On the fringes of free speech

The man on the right is Geert Wilders. He is a Dutch MP, a campaigner against Islam and, above all, an attention seeker. Today, UK border control stopped him from entering the UK.

The Netherlands has a recent history of outspoken opponents of Islamism. Pim Fortuyn was assassinated just before he was due to win a substantial share of the vote in a general election. Theo van Gogh was assassinated for making a film about domestic abuse in Muslim families. Ayaan Hirsi Ali was forced to flee to the USA after receiving death threats relating to her involvement in van Gogh's film.

Geert Wilders, in my opinion, is a deeply unoriginal attention seeker who is courting controversy on this subject purely because he knows that it will give him a platform and a following.

He wants to ban the Koran. That's why he's being banned from the UK - would apparently cause too much unrest or controversy to air such a view here.

He's not been invited to the UK by a fringe group though - he's not going to be rabble rousing in in the pubs of Lancashire. He's been invited by members of the House of Lords, to give a speech in the Houses of Parliament.

If parliament doesn't want him to speak there, they could pass a resolution declaring this. In the absence of such a resolution, it seems like a remarkable abuse of discretion for the Home Secretary to decide what members of the Houses of Parliament can and can't hear.

Geert Wilders is an attention seeker, and it is an abuse of freedom of expression when he calls for books to be banned.
But it is a greater abuse when the state tries to determine who parliamentarians can and can't listen to.

The idea that Geert Wilders represents a danger to the security of the United Kingdom is verging on ridiculous.

Failed predictions of 2008

At the beginning of each year, various deluded people make predictions of what the new year has in store. I typed predictions 2008 into google, and the first result was a psychics forum. I hope the below demonstrates just how deluded psychics can be...

The predictions were made in late 2007 / January 2008 to forecast what 2008 would have in store.

Littlehalo predicted "there will be a volcano eruption, i am not sure where but when i asked my spirit guide to help me this is what i was told" - thanks a lot spirit guide - not very helpful. There are volcanic eruptions every year, but none of note in 2008.

Littlehalo's aside, I've ignored the other really lame / vague predictions of earthquakes somewhere in Asia, civil unrest in an unspecified European country etc.

Datin said, "I feel that on January 25, 2008 California will be rocked by an earthquake that will rival the San Francisco earthquake. I feel this will be a centered a bit above Los Angeles but felt in a very large area including surrounding states. I feel it will hit in the afternoon, and amazingly, not many will be hurt, but alot of services will be disrupted for a long time." - No, no, no and no.

Smattp had a couple of dreams... "one of the dreams i had is of me sitting in my hous watching the television as a nuclear war is announced so i hope that one doesn't come true but we will have to wait and see and i also dreamt that i will meet someone called dan" Nuclear war failed to materialise in 2008, but maybe Smattp met Dan - we can only hope!

PrincessKLS anticipated "Another big hurricane that could rival Katrina" - Not quite - Katrina was a category 5 hurricane, which killed 1,800 people. The closest this year was Ike - a category 4 with 126 deaths - devastasting, but doesn't quite rival Katrina.

Brightgrey confidently predicted "serious civil unrest in the UK during 2008. It is related to Muslims and policies of the present government." Well, a couple of terrorists set themselves on fire and drove into a wall at Glasgow airport but, that aside, it's been a pretty civil year for the UK.

She went on to predict "I had a dream in which UK police / military were hunting a group of armed Islamic terrorists who had just committed a significant act of terrorism. The armed terrorists were hiding while police / military closed in on them. Although not a totally unexpected event considering the current political situation I feel this attack must be significant (on par with the London terrorist attacks of July 2005 or worse) for me to have been shown it. "

Despite clear references to the UK military hunting them, Brightgrey lately took credit for predicting the Mumbai attacks - she was convinced that it would be proven that there were British terrorists involved. Sorry Brightgrey, your description sounds nothing like the Mumbai attacks, and none were British.

Rosedawn feared "multiple severe and devastating earthquakes in various parts of the world causing much disruption to human society; possibly volcanoes erupting, as I see the sun blocked by darkness and explosions in the sky." However, she also said, "Humans who are in alignment with the new energy ... do not perceive reality in the same way as less spiritually evolved people." Quite.

Quelquechosedautre was very keen to warn to "BEWARE - 4th & 5th January 2008
4th is 911 days after the 7/7/2005 bombings in London. This does not take "psychic powers" to work this out" Really? - Because nothing of note happened on either day.

He also got very excited predicting "20% inflation in the USA, 1930s style unemployment, bouts of civil unrest by the summer, martial law in various countries, and the Beijing Olympics being cancelled." - Sorry, not quite.

Majic had a long list of crap: "Another major political/religious assassination in Pakistan leading to civil war. India to invade to contain dramatic rise and spread of Islamic extremism in Pakistan. A small nuclear detonation in Asia or middle east, possibly Israel. I get a strong feeling this will be more accidental than deliberate. A major terrorist attack in the middle east, again possibly Israel, involving a missile. Another major earthquake and possible tsunami in Indonesia or New Zealand from the continuing 'unzipping' of the fault which caused the 2004 tsunami. Tens of thousands possibly dead. US city to be hit with another atrocity - either New York or Washington."

None of those, luckily

On 1st January 2008, SpiritualQueen had:
"Landslide on west coast of America.. 'Strange' markings in the night sky, visible to all.. Possible eruption of an American volcano.. Discovery of new DNA?.. Terrorist threat/Catastrophe in London.. Major earthquake in Greece.. Sudden fatal death of a worldwide actress.. Assasination of President Bush.. Last edited by SpiritualQueen on Sun Jan 06, 2008 8:48 pm; edited 2 times in total"

SpiritualQueen got lucky. Although nobody has discovered any new DNA (whatever that is), there was an earthquake in Greece five days later, and she naturally took credit for this. However, Greece always suffers from earthquakes, and this was not a very notable one (fortunately there were no fatalities). SpiritualQueen also undermined her credibility by editing her post after the earthquake happened, so it's unclear whether she predicted this in advance, or edited her predictions after the event. Lesson for the future - if you've made a successful prediction, don't tamper with the evidence.

Doug posted a load of crap about nuclear explosions in various American cities. However, he then then did something amazing, in correctly predicting that Obama would become US President. This is just about the only successful prediction on the entire list. He didn't stop there though. According to Doug, Obama will also turn out to be the anti-Christ! - If Obama starts consorting with the Whore of Babylon, or the making everybody carry the mark of the beast, we shall know that Doug is our true prophet.


Anyway, you'd think after such an ignominious attempt to predict 2008, the idiots at psychics.co.uk would give up for 2009. Sadly, they have already predicted a whole pile of crap. I predict that almost every single prediction there will fail to come to pass

Potted round up of the year

I've effectively hung my blog up on the coat hook for the time being. Since I gave up my job, I've had much less time on my hands.

The news story which has most fascinated me this year has been shipping routes. Not immediately an exciting topic - but it is one which will increasing become more significant. About 100 ships have been hijacked by Somali pirates this year. That's been enough to get the attention of the world's navies. Although various countries have sent ships to the Gulf of Aden, surprisingly it is India that is leading the way. Its navy escorts ships through the Gulf, and has intercepted a number of pirate vessels.

Related to this in some way is the news that melting icecaps are making the Arctic Ocean navigable. It is becoming viable for ships going between Europe and the Far East to cut across the Northeast Passage rather than through the Suez Canal. The pirates will only add to the incentives to use this route - already cautious shipowners are sending their vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, rather than risk hijacking.

I haven't read many new books this year, but the best I managed was Tim Butcher's Blood River. Tim Butcher wanted to see if he could retrace Stanley's journey along the River Congo. He sketches a picture of a country which is not undeveloped, but undeveloping. Zaire in the mid Twentieth Century had roads, railways, steam ships, schools, hospitals... - now everything is crumbling. Factions vie for control of the mineral wealth, and that's about it. I used to have lots of clients from the Congo who'd talk about the place, and I've read dozens of human rights reports. But it was always difficult to get a clear mental image of the country. Human rights reports always focus on the worst, and my clients from the place were talking from their position within the culture. This book gave me a great insight, because it was a first hand account of a Westerner, who would be viewing the Congo in a similar way to which I would if I were there.

The best film I've seen this year was Batman. I doubt I've got anything to say about it which hasn't been said by plenty of critics...

I've come to the firm conclusion that the best entertainment for somebody who's short of time is to listen to Podcasts. They're free, and can be listened to whilst travelling or even just walking to and fro. My top three are:

1) Collings & Herrin. Richard Herring is extremely sharp and funny. I can only conclude that the people in charge of comedy at the BBC are idiots for not giving him his own show.

2) Adam & Joe have a brilliant Saturday morning radio show on BBC 6 Music. Again, they're two very talented comedians, and it's rubbish that it's taken so long for them to get the recognition they deserve. I hope that their radio show can propel them on to greater things. I don't often get to listen to their show, but they have an hour long podcast of the funniest bits - both can be listened to here.

3) The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe continues to be my preferred source of learning about the most interesting new science news, and to hear witty and scathing coverage of the world of bogus science such as 'alternative medicine' etc.

Late Junction is my favourite radio show - I listen on the BBC's iplayer. It plays amazing music you've never heard from all over the world.

More later perhaps.

Most influential books

I was reading Jim's and Matt's blogs, where they list the ten political books which have had the most influence on them. I'm fairly widely read politically, and yet this spurred me to wonder whether books have influenced my political direction, or if they've merely illuminated a direction I was already travelling.

Whereas books might give people the arguments and illustrations to help them to sharpen their opinions and better advocate them to others, I'm skeptical of how much they influence our actual direction in life.

My guess is that our political outlook is determined much more by psychological factors, and by the social and economic circumstances we find ourselves in. We gravitate towards advocating either individualist or collectivist solutions to problems, and to implementing these solutions in either a liberal or repressive manner. Beyond this, political theory merely turns us into the little-enders or big-enders of Liliput.

There are science books that change the world though - either new calculations which bring on huge technological change (Newton), or new theories which completely demolish fanciful religious stories (Darwin). There are also books which have far-reaching impacts on people's ethics and behaviour (The New Testament).

According to Martin Seymour-Smith, these are the 100 most influential books in history (in chronological order). Those I've read are in bold, and also brief comments on them:

1. The I Ching - a good way for lost souls to waste time, tossing coins to determine their actions, and ignoring any results they don't like.
   
2. The Old Testament - a brutal account of the psychotic actions of a jealous god. This book helped me to realise that christianity wasn't for me.
   
3. The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer - I'm sure these were much more snappy when told as part of an oral tradition - but still an essential source of western mythology and imagination.
   
4. The Upanishads - I remember reading this when I had my "interest in different religions" phase. Perhaps tellingly, I don't remember much of the contents.
   
5. Tao te Ching, Lao-tzu - A classic of Eastern Philosophy. It has to be said, though, it's a bit of a philosophy for the unambitious - e.g. "Should a man grow old and die without ever leaving his village, let him feel as though there was nothing he ever missed"
   
6. The Avesta
   
7. Analects, Confucius
8. History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides - one of my favourite books of all time. I expected it to be so dry and dusty that it would give me a permanent sore throat. But it's GREAT. It's a rip roaring account of decades of war and strife, covering military strategies, diplomacy, political debate, and sociological impacts of the war. Forget current affairs and immerse yourself in this for a couple of weeeks - you won't regret it.
   
9. Works, Hippocrates
10. Works, Aristotle
11. History, Herodotus
12. The Republic, Plato - I recommend this not so much for the philosophy, although it's a good philosophical text, but because it shows us that humans really haven't changed at all in our thought processes and motivations in 2000+ years.
    
13. Elements, Euclid
14. The Dhammapada
15. Aeneid, Virgil
16. On the Nature of Reality, Lucretius
17. Allegorical Expositions of the Holy Laws, Philo of Alexandria
18. The New Testament - a definite improvement on the old testament. Not a bad text for the common folk to live their lives by.
    
19. Lives, Plutarch
20. Annals, from the Death of the Divine Augustus, Cornelius Tacitus
21. The Gospel of Truth
22. Meditations, Marcus Aurelius - one of the very few books which has changed the way I think and act in my life. Stoicism is definitely the philosophy for me. It's made me a saner, more balanced person.
    
23. Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Sextus Empiricus
24. Enneads, Plotinus
25. Confessions, Augustine of Hippo - not the raunchy page-turner I was hoping for.
    
26. The Koran - read bits of it - cf my thoughts on the old testament.
    
27. Guide for the Perplexed, Moses Maimonides
28. The Kabbalah - mystical mumbo jumbo, superseded by science.
    
29. Summa Theologicae, Thomas Aquinas
30. The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri - hard going, but some cool imagery
    
31. In Praise of Folly, Desiderius Erasmus
32. The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli - seems jolly and elementary in these cynical days.
    
33. On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Martin Luther
34. Gargantua and Pantagruel, François Rabelais
35. Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin
36. On the Revolution of the Celestial Orbs, Nicolaus Copernicus - read this for my degree. It would probably have seemed more mind-blowing if I actually lived in the Sixteenth Century.
    
37. Essays, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
38. Don Quixote, Parts I and II, Miguel de Cervantes - a little heavy going, but still a reasonable read. I wouldn't necessarily recommend reading it though - as long as you know the basics of it, you can bluff your way through a conversation about it.
    
39. The Harmony of the World, Johannes Kepler
40. Novum Organum, Francis Bacon
41. The First Folio [Works], William Shakespeare - I recognise the value of Shakespeare but, controversially, I don't enjoy watching his plays. Call me a philistine, but I enjoy a play much more if I can actually understand what they're saying.
    
42. Dialogue Concerning Two New Chief World Systems, Galileo Galilei
43. Discourse on Method, René Descartes - an important book in the history of scientific thought, but not one I necessarily enjoyed reading
    
44. Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes
45. Works, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
46. Pensées, Blaise Pascal
47. Ethics, Baruch de Spinoza
48. Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan
49. Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Isaac Newton - I once picked up part of the Principia, but quickly put it down again.
    
50. Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke
51. The Principles of Human Knowledge, George Berkeley - Bishop Berkeley's treatise is one of those philosophical books, of which the experience of reading it is akin to an acid trip. "Wow, so like everything is just like ideas in the mind of god, and there's no real matter. Far out man!!"
    
52. The New Science, Giambattista Vico
53. A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume
54. The Encyclopedia, Denis Diderot, ed.
55. A Dictionary of the English Language, Samuel Johnson
56. Candide, François-Marie de Voltaire
57. Common Sense, Thomas Paine
58. An Enquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
59. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon
60. Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant - the best and clearest book of philosophy I've ever read. Kant is pretty much unassailable. All subsequent generations of budding philosophers must have read this downcast thinking, "Shit, I'll never write anything to top this".
    
61. Confessions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
62. Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke
63. Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollstonecraft
64. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, William Godwin
65. An Essay on the Principle of Population, Thomas Robert Malthus - Malthusianism will always be with us. There's always evidence to support apocalypticists who say we're on the brink of an over-population catastrophe, but they've always been proved wrong in the past. One day they might be vindicated. Even a blind darts player hits the bullseye occasionally.
    
66. Phenomenology of Spirit, George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
67. The World as Will and Idea, Arthur Schopenhauer
68. Course in the Positivist Philosophy, Auguste Comte
69. On War, Carl Marie von Clausewitz
70. Either/Or, Søren Kierkegaard
71. The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels - The original rabble-rouser. A strange treatise though. Much of it reads as a real paean to the dynamism of the Bourgeoisie, rather than a condemnation. Still relevant for Marxists tofay.
    
72. "Civil Disobedience," Henry David Thoreau - A brilliantly written call to act in line with your conscience
    
73. The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Charles Darwin - I've read parts of it. As Dawkins keeps saying, it's one of the most beautiful and elegant scientific theories ever conceived. It greatly angers and frustrates me that, 150 years later, there are still millions of otherwise decent people who consider it the work of the devil.
    
74. On Liberty, John Stuart Mill
75. First Principles, Herbert Spencer
76. "Experiments with Plant Hybrids," Gregor Mendel
77. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
78. Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, James Clerk Maxwell
79. Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche
80. The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud
81. Pragmatism, William James
82. Relativity, Albert Einstein
83. The Mind and Society, Vilfredo Pareto
84. Psychological Types, Carl Gustav Jung - not so much this book but the theory of psychological types has been quite important to me. When I read a detailed description of an INTP, it was like looking in the mirror. I don't meet many people like me, and this made me feel less alone in the world.
    
85. I and Thou, Martin Buber
86. The Trial, Franz Kafka - how I feel whenever I have to deal with a government service or automated phone system
    
87. The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper - being born in 1981, it's not easy to appreciate how important some of these books were when they were written. We're lucky to possess the legacy of science and philosophy - stil so much more to discover though.
    
88. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, John Maynard Keynes
89. Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre
90. The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich von Hayek
91. The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
92. Cybernetics, Norbert Wiener
93. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell - This is a brilliant sci fi book. I really wish that it was classified as sci fi rather than as classic fiction - it would draw more people over to the sci fi shelves in the bookshop, and discover some of the other great works the genre has to offer.
    
94. Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff - I'd never heard of this book but, seeing its inclusion on this list, I'll try and seek it out
    
95. Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein
96. Syntactic Structures, Noam Chomsky
97. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, T. S. Kuhn - read this some years ago, and was very impressed by it. I don't know, but suspect I might be more critical of it today.
    
98. The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan
99. Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung [The Little Red Book], Mao Zedong
100. Beyond Freedom and Dignity, B. F. Skinner

Wow - I've read at least parts of 39 of these. I'm more well read than most people, but I still feel like I know so little, and that there is so much more to discover ... - and this list gives plenty of suggestions...

I doubt many of the latter fifty would appear on such a list in 200 years time though.

Breast Milk ice cream

PETA (whom I suspect love animals a bit too much, if you get what I mean), has called on Ben & Jerrys to replace cow milk with human breast milk in their ice cream.

I'm not sure they've thought this through. In order to do this on the globalised industrial scale required by Ben & Jerrys, we'd have to start treating lactating women like cattle.

Sure - who wouldn't like to suck on a breast milk ice lolly (or even breast milk cheese* or yoghurt). Waste not, want not - that's my attitude. But to make this happen, I'm not prepared to pay the price of keeping women in cattle sheds, waking them up at 5am to take them to the milking machines, and inducing pregnancies once a year to keep the breasts full of milk. We'd also have to selectively breed women with massive boobage. And my preference, to be frank, is something small, round and pert.

I'm sorry PETA - but not in my name, NOT IN MY NAME!!!


*When I was in Northern Spain, I came across a very interesting cheese called a Tetilla. However, despite its shape, it is disappointingly from sheep breast, rather than human breast. Food for thought, anyway...

Noel Edmonds - the next Kilroy?

How can one man be so idiotic? Why on earth would anybody support a complete ban on immigration to Britain?

Noel Edmonds believes he is back on TV because of something called cosmic ordering. Apparently he read a book which told him if you write a note and ask "the cosmos" for something, it will always provide it. So he wrote a note asking for a prime time TV show, put it under his pillow, and the cosmos obliged in the form of Deal or No Deal. Perhaps he should write a little note and put it under his pillow asking the cosmos to stop all foreigners entering Britain.

According to the Times, he also believes that his dead parents follow him around as two little orbs of energy invisible to the naked eye. This guy isn't just crazy - he's mental.

I am seriously worried that Edmonds is going to be the next Kilroy Silk. What are the odds of him standing for UKIP, or forming his own oddball political party with a new age slant.

I really don't want to live in a vaguely fascist new-age state run by Noel Edmonds :(

(Deal or No Deal is quite good though - it's really funny when somebody doesn't understand they're supposed to quit when the going's good - and ploughs on to the bitter end, ending up with a fiver)

The worst beer in the world

Carlsberg may or may not be the best beer in the world. I am but one man - it is not for me to judge.

But I have now had the displeasure of tasting what is probably the worst beer in the world. It was in North Bar in Leeds, which has a great selection of beers - apart from one. Sadly, I don't remember the name of the beer, which means there's a slight chance I might unintentionally reorder it - it was something like Yorkshire White.

The initial bouquet of the beer can only be described as vomit. However, foods which have an unpleasant smell can still taste great. Unfortunately in this case, it also tasted literally like vomit, and I do mean 'literally'. The barmaid said it is an acquired taste, but I prefer not to acquire the taste of somebody sicking up into a pint glass.

The most amazing thing is that other people were managing to drink half a pint of it before giving in.

score: minus two out of five

Is it good to be fat?

There's a lot of moralising about weight in our society, and I've been guilty of it myself plenty too. Even the slight paunch I have, and any hint of my jawline receding, is enough to make me fear the prospect of becoming overweight.

Apparently poorer people in the UK tend to be more overweight than wealthy people. Why is this. Fresh fruit and vegetables are cheap as chips - you can eat very healthily very cheaply. And the less you eat, the better off you are financially. It's not as if you can only afford to eat lard if you earn less than £60,000 a year.

And the idea that over-eating causes weight gain is hardly a revolutionary scientific breakthrough. We've known this very well since the paleolithic. This issue is not down to lack of education about nutrition.

So perhaps there's more to it than that. Perhaps over-eating to gain weight is simply a sensible insurance strategy if you are towards the lower end of the social hierarchy. If, for example, there were a sudden unexpected major economic crisis, millions of people could face food shortages or starvation. If you are relatively unskilled, or vulnerable to losing your job, perhaps it is wise to be overweight. You will have more chance of staying healthy and thus finding better opportunities during an economic meltdown than your bone-thin colleagues.

So is all the moralising about over-eating completely misguided? - Is it not just an evolutionary strategy which has survived down the ages because it works?

We may live in a time of abundance, but just because we've had sixty years of abundance, doesn't mean it will continue indefinitely. There are negative health affects from being overweight but, perhaps on the whole, these are outweighed by the risk of starvation in a crisis.

Still, my preferred strategy is to stay lean rather than let myself go.

The new poster boy of alternative medicine

So now we know that, whilst evading justice for the past few years, Radovan Karadjic was alive and well practicing alternative medicine in Belgrade.

More pertinently, this tells us something profound about the gullibility of those who visit acupuncturists and homeopathists. Karadjic knew that he was one of the world's most wanted men and that his days were numbered. To prolong his liberty, he had to find a job where he could easily fool people that he was something he was not. Where people would not have their suspicions aroused, or ask awkward questions, or engage their critical faculties.

And what better field in which to do this than in the field of alternative medicine?

Why does a bishop need a penis?

Damned if I know. But 1,300 priests are threatening to leave the Church of England if it does not compromise and provide areas of the country where you are guaranteed a bishop with cock.