Article backlog

I ran a word count today which revealed I have a backlog of more than 14,000 words of jotted thoughts which which will become articles. Most relate to human nature. I wrote ten times this amount in my late teens and early twenties, and I only took time off to study philosophy formally and learn Flash. Now I split my time. And with that, I must get on with work.

New Order: Bizarre Love Triangle

I post this because I was actually in the crowd at this gig in Finsbury Park in Summer 2002, and I can confirm it rained solidly all morning and all throughout the gig. But, if you can tolerate the bizarre dance of a now middle-aged Bernard Sumner, the greatness of the studio version of this track can still be detected.

Oops! The latest free Adobe Flash Player™ is required to view this content.

Atheist Alliance International videos

Do you care about reason, truth, and kindness, in a world increasingly threatened by asburd and barbaric religious beliefs which lack any supporting evidence whatsoever?
If so, you might like to watch these speeches by leading free-thinkers and humanist luminaries.

Petition to make faith schools illegal

The office of the Prime Minister is being petitioned in the hope that faith schools might be banned. Here’s why:

“Faith schools remove the rights of children to choose their own religious, philosophical and ethical beliefs. They also sanction ethnic segregation and create tension and divisiveness within society.

Schools should be places where children are given a free education, not centres for indoctrination. Creationism and other religious myths should not be taught as fact regardless of the funding status of a school. Abolishing faith schools will provide children with more freedom of choice and help to promote a fully multi-cultural, peaceful society.”

Since Gordon Brown is the son of a clergyman and nearly went into the clergy himself, there is a fat chance chance of this noble cause succeeding, however if you live in the UK please consider signing the petition nonetheless.

Religious victimisation of women

This is a sensitive subject, isn’t it? Simply because it involves people’s irrational beliefs. It would not be controversial in any other context. It must be faced up to, without fear, by all of us, in this context too.

I have just received my e-mail newsletter from the National Secular Society and it links to an excellent article by Johann Hari about a lady called Mina Ahadi, who has just won the Secularist of the Year prize. With this article, and with others, Mr Hari excuses his dumbing-down appearance on the trash that is Big Brother.

Says the newsletter:

“Mina Ahadi started her serious political activities when she was 16 and living in Iran. She was at university in 1979 in Tabriz at the time of the Iranian revolution and she began immediately to organise demonstrations and meetings to oppose the compulsory veiling of women. This courageous dissent got her noticed by the Islamic regime’s authorities and soon she had to go underground to avoid retribution.

At the end of 1980 her house was raided by the police and her husband and four of their comrades arrested. Mina escaped only because she wasn’t at home at the time.

Her husband and the four arrested were all executed by firing squad soon after. She lived underground for some time and then fled to Iranian Kurdistan in 1982, where she continued to struggle against the Islamic regime for the next ten years. In 1990 she went to Vienna. She moved to Germany in 1996 and has lived in Europe since then.”

Mr Hari in his article rightly challenges the disgusting liberal relativists who seek to excuse religious people for their absurd beliefs. People: the Iranians follows these rules because they are clearly stated in the Koran. They are following their religion properly. It is with the religious texts themselves that the problems lie (”lie” being the operative word).

I shall say no more and hand over to Mr Dawkins himself, whose humanist eloquence seemingly never fails:

“I have long felt that the key to solving the worldwide menace of Islamic terrorism and oppression would eventually be the awakening of women, and Mina Ahadi is a charismatic leader working to that end. The brutal suppression of the rights of women in many countries throughout the Islamic world is an obvious outrage.

Slightly less obvious, but just as outrageous, is the supine willingness of western liberals to go along with it. It is worse than supine, it is patronising and condescending: “Wife-beating is part of ‘their’ culture. Who are we to condemn their traditions?”

A religion so insecure as to mandate the death penalty for apostasy is not to be trifled with, and ex-Muslims who stand up and fight deserve our huge admiration and gratitude for their courage. Right out in front of this honourable band is Mina Ahadi. I salute her and congratulate her on this well-deserved award as Secularist of the Year.”

Safari 3 Beta

Apple have released a Safari 3 Beta for Mac and PC. It’s looks nice too (as much Apple stuff does) but as is usual for Macs it suffers from various limitations - they have even built in the Mac restriction that one can only resize the window from the bottom right corner, not from any corner or edge as is possible with other Windows browsers.

Duties come before rights

While waiting for a friend of mine outside a box junction in Balham this evening, I noticed an interesting thing. It is illegal for vehicles to enter a box junction unless they can see their way clear for leaving it. On this occasion a “minicab” had actually parked in the box junction to let a woman out - on the corner of the junction, blocking traffic from three directions.

It was there for some time - we’re talking two or three minutes. Eventually a woman got out, and a man behind sounded his horn. Did the woman look embarrassed and apologise for the obstruction? Of course not. She raised her fingers and scowled at the man, then disappeared into a pub.

What must have been going on inside this woman’s mind? It can only have been “I wanted to do that so I will do it. I don’t care what you think” - as is so prevalent these days. This seems like a trivial incident, and we all see them every day. One can hardly walk 10 minutes in London without witnessing some kind of vulgarity or insensitivity (10 seconds on Oxford Street). But society comprises of trivial things, the strands that (should) join us together are many and thin, and the fact we see them broken every day should be of serious concern to us.

These issues boil down essentially to a sense of “rights above duties”. Not only is this sense morally wrong, it is also self-defeating. Only when you care about others as much as yourself can you ever live any kind of fulfilled life. Some people know that. We must insist that all people understand it.

No more TV

“I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There’s one called brightness, but it doesn’t work.”

Eugene P. Gallagher

I am pleased to report I have just cancelled my TV licence. I’ve done this because:

• Most TV is rubbish.
• The advertising one must tolerate between programmes is even worse.
• If there is anything you wish to watch you can usually do so on the Net instead.
• I use my TV (which is a high quality Bang & Olufsen model) only to watch DVDs (and a virtual fireplace).
• TV watching is passive and saps your time.

This move is going to save me £140.50 per year and bring me the satisfaction of not paying for things I do not watch. And all the time I can still listen to the intelligent speech on BBC Radio 4 (and to any other radio station).

Here are some interesting links regarding this issue:

• Remote Controlled by Aric Sigman
• Pravda article
• More links

I’d like to see the licence fee (and advertising funding) abolished and subscription only services introduced instead, so that you get only what you pay for and pay for only what you get. I hope now the TV Licensing people don’t come pestering me. If they do they will be given short thrift..!

Titanic: “A Diamond?”

Oops! The latest free Adobe Flash Player™ is required to view this content.

2001: A Space Odyssey

This is one of the most famous sequences in cinematic history, with an inspired choice of music.