Glib theology

Norm:

(Responding to comments by Justin Thacker)

I believe in no kind of God. Still, there is a world of difference between a God who strengthens people's belief and resolution in the struggle against injustice, a God, even, who gives people courage in the face of loss or other adversity, and one who reconciles the faithful to an acceptance of human barbarism, gives them the satisfaction of knowing that He has a reason for allowing it, justifies it indeed by reference to some 'greater good'. This is the theological equivalent of a political apologia for genocide and worth about as much respect.

Google Chrome

I'm currently using Google's new Chrome browser.

So far, so good.

It looks cleaner than Firefox - combining the address and search box makes it less cluttered. The fact that a new tab opens with list of your most visited sites is also a nice touch. But the lack of add-ons is a real downside.

Will stick with it for the moment.

Tegenaria duellica redux

This post, on a house spider I used to find wandering around my place, is by far the most popular post on this blog. Rarely a day goes by without someone coming through from google.

If only there were some way of harnessing this for the greater good of the blog - aside from including the words Tengenaria duellica in every post title.

Suggestions?

Praise be to Charles Darwin

The Onion:

DAYTON, TN—A steady stream of devoted evolutionists continued to gather in this small Tennessee town today to witness what many believe is an image of Charles Darwin—author of The Origin Of Species and founder of the modern evolutionary movement—made manifest on a concrete wall in downtown Dayton.

"I brought my baby to touch the wall, so that the power of Darwin can purify her genetic makeup of undesirable inherited traits," said Darlene Freiberg, one among a growing crowd assembled here to see the mysterious stain, which appeared last Monday on one side of the Rhea County Courthouse. The building was also the location of the famed "Scopes Monkey Trial" and is widely considered one of Darwinism's holiest sites. "Forgive me, O Charles, for ever doubting your Divine Evolution. After seeing this miracle of limestone pigmentation with my own eyes, my faith in empirical reasoning will never again be tested."

Via New Humanist Blog

Memories are made of this

From the International Herald Tribune:

Scientists have for the first time recorded individual brain cells in the act of summoning a spontaneous memory, revealing not only where a remembered experience is registered but how the brain is able to re-create it.

The recordings, taken from the brains of epilepsy patients being prepared for surgery, demonstrate that these spontaneous memories reside in some of the very same neurons that fired most furiously when the recalled event was first experienced. Researchers had long theorized that this was the case but until now had only indirect evidence.

The new study, experts said, has all but closed the case: Remembering, for the brain, is a lot like doing.

Jonathan Sacks and an appeal to shared inadequacy

One thing that always tends to annoy me is people mistaking vagueness for profundity.

Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth the "truth" of his God:

In fact none of the most important truths can be proved: that right is sovereign over might, that it is better to be loved than feared, that every human being however poor or powerless is worthy of respect, that peace is nobler than war, forgiveness greater than revenge, and hope a higher virtue than resignation to blind fate. Lives have been lived and civilisations built in defiance of these truths, yet they remain true.

This is essentially nothing more than an appeal to shared inadequacy: I may have beliefs I cannot justify, but then so do other people - so leave me alone!

None of the Rabbi's statements deserve to be accepted as true simply because he - or anyone else - asserts them. What we have is simply a list of things he wants to be true but can't be bothered to argue for. While that may provide an insightful (but unexceptional) insight into the mind of Rabbi Sachs, it provides little else and certainly no facts about the world around us.

Why we're not natural statisticians

Michael Shermer:

Thanks to our confirmation bias, in which we look for and find confirmatory evidence for what we already believe and ignore or discount contradictory evidence, we will remember only those few astonishing coincidences and forget the vast sea of meaningless data.

We can employ a similar back-of-the-envelope calculation to explain death premonition dreams. The average person has about five dreams a night, or 1,825 dreams a year. If we remember only a tenth of our dreams, then we recall 182.5 dreams a year. There are 300 million Americans, who thus produce 54.7 billion remembered dreams a year. Sociologists tell us that each of us knows about 150 people fairly well, thus producing a social-network grid of 45 billion personal relationship connections. With an annual death rate of 2.4 million Americans, it is inevitable that some of those 54.7 billion remembered dreams will be about some of these 2.4 million deaths among the 300 million Americans and their 45 billion relationship connections. In fact, it would be a miracle if some death premonition dreams did not happen to come true!

These examples show the power of probabilistic thinking to override our intuitive sense of numbers, or what I call “folk numeracy,” in parallel with my previous columns on “folk science” (August 2006) and “folk medicine” (August 2008) and with my book on “folk economics” (The Mind of the Market). Folk numeracy is our natural tendency to misperceive and miscalculate probabilities, to think anecdotally instead of statistically, and to focus on and remember short-term trends and small-number runs. We notice a short stretch of cool days and ignore the long-term global-warming trend. We note with consternation the recent downturn in the housing and stock markets, forgetting the half-century upward-pointing trend line. Sawtooth data trend lines, in fact, are exemplary of folk numeracy: our senses are geared to focus on each tooth’s up or down angle, whereas the overall direction of the blade is nearly invisible to us.

Common sense on genetics and behaviour

From the Times:

But can there really be a “divorce gene”?

It may be the case for randy meadow voles, as scientists proved in 2004, but are changes in the human vasoprassin receptor really to blame for turning some men into roving lotharios? “The critical thing to remember is that genetics are important, but they're not the whole story. They will determine a man's height, but that's also determined by his nutrition,” says Susan Quilliam, psychotherapist and co-author of 'The New Joy of Sex'.

“You can say that some men are predisposed to stray, but once the genetics are set, you have the culture into which they are born, the media influences, family and society. So it's not a done deal that some men are always going to be unfaithful.” What is clear, says Quilliam, is that nurture is key. While men do have a tendency to have more partners than women, it is also true that if two people are in an unhappy marriage, one is more likely to be unfaithful. And it's not always the man. In the past, marriage was more of a contract. The woman stayed at home with the children, while the husband went to work. Infidelity often ended in the divorce courts. Now the roles have changed and, as more women go out to work, so they have more opportunity to stray and consequently women are more often becoming the unfaithful partner, says Quilliam.

Anyone interested in how genetics affects behaviour could do a lot worse than check out Richard Dawkins' 'The Selfish Gene', Matt Ridley's 'Nature via Nurture' and/or Steven Pinker's 'The Blank Slate'.

Morality police

From the Guardian:

The Egyptian crooner Ehab Tawfiq has bedroom eyes, smouldering good looks and a voice that enchants Arab audiences. Sadly he won't be performing any time soon in Yemen, where he has been blocked by a controversial new Saudi-style "religious police" charged with enforcing austere standards of public morality.

Tawfiq sings catchily about love and relationships. But a concert he was due to give in Sana'a was postponed and then cancelled last month after a campaign by the country's newly-formed "virtue committee", which distributed posters and leaflets — and, say some, encouraged death threats and intimidation — condemning the handsome Egyptian for promoting "sedition, immorality and nudity".

For many Yemenis, and for women in particular, this was another alarming sign of the growth of Salafi extremism — an unwelcome import from neighbouring Saudi Arabia where the "mutaween" religious police are part of the scenery.

The need for religious education

Should schools teach about religion?

The National Secular Society has expressed its objections to the recently launched Accord Coalition. Despite agreeing on several points - school selection on the grounds of a parents’ religion, discrimination in the employment of teachers and collective worship - it disagrees on one major point:

The involvement of religious groups in the new coalition means that it stops short of demanding an end to the very concept of religious schools. It wants “objective and fair religious education” – which would include humanism.

The NSS, on the other hand, thinks that schools should be properly secular places and that religion should play no part in them. This is not as radical an idea as it sounds. France and America do not permit churches to run their state-funded schools and there is no religious education in the classroom, either (although constant pressure is on from religious interests to change that).

I'm with Accord rather than the NSS on this - Religious education is essential not only for allowing different groups to understand one another but also for teaching children to think critically about the religious (or otherwise) communities they grow up in. The RE classes I had at school were the first time I started thinking seriously about my beliefs, setting me off on the road to where I am now. The knowledge of Christian culture gained from singing hymns and listening to various religious parables (even if they would've been better off in RE class than assembly) has also proven invaluable in understanding Christians. I only wish I'd had the same contact with other religions as well.

Rabbi Jonathan Romain, in an article against faith schools, puts it well over at CiF:

There should also be a distinction between religious knowledge and religious beliefs – with the former being taught to everyone, while the latter learnt from the home, after-school classes or weekend studies.

Removing RE from schools would mean that the only contact children would have with religion would be their own family and peer-group - who have a vested interest in shutting out all options but their own. Religion is a part of our world and children need to be taught about it. School is the best place for that.

How to make your god seem quite petty

From Ekkelsia:

A Christian woman is taking an art centre to court over an exhibition which included a statue of Jesus that she believes is lewd and offensive. Civil rights advocates say that this is an attempt to reinstate blasphemy laws by the back door.

The private prosecution, which has been postponed to 23 September over legal technicalities, is being backed by the Christian Legal Centre and campaigners, including Stephen Green - who unsuccessfully challenged Jerry Springer - The Opera.

Lawyers for Emily Mapfuwa, who comes from from Brentwood in London, will put their arguments to Gateshead Magistrates Court when the case resumes.

They will say that the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art committed an "act of a lewd and a disgusting nature and outraged public decency contrary to Common Law" by displaying a statue of Jesus that shows an erect penis.

Might I humbly suggest that, if her god does exist, he might have slightly more important concerns than a slightly weird statue.

UPDATE: Ministry of Truth has more:

One of the questions about this case that’s already been raised is that of whether Mapfuwa has actually ever visited the gallery, in Gateshead, let alone went to see this particular exhibition, with several news sources suggesting that she complained after reading about the statue in a newspaper and this tends to be just what it takes to get my ’something’s not quite right’ bump has itching - and you should all know what that means by now.

Go read.

Why that next chocolate bar might not be such a good idea

Are human beings as rational as some people make out?

Matthew Sinclair on supermarket's promoting sweets:

If you think that labelling is important then you are assuming that people are good at making decisions about the kind of food they eat. That they care about their health and, if properly informed, know how to eat healthily. Or, you think that people should be free to decide for themselves how important healthy eating is to them. That's why you value giving them information, it allows them to make as much use of their remarkable ability to decide for themselves as possible.

By contrast, if you think that having sweets at the counter, or offering people discounts, will cause them to want things they shouldn't, and we should intervene to stop that happening, then you don't really respect their ability to decide for themselves at all. You think they're simpletons who can't possibly decide for themselves or are so pathetically vulnerable to pester power that they will be terrorised unless you hide the jelly babies in the corner. When Sainsburys take a pound off the price of my Coke they make me worse off.

But is it really that simple?

Human beings are not quite the rational agents economics often makes them out to be. As well as the ability to reason, we're also saddled with numerous evolutionary hang-ups that drive our behaviour, evolutionary hang-ups that may not have caught up with the modern world. As Daniel Dennet explains in "Breaking the Spell":

There is nothing "intrinsically sweet" (whatever that would mean) about sugar molecules, but they are intrinsically valuable to energy-needing organisms, so evolution has arranged for organisms to have a built-in and powerful preference for anything that tickles their special-purpose high-energy detectors. That is why we are born with an instinctual liking for sweets - and, in general, the sweeter the better.

We have an evolved strong desire for sugar because it benefited our ancestors to have it. However, they lived in a much less sugar-rich environment than we do. While the amount of available sugar has increased, our instincts have yet to catch up - leaving us with a strong desire for more sugar than is healthy for us. (Especially so in children).

The problem is that most of us probably don't know how much sugar is good for us (or how much sugar various items contain). We just know that our body desires that chocolate bar or that Eccles cake. Supermarkets, looking to boost their profits (as any good company should), will naturally aim to take advantage of this and seek to exploit any weakness in human nature.

This isn't a call for greater state intervention. (Personally, I think better education is the way to go). It is, however, a suggestion that the matter is more complex than the either/or option presented in the quote above.

Better watch what you say

From Ekklesia:

Civil rights organisations, advocates of religious freedom, anti-censorship groups and government in Europe and beyond are expressing alarm at a United Nations General Assembly resolution that demands respect for religion but which critics say has been used to justify suppression of religious minorities.

Some say that it is in danger of becoming a "global blasphemy law" by stealth.

The resolution, "Combating Defamation of Religion," is sponsored by the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and has been approved by the world body annually since 2005. It comes up for renewal later in 2008.

There are hopes that some Muslim nations - among them Senegal, Mali, Nigeria and Indonesia - will reject the measure, which lacks the force of law but has provided diplomatic cover for regimes that wish to deny speech critical of them.

Better to die of cancer than have too much sex?

Julian Baggini on sending the wrong message:

You would have thought it was good news: hundreds of thousands of girls are going to be much better protected against the two forms of the human papilloma virus (HPV) that cause 70% of cervical cancers.

But for some, the immunisation programme which launched in Scotland yesterday is dangerous because it "sends the wrong message". Because HPV is sexually transmitted, runs the argument, girls who get the jab are going to think they can sleep with whoever they want and never worry about cervical cancer again.

I'm very suspicious about such "wrong message" arguments. Might not indigestion tablets, for example, send the message that it's OK to eat and drink too much? Could smoke alarms send the message that you needn't worry about fires because they'll be detected soon enough? Given that the human capacity for misinterpretation is infinite, the number of possible wrong-message arguments seems endless.

A heartbeat away from the presidency

Atheist Revolution has plenty of reasons why US secularists should be worried about McCain's VP pick:

Who is Sarah Palin?

• She has connections to dominionist groups, including Joel's Army.
  
• She believes creationism should be taught in schools.
• She believes religious leaders should be able to endorse political candidates.
• She strongly opposes reproductive freedom for women and wants to ban abortion even in cases of rape or incest.
  
• She supported the infamous "bridge to nowhere" and recently lied about her support.
  
• The leading Christian extremist groups support her.

Quick blogroll question

Is it better to use "A" and "The" in blog names or remove them? For example: "The Orwell Prize" or simply "Orwell Prize"?

Is religious humanism a contradiction in terms?

Nigel Warburton interviews Andrew Copson on the meaning of humanism:

Nigel: There is some confusion about what 'Humanism' means. What do you understand by the term?

Andrew: I think the Oxford Companion to the Mind has it right when it calls Humanism 'a morally concerned style of intellectual atheism openly avowed by only a small minority of individuals (for example, those who are members of the British Humanist Association) but tacitly accepted by a wide spectrum of educated people in all parts of the Western world.' This contemporary and widely-shared meaning, which the word has had now for over half a century, takes it to denote a non-religious worldview entailing a belief in reason and evidence as the ways of understanding reality, in human welfare and fulfillment as the aim of morality, and in the capacity of humanity to make meaning and purpose for itself in the absence of any 'ultimate' meaning or purpose to the universe. This is the meaning of the word understood by the British Humanist Association and all the other national Humanist organisations in the world, and the meaning that is commonly understood in education in UK schools today. It is the Humanism described in books like Richard Norman's On Humanism (Routledge) or Jim Herrick's Humanism: An Introduction (RPA) and great books from the 1960s such as Hector Hawton's Humanist Revolution. Any confusion that there still is over the term, I think, is down to the word having had different uses at different points in the past, before it came to mean what it mainly means today, and this sometimes gives rise to misleading uses of the word.

I'm not sure I entirely agree that humanism is essentially an atheistic worldview. While the term "Christian Humanism" does raise some questions (though perhaps not unanswerable ones), the worldview outlined above doesn't seem incompatible with more deist or pantheist outlooks. You can believe in god(s), but still see them as sufficiently mysterious to throw the emphasis back on human beings.

Addendum: Although, Norm does have a good point:

It's not that humanists and believers can't share fundamental moral beliefs. They can - such as the commitment to universalist human values. But it robs the label 'humanist' of what has given it its core significance if one speaks of 'religious humanists'.

It's so unfair that it's not more unfair

Shuggy on British Christians being "persecuted":

Here's the present situation: in England, as in Scotland, the present system discriminates in favour of the religious - controlling more schools than their weight in the population could possibly justify. The merest suggestion that perhaps just maybe, if it's alright with you, we might suggest this is a little unfair and perhaps you might stop this, amounts to "persecution" these days.

State-funded segregation

From Ekklesia:

A well known supporter of faith schools has said that the discriminatory practices of church schools are what give them their special Christian ethos.

Writing in the Independent on Sunday, Catholic Melanie MacDonagh, championed the routine discrimination in employment and admissions of church schools, and challenged the claims of the Faith Schools' Providers Group made on Friday, that faith schools never discriminate.

Her comments come ahead of the launch of Accord on Monday, a coalition of academics, teachers, and religious leaders, which seeks to end the discrimination of faith schools in the appointment of teaching and non teaching staff, and in admission arrangements.

Although funded by the taxpayer, faith schools can legally give first choice in school places to children of families who hold the same religious views as the school, and give jobs only to those who share the school's faith. Such policies have been defended by representatives of faith schools, but who have denied that they are discriminating.

The Environment: A natural obligation

Why should we protect the environment?

Matthew Paris in the Times:

We must stop retreating into the metaphysical mists of a theory of division between Man and Nature, and cheerfully accept that we ourselves are “Nature”, and we're in charge: the top species. We can design this garden for succeeding generations, according to our human taste, because we love our own species.

I'm not too sure I agree with his idea that human beings are "in charge" of the environment - there are still plenty of natural forces giving us puny creatures a battering. Other than that, however, I'm in complete agreement.

Nature (of which we're firmly a part) has no inherent right to exist - scientists are currently doing their utmost to eradicate numerous viruses that are part of the natural world and we've been messing around with crops and animals in order to increase returns for longer than civilisation has existed.

But is does need protecting: The natural world is both awe-inspiring and utterly essential to the survival of our species. Without it, we cannot exist.

A cleaner world, built on sustainable economic policies, and in which we aim to conserve and enhance our environment is in everyone's interest.

The vice-presidency and a pitcher of warm piss

Are US Vice-Presidents that important?

To be honest, I don't know that much about the US political system - it not being my country. However, both the print and TV news people seem to be tripping over themselves to bring us the latest updates from the Presidential election, so I'm assuming it might have some relevance beyond the fact that Obama's campaign has lots of flashing lights. After all, they wouldn't waste time on trivialities... would they.

The delightful title of this post was inspired by John Nance Garner, who was US Vice-President under Roosevelt from 1933-41. Apparently, he was less than happy with the position.

The current VP is, of course, Dick Cheney. Although I don't remember having seen him for a while. I assume he's still around. Cheney is often portrayed as the puppet-master behind George W. Bush - especially when it came to the invasion of Iraq.

But, aside from his rather murky involvement there, he's mainly known for shooting a good friend in the face, after mistaking him for a quail.

Harry's Place taken down

Will these people never learn?

I don't tend to read Harry's Place very often. In fact, you could probably count the times I've visited it in the past year on one hand. This means that their post on "Sheffield-based UCU member" Jenna Delich linking to "the website of a known neo-Nazi figure and former Ku Klux Klan leader" would normally have passed me by.

However, apparently following threats of action by Ms Delich and her supporters, the blog's ISP has been targeted and consequently Harry's Place has been taken offline.

So now, in the proud tradition of blogopshere, the story is being spread as far and wide as possible.

More details at Mr Eugenidies.

Librarians getting tough

From Yahoo News:

GRAFTON, Wis. - A Grafton woman has been arrested and booked for failing to pay her library fines. Heidi Dalibor, 20, told the News Graphic in Cedarburg she ignored the library's calls and letters as well as a notice to appear in court.

Still, she was surprised when officers with a warrant knocked on her door, cuffed her and took her to the police station to be fingerprinted and photographed.

According to the report, one of the books she'd held on to was Dan Brown's 'Angels and Demons'. Frankly, the $30 fine was far too little for such criminally bad taste in books.

A step in the right direction

Youtube Comment Snob add-on

YouTube Comment Snob is a Firefox extension that filters out undesirable comments from YouTube comment threads. You can choose to have any of the following rules mark a comment for removal:

• More than # spelling mistakes: The number of mistakes is customizable, and the extension uses Firefox's built-in spell checker.
• All capital letters
• No capital letters
• Doesn't start with a capital letter
• Excessive punctuation (!!!! ????)
• Excessive capitalization
• Profanity

If only there were a blog version.

Fantastic

I thought the 'Lord of the Rings' films were good, if massively over-hyped. But the idea of a Jackson / Del Toro team-up for the Hobbit prequels is very exciting.

Peter Jackson is to co-write the screenplay for The Hobbit, according to US trade paper Hollywood Reporter.

Jackson, who presided over the Oscar-winning Lord Of The Rings trilogy, is executive producer on the new Tolkien adaptation, which is due out in 2011.

He had already handed over the director's reigns to Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro.

But following an eight-month search for a suitable scribe, the pair decided to adapt the epic novel themselves.

Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, who worked with Jackson on Lord of The Rings, have also joined the writing team.

Twits

From the BBC website:

Publisher Random House says it received three complaints about a vulgar term used in My Sister Jodie, which is aimed at children aged 10 and over.

In future editions, the offending word will be altered by one letter and replaced with "twit".

Three complaints. They changed the word purely on the basis of three complaints. Do these books not go through some kind of vetting process? Surely publishing companies have someone who goes through manuscripts looking for anything that might cause this kind of problem - and, if so, you'd think they might be able to put up a bit more of fight about their decision to publish it. Changing it on the basis of a few objections just looks stupid.

The decision to alter the text came after supermarket chain Asda announced it would stop selling the book.

Ah.

Their move followed a complaint from one shopper in Stanley, County Durham.

Right.

Still, at least the "offensive" version might end up fetching a few quid on eBay.

Survival of the fittest

Without the benefit of evidence or cogent argument, creationists often have to fall back on guilt-by-association tactics in their attempts to discredit evolutionary theory. The idea that the tyranny of the Soviet Union is somehow built upon the theory being a favourite line to use. For a recent example, see here.

Leaving aside for the moment the startling fact that the majority of the civilised world accepts evolutionary theory and yet has somehow managed to avoid death camps, there are two rather obvious flaws with this.

The first is that the Soviet Union officially rejected the mainstream theory, embracing the non-scientific Lysenkoism:

Between 1934 and 1940, under Lysenko's admonitions and with Stalin's blessings, many geneticists were executed (including Isaak Agol, Solomon Levit, Grigorii Levitskii, Georgii Karpechenko and Georgii Nadson) or sent to labor camps. The famous Soviet geneticist Nikolai Vavilov was arrested in 1940 and died in prison in 1943. Genetics was stigmatized as a 'bourgeois science' or 'fascist science' (because fascists — particularly the Nazis in Germany — embraced genetics and attempted to use it to justify their theories on eugenics and the master race, which culminated in Action T4). Some Soviet geneticists, however, survived and continued to work in genetics, dangerous as it was.

In 1948, genetics was officially declared "a bourgeois pseudoscience"; all geneticists were fired from work (some were also arrested), and all genetic research was discontinued. Nikita Khrushchev, who fancied himself as an expert in agricultural science, also valued Lysenko as a great scientist, and the taboo on genetics continued (but all geneticists were released or rehabilitated posthumously). Only in the middle of the 1960s was it waived. As a consequence, Lysenkoism caused serious, long-term harm to Soviet biology. It represented a serious failure of the early Soviet leadership to find real solutions to agricultural problems, allowing their system to be hijacked by a charlatan — at the expense of many human lives.

The second is that evolutionary theory is descriptive, not proscriptive: It explains how beneficial mutations spread throughout the gene pool, but - given the complexity of the environment - makes no real comment on what should, or is even likely, to prove beneficial. The idea of "fitness" is defined purely in terms of that which has survived (so far). What the Soviet Union indulged in was not evolution but politically-motivated elimination of the undesirable. It attempted to impose its own views on nature and over-rule environmental pressures. With - for it and its population - catastrophic results.

In fact, from an evolutionary point-of-view, democracies have proven themselves to be far better at surviving than tyrannies (the Soviet Union failed to make it out of the Cold War, while Nazi Germany didn't even make it past WW2). While there are no guarantees, those looking to place bets on which political model will prove the most versatile in the future would be wise to shun any which display the dogmatism and arrogance of the Soviet Union. Assuming they accept evolutionary theory, of course.

Privacy mode

Heh.

[Internet] Users may wish to turn on the privacy mode if they are planning a surprise party, buying presents or researching a medical condition and do not want others users of the same computer to find out.

Oh yes, I'm sure those are exactly the reasons many people will want to browse the Internet in private.

Too much faith in atheists?

I was going to attempt a post criticising this piece by AC Grayling over at CiF, but it looks as if Chicken Yoghurt has already done so. Which saves me the effort.

Grayling essentially argues that David Miliband would make a good PM simply because he's an atheist and would therefore pursue a more rational, secularist line.

Justin begs to differ:

Has Miliband gone on the public record anywhere giving even the merest hint that he might think along these lines? He was head of Tony Blair’s Policy Unity from 1997 to 2001, for crying our loud. He backed the Iraq war despite his belief that everyone fighting might squander their one existence without hope of the reward of an after-life.

The thing is, I have doubts whether religious (non) beliefs of any stripe colour the judgement of leaders to any large extent. For all his self-proclaimed Christian beneficence, Tony Blair displays very, very few of the qualities that mark someone as a Christian. Ditto ’son of the manse’ Gordon Brown. See also George Bush.

But here we go again, imprinting another potential Prime Minister with our tenuous hopes. Haven’t we learned our lesson in the last year? Miliband, like Gordon Brown, is a leading figure and architect of New Labour. He is the status quo; another bag carrier for the post-Thatcherite consensus.

As I've argued before, the fact that someone is an atheist tells you nothing about them other than that they don't believe in a god. Atheists are people too, and as such can hold any number of stupid and bigoted beliefs or attitudes.

It's probably the memory that helps

Even elephants are better at maths than I am:

When a trainer dropped three apples into one bucket and one apple into a second, then four more apples in the first and five more in the second, the pacaderm recognised that three plus four is greater than one plus five, and snacked on the seven apples.

It seems that the ability to do basic addition is quite widespread amongst them. Although experts aren't entirely sure why. Apparently, it might be something to do with having to keep track of the herd you're in.

Mind you, I don't remember my own education involving snacks as teaching aids. If it had, my numerical ability might not be in quite the shoddy state it sadly is now.

Ignore the man behind the curtain

From Times Online:

Wu Dianyuan, 79, and Wang Xiuying, 77, have been petitioning the government ever since they were forcibly evicted from their homes in Beijing in 2001 as part of a series of huge renovation projects across the city.

The pair applied five times between August 5 and August 18 to the Beijing city Public Security Bureau for permission to demonstrate in the newly designated protest parks. The two women, formerly neighbours, wanted to protest against their forced eviction from their homes seven years ago. Their application was neither granted nor denied and on August 5 they were held for 10 hours for questioning by the police, the son of one of the women told Human Rights in China.

On August 17, the two elderly women each received a document from the city authorities ordering them to serve one year of re-education through labour – an administrative punishment that does not require any judicial process – from July 30 this year to July 29, 2009 for “disturbing public order”. The two would be allowed to serve their term outside a camp, but the notice restricts their movements and states that if other regulations are violated they could be moved to a camp.

I bet that's ruined their enjoyment of the Olympics.

The illusion of intimacy

Want to know what Barack Obama and John McCain will publicly admit to reading on the Internet?

No?

Me neither.

But you could if you wanted to.

Say it ain't so...

Bigfoot isn't real:

The website that promoted the finding of the supposed remains of the legendary Bigfoot has confirmed what most people suspected: the body was nothing more than a rubber sasquatch costume.

The very definition of injustice

It seems that certain classic 'Doctor Who' stories are available to download from the US iTunes store. But we UK users have none.

Bastards.

New Look

As you can see, I've changed the template slightly - mainly to give the 'From the Web' feature more prominence.

Any thoughts (specific or general) are appreciated.

Is our children learning?

Not too sure what to think about the proposed "age bands" for children's books. The obvious concern is that bracketing books as for a specific (and very specific, from the look of it) age range will limit what children end up reading - as certain texts, which they might otherwise have enjoyed, will be considered as either too childish or too grown-up for them.

Anything which discourages reading is, in my book, a bad idea.

Follow the money

Steve Richards in the Independent:

On the whole, there is a prevailing sense that we pay into a great big hole marked "tax". The cash is lost, never to be seen again. A Government supposedly obsessed with public relations has displayed a strange complacency in its failure to show the connections with that big hole and the benefits.

Quoted by Tom, but worth quoting again.