females to try and look younger to get a partner. Boob jobs, cosmetics, hair dye are all ways to appear younger, and appeal to a male brain evolved to look for reproductive fitness, i.e. youth.

However, in the eyes of the law, they are just the same. This seems silly to me. I appreciate that we have to infantilise our teenagers in order to educate them sufficiently to be members of our complex western society. And I've blogged about Rousseau and the noble savage before. Even so, lumping people who are normal, but have transgressed their society's taboos in with people with broken brains seems wrong. The former need a slap on the wrist, the latter need treatment.

Fixed age of consent laws will always throw up anomalous cases, but it's generally for the best that schoolgirls get on with their homework without having to fend off men trying to get into their pants, so generally I support them. However, lumping everyone into the category of sick perverted paedophiles just isn't helpful. As with everything else in life, the reality is more nuanced.

* just because I can't think of it doesn't make it true, of course, but until I read otherwise, I'm sticking to it.

** the title comes from the fantastic Brass Eye 'Paedogedden' special.

UPDATE: someone on the cif thread pointed me here, with the statistic that 25% of adult males fancy children. That seems a bit high to me, and I suspect that what happens in the lab doesn't transfer into the real world in this case.

Entering the Twilight Zone

2007-07-25T16:52:00.001+01:00

I seem to have entered a parallel universe today, in which everything I know is wrong. UK Healthcare is among the best in the world, despite being a quasi-Stalinist organisation. And the UK government has decided not to extend the term of music copyright, despite opposition objections.

Lordy. I need a lie down.

Smoking Kills!

2007-07-25T09:01:00.000+01:00

So, we have ~~possibly~~ the first casualty in the War On Smoking. A man was shot after annoying some smokers in a bar. Now I don't condone shooting people who annoy you. We're not Americans after all. But it's just another, predictable, consequential effect of legislation. If you put in annoying laws, people are going to get annoyed. And occasionally people will get hurt.

Now I see that Friends of the Earth is recommending that patio heaters be banned. This means that all those annoyed smokers won't even be able to sit in a pub garden without freezing. So more people are going to get hurt when they come back inside. It's not even as though there's a clearcut link between passive smoking and health, according to this study.

Slow handclap for the totalitarians. Again.

Which Tarot Card Am I?

2007-07-23T11:12:00.001+01:00

I like the Tarot, and can do passable readings. This may sound odd, considering I'm a thorough-going rational materialist, but I find the images fascinating, and in a Jungian sense I think they are visual representations of Archetypes. Anyway, I couldn't resist the chance to see what card I was:

You are The Hermit

Prudence, Caution, Deliberation.

The Hermit points to all things hidden, such as knowledge and inspiration,hidden enemies. The illumination is from within, and retirement from participation in current events.

The Hermit is a card of introspection, analysis and, well, virginity. You do not desire to socialize; the card indicates, instead, a desire for peace and solitude. You prefer to take the time to think, organize, ruminate, take stock. There may be feelings of frustration and discontent but these feelings eventually lead to enlightenment, illumination, clarity.

The Hermit represents a wise, inspirational person, friend, teacher, therapist. This a person who can shine a light on things that were previously mysterious and confusing.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

H/T to DK. I think I shall just crawl back into my cave now.

Fisking the Extreme Porn Bill

2007-07-22T12:47:00.000+01:00

This really follows on from my last post, but it was getting a tad unwieldy so I thought I'd split it. Plus writing sensibly was beginning to annoy me. These are the government's supposed reasons for bringing in the new law. Let us now peel back the foreskin of ignorance, and apply the wire brush of vitriol to their proposals.

Extreme Pornographic Images

802. The Government believes that these clauses constitute an interference with Convention rights under Articles 8 and 10 but that for the reasons set out below this is justified as being in accordance with the law, and necessary in a democratic society for the prevention of crime, for the protection of morals and for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

This is bollocks. The government admits that it is a breach of human rights, but hopes to get away with it. On moral grounds. God I loathe people who believe that they have a right to impose their tired old morals on others. The grounds for banning something should be demonstrable harm. Not just because its objectionable. Which leads us to:

803. The material to be covered by this new offence is at the most extreme end of the spectrum of pornographic material which is likely to be thought abhorrent by most people.

So fucking what? All sorts of things are abhorrent to each and every one of us, but that's no grounds to make pictures of them illegal. Unless you're a moralising cunt like John Beyer.

It is not possible at law to give consent to the type of activity covered by the offence,

Oh yes it is! under the Sexual Offences act 2003 you are allowed to give oral sex to an animal, you are allowed to fist your wife, or give your lovers breasts or genitals a good thrashing. Distasteful? maybe. But not illegal. Fucking liars.

so it is therefore likely that a criminal offence is being committed where the activity which appears to be taking place is actually taking place.

This is nonsense. Given that the bill includes the idea that images that are acted or fake are prosecutable, it is entirely likely that no criminal offence is occurring in a majority of cases.

The House of Lords upheld convictions for offences of causing actual and grievous bodily harm in the case of Brown [1994] 1 AC 212 which involved a group of sado-masochists who had engaged in consensual torture. The threshold that the clauses have set is very high, so while those taking part might argue that they had consented to it, such consent is not valid at law.

This was a truly disgusting piece of legislation, in which a group of gay men were engaged in a bit of consensual BDSM, and were jailed for it. One of them died in jail. Gay clubs were raided for years, and the BDSM scene is harassed because of it to this day. For the government to regard this as a good thing shows what a bunch of moralising bastards they really are.

804. In the case of images of staged activity , the Government believes that banning possession is justified in order to meet the legitimate aim of protecting the individuals involved from participating in degrading activities. This is also the case with images of bestiality, which while involving harm to animals can also involve the non-consensual participation of humans who are harmed in the process of making the images.

Ah, here we come to the actual reason. The government regards these paraphilias as "degrading". No wait. They believe that acting in a production depicting these acts is degrading, whilst in most cases actually doing them is not. Ludicrous inconsistent fuckwits.

805. The Government considers that the new offence is a proportionate measure with the legitimate aim of breaking the demand and supply cycle of this material, which may be harmful to those who view it.

This entire paragraph is hearsay, with no scientific backing from any source. It will not break the supply and demand cycle, since the rest of the western world will go on supplying and demanding it. This material may be harmful, they say except that evidence shows exactly the opposite. Banning this material will be harmful, as it will increase the rate of sex crimes. How many women need to be raped or murdered before the government bothers to read the studies? Lazy, ignorant, stupid mendacious cunts.

Irrespective of how these images were made, banning their possession can be justified as sending a signal that such behaviour is not considered acceptable. Viewing such images voluntarily can desensitise the viewer to such degrading acts, and can reinforce the message that such behaviour is acceptable.

There is absolutely no evidence that support these statements. However, contrary to my previous statements the government is not being inconsistent. They really do hate BDSM, fisting and all the rest. I'd just like to know what fucking business it is of theirs what people get up to in their own homes. The BDSM movements motto is "Safe, Sane, Consensual". I wish it was the governments motto.

806. The Government considers that the restrictions on this material also achieve the aim of protecting others, particularly children and vulnerable adults, from inadvertently coming into possession of this material, which is widespread on the internet.

Don't be so fucking stupid. England is the only country enacting this legislation. They may not even have it in Scotland. It'll all be up there, just the same. Unless, of course you want to use this as an excuse to start censoring the internet. Just like Saudi Arabia, China and all those other models of democratic freedom. You authoritarian fuckpigs.

Even More Extreme Pornography

2007-07-20T21:20:00.000+01:00

So, the UK government has released the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill 2007 with the promised legislation on Extreme Pornography in sections 64-67. I've blogged on this before here and here. I know it came out a while ago, but I haven't had a chance to study it in detail until now. And guess what? It's even worse than they suggested in the consultation.

As always the legislation itself is boring to read and hedged about with legalese, but the notes are rather easier to read. The nub of it is as follows:

If you have pictures that the government doesn't like, of perfectly legal acts between consenting adults, you may be sent to prison for up to 3 years, and placed on the Sex Offenders Register for life. You can be branded a nonce and locked up with all the other paedophiles, rapists and murderers, just for the sake of a few harmless pictures of legal acts.

So what sort of pictures doesn't the government like now?

Well, firstly they have to be pornographic. An image is “pornographic” if it appears to have been produced solely or principally for the purpose of sexual arousal.

Secondly they have to be “extreme”. An image is “extreme” if it depicts:

(a) an act which threatens or appears to threaten a person’s life,
(b) an act which results in or appears to result (or be likely to result) in serious injury to a person’s anus, breasts or genitals,
(c) an act which involves or appears to involve sexual interference with a human corpse,
(d) a person performing or appearing to perform an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal, where (in each case) any such act, person or animal depicted in the image is or appears to be real.

The first thing to notice, is that in all cases these images only have to "appear to be real". In other words, it doesn't matter if it's just acting, or completely fake. The second thing is that many of these acts are actually perfectly legal to perform (including giving an animal a blowjob, curiously enough).

Images the government wants to criminalise:

Rape (a)
Torture (b)
Necrophilia (c)
Bestiality (d)

In actuality, images that are likely to be criminalised include:

Breath play (a)
Fisting (b)
Anal intercourse (b)
BDSM involving the parts listed in (b)
Sleepy sex (c)

There are probably a lot more. Perhaps interested readers will suggest a few and I'll list them.

As I've said before, you personally may not be into any of the above things. But a lot of people are. Around 5% of the population are into BDSM, and about 25% of the gay population. In England that's around 2m people. Around 10% of the population like a regular bit of back-door action. That's another 4m potential criminals. Even if not many are photography enthusiasts, that's still an awful lot of people.

And there's simply no point to this. The government themselves admitted that there was no causal link between Extreme Porn images and criminal activity. No other western democracy wants to ban images of this sort, and numerous studies have shown that the free availability of porn actually reduces sex crimes.

This legislation will, by the governments own admission protect no-one, criminalise many law-abiding people, and increase the number of sex crimes in England. It will also encourage the Police to burst into peoples houses at dawn to confiscate their computers, and provoke more censorship of the Internet. Still think that it has nothing to do with you?

There are other articles worth reading on the subject here and here.

The governments offical line on this is here, and this debate is pretty representative of the lack of understanding of this issue by the powers that be. References can be found in my response to the initial consultation.

Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature

2007-07-19T07:46:00.000+01:00

Here's an article from Psychology Today which I rather enjoyed. It looks at a number of social phenomena from an evolutionary psychology basis, and although the evidence offered is a bit sketchy in some places, it's worth a read. Evolutionary psychology is one of those things which is so obviously right that it's a no-brainer (pun intended), but almost no-one believes in because it de-mystifies our behaviour and makes us feel less like free agents, and more like the semi-conscious automata that we really are.

Silver Pirate Things

2007-06-28T09:48:00.000+01:00

Unity over at the Ministry of Truth has an article about how European Law impacts on the Silver Ring Thing court case thing involving Lydia Playfoot thing. Unity has made something of a study of the case in fact.

If I read article 9 of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights correctly, my daughter can go to school in full pirate regalia, despite the fact that her school has a fairly strict dress code, because she is (or claims to be) a worshipper of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. FSM's worshippers are exhorted to wear this regalia because it will reduce global warming (of course).

Article 9 protects the right of a person to manifest their religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance.

Dressing like a pirate is in fact an act of worship, possibly an example to others (teaching), definitely a religious practice (since it dates from the religions foundation), and an observance. Consequently this is protected by the full force of European law.

All of which goes to show how ridiculous this religious stuff is.

UPDATE: She lost, of course.

Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen

2007-06-18T14:59:00.000+01:00

Do you want to understand global trends for life expectancy, child mortality and poverty rates? Are you rubbish with figures and hate statistics, and thus find the modern world hopelessly confusing?

Notwithstanding the fact that if you're stupid, you're probably too stupid to realise it, of course.

Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen is a talk by Hans Rosling which is both funny, informative and for me at least, quite surprising. Even better, you can play with the lovely visualisation tool he uses for yourself. A fine way to waste an afternoon in my opinion.

Satanic Knighthoods

2007-06-17T17:22:00.000+01:00

Good to see that Salman Rushdie has been given a Knighthood in this years UK Honours list. Good mostly because it has annoyed the Iranian government, who are frankly even more corrupt and useless than our own, and that's saying something.

Even better is that Shami Chakrabati has been given a CBE. She's one of the very few people who have made a principled stand for human rights and personal freedoms during the term of the Labour government, so it's something of a surprise. Shame she didn't turn it down though.

The Honours list is basically just a popularity contest, with anyone who can pay enough, or get enough column inches getting a gong, so it's generally dominated by worthless politicians and sports folk. I wonder if a blogger will ever get one?

The thrill of being forced

2007-06-15T13:16:00.000+01:00

In the great game of Dominance & Submission which makes up our human existence (and that of most other pack animals), I like to think of myself as a Dom, a Top, an Alpha. Probably this is to do with the testosterone which courses through my male veins. I like to be in charge, or more specifically, I loathe being ordered about, especially when it's 'for my own good'. This in turn fuels my right-wing libertarian political viewpoint.

However, many people do not share this view, and naturally appreciate the firm smack of authority. It makes them feel secure, wanted and part of something greater than themselves, It also helps diminish death anxiety. The converse is also true. Studies show that people become more authoritarian when they are anxious.

I was reminded of this whilst reading an article on spiked-online, which quotes Al Gore on climate change:

‘The climate crisis also offers us the chance to experience what very few generations in history have had the privilege of knowing: a generational mission; the exhilaration of a compelling moral purpose; a shared and unifying cause; the thrill of being forced by circumstances to put aside the pettiness and conflict that so often stifle the restless human need for transcendence; the opportunity to rise…. When we do rise, it will fill out spirits and bind us together. Those who are now suffocating in cynicism and despair will be able to breathe freely. Those who are now suffering from a loss of meaning in their lives will find hope.’

So Big Al enjoys 'the thrill of being forced'. Indeed it fulfils his 'need for transcendence'. It's funny how often those in positions of power often turn out to be subs.
This appeal to authority has other implications for contemporary eco-warriors. In the old days, and particularly during the Christian dark ages, people solved problems about the world through appeals to authority. If it was in the bible, then it was true. If the bible was a bit sketchy, or inconsistent, then further proof would be provided by reference to Plato, or Aristotle. No-one actually checked the information. No-one did rigorous observations of the world. so for hundreds of years people believed that the world was flat, and that geese were born from barnacles.

However, there has been another thread to western civilisation. Since Aristotle first wrote about Empericism some 2300 years ago, through the Muslim polymath Alhacen, via Dr Mirabilis in the West, to Karl Popper in our time, the scientific method has been developed. After the renaissance, scientific thinking became our dominant way of dealing with the world. This fuelled the industrial revolution, and lead us to the world of today, where at least in the West, we are living longer, healthier lives than anyone in the history of Mankind.

But Eco-Masochists like Gore want to turn the clock back. Their science is merely appeals to authority. The IPCC report has lots of scientists contributing so it must be right. George Monbiot writes in the paper, so he must be right.

This world of plenty and change frightens Eco-Masochists. They don't want unlimited horizons and the freedom to achieve our dreams. They want a 'compelling moral purpose', so that they will be able to 'breathe freely' and 'find hope'. They want to be bound by regulations and slapped promptly when they transgress. They want state interference with every aspect of their lives, so that they feel cared for, and less scared.

I think that Bertrand Russell put it best: 'If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing'

Are you pushing it out...

2007-06-08T21:12:00.000+01:00

...you nigger. These were the words that got Emily Parr turfed out of the Big Brother house yesterday. I heard this on Radio 4, shortly before Andy Duncan was castigated by John Humphries for broadcasting it on C4. Double standards ftw, hmm.

Funnily enough, I was working at C4 when I had a similar experience to young Emily. I have some married friends; she's from Grenada, he's from Yorkshire. He calls her 'nig' or 'nigger' all the time.

We were watching some after-dinner porn (as you do) and the thorny question of penis size came up. John Holmes was on screen, and my Yorkshire friend claimed that he was in fact King Dong. 'Nonsense', I replied, 'King Dong is a nigger!' (actually it's a film). All eyes turned to me, and silence reigned for several seconds, broken only by my partner inquiring archly 'what did you say?' 'He's a nigger, you know, a black guy.' I stuttered.

The conversation passed on, but our friendship was never quite as close from that day.

I've blogged about swearing before, and in general I think it's a bit infantile to be offended by rude words, but racially-charged epithets carry a particular connotation, i.e. that the user is themselves a racist. I feel slightly sorry for Emily Parr, as I don't think she meant to be racist, as I did not. I don't think C4 should have thrown her out. Apparently 900 people agree with me, as opposed to 86 that don't.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.

UPDATE: spiked online says something sensible about this. Shock. Horror.

The Olympic Logo is Arse

2007-06-05T13:11:00.000+01:00

I'm not going to comment on the new olympic logo. It's been reviled here, here, here and here. Just about everywhere in fact. There's even a petition to change it.

No, I'm just going to say that the logo absolutely should have been this one.

UPDATE: and it's on the telly too!

Extradition

2007-06-04T14:27:00.000+01:00

Just a quickie, because I'm busy. Compare and contrast two government attitudes to extradition. And there's me thinking we live in the free part of the world. Next thing you'll be telling me there are people watching our every move. Oh wait.

More Extreme Pornography

2007-04-25T22:18:00.000+01:00

So, the UK government has deigned to respond to the petition about violent pornography. And what is the result? Well, pretty much nothing. They're still going to press ahead, despite the majority of responses to their consultation being against the proposal. They say they're simply updating the Obscene Publications Act (which is a lie), and are still going to criminalise the possession of pictures of completely consensual and legal acts. Frankly I wonder why they bother with the pretence of consulting the public, just to annoy them by ignoring the results.

And while we are on the subject of thought crime, google has seen fit to delist Inquisition 21st Century. This site, amongst other things, campaigns on behalf of the victims of Operation Ore, which must be one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in recent times. PcPro wrote about it here and here. Literally thousands of people were falsely branded as paedophiles on trumped-up charges. Apparently Operation Ore Exposed is bringing a class action against the police. Now the government wants to bring pictures of consensual BDSM under the same regime. Expect many more miscarriages of justice. And remember, don't be evil, kids!

UPDATE: the Yorkshire ranter has posted this article discussing the latest developments in Operation Ore. H/T to Chicken Yoghurt

UPDATE: As the group (class) action began Google re-listed the site. Fishy, huh?

Cartoons

2007-03-29T09:03:00.000+01:00

I loved this cartoon. It sums up the ludicrously over-optimistic view that people have about life. It seems that being optimistic is an evolutionary advantage, even if that optimism is unfounded. We're descended from all those cave-men* who didn't lie in the cave moaning that there was no point in getting up to hunt mammoths because we'd all be dead by 25.

I like cartoons which have a particular warped sensibility about them. It's hard for me to define that further, but here is a another (sadly defunct) cartoon strip that floats my boat. Enjoy!

* There weren't really any cave-men. Living in caves is draughty and unpleasant. Even for hominids.

The Noble Savage

2007-03-29T08:46:00.000+01:00

The doctrine of the Noble Savage was first popularised in Rousseau's Emile (1762), . It's the idea that in our natural state, unsullied by technology, people were peaceful hunter-gatherers, with a deep respect for nature and all living things, living in harmony with our environment. Children, too, are naturally good, kind and innocent, until corrupted by their contact with the adult world.

In my opinion it is arrant nonsense and the cause of many of societies current ills :- Green Fundamentalism, Anti-intellectualism, and the Paedophile Panic, to name a few. It's the mirror image of the doctrine of Original Sin, which is just as silly.

In Edge magazine, Steven Pinker dismantles one of the planks upon which the idea of the Noble Savage rests upon; the idea that society is more violent today than in the past. Despite all the wars and genocides* of the last century, he makes the point that if modern society was as violent as historical society, our death toll in the 20th century would have been 2 billion rather than the comparatively meagre 100 million we actually killed.

He isn't sure exactly why we've got so much nicer and less violent, although he lists a few possibilities. One possibility he doesn't list explicitly is the possibility that is is the fact that we are getting more prosperous as time goes on. It does seem that rich people are actually nicer to each other, presumably because they don't need to squabble over scarce resources, and aren't so anxious and aggressive because they're less scared of dying.

* I hate the way genocide has been redefined to mean attempting to kill people of an ethnic group, rather than actually annihilating a particular ethic group, (e.g. the Tasmanian aborigines). Likewise with decimate, which means to kill 1 in10, not to kill nearly everyone in a group.

Happy New Year Saddam

2006-12-30T22:52:00.000Z

So, the US and UK governments have another murder on their hands, to go along with all the others. I'm not saying that Saddam Hussein was a nice man. I wouldn't have invited him to my new-years eve party, or anything. However, I believe that you can judge a country by how it treats it's prisoners, and ex-dictators are no exception.

State sponsored execution is the worst kind of murder, because it is carried out in cold blood, on a totally helpless enemy. Anyone who approves of it should watch Krzysztof Kieslowski's film A Short Film About Killing, which puts the point better than I can.

Some people will say that it was the Iraqi's who executed him, not Bush or Blair but as Riverbend says:

"...make no mistake about it, this trial and verdict and execution are 100% American. Some of the actors were Iraqi enough, but the production, direction and montage was pure Hollywood..."

Here in the UK, we don't have the death penalty, but that hasn't stopped bloggers, christians, and the media over here metaphorically rubbing their hands with glee at the fact that once again we've managed to outsource our executions to somewhere that does. I haven't provided a link to the christian, because it was my mum.

The Tragedy of Cod Fishing

2006-12-22T13:15:00.000Z

Cod fishing in the North Sea is an emerging example of the tragedy of the commons. It's been brought into sharp focus by the decision of the European Ministers to slightly decrease the fishing quotas. This is against a background of cod stocks and catches decreasing year-on-year since the 1970's. The ICES, who monitor this, have been advising a moratorium on cod fishing since 1992.

In the summer of 1975 I spent a month in Newfoundland, in the city of St Johns, which at that time was a thriving fishing port, catching its share of 300,000 tonnes of cod caught off the East coast. St Johns isn't a big place, and most people were involved in the fishing industry. They were thriving on it though.

However, even then the catch had fallen from its peak of 800,000 tonnes in 1963. 1975 was also around the time they were introducing draggers (or trawlers), and this technology kept the levels up around 250,000 through the 1980's. In 1986, scientists recommended the catch be halved, due to dwindling stocks, and the Canadian government responded with a small reduction in the quota. See any similarities here?

By 1992 it was all over. There were simply no fish. The Canadian government responded by banning cod fishing, but it was too little, too late. A 1994 survey found only 1700 tonnes of biomass. 20 years later, and there's no real change. The cod have not returned.

The story is told here, by greenpeace, and there's a discussion of it as a tragedy of the commons here. Or in video here, if you like. It's a big deal to Newfies.

Fishing is interesting, because it's the last truly hunter-gatherer occupation that we have. All our other food production industries are a variation of farming. Even with highly mechanised fishing boats it's still hunting. History shows us that hunting on land can't support a large population, maybe 1% of that supported by farming, and hunting at sea isn't much different.

Using history as a guide, I predict that the sea will be given over to commercial fish farming, with a few nature reserves where people can fish for sport, and sell their high priced catches to discerning consumers.

A recent report in Science predicts the demise of commercial sea fishing worldwide by 2050. Its a classic tragedy of the commons, and we should all tuck in to our wild fish and chips, because soon there won't be any more. We'll have to make do with the farmed stuff. It's not so bad, although less romantic.

Mind you, Jared Diamond thinks that giving up hunting was the "Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race", and I can see why.

UPDATE: Here's an amusing site which confirms my views about the viability of cod farming, done by people who obviously have too much time on their hands.

Unforeseen Consequences

2006-12-16T10:37:00.000Z

Unless you've been living on Mars, or at least outside the UK, for the last couple of weeks, it will not have escaped your notice that someone has been murdering prostitutes in the the Ipswich area. With a blog titled "Sex and Death", I could hardly fail to comment on this, albeit a bit late.

Matthew Parris has written an excellent article about it here, in which he lays the blame fairly and squarely at the current laws on prostitution.

The important point to take from this is that whenever governments make a law prohibiting something, there will be unforeseen, and often undesirable, side-effects. By making brothels and advertising illegal, they force women to work on the streets, and by making drugs illegal they push up the price and force addicts to commit crimes to feed their artificially expensive habits. That's what the International Collective of Prostitutes think, and they should know.

In this case, the murdered women would not have had to hang around on street corners, making themselves easy targets for a maniac, if the law had been different. It's a pity the lawmakers aren't able to see this.

Why I don't recycle

2006-11-30T22:17:00.000Z

Via Samizata I came across this, which is funny, and this, which isn't. What they both say, in a nutshell, is that recycling, with the lone exception of aluminium cans, costs more and wastes more resources than making things from scratch. In fact it costs 3 times as much. Another source for costs is Friends of the Earth, who estimate that it costs us £375m to provide a doorstep recycling scheme. In the US it's closer to 8bn. And it's all pointless.

We're not saving the planet by recycling, we're not running out of landfill space, we're not saving money.

So why are governments and people so keen on recycling? I think that these are separate questions. People like recycling because it makes them feel good. It gives them a sense of agency, which reduces anxiety, and makes them feel part of something bigger than themselves, which also reduces anxiety. Also the government lies to them and says that it works.

Governments, on the other hand, like recycling because it looks as though they are doing something, and because it provides lots of jobs for the boys (50,000 according to FoE). It's popular with voters, for the reasons mentioned above, so the government continues to propagate the myth. Additionally, any form of control over our behaviour appeals to the authoritarian nature of our government. Remember, Hitler was a green.

Venal, Stupid, Mendacious Politicians - who knew?

2006-11-18T22:21:00.000Z

Dear gods, I don't want to talk about politics, but I feel like Al Pacino in the one of the later Godfather films; "just when I try to get out, they pull me back in again".

This time it's the government having a pop at bloggers, of all people. Matthew Taylor, ex-strategy advisor to Tony Blair has said that:

"The internet has immense potential but we face a real problem if the main way in which that potential expresses itself is through allowing citizens to participate in a shrill discourse of demands"

He also says that the public are like "teenagers": "demanding", but "conflicted", and are encouraged by bloggers to regard all politicians as "mendacious".

Well Damn Right! Hell Yeah!

The point about blogging is that it is an uncensored way for ordinary people who actually have lives, families and jobs, to comment about the things that they see around them, and in particular the things that annoy them. I'm not a teenager, and I resent the patronising tone in Mr Taylors speech, although it is entirely in keeping with their nannying attitudes to their subjects.

The "shrill" tone of many peoples blogs is frustration, and real anger at their stupid, illiberal, and yes, mendacious policies. And as for having a "more mature discourse" with the government, that can only happen if the government is actually listening. And if it won't listen to a million people demonstrating against their stupid war, it certainly won't be listening to bloggers.

2 Things about the Queens Speech 2006

2006-11-16T08:25:00.000Z

Apparently, about any subject, there are only 2 things that you really need to know. It's an interesting exercise to try and work these out, because it forces you to distill out the essence of a subject in a haikuesque way. It has a sniff of Zen-like austerity to me. These 2 things about being a Briton made me laugh, anyway.

Wasn't the Queen's speech yesterday boring? It's hardly riveting at the best of times, but this tranche was positively leaden. Re-hashing the old themes of anti-social behaviour, climate change and terrorism. All things that they've either made worse, or can't do anything about.

I notice that the Extreme Pornography bill that was promised has been slipped in with the proposed Criminal Justice Bill. I've blogged about this before. I'm not sure whether this is just the government being underhanded or because they didn't want videos of the Queen saying 'Pornography' or possibly because they underestimated the degree of opposition from people like Backlash and are trying to quietly bury it. I doubt that it's because the government has realised that internet porn actually cuts crime, but you never know.

The Guardian sums the speech up with 2 Things:

1. Terrorism
2. Crime

Although my take on it is:

1. More Tax
2. More Surveillance

Mind you, there are only really 2 Things you need to know about life:

1. Sex
2. Death

Wicked Vicious Faith

2006-11-14T22:28:00.000Z

My friend Nick has a typically considered post about the Nick Griffin trial. By contrast the Devils Kitchen is a bit ruder.

I can't, for the life of me, see why calling Islam a 'wicked vicious faith' should be considered as race hatred. There's a fundamental difference between insulting a religion, and insulting a race. The difference is that one is born into a particular race, whereas religion is voluntary.

It's easy to change religion. At various times in my life I've been a follower of the invisible pink unicorn, the flying spaghetti monster and the universal church triumphant of the apathetic agnostic (motto "we don't know, and we don't care"). At the last census I embraced the Force, putting my household down as Jedi Knights, and found myself a member of the UK's 4th largest religion, behind the Christians, Muslims and Hindu's, but ahead of the Sikh's, Jews, and Buddhists.

I was brought up in a Christian household, attended a cathedral school, my grandfather was a vicar, and my mother a missionary. I have been an atheist since I was 8 years old.

I vividly remember my damascene un-conversion. I was in bed, listening to my parents argue over something that I'd done downstairs, and thinking about theodicy. My thoughts went like this:

I was incapable of being good (or not being naughty).
Furthermore, I was doubly incapable of not wanting to be naughty, even if I managed not to misbehave.
God was omniscient, so he knew all this.
Therefore, there wasn't any point in even pretending to be good, because God would know that I was just pretending to get into His good books, and was naughty really.
Therefore I was going to burn in hell for all eternity.

It was with a considerable sense of relief that I resolved this by concluding that it was all a load of old hogwash.

Brown to be Terror Overlord

2006-11-12T21:57:00.000Z

The Sunday Times offers us the idea of Gordon Brown being the Terror Overlord. I must say, the images this conjures up for me are of a demented one-eyed daemon, glowering at the UK from his chilly Northern fortress. Peasants storming the walls with pitchforks and torches. Brown sending out his servitors to spread fear and discord in the land, all to feed his raging hunger for tax income.

Actually that's not too far from the truth. Bring on the peasants with pitchforks.

Religion is just childish part II

2006-11-10T12:39:00.000Z

There is a fascinating article called Why Johnny Can't Reason based on the work of Jean Piaget, which in a nutshell, shows 68% of the adult population are incapable of abstract reasoning. Abstract reasoning, in this context is:

"...abstracting from directly experienced objects or situations to broader groups which could not be directly experienced. For still another example, children could begin to grasp the idea of probability..."

In other words, the majority of the population are incapable of reasoning about situations that they have not directly experienced. Such as religion, which almost by definition is not objective.

Why do people get religious in the first place? Young children are naturally predisposed to be religious, because they can only copy what the adults around them are saying, by rote. Older children, and most adults, are unable to look beyond their limited experiences, and analyse what they have been taught.

It would take a whole book to write about where religions come from, but essentially, people are very good at seeing patterns in the world, and making theories about cause and effect, but we don't understand probability, overgeneralise, and become superstitious.

Superstition is a false conception of cause and effect, where we see things happening together, and assume they are connected, when in fact they aren't. So, for example we may reasonably notice that cloudy skies tend to precede rain, and conclude that rain is caused by clouds. We might also see that meat left uncovered becomes maggoty, and conclude wrongly that meat causes maggots (or causes cats to eat it).

In a discussion of programming methodologies Steve Yegge comments obliquely on BF Skinners work on Superstition in the Pigeon, saying: "...superstition isn't necessarily a bad thing! We couldn't possibly go and verify every single fact we've heard that we think is probably true. We'd never make any progress (as individuals or as a civilization). We have to take most things we know for granted. Most of what we know at any given time is superstition. It's normal."

He's right of course, but for 68% of people, that's all they have.

655,000 dead. Who cares?

2006-11-05T20:48:00.000Z

655,00 Iraqi's have died since the start of 'Iraqi Freedom', according to a study by The Lancet. President Bush has said that this is 'not credible'. Well he would say that, wouldn't he. However, this figure is also disputed by iraqbodycount.org who reckon the figure is more like 49,760. I'm using the high estimates here. The low estimates are 426,000 vs 44,803. Athænium has nice posts about it here and here.

I don't care. 655,000 people dead, and I don't care. You probably don't either. Oh, I care in an abstract, it's a bad thing that people die, sort of a way. But not in the deep emotional sense that I would feel if a friend or family member died. Not even in the stressed and saddened way I would react if a person was killed outside my house. It's just news.

This is summed up in a truly brilliant article which explains this, one of the hard problems of human relationships, and is also very funny.

The Political Compass

2006-10-30T12:17:00.000Z

I like the Political Compass, a way of seeing political and social views in 2 dimensions, not just the familiar left-right polarities, which date back to the french revolution. The Political Compass adds another dimension, Authoritarian-Libertarian which I think is particularly relevant today.

A chart of the political parties in the 2005 elections is here. It is worth noticing how close together New Labour and the Conservatives were in that election, nestled together in the right-wing/fascist quarter of the grid. There really isn't much to choose between them. Of the major parties, only the Lib-Dems were even slightly in the libertarian camp. It's also interesting that the BNP are actually a bit left-wing, although seriously authoritarian.

My chart is here. I'm over in the lonely right-wing / libertarian quarter where there are no political parties. Even the Lib Dems have got more fascistic over the past year. No wonder contemporary politics annoys me so much. Mind you, I'd be more annoyed if I was a green.

I just can't help myself sometimes

2006-10-29T21:33:00.000Z

"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer" -- Mark Twain

Christ I hate this fucking country. I was born and bred here, but I haven't hated the place so much since I was a nine year old at school being beaten with a cricket bat 'for my own good'.

Generally I'm an optimist; I tend to think that life gets better for each successive generation, but reading todays paper made me just want to vomit with rage and frustration at what a filthy fucking pestilant pool of shit our craven, pusilanimous, deceptive, lying, manipulative, self-serving, ignorant political fuckwits are turning this country into.

I remember back in 2000 or so looking out of a bus window, at the recently renovated statue of Prince Albert in Hyde Park, which had just been unveiled, after having being boxed up for the previous two decades (well, for as long as I could remember anyway) . I was filled with sense of well-being at being part of a society that was prepared, and could afford to restore, such a pointless and gaudy monument. The cold war was over, we had no enemies, the economy was good, and a feeling of cheerful liberty was in the air.

And since then, every fucking thing that the government have done has made the place worse.

Here's a small selection of stories from todays Sunday Times:

Inland revenue to crackdown on people who have trouble filling in their tax forms, despite the government having made them almost impossible for anyone to understand.

Britons are now the most surveilled society in the western world. One CCTV camera for every 14 people, our internet movements tracked, our phone calls recorded, our financial details shared with every fucking small-minded official that wants to see them. Our, and our children's DNA being kept on file. And now compulsory ID Cards and National Register. All 'for our own good'. Bastards, bastards, bastards.

Alan Johnson caving in in typically pathetic fashion over the proposal to make faith based schools take a 25% quota of children of other faiths, just so that they realise that there are people who think differently to the religious zealots that are trying to indoctrinate them. What a fucking waste of space that man is.

Council tax may double, despite the fact that the CBI says councils are wasting at least £3bn a year.

Green parking charges in Richmond, and proposals being made for green taxes to that pension-raiding means-testing cunt Gordon Brown. Despite the fact that we emit only 1/10th as much CO2 as the US, and that CO2 may be an effect of gobal warming not a cause.

Britain is becoming increasingly gridlocked despite that fat moron Prescott pledging to reduce congestion by 2010. At the same time, overcrowding on commuter trains into london has doubled since 1996. How do those mendacious fuckers expect us to get into work in the morning if they won't build more railways and roads? Presumably by taking taxis down the bus lanes as they do. Hypocritical wankers. I hope they all get cancer.

Enough ranting for now. Normal service will be resumed after this post.

Can we be religious and sane?

2006-10-24T23:27:00.000+01:00

Martin Newland over at the Grauniad's Comment Is Free offers the following assertion - "I am a Catholic. I'm also sane". It is an assertion that the majority of believers in any faith would make.

It is also an assertion which cuts to the heart of the religious vs scientific debate, and makes arguing with theists such an intensely frustrating experience for atheists.

What do we men by 'sane'?

Of course we need to consider what we mean by sane. Wikipedia defines sanity as a legal term denoting that an individual...can bear legal responsibility for his actions. I think that most believers fit this definition, although the definition of children as insane seems odd. I digress.

Generally, sane means whatever the majority agrees is sane. In England a century ago, homosexuals, and umarried mothers were regarded as candidates for the local asylum, and a few hundred years previously you would have been thought insane not to believe in god.

Nowadays, by contrast, having an interest in sexually mature members of the opposite sex who are under eighteen is regarded as insane, despite being the norm for most cultures for most of history.

However, probably the definition that most people use in everyday life is: mentally healthy; free from mental disorder. And it is here that atheists and theists disagree.

Atheists believe that it is mentally disordered to believe in supernatural beings without a shred of evidence. They, and I include myself here, feel that all we need to do is point out the irrational nature of belief to a theist, and they should accept our logic and join our ranks. Unfortunately this doesn't happen. Why not?

Why do religious people not listen to reason?

A recent study by Emory University shows that people who are strongly attached to a partisan position do not use facts to make decisions. Brain imaging studies of comitted American political party members using fMRI showed that it is the emotional parts of the brain which is active during discussions, not the reasoning parts. If you argue with someone about an entrenched position, they defend with their emotions, allowing them to ignore contradictory or conflicting evidence.

In other words, it's very difficult to change someone's mind about an entrenched position with logic, because the logical part of their brain isn't listening.

So, is Martin Newland sane? Yes. He's no more insane than the rest of us. He is, however less rational than the majority of his countrymen.

Darwin Online

2006-10-19T12:07:00.000+01:00

The complete works of Charles Darwin have recently been digitised and made available here, courtesy of the British taxpayers via Cambridge University.

Darwins seminal work not only explains that we are in fact descended from a long chain of ancestors, all of whom reproduced and passed on their characteristics to their offspring before dying. What is particularly impressive about this is that Darwin managed to formulate his theory without knowing Mendel's mechanisms of genetic inheritance.

Daniel Dennett called natural selection "the single best idea anyone has ever had", in his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea. He's right. It explains why every creature on this planet looks, acts, eats, sleeps, thinks and fucks the way they do.

Religious fundamentalists of all persuasions should read it before uttering another word about evolution.

29% of the world think that torture is acceptable

2006-10-19T10:01:00.000+01:00

So, almost a third of the worlds population believe that torture is okay. Israel tops the list of folk who want their fellow human beings to suffer unbearably to gain a little security for themselves, closely followed by Iraq, the Phillipines and Indonesia.

It is noticeable, however, that only 16% of Israeli Muslims are pro torture, right down there with the Spanish and the French. The only country better than this is Italy, our overall loser in the pulling peoples toenails out stakes. Salute Italia! Hurrah for Italy and La Dolce Vita!.

There's also a surprising degree of woolly-mindedness about this, especially in India,where 45% of the population couldn't make up their collective minds about whether to waterboard people on spec. Come on chaps, electrodes to the testicles - good or bad?

And what of the British? Only about 1 in 4 of my fellow countrymen like the idea of stress positions and beatings, which I suppose is a good thing, although I find it rather depressing that about 10 million of my neighbours would happily torment me on the off-chance that I might have a bit of useful information.

Still, at least we're not as bad as the Americans, who have recently legalized the use of serious pain in interrogations (although not Extreme pain, of course) , with a 36% approval rating.

What they were specifically asked was:

Most countries have agreed to rules prohibiting torturing prisoners. Which position is closer to yours?

Terrorists pose such an extreme threat that governments should now be allowed to use some degree of torture if it may gain information that saves innocent lives
Clear rules against torture should be maintained because any use of torture is immoral and will weaken international human rights

This post falls into the Death camp, I think.

arseholes, bastards, fucking cunts and pricks

2006-10-12T11:03:00.000+01:00

The Devils Kitchen periodically releases a roundup of swearing blogs. These are blogs which not only use lots of profane language, but also, in general abuse the great and good of our world. Check it out for a lot of sweary gorgeousness.

Now, in normal speech with my friends, I swear as much as the next man (nsfw), and despise our leaders as much as any good card-carrying anarchist. However, I don't generally use profanities when I write. The Devils Kitchen made me wonder why not.

For example, the word 'fuck' is probably the most versatile word in the English language. There's a splendid academic paper on it here.

'Cunt' is even older; the prefix 'cu' being described as an indo-european expression of 'quintessential femininity' by the lexicographer Eric Partridge. It's thought to be the root of words like queen, cow, quim, cwm and cirque. There's a nice article about it here.

Every culture, every language has it's own swearwords, commonly related to sex, elimination, or religion. There's an interesting case study about translating the filmic profanity in South Park to Spanish here.

We censor not only a depiction of the thing, but also its name. It's as though we weren't even allowed to say the word 'Murder' because murdering people is bad and had to resort to some sort of euphemism.

So why is it that these versatile, ancient words shock some people? Why do many adults refrain from swearing in front of their children, when we know that every child over the age of 10 knows them all anyway? Why do we censor our films and TV, and occasionally even get imprisoned for swearing?

I appreciate that it's an irrational cultural taboo, but it still seems strange to me.

Religion is just childish

2006-10-11T10:30:00.000+01:00

As it says in my profile, I'm a humanist. I'm also an atheist and a bright. Actually I'm an agnostic when it comes to religion, but like Richard Dawkins, I'm agnostic in the same way as I'm agnostic about teapots in orbit around Pluto. In other words, it's possible that they may be true, but the possibility is so slight as to be not worth worrying about.

It's not that I don't know about religion. My grandfather was a vicar and my mother a missionary. I attended a cathedral school and was confirmed into the Church of England at the age of 14. I've been a scholar of ancient religions all my life. And whilst I understand the religious impulse very well, falling for it is simply absurd.

It's absurd in the same way that an adult believing in the tooth fairy, or father christmas, would be absurd. In the same way that belief in genies , rakshasa's or kami is absurd. It's absurd because as adults, we seek to know truth by the best means available to us. And if we don't do that we are wallowing in a child-like fairyland of magic and superstition.

So what counts as a good method of discovering truth?

My Parents told me so - No
My Teachers told me so * - No
Everyone in my society believes it - No
I intuitively feel it to be true - No
It has been revealed to me in dreams or visions - N0
It is common sense - No
It makes me feel better - No
It must be true for moral reasons - No
You can't prove it's not true - No

There is one way, and one way only of discovering the truth about the world. Observe, Hypothesize, Test your hypothesis. Get other people to test it. If it's correct, repeat and move on.

Luckily we don't have to do all this ourselves. There are many many great people who have spent their lives doing this, so that we can reap the rewards of their work. As Newton said, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

All the rest is superstition or hearsay. And that's no way for an adult to live.

* But I said that "My Teachers told me" is not a method of discovering truth. And it isn't if you do it uncritically. If you study what your teachers say, and find a scientist at the root of it, and the arguments are sound, then there is truth there.

Should women wear veils?

2006-10-08T15:50:00.000+01:00

The recent debate about muslim women and veils in the UK has left me in a state of indecision. On the one hand, as an innate libertarian, I believe that people should be able to dress as they wish to. Obviously there is the issue of causing offence to other people by your choice of dress code, but it seems to me that we should all be adult enough to accept other peoples choices, whether it be a niqab or a thong.

On the other hand, the niqab represents pretty much everything that I'm opposed to - subservience to outdated religious practices, a desire for separatism, and in particular a publicly expressed loyalty to Islam, possibly the most regressive of the worlds religions.

As the wearers of the niqab are aware, they are making a statement above and beyond that demanded by their religion, and niqab wearing seems to be on the increase as a result of increased tensions between Britains muslim minority, and the rest of the christian/atheist majority.

On the surface of it, it would seem to be an irrational response to increased hostility to wear clothing likely to inflame that hostility. Terror Management Theory posits that when an individual is threatened, they respond by adhering more closely to their world-view. This seems to be a good example.

A quandary, in microcosm, of the western worlds view of Islam.

Homeopathy 'proven' effective

2006-09-29T12:58:00.000+01:00

New regulations came into force on 1st September 2006 allowing homeopathic remedies to be marketed alongside conventional medicines as proven effective. You can read about it here.

The concept that homeopathic medicine should be considered on a par with scientifically tested and proven efficacious 'conventional' medicine is simply absurd.

Homeopathy has been proved to have no more efficacy than placebo (i.e. none at all) and has a theoretical basis which is nothing more than medieval superstition.

What will we have next - Galen's four humours based medicine? Witch doctors chewing sacred grasses? Utterly ridiculous.

Extreme Pornography

2006-09-24T22:33:00.000+01:00

Here's a cause that is close to my heart, and incorporates both sex and death nicely. The death was that of Jane Longhurst, a schoolteacher in Brighton, England. Ms Longhurst was strangled with a pair of tights by a man named Graham Coutts, a sales rep and neck fetishist.

Coutts claimed that her death was accidental, and had been caused during a bout of breath play while they were having sex, a practice that he had performed with previous sexual partners. He hid the body for 5 weeks and then burned it, which didn't help his case much.

Another thing which seems not to have helped his case much was his predeliction for web sites showing images of asphyxial sex and strangulation which was brought up during the trial.

He was duly sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of 30 years. You can read the local paper's version here.

However, when referred to the House of Lords, the conviction was judged unsafe, as the option of finding him guilty of negligent manslaughter hadn't been offered to the jury in the first trial. The trial has therefore restarted. You can read the pop version of it here or the official version, here. The wheels of justice grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine.

Enter Mrs Liz Longhurst, mother of the deceased. Mrs Longhurst firmly believes that it was the violent internet porn that Coutts was interested in that caused him to murder her daughter. Mrs Longhurst duly set about lobbying the government to prevent people in Britain from looking at these sort of images on the web. She even presented the government with a petition with 50,000 signatures on it, agreeing with her.

So far so good.

The British government responded with a consultation on a new law which would outlaw images of sexual violence, necrophilia and beastiality (a.k.a Extreme Pornography) on the web. In essence it proposes a prison sentence of up to 3 years for even looking at an image of this type, with worryingly vague definitions of what 'this type' of image might be. Even if it's legal to actually do. Even if its been faked up, or the participants are acting. Even if it's you and your wife.

So what's wrong with this?

Firstly the consultation document is deeply flawed. It asserts that there is no causal link between viewing images of Extreme Pornography and actually performing illegal acts. It then proposes to make them illegal anyway.

It consistently and deliberately proposes an equivalence between Child Pornography and Extreme Pornography, when none exists, as a justification for the new law.

Lastly, even though the majority of responses to the consultation were against the proposal, the government claims that most people were in favour of it. Mind you, the government won't actually post the responses on the web. My full response to the consultation can be found here.

Now you may not be the sort of person who is interested in necrophilia, beastiality or sexual violence. To be honest I don't suppose anyone is interested in all of these. But a lot of people are interested in BDSM. A 1981 study from Indiana University states that 4.5% of the straight population are into BDSM, 26% if you're gay. In Britain, that's around 2 million adults.

A lot of them will have pictures of their activities. If this law goes through, all these people, who have harmed no-one, and merely engaged in lawful, consensual sex will be threatened with having their homes raided, their computers seized, their liberty removed, and their names permanently on the sex offenders register. This matters, even if you're not personally interested in Extreme Pornography.

Mind you, If you're John Beyer of Mediawatch, you think this doesn't go far enough. That's a whole other story.

Lots of discussion about this on the web. A group of concerned citizens have started up Backlash to give the government a spanking. Other good starting points are the activism board on informed consent, and I like melonfarmers.

Update: Today is Blogging for Backlash day, and this post is linked on their site. Check out all the other blogs and discussions.

Why Sex and Death?

2006-09-20T22:47:00.000+01:00

Because it's the basis of all good literature, and of all human life. Some of the main topics of this blog will be evolutionary psychology, terror management theory, and how they relate to the religious impulse. And that's all about sex and death too.

I don't promise to stick to these topics, but they'll probably be recurring themes.