'Right wing' shight shwing

The so-called 'right' and 'left' 'wings' of politics have always been a conceptual mishmash, but never more so than in today's centre-ground-only Britain. "I believe in the freedom to take drugs, I'm left wing!" "I believe in the freedom to shoot guns, I'm right wing!" "I think you shouldn't be allowed to smoke near me, I'm left wing." "I think you shouldn't be allowed to have abortions, I'm right wing." "I think your corporate activities should be curbed to prevent unfairness, I'm left wing." "I believe your social activities should be curbed to prevent social degradation, I'm right wing." "I believe everyone should have a similar standard of living, I'm left wing." "I believe everyone should have similar values, I'm right wing."

People have tried to recharacterise political 'liberalism' and 'conservatism' by dividing it into two, social liberalism/conservatism and fiscal liberalism/conservatism; it turns out the majority of people who call themselves right wing are socially conservative and fiscally liberal; while the opposite is true of those who call themselves left wing (perhaps in the old sense).

But this is all bollocks, let's face it. Right wing and left wing don't have anything to do with your carefully considered opinion on what is best for you or for society, they are just the outward manifestations of the antiprocess that is every adult's eternal burden - the unconscious filtering of information and selective application of reasoning to ensure that prior prejudice is never contradicted.

In this case, the real distinction between the typical 'right' and the typical 'left' is first and foremost whether you are reactionary or progressive, that is, whether you always think everything would be better if it stayed the same or went back the way it was before. And secondly it's about whether you have more to give than to receive. Selfishness is a given, poor people can sound charitable and still be selfish more easily than the rich, that's all.

Of course, this sounds dreadfully bigoted, and it's also unfair on all the genuinely charitable, empathetic liberals, like me :o) But let's not mince our words: left and right wing are hopeless as labels unless you recognise where people are really coming from: 1) their old-fashioned mindset, 2) their wallets.

One thing, however, is for sure. If you want to be not only seen as unselfish but actually be unselfish, you have to be left wing. The idea that low taxes, small government, low regulation and 'family' values are what is best for the majority is quite simply false, and has been proven false by European countries that have successfully implemented compromise socialist societies that are prosperous and fair. I'm thinking, as always, Sweden. Amazingly successful as the US is as a nation, it is not fair to the average citizen. It's all very well to talk about opportunity when you're part of that small percentage of people with the opportunity to talk at all.

The fact is, everyone admits that some 'nanny' statism is necessary (whether it's for stopping corporate exploitation, or smoking, or bad parenting, or homosexual marriage), while as much freedom as possible is generally a good thing (whether it's for taking drugs, or swearing, or tearing foxes to shreds, or working employees as hard as you want). What people disagree on is where the control and freedom should be balanced.

My principle is that the answer isn't easy; where possible, the most benefit or the least harm to the most people should prevail, but it has to be examined case by case, there's no blanket Commandment or backward uneditable constitutional clause that covers everything. People will always disagree about what constitutes harm (is a smoker harmed by being prevented from smoking in a pub?), and by what constitutes freedom, and freedoms will almost always clash. Let's forget the idea of absolutes. Life is just too bloody complicated for that.

The senseless waste of religious study

I was watching this programme yesterday and I was thinking, my god, this is so incredibly sad; in fact it's embarrassing. These are grown men, quite old in fact, respectible men in suits and ties, apparently sincerely telling us how we can examine the Bible for prophecies about the future.

Let's set aside for a second the incredible puerility and silliness of the god-concept, and look at the Bible for a second. I mean, have these people ever actually read the Bible? The book is quite literally god-awful. As a history book it is almost pure myth. As a work of literature it is variously ugly, tedious, trite, and impenetrable. As a guide for behaviour it is, at best, hopelessly contradictory, and at worst quite despicable. Even as a work of fiction it is quite simply awful, boring, ugly, and confusing. But without doubt as a work of prophecy it is hopeless, utterly hopeless, failed, and wrong.

How can a grown person not see this? These men are embarrassing to humanity, and they're wasting their lives on bullshit.

We've known and become familiar in the West with Bible study, theological colleges and courses, and so forth. So it wasn't until Oxford started putting up Institutes for Islamic Studies left right and centre that I came to notice what an unbelievably huge waste of time and money is being piled into reading these pieces of shite ancient tomes over and over and over looking for more meaning, as if the last thousand years of study wasn't enough. Of course, the idea of a vitally important book that everyone must value, and inspired by a 'perfect' entity, being so completely impenetrable that it is not fully understood even after a millennium and a half, is nothing short of farcical. But the waste is so depressing. GO AND DO SOMETHING USEFUL WITH YOUR LIVES, PEOPLE!

Religion - it makes you laugh and it makes you cry. But it certainly doesn't make you a good person.

Irving - Martyr for Stupid

David Irving, a historian who denies the holocaust, has been jailed for three years in Austria.

A Jewish lawyer on the Today programme this morning said that Irving's bigotry was a step on the road to hateful action against Jews, and therefore constituted a kind of incitement. He said this sort of thing was what led to Fascism.

I must ask the question: what is the biggest step on the road to Fascism, hate-speech, or the invoking of laws that erode civil liberties? Surely that is precisely what Hitler did - he hijacked a supposed threat to encourage Germans to hand over their rights to freedom of speech and movement. That was the first step, not the hateful speech.

Now, I don't want to deny that bigotry can lead to more bigotry, and sometimes violence; that miseducation can be damaging. But I don't see how there can be anything worse than censorship in this dilemma. This kind of utter nonsense can be fought with education, I don't think it can ever be fought successfully with criminalisation.

Irving was sensibly convicted under Austrian law, and he brought it upon himself by going back and talking there when he knew he could be arrested. But the law is wrong. The similarities with the Mohammed caricature fiasco are clear. Freedom of speech must win every time, but it especially must win in these extreme cases.

Men came from women

Marci made an astute observation the other day. She's been reading Paradise Lost, and not enjoying it mainly because it is riddled with religious bigotry, particularly sexism. Milton is very keen to make it clear that woman is inferior to man, having been created as his companion and specifically placed under the man's jurisdiction and command. In the poem, and the Bible, woman literally 'comes from' man, being created from Adam's rib.

But Marci noted that all foetuses are female until about the 7th week of pregnancy, at which point a surge of testosterone in males causes male-specific differentiation and development. However, the mark that man came from woman is left, for instance in the man's nipples and in intersex babies (commonly known as hermaphrodites).

Before we knew this we knew that men had X and Y chromosomes, whereas women had only X. So all men are 'half' woman in that respect! And now scientists are experimenting with causing an egg to divide without having been fertilised, meaning a woman can procreate and produce female children without the use of men (these children, by the way, would not be clones, because the woman's genes would still have been mixed up, but they would still be very similar to the mother). However, it's difficult to see how the same thing could be possible for a man, since men don't have eggs, or any means of gestating the child.

Anyway, I think it is very poignant how emphatically wrong all the patriarchal (mainly Abrahamic) religions are in respect of the sexes. We may not all be women, but we all once were women.

Morpheus

Morphy continues to be a source of amusement, comfort, and frustration. He enjoys climbing into tightly enclosed places like wastepaper bins, and when he's really happy he sticks his tongue out, which is rather Carrolian (if that's a word - I'm thinking of the Cheshire cat saying that the cat is perverse because he growls when he's happy and wags his tail when angry).

When he's active he's bouncing off the walls. I have to shut him out of the bathroom now because he completely destroys the toilet roll, or at least spreads it all over the floor, if given the chance. He now wakes me up with purring and clawing at 3.30am if I'm lucky, and I pretty much have to put him outside at that point if I want any sleep. It's very sweet really, all he wants to do is cuddle. At least he now goes out by himself and so isn't stuck inside all day getting bored.


Here are some of zillions of pics I have of him. As you can see, he's getting pretty big now. Sitting in Marci's arms he looks a bit like a tiger cub or something.

Hurray for the smoking ban!

Westminster has finally got around to catching up with Ireland, Scotland, Wales, some U.S. states and a good portion of Europe, and agreed to ban smoking in almost all public places by the summer of 2007.

I'm a liberal. How can I possibly support such an apparently indefensible encroachment on our civil liberties? Simple. Because the freedom to smoke in a public space encroaches on the liberties of others, namely the right to be free from assault. Where your personal freedoms clash with mine, there must be a debate about who wins. I think the compromise solution is perfectly obvious in these circumstances: take your pollution somewhere where only you have to endure it.

The social smoker says "Fine, ok, so I won't smoke in a shop, or in the bank, or at a concert. But everyone knows the pub is a place where people smoke. When I go to the pub, I am taking my pollution where only me, and other people who have agreed to endure it, must do so." A fair point, and this is where the debate lies. Do smokers have a right make pubs, clubs and bars theirs? Or, more to the point, why don't the non-smokers go to their own pubs, clubs and bars? The answer lies in an analysis of the particular circumstances: there is no simple universal truth to apply here.

First and foremost, cigarette smoke is very pervasive. In Oxford the number of smokers is extremely low. Yet in a smallish pub just one or two smokers can make the atmosphere unpleasant for everyone; it can leave a smell in everyone's hair and everyone's clothes (and everyone's lungs). There is an argument that adequate ventilation is the key, but I haven't seen this happen, or work. Neither have I seen a successful smoking/no-smoking area, which I will discuss later. Effectively, in Oxford at least, a minority of people can bully the majority out of the pub. Inevitably, then, you will have pubs filled with smokers and you can claim that they are the majority. But are they really the majority of people that would use the pub?

So if there are so many potential punters for a no-smoking pub, why aren't there any (or many) no-smoking pubs? I think it's because of the strength of the idea that smoking and drinking go together, and because there are smokers throughout society, not just in particular areas or groups. So, firstly, non-smokers expect to get smoky in a pub, and so put up with it. Which means that landlords don't really notice the business they are losing by allowing smoking (because the people who really can't stand smoke would never go to the pub in the first place). Since no landlord wants to lose any business, they don't see why they should push away their few smokers if nobody is going to be too bothered.

The spread of smokers means that in any group of people going out to a pub, club or bar, there's a good chance there'll be a smoker. The choice about where to go, in an imaginary environment where there are plenty of both smoking and non-smoking places, is defined by the smoker, not by the non-smokers. Why? Because we're lame-arses, and the smokers are often blind to the effect they have, to the extent that some believe that simply making sure they exhale upwards or away from you is sufficient to avoid getting anything on you.

In effect, the smoker in a group is saying: "We can't go to that pub because I can't smoke. I have to smoke, but you don't have to be free from smoke." Since we're lame-arses and we're prepared to put up with it if we must for the sake of cameraderie, the choice is the smoking pub. We've lamely agreed that the smoker's addiction is more important than our own health and enjoyment. Not only is it obvious that this attitude was not going to change, but the health evidence for passive smoking is not yet strong enough. I imagine if we were really certain that our risk of death was high from passive smoking, we would be more assertive. But really it's about putting up with the stink. And we defer to the smoker's condition, not blinking an eyelid at the fact that all the smoker needs to do is go without a cigarette for a few hours, not give up entirely!

If you had any doubts that smokers have this sort of attitude, try testing it: go to a pub with some smokers and some non-smokers (more than one), and attempt to sit in the non-smoking section. You will find first that the smokers try to make you sit in the smoking section, but if you refuse, they will quickly form a group of their own in the smoking section, starting with "I'm just popping into the other room for a fag." The smokers don't see this as selfish. To them it was a perfectly natural evolution of events, not a deliberate decision to be antisocial. But let us not shirk away from what this means: your company is not as important to them as their addiction. Tough, but true.

Smoking and non-smoking areas are not ineffective only for this reason. They are ineffective because they are impractical as well. I personally have seen several attempts to separate the smokers and the non-smokers, and they all fail miserably. And not just because, for some reason, it is the non-smokers who must be removed to a separate area rather than the smokers.

I still don't think I've adequately explained why we can't have smoking and non-smoking pubs, clubs, and bars. Sure, so the non-smokers are not being assertive enough to push for their own places, but that's their fault, isn't it? In the past I might have agreed. I think more assertive non-smokers forcing their smoking friends to join them in non-smoking places might be a better solution for preserving civil liberties. But in policy and public health we must deal with the reality of the human condition. The fact is, only a quarter of the people in Britain smoke at all, yet there are a negligible number of smoke-free pubs, clubs, and bars. Pressure and opinion simply wasn't working. Smokers had the upper hand, forcing people who like to drink (which is an entirely personal pollution) to smoke as well. This balance had to be redressed.

Smoking is not being banned. What is being taken away is a smoker's right to impose a physical assault on other people through carcinogenic and corrosive pollution. And that should never have been a right.

Religidiots

The Mohammed caricature affair rolls on, with continued protests in Muslim countries and deaths in Pakistan.

Why are we even having this discussion in the civilised world? (and, yes, I am now prepared to say that many of these Muslim countries must be uncivilised). The idea that a picture should be censured, whether compulsarily or voluntarily, is utterly preposterous. We shouldn't be pandering to this in the slightest. I don't give a shit about people's deeply held religious beliefs, what we should be interested in here is what is right, not what a minority of people think is right. The simple fact is, the Muslims are wrong; as were Christians protesting about the Jerry Springer Opera, and Sikhs protesting about that Sikh play.

Check out this article in the Times from Matthew Parris, which says what I mean. To quote him:

Now it’s very easy to murmur “I am not a Muslim/Christian/Jew/Hindu” as though not being something was terribly inoffensive — a sin, at worst, of omission; a way of avoiding an argument — the suggestion, perhaps, that “your” religion may be “true for you” but, as for me, I’ll sit this one out. But let us not duck what that “I do not believe” really means. It means I do not believe that there is one God, Allah, or that Muhammad is His Prophet. It means I do not believe that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, or that no man cometh to the Father except by Him. I do not believe that the Jews are God’s Chosen People, or subject to any duties different from the rest of us. It means I do not believe any living creature will be reincarnated in another life.

In my opinion these views are profoundly mistaken, and those who subscribe to them are under a serious misapprehension on a most important matter. Not only are their views not true for me: they are not true for them. They are not true for anyone. They are wrong.

Muslim fanatics, not Muslims

I want to make some conciliatory mumblings over the Mohammed caricature affair that I've been commenting on. I understand how frustrating it must be for Muslim moderates trying to correct injustices and give Muslims a voice when violent lunatics keep barging in, trying to identify themselves with your group. I am profoundly against much of the Western foreign policy that has led to this situation, including the "protect our own interests" bias, and the Israeli policy on...well, pretty much everything (except withdrawal, of course!).

It's very hard for me to empathise in this situation. To me, not only is the idea of holding any idea 'sacred' a nonsense, but adhering to a code simply because it is written in some book is profoundly anti-intellectual - verging on the despicable, in my view. But I do understand that we're human, and if I'd been brought up in such a tradition I'd probably believe the same nonsense, such is the strength of indoctrination. So I suppose I can accept that almost any profoundly ridiculous idea might well be considered crucial to a person's identity, if strongly enough imbued (just look at the beliefs of the Scientologists if you want to hear silly).

To an atheist, this whole affair is viewed from a completely different angle to the way it is being discussed in the press. This isn't just about whether the right to be offensive is more important than the right not to be offended. Since religious belief is, to us, just plain wrong, any religious group asking for any kind of favours is basically saying: I want to be allowed to invent any nonsensical view of reality, life, and behaviour I like, and as long as I can convince you I hold those beliefs strongly enough, for those views to be given special respect. This, to me, is asking for trouble, since people can have strongly held profoundly conflicting views.

What kind of a world do we live in where mockery can be a sin? What kind of God are we talking about here, who can't handle being mocked? A petulant, childish one, it seems to me. But I suppose I'm never going to understand, not really.

The other issue is whether a newspaper should be prevented (by law or by guidelines of decency) from perpetuating a prejudiced viewpoint. But one man's prejudice is another's valid assessment! The Daily Mail contains article after article of views that represent poor people as scroungers, immigrants as damaging British culture, liberalism as ill-educated, ill-thought-out, wishy-washy optimism. But they really believe that shit. The battleground is a democratic one: who has the most persuasive argument. The law must stay away, just as violence must.

I'm not denying there are border areas where persuasive prejudice leads to illegal action, and it makes sense to tackle the cause rather than the symptom. But the form that the response takes must surely be a positive one: education and argument, not a negative one of censorship. Why did the July 7th bomber, after being educated in Britain, even want to go to Pakistan to be indoctrinated in a madras?

Joss 1 - 1 Morpheus

Morphy gave away a penalty this morning by not only waking me up before 7am, but bugging me continuously with loud purring and lying on my head. Instead of getting up to feed him I just put him out of the room and shut the door. Sorry Morph, but if you want to be in the room, you've got to play by the rules. I'll think I'll keep him out for a few days to catch up on some sleep...

The Electric Light Orchestra

Why is it that nobody else in my generation seems to have heard of E.L.O.? A classic band of a classic era? Ah...the sweet rustic sound of the synthesiser, the heady shrill of falsetto... I'd better go to bed, I think I'm delirious.

Wet willy alarm clock

Morphy has for some time been waking me at 7.30 or before by jumping on the bed. Now he's discovered a new method of morning torture: licking the ears. First he licked one ear, then, when I turned over, the other. Then I hid my head under the covers, so he started digging his claws into my head. Eventually, I gave up and got up to feed him. Morphy 1, Joss 0.

Family reunited

I took Morphy back to my parents' last weekend and he got to see his sisters again. At first they were quite cautious and there was lots of growling and pacing.


Curiosity killed...

Eventually, they were all playing together (and fighting pretty roughly) like they'd never been apart.


Sibling rivalry

So much so, that they spent most of Sunday exhausted...

Pippa after a hard day's nothing

Saffi pooped

Morphy, the lazy arse

Talking is so five years ago

Last night, Marci and I had an argument. Well, Marci would call it an argument, I would call it "me saying something that upset her, and then us having a long conversation about it". At first, Marci wouldn't speak to me about it. But we were both in the same room on the wireless network, so I MSN'ed her. We had the whole conversation over the internet, even though we were a metre apart.

For some reason, it was easier to talk online than it was to have the conversation vocally. Perhaps it was because you have time to collect your thoughts before responding, and there's not so much interrupting going on (usually from me). And perhaps it's because we're both getting so used to talking via text now it comes more naturally. But I also found it easier to say what I really meant rather than trying to soften everything as well. I was able to be more honest. Essentially, it seems I'm a different person online as I am in the room.

So we had this long conversation over a wireless link that pointlessly routed everything we said to some distant server and back, eventually ran out of new things to say, and went to bed happily without another word about it. What a strange world we now live in. I suppose many people would say it's a tragic turn of events, but I think the alternative would have been not to say anything, or as much, and we would probably have been less reconciled at the end than we were. So I think it's a good thing. Probably.

My Scott Adams story

Scott Adams is the author of the comic strip Dilbert. I read his new strip every day on the web. He has recently started his own blog, which is fairly amusing and I occasionally take a look at it. In it he often betrays good insight, and often deep ignorance of a range of issues, particularly in science, and ignorance he sometimes gives the impression he is proud of. However, the context is usually that he's making a joke, so the fact that he's talking crap seems like part of the joke. Who cares?

Well, a lot of people cared when he started weighing in to the evolution vs 'intelligent design' debate. Not only did he effectively misrepresent the Darwinist theory, but he claimed that since scientists had a vested interest in their work, they could be trusted just as little as the IDers. This caused a lot of hoohah. I'm not going to go into the debate here. I'm sure I will be publishing plenty on the subject of ID over time. And I'm not going to try and discuss the arguments over Adams' posts either. If you want to know about it, go to his blog, find the November 2005 archives, and scroll almost to the bottom to 'Intelligent Design Part I', where the first post happened.

My purpose for bringing this up is that I've had a run-in with Scott Adams' seemingly over-exaggerated opinion of his level of knowledge before. (Actually, Adams continually puts in provisos that he's stupid and probably talking rubbish but I intend to illustrate that this is a bit of a sham.) It has to do with his non-Dilbert book "God's Debris". Fascinated by Scott Adams' opinions on philosophy, I bought this back when it first came out, ooh, about 4 years ago.

I hated it. I hated the fact that it was full of factual errors about science (including evolution). I hated the fact that its conclusions were variously illogical, unoriginal, and idiotic. I hated that it had an air about it that Adams was trying to pass it off as serious philosophy rather than just woolly thinking combined with a willingness to comment on things without research, combined with the use of fame to get something published that would otherwise never have been published. But most of all, I suppose, I hated that online, on Amazon and on discussion boards, so many people thought it was the most mind-blowing thing they'd ever read. I felt I had to put these people right.

On amazon.co.uk I wrote a pretty scathing review ("Flawed 'fact' and poor logic sully a book with potential", November 2001), and I copied it to amazon.com. It quickly generated heated 'debate' on amazon.com (not that you can get much debate on amazon's review board), and eventually similar comments were made on co.uk too. Apparently, according to these other reviewers, I had failed to read the book properly because Adams has a disclaimer at the beginning warning people that the book is just a 'thought experiment' and there will be bad facts and bad logic in there.

Rereading my review, I feel I make it pretty clear that I did read that; my questions were aimed at whether it was possible, as Adams requests, to assume the old man in the book knows everything, when he is talking palpable nonsense; and whether the 'thought experiment' could be expected to succeed when it was relying on misinformation. Adams may have been getting people thinking, but in my opinion, if you weren't aware of the true facts then he'd be getting you to think total bollocks, which hardly seems like a success. My attempt was to review the book, to tell people whether or not they should read it. I assume that most people reading non-fiction want to learn something, not mislearn something.

My other point was that any valid points Adams had made were to a large extent as old as philosophy itself, and if people wanted to learn that stuff they'd be better off reading the work of people who have really thought things through. I did also make it clear that to the extent that Adams was getting people into philosophy who might never otherwise have thought about it, it was a good book. I still think the review was fair.

Anyway, enough of defending my review. My antagonistic stance on the book has softened quite a lot since then and I'll comment on this at the end of this post. On with the story.

Some time after I posted my review on amazon.com, Scott Adams himself posted a 'review', responding to mine. Basically, he said the same stuff about me not getting the point, except being even more scathing than some of the other reviewers had been about how stupid I clearly was. He also, I seem to recall, got upset about the particular point I made about magnet fields. In my review, as an example of false facts in God's Debris, I point to his comment that no matter what object you put in a magnetic field it has no effect, and I say that that is simply false, which it is. His review denied that was true.

Intrigued both by his vehemence, and by the fact that he'd wanted to respond to my review at all, I emailed him. Now I'm afraid that I'm an idiot, and somehow I've let those emails go missing over the years. It is dreadfully frustrating because I'm going to have to drag what was said from memory and that is probably a bit unfair on Scott Adams. But you'll get the gist.

My email basically said that I was curious why he'd responded to my review and said it was irresponsible reviewing, and pointed out that every material has some magnetic conductance, including air, and makes a miniscule or large effect depending on this property. Some materials are 'ferromagnetic' which means, I recall, that its internal magnetic monopoles have a tendency to line up in a magnetic field, which means it will have a stronger effect on the field it is in, distorting it. Anyway, don't take my word for it, I suggest you take a look at the Wikipedia pages on magnetic fields and magnetic permeability to find out more.

His response was both truculent and completely unexpected. He said that my review was irresponsible because, since I had not properly understood the nature of the thought experiment, I was giving potential readers a misleading idea of the book. He said that a lot of business for the book was going to come from amazon, and that I would be responsible for losing him a lot of buyers.

I must say, I couldn't believe it. Scott Adams seemed to be saying that it was irresponsible of an amazon reviewer to give a bad review of a book!! That by reviewing his book I'd somehow bought in to it and the author had a right not only to expect a thoroughly fair and properly researched review, but even a favourable one! And this is amazon, for goodness' sake, where the reviews are published for free, by non-professionals. We're not talking Times Literary Supplement here.

(An interesting parallel is with the eBay seller I bought my TV from. After they sent me two broken TVs, I left them negative feedback, despite the fact that the third TV worked ok. A guy from the company got very upset with me, saying he would lose hundreds of customers as a result and since they replaced the broken TVs I shouldn't have given negative feedback. I said the point of feedback was to reward good sellers and the best way for him to get customers would be not to sell broken TVs. Otherwise, what on earth is the point of the eBay feedback system?)

I wrote Adams a response, saying I hardly thought his business was hinging on my review, and that regardless I could hardly be seen as having any responsibility to his business. I'm not sure he replied to it, I think maybe it was just the two emails from me and the one from him, but there may have been a second response from him, I can't remember. Still, I do remember that it ended with him in a huff, with, essentially, an "I don't wanna talk to you no more" comment.

A while after this fracas, all the reviews from that period, including mine and his, were removed from amazon.com, presumably at the request of the author (mine is still there on co.uk). Actually, perhaps they regularly prune old reviews, I don't know, or perhaps amazon thought it was degenerating too much into a debate rather than a proper set of reviews and pulled it for that reason.

Still, there is an interesting end to the story, and a reason why I am mentioning it now. I have kept a little bit of interest in the book and occasionally checked the reviews on amazon. A little while after Adams started his blog, I saw that he was making God's Debris available online for free (see link above). So I downloaded it and have occasionally been rereading it on the odd break at work.

I haven't finished reading it yet, but I did discover that his section on magnetism has changed. He now says that if you put a magnetic object in a magnetic field, it affects the field, but a non-magnetic object will have no effect. Of course, this still isn't strictly true, every material has some effect, it's just that for non-ferromagnetic materials it is often negligible. However, it did give me the sense that I had been personally responsible for his editing his book!

Of course, what is more likely is that many people mentioned that error and he decided to change the section when republishing the book. I wonder whether he's changed the section about evolution too? I'll have a look.

I wonder what all this editing does for his story that it doesn't really matter whether the Avatar in the story is telling the truth or not, that some bad facts are in there deliberately to trip us up as part of the thought experiment? I cannot comment...

My conclusions
Since I've been revisiting all this stuff I've got it a bit clearer in my head what Adams was trying to do, and although I still think he is trying to punch way above his weight, both in God's Debris and in his blog, perhaps I did judge him too harshly. He had a bunch of ideas in his head and he thought they were interesting enough to publish. Now most of us wouldn't, not just because we're not good authors, but also because we simply don't have the time and inclination to research and reevaluate those ideas properly to make them fit for publication. But Adams could get them published without bothering with research. And, I suppose, so would we all, if we could - if not, why the blog phenomenon? He thought that as long as he told you he didn't know what he was talking about at the start, he could get away with it. But with me, that grated.

A recent reviewer of the book on amazon.co.uk put it much better than I, so I'll repeat his words:

...I realised one of the main sources of this book - 'The Way of the Weasel' - a Dilbert book. By making this a thought experiment and deliberately stating that the facts are not all true etc Scott Adams has instantly freed himself from having to do any research or have any understanding of the 'fact' and ideas explored.

It's philosophy written by Dogbert - he is basically saying 'I haven't made the effort to fully explore what I'm saying, but you can if you want.'

And in some of the reviews I can see that people are falling for the bait - they are getting upset because they are making the effort, or have made the effort, and Adams hasn't. I don't think that he has deliberately put in false facts and false ideas - I think that he hasn't checked because he knows that he didn't need to.

So, basically, Adams is guilty of being incredibly lazy, and unlucky enough to have sycophantic publishers that allow him to sell crap. So I don't, ultimately, feel bad at Adams, I just feel bad for all the people duped into thinking there's a message in God's Debris worth taking on board.

The other stuff about my 'irresponsible' reviewing, on the other hand, is pretty unforgiveable. Adams clearly needs both a reality check and an ego-deflation.

What is the moral of this story? I suppose it's that we should never risk letting people think we know more than we do about something unless we actually intend to deceive them. I'm not anal about this, I'm not like some people who think you have to have a PhD in something in order to be able to talk about it. It should just all be like Wikipedia - if you aren't talking crap then you should be able to back up what you're saying.

If anyone thinks I'm overstepping my own bounds and talking authoritatively on something I don't know about (as in, I'm clearly pretending I know more than I do), please call me on it. I admire Scott Adams' wit, but I don't want to be like him.

Peterborough Head

Today I took Marci to the Peterborough Head where she raced with CCAT Women's 1st boat. Her crew did 5k in 18min58sec, coming third out of eight women's Novice 8s. Pretty good for a fairly new crew!


Marci before the race

The crew

Muslim hypocrisy

So far I have identified three major hypocrisies in the Muslim protest against these caricatures:

1. Muslims are always telling us not to assume all Muslims are violent fanatics or bigots just because of a 'few' fanatical elements; and yet they are treating all citizens of a country where a few individuals have published these photos as legitimate targets of protest.
2. Newspapers in Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia have printed scathing representations, in cartoon form and otherwise, of Jews, and of Western countries, which are deeply offensive. Free speech is a valuable commodity when Arab heads of state are denouncing the West, or Muslim clerics are calling on followers to violent action, but Muslims are quick to dispense with it when the boot is on the other foot.
3. The biggest irony of all: responding to caricatures that paint a picture of Islam as a violent religion by threatening violence.
   

As many have mentioned in the past few days, Islam has way bigger image problems than that which might be incited by a few offensive caricatures. Perhaps the so-called moderates should worry first about confronting terrorism, bigotry, and human rights offenses before they turn on those who would comment on it.

Muslims are always calling on the West to treat the root political cause of the problem - the unjust offences against Muslims in Palestine and elsewhere, and Western stranglehold on world trade - and not just react to the result. But in what way are they following the source of these cartoons back to their root cause? The cartoonists view Islam in that way for a reason, and I'm afraid it isn't just because they're all indoctrinated by prejudice. You only have to pick up a newspaper to see who the real 'bad guy' is here.

This is a clash of cultures the Muslims cannot win. Why? Because Europeans hold the concept of freedom of speech just as dearly as Muslims hold their religious convictions. To us, it isn't just a principle we uphold - it's a given. It's so natural to us that taking it away is like trying to strip away part of our identity, just as the Muslims say about their faith. As I have said throughout this thing, I think the cartoons were offensive, and probably ill-advised. But there is no way that is a sufficient excuse for censorship. The right to offend is more important than the good sense not to offend.

Denmark = a Dane conundrum

Why are these Muslims, protesting over these caricatures of Mohammed, associating the few Danish people that published the drawings with the government and people of Denmark? Not only is recalling ambassadors and boycotting Danish goods a quite infantile overreaction, but it is punishing completely the wrong people!

Again, I can only imagine it is because there are Muslim theocracies, and in these countries there is such control that the state must be complicit in any action for it to be allowed.

How then do the Muslims (in question) reconcile their defence that we shouldn't tar all Muslims with the brush of the 'few' fanatics?

Listen to reason

Today I was ordering a kebab in pitta for my lunch, and the guy said "Do you want everything on it?". I looked at the different trays of salads, decided I didn't want everything, and said "I'll have onions, gherkins, and tomatoes". As he was doing this, I realised I probably did want some lettuce on it too. But I decided not to say anything. Why?

I'm thinking it was because it would be changing my mind, and we don't like to change our minds. Perhaps because it indicates weakness to others; perhaps indeciveness is a trait that evolution selected against.

How often do we pointlessly put up with something we don't want or a worse way of doing things just because we don't like changing our minds? All the time, I think. It may be: starting to cycle the wrong way somewhere, getting a few yards down the wrong street and realising it, and then reconciling yourself and deciding to go this route anyway, even if it's longer than it would be to turn around and go back (this is far far worse if anybody's watching you; we go to extraordinary lengths never to turn on our heel when people can see us and make us feel stupid). Or it may be ordering some product or foodstuff, being misheard and given the wrong thing (say, you were given a cheese and mushroom pastie instead of cheese and onion), but you only realise while you're paying and you feel it's too late to say anything for some reason. It happens everywhere.

Of course, this is a self-perpetuating thing, a vicious cycle. The longer you leave a decision to change your mind, the more embarrassing it becomes to do so and therefore the harder it is. This is taken to extremes with religious belief. The more you face up to your doubts, and dismiss them, the more emphatic the evidence must be for you to change your opinion, until basically nothing will - the mental consequences of deconstructing the wall of certainty you have built brick by brick with each reaffirmation become so severe that you cannot possibly face it. The brain gets better and better at ignoring contrary evidence.

Actually, it's more than just religion, it's all our core beliefs and values and prejudices. Most of it, of course, learned from childhood when the ability to appraise the incoming information properly is just not present.

People of reason must learn to question every value that passes through their minds. We must lend a brief thought, even if only occasionally, to the possibility that we might not have properly considered the facts on certain subjects. Every time you find yourself doubting some old truth, you should consider it a victory, not a failure. I've started to do this recently and I must say it is quite liberating. I would say that all my beliefs are open to critical reassessment, including my stance on religion. Of course, it would take a hell of a lot to dislodge that one...

Are you a tolerant religionist?

Here's test for your tolerance.

Christians:

Jesus never existed as depicted in the gospels. How does that make you feel? What about if I said that the biblical God is a maniacal bigoted despot? Does that irritate you?

How about: Jesus, if he existed, was an airy-fairy hippy who advocated the principle that bumming off other people was the holiest lifestyle choice, plagiarised some stuff about being nice to people that moral philosophers like Confucious came up with centuries before, viciously condemned swathes of people to eternal hellfire for no better reason than refusing to submit to blind delusion, and generally did nothing whatsoever to help us come up with the moral principles we hold so dear today, such as freedom, equality, and the precedence of reason? Basically, he was a twat. How does that make you feel?

Not much? Didn't think so.

Hindus:

The Vedas is a tissue of nonsensical fairy tales that only a child would be duped by. A little upset? How about if I said that the concept of Vishnu is wholly ridiculous. Anyone who thinks there's a powerful floaty presence with multiple arms must be utterly dense. And as for Ganesh - what on earth's with the trunk for goodness' sake? Are you people crazy?

A trifle angry? Think I've overstepped the bounds of decency?

Muslims:

Your God, Allah, does not exist. Mohammed was a vicious supremacist with shoddy values and bad hygiene. The Koran is not just tripe, it is perhaps the most despicably immoral pile of ************** I wouldn't wipe my ******** ...

Oh dear...I'm feeling nervous now. I've had to self-censor this section, I'm so concerned. I've probably offended your core sensibilities, haven't I? I deserve to be smitten, not just by your God, but by your very hand. I deserve punishment. For some frickin' words.

People, these are just words. They mean nothing without actions. Neither do they incite any actions. Why is it that Muslims seem to find it harder to see that than Hindus, and Hindus harder than Christians? I don't know. Christians believe a complete load of hogwash too, just like all other religionists, so it probably isn't just about the religion itself.

Everyone try:

Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelled of eldeberries. How's that? Your mother was a prostitute, and your sister is so ugly her face launched a thousand ships - because they were so desperate to get away. Worse? Should I go on?

I have to watch my language because if I don't, I'll be in breach of the contract I made with the good people of blogspot. Why is that? What is it about people that their sensibilities deserve to take priority over other people's actions, regardless of whether those other people know anything about their sensibilities?

If your beliefs are so important to you that they cannot face scrutiny, ridicule, mockery, or offense, then hide yourself away, don't talk to anyone or read anything or listen to anything. Because the world does not revolve around you.

Islam - the tolerant religion

At the moment there is a big hoohah going on about some caricatures of Mohammed printed in a Danish newspaper. People have taken to the streets to protest outside embassies with guns, threats have been made, Arab nations have recalled ambassadors...it's pretty unbelievable for something so innocuous. It's making me spit bricks.

Here are the four opinions I posted to BBC's Have Your Say

Perhaps next time the Ayatollah (or Jerry Falwell, for that matter) announces that atheists are evil and deserve to be tortured for eternity in hell, we should cause an international outrage? All religions are a bunch of tripe, and anyone who has been brainwashed into attaching such importance to an object or an idea that they will interfere with freedom of speech to protect it needs therapy, not respect. If God is so great he can defend himself. Pity he doesn't exist then.

All religions believe most other religions are purely or partly invention or delusion. Yet they all agree we must respect those beliefs. Religionists think we have to respect invention! Can I invent my own religion that purports to hold Elvis or Charlie Kennedy sacred and take revenge on anyone who mocks them? The cartoons were offensive and provocative, but they did not incite violence and so were not and should never be illegal.

What is the Enlightened world coming to when an idea must be immune from criticism or mockery just because it is held sacred? Many tenets of religion, such as Original Sin, Holy War, and the place of women offend me to the very core of what I hold dear. Yet I would defend religions' right to offend me as loudly as they clamour to condemn me.

When Bush got a second term I lost my hope that most Americans are reasonable people. Then this 'furore' destroyed my last vestige of hope that Muslims (if not Islam) really were a peace-loving and inclusive people. What a sick animal is man, when dogma and ideology become more important than compassion and humanity. Religion will be the death of us all.

Guess which one made it onto the pages among the hundreds of other comments?
It was the third one, the least controversial, obviously.

I want to believe that most Muslims are really peaceable, tolerant, inclusive people, I really do. But every chance they get to prove they keep blowing it! It seems that even the most moderate Muslim will defend dogma and ideology not just with words, but with hostile, possibly even violent action. I quite regularly hear moderate Muslims say that their faith is so important to them, if called to fight in a religious war they would die for it. I used to hear that with the same sort of shock I have when I hear a Jew say they can't marry a non-Jew because they must "preserve the purity of their race". Now it's just expected.

Of course other religions are not immune. Christians got all up-tight about Jerry Springer and the Sikhs got threatening about that other play a while back. But how often do you see Christians threatening with violence? Sometimes, but definitely not as often, and only from fanatics. Maybe it's because there are Muslim theocratic nations and so Islam becomes not just an idea, but your entire country. I don't know.

It is astounding to me that I must listen with cold compliance to the rantings of religionists the world over, telling me I am degenerate and evil because I'm an atheist; yet I must pander to the transparently infantile sacred beliefs of the many for fear of causing offense. The real reason why we must pander to them? Because there are lunatics among them, a great many. We must concede by force of violence. It is just terrorism by another route.