Mysterious ways

My local council does things in ways that I cannot comprehend. A few days ago, several broken paving slabs outside my house were marked with a yellow cross. Several neighbouring paving slabs that are equally broken were left unmarked. Today, two workmen arrived and replaced one of the broken slabs.

Colour me mystified.

Mental contortionists

This page, at the extraordinarily silly (but, sadly, totally serious) Answers in Genesis web site has irrefutable proof that the Universe and everything in it was created by the Christian god 6,000 years ago, and that all of modern science is wrong.

Or perhaps not. The argument goes like this: the Big Bang was an accident; the human mind is the result of billions of mutations and is therefore also an accident; one accident cannot understand another; therefore science is impossible. But clearly science is possible, so therefore God exists.

I really don’t know where to begin in deconstructing that nonsense, but let’s try. The Big Bang was no more an ‘accident’ than a rain cloud. It happened, based on physics that we don’t fully understand, leaving evidence across the whole Universe. We see this evidence, and the Big Bang is the best available model to explain this evidence.

The evolution of human minds is undoubtedly the result of many chance events (mutations), but the process of natural selection provided a mechanism whereby an organism that could understand something about its surroundings would have an advantage in the battle for survival. We’re rather fortunate that the hominid line found greater utility in this than in, for instance, being able to run very fast, but that’s evolution for you: it picks what works at the time, and if the right conditions prevail then there’s a chance of further progress in a particular direction.

(It didn’t have to be that way – try reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos, which speculates on the future evolution of Homo sapiens when being smart is no longer useful.)

So the next assertion – ‘there would be no reason to think that the mind could understand the universe’ – is just the writer’s opinion. It doesn’t follow logically, and it contradicts what we know to be true. Of course, libraries full of careful research don’t count when dealing with creationists – except when they can twist a result to suit their agenda. Then it’s ‘Science shows that Bible is true!’, even when it’s explained to them why they’re wrong.

And (just to digress a little) why do creationists need to show that something is scientifically plausible to back up their fairy stories? Have they forgotten that their god is omnipotent? That he can do any damn thing he wants, regardless of the laws of physics? I’m pretty sure that if you can create a universe, billions of light years across, in a matter of moments, then doing anything you want within that universe is just child’s play by comparison.

But never mind – they’ve just proved that their god exists, because ‘the fact that science is possible at all demonstrates that the Christian worldview is true’. Wow. Not the Islamic or Jewish worldview? Or the Mayan, Norse, Australian aboriginal or thousands of others? And not a mention that it was the Christian worldview that effectively suppressed science for hundreds of years.

The mental contortions needed to believe such creationist drivel are quite extraordinary. And yet millions do. They must be really clever – my rational mind can only deal with reality, while theirs can simultaneously believe in a fantasy.

Politically correct?

‘Politically correct’ used to mean ’saying what the powers that be want to hear rather than what you really think’. But now it has a different meaning. When someone uses the phrase now it means ‘I disagree with you and I’m going to hang on to all my old prejudices regardless of what anyone else might think’.

The speaker then turns his or her attention back to the Daily Mail to read some more lies about asylum seekers, the BBC, wheelie bins, lefties, gays, foreigners…

Everybody lies about politics

It’s a funny thing: almost everyone who votes for the BNP says something like ‘I’m not a racist, but…’ and then goes on to say two things. The first is that British jobs should be for British people (ignoring the detail that the BNP defines ‘British’ in a slightly different way from the legal definition; hint: ‘colour’ isn’t part of it), and the second is that they voted for them as a protest against the main parties.

Right. Of course. The BNP is the only minor party that you can possibly use to register a protest vote. Why not UKIP? They at least have a veneer of respectability to cover their xenophobic tendency. Or how about the Greens? Or anyone who isn’t racist? After all, ‘I’m not racist…’.

But as I said, everybody lies about politics. Racists more than most.

Beware my awesome powers!

So, recently I wrote approvingly about Primeval, which ended its third season with the cast up a tree, millions of years in the past. Naturally, ITV promptly decided that spending money on a half-decent show with pretty good ratings was not going to help it in these straitened times and promptly cancelled it.

Conversely, I damned Dollhouse with faint praise, fully expecting it to be axed by Fox for (a) not getting enough viewers and (b) not being all that good. Almost inevitably, it got a second season.

Would it be asking too much for me to heap praise on Big Brother, X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent and The Apprentice so that these steaming heaps of wasted effort can be sent to TV Hell?

Collapsing confidence

In 1997, the phrase ‘Tory sleaze’ was practically all that a Labour politician had to say to win in that year’s General Election. The public was fed up with scandals involving Conservative politicians and Blair’s New Labour swept to power.

Fast forward 12 years and it seems that Labour has completely forgotten the lesson that it taught the Tories. And the Conservatives, who one might have expected to remember it a little longer, have slipped back into their old habits. The endless stream of bizarre and (in some cases) downright fraudulent expenses claims leaves both major parties facing big problems in today’s European and council elections.

Despite being kicked around in the media for several weeks, there is a still a sense that most of the politicos don’t really understand what they did wrong. ‘If only’, they say to themselves, ‘we could explain why we made those claims, then the voters would understand’. But the voters do understand. It doesn’t take a genius to see that claiming second home expenses on a property but then declaring that same property as your main residence so as to avoid capital gains tax is wrong. Paying back the money when found out doesn’t make it right. We don’t extend that courtesy to thieves.

We also know that politicians wanted to keep all this secret. They knew that the public would be angry if they ever found out what was going on, and that means they knew that what they were doing was wrong. And yet they blame the system, as though they had no personal responsibility. It’s as if a child, caught with her hand in the cookie jar, were to blame the cookie jar because the lid had been left off. A lid, moreover, that the child herself had removed. Because – let’s not forget – MPs designed the expenses system.

Gordon Brown’s leadership of both the government and the Labour Party has been feeble during these scandals. His instinct as a politician is to lie low whenever storm clouds gather (while Chancellor, he had a remarkable talent for avoiding saying anything about the Iraq war, for instance). He’s tried the same approach here, saying as little as he can. But that’s not so easy when you’re the PM. So his instincts betrayed him when he called Hazel Blears’ behaviour (the afore-mentioned capital gains tax dodge) ‘totally unacceptable’, but failed to dismiss her from her ministerial post. Instead, the press was allowed to kick that football around for weeks, culminating in Blears’ resignation on the eve of the elections. His half-cocked attempt at a swift reform of the expenses system was simply laughed at.

David Cameron has had a better time as Conservative leader, but he has been indecisive on a couple of occasions and will be all too well aware that some of his multi-millionaire MPs have also been caught riding the gravy train, reinforcing the stereotype of the posh Tory, out of touch with the public. So while he stands to gain something through being in opposition, rather than government, he won’t get out of this completely undamaged.

One would like to think that these events will change the perspective of MPs. They’re not at Westminster by right, and they’re not (despite appearances to the contrary) their parties’ representatives in the constituencies. No – they have their jobs because we elect them, and they are our representatives in parliament. They spend our money for the benefit of the country at large, and misappropriating it to bolster their own bank accounts (not to mention those of their families and friends) will get them into very hot water.

Or perhaps I should rephrase that last sentence: Don’t steal our money and we won’t sling you into prison.

Microsoft gets something right

I’ve given myself a dilemma: at some point next year I’m going to have to decide whether or not to buy Windows 7.

Choosing not to have Windows Vista was easy: bloated, slow, confusing, ugly – it was just wrong. Microsoft must have known this, as people kept telling them that they wanted to keep (and keep buying) Windows XP because it worked.

So with Windows 7 they’ve given us the release candidate (nearly finished version) to play with, free, for the best part of a year. In March next year it will start to shut down every two hours, and in June it will stop working unless you buy a licence. The hope is that people will have become so wedded to the shiny new version that they’ll pay up.

They just might. Installation on my laptop (which already dual boots XP and Ubuntu) was a breeze (although I had to create a new partition using Linux). As always, Windows overwrote the Grub boot loader, leaving me without access to Linux, but it didn’t take long to fix that.

Windows 7 then cheerfully set everything up for me and got out of my face. That was one of my biggest gripes about Vista – every time I tried to do something, there it was, slowly bugging me about something or other. Windows 7 just gets on with the job.

I haven’t tested it properly yet. For one thing, I need to find out whether one or two critical applications will work. If not, then I’ll be sticking with XP. But if they do, then come next March I might have to fish out the credit card and pay Microsoft whatever exorbitant sum they’re demanding.

Religious hypocrisy

Of all the truly fatuous ideas put about by the religious, the claim that religion is the source of morality is one of the most pernicious. Apparently, because certain ancient holy books lay down rules about how one should behave, this proves that religion is both necessary and good. And of course, each religion claims that its version of morality is the right one and that it is absolute.

This idea doesn’t stand up to a moment’s critical thought or to the changes in morality accepted by religious institutions over the centuries. Unfortunately, some of the consequences of this attitude are bizarre and dangerous. For one thing, we hear claims that atheists must be evil because, having no belief in any god, they therefore have no morality and simply want to live a debauched life of killing, raping and theft. Furthermore, it’s only the fear of laws and punishment inspired by religious morality that stop them from living life this way! This in turn leads to atheists being demonised (easy enough when your religion tells you that demons are real) and discriminated against when the religious nuts gain a certain level of dominance in a society. Conversely, it means that the media always turn to the clergy when there’s a moral issue to be debated – ancient superstition trumps rational thought every time.

If religion could keep its own house in order then it might have a point. But if you’re looking for true evil, then organised religion is the place to go. The Catholic church, with its global reach, leads the way, with the revelations of institutionalised sexual, physical and emotional abuse of children in Ireland being just the latest example.

If this had been going on without the knowledge of the church’s hierarchy you might be able to dismiss it as the actions of misguided individuals (although there do seem to have been rather a lot of them). But, true to form, when the church found out it systematically covered up the crimes and protected the perpetrators. Even more bizarrely, the spineless Irish government can’t bring itself even to name the perpetrators, let alone prosecute them.

At some point, if you bring up this kind of crime as a counter to the ‘religion gives us morality’ claim, you’ll get one of two responses. The first is ‘We are all fallible human beings’, which is true but beside the point. Why does the church not act against these people when discovered? And the second answer is ‘Well, they call themselves Christians, but they’re not really otherwise they wouldn’t have done this’. That’s an equally pathetic defence – if bad things are never done by true Christians, then you can define the problem out of existence as far as your church is concerned.

There’s a stench of hypocrisy in all this. But that’s pretty much par for the course with religion.

The politics of race

Elections for the European Parliament are fast approaching and leaflets have started to arrive. By coincidence, the parties of the right (Conservative, UKIP and BNP) all delivered there messages to me today.

The Conservative message barely mentioned Europe. The Tories clearly sees this election as the opening salvo in their attempt to regain power in Britain, so they talk almost exclusively about UK politics.

UKIP, on the other hand, focus entirely on the EU. ‘Say NO to unlimited immigration’ is their top policy, backed up by a picture of Winston Churchill. UKIP’s reflexive antipathy to all things European is irritating and remains grounded in a post-Imperial past that no longer exists. Whatever they may think, the UK is better placed to cope with today’s global challenges within the EU. It’s ludicrous to pretend that British influence can do anything other than decline rapidly if we leave the EU. UKIP just hasn’t noticed that there are two Asian superpowers on the rise, and that Europe can only compete effectively if it is more or less united.

The BNP also invoke the Second World War, this time with a Spitfire and the slogan ‘Battle for Britain 2009′. They also throw in ‘Trafalgar – The Somme – Dunkirk – D-Day – The Falklands’ (although the Somme was hardly a huge success and Dunkirk was an abject retreat, so I’m not quite sure what they’re trying to say there). Yes, they’re still fighting Johnny Foreigner. But while, for UKIP, this xenophobia is kept well in the background, for the BNP it’s up front and centre: they talk about ‘80 million low-wage, Muslim Turks [being given] the right to swamp Britain’ and ensuring ‘that British soldiers are not abused on the streets of our cities by Muslims’.

The BNP is using one of the oldest dodges in politics: pretending that everything would be hunky dory if it weren’t for all those dark-skinned barbarians tearing down our island paradise. It’s negative, scapegoat politics. They appeal to the basest emotions and deserve nothing but contempt. The BNP is racist to the core.

I blame that Gene Hunt

There was I, minding my own business, when I saw a BBC news story that Kajagoogoo have reformed. Seriously.

It’s just non-stop, this 80s retro stuff. Spandau Ballet have buried the hatchet, The Police have pulled in mega-millions, The Specials are back together – where will it all end?

It’s Gene Hunt’s fault. I’d tell him that to his face. From a safe distance.