Happy Halloween!

The logo on the left is the humanist Happy Human, whom I find endlessly endearing
I’d never carved (or even really looked at) a pumpkin before, but given that they cost £1.50 each I figured it was worth a try. Plus the candles were 31p for 50, which confused me for a while. It’s surprisingly easy to carve if you have a stencil. Chop off the top, scoop out the string and seeds, tape the stencil to the outside, poke around the pattern with a nail then cut through the indentations. They’re now sitting on my windowsill freaking out small children and the elderly.

And, because I couldn’t resist trying it…

You know you’re in for an entertaining read when the first sentence of an article is:

We are witnessing the rise of an arrogant secularist rhetoric founded on belief in the supremacy of reason and absolute faith in science and progress, dogmas which arouse ridicule in serious academic and intellectual circles nowadays.

Fun or what? Beware of logical explosions in the following paragraphs:

“Reason” itself, whose praises they sing night and day, is a perpetually changing mixture of many overlapping elements. It is neither abstract, nor intentional and does not confront the rich, labyrinthine human world as its other. It is quintessentially imbedded therein, in its emotions, languages, historical experiences, religious traditions and cultural heritage. There is no such thing as an ahistoric reason.

I don’t think this makes any sense. Maybe it’s been ghost-written by the Pope.

This means that we do not have one but many rationalities, the Christian European, the Islamic, the Chinese, the Indian to name a few, each stamped by the specific conditions of its evolution, and in turn incorporating a multitude of sub-rationalities. Neither do these traditions of rationality exist isolated from each other. They have much in common, the product of the interactive and communicative activity of cultures.

Aristotle’s logos, Descartes’ intellect and Kant’s transcendental reason, are illusions, which no self-respecting thinker can afford to defend in the 21st century. The truth is that today’s self- proclaimed guardians of enlightenment and rationality are offshoots of the intellectual poverty of eighteenth century positivism and scienticism, who disfigure philosophy and thought, history and reality. They are the victims of what may be referred to as a sick secularist consciousness.

There are people who really say this stuff to each other, you know. I like the argument of redefining a word out of all meaning as an attempt to claim something doesn’t exist.

This feels unfinished. Something’s missing…what could it be…

Secularist dogmatism is no less dangerous than its religious sibling. Secularism itself can be, and indeed has been in many historical instances, highly destructive. We should remember that Europe’s modern history is scarred with the brutality of secular totalitarianism. Neither the Jacobites, fascists, Nazis or Stalinists were priests or theologians. They were fanatical secularists who worshipped in reason’s grand temple and sacrificed hundreds of thousands for the god of progress, fervently vowing to create a new man and a new world on the ruins of the old.

Ah yes, there we go No article of this nature is complete without mentioning Stalin at least once. Normally, though, the argument sounds at least vaguely plausible, even if it turns out to be a bit silly. Stalin, as far as I know, wasn’t acting as a result of non-belief in god, he was just your average dictator with access to 20th century technology. He was only using ‘reason’ in the same way that some Muslim fundamentalists ‘reasonably’ think that blowing themselves up guarantees them access to paradise. The problem is in the initial assumptions, which we can attack though logic and reason!

Nobody’s saying that religion is the only reason for hate and violence, just that it’s a major one. Simultaneously accusing ’secularists’ of attacking straw-men while saying things like “[c]ommunication, they insist, is only possible within uniformity.” is a little ironic, too.

All these words. Why are people so scared of having to back up their ideas? If you want to believe in a fairy in the sky, go right ahead, just don’t tell other people they have to think the same thing. If you want to do something that affects other people, you need back it up with evidence and a logical argument - some people call this ‘reason’, but you can call it rumplebumpkins if you like, it doesn’t change what it is. What’s wrong with that?

Don’t bother reading the whole thing, it’s just depressing.

Bit of Tuesday happiness to be found over at the always entertaining Mike’s Weekly Skeptic Rant, where there’s an utterly charming video of the Peanuts gang dancing to Outkast’s ‘Hey ya’. I really despise that song, so anything that makes me want to listen to the whole thing must be impressive

I was listening to Radio 2 this afternoon when the waste of bandwidth that is the weekly astrology segment started. Russell Grant wittered on as usual and I wasn’t paying much attention until he mentioned that he’d been asked his advice on whether a person should move to the Orkney Isles. He said:

I had to look up the astrotravel […] and it’s a Leo place is Orkney, and it’s a good place to live or work.

Places have star signs now? How does that work? Are there any places - like here, presumably - with a sign that say they’re a bad place to live and work? Astrotravel?! Actually, I don’t think I want to know. It’ll just wind me up. Except I’m intrigued.

Lynsey and I headed over to Worcester this evening for a lesson in the American Smooth waltz. It’s the first of a seven-week course, and was fun, if fast moving. Having some experience in the ’standard’ waltz meant we kept up ok, but I felt for the complete beginners. The American Smooth differs in that it’s permissible to break the normal ballroom hold, and mixes the elegance of ballroom with more visually interesting latin moves. It has a distinctive look that’s hard to describe without using the word ’smooth’. I imagine we’ll eventually be taught a full routine. Good fun - I’m looking forward to next week!

I started watching the DVD-set of 24’s fourth series the week I moved into my flat, which means it’s taken almost 12 months to reach the end. I like watching one episode per week, but did sometimes forget I really enjoyed it, though. It’s difficult to say anything about the story without giving things away, but it did a reasonable job of maintaining a coherent plot throughout, and avoided the standard formula of simply ascending bad-guy hierarchies. As ever they created some very tense scenes, and it being 24 there was no predicting who would survive. There were a couple of lines that made me wince - one government official seemed to be Dale Arden in disguise - but on the whole it was well written with enough unexpected twists that I couldn’t see what was coming. One particular moment was such a surprise that I sat there with my mouth open for about ten seconds, and I like it when something gets me like that. There were the usual insane uses of computer technology and blatant product placements - “they’re trying to hack into our network in a massive attack, but the new Cisco firewall is coping!” - but that’s all part of the charm
The final disc in the set contained a large number of deleted or extended scenes, which are fun to watch. There was at least one character whose resolution was cut from the final show but included here, and it’s also interesting to see the little padding-stories that didn’t make it. There’s also one scene in which Jack uses the f-word! I was quite shocked - Jack doesn’t swear! The only real annoyance with the box-set was the unskippable, minute-long anti-piracy trailer that played every time I inserted a disc. I wouldn’t mind if it were just on the first, or something, but twenty-four times gets annoying. Especially since I bought the damn thing, and don’t need lecturing in the rights and wrongs of theft.

After four series it’s easy to get blasé over the achievement of constructing a show in which something interesting happens every minute of a day (less advert breaks :-)), but even with the flaws it’s still very impressive. Definitely worth watching if you’re a fan.

I just watched Mark and Karen’s Paso Doble on Strictly Come Dancing. Back after I’ve had a lie down.

Update: 30 seconds of low quality realplayer footage here. Hopefully there’ll be a youtube version before long.

Update 2: There we go. Long clip embedded after the break.

Continue reading ‘Cold shower needed’

I like country music when it’s not too depressing, and The Dixie Chicks are good fun in this regard. They’re in the news today after NBC refused to screen a trailer for their documentary, which follows the few years after they were abruptly launched into politics when lead singer Natalie Maines, during a break at a 2003 London concert, said:

Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.

The US right-wing press went nuts. I may think it’s a weird thing to say - how does it make sense to take pride in / be ashamed of somebody else being born in the same arbitrary land area as you? It’s like being proud of sharing a birthday - but it was apparently off-the-cuff and certainly pales in comparison to the insanity of the reaction. Wikipedia’s good write-up says:

The remark sparked intense criticism from many Americans, on three grounds: that Maines shouldn’t be criticizing the nation’s head of state while on foreign soil; that Maines shouldn’t be criticizing the military’s commander-in-chief while the country was on the verge of war; and (from a business standpoint) that Maines shouldn’t be making political statements that would offend the Dixie Chicks’ culturally conservative audience base.

Which is all crap, if you ask me. The first two are just ridiculous, and the third is funny. I particularly like it when lay-people pretend they have any interest in business decisions. It’s like mobile phone mast campaigners claiming they’re not NIMBY-ing, just trying to tell Orange that they think it would be a better business decision to place it somewhere else (a frequent response after somebody asks them to provide any evidence to back up their health claims). Who do they think believes them for even for a moment?

Many radio stations refused to play their music - one arranged for its listeners to donate their cds to be crushed by a bulldozer - and the band received death threats. Aside from the craziness that this can all result from something fairly innocuous - doesn’t Jon Stewart say worse every night? - it’s at least an interesting story. The new documentary, Shut up and Sing, has the following trailer:

and US tv-channel NBC refused to show it on the grounds that it’s ‘disparaging to President Bush’. I assume this channel is happy to screen political ads that personally attack senators etc. I wonder whether the real reason is right-wing bias or fear of a backlash. I’m sure there are crazies on the left, but the ultra-nationalism that goes seems to go hand-in-hand with the modern Republican Party is appalling. Gotta hope the Democrats have some success in next week’s midterm elections.

Natalie Mains said to the Telegraph earlier this year:

The entire country may disagree with me, but I don’t understand the necessity for patriotism. Why do you have to be a patriot? About what? This land is our land? Why? You can like where you live and like your life, but as for loving the whole country … I don’t see why people care about patriotism.

Doesn’t necessarily follow from the 2003 comment, but I like the sentiment I don’t know whether the documentary will make it over here, but it looks worth catching.

My application was successful - hooray! They say ‘Smart/glamorous dress only - no jeans!’. Hmmm. Had better borrow some suit trousers I guess.

After nagging my teacher for a long time, we started learning the Paso Doble tonight. It’s the spanish dance in which the man represents a matador and the woman a cape. In theory it looks like this:

Ours doesn’t look like that But it does involve stamping, and is excellent fun. Most other people in our group looked rather nervous when the teacher announced what we were doing, but I think they all enjoyed it in the end. They did make me wear somebody’s coat as a cape as punishment, however, which was ok with me - it swooped!

I think I could wangle a cape and a hat if I got good enough at the Paso Doble. This is in fact my ultimate goal. Any excuse to wear a cape and a hat.

I was hesitant to upgrade Firefox because I knew it would break some extensions, but the supposed speed and security improvements were tempting so I went for it anyway. It installed quickly, and on first run checked all the extensions, automatically disabling / downloading new versions as necessary. This Just Worked, happily.

Is good. It seems faster than 1.5. I tend to have 15-20 tabs open at any particular time, which sometimes slowed down FF1.5 considerably. FF2 seems to handle them without a problem, which is great. Page loads seem subjectively faster, but I’m aware there are plenty of other factors which could be fooling me there. FF2 looks much nicer than 1.5, too. I always thought the default theme was ugly and never found anything much better in custom themes (with the possible exception of the Opera theme, but that caused problems with Options dialogs). The new silver / grey theme looks much classier, imho.

Most of the broken extensions had alternatives:

Tab Mix Plus - adds many useful options to FF’s tabbed browsing feature, such as a maximum and minimum tab size, multiple lines of tabs instead of a scrolling bar and close-tab buttons in reasonable locations. The official version isn’t yet compatible, but the Release Candidate seems to work ok, despite a couple of bugs with re-ordering tabs.
Resizable textarea - allows any text field to be resized, and comes in useful surprisingly often (particularly on blogger.com comment boxes). A compatible version can be found in the comments here.
Compact Menu - removes the pointless ‘File, Edit’ etc. menu bar and replaces it with a drop-down list which can be placed next to the address bar. Not updated for FF2, but there’s a compatible version available here.
Paste and Go - just a little thing, but one-click pasting and loading of URLs is surprisingly pleasing. The old version has been replaced with Paste and Go 2.

Other favourites, such as Auto Copy, CoLT, dragdropupload, Googlepedia and FlashGot, were updated automatically.

I can’t think of the last time a site was broken in Firefox. I think this is probably to do with the great rendering engine, although it’s possible that most of the sites I visit these days are the kind that design for FF anyway. I have the occasional problem with Windows Media Player files refusing to load, but that’s all. It’s easily a full IE replacement. I don’t have any actual problems with IE7, but extensions make FF2 the more productive of the two.

I think it was written for twentysomethings. The plot revolves around the disintegrating relationships of a variety of couples, most of whom are in their late 20s, and their worries over the future. If I’d seen it six years ago, or even two, I don’t think I’d have understood as much as I did, or even sympathised with the same characters. When I’m older I suspect it’ll all seem very obvious, but right now it strikes various chords, and I enjoyed it. I liked that the dialogue managed to keep its head above water despite the subject matter, and the ever-watchable Zach Braff was good in a non-comedy role. I was particularly intrigued by Rachel Bilson’s character, who not that long ago I’d have found very sexy, but now just seems young. I think that was the idea, even if I feel terribly snobby now I’ve written it down. I thought the film did a good job of portraying a range of emotions while keeping a sense of…well, it didn’t sink to Closer-esque levels of unpleasantness, put it that way. Worth catching, imho - trailer here.

We thought Chuck Norris was like The Hoff. We thought he got it, that he was having fun taking the mickey out of himself. We thought Chuck Norris facts were a good laugh, and that Chuck Norris was funny. Sadly, we thought wrong. From the man himself:

While I have as much fun as anyone else reading and quoting them, let’s face it, most “Chuck Norris Facts” describe someone with supernatural, superhuman powers. They’re describing a superman character. And in the history of this planet, there has only been one real Superman. It’s not me.

Don’t do it, Chuck. Please don’t say it. You can’t do this to us.

Alleged Chuck Norris Fact: “There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live.”

It’s funny. It’s cute. But here’s what I really think about the theory of evolution: It’s not real. It is not the way we got here. In fact, the life you see on this planet is really just a list of creatures God has allowed to live. We are not creations of random chance. We are not accidents. There is a God, a Creator, who made you and me. We were made in His image, which separates us from all other creatures.

It’s so sad. If Chuck Norris had skipped the education system he’d be…Chuck Norris.

Alleged Chuck Norris Fact: “Chuck Norris’ tears can cure cancer. Too bad he never cries. Ever.”

There was a man whose tears could cure cancer or any other disease, including the real cause of all diseases – sin. His blood did. His name was Jesus, not Chuck Norris.

If your soul needs healing, the prescription you need is not Chuck Norris’ tears, it’s Jesus’ blood. By the way, without him, I don’t have any power. But with Him, the Bible tells me, I really can do all things – and so can you.

Chuck must now be replaced. There is only one man for the job, my friends, and quite frankly I don’t know how we missed him in the first place: his name is Jack Bauer.

Imagine you’re a policeman assigned the task of blocking off roads for the duration of a John Reid meeting. Your cars are parked lengthwise across the road and you and two other policemen are having a jolly chat in front of them when a young guy walks around the corner, heading for the postbox opposite. Everybody stares at him, and he seems momentarily startled. He moves to cross the road, misjudges oncoming traffic (probably as a result of being a little nervous that three policemen are watching him) and two cars have to slow down. Whoo, would he feel stupid! You wonder whether he’d walk three sides of a square, in the rain, just to avoid passing you again. Purely hypothetically, would you put him onto any kind of watchlist?

During the picture round of Monday’s quiz I failed to recognise Carlos Santana. This has happened before, and I never remember what he looks like. To prevent the embarrassment of this happening again, I’m going to start assuming everybody I don’t recognise is Carlos Santana. Just so you know.