Quiet in the back, please
My brain has decided it doesn't like being single. Nothing brought this on, and I'm assuming it's evolutionary pressures frakking up my conscious mind, but it's there, at the back of my head, all the time. It's totally different from teenage horniness, and manifests itself as jealousy around couples, soppy daydreaming, and occasional loneliness. Nothing else - I'm not suddenly keen to start online dating again, nor am I desperate to meet someone. It's just like a weird ache. It's all new, and it's getting annoying.
It's been around for a couple of months, and I'm unable to override it. Nothing works. I can build a genuinely honest intellectual castle of I'm-happy-as-I-am-thanks and this achieves jack shit. And I really am doing fine, otherwise. Some money worries1, but lots of satisfying work, and lots of challenges. I'm better at social stuff than I've ever been, and am even - finally - getting a healthier lifestyle. All in all, doing ok. So intellectually, I'm perfectly happy to go on like this for a while. Intellectually, I know dating makes me neurotic. Intellectually, I know I'm bloody lucky, and I'd like to be satisfied with that. But intellectual counts for nothing against an unbroken line of ancestors, back to the primordial soup, all of whom managed to find a mate2.
I'm assuming this is just what happens when you're 27 - and isn't helped by people around you starting to get engaged. The number of single people I know is slowly diminishing, and I keep inexplicably considering that my parents were together by my age - as if this is relevant to anything. I figure it's lizard brain stuff, and out of my control. Not sure what to do about it, though. Grrr. Evolution sucks.
Mongrels
This week I discovered Mongrels, BBC3's new puppet show for adults, and it's quickly become my very favourite thing. It's hard to describe without sounding all Guardian reviewer, so here goes: basically there are a bunch of animals living behind a pub, and they do bad things. Did that help? I'm not very good at summing things up. The puppet work is brilliant, though, and the voice acting is inspired - it's also dirty as hell. I've laughed enough that I now shut the window beforehand.
And there's a truly glorious pigeon. Said pigeon at one point declared her intention to "make like a clairvoyant...and rob an old lady", causing me to have an altercation with some spaghetti. There are also regular musical numbers - here's Kali having a atheistic crisis:
The whole series is currently on iPlayer, if you fancy it.
Seriously considering a PGCE
Michael Gove is apparently in favour of atheist schools:
Answering questions from MPs on the Commons education select committee on Wednesday, Mr Gove said: "One of the most striking things that I read recently was a thought from Richard Dawkins that he might want to take advantage of our education legislation to open a new school, which was set up on an explicitly atheist basis.
"It wouldn't be my choice of school, but the whole point about our education reforms is that they are, in the broad sense of the word, small "l", liberal, that they exist to provide that greater degree of choice."
In that case, your education reforms suck. An atheist school is a horrible idea, and any system that allows it is broken.
I don't know why so many people think parents have a moral right to bring their children up in a particular worldview. Kids aren't possessions to be toyed with - their education should be about how to think, not what to think. And the idea that kids should be segregated by whatever mystical beliefs their parents have is just vile. Given that the Tories aren't actually stupid, or avowedly evil (well, not all of them) I assume that they have some rose-tinted view that children will grow up to be freethinking, independent adults no matter what their upbringing. We clearly need to introduce them to Psychology 101. And Northern Ireland.
And of course Richard Dawkins didn't suggest an explicitly atheist school:
I would never want to indoctrinate children in atheism, any more than in religion. Instead, children should be taught to ask for evidence, to be sceptical, critical, open-minded.
Now that is a proper thing. I have no bloody idea why the entire education system isn't built this way already, or why the Tories (and Labour)1 aren't able to figure this out for themselves, but at least there'll be the option - though only if we do it ourselves. I hate that UK education may come to the point where avowedly freethinking schools are a necessary counterpoint, but I'm worried there'll be no other way.
- not much point even mentioning the Lib Dems [↩]
Pathetic government response to criticisms of homeopathy
The Science and Technology Committee investigation into homeopathy concluded that homeopathic products should not be exempt from requirements of efficacy. Here's the Government's response:
37. Homeopathy has a long tradition in Europe and is a recognised and widely used system of medicine across the EU. The Government takes the view that consumers who choose to use homeopathic medicines should be fully informed about their purpose and assured that standards of quality and safety are maintained. If homeopathic medicines were not subject to any kind of regulatory control consumers would not have access to such information or assurances. Conversely, if regulation was applied to homeopathic medicines as understood in the context of conventional pharmaceutical medicines, these products would have to be withdrawn from the market as medicines. This would constrain consumer choice and, more importantly, risk the introduction of unregulated, poor quality and potentially unsafe products on the market to satisfy consumer demand.
Oh well, that's fine then. It's obviously more important that people have access to all 'medicines' ever dreamt up, than that anyone ensure they work.
Unwanted visitor
The girls' boarding room at the Isaac Newton School has no mosquito nets. I don't know why. Nets are extremely effective in reducing malaria infections, but there's an unfortunate belief in some parts of Uganda that the pesticide used is harmful (it isn't), that natural remedies work (they don't), and that malaria mosquitoes aren't in the area (they are). A couple of the individual beds had nets - brought from home, apparently - but the doors and windows were unprotected. This really needs to be fixed, and to keep out more than just mosquitoes.
The Isaac Newton School is a boarding school in that there's a room with nine mattresses on the floor:
The bed on the left is for a matron. Some kids board because they live a long way away, others because they get access to the school facilities at the weekend. It's pretty basic, as you can see, but it's a good option for the kids who need it.
I stayed at the school for a week, along with two students from Swansea Met., and on our first day alone at the school we explored all the rooms and tried to get to know the kids. They were keen to show us where they slept, and very kindly let me take photos. One of my fellow students, Sam, is studying video, so we were making the most of the opportunity to film and photograph. The girls all wanted to be included, and were happily posing with various items from around the room, when suddenly they all started screaming. I looked up from the viewfinder and saw the kids flowing past me, heading outside as fast as possible. A teacher appeared at the door in some agitation, yelling at the kids to get out, and I turned around to see a snake coming through the window.
A window three metres off the ground.
Half a second later and the teacher was inside, between us and the intruder, so Sam and I figured what the hell, and kept shooting / filming. A couple of sixth formers piled in to help, and I have 10s of video before remembering there was an actual video expert in the room, and I should stick to photos (as proven by the sound going weird - I have no idea what happened):
Obviously the best defence against a snake is to throw shoes at it until you can get the shovels / massive sticks:
And over the next 90 seconds they killed it. Which actually made me a little uncomfortable, even though I knew Uganda is full of poisonous snakes. It's an entirely reasonable thing to do - I'm just surprised my animal-rights instincts kicked in for a snake coming into a girls' dorm. Them's the breaks, snake. Anyway, once dead they carried it outside and posed for me and Sam:
At this point I should have followed it to get some close-up pictures, but the kids were crowding around us, desperate to see the footage from inside the room. I defy you to say no to such a thing. So that's the last I saw of the snake. But we asked the kids what type it was, and they answered immediately: a cobra.
A cobra. Holy shit. So we spent the next couple of days telling people about our near-death-experience with a cobra. And then we thought - 'it didn't look like a cobra. They were cobras in Indiana Jones, weren't they? They have the wing things around the heads. It didn't have one of those. Maybe it's not a cobra'. And we reluctantly acknowledged that our anecdote may have to be reigned in a bit.
It turns out identifying snakes is quite hard. Back home I got all the close-up shots I could, and tried to figure it out from the markings. My pictures are weirdly inconsistent - the first shows regular rings, the second doesn't. It's definitely not a cobra, though. Here's what I have (apologies if somewhat mangled snakes are upsetting):
It could be a green mamba. That's as good as a cobra, anecdote-wise, as it's a seriously nasty snake: bites are fatal without prompt treatment. But I'm not sure the markings are quite right. Alternatively, it could be a green tree snake. Green tree snakes are green, and live in trees, and that's it. They are less exciting than green mambas. Can anyone help? It'd just be nice to know.
The kids got over the incident very quickly - we were off to the local football field (you have to chase the cows off it first) within 15mins. On the way we talked to the teachers and they said they'd never known a snake come through the window before. And then we asked the students and they said it happens all the time. So who knows how common this is. But it's pretty lucky we were in the room - I see no reason snakey couldn't have curled up in someone's bed. Or have come in at night.
I reckon a net would help against snakes as well as mosquitoes, though the latter are by far the bigger killers. So, one way or another, nets for the door and windows will be going over with the next trip. I'm just hoping the school can enforce their use.
The advantages of living in rags
I was at a humanist gig in town yesterday, and I think I spent too much time talking about myself. One of those times you look back and cringe. Admittedly I went in tired and not at my best; hopefully I wasn't too annoying. Anyway - I talked a lot about Uganda, and got into a discussion that's bounced around my head ever since.
I was describing how the local villages probably have just enough food, but the kids are still in rags, and one person started talking about western materialism, and how over here we're obsessed with having stuff - perhaps we need to see the advantages of living like they do in these communities.
It's now 24h later, and I'm pretty annoyed. That argument seems to me a left-wing rationalisation to dismiss something people would rather not think about. It tries to hand-wave the problem away by claiming extremely poor people are in some way lucky. That we in the west are the ones with the problem. That these people with nothing actually have it pretty good.
Get lost. Call me a cultural imperialist, but don't tell me life isn't better when your home has running water. Don't tell me life isn't better with a local shop with affordable food. Don't tell me life isn't better with local medical facilities and expertise raising the country's under-5 mortality rate above 1 in 8. Don't tell me life isn't better when your home is easy to clean, and has beds, chairs and tables. Don't tell me life isn't better with an electricity supply.
To me these are not subjective standards. These things clearly improve quality of life. And I don't think it's patronising or insulting to point this out - you could be patronising or insulting in how you go about helping, of course, but there's nothing wrong with saying it.
I don't see the slippery slope, either. Basic human rights like food and water don't inevitably lead to oh-so-awful things like wanting to buy clothes. I'm pretty skeptical that modern society is anything like so consumerist as the commentators would have us believe - do you know anyone who's as obsessed with buying stuff as the stereotype suggests? - but let's say they're right. Let's say western society is completely obsessed with shopping. Good. This is considerably less shitty than not knowing where your next meal is coming from, not being able to provide shoes for your family, walking miles to the local water pump every day, and having to worry about malaria mosquitoes killing your children. I obviously don't think everything about western civilisation is perfect, nor that everything about living in a hut is horrific, but if the average Ugandan village became a carbon copy of the average UK village, I would be fine with that (not that this is anything like the goal, obviously). This is not pushing a way of life onto other people, this is about reducing suffering.
I can understand the romantic impulse to pretend the Ugandan villages have a lovely, simpler approach to life to which we should all aspire. It would be nice if it were true. But it's not. I don't think it's a actively uncaring argument, and I expect the person who said it was a decent person, but it's an easy way to lie to yourself, and it has consequences. The next step in the argument would surely be that we don't need to help, and that's simply inhumane.
Boda-boda
Boda-bodas are everpresent motorbike taxis in Uganda (and much of Africa, I believe). It's really the only way to travel - unless you're worried about the little things, like arriving in one piece.
Their safety record is not something you should look at before getting on one (though sometimes you've little choice), but they are cheap, fast and always available. I left it till the last day before succumbing, and recorded this in a fishing village near Entebbe, the old colonial capital, where traffic is light. I'm glad I didn't have to take one in the current capital, Kampala: traffic in Kampala is, um, creative.
Humanist Hero: Gene Roddenberry
Just spotted that an article of mine went up at HumanistLife just before I left. The BHA asked for our Humanist Heroes, and I nominated Gene Roddenberry:
Humanist Hero: Gene Roddenberry
My humanist hero is Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek and, I think, the most effective communicator of humanism there’s ever been.
For three decades, the universe of Star Trek brought a humanist viewpoint to mainstream audiences. Countless children watched weekly as the galactic Federation of the future was depicted as a philosophers’ state in which the humanist outlook is paramount. It was never hostile to the godly - religion is simply null, and irrelevant. This was never spelt out, because it somehow seems incredibly obvious that the future would be so. It just makes sense. Of course nationality won’t matter in the future. Of course we’ll make sure everyone gets to live to a decent standard. Of course humanity will eventually grow up and out of superstitious thinking. This was unlike anything that had come before. Critics called it a Marxist vision, but one of Gene Roddenberry’s assistants instead described it as Lennonist: a brotherhood of man.
Roddenberry’s quasi-utopian future was attained through the twin humanist beacons of science and moral development. Science fixed poverty with the replicator - surely the most desired device in science fiction - while humanity developed a way to bring the galaxy together without coercion or violence. Key to this was the Prime Directive, probably the most vaunted and violated commandment in television. Always problematic, the Prime Directive stated that the Federation must not interfere with other cultures - except of course the Enterprise was forced to intervene in pretty much every episode. This core humanist message was hammered home over the series and the years: people are free to do as they will, but if they need help, you go help.
This optimistic view of humanity’s possibilities was at the core of Roddenbery’s humanism, a life stance he didn’t have a name for when he began questioning religion in his teens. He kept such opinions to himself for years, but came to recognise the power of television to effect social change - both good and bad - and saw an opportunity with Star Trek to bring a non-religious, human-centric philosophy to the general public. He eventually described the show as his ‘statement to the world’.
But his genius was to wrap up all this philosophy in solid entertainment. Morality plays can make for dull television, so Roddenberry blended endearing characters with fantastical situations, cleverly making the resolution of moral conundrums key to the progression of the plot. And in doing so he quietly built a cultural dictionary of philosophy. Want to discuss the limits of artificial intelligence, and what it means to be human? Skip tracts of dialogue and get everybody onto the same page with the word ‘Data’. The moral culpability of the soldier? The Borg will do nicely. This was never overt, and plenty (including me) were certainly watching for the phaser battles as much as anything else. But ideas etch, and the behaviour of these exciting and civil characters couldn’t help but have an effect. Star Trek always emphasised decision-making, and actually doing something. Every week the Enterprise crew would argue the rights and wrongs of their predicament, before the Captain took it out of the abstract by committing to one side or another, and acting appropriately. There are worse ways to live your life than “What would Picard do in this situation?”.
The conservative nature of 1960s US television didn’t make this easy for Roddenberry, but he ran rings around network censors by setting the stories in space - it’s not about racial equality, silly, it’s about aliens who happen to be different colours. He refused to put a chaplain on the Enterprise, despite regular pressure, and consistently crafted stories about morality that were devoid of moral outrage. Religion is rarely mentioned outright, but turns up subtly in the broad, overall themes. In The Next Generation, the only alien with god-like powers is a jerk who hates humanity. But over time he watches humans solving their problems through reason and compassion, despite his offers of magical intervention, and, by the end, he’s won over. It’s hard to see that particular story arc going down well with US networks, so Roddenberry simply didn’t tell them.
But Star Trek went beyond entertainment and subtle dissemination of humanist ideas - it’s not unreasonable to claim that Gene Roddenberry is partly responsible for accelerated pace of modern scientific progress. It’s impossible to know how many children had their sense of wonder stoked by the show, but you can get an anecdotal impression by asking any science graduate if they’re a fan. They probably are. The remarkable correlation between Star Trek fans and scientists may be because the show built upon established knowledge, but pushed it a bit. The ideas weren’t completely out there, so any children interested enough to investigate for themselves wouldn’t be disappointed. They’d discover that warp drives aren’t real, but impulse engines make sense. So why can’t you just use impulse engines to travel around? Because the distances are too great. Wow - just how big is the universe? And what about those communicators that allow the crew to keep in touch on different sides of the planet? Is that possible? Well, no, but radio waves can do that - we just need to figure out how to generate them in something hand-held...
Gene Roddenberry’s humanism affected forty years of children (and adults!), and continues to do so. Generations were raised on a regular diet of secular decency and resolving crises by weighing evidence and listening to all sides. Star Trek lodged abstract philosophy into the public consciousness, and is a pivot around which modern science turns. And above all this, Roddenberry’s vision was a source of hope. Gene Roddenberry brought a hope for humanity to millions, and is a humanist hero for that.
Dubai hi
I'm typing this sitting on the floor in Dubai airport, plugged into one of the many helpful laptop-charging-stations. It's 5am my time, and I may start hallucinating shortly (apologies if this post descends into detailed descriptions of moon-badgers).
I am happy. Uganda was wonderful, and has pretty much rendered useless my stock of superlatives. It is a land of poverty and wooden scaffolding and bright colours and religion and nestled treasure and stars and crazy bike-taxis and monkeys and fruit and malaria and the friendliest people I've ever encountered. Seeing the schools was a lesson in the realities of life in such small communities, and you can't help but admire the kids - their dedication in the face of such odds was remarkable.
I took a shade over 6000 photos (though many are rapid-fire duplicates), and I'll process them as soon as I can. Here's lunch being prepared at the Isaac Newton School (where we stayed for a week):
and new chum Ivan next to one of the stranger water dispensers we encountered:
I'd best stop there - feeling pretty weird now. 3.5hrs till my Birmingham flight. Back soon.
Hello!
Hey, thanks for coming! I'm Andrew, and this is where my headthinks come to breed. They often meander around humanism and photography, but they're flighty and you can't trust them, so anything is possible.
Do feel free to email me - I get lonely:
Your hair looks swish, by the way - have you done something new?
Recent Comments
- vicky: going up this weekend having done all the welsh peaks except 4 snowdon, cant wait
on Climbing Snowdon. - vicky: what, how can u live in the 21 c and say that, probably a sexist thing
on Climbing Snowdon. - vicky: da iawn laura, cant believe what im hearing, all this fuss, anyway love the site, and i agree, normal people who swear and curse clomb mountains cos we live in the...
on Climbing Snowdon. - Andrew: Did a few quick test shots to check the light levels, then balanced the camera on the arm of a bench, set it for a 20s exposure and hoped for the best
on ISS. - lynsey: Wow, how did you take that photograph?
on ISS.
