Monthly Archives: July 2008

Space liquid

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Much interesting NASA news this week. Today, Phoenix has found water in a Mars soil sample.

“We have water,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA. “We’ve seen evidence for this water ice before in observations by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and in disappearing chunks observed by Phoenix last month, but this is the first time Martian water has been touched and tasted.” (From NASA)

Yesterday, NASA announced that Cassini had identified a liquid ethane lake on
Saturn’s moon Titan. This makes Titan the only place in the solar system except Earth that is known to have liquid on its surface.

There are lots of awe-inspiring images on NASA’s site and the Cassini ones are particularly fascinating. Saturn and its moons must be the all time favourite space pictures, what with Saturn being the most photogenic planet by a few light-years.

But this picture is pretty good, too. A planet with surface water and water vapour and everything. Looks good enough to move to.

from Ciclops.org - earth and moon

from Ciclops.org - earth and moon

Down wiv da kidz

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It is certainly true that if you don’t have a vote, you don’t count in a democratic society.

One of the (many) demonised groups in the UK now seems to be the “youth” – of which the middle aged, middle classes seem to be inordinately frightened. Coincidentally, this is also an age group in which most are unable to vote, and most of those who do, don’t seem to bother. As a result, it seems, they have become fair game for any crackpot ideas. Oddly, they are also a group politicians seem to constantly appeal to (obviously knowing they wont be arsed to vote…). Isn’t the world strange.

Two recent mad ideas spring to mind. First from the Guardian:

Road safety: Impose total alcohol ban for teenage drivers, says chief medical officer
A zero drink-driving limit should be imposed on all drivers under 20, the chief medical officer recommended yesterday, saying that such a ban would save lives.

This hits two of our current “fears.” First it panders to the idea that the UK is in the grip of a “Booze Culture” and secondly it cries that some new restriction will “save lives.” Nicely it wraps all this up by targeting a silent group of society, so the fall out would be minimal (and it was).

For me, despite being neither “yoof” or a novice driver so immune to any resultant laws, this is insane. I completely, 100% fail to see any logic. I am reasonably sure that any young driver mature and grown up enough to go out and stick to the 1 pint limit is also likely to be mature and capable enough to drive sensibly. The problem, and it isn’t just young drivers, is being over the limit.

Some figures are bandied about:

Justifying his call for zero alcohol for 17 to 20-year-olds, Donaldson said they were six times more likely to have a car crash if they had been drinking. A young person who had been drinking was 2.5 times more likely to have a crash than an older person who had been drinking. “I’m aware it is a controversial recommendation, but I believe it would save lives,” he said.

Now, so far I have been unable to clarify this, but I am reasonably certain that the problem is young people are more likely to be over the legal drink driving limit – I seem to recall the alcohol level is not recorded by the police if the person is under the legal limit.

Basically, this is saying young people over the limit have more accidents than old people over the limit, so lets lower the limit for young people.

Madness. But it is the madness that comes from some one with a fantastic knowledge of one subject area (medicine) being given implied authority in another area (crime reduction, driver safety etc).

The next bit really annoyed me. From the Times a few days ago:

Curfew tames feral yobs of Cornwall
An experiment to bring peace to a yob-plagued town by imposing nocturnal curfews on its teenagers had a promising start this weekend when the streets of Redruth in Cornwall were free of the usual intimidating gaggles of youths.
Under the experimental curfew, named Operation Goodnight, parents in the most troubled part of the town have agreed with police that they will keep children under 16 indoors after 9pm, and that under10s will not be allowed out after 8pm.

What a wonderful culture we live in. When you read things like this it really makes you despair for what the adults of 2020 will be like.

I have two big issues with this. First off – why are we sending kids so many mixed signals? We (as a society) say they should be more involved in the community, say they should spend less time on their playstations and more time outdoors, say they should spend more time interacting with others. Simultaneously we say they cant go out, cant hang round together and everything they do means a paedophile will get them.

Secondly, the sheer unadulterated nonsense behind this.

  1. It is a voluntary scheme. So if you are a NAUGHTYKID™©® all you need to do is ignore it. All the good, well behaved kids will stay at home. Hang on, isn’t that the wrong way round?
  2. It is being done with the approval of the parents and targets the children in the most troubled part of the town. What? It actually says “a Sunday Times poll showed that nine out of 10 parents backed restrictions on their own children going out after dark.”

Right, let me get this straight. The parents of these “feral” children want restrictions on when the children go out. They have enough control over the children to stop them going out but wont do this simply because their children are little s***s, they demand that the police tell them to do this.

Nope, still cant get my head around it.

Why in the name of Zeus dont the bloody parents control their children? Why do they have to agree with police to follow this “trial” curfew (which will, no doubt, report a positive outcome and then spread to other areas – just like the criminal nonsense that is congestion charging)?

Our children are fine. They are the same mix of evil little turds and fantastic kind angels they were 30 years ago, 60 years ago, 90 years ago and even 900 years ago.

The bloody feral parents are the problem…. but then, they can vote…

Question for the experts

Aside

What is the weather like in central Florida in April and in May? I have looked at Weather.com, but frankly the information seems a bit sterile and hard for me to put into perspective. Are there any Floridians who read this blog and can give me a feel for what that time of year is like? All information welcomed.

A lie goes round the world before the truth has put his boots on

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(A Terry Pratchett quote, from the Truth, possibly an old saying, possibly invented on the spot.)

A BBC article said that Birmingham City Council has banned atheist websites.

I read this news in my workplace (which seems to randomly ban or allow even this site. There is absolutely no discernable difference in cussword quotient or possible offensiveness between this site on the days when it throws up threatening warning messages that I’ve tried to access a forbidden site and should instantly alert my line manager from the days when it works normally.)

I was shocked. Bloggably shocked, even.

I didn’t – for more than a minute or so – think that Birmingham Council actually wanted to ban atheist sites. The BBC article made it pretty clear it’s some useless off-the-shelf netnanny software that they are using. (In comments on Pharyngula, Cronan, Quidam and Armchair Dissident made excellent points, about the software and way it is set up and used, suggesting that this isn’t a deliberate city council policy, so much as the unthinking use of disturbingly set-up software.)

Well, duh. It’s a local government office. Almost by definition, its software buying decisions are made by people who can’t even use a spreadsheet package. Who are suckers for any sweet-talking sales people on their Preferred Suppliers lists. Who would think it was wildly outside their purchasing remit to pay attention to the details of what the software actually does. And who would rather insert a parking permit into their own left nostril than consult the people who might actually use a program.

But, still, it’s outrageous and the National Secular Society is absolutely right to object to this.

However, tracing the evolution of the reporting of this story in the atheosphere made me aware how easily a news item becomes a myth.

Pharyngula – blogged the story. He had a link to the BBC story but there was no evidence in his text that indicated that this was Birmingham, England.

Some of the 80-odd commenters who responded to this brief reference to a BBC article clearly took it that Pharyngula was talking about Birmingham, Alabama. An easy mistake to make. (I make it in reverse whenever the BBC refers to Birmingham, Alabama.) If I had read the Pharyngula piece without reading the BBC source, I would have automatically assumed this took place in Alabama.

Quintessential Rambling obviously assumed it was Birmingham Alabama and delivered a classic rant then showed an amazingly good grace and regard for the truth by admitting his error. That is my kind of human being.

A fair number of people will now believe that Birmingham, Alabama, has banned atheist websites. That’s fair enough. It’s a mistake based on an error of fact. No blame.

It’s the way that the facts of this incident contribute to a general level of atheist myth-making that disturbs me more. Wouldn’t you expect atheists to be a bit better at processing information than the average moron? Maybe that’s wishful thinking. Well, OK, it is definitely wishful thinking, but I am going to persist with it, in the face of the evidence.

A Richard Harris comment on Pharyngula says:

I bet the feckin’ Submissionists (followers of the prophet Muhammad, piss be upon him) are behind this.

Well, no. That seems like yet another attempt to demonise muslims to me. Is there some knee-jerk hate response that is stirred up every time the word islam is mentioned in any context? Oh, yes, silly me, Of course there is.

Leki is more rational but still manages to throw in a social disorder theme, expressed in terms of religion. S/he strings together a lot of completely disparate incidents to support a characterisation of Birmingham people as almost engaged in some sort of inter-ethnic, inter-religious war.

Birmingham is always in the news for something or another. A few years ago there were riots at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre over a play that depicted a rape in a sikh temple; there have been issues with honour killings; gun crimes have doubled (highest concentration of guns in the UK is Birmingham).
Remember the raid of January 2007? Birmingham police rounded-up a bunch of folks who were planning to kidnap a British soldier (muslim group, muslim soldier). That was big, big news.
I’ve visited Birmingham several times and there is this huge chasm between ethnicities. People are screaming on all sides about what language to teach in schools, how many mosques are allowed per block, whether or not the ‘english’ way of life is disappearing.

Well, yes, Birmingham IS always in the news for something or other. It’s England’s second city. Even the London-centric British media must mention what happens to a few million people every now and again.

Huge chasm between ethnicities? I assume you have never visited a US city? People screaming on all sides about what language to teach in schools, etc? Admit it, this is just made up.

OK, there’s nothing wrong with hyperbole in a blog comment. My point is that a casual reader of Pharyngula – who’s read the comments far enough to realise that a US city hasn’t banned atheist blogs – will be left with a vague, but probably lasting, impression that Birmingham, England, is under siege by extremist mullahs who have banned atheism.

Now, I expect the gutter press to leave this subliminal hate-residue in the back of the minds of its readers. That seems to be what it’s for. Keeping the population in a generalised low-level state of xenophobia, to make it easy to manipulate. It’s hard to understand the rabble-rousing tricks when they crop up in the atheist blogosphere.

There are some real concerns in this Birmingham situation. For instance, it’s disturbing that the effects of decisions made by blocking-software providers – with their own illiberal agendas – can be unthinkingly transmitted to become public policy. These issues are a bit boring. They don’t produce the visceral kick that seems to come with identifying an alien scapegoat. But trying to find out the truth must be the truly “rational” response.

Exercising some Restraint

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Who’d have thought that until today – when there was a humane judgement against it – that the law allowed the “physical restraint” of youths in custody by means that would surely count as assault in any other context?

Lord Justice Buxton said the methods used had amounted to “inhuman and degrading treatment” contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights. (from the BBC website)

Examples of actions that are allowed are:

Methods used involved pulling back thumbs, and blows to the ribs and nose.

Why thumbs, ribs and nose? Because broken bones won’t be permanently disabling, I assume. Only excruciatingly painful. Hmm.

Private companies run four STCs in England and Wales for the Department of Justice.
Until June 2007, the rules restricted the use of physical restraint to cases where the approach was necessary for the prevention of escape, damage to property or injury.
The new rules, which were introduced after the deaths in custody of Gareth Myatt, 15, in Northamptonshire and Adam Rickwood, aged 14, in Co Durham allowed restraint when it was thought necessary to ensure good order and discipline. (from the BBC)

So “private companies” run youth prisons. Why does that not inspire confidence?

It looks as if the law used to allow officers to restrain young prisoners in the case of emergency, which seems reasonably fair enough, given the hellish task it must be to contain these damaged children, when containment seems to be all that we are socially capable of achieving.

The new rules – which don’t seem to have had massive publicity…. – talk about “good order and discipline.” Is it just me or does that refer to “anything the officers choose it to mean?”

People who assaulted their own children in such a manner would rightly be prosecuted. School teachers who assaulted their pupils would be sacked.

On first reading this, I assumed that these two teenagers had died as a result of attack by other prisoners. So there was some cock-eyed justification in it at least being intended to save lives. Not so.

Gareth Myatt, from Staffordshire, choked to death while being restrained at Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre, near Daventry, Northamptonshire, in 2004.
And an inquest into the death of Adam Rickwood ruled that the teenager hanged himself after being restrained while at the Hassockfield Secure Training Centre in County Durham in 2004. He was the youngest person to die in custody in Britain. (from the BBC)

These kids died as DIRECT RESULT of restraint. Under the old rules.

Following the ruling, Liberal Democrat justice spokesman David Howarth said the full extent of physical restraint being used was “absolutely shocking”, adding that “it’s right that it is put to an end”.
“It’s a shame that it has taken the courts to force the government to stop this barbaric practice. Ministers should have done this a long time ago,” he said. (from the BBC)

However,

The Ministry of Justice said it was “examining the court’s judgement with great care” and added that it would also be “considering an appeal”. (from the BBC)

On reading the guidelines for so-called “ethical restraint” techniques, as used in prisons and care homes, I found this page of golden rules on a site that offers training. Rule 4:

Never place pressure on or around the back, chest, stomach, face, neck, shoulders, major joints or the fingers. (from ECCRUK website)

Hmm, where do the Department of Justice rules allow these private companies to apply pressure, again?

Methods used involved pulling back thumbs, and blows to the ribs and nose.

Maybe I’m mistaking my physiology here but, last time I checked, the ribs were on the back and chest;the nose was dead centre of the face; and I assume thumbs count as fingers. So, the forms of restraint used in youth jails are clearly contrary to these golden rules.

Respect to the Equality and Human Rights Commission for intervening.

‘As the case reveals, the Ministry of Justice has failed young people on two counts. It has allowed staff at secure centres to use unlawful force – in violation of one of our most fundamental rights – and failed to consider the effect of these new rules on young people from ethnic minorities.’
‘Restraint should only be used as a last resort in cases where the young person might do harm to themselves or others – it is never to be used a way of ensuring young people in custody behave. Using pain as a means of creating order and discipline is entirely unacceptable.’ (John Wadham for EHRC, quoted on the EHRC website)

Ex-archbishop sees News of the World as moral force

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If you live outside the UK you probably don’t have newspapers like the News of the World. Just thank Freya. It’s not even possible to describe them adequately but the link might give you some idea of their idea of “news”

The NoW recently lost a privacy case based on its deeply unpleasant activities – paying dominatrix prostitutes thousands to secretly film a client (who was already paying more than my month’s salary for an evening of their services) and to add a fake Nazi element because his long-dead father had been a well-known fascist.

(Well, it makes a change from Amy Winehouse. Just don’t get me started on the Amy Winehouse coverage.)

You might think “comically distasteful, but definitely none of my business.” The good old News of the World tried to pretend this was somehow our business because his father had been famous in the 1930s and because he’s the boss of Formula One or something.

Well the guy won his court action and got a fairly huge sum, plus they have to pay some part of his incredibly huge legal fees. This seems fair enough to me, and nothing to do with freedom of the press. I can’t see what the private behaviour of the Formula One Boss has to do with public interest. To be honest I don’t even know what Formula One is. But, even if I did, I can’t believe I would base my private morality on the actions of its multi-millionaire boss.

Not so Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, apparently. He has written – in the News of the World, no less (LOL) that this judgement set a dangerous precedent.

Without public debate or democratic scrutiny, the courts have created a wholly new privacy law. In itself that’s bad enough.
But, as a Christian leader, I am deeply sad that public morality is the second victim of this legal judgement.
Unspeakable and indecent behaviour, whether in public or in private, is no longer significant under this ruling.

D’uh? D’uh, again? So, to the Archbishop, the News of the World’s use of techniques normally associated with blackmail isn’t “unspeakable and indecent” behaviour? Fear of the gutter press is a pillar of public Christian Morality?

More from the ex-Archbishop-

In the past, a public figure has known that scandalous and immoral behaviour carries serious consequences for his or her public profile, reputation and job.
Today it is possible to both have your cake and to eat it. But a case can be clearly made for a direct link between private behaviour and public conduct.
If a politician, a judge, a bishop or any public figure cannot keep their promises to a wife, husband, etc, how can they be trusted to honour pledges to their constituencies and people they serve?

Can the ex-Archbishop not see the difference between being the boss of some racing sports association and being a politician or a judge? Is this man’s public exposure actually doing any service to his wife? Who else is he supposed to have made promises to? What’s his constituency?

Lord Carey is upholding a view of “morality” that barely touches upon any version of the concept that I can recognise. I started to disentangle the contradictions in this argument and its bizarre conceptual basis but I gave up because it seems so self-evidently ludicrous.

I can only assume that the Church of England doles out a really mean pension to its ex-leaders, so they are reduced to producing moral underpinnings for the NoW’s prurience. Please, up the man’s stipend, ffs, Church of England. Thor only knows what shameful activities he may be forced into next in the search to earn a crust.

Assault on Science

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As I write this, it is the end of an interesting week where the western worlds decline to pre-enlightenment understanding of science has continued. Obviously, when I said “interesting” I meant sad…

The really annoying leader of this decline has to be Mary Midgley, as Heather previously addressed, who seems to think that “Science” is some dark art that has no relevance on any other aspect of society. Oddly she seems to be calling for the implementation of social policies, laws and the like without any scientific input. Obviously the idea that laws should be formulated without any experiemental reason to think they would ever work – I mean we are innundated with such laws now… Who cares if it can be demonstrated that Law X doesn’t work, as long as we “feel” it is a good law… Well done Mary.

Next in the firing line is the case of Dawn Page and here “nutritional therapist,” Barbara Nash. In a nutshell Page followed Nash’s frankly crazy advice and suffered major brain damage. Bad Science has an excellent take on this – the media as a whole has ignored the general trend of crazy advice by self appointed “Nutritionists” and focused on Nash as a one-off crank… The sad reality is the western world is inundated with fruitloops like this who go on about Chakras, Detox and the like. The even sadder part is that we fall for this nonsense without having the basic scientific reasoning ability to question their basically insane claims. I am all for sticking it to “professionals” who abuse their position (and I think £801,000 was a trivial sum in this case) but, for Toutatis’ sake, why on Odin’s Earth didn’t Ms Page go to the bloody doctors when she felt sick. When uncontrollable vomiting set in, most normal people (you would hope) would go to the hospital, probably via a 999 call to an ambulance. Not Ms Page, who returned to her nutritional therapist for more advice. As I see it, this is where Nash commited the greatest crime. Rather than telling Ms Page to seek real help, she stuck to her woo. Stupid or greedy? Who knows? Who cares – it still screams criminal negligence as far as I can see.

Closing on the heels of the above, and a strong candidate for the worst abuse of scientific illiteracy is the media’s “feeding frenzy” on the decision by Ronald Herberman (Director of the University of Pittsborough Cancer Institute) to issue a warning to his staff to limit their use of mobile phones due to the risk of cancer. Now, I am going to assume that Herberman is a scientist and aware of the nature of scientific reasearch – and indeed, he did say the “evidence is controversial” that phones cause cancer. The same can not be said for the media vultures that descended on this…

First off, often decisions have to be made on “inconclusive” evidence, so that in itself is not a bad thing. By its very nature a scientific proof is still liable to be disproven at any moment. In this manner, it is perfectly reasonable (there is that word again) for Director Herberman to send a memo to his staff saying that, in his opinion, they should limit their use of phones. Does this count as “evidence” there is an increased risk of cancers forming in users of mobile phones. No. Does this mean the “scientific community” (in as much as one can exist) thinks there is a greater risk today than they did two weeks ago – again, no.

If you were to absorb any news from the UK this week, however, you would think this was fundamental proof that mobile phones are dangerous. New calls are all over about how phone masts cause “electrosensitivity” and similar woo. It seems that people have assumed, that because Dr Herberman has sent out this message it must be true and obviously because Dr Herberman works at a Cancer Institute he must be correct, notwithstanding the fact that Cancer Research UK reported (in February) that phone users were no more likely to get cancer than someone who had never touched a phone. Obviously, as journalists are functionally incapable of reading research they go with what ever seems to have the power to sell as many issues as possible…

The Guardian newspaper on Saturday identifies what it sees as the logic at work here (and sadly this is where Dr Herberman seems to fall down). First off, it explains the problem in trying to find out what is a “cause of cancer” with:

Here’s the thing. Almost everything that causes cancer does so by causing mutations in our cellular DNA that accumulate over years and often decades before culminating in a tumour. So to prove something increases a person’s cancer risk, scientists must often not only wait for years to see a significant peak in the disease, but also be able to rule out any other possible cause. That could be changes in diet, environmental factors, lifestyle, the list goes on.

Yes. It it hard trying to work out what causes cancer, this is one of the reasons we have so many “institutes” around the world looking into it. I don’t seem to recall any of them having solved the problem yet though. The Guardian finishes with: (emphasis mine)

The independent Stewart review into mobile phones in 2000 advised children to limit their use as a precaution. Dr Herberman is following the same logic. “We shouldn’t wait for a definitive study to come out, but err on the side of being safe rather than sorry later,” he said.

Wow. A fail for science there. I think that funding research institutes causes cancer. Rather than wait to see if any study can agree with this, why don’t we withdraw the funding now so we can err on the side of being safe rather than sorry later.

Shame on you Dr Herberman, you have opened the floodgates to woo….

Reasonable doubt

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New Scientist presents what it calls a debate about reason. Fond as I am of New Scientist, this debate is just silly.

It’s not a “debate” in any usual sense of the word. i.e. There isn’t a premise that is discussed by contributors. NS just seems to have assembled a set of articles that randomly touch on the topic of “reason” at any point. And define the word as meaning whatever suits their argument.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” (Wikipedia: quote from Alice through the Looking Glass)

How do you define reason? With great difficulty. And the articles in this special project issue don’t really start by overtly defining reason at all. This makes it very difficult to agree or disagree with the criticisms as you can’t really be sure at any given point what form of reason they are objecting to.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has a good stab at proving wrong all those of his critics who think he’ s too intellectual to be a church leader. (Toutatis forbid that we even try to imagine how unintellectual his critics must be, if they think that he’s too much of a deep thinker.) His article is entitled “Reason stands against morals and values” but he doesn’t actually put forward that viewpoint, it being too patently silly even for the NS special issue. He meanders through history, cherry-picking definitions as he goes, presents an unsourced redefinition of classical ideas of rationality then blames the nastier aspects of the French revolution on the role of reason, following an argument that boils down to “shaping a moral and humane world requires more than reason” (NS’s summary.)

Well, duh. Unarguable conclusion, but bearing only a passing relationship to the arguments that he presented. A bit like saying that water is not enough to sustain life. It’s not that it’s not true but it can’t be considered a valid attack on drinking water.

In similar, “No shit Sherlock” vein, a neuroscientist (Chris Firth) also points out that there are lots of mental processes that don’t involve the use of reason. “If we had to think logically about everything we did, we’d never do anything at all” Well, yes. And your point is?

His article is entitled “No one actually uses reason” which is, yet again, not borne out by the content and is blatantly falsified by the fact that he is employed as a bloody neuroscientist. If he himself isn’t using reason to earn his wages, then who else could possibly be using it?

What about

I hear “reason”, I see lies
Science is routinely co-opted by governments and corporations to subvert people’s ability to make their own decisions, say sociologist David Miller and linguist Noam Chomsky.

Chomsky’s couple of paragraphs seem to have been co-opted onto the page from a completely different context and say pretty well nothing nothing about alleged flaws in “reason” – indeed he seems to be challenging the triumph of unreason.

Miller is basically talking tosh here. To recognise that science can be distorted and misused is surely not the same as arguing that scientific rationality is inherently easier to misuse than any other area of thinking. If so, the products of reason would be uniquely more dangerous than the products of bigotry or fantasy.

This seems like a chap in dire need of a crash course in Social Theory 101. Power includes the power to define the parameters of our understanding. This has nothing to do with any inherent defect in reason or scientific thought. If Miller is indeed a sociologist, he should be aware that the use/misuse of science is a social and political issue and should be looking for social explanations, in relations of production, the operation of power structures and so on.

(More charitably, this article has the scent of an article written on another altogether different topic, drafted in and slightly reworded to fit into an non-existent debate.)

The next few pieces are just longer-winded ways of saying reason isn’t everything. Or, at least, of appearing to say that truism while actually saying nothing.

The pointlessness crown goes to Mary Midgely, though. She starts with a 1950 quote from Nehru, who said that science would be the key to India’s survival. “The future belongs to science.”

She ignores or skates over the obvious points that: this was a pretty universal idea in the 1950s; that it was a political speech, so can be assumed to have been mainly rhetorical; that it was spoken by the leader of a post-colonial country desperate to modernise; and the words were, in any case, uttered more than half a century ago. She notably ignores the fact that – as it turns out – Nehru was right. The intervening 58 years have indeed been dominated by science.

Instead, she follows this obscure speech (well, previously unknown to me, so I’m treating that as being obscure) with a load of nonsense about reason being the new religion. What? The woman is famous and respected philosopher. I.e, yet another one who gets paid to use reason. But is so poor at it that she can’t put together a remotely coherent argument.

Maybe that is too harsh. At least Midgely is consistent in her use of “reason” to refer to one thing only – scientific rationality – which puts her several steps ahead of some of the other contributors (hang your head in shame, Archbishop.) But, at that point, I have to stop giving her props. Because, the whole worship of reason thing is a complete invention.

Nobody worships reason. If you can find me a church of reason or a pope of rational thought or even a prayer for intercession by the spirit of rationality, then fair enough. Midgeley speaks disparagingly of “scientism.”

It is this exclusiveness that is the trademark of scientism: the belief in the unconditional supremacy of physical science – or of Science with a capital “S” – over all other forms of knowledge

OK then, let’s pretend there is some recognisable science-worship system. What do you call a believer in Scientism? The obvious answer is a Scientist. But, Midgely must have a dictionary, which will tell her that “scientist” means something quite different. There isn’t a word for a believer in scientism, is there? I think you could take that as prima facie evidence that there aren’t any such believers. I can’t say there are none. People will believe anything, after all. Some people believe they will be bodily ascended to heaven while non-believers get cast into hell, ffs. It’s not impossible that there are people who pray to rational thought. Just very, very unlikely.

WordPress Upgrade

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For the techies amongst you, WP 2.6 is now on the streets. (and has been for over a week – but I’ve been away). The promo video is:

https://videopress.com/v/mARhRBcT/fmt_std

When I get back to my proper PC, real content will be blogged once more.

Knives out

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Grim numbers of stabbings have recently dominated the UK news. The popular press are baying for action. Increasingly hostage to the demands of the Daily Mail, the government is taking this to mean any action whatsoever, no matter how pointless or counter-productive.

A couple of days ago, there was a decision to take young people “at risk of being involved in knife crime” (a bit difficult to identify, surely…) to visit stab victims in hospitals. This made some sort of sense. Seeing the consequences of a stabbing might indeed put a few non-psychopathic people off contemplating carrying knives. Although it could possibly be a bit unnerving for victims. However, within a couple of days, this idea has come to be seen as too much of “a soft option” and the government denies it even contemplated it.

Targetting problem families is the new favoured solution. Targetting how?

More than 110,000 “problem families” with disruptive youngsters will be targeted as part of a crackdown on knife crime, Gordon Brown has said.
They will get parenting supervision, with the worst 20,000 families facing eviction if they do not respond. (from the BBC)

Duh? Run that by me again.   Where do these numbers come from? Made up on the spot,  like 42 days, 300 active terror networks and all the other bullshit numbers?

110,000 problem families

Firstly, what is a “family?” A whole kinship group, the nuclear family, any co-residents in a property? There’s no room for sociological niceties in this policy. However, without even a working definition of what counts as a “family”, the whole approach becomes hot air.

The UK government, under the pressure of the baying press, has been deifying the “family” for a few years, to the point that now well nigh all policies are presented as “family” policies.  Which is odd given that a huge minority of people don’t live in “family” groups.

Even the government now seems to acknowledge that there may be sometimes be a dark side to its cosy “family” ideal. We all know there are whole families that any sane person will move to the next county to avoid.  But still.

How are these bad “problem families” going to be identified? Are they families in which everyone commits crimes? We have laws that are supposed to bring penalties if you get caught. There is an old-fashioned idea of presumption of innocence surely.  Are they “families” overwhelmed by poverty, illness and mental problems?  Even the shittiest family grouping is hardly responsible if one of its number goes and stabs someone.

Are they going to be the sort of families who spends their lives under social services supervision, with the kids in and out of care? The forms of intervention don’t seem to be effective yet, do they? Maybe some serious action to help ease the misery of the kids involved might be more effective than heaping even more pressures on them.

The worst 20,000 facing eviction?

  • Well, this assumes that ALL problem families live in council accommodation. A bit odd (a) for the party that was once identified with the labour movement; (b) when public housing is becoming almost non-existent and (c) when any successful criminal “families” are more than likely to own their own property.
  • It assumes that some scale of “worst” can be applied. Again, this can’t involve actual engagement in crime otherwise the perpetrators should surely just be arrested and charged in the traditional manner. So what will it come down to?
  • It puts a bizarre numerical value on the numbers of people judged “worst” and due to be evicted. Will there be targets? Will numbers of problem families be shared out equally between local authorities? In that case, playing football in the street might get you seen as a problem in some Surrey suburbs, whereas you might need to engage in a random arson campaign before you disturb teh neighbours in some Glasgow streets.
  • Even imagining for one moment that these twenty thousand “families” are the genuine causes of all crimes, what about the children and adults in these families who are blameless? Are the innocent now to be punished for other people’s criminality?
  • Can someone – anyone – please explain to me how making 20,000 families homeless will cut knife crime?
  • Is there evidence that homelessness works wonders for child development? Are the homeless uniquely moral?

Hint to Gordon Brown – yet again. (Please start paying attention, Prime Minister…..)

Mad social policies that pretend to be “tough” but – in fact, show an incapacity to use simple logic and usually involve hammering the poor – aren’t going to win you the election. The hangers and floggers Tories in the Daily Mail readership are just not going to vote for you, no matter how much you pander to them. And it makes the rest of us despair.

Faking everything

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Photoshop is so much of a celeb product this week that it may now only appear in public in an airbrushed slimline version of its own packaging.

The big Photoshop story was the picture of an Iranian missile firing that had been digitally enhanced to look like more of an explosive occasion. The BBC editors blog had to admit to having failed to spot the fakery.

The great Photoshop Disasterssite got lots of submissions of this image:

Not only do Iran’s missile pictures reveal a shocking gap in that nation’s ability to use the clone tool, our patented Extra-Contrast-O-Vision shows how clumsy they are at comping (from Photoshop Disasters)

Aleisha Dixon made a BBC3 programme about how all magazine pictures are Photoshopped to within an inch of their lives. (No, I don’t know who she is, either, sorry.) The objective was to get a picture of her on the cover of a magazine without enhancement. The idea behind the programme was to show the credulous public that these images of perfection aren’t real and, especially, to convince young girls that they aren’t hideous if they are just human.

However, this was a bit of an unfair test. She is (a) extremely good-looking and (b) was wearing about 5 kilos of makeup when they finally persuaded a magazine to agree to shoot au naturel. So, she was basically already greatly advantaged as well as airbrushed at source. But still, respect for trying.

I hope it was TV fakery when she told school girls that every magazine photo is retouched and they all acted astonished. I’d sort of assumed that everybody already knew that anything that can be retouched will be retouched.

Partly, it’s obvious because the digitally-enhanced world is often so much uglier than the real world. My favourite misuse of Photoshop is this picture of Clive Owen, advertising an anti-ageing cream for men. We don’t normally see this sort of Xtreem- Airbrushing done to men. In the effort to improve him, it manages to make an averagely good-looking man look even more alien than most of the women’s images that we see every day. Clive Owen on photoshop disasters (Pinched from Photoshop disasters)

Obviously, it doesn’t have the same global significance as Photoshopped missile tests.

But, I’m sticking with the comedy Photoshop angle on the missile portrait, because I don’t want to have to think about:

  • What these images mean in terms of a potential war against Iran
  • Whether they are even genuine Iranian productions
  • Why the Iranians would feel obliged to airbrush their missile-testing programme, when you’d think that down-playing any such activity might be the safer course
  • If there is any chance of avoiding another insane and suicidal/homicidal war about oil and Israel

A unique threat…

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“‘Violence is taboo’, wrote Stephens in his in-house history of Camp 020 now available as a National Archives publication, “for not only does it produce answers to please, but it lowers the standard of information” .
Stephens put the unprecedented successes of Camp 020 down to the rule of non-violence.
“Never strike a man” wrote Stephens in instructions for interrogators.
“In the first place it is an act of cowardice. In the second place, it is not intelligent. A prisoner will lie to avoid further punishment and everything he says thereafter will be based on a false premise”……
… On one occasion in September 1940, Stephens expelled a War Office interrogator from the camp for hitting a prisoner, the double agent TATE. As Liddell noted in his diary “It is quite clear to me that we cannot have this sort of thing going on in our establishment. Apart from the moral aspect of the whole thing, I am quite convinced that these Gestapo methods do not pay in the long run”.

These quotations from an apparently famous British WWII interrogator Tin-eye Stephens are from MI5’s website. (I added some paragraph breaks.) As I blogged a couple of weeks ago, Alex Gibney said an interview about his film Taxi to the dark side that his father – who had been a WWII naval interrogator – was horrified at the use of torture, seeing it as both completely unethical and absolutely ineffective.

Many people believe that waterboarding and the associated horrors (like the emetically-named torture-lite) are justified because the current threat from Islamic terrorists is so extremely serious and unique.

I will spare you political arguments about manufacturing terrorism, through what I will politely call “misguided” foreign policies.

Instead, I’d like to question the “uniquely threatening” idea. I’ve already banged on about the decades of Northern Irish warfare having been a much bigger threat to the UK public than the recent terror episodes. But that was surely a playground scuffle compared to World War II.

The clue’s in the name. It was a world war.

Remember, there were Nazis who made lampshades out of human skin. Well more than 6 million Jews, disabled people, homosexuals, gypsies and communists were systematically exterminated. Most of Europe was overrun by the people slavishly following vile political systems. Any European country that hadn’t been invaded expected invasion at any moment.

Surely that was a pretty unique situation. So, do we find World War II veterans falling over themselves to justify torture?

In case you haven’t guessed, the answer is “No.”

From the quotations from Alex Gibney’s father and from the English interrogator with the nickname that could have come out of a Biggles book – it’ s pretty clear that the very people who might have justified torture in World War II saw it both abhorrent and completely useless at getting real information.

The phrase “Gestapo methods” expresses it all. People who took part in World War II on the Allied side were pretty confident of having the moral high ground. Torture was part of the horrors they were risking their lives to oppose. Indeed, after the war, the Nuremberg principle established that “just following orders” was no defence to war crime charges,

Can anyone seriously argue that the current terrorist threat is so much more threatening to the USA – let alone to Western Europe – that standing on the moral high ground should have changed to sinking into a filthy swamp?

Another “Christian” (head)case

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A registrar who claimed she was discriminated against for her Christian beliefs because she wouldn’t officiate in civil partnerships has won an employment tribunal case.

The ruling appears to place the religious “conscience” of registrars above their legal duty to carry out parliament’s legislation. If it is not overturned on appeal, and it sets a precedent, where could it lead? (Terry Sanderson in the Guardian)

Indeed. The implications are disturbing. Could a Jain vegetarian doctor refuse to deal with your food poisoning case because you’d eaten meat? Might an orthodox Jewish nurse’s aide refuse to make beds if the sheets are made of mixed fibres? Could a barista who believes in Russell’s flying teapot refuse to collude in the serving of coffee?

The idea that playing the “religious conscience” card can somehow get you out of doing work you are paid to do – and even get you compensation at the same time – is so enticing. I am sorely tempted to form a religion that directly proscribes any unenjoyable part of my daily work. That’s my work day sorted out. And a sweet little compensation claim on the way, without the usual trouble of having to fake a whiplash injury

I am bit confused here, anyway. I have only a cursory knowledge of the bible, but I would be truly amazed to find that the New Testament mentioned civil partnerships, let alone forbade believers from officiating at them.

Naturally, the Christian Institute, which bankrolled this case, is cock-a-hoop. This is a result that they and other Christian activists have been trying to achieve for some time now. It will provide the platform they’ve needed to build their dream of a theocratic Britain. (from the Guardian)

Well, blow me down with a feather. How surprised am I to find that the good old Christian Institute is behind this? They put up the money. Again. (It’s not as if there were anything better they could so with their seemingly bottomless resource pit. I dunno, like feed the hungry and that sort of unchristian stuff. I think it’s called “charity” or something.)

The Christian Institute have a gloating list of references to the media coverage. For example the Daily Mail called it “A victory for Britain’s quiet majority”

I could only assume this is a new and counter-intuitive use of the words “quiet” and “majority.” I think it’s pretty clear that the Christian fundamentalists and the Daily Mail are neither humbly self-effacing nor a majority. I would probably have a lot of trouble sleeping at night if I thought these extremist bigots people had become a majority.

The Mail editorial managed to express its trademark depths of hypocrisy by phrasing the article in such a way as to imply “She’s black and she’s a bigot just like us. Did we mention she’s black? Well here’s a picture. This proves we aren’t bigots ourselves here at the Mail because we are agreeing with the multicultural society. See. We like black people when they hate gays.”

Two small points:

  • If not performing civil partnerships is really a crucial part of Christian belief, why haven’t the mainstream Christians made it into some sort of sin? In fact, why haven’t they made wearing a crucifix and/or or a promise bracelet an obligation?These are the topics of the pro-Christian court cases that these zealots are happy to fund. So where are the Christian rules about them? I’m all for thinking for yourself and challenging authority and that, but I thought these fundy sects were all against it.

    And now, here they are, redefining Christianity, not just in the face of those tiresome old sermon-on-the-mount beliefs, but in the face of pretty well all the established church hierarchies.

    I can be a moralistic bitch. Can I get some association of non-believers to fund my own personal morality campaigns?

    Lots of things offend me. I would quite appreciate being compensated for a whole range of things – from newspapers promoting being a footballer’s famous wife as the only reasonable life goal to young girls, to the increasing acceptance of torture. (Passing through almost any major social evil or minor irritation you can think of)

  • The guy who sued the BBC for Jerry Springer the Opera and lost then whined that the BBC should pay his costs for suing them (!!!) may have set a precedent for the litigation-hungry Christians. Surely – in a spirit of fairness and decency similar to that demanded from the BBC by Green – Lilian Adele can just offer to let Islington council off with the compensation they are going to have to pay her…… Now how likely isn’t that?

Things for the USA to attack

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TW’s last post referred to the New Scientist report that archaeologists are displaying common decency and refusing to list monuments to be protected in the event of a US strike on Iran.

Clearly, America hates anywhere that starts with the letters “IR”

And needs help to draw up attack maps. I will do the job that the archaeologists are too humane to do and list places that the US might like to attack:

  • Iraq (Sorry, too late, they already thought of that )
  • Iran
  • Ireland
  • the Iroquois nation (Sorry, too late)

Well there’s only Ireland left. And I don’t think it’s overburdened with recognised world-class archaeological sites to obstruct the handily disposable population. Be very afraid, people of Dublin. (Dublin museum has some fantastic Viking era relics but the site they came from has already been dug up, with an office block stuck over it. The artefacts are all in the museum, in handily lootable form.)

Don’t worry, USA. I checked your own states and only 4 even start with the letter “I” (Idaho, Illinois,Indiana, Iowa) However, I don’t want to worry the citizens of these states but you may be next in the frame after Ireland. Or at least, after wars have been waged against Italy (Luckily for Italy, it has way too much archaeology to be a first strike choice), Iceland, Indonesia and the Isle of Man. Oh, and Israel… (well maybe not that one.)

A few more suggestions for quick and easy wins, thanks to online dictionaries and wikapedia:

  • Irish stew (an Irish excursion should do for this without using any extra firepower)
  • Iridium (some sort of chemical. No idea if this is actually part of weapons tech but that would be killing two birds with one stone if it was)
  • Ira Gershwin (He seems to be dead though.)
  • Irenaeus 2nd century bishop of Lugdunum, Gaul (He’s likely to be already dead too. He may even count as archaeology.)
  • Irapuã – a municipality in São Paulo state (seems to have population of 6,000 or so, barely worth the effort)
  • Irony
    (Not much good. You can’t wage war on an abstract noun, can you? Oh sorry, yes, you can. Terror. Drugs. Obesity, even. Ok irony stays in)