Home-Brewed Bulletins

The Sea Dog, or The Ducking Fog

2011-09-27T11:40:00.000-07:00

The ducking fog!
Flits on the shore,
The nub of the rose
Pains his trooping.

The ducking fog!
Locks his keg on tree.
Disguised as mere duck,
Proud of stinging clench.

The ducking fog!
Marks at the boon,
Nicks his leathers,
And buckles his sum.

Plot A: A pirate smuggler comes ashore, struggles through a rose garden and a barnyard, leaves his rum, and cuts his hands to grab some treasure that he secretes in his coat and his belt.

Plot B: I really date my hog sometimes.

The Old Testament God of Peace?

2011-09-23T13:08:00.000-07:00

This is rough-hewn for now but thoughts have been percolating for a while and I wrote some of them down earlier. I'd like to particularly thank Gary Holt and other friends from the Bible study group at work for leading me through some of the learning that's gone into these ideas.

A lot of people have pointed out at different times that "the Old Testament God is brutal and vengeful", and it's very easy to find evidence that may be used to support this. Several times in Judges "God" apparently orders the execution of entire populations; in Genesis God's angels mete this out to Sodom and Gomorrah; and in the flood story God himself decides to put all mankind to death. Every one of us would condemn anything like this as genocide today. This is in no way unusual among stories that have come down to us from the late bronze and iron ages - consider the Iliad, Mabinogion, Viking Sagas, most any national founding myths.

What I think is emphasized much too little is that this is only part of what we see of God in the writings that have come to form the Torah / Tanakh / Old Testament. We also see a tender and peaceful God, which in many ways is much more foundational.

The story of Jacob is particularly curious among national myths. He's a relatively normal guy who by faith, sheer hard work and a certain amount of hook-and-crook builds the best life he can for his family. Compare with Romulus, Theseus, King Arthur, George Washington? (Of course, this is one of the reasons why Benjamin Franklin is my favorite American hero of all time!)

The story of David is particularly curious among dynastic founding myths. Yes, he's a great military leader, but this is always a side issue compared with his joy in the Lord and what God has done for him. He is generous, magnanimous, conflict-avoiding and forgiving whenever he can be (and when he's not, in the story of Uriah, he's deeply shocked at himself and penitent). David is a very deliberate contrast with Saul, Gideon, Samson, and the other Judges - they are all jolly efficient at destroying their enemies, but there is a very clear message that David and David's line deserves the reader's loyalty because of his faith and his goodness from God that shines from within. His whole story even begins with everyone saying "it can't be this one, look at him!" and Samuel saying "you only see the outside, God sees within".

All Biblical scholars to my knowledge - Jewish, Christian, conservative, liberal, etc - at least agree that the most important parts of the canon were compiled and edited some centuries after the events depicted. The editors probably had to include the blood and guts and destruction of enemies because any national myth without blood and guts and destruction of enemies was unthinkable at the time. (It's still largely unthinkable today, look at all the monuments and movies we have about war leaders.) But among ancient founding stories, the editors were clearly not content with just this, victory in war is not the purpose of Deuteronomic histories, it's the shallow and often frowned-upon starting point.

So the editors of the canon clearly and deliberately chose to highlight the stories of people like Jacob and David. What do we think was so important for them to communicate?

New Song: Which Side Are You On?

2011-07-31T11:10:00.000-07:00

Yesterday while putting away the laundry I found myself humming a new song. Here are the lyrics.

***

When Gore said to Bush, "This will cost us!", Which side were you on?
When he said "Your tax cuts are reckless!", Which side were you on?

Oh Lord! Don't forget now! Which side were you on?
Oh Lord! We're in debt now! Which side were you on?

When Bush said, "The rich need more money!", Which side were you on?
When he said, "There'll be jobs a plenty!", Which side were you on?

Oh Lord! Please remember! Which side were you on?
And don't forget come next November! Which side were you on?

When Bush said "Send troops to the desert!", Which side were you on?
When he said "Old Saddam's the worst hurt!", Which side were you on?

Oh Lord! Don't forget now! Which side were you on?
Oh Lord! We're in debt now! Which side were you on?

Month on month the war drums a-holler! Which side were you on?
The Euro climbed, and down went the dollar! Which side were you on?

Oh Lord! Please remember! Which side were you on?
And don't forget come next November! Which side were you on?

When they said "We'll pay for war later!", Which side were you on?
When they said "Our patr'otism's greater!", Which side were you on?

Oh Lord! Don't forget now! Which side were you on?
Oh Lord! We're in debt now! Which side were you on?

Now I hear "We can't afford schools now!", Which side are you on?
When the rich take poor folks for fools now, Which side are you on?

Oh Lord! Please remember! Which side are you on?
And don't forget come next November! Which side are you on?

***

A bit more backstory is on my little music site.

Yes, I've given in to polarization, on some levels at least. Or I've given in to pointing out the existing polarization as I see it, which is perhaps not much different. There is too much of a pattern of hypocrisy to avoid comment, and yes, I prefer spending money on schools to bombs.

Comments welcome. Particularly contrary comments that might give me any chance to see things differently. So no, I don't mean "But you've got to see that now Obama's in office deficits are really bad because the government is evil, right?". I mean something that gives a decent argument as to why debts for tax-breaks for the wealthy and foreign wars were worthwhile, but debts for education and healthcare are totally immoral.

Please contribute your favo[u]rite Americanisms here!

2011-07-22T07:20:00.000-07:00

There's a challenge below - please post comments with words and phrases that, unlike rock'n'roll, haven't made it to Britain yet!

The BBC just produced a reader-contributed list of most noted Americanisms. Dismal stuff - "take away" is correct and "take out" makes me want to faint without a scrap of a reason, film is better than movie because it's the language of Beowulf, and "gotten", with its couple of dozen appearances in the King James Bible and at least a handful in Shakespeare, is a cringeworthy American neologism. The Economist, bless its heart, has already published a scholarly debunking of many of these Anti-Americanisms.

Come on, folks, let's do something more fun! Britain's done really well from the New World in terms of music, entertainment, and crazy oversized consumer goods. Calling a movie after the film that used to be in the projector, or shortening refrigerator to fridge, these things just don't upset us here in the New World, and if the folks back in Blightly decided to call a big-ass TV a big-arse TV or even a big-bum TV, well, that would make us smile not grimace. And every time American music gets exported to the British Isles, it comes back with interest - we could fill a book with the wealth of blues and rock'n'roll guitar licks that have become cornerstones of British popular culture and returned to America as big hits. We couldn't be happier to share, we benefit enormously, e pluribus unum and all that.

But if the blokes and blokesses back in Blighty think modern British English is complete enough for Chaucer so it's complete enough for anyone, we should help them out. Many many of my friends and nearly all of my family have one time or another lived on both sides of the Atlantic. We know that sometimes there's a perfect word for something in Britain and there just isn't in the New World, and sometimes it's the other way round.

So please, all you transatlantic travelers out there, lend a hand! Instead of listing 50 words and phrases we hate without reason, let's try to gather a list of words and phrases we enjoy in North America that they might enjoy back in Britain, if only they knew! Just post them as comments below for now, email me if you have trouble, and in the unlikely event that this gets popular I'll try to find a more sustainable structure.

I'll start with a few to get the ball rolling and will add more as I think of them. Please please, if you think of anything send it in!

On Becoming a US Citizen

2011-04-29T12:13:00.000-07:00

I was asked to speak at the swearing in ceremony, on April 29th 2011 in PIttsburgh, Penssylvania, at which 51 of us became American Citizens. After thanking the judge, the attorney, and all who work for the court and the immigration service who had helped us along the way, this is what I said:

At Jewish Passovers, it is traditional for a young member of the family to ask “Why is this day special?”, whereupon one of the grandparents tells the moving story of a nation’s founding, a nation’s freedom. Every year on our own Independence Day (also my daughter Elinor’s birthday), I find myself wishing that we had the same tradition: amid the pleasures of a good meal, a cold beer, and the anticipation of fireworks, to stop and ask “Why is this day special?”

If you’re British in America, you have a special advantage here - every year on Independence Day you can’t avoid the question! And so it was for me, on my first Independence Day here, and every year: and it is a wonderful and moving journey. Schoolchildren in England are usually taught something about the French and Russian Revolutions, but not the American Revolution. It is never mentioned in political or social history, and in military history, American Independence is skated over in shuffling embarrassment, something of a hiccup in an otherwise clean slate from King Alfred to Francis Drake, to Nelson to Churchill. Coming to America, Britons have to learn afresh and question themselves.

The American Revolution was about much much more than whether people on one side of the Atlantic should govern people on another. The Revolution took the best of English and European traditions: Magna Carta, the Religious Settlement under Elizabeth, the French Enlightenment and the Rights of Man, and made something real, practical, resilient, sustainable, something we could implement as the cornerstone of freedom. Government of the people, by the people, for the people: however imperfect we the people are, it is our way to the Creator’s endowment of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

The American Revolution did not end in chaos or dictatorship. It cannot be placed in one period of history, the student can not finish the chapter and move on. It led to a new law, the Constitution, which governs each of us as individuals, but is itself governed by the people as a whole. It is part of a great campaign of the rights of humanity spanning centuries: that freedom cannot be restricted by religion or color, that voting cannot be restricted by wealth or gender. The Revolution spread, winning converts who made it their own. After two generations, in 1832, Britain passed its own reform act, so that, as in the USA, representation in government was based on population, not on ancient privilege. In 1867, Canada moved peacefully to its own democratic independence. People throughout every continent have thrown off old overlords and forge their own destinies: France, Germany, Russia, Turkey, Japan, India, Australia, Brazil, South Africa, a daring, growing list that would have amazed our founding fathers. And with events in the Middle East, the reach of freedom may even be spreading further than any of us would have imagined only a few months ago.

Every nation is unique, every people brings its own insight and value to the world table. But we believe there is a unifying theme to all humanity: that we all share rights including Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. These rights, though divinely endowed, are for many people today as distant as the dreams that must have sustained the American Revolutionaries through some of their bitter, doubtful winters. To this day, it is a hope for all people, a natural birthright, worth the devotion of a lifetime.

To this, I too dedicate myself. I am here today not because my story is inspiring: I am here because America’s story is inspiring. I am honored, I am grateful, to take part. Thank you all.

Talked with the Governor of Pennsylvania!

2011-04-27T14:23:00.000-07:00

Earlier today I got to have a good and very direct chat with Governor Corbett.

He was visiting Google Pittsburgh, there wasn't an organized "question and answer" session, but I hoped that if I positioned myself between the photo ops and the cafeteria he might just bump into me and say hello, which is precisely what happened.

We were very friendly and polite to each other, but nonetheless traded opinions on some tough issues. In particular, I wanted him to know that his statement "I don't think anyone here wants to pay any more in taxes" does not speak for me, and I know many other Googlers who it doesn't speak for. If more money in taxation is required for good schools for our children, then we'll pay it. People who work for Google are choosing between many options in many parts of the world, so if Pennsylvania is competing for tech talent (as the Governor emphasized), the state needs to be aware that we care about issues like education.

Of course, the Governor didn't say "Wow, you're right, I should change the budget proposals". But he did listen. We both agreed that Google employees are privileged and not-your-average-citizen. He did talk about longer term options for paying for schools and universities, voucher systems and choice. He recognizes that long-term, we need better education, it builds stronger communities, lower crime, more prosperous societies. And (something I haven't heard so much in the public speeches) he emphasized that the stop-gap budget he had to come out with in 6 weeks is not his long-term vision for Pennsylvania: longer term we need to have a much more strategic and visionary approach.

There is much we disagree on, and I'll still be surprised if we come to agree enough about his concrete proposals for me to vote for him next time. But we were both receptive and respectful, and I very much appreciated his taking the time to talk with me. He said "watch this space, we're not always going to be in crisis mode", and I will certainly watch it carefully, look at subsequent budget proposals, and consider his record and manifesto carefully if he stands for reelection.

I really appreciate opportunities like this. There might be a few jobs where you get to talk to your State Governor in person, but I bet I have one of the only jobs where you get to talk to your State Governor dressed in shorts and sandals and nobody thinks it's at all unusual!

Counting the Cost of Nuclear ... and Road Traffic Accidents

2011-03-20T12:52:00.000-07:00

Massive gulf oil spill. Answer: Find a way to blame BP.

1.2 million road deaths in 2010. Answer: Subsidize the auto industry. Don't dream of stopping driving.

One bad nuclear accident (impact unknown). Answer: Remove this evil from the face of the planet!

Why? Because nuclear accidents are rare enough we feel we can get upset about them and solve the problem by changing others, not changing ourselves.

***

We're hearing a lot about the Fukishima nuclear power station at the moment - a recent BBC headline reads "Japanese police say 15,000 people may have died in one prefecture alone, as efforts to tackle the Fukushima nuclear crisis go on." One could be forgiven for reading that and thinking that the nuclear crisis has killed 15,000 people. But as far as we know, it hasn't killed any yet.

First of all, the most important thing is the tsunami disaster and survivors. There is a lot you can do to help: one of the many responsible organizations accepting donations and organizing relief efforts is Mercy Corps.

Secondly, it's still way too early to say "mission accomplished" on the reactors. Another BBC article says that the incident has been raised to a "level 5" by the Japanese authorities. This puts in on a par with the other two level 5's in history, Windscale 1957 (eventually causing an estimated 120 deaths) and Three Mile Island, 1979 (eventually causing an estimated 0 deaths). So even if the worst radioactive emissions are over, the reactors can be cooled, and the situation brought under control, there may be long term illnesses and even some deaths caused by the incident. We will need to monitor carefully and learn - an obvious lesson being "don't put a nuclear power station near a well-known fault line". This lesson appears to have already been learned in most of the USA, according to a map made by Rhiza Labs. (We're not quite sure why there are a couple in California, that doesn't seem too smart, and apparently one in Humboldt County, CA, was closed in the ’70s precisely because of seismic activity.) Europe (Northern Europe particularly) has a lot less earthquake activity in general.

Thirdly, and my main point: in spite of there being no confirmed deaths, there is a chorus of voices (including many good friends of mine) saying that enough is enough, we should altogether get rid of nuclear power. Enough of what? Enough injury and death and suffering caused by nuclear power?

Let's compare with road traffic accidents. According the the World Health Organization:

"Worldwide, an estimated 1.2 million people are killed in road crashes each year and as many as 50 million are injured. Projections indicate that these figures will increase by about 65% over the next 20 years unless there is new commitment to prevention."

So every single year, 10,000 people die in road traffic accidents for every person killed as a result of the Windscale fire, which (according to the rankings) is a comparable incident to the Fukushima incident. To put in in context: I remember watching an hour's documentary about Windscale. To devote a similar attention-span-per-fatality to road traffic accidents in 2010 alone, I would have to spend 10,000 hours, which is over 1 year, watching documentaries about the accidents and the people killed.

An obvious question is "Hang on, what about Chernobyl?". Estimates for eventual fatalities from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 are hard to verify, ranging from about 100 to about 1 million, with a figure of 4,000 quoted in between. The 4,000 figure is disputed as too small by anti-nuclear and too big by pro-nuclear commentators. (This is a good example of how, most of the time, we don't weigh the evidence and choose our position accordingly, we choose our position first and then weigh the evidence accordingly.) If 4,000 is the correct number, then 300 people died in road accidents in 2010 alone for every person killed in the worst nuclear accident ever. Also, much has been learned from Chernobyl, and given the sort of funding required and precautions taken for each nuclear power station today, a incident from the declining nearly-bankrupt years of the USSR is not a typical case.

If we are so less likely to die of nuclear fallout than we are in road traffic accidents, why are people so eager to ban nuclear? I think the answer is not that we're really threatened, but quite the opposite. We're not really threatened. Nothing really bad has happened in quarter of a century. So when something bad might happen it makes it very easy to get hot under the collar, to get really worried about how terrible this is, because it's so unusual, and the unusual is newsworthy. And we could get rid of nuclear and feel much better about ourselves and how much we've done for the planet, without actually impacting our lives very much either way. Sure, there'd be more pressure on natural resources, the pro-drilling lobby would be thrilled, and we'd see some price rises in electricity. Perhaps we'd see more investment in renewables. But we wouldn't really have to behave differently on a day to day level, would we?

And the moral upside of getting rid of nuclear would feel huge. As Greenpeace puts it in describing the Chernobyl museum:

"These powerful images are a timely reminder that human lives are more than just numbers. For each statistic there is a person paying the ultimate price. Anyone who doubts the dangers of nuclear power should visit the exhibition and see for themselves one of the reasons why we oppose nuclear power. Twenty years on, every nuclear power plant bears the legacy of the nuclear industry's victims; and every nuclear power plant represents the threat of becoming the next Chernobyl."

Powerful stuff. So what if we replaced a suspected 4,000 deaths with a confirmed 1.2 million, and said "every new motor car bears the legacy of the auto industry's victims"? Ban cars now?

A quick response from me to Senator Toomey's statement on Guantanamo trials

2011-03-18T06:14:00.000-07:00

Senator Toomey recently wrote “I am pleased President Obama has decided to resume trying detainees in military commissions at Guantanamo. I now look forward to hearing the president announce that murderous enemy combatants, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will go before military commissions instead of American civilian courts. Pennsylvanians do not want terrorists such as Mohammed being tried in their communities, and our citizens must be kept safe from the security threats that would arise from such high-profile trials,” (http://toomey.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=331724).

Here is my response, which I thought I would share:

Dear Sir,

I am not one of those you speak for when you say "Pennsylvanians do not want terrorists such as Mohammed being tried in their communities".

I believe in the rule of law, and have perfect faith that the authorities of the United States could both execute the rule of law and keep me and my family safe from an unarmed accused terrorist and any who would seek to help him.

The fear expressed by our leaders in this matter confuses "how wicked someone is" with "how much harm they can do". This is not fitting for the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Please be aware that at least some Pennsylvanians believe that our government should be competent to protect us from unarmed well-known bad guys in custody.

Yours faithfully,

Dominic Widdows

Sout Al Horeya Link and Lyrics

2011-02-18T07:33:00.000-08:00

Sout Al Horeya is a wonderful song and music video has been going round the web. In case you're a Roman alphabet reader like me who wants to try to sing the Arabic lyrics, here they are transliterated into Roman type (with thanks to alielsokary).

To see the meaning translated into English, turn on the "CC" (closed caption) link in the YouTube video player.

Sout Al Horeya

nezlt w 'oolt ana mesh rageAA

we katabt bdamy fe kol shareAA

samAAna elly makansh sameAA

wetkasaret kol el mawaneAA

selahna kan ahlamnaaa

we bokra wadeh odamna

men zaman bnstanaa

bndawar mesh la'ieen makanaa

fe kol shareAA fe bladiiii Sout Al Horeya bynadi

rafAAna rasna fe elsamaaa

we elgooAA maba'ash byhmnaa

aham haga ha'ienaa

we nkteb tarikhna bdamnaaa haaa haaa

lw kont wahed mnnaa

balash trghi we t'olinaaa

nemshi we nsiiiib helmnaa

w batal t'ool klmt anaa haaaa haaaaaa

fe kol shareAA fe bladiiii Sout Al Horeya bynadi

Protesters and Students and Thugs at the G20 in Pittsburgh

2009-09-25T07:16:00.000-07:00

During the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, there has been some much publicized damage in Oakland (the University district). But before you condemn the protesters as wanton vandals: the local press records that most of the damage was done by students who went out to taunt the protesters and were forcibly dispersed by the police.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/pittsburgh/s_644908.html

I just passed the "Free Tibet" protesters in Squirrel Hill - organized, respectful, quiet but clear. They are an important example of our freedom to dissent, and to draw the attention of our governments to those issues we think are important.

Don't get me wrong, there are a few idiots who have come into town just to cause trouble. It is a crying shame that, thanks to a few deliberate thugs, excitable students, nervous police, and the press who follow (and encourage) all of them, one would think that the right to dissent publicly is a freedom we no longer merit.

A Sober Bicentennial

2007-03-25T23:44:00.000-07:00

Today - March 25th, 2007 - is the 200th anniversary of the passage of the Act of Parliament that outlawed the Atlantic Slave Trade. Within 18 months of the Battle of Trafalgar, and with 8 years of war still to rage on the European continent, the now undisputed naval superpower declared an intention to see the end of a trade on the high seas that had supported Britain's economy for hundreds of years. And, unlike many such initiatives, the intention was followed more or less adamantly. The Royal Navy appointed itself policeman of the seaways, and with force and treaty over many decades, set to the task of apprehending, boarding, searching, and if necessary prosecuting and hanging suspected slavers. At times, up to one sixth of the world's most powerful navy was devoted to the task of blockading the West African coast, to prevent the continuance of the Slave Trade. To my knowledge, this determined use of military resources in the enforcement of a humanitarian principle is unprecedented before or since.

This hardly makes amends for the evil of slavery in general or the Atlantic Slave Trade in particular, for which a formal apology from Britain and other nations is long overdue. Slavery throughout the British Empire was not abolished until 3 more decades had passed, and some argue that its final abolition owed more to Sam Sharpe's slave rebellion in Jamaica than William Wilberforce's persistence in the House of Commons. That one was decorated and the other hanged makes history's selective accolades even more sorrowful. Other European and American countries persisted in legalised forms of slavery much longer still. In Brazil, slavery was not abolished until the 1880's, and in Russia, the institution of serfdom persisted until 1859, one of a host of important reminders that the history of enslavement of one person by another is complex and insidious, and is not just an issue "black and white". Other countries were ahead of Britain - for example, Denmark abolished slavery and slave trading in 1798.

The situation in North America was much more varied than many people think. Non-Americans are often taught only that the United States came to blows over slavery in paving the way for a late emancipation in 1865, branding the USA as an kicking-and-screaming latecomer in this aspect of human rights. Though slavery is still sometimes described by historians as "America's birth defect", the history of slavery in the settlements that became the United States spans the whole period, and exemplifies some of the best, as well as the worst of the morality of the time. The Pennsylvania Assembly voted to penalise the slave trade with prohibitive taxes during colonial times, but this legislation was outlawed by the Government in London. After Independence, Pennsylvania and Massachussetts outlawed slavery as early as 1780, though even they were pipped at the post by Vermont in 1778. Since Vermont was at the time an independent republic, it retains the honour of being the first sovereign state in modern times to outlaw the practice of slavery. Similar honours are due to West Virginia, formerly part of Virginia, whose secession from the mother state at the outset of the Civil War was in rebellion against slavery.

The United States banned the slave trade on the high seas in the same year as Britain, two hundred years ago, but the fledgling US Navy lacked the means to prosecute the policy. Britain did much to harm the possibility of American cooperation, because of another endemic form of enslavement that the Royal Navy could not do without - the Press Gang. The terror of British ports, the Press Gang's job was to ensure that the Royal Navy had sufficient "recruits". For all its glories, the Royal Navy was an abominable place to serve, and recruitment to the gun decks depended on conscription. In the port cities themselves, this conscription often took the form of capturing merchant sailors who had drunk too much, who waking up on board ship at the pleasure of His Majesty may have had good reason to regret "the draft". On the high seas, the Navy assumed the right to board ships in the hunt for deserters. Given that many, if not most, American sailors at the time had at one time been, at least arguably, British subjects, and were hence prime suspects for "deserters", a clash was inevitable. If I knew the history better I might see other sides to the argument, but in the meantime, my sympathies with respect to the issues that led to the War of 1812 are wholeheartedly American. For decades to come, American ships were naturally suspicious of armed British boarding parties, including those who claimed to be arriving on board ship purely out of humanitarian concern.

Looking back to the issues that were so hotly debated in 1807, I see startling resemblance to political divides today. (Similarity, or "made in our own image" - who knows?) Abolishing slavery would be terribly damaging to commercial and national interests - at a time when the Enemy (at this time, the French) were ready to pounce on our every weakness. (William Wilberforce was actually decorated by the French Revolutionary Government for his efforts, which did his cause in Britain no end of harm.) Things were at least better for the slaves in the Caribbean than in the starving wilds of Africa, so it was humanitarian to transport them. ("If they weren't working in our factories, they'd be even worse off.") Given these typical objections, it is a marvel that the legislation to abolish slave trading passed Parliament, especially in time of War. The idea of the sugar industry being made to do without forced human labour was as prabably as unthinkable as the idea of many modern industries doing without fossil fuels. The idea of Africans deserving basic rights and freedom from exploitation was probably to some as outlandish as the idea that marine ecosystems should be accorded basic rights and freedom from exploitation today. But somehow, against all the odds and the economic practicalities of the situation, change did take hold, and with the simple hindsight of 200 years, we are of the confirmed opinion that anyone who supported the Slave Trade was clearly a self-seeking scoundrel.

The conservatives, then and now, had a literary heavy-hitter on their side: the Bible. The Good Book is clear in its support of slavery. It is carefully regulated in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. You have to set male Israelite slaves free after 6 years (not their families, and foreigners are fair game forever); you have to sacrifice in the temple if you rape one of your female slaves who turns out to be married or engaged (no penance required if the female slave is single); you shouldn't beat your slave to death (you can beat them, but if they can't walk again after 2 days then that's too hard). Even the New Testament, in its explicit statements about slavery, is largely supportive - St Paul exhorts slaves to serve their masters as we all serve Christ, and requests that his friend Philemon give him the slave Onesimus who has been a useful and devoted servant to Paul. Granted, Paul also made a few explicit statements that, under the Kingdom of Christ, there would be no distinction between free and bonded, Jew and Gentile - but that would be then, this is now.

But, as is well known, William WiIlberforce, the British Abolitionists, the Quakers in Pennsylvania, were deeply Christian in their motivations as well. They argued that the Love of God trumped all laws that sanctioned oppression - even Biblical laws; that the early laws given to the Hebrews may have been appropriate only in less civilised times; and that our understanding of right and wrong should be advancing, not fixed in tribal documents. For some Christians, "If parts of the Bible say slavery is right, then slavery is right." For others, "If parts of the Bible say slavery is right, then parts of the Bible are wrong."

There have been similar debates in the history of the Church, and it is being repeated today over the issue of homosexuality (the only substantial difference is that those who claim that the Bible is "incontrovertible" have picked different “incontrovertible” verses). The other side of the debate within the Church is also still with us - less vocal in the USA, but more than alive and well in Europe. They are the people who are involved in Trade Justice, Drop the Debt, and the Make Poverty History campaign. They include my parents and their friends, and I sill have a child's pride in what my wonderful parents do. They go to political events, they make banners and march in the streets, they bring the enthusiasm for justice back to their home town, they put on a host of events, they given people tea and coffee and cake and pamphlets, they host the Korean War Veterans, the Tank Regiment, and the Stop-the-War protesters under the same roof. They make people confront and talk about things that none of us really want to hear about.

Yes, we should make amends for slavery and other evils, but speeches and written words won't cut it without action. Unfair trading agreements, unfair prices for raw materials and labour, the Third World debt - these are the modern legacy of the slavery and the causes of slavery, and they must be thrown out.

We don't need to cast our eyes abroad to see the evil consequences of slavery. The evils of slavery are on our shores, and apparently are growing. An estimated 4000 women were trafficked to the UK in 2006, tempted by "family friends" or "boyfriends" to be trapped into sex slavery. Slavery has moved from the legal to the illegal sphere, but it persists. An estimated 10 million people were slaves in 1807: an estimated 27 million people are slaves today. In the meantime, the House of Commons has voted 8 billions pounds (over 15 millions dollars) to update our fleet of Trident nuclear submarines. It is hard to see how nuclear submarines can protect us against modern threats, let alone what role they have to play in pursuing the suppression of the Slave Trade to its determined end. As a diminished nation, perhaps the best Britain can hope for in the 21st century is that, if we are attacked by a handful of terrorists, we can destroy the cities they came from.

On this bicentennial, should I be proud or ashamed of Britain, the country where I was brought up, or of America, the country I seem to have adopted? I don't know, I don't think sentiments of pride or shame really hurt or help either way. But there are some lessons I'm willing to draw from this.

We have a natural tendency to make excuses for the way we harm to our fellow humans, and we have developed a huge machine that enables us to hide from these harmful realities.

Religion motivates the best humanity has to offer, and sanctions the worst.

Laws are only the beginning. Committing the will, the resources, and the persistence over decades to see them through is what counts.

Bringing about change for the better involves long uphill struggles to change opinions, win hearts and minds, make sacrifices, compromise, take it a bit at a time, three steps forward and two steps back. But great changes are possible, they have been wrought before.

Within 200 years, the moral imperatives of an apparently complex situation will be distilled down to blinding simplicity.

The only way we can ever hope to make the future better than the past is to act in the present.

---

Sources: There were a number of very useful sources for this essay, written and word-of-mouth, along with many dates half-known and half-remembered. I was writing this in Cincinnati airport, so didn’t have access to sources, and it’s now late at night. Please write to me if you want corroboration of any of the facts and figures I have cited, and I will retract any that turn out to be wrong and qualify and that turn out to be misleading.

Some useful and interesting articles are available at the following websites:

BBC panelists
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/6474225.stm

Biblical quotes and some analysis
http://www.religioustolerance.org/sla_bibl.htm

Antislavery
http://www.antislavery.org/

Wikipedia article on abolitionism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolitionism

Some Naval History
http://amistad.mysticseaport.org/discovery/themes/lane.navy.html

Royal Naval Museum
http://www.royalnavalmuseum.org/visit_see_victory_cfexhibition_infosheet.htm

Keeping up with life in Pittsburgh

2006-06-04T19:08:00.000-07:00

Walking into the main Carnegie Library in Oakland, next to the Universities, the Phipps Conservatory, and a 400 acre park, one can't help but be reminded that Pittsburgh abounds in the basic necessities for high civilization, and even better, it's right on your doorstep. Or rather, to be more exact, it's about 5 minutes drive from home and 7 minutes drive from work. Right on our doorstep, opposite the Spanish immersion elementary school, is the other 400 acre park, where Rolo happily snuffles every morning and fondly imagines that some day he has a hope of catching a squirrel, a bunny rabbit, a chipmunk, or a deer. So far he hasn't come anywhere near, though he has got himself lost in the woods a couple of times trying, given up, and turned up back home several minutes before his chapperone stops calling for him in the park. Which is always a completely harrowing several minutes, as every dog owner knows. Fortunately Rolo only crosses one road on the way, and has absolutely no chance of getting lost on the way back. As well as a symphony, ballet, big theatre district, respectable art and natural history museum, and the National Aviary, all within a 12 minute drive, we also have waterfalls, white water rafting, forests, falling leaves, skiing and snowboarding within an hour's drive. In the spring, for a month or so, the city blooms like no other I've ever lived in. Cherry, apple, dogwood, and many others that one day I'll photograph and publish somewhere online so that flower lovers who would never have dreamt of visiting can put Pittsburgh in their calendar.

By now the blossoms have given way to leaves and fruits. We're very lucky to have a cherry tree in the garden, and the cherries themselves are now turning from green to pink to red. Hopefully there'll be plenty to share with folk for a few weeks. We've also been working on bookshelves, plastering, painting, rewiring, planting flowers, and generally way too many things to do at once, especially since in the past two or three months I've been travelling to England, France, Italy, the United Arab Emirates, and a trip to Maryland. As well as some chance for holiday, there has been a lot of travel to present some of MAYA's work to communities that are interested in what we're doing, sharing information, reusing resources, merging and combining information in the biomedical domain, building smarter devices, smarter networks, and all that good stuff. If anyone's interested, there are a few papers at my local MAYA webpage, and there will probably be more to come. And if you're more interested in the house projects, here's a picture of the bookshelves (and Rolo and me).

So, as usual, there's a millions exciting, harrowing, predictable and surprising things happening in the world and at home. I just thought I should scribble something down, and for once I thought I should skip politics, science and religion and write about a couple of the things I concentrate on in real life.

Oil and Coca

2006-02-01T06:24:00.000-08:00

The front page of the BBC website was interesting on Wednesday (which gives some idea of how busy I have been in the meantime).

The main story was the tragicomical spectacle of George Bush urging the USA to reduce dependency on foreign oil. Rather like the pyromaniac who's burned the street down finally accepting that fire is dangerous and the community should invest in fire extinguishers. So finally, the Republican Guard is accepting that the streets of Baghdad aren't full of cheering Iraqis draping American flags from every lamppost, the price of oil is sky high, and the war is not going to pay for itself by improving the oil supply - quite the opposite (in contrast with the rosy picture presented to us before the war began, that it was going to cost $60 billion payed for by Iraqi oil, whereas the current cost is some $400 billion and counting).

It's probably too late to turn around the American Imperial machine, as real events since the speech have demonstrated. More money for the war in Iraq, specifically for military expenses not reconstruction, hikes in US defense spending across the board, and cutbacks everywhere else. According to friends and former research collaborators who receive funding from the military budget (there are many defense research programs in the USA), those cutbacks are eating into information systems research. I don't recall the 9/11 report recommending that resources be diverted away from information integration programs, nor stating that the reason for the 9/11 attacks was that the USA wasn't spending enough money fighting insurgents in foreign countries - nonetheless, that is the priority that has been set by the current US administration. The people who could implement the overhaul of information infrastructure recommended by the 9/11 commission aren't receiving the necessary funding - they're afraid of losing their jobs to pay for Iraq. Compare the State of the Union address with tomorrow's budget and make your own judgment. (There a preview on MarketWatch here.)

Sadly, that's all very predictable. We will remember this regime as the one that spent the USA out of global influence, both fiscally and morally. Many may rejoice. I don't - as a traditional European social liberal, I have a lot of bones to pick with the USA, but I would still much prefer US hegemony to Chinese.

However, a much more interesting story was about legal coca growers (you can find the story at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4623350.stm). Since the election of Eva Morales in Bolivia, himself a former coca farmer, there has at last been some interesting debate and awareness raising about the role of crops in the "war on drugs". The article describes the varied uses of the coca leaf for making drinks and medicine, just as the hemp plant has been used for centuries to make rope and textiles. There are many farmers worldwide trying to build a living out of the legal and beneficial uses of the coca plant, instead of using huge amounts of it to make small amounts of cocaine.

If we can just make the right connections between these coca farmers and the right markets, we can bring a variety of great new products to consumers and cut the narcotics out of the business. The two main enemies of this strategy are of course the drug barons and the (somewhat ignorant) drug warriors. As with the global "war on terror", and almost every other conflict there is, the warriors on both sides would much rather have the war continue than to face the challenge of peace.

Having lived in Bolivia for a time, I have some good experience of the coca leaf - my Bolivian host once heard that I had a stomach ache and literally stuffed some into my squeamish Western mouth, and within a few minutes the stomach ache went away. It's quite a miracle - it seemed to cure both constipation and diarrhoea with equal effectiveness, don't ask me how.

Needless to say, us prissy western Christian kids were terribly worried that we were getting hoodwinked into "taking drugs", whereas our hosts had no idea what the fuss was about and of course, thought we were refusing hospitality and saying that their plant wasn't good enough for us, while we were obviously suffering from ill effects that the plant was known to cure in many cases. It was an interesting situation, as you can imagine, and it will surprise none of my readers to hear that, for me at least, the "conquer evil by force of will and force or arms" rhetoric of Cromwellian Protestants was soon quietened by the humble but wise coca plant.

Some of my teammates had a little more difficulty letting go of the rules, of course, but we had very different attitudes on a range of topics and the positions we chose on the coca leaf debate were very predictable.

"You should pray to God for relief from your stomach ache."

"I did. God heard my prayers and gave me coca leaves."

Of course, this idea is many world's away from the way the USA has traditionally fought its "war on drugs", fighting violence with violence, because overmonied idiots in the USA encourage tons and tons of perfectly good coca leaves to be condensed down to mere grams of cocaine so they can get high, do dangerous things, and damage their health. Just as you can distill large amounts of grain to make small amounts of whisky, which we all know to be a dangerous and harmful substance.

Imagine that the year is 1760 and the whisky problem in Britain is getting out of hand. And suppose that it's easier to sneak a barrel of whisky into England than to disguise the cultivation of a grain and the nearby distillery. To prevent the uncontrollable surge of illicit whisky across the Atlantic, the Redcoats start marching around the American countryside burning grain fields, on the grounds that the British, the world's most sophisticated people and the champions of liberty in the modern world, can't be trusted not to use all that healthy grain to get horribly drunk, act violently, and go blind. Sadly but seriously, this is very much how the American "war or drugs" has been perceived in Bolivia, and with good reason. It doesn't sound like such a good policy when you try and put the boot on the other foot, does it?

So, thumbs up to Auntie for publishing such a jolly good article on its international frontpage. And if there is any unifying theme to this little essay (except that the source articles both appeared last Wednesday), could we please in future try to connect some of the dots before we decide to go to war? It might even be more profitable.

A Vote for Gulf Coast Relief is a Vote for Arctic Drilling?

2005-12-21T07:55:00.000-08:00

I probably should not be surprised by this, but I am. There is an important vote / fillibuster / lobby / pantomime expected in thhe US Senate soon, on a bill that seems to

i. allocate billions of dollars to defence spending
ii. part of this includes relief and rebuilding for the Gulf Coast
iii. there's something about fuel subsidies for the cold weather, to sweeten the pill of
iv. cutting billions of dollars from Medicare and Medicaid

and there's

v. an Alaska Senator seems to have got Arctic Drilling onto the same bill.

The story I read is here. I may have confused some of the seemingly crazy array of issues that have been rolled together into one story, though it sounds like the US Government has done this for me.

I gather that US history is rife with crazy bills where different politicians insist that they'll support a bill for one thing, provided that their constituency gets another. But seriously, a vote for winter fuel aid and rebuilding the Gulf Coast is a vote for Arctic Drilling and cutting Medicaid? Is this really the will of an educated, enfranchized and free people? Sounds more like an arcane medieval theocracy to me.

In other news, I've laid hardwood floors throughout our ground floor, built a baker's wrack, been sealing the house, making pieces of banister rail, coat hooks, finishing wood furnitred, and learning to use all kinds of tools that I'd never even heard of. Just in case you were thinking that all I ever do is moan about conservatives who couldn't even conserve a jar of marmalade, I wanted you to know that in fact, I devote very little time to politics and a lot more to home improvement! I will hopefully post pictures of some of these projects on the internet, many readers may find this more interesting than my sporadic political rants.

Truthfulness and Weapons of Mass Destruction

2005-11-17T16:25:00.000-08:00

Amongst the to and fro about the war in Iraq, I read this morning about Dick Cheney's condemnation of those who would complain that the governments of the USA and the UK were deceptive in the way they led us into war. Many excerpts from the Vice President's speech can be found here. By now, the Republican Guard is on the defensive, in a predictably offesive fashion. It's worth noting that everything I read in the transcript of the Vice President's speech is arguably true - but whenever a politician follows a statement with a phrase like "those are the facts", the people should probably be extremely sceptical.

What has happened (Dom's personal expert analysis, don't confuse this with "facts", folks) is that the past two years have seen a shambles in Iraq, more and more reports of deception and twisting of public opinion in the run up to the war, the scandal of Abu Graib, the Katrina disaster, clearer and clearer signs of China's rise (this will be about China's 6th rise - the main thing China can teach the US is the virtue of staying power), as the US spends its way into the honourable club of once-great empires, and the slow but perceptible fading of September 11th 2001 into the perspective of history.

Back in 2001 and 2002, the Republican Guard successfully whipped public opinion into war frenzy, with the traditional goads of indignation and fear - get the people angry and frightened, and war becomes the only patriotic decision. I clearly remember the run up to the Iraq war. As war became more inevitable, the question wasn't "will it happen", but "will you stand with the majority?" At the time, Maryl and I didn't. We, and thousands of other people in America, joined hundreds of protests, stating as firmly as we could that we were being misled, that we were being foolish, that in spite of September 11th 2001, going to war in Iraq was not just wrong, it was stupid. Even from close friends and family, we faced shocked questions like "Surely you're supporting the troops?" To which we always said "Yes, we are. Are you supporting them by sending them off to the wrong war for a made up reason?" Oh, how marginalized we were. Had we been Democrat Senators, our political acumen would doubtless have warned us off such foolish idealism in the face of public opinion.

Now, some of the Democrat Senators are finally coming out and saying "we were wrong to go to war, and the administration was wrong to lead us into war". Thanks for speaking out, guys. Now that Bush's approval rating is about one third of the Amrican people (and lord knows what on a worldwide scale), those brave Democrats are coming out and saying that the whole thing was wrong.

So the Republican Guard was decisive but evil and stupid. The Democrats were either wrong, or if they were right, they were too spineless to say so, and now they're trying to capitalize on the fact that public opinion was swayed. And, I've said it before and I'll say it again ... the do-gooder peacniks, the liberal academics, the soft-hearted fools who took the time to read histories of the middle east and the history of previous "wars on terror" ... well, they were right all along.

No WMD, 2000 US soldiers and uncounted Iraqi civilians dead, no sign of the Al Qaeda leaders, the moral high-ground of Western Democracy in tatters, habeus corpus suspended (so long as the administration promises not to torture people).

What are the finest aspects of Western Civilization? What are we going to do to preserve and enhance them? Who will lead us?

Three Years in Guantanamo for the Crime of International Satire

2005-11-11T07:05:00.000-08:00

As ever, when I haven't written a weblog article for months, it's not because there isn't much going on, but because there's so much going on at home and in the world that I really should be making more time to write. Hopefully there will be some catch-up postings soon. However, my immediate reason for scribbling a quick article today is because my cousin Andrew (who is from Trinidad and has lived in Barbados, the UK, and is now in Canada) drew our family's attention to the following article:

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-wobadr094492447oct31,0,1261
> 397.story?coll=ny-worldnews-headlines.

The article asserts that two writers from Afghanistan were incarcerated in the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison for three years, because they were handed over to the US military with the accusation that they had publicly encouraged the assassination of President Bill Clinton. If you read the article you'll find that Pat Robertson's incitement to crime against Venezuela were much more serious, but he's American, Christian, white and rich, so of course he got off with a round of mild public rebuke.

Just a couple of days later, the UK Parliament voted down the Blair Government's plans to increase to 90 days the time for which police can hold terrorists without charging them with any crime. Even though this would still have been a mere snip compared with the astonishing "3 years and counting indefinitely" which the United States has chosen over the ancient writ of Habeus Corpus, that is no standard for any self-respecting country that claims to hold freedom dear. I am delighted that our representatives in parliament are standing up for the ancient rights that made our culture worth defending in the first place (and that the MPs for Halifax and Newcastle were among the Labour "rebels" involved in this defence).

Anyway, my main reason for putting this brief posting together was so that my family could hopefully add some of their insights as comments. Some of the discussions over e-mail (from the USA, Canada, the West Indies and the UK) have been very thought provoking, and I hope that some of them will appear here in due course!

Newtonian Gravitation is just a Theory, too

2005-08-08T04:22:00.000-07:00

The past couple of days have been pretty busy, not only for myself personally, but also for every other scientific pundit who has been working overtime contributing their own views on whether evolution in the United States is an established fact or a dangerous distraction from the serious business of promoting Christianity. What with everything else going in, I have not had time to gather many of the promised quotes demonstrating Darwin's own sympathies with the idea of nature as the tireless designer of the species of the earth, so instead I'll post a couple of thoughts about what others have written more recently.

One of the most interesting is the stance of the school board from Dover, Pennsylvania. No, not Kansas, but our very own PA, the home of Benjamin Franklin (discoverer of electiricity in the lightning bolt), and of the writing of the American Declaration of Independence. In a similar spirit of seeking discovery and questioning misplaced authority, the schoolboard of Dover has apparently ordered that a "disclaimer" should be added to the teaching of Evolution. You can find a sympathetic discussion of the disclaimer in this article, which is honest enough both to reproduce the entire text and to admit that this is only a first step towards the proper goal of teaching history from the book of Genesis.

The beginning of the decalaration to be read to students in Dover reads as follows:

Because Darwin’s Theory is a theory, it is still being tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.

Rather than expressing outrage, I think most scientists could heartily endorse the spirit of scepticism expressed by the Dover declaration. After all, people (especially the media) are all too willing to encourage the public to swallow "science" without sensible questioning, and without distinguishing theory from fact. For example, "thing tend to fall downwards" is a fact. "All objects in the universe exert gravitational influence on all other according to their mass and to the inverse square of the distance in between them" is a theory, and only an approximate theory at that. Perhaps the Dover educators will extend their scrutiny of the curriculum to add the necessary disclaimers before the theory of Gravitation is taught to students. In fact, as soon as the school board gets down to business properly, they will discover a host of assumptions and incompletenessed in many other scientific theories that have been parading as truths for far too long, and I trust that the board will be willing to continue down the path of intellectual emancipation that it has so nobly begun.

Fortunately, our high school students are deemed too unsophisticated to be inculcated into the deeper mysteries of Quantum Theory and the Theory of Relativity, otherwise the list of cautions would probably take longer to read than teaching the theory itself. But these should at least be mentioned, otherwise students may be taught about the electric motor and the electromagnetic spectrum without realising that Faraday's and Maxwell's theories were, again, just theories, and relativity and the quantum theory have plenty to say in improving both of these. But there may be ample opportunity to teach the Copernican Theory of the solar system, and in this case the arguments for the Geo-centric Ptolemaic Theory and the Flat Earth Theory should be presented, at least to enable students to make up their own mind. Of course, the idea that humans are heterosexual and monogamous may be just a theory, but I wonder if it's even that general - the Bible certainly presents alternatives, and our children should probably be exposed to these and left to choose their own path. The modern value given for pi is deduced from the mathematical theory of complex analysis, and students should be told about the Biblical value of 3 as well.

Imagine the intellectual honesty that could result from a society where children are actively encouraged to question the things taught as scientific fact in less enlightened places. I should keep an eye on developments in Dover, if they encourage so much open-mindedness, I might be tempted to move there for the sake of my children's education.

Intelligent Design is a version of Evolution

2005-08-05T22:00:00.000-07:00

In the past couple of days, George Bush has caused a news stir by advocating the teaching of a theory described in its modern guise as as "Intelligent Design". In essence, protagonists of Intelligent Design claim that natural selection alone cannot explain the compexity of biological species, therefore the living world has to be the work of an intelligent Creator. The idea is not new, of course - called variously "the teleological argument", "Paley's Watch", many great scientists, theologians, philosophers and certainly poets have believed in a great Creator and Designer of the Universe. The ridiculous thing about the current fracas isn't that some form of Intelligent Design might be a tempting point of view for a scientist to hold: it is that this view is being put forth as an alternative to the theory of Evolution.

Intelligent Design is not a competitor with Evolution. It presupposes Evolution, while advancing an explanation of how Evolution may have taken place. The scientific concensus upon Evolution itself is virtually complete: the geological record, the fossil record, the link with cosmology, biological observations, all bear witness to the fact that human beings and every other species evolved gradually from the first tiny single-cell creatures.

Religious conservatives did fight a bitter rearguard action against Evolution itself when the theory was young. When the Origin of Species was first published, the wife of the Bishop of Worcester expressed horror in the famous quote: "Descended from the Apes? My dear, let us hope that it is not true, but if it is, let us pray that it does not become widely known." But in spite of her plea, the theory of Evolution - if not that we are descended from current apes, that we and the apes share common ancestry - is accepted beyond reasonable doubt, and has become widely known. In scientific terms, Evolution is "true" - as true as the fact that electrons orbit nuclei. The remaining questions are about how and why Evolution happened, and who is responsible, and it is here that present day religious conservatives are trying to assert their agenda, while at the same time trying to obscure the fact that all parties agree on the fact that Evolution itself happened.

In other contexts, people find it very easy to distinguish between the "what" and the "how, who and why" of a scientitifc or historical question. Suppose that when General Relativity corrected Newtonian Gravitation, people claiming to be scientists tried to use this fact claim that "we should stop teaching that things fall down, things falling down is just a theory". Imagine that someone was claiming that they had "a new theory about who killed JFK", and then asserted that their theory was a viable alternative to the theory that John J. Kennedy was assassinated in the first place. After all, the idea that he was assassinated is just a theory, right?

The proper comparison is not "Evolution vs. Intelligent Design". It is "Intelligent Design vs. Natural Selection", Natural Selection being Darwin's own answer to how Evolution took place. I will try and do some small justice to this debate in a subsequent article. I hope that it is what Darwin would have wanted - at least, I will try to discuss the great naturalist's teaching. This may come as a surprise to people from both camps. The sad thing here, of course, is the presumption that people are of one camp or another - based on your political views, you have probably already been informed by the media about whether you are a supporter of Evolution or of Intelligent Design. But if folks from either side were to take down Darwin's dusty Victorian hardback and read a few bages, they might find a few surprises.

Gun Control and Software Control - Will the Law Converge?

2005-07-30T08:06:00.000-07:00

The US Senate has recently approved a bill called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. A copy of the act itself can be found here, with a summary from the BBC here. In a nutshell, the bill prohibits legal action that holds a gun manufacturer or distributor liable for the damages caused by a weapon they produced or sold.

Immediately, one is very tempted to compare this legislation with the recent decision made by the Supreme Court, which ruled on behalf of the media industry's claim that Grokster, a maker of peer-to-peer software (AKA "fileswapping technology") should be held liable in cases where its software is used to exchange copyrighted content. Summaries of the decision and the ensuing fallout can be found here and here.

So, software makers are liable if someone uses their software to exchange a copy of a recent pop-song. After all, this is damaging the economy. On the other hand, gun makers aren't liable if their weapons fire bullets that kill people. After all, it's the criminals who are at fault, not the gunmakers.

The cynic in me is bound to note that the apparent legal contradiction is swiftly resolved if you just rule in favour of the currently most powerful corporate lobby. It's also noticeable that action is being demanded of software makers because lawmakers suspect that it may be possible to detect and block copyrighted content. Trust me, lawmakers, some of us are spending late nights working on this, but to be honest, it may simply not be possible unless users cooperate with us fully. This is current research, it's not something we can just do. I would be happy if the gunmakers were held to the same standards - until they can make bullets that only harm bad guys and legal game animals, but which don't harm good guys and won't fire off-season unless in self-defence, then they shouldn't be allowed to sell guns, right?

However, taking a longer view, the gun lobby might well be doing the software industry a favour here. The ruling in the Grokster case was notably quiet on whether peer-to-peer technology should be allowed to prosper or be stamped out. Instead, the judges focussed on the intent of the software manufacturer, noting that much of Grokster's marketing and development had been directed towards the music-swapping market, without doing much if anything to discourage illegal use. For example (I quote):

Justice David Souter wrote: "We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright... is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties."

So this would be like promoting a gun with the advertisement "Sick and tired of those protected species on your land? Hell, just shoot them!" Even if this was in the minds of a gun distributor, they would be scrupulously careful not to say any such thin, even after the current legislation.

Gun manufacturers may still be held liable in some instances, including the following:
(ii) an action brought against a seller for negligent entrustment or negligence per se;

(iii) an action in which a manufacturer or seller of a qualified product knowingly and willfully violated a State or Federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of the product, and the violation was a proximate cause of the harm for which relief is sought;

It looks like both of these are potentially relevant to the software issue as well. Don't negligently put tools in the hands of the wrong people, and don't violate the law in the sale or marketing of products. It will take some years for these principles to play out in the software industry - we can probably do better than gunmakers in making sure our software will do some things and not others, but we are probably in a different situation in checking the backgrounds of people signing up to use our services. The abstraction of technology gives you a trade-off here, I think.

On a separate note, I'd like to quote recent research (OK, I do get an awful lot of my news from the BBC website) that demonstrates that people who do a lot of music downloading also spend about four and a half times as much on legal music than the average. Draw your own conclusions.

In the long term, it looks as though things are going to be good for the "good" software makers, i.e. those who don't just make good software, but those who make good software and are good people. If we do a good job of discouraging people from doing harm, it would be hard to claim legally that firing bullets is protected by the constitution but that firing off songs is destroying people's lives.

London Bombings and the US Media

2005-07-15T06:36:00.000-07:00

Last week there were a total of 4 bomb explosions in London, and just over 50 people have been killed. I'm relieved to say that none of my friends were hurt. It's a terrible tragedy, and everyone (that is, every member of the civilized world) is pretty appalled. A couple of days ago, my father in Newcastle hosted a service that brought together the local leaders of 13 different faith communities, praying for peace and for the families of those killed, injured, and still missing.

By all accounts (in the news and from talking to people personally), the reaction amongst Londoners has been one of pulling together, getting on with life, insisting on business as usual even in the face of appalling tragedies. After all, there are an awful lot of ways to die, and London is no stranger to tough times and being a target.

By contrast, the news coverage in the United States has been extremely discouraging, alarmist, and rather pathetic. Headlines like "London Terror" do not help at all. There has been terrorism, and subsequently people are pretty apprehensive, but they're not terrified, and are not succumbing to the terrorist's agenda. Talk about "London Bombings", even "London Terrorism", but "London Terror" is a slap in the face of the brave civilians who got out of their tube trains in an orderly fashion and helped one another through the dark tunnels to safety.

In the days immediately following the bombings, 20,000 people were evacuated as a precaution in central Birmingham, as the police detonated another suspected bomb. The American news described this as "jittery nerves." A wise precaution, I would say. In the meantime, the main organization that did suffer from jittery nerves was the US military. American servicemen and women were banned from entering London for several days, though after millions of unarmed civilians had set the example of going about business as usual, the high command finally accepted that it was probably safe for their kickass personnel to follow. I should state very clearly that I don't doubt the bravery of American soldiery here, I dare say that they were dying to go into the City to enjoy themselves and help everyone to stick up for the good life. But I hold their commanders to be deeply mistaken and frankly chicken on this issue.

Even more alarmist has been the American news coverage on the home fromt, asking "Could this happen here?" in a million different predictable ways, almost always concluding that "yes it could, you are personally in terrible danger". By the time you've finished watching the news, you should be evacuating to the country, cancelling travel plans, buying armfulls of duck tape, and shitting your pants. That is, if you're a patriotic American, unlike those happy-go-lucky idiots in the rest of the world who haven't yet realised that 9/11 changed everything.

In conclusion: there are at least 2 ways to fight a "War on Terror". On the one hand, you can conduct business as usual, don't let the terrorists change your life, but be vigilant, and be prepared to evacuate your workplace as a necessary precaution in the face of a particular threat. On the other hand, you could give in to a media frenzy of panic, sign away your civil liberties including the right to trial, and allow any sucessful terrorist attack anywhere in the world threaten your confidence in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Let's stay vigilant, dignified, and (for goodness sake) cheerful, whatever happens. Then the terrorists cannot win.

If we allow ourselves to be terrified, then they have won already.

Come on, America - you've witnessed the way the people of New York have coped and, in the end, triumphed. Follow their example: the world knows that you are made of sterner stuff than your pampering TV stations would have you believe. Demonstrate it.

Don't hand religion to the right ...

2005-03-17T20:14:00.000-08:00

I thought I would draw attention to an article in the Guardian which is worth a read.

The article is here:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1440680,00.html

It's written by Dr Giles Fraser, the vicar of Putney and Dr William Whyte, Fellow in History at St John's College, Oxford. They point out that while the religious right and the secular right have been acting ever more in concert and becoming ever more authoritarian, the secular left has continued even more to mock and castigate religion, citing the religious right as its reason for so doing.

I've certainly experienced a lot of this in the great secular left establishments we call 'universities', where you can get into a lot of trouble for mentioning the old 'God' word or even for suggesting that spirituality may not have been explained once and for all by BF Skinner and his observations of supersticious pigeons. This all makes it increasingly easy for the religious right to caricature the liberals as Godless cultural relativists who are nonetheless extremely authoritarian in their own politically correct orthodoxy.

The religious left was once a very powerful group, especially in England, responsible in part for many great deeds including the abolition of slavery, the Welfare State, the National Health Service and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. And no, I'm not saying that they were the only group involved, and I'm not forgetting for a moment the great role that Bertrand Russell, a great humanist, played in CND. That's the point - there used to be much greater alliances between many groups who made common cause in favour of world peace, social justice, combatting disease and poverty. And we need to get our act together again, for we have greater challenges before us than ever before.

The secular left needs to realise that, if religion really doesn't matter, then get on with doing the things that do matter and if this means joining forces with religious people who share your values, well, what's so bad about that? What's your problem? Don't tell me that you can't work with anyone who believes in God, that's just plain religious discrimination.

And the religious left needs to roll its sleeves up, and stop apologizing to the secularists for being spiritual and stop apologizing to the religious right for being progressive. The power-hungry, war-hungry, socially, economically and environmentally irresponsible right wing of our society needs to be challenged firmly, for its moral values are tolerant of exploitation, repressive of freedom, and deeply flawed.

There's more to Life than Zeros and Ones

2005-03-10T19:48:00.000-08:00

I recently heard from Göran on the Inclusive Church forum that the AND in (for example) "men AND women" is a kind of quantum disjunction. And what the blazes would one of those be? I quote:

I've always understood this AND to be a Hebrew "al kol", that is a manner of including both extremes (if be) and everything in between.

Well, that's what a "quantum disjunction" is. It's a way of modelling the phrase "A and/or B and everything in between them." If there is such a connective in Hebrew, this is very interesting, and if anyone can comment to confirm or deny this, that would be great ...

You get a similar usage in English with continuous quantities, e.g., if someone says "5 or 10 miles" they don't mean that 6 or 9 miles is not allowed, it's all part of the range between 5 and 10. This is deeply relevant to whether you can force things into a Boolean 0 vs 1 (us vs them, good vs evil) classification, or whether the universe has naturally in-between values that just can't be carved up into 0 and 1.

One obviously successful example of techonology breaking this 0 and 1 mould is the development of the search engine, from a computer program that divides a document collection into matching and non-matching collections, to a more flexible ranking program. This was forced by the amount of content (e.g., on the Web) becoming too rich to give a user all the keyword-matching documents and saying "these are what you want", because it would still take forever to wade through them. So for most decent search engines nowadays, you don't have relevant or non-relevant documents, you have varying
degrees of relevance.

The reason this discussion came about is the fact that the Anglican Church may be in the process of splitting up, honest, and though I'll certainly grant you that there are more relevant things you could read, believe it or not, an article about logical operators and the values they can take is not completely irrelevant. There are many in the Church who believe firmly that the world is divided into believers and unbelievers, people who are forgiven in God's eyes and people who aren't. God knows exactly who belongs to which category, and will judge accordingly. You see similar approaches to all sorts of things, a recent and obvious example being George Bush's version of "you're either with us or you're with the terrorists". Some choice! Other triumphs of over-simplistic classification include dividing the land area of the world into mutually exclusive "nation states" or "religions". When this mental straitjacket comes up against the patchwork of history, disasters result - the past century is full of simplistic attempts to draw boundaries on maps, and sooner or later the pot boils over.

Many of us in the Church believe that this is the wrong way to think about Jesus and what he wanted to bring into the world.

Binary classification is only one form of logic, and while it is useful for some things, it is way too simplistic for much of real life. The founder of binary logic in its modern form was George Boole, who based his argument on the fact that zero and one are the only solutions of the quadratic equation x²=x. You might argue that this is hardly a very good reason for dividing humanity into 'saved' and 'damned'. I would tend to agree.

Nonetheless, Boole's reasoning was very good, for many purposes. It enabled him to develop modern set theory, and a robust algebraic version of logic so that 100 years later, it became possible to program his system into machines, and the modern computer was invented. Those of us who program computers still talk about Boolean values every time we have a variable that is restricted to taking the values 0 and 1. It's good for many binary algorithms, though as seen above, you need more values nowadays just to make a decent search engine, because the range of information out there is too rich just to be partitioned into 1 for relevant and 0 for non-relevant.

To come in a full if brief circle, this more flexible "relevance ranking logic" relies on precisely the kind of "A or B or things in between" concept that Göran alludes to with the al kol conjunction. And it turns out that such a logic is not only a way of building a search engine, it is one of the key differences between classical physics and quantum mechanics. There is a lot about this in my book, Geometry and Meaning, the important chapter being this one.

So, for a combination of scientific, linguistic and theological reasons, I think that we should really explore the richer ways there are of approaching the questions "What is logic?" and "How should people and things be classified?" And if you look at our natural language, it's clear that we already do this in the vernacular. And search engines are pretty good at this, even if they're just computer programs. Humans, unfortunately, may have some catching up to do.

The Revisionist Question

2005-02-28T15:18:00.000-08:00

I would like to thank everyone who's shown such support over the past few days, and especially those who've shared their thoughts and feelings, posted comments, written their own articles, here, at the Inclusive Church forum, and in many other places where people are coming together.

I went to Calvary Episcopal Church yesterday morning, and was very grateful to be welcomed by a cheerful group of folk who are taking things in their stride with quiet courage and great good humour. Everybody was interested in finding out about my work, interests, reasons for moving to Pittsburgh (and of course, my accent!), and in describing the neighbourhoods where they work, what motivates them, and reasons why they like the community at Calvary.

Local terminology: the Episcopalians who think we should evolve with the rest of civilisation are referred to as "Revisionists". Like "Christian" and "Protestant", this originated as a term of abuse from other communities, and now arouses some mirth and popularity amonst those so named. Broadly speaking, "Revisionist" is something of a compliment to people who believe, for example, that whether or not you find evidence for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq should affect your a priori assumption of whether such weapons are there or not.

There is also a very good bookshop at Calvary - lots of works from the Church Fathers to the present day, much that goes before, and many broader topics covered. So all in all, I was lucky - I found a beacon of light when I badly needed one, went looking for companions and found some. Not all have fared so well over recent days - there are a few of us talking on a forum at the Inclusive Church network and many are feeling very much alone, on both sides of the geographical divide-and-conquer split that our Primates are trying to impose upon us. Please do pray for guidance for us, and please please please, if you're unhappy about the category in which you've beeen lumped then come out and say so. I don't know if there should be a more formal way of doing this, whether a petition or a day of prayer needs to be organized, but somehow we need to make the message ring loud and clear that we are still in communion with one another and we mean to remain so.

In terms of how we should make our voices heard - I do have one strong suggestion, that I raised in my posting the other day (The Anglican Schism), and though I was clearly ranting in anger on that day, there is some sense in the proposal which I will expand more clearly here.

One of the problems, as I see it, is that the cartoon conversation too often goes:
Conservative: Leviticus 18:22 says being gay is bad.
Liberal: Well, it's not necessarily that simple.
Conservative: Yes it is. I just believe the Bible and it's perfectly clear.
Liberal: Well, as I said it's really not that ... I mean, you should really consider ... oh dear oh dear, this is awful ...

I want to take this conversation one simple step further by asking what else should be considered in this debate.

The Revisionist Question

The Bible says that some things are bad. These include
1. Trimming your beard. (Lev. 19:27)
2. Two men sleeping together. (Lev. 18:22)
3. Failing to care for those in need. (Matt. 26:40)
4. Killing other people. (Ex. 20:13)

Most Christians agree that nobody should be thrown out of the church for trimming their beard. Most Christians also believe that it's vital to care for those in need. Yet both of these are commandments in scripture. On what basis are these commandments distinguished?

For a Revisionist, this is an easy question. They are distinguished by basic moral differences. You can draw inspiration for such moral distinctions from many philosopihical and religious works - many of which are really formalisations of experience and common sense. If you suddenly see one guy about to kill someone and another guy about to trim his beard, you don't need any books to tell you which one you should try to prevent.

If your only basis is scripture, then you deplore the idea of picking and choosing between parts of scripture, and you deplore the idea of anyone saying that some parts of scripture are more important than others. After all, such a person is just basing their judgement of importance upon intuition, reason, the morality of the times, and all of those human things that are fallible compared to the Word of God. So how do you proceed?

In practice, I know that many people who call themselves fundamentalists have no problem with beard-trimming. To find a regime that really claimed that beard-trimming is a crime because scripture says it's a crime, you have to look to someone like the Taleban. And I've met many good fundamentalists who are nothing like the Taleban. So what's the answer? If the only allowable input is from scripture, and you have to follow the whole of scripture, how do you tell the moral difference between killing someone and trimming your beard?

The Anglican Schism

2005-02-25T18:46:00.000-08:00

The Anglican Church, some 450 years after the Elizabethan Settlement, looks like it's finally splitting because in the chapter before it condemns trimming ones beard, the book of Leviticus also says that "You must not lie with a man as with a woman". I'm not sure whether this clear commandment is a ban on lesbians as well - it would seem strange for God to mean that only one form of homosexuality is a sin, and nowadays we do tend to believe that things said about "men" in ancient books should really apply to people as a whole. But then, we are not to interpret the Bible in a modern context just to suit our liberal whims. Clearly God did not mean to outlaw lesbian relationships at the same time or he would have said so.

True to form on this tragic day, the "News" section of the Church of England's official website carried the momentous headline "Church Commissioners in discussions to sell residential properties". It's very moving, especially if you grew up in a Church of England residential property.

Of course, the Church is not splitting and nobody's being asked to leave. Not yet anyway. It's all very much more subtle and complex than that, and the press simplifying things just shows that they really don't understand the terribly poised niceties of the situation. What's happened is that the American and Canadian branches of the Anglican Church (the American branch, like the Scottish, is called Episcopalian to avoid any lack-of-independence stigma) have been asked to voluntarily withdraw from the Anglican Consultative Council, one of the four Anglican "instruments of unity" (the other three being the organ, the piano, and the guitar). They are allowed to voluntarily rejoin sometime around the next Lambeth Conference in 2008 if everybody agrees that we're all suitably wretched sinners and repents. This may not sound very newsworthy to the rest of the world, but let me assure you that George Bush invading your country is comparatively mild compared to the wrath the Anglican Church must be feeling to not invite you to a committee meeting.

For those who don't normally follow my sense of the cynical (not that I'm likely to have acquired any readers who don't know me personally), I'm a lot angrier than I normally am, and you only have to look at the spineless peace of crap that the Anglican Church has released to see why. (For the majority who have better things to do than to go looking for this, it's here.)

There is some kindly and gracious stuff that reminds us of the pastoral Jesus at his Victorian Christmas Carol best, such as the following:

"Section 6. The victimisation or diminishment of human beings whose affections happen to be ordered towards people of the same sex is anathema to us. We assure homosexual people that they are children of God, loved and valued by him, and deserving of the best we can give of pastoral care and friendship (vii)."

Skip the crucial sections listing the committees and working parties the Archbishop of Canterbury is going to convene to get us out of this crisis, the dates they are going to report back, the process of election and confirmation of the Church hierarchy, etc. etc., and you find the following:

"Section 18. In the meantime, we ask our fellow primates to use their best influence to persuade their brothers and sisters to exercise a moratorium on public Rites of Blessing for Same-sex unions and on the consecration of any bishop living in a sexual relationship outside Christian marriage."

We get the picture loud and clear. The Church will withold God's blessing from you, and then give you all the bedside manner pastoral care you could possibly need to get over this slap in the face. And by the way, treating any human being with diminishment is anathema.

There are times in the past when I've been quite proud of the compromise capability of the Anglican ideal. Thanks largely to the Elizabethan Settlement, for centuries during which countries such as France, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, Scotland, and Ireland suffered large-scale religious conflicts, England remained a country in which differences of religion were not a justification for killing someone. But in the modern world we have backed ourselves into a corner in which compromise isn't saving lives, it's forsaking your belief in a fully loving God. What happens is that the fundamentalist wing of the Church screams loudly about what it will and won't put up with, and the rest of the Church has to put up or shut up in case the fundamentalists walk out.

The solution proposed is that the Americans and Canadians have to go to their room and think about it for three years, after which they had better come downstairs and say that they're very sorry. The Church has become one of those frightening family reunions where there is some gun-toting lunatic of an Uncle who keeps making sexist, racist and violently threatening remarks about anyone who doesn't agree with his entire agenda. Then one of the children who doesn't realise the subtlety and complexity of the situation commits the abhorrent sin - he contradicts the gun-toting Uncle and suggests that he be a bit more reasonable and get with the picture. All hell breaks loose, and of course it's the child's fault. "Little Timmy, don't you realise that you have really upset gun-toting Uncle Nutcase and if you don't let him yell at your friends and throw them out of the house then the family may not be able to stick together. I know, Timmy, it's very sad that your friends can't come here any more without being threatened and abused, but let's not worry about that right now, please please please say you're sorry to Uncle Nutcase or Grandma will be terribly terribly upset." You grit your teeth and play along with the farce, because you too bow to the subtleties of the situation, but for the sake of your kid's sanity and protection you'll find just about any excuse to go to your partner's family instead next time Christmas rolls around.

A very biased cartoon, of course, but then I am quite fed up with reading about the poor Nigerians as the injured party, the backward Third Worlders who can't be expected to understand basic human dignity. Why doesn't the Church stands up for the Nigerian homosexuals? And don't go and tell me that there aren't any because it's not culturally acceptable in Nigeria. If it's culturally unacceptable then you can bet your life that Nigerian homosexuals exist and are just the kind of marginalised people who Jesus came for.

Just is case you were in any doubt as to who is in the majority here, you can turn to the following:

"Section 12. We as a body continue to address the situations which have arisen in North America with the utmost seriousness. Whilst there remains a very real question about whether the North American churches are willing to accept the same teaching on matters of sexual morality as is generally accepted elsewhere in the Communion, the underlying reality of our communion in God the Holy Trinity is obscured, and the effectiveness of our common mission severely hindered."

The rest of the Church clearly accepts a unified collection of teachings on sexual morality, which presumably includes the outlawing of homosexuality. If you're an Anglican from anywhere else in the world, you accept that homosexuality is a sin and you're very upset by your wayward North American cousins.

This is utter rubbish, and is a typically lame Anglican trick to silence the progressives because you can't silence the fundamentalists but you must have unity somehow. In the next few months we will hear about many North American churches who want to split from their diocese and demand to be overseen by a Bishop from somewhere else. These conservative churches will have no compunction at all about splitting from their local Anglican communities because they're just "doing the right thing". On the other hand, the liberal Anglicans in the Church of England and elsewhere will meekly stand by and accept the category in which Section 12 places them, because they don't want to upset church unity or cause pain for their poor Bishops or dear Dr Rowan Williams who is doing the best he can in very difficult circumstances. This is all part of the fundamentalist plan - keep the American conservatives loud (not difficult), keep the English liberals quiet (again, not difficult because they're so terribly nice and will just go on saving souls with cups of tea for all eternity), and the prediction that gun-toting Uncle Nutcase was in the right and Little Timmy was out of line will come beautifully true.

Dr Williams, you have failed us. Yet again, the Church has marginalised the mainstream by pandering to the extremists, to the extent that mainstream people with true Christian values are now firmly outside of a shrinking church. No wonder that of your remaining flock, the intolerant group is in the majority. They've been allowed to dictate the "beliefs" of the church for years, not by being persuasive, not by appealing to Christian values, not even by presenting a proper analysis of the Bible as a whole, but just by being loud and threatening. Every public discussion on this topic I've read has the same pattern. About 1 out of 4 people says "I'm glad, it's about time the Church stood up for God's incontrovertible Law as expressed by the Bible, gays are wrong and will be punished", and about 3 out of 4 people write in to say "Are these people meant to be loving? I'm glad I'm not a Christian, they sound like a horrible lot."

This situation is not delicate. It is not complex. The only delicate complexity is the handwringing and headshaking that the Anglican councils are going through in their desperate attempt to fudge the simplicity of the issues and pretend that we're all on the same side really.

Let me put it very simply. My own point of view, of course. There are those in the Church who believe that civilization has moved, and moved largely in the right direction. They condemn slavery. They abhor genocide. They don't believe that polygamy is a good thing. They don't believe that's it's a sin to eat shellfish or to strike a match on the sabbath. They don't believe that women and everything they touch should be treated as unclean for 7 days during their period. And they are honest enough to accept that these beliefs are in some conflict with a literal interpretation of the Bible, that many parts of the Bible are in contradiction with one another, and that a Law governing nomadic tribes attacking Canaan from the East in the 2nd millenium BC has to evolve.

On the other hand, there are those in the Church who claim that they haven't budged and inch from what the Bible commands. They still condemn slavery, abhor genocide, don't condone polygamy, eat shellfish, strike matches on the sabbath, don't believe that menstruation is unclean, etc. etc. And by the way, they hate gays. And they hate the idea of Christians neglecting the verse in Leviticus that says that being gay is wrong. In fact, they hate the idea of Christians suggesting that any part of the Bible may not apply to the present day. Except for the vast majority of the Bible that they have not read, choose to ignore, or claim is "only ceremonial". Of course, it's not for mankind to choose which parts of the Bible to follow: however, this group does claim a monopoly on choosing which parts of the Old Testament count as "ceremonial".

You cannot live strictly according to Biblical law without breaking the law of every civilised country. You cannot today insist that if a woman's husband dies, she passes by right to his brother. The nearest recent attempt to live strictly and only by scripture was the Taleban regime in Afghanistan - remember that many Muslims treat the pre-Koranic scriptures with as much if not more respect than Christian fundamentalists treat their "Old Testament". Suppression of women, public executions, closure of schools that teach anything beyond scripture, destruction of priceless cultural monuments (a.k.a. graven images). These are not only sanctioned, but demanded by the Bible.

I propose the following action, quite seriously. The document released by the Church today requests of the Americans and Canadians "that both churches respond through their relevant constitutional bodies to the questions specifically addressed to them in the Windsor Report as they consider their place within the Anglican Communion." During the same period, I want the self-proclaimed Biblical party to respond through their constituational bodies to the questions I'm specifically addressing to them. How is it that "following the Bible" means following the one verse about homosexuality and ignoring the vast swaths about polygamy? Or about any number of other issues? And don't come back and say "it's the Bible, you can't pick and choose" unless you really mean that you're going to stop picking and choosing, in which case the rest of the world will have to send in UN peacekeepers to prevent mass rape and even genocide. I demand an explanation, not a repeat of the self-righteous denial.

One silver lining - I am at least in the part of the world that's being outlawed for its outreach. I might even go to Church on Sunday.

Science and Global Warming

2005-02-20T17:43:00.000-08:00

Global warming has been in the news again in recent days, and once again highlights the disconnect between science and decision making in the Western world. Doubtless this disconnection is not localized to the Western world, but since the West claims a proud tradition of behaving with enlightened objectivity rather than superstitious dogma, we have a particular duty to examine this tradition and see how measures of proof and demonstration are used by our leaders and ourselves to make decisions.

The new evidence for global warming was presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, according to this BBC report. The researchers collected some 7 million oceanic temperature and salinity readings, and concluded not only that temperatures have risen (a debate that is largely over except for people who are sure that the Bible is the only trustworthy source of data for 21st century ocean temperatures), but that among the hypotheses used to account for the changes, two simulations that predicted the warming effects of increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere hit the nail on the head.

My first compliant about the way this research has been reported is that I have been unable to find a copy of the AAAS paper itself. None of the news reports have contained a link to the article, though they contain copious quotes from the authors and other interested parties. This is typical of the science is presented to the public nowadays. Far from the picture of the Renaissance or enlightenment scholar eager to read about and verify each new scientific breakthrough, science is fed to us with a distance and authority reminiscent of medieval theology. Experts can explain everything about the Universe, but you won't understand and you might as well not try, so here, my dear, is the edited version. An example (which I picked because it is typical of fiarly good scientific journalism, not because it is the worst of the bunch) is this article from the San Francisco Chronicle. (An alternative published a few months ago is this study which was prepared for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, and certainly does not patronise the reader.)

Other major trends include the increasing reliance of new science upon empiricist rather than rationalist data. Many sceptics would point their finger and say "aha - you can prove anything with computer modelling", but I'm not so worried about this. Philosophically, this is exactly like doing millions of calculations with a pen a paper, and it's a lot easier for an independent reviewer to check someone's algorithm written down in a programming language than it is to check pages and pages of human calculations. Putting the computer in the loop doesn't take the human intellect out, it just speeds things up. It's not the computers that make this sort of research inaccessible. It's the 7 million records of ocean temperature and salinity. That sort of experiment can simply not be reproduced without enormous resources, and of course, even if data was different six months later you could argue that that's because it is - well - just six months later.

This is very very different from the rationalist approach to science that produced such enormous strides through the gravitational and mechanical laws of Isaac Newton, the electromagnetic equations of James Clarke Maxwell, and the special and general theories of relativity of Albert Einstein. Einstein's special theory is a wonderful example - it relies on only two empirical observations or postulates, the first that the velocity of light is constant, and the second that you always get the same results whatever coordinate system you use. Now that's proper science for you ... at least, if one goes in for nostalgia.

Generally I don't. I believe that we're entering a new and exciting epoch of science, and indeed, it is upon us. From climatology to evidence-based medicine to corpus linguistics, empirical methods are shedding new light not only upon their own subject matter, but upon the way our minds work. Descartes' famous "I think, therefore I am" is increasingly understood as only part of the story. Baby humans are apparently not born with the knowledge that if a ball is taken behind a screen and emerges a different colour then there is something funny going on - the register of surprise at this experiment is something that gradually develops. The laws of physics may be true, but they are also learned. Rationalist science may rely on pure intelligence: empiricist science at some level relies also on the tangled web of know-how that is often colloquially called "common sense."

This leads to my main point, deep anger, and deeper fear for the world. Science is changing. Is the interpretation of science keeping pace? Not at all. If anything it is going backwards, and this is bad bad news for us all. Far from responding to scientific results with scientific policies, our leaders are increasingly hiding behind bad science and bad ethics to do whatever they think will please their electors and flatter their images in history. And here's the problem. Whereas rationalist results often rely almost entirely on deduction, empiricist results rely crucially on induction - the acceptance that the future is likely to follow the same trends as the past. But there is always grounds for reasonable doubt with induction - life has its generalisations and its exceptions, and politics has become expert at emphasising one or the other and obscuring the science behind the rhetoric.

Take a simple example - many conservative politicians talk of marijuana as a "gateway drug", citing the fact that (for example) most heroin addicts have previously tried marijuana. And alcohol. And kissing. In deductive logic, the assumption that "A implies B and so B implies A" is known to be a fallacy. In inductive reasoning, people get away with it all the time. This is used, sometimes quite deliberately, to stifle debate into questions like "how come opiates such as morphene are allowed in medicine when they are known to be deadly, and marijuana is completely outlawed." (My reason for citing this example is not to make a case for medical marijuana in this instance, but to point out how unscientific are the decisions made on our behalf and the rhetoric used to uphold them.)

The deadliest example is the contrast between the politics of profit and the poilitics of fear. If a man carrying a gun and wearing a turban poisons your water once, it's a dastardly act of terrorism, but don't worry, our leaders are on to him already and are going to attack his country before he attacks ours. If, on the other hand, a man wearing a suit and tie explains to a man wearing a wig and gown that a man wearing a blue overall was just doing his job, and the EPA had issued a license, was monitoring all the activities, and they were all within "safe" levels, then everything is perfectly legal. Kicking up a fuss in this instance is deeply frowned upon - frivolous lawsuits cost jobs, so don't rock the boat.

An astonishingly bad example was the attitude of the UK government to the growing threat of BSE or "Mad Cow Disease" in the early and mid 1990's. In many reports and parliamentary sessions, the mantra was quoted again and again that there was no proven link between feeding dead sick sheep to cows and any human suffering. A typical political example of demanding
a deductive proof, because there was money riding on the issue in the short term. Of course, there was orders of magnitude more money riding on the issue in the medium to long term, but that would demand that our leaders were prepared to reason empirically, arguing that if something sounds stupid and negligent, it probably is. Feeding sick sheep to vegetarian cows and then eating the cows was always a gross violation of common sense, and a large proportion of the British public ("those emotional unscientific bleeding-heart liberals at it again ...") were outspokenly aware of this.

Most recently, the contrast between fear-politics and profit-politics is heartbreakingly obvious, but it needs to be said again and again. Out-of-date reports, a photograph of an Iraqi with a briefcase in Nigeria, and the fact that Iraqi officials and Islamists had potentially been within 20 miles of Prague at the same time, was enough for any reasonable person to be beyond doubt - Saddam Hussain had weapons of mass destruction and was ready to push the button any minute now. And Blair and Bush could simply not afford to risk their people's safety any longer.

Faced, on the other hand, with 7 million observations of ocean temperature and salinity, we have the following call to arms.
"Our position has been the same for a long time," said Bill Holbrook, spokesman for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. "The science of global climate change is uncertain."

I suspect that this phrase may become famous. It's true, of course. Empirical science is uncertain. To know that a virus causes sickness, you do not predict with certainty which members of the population will fall sick and which will stay healthy. You see enough sickness and you take action.

According to the cartoon we were taught in school, the middle-ages ended when Science broke free from the Church and spoke with its own voice. The challenge today is far greater, because the earth is at stake. Science must break free of the web of ego, profit ignorance and speak with its own voice, so clearly that people are compelled to believe and change their ways. Science will triumph, or we are doomed to great suffering and possibly extinction. And no, I cannot prove this.

The Greatest Generation

2004-12-04T15:40:00.000-08:00

It is over a month since the Republicans won the US election, an occasion for much flag-waving and hand-wringing. Fallujah was stormed within days, a pharmacist tried to deny the presription for the pill to an unmarried woman, the dollar sinks every week to a new all-time low against the Euro, and we met a couple of Christian ladies in the street today giving out leaflets claiming that only homosexuals suffer from AIDS.

Of course, many of my friends have been angry and ashamed at this lurch, especially after such a close call in the election. This particular form of democracy gives all the spoils to one winner, though the United States is more firmly divided, it seems, than at any point since the civil war of 1861-1865. As an outsider I am more fascinated than appalled - I don't think that everyone who voted for Bush is either evil or an idiot (I know some very good and intelligent couterexamples, though unfortunately they have to keep somewhat quiet around the office - confessions by the coffee machine, answering an honest question with a furtive answer). The picture of red states and blue states you may see on the map is quite misleading - the boundary is quite sharp but much more detailed and fractal than any map will show. In Pittsburgh, we are in the city, and the major cities are strongly democrat. But we are right on the border - a half-hour drive at most will take us to rural areas where the overwhelming majority of people attend churches whose orthodoxy is extremely republican, and this view of Christianity appears to have played a cruicial part in the election - and certainly its aftermath.

My Grandfather, John Widdows, died two days ago, and in amongst everything that is happening in the world I must give him some epitaph, more for my own sake than for his. He couldn't be happier - for 15 years he has been waiting to join his beloved wife Doris, and told us of a pub in heaven where he knew she was saving him a seat, and was sure she'd be asking him "John, what on earth took you so long?" And then with a smile she'd moved her handbag off the seat and he'd finally got to sit down next to her where he belonged.

Grandad was a role model to us, and still is. He fought for five years in India during the Second World War, not for any sense of glory but because with a heavy heart he concluded that the alternative was even worse. To the end of his life he wrestled with this decision - one night of bombing in Dresden killed 150,000 civilians, and these events burdened his conscience, and his poetry. He rose from nowhere to the rank of Major, and his amazing stories included semaphore signals under fire, monkeys fiddling with radio aerials that nearly brought down communications, and quelling riots by walking through the crowd totally unarmed, begging people to come back the following day when they would be promised a fair hearing for their grievances. (It was Sunday, and the local people had come to understand that this was John's day of prayer, after which he would be as good as his word on Monday morning.) At times mischief got the better of him - when he caught the monkeys playing with the radio equipment of an American regiment, he gravely told the fresh-faced Allies to put barbed wire in a special shape around the roof, allowing them to believe that he was some kind of crop-circle genius at tapping into exactly the right shape of electromagnetic waves. But of all these stories, the one that made him the most quietly proud was that, when it had become clear that India would be an independent country, he was one of the few British officers who was asked by the Indian leaders whether he would consider staying and working with them.

But Grandad wanted nothing more than to go home to Doris and build the home they had struggled so hard for - and for this, the welfare state and the national health service, still a gleam in people's dreamy eyes, mattered so much more than the grandeur of a worldwide empire. Living in the United States, I appreciate this revolutionary commitment as never before - universal healthcare remains a never-never land beyond the most idealistic American's dream, and yet, for a fraction the cost, is a basic right for the British.

Grandad's own calling to service was education. He became a headmaster, wrote for Oxford University Press on the teaching of poetry, introduced classes on 'how to write a job application letter' in the days when the syllabus still thought it was more important to know the declarative imperfective subjunctive of Latin verbs, and had the good fortune to work with a school secretary he was head over heels in love with (Doris, of course - a great encouragement to me and Maryl, who are also just about to start working together). To me, he was the teacher who brought history to life. He talked of Pharaohs, Roman Consuls, Elizabeth I's Ministers and the American Founding Fathers as though they were personal friends who he had tea with every week. He told stories that made soap-operas and thrillers seem tame - you felt the frailty of the greatest people, the dignity of the smallest, and the humanity of us all.

Like all great teachers, he never stopped learning - sensing the world changing and forever growing with it. However much it hurt, however strange it was, life changed, relationships changed, the rules changed. Grandad and I disagreed on the subject of same-sex marriage - yet after we had written several letters to one another, he asked if he could take the correspondence and share it with his prayer group, because he thought that a thoroughly different point of view would enable his fellows to pray about the issues and the people involved more profoundly. After September 11th, and all the talk of a conflict between the Christian and Islamic worlds, Grandad (mad old duffer that he was) took it upon himself to start a focus group so that the Christians and the Muslims (and the Sikhs and the Jews) of Brighouse and Rastrick could get together and visit one another's places of worship. As I see religious people defining themselves more and more by how they restrict, not how they reach out, I give thanks for Grandad's continuous example of what it can mean to be Christian.

The latest chapter in this story I must tell second-hand, for to my sorrow I have not been there, and though much of the tale I heard from Grandad himself, much has been left to other family members to fill in for me. Early this year, a serious cancer was found in one of Grandad's kidneys. Much to everyone's amazement, the specialist offered him the chance of an operation to have the kidney removed - even at the age of 88. Grandad of course agreed, on the grounds that either he would go quietly under the anaesthetic, or get better, either of which was way preferable to wasting away under some of the other much more brutal forms of cancer treatment. And the old horse pulled through marvellously - a miracle in itself. I don't know if he's the oldest person ever to recover from a kidney being removed, but he must have been pretty darn close. But as the year wore on, other pain became more serious and it became clearer to everyone, most of all to Grandad, that the machine was finally packing up. Secondary cancers were in the wings and his approaching death became a primary topic of conversation and source of comfort - having waited for years for his Promotion to Glory, his earthly struggle was coming to a close and his wish to join his wife and his maker (in that order!) was gradually being realised.

Last Monday - just a week ago - his children moved his bed downstairs so that he could get about on one floor, and he stopped taking drugs except for painkillers. Weaker than ever but clear as crystal once more, he talked more and more of worlds of wonder which to us are still distant but which were growing closer and realler every minute. Even so, he kept up his earthly contacts, recognising when he may have seemed distant and apologising that all this must seem terribly strange to those of us who stay so very far from the boundary between mortality and immortality.

On Saturday, the children and grandchildren were gathered around. Maryl and I even received a 'phonecall in Pittsburgh, and with some effort but still full of beans Grandad said "I think I'm probably going to pop me clogs on Monday". He asked to speak to Maryl and wished her a "temporary goodbye". Within a couple of hours, the family had celebrated communion and Grandad had died peacefully in his bed. In the front room where he and Doris had hosted so many of us so many times, he gave us one last glimpse of a great man, quite at peace, relaxed, in control, and completely accepting of everything life and death could bring. The nurse, the doctor, the priest, in all the years of their professions, had never witnessed such a gentle and organised departure. Like an Ancient King, he lay back and crowned the greatness of life with the unbounded dignity of death.

Now colder, harder, it feels that we must all shoulder a burden of responsibility for the wellbeing of the world like never before, for nothing forces us to grow to the task more certainly than the passing of those who made the world safe for us before we were even born. Forever I will treasure the strength, the pride, and the example of the Life and Death of you, my Grandfather and my hero.

Thankyou. Farewell. Enjoy.

Too much to tell ... too close for politics

2004-10-28T06:43:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm a bad blogger. Good bloggers write things down every few minutes if they have a significant (or just interesting) thought or experience. I tend to have lots of ideas that should turn into blog posts, but somehow never get there. Since I last wrote anything here, Maryl and I have bought a house, Mike and I delivered a paper in Washington DC (you can read the paper here if you want), Maryl and I visited Georgia and South Carolina for a friend's wedding, and all hell kept breaking loose in many parts of the world. Now the European Parliament is finally starting to show its teeth, 50 unarmed Iraqi recruits have been brutally massacred, 4 Britons are suing the US for locking them up without a trial (the historic irony would be amusing if it weren't so tragic), and the US election is just a week away.

The elections ... voter registration has reached unprecendented levels, but is already dwarfed by the explosion of preemptive and planned lawsuits. According to a poll in the Financial Times, 6 out of 10 Americans expect this election to be so close that it's decided by litigation. What a tragedy - and what a poor prognosis for democracy. Both sides believe that the other side would prefer to win by foul means than to lose fair and square, and with partisan suspicion at an all-time high, this has lead to a legal arms race. In most democracies, if the vote in any constituency is too close to be decisive, you start by recounting (and if you still can't tell, you should reballot). In the US, they'll freeze the voting and go straight to the courts. Similarly, in most democracies, if the outcome is genuinely indecisive, the parties have to start negotiating with one another to form a government. The process is still political. In the US there is no post-election political process - winner takes all for 4 more years. Again, there is bitter historic irony here - the reason for having the Electoral College in the first place was for the college to be a democratically elected body of wise individuals, aware but not bound to their own partisan interests, willing to make the necessary political decisions and compromises to choose a viable and equitable executive government.

I cannot help being biased at this point. The sheer willful ignorance of the Republican Hawks - ignoring the rest of the world, ignoring the warnings of expert military advisors and diplomats, ignoring the delicately split margin that placed them in power, and above all ignoring the laws that the American Revolution cherished and enshrined - makes me despise them utterly. But according to polls all over the world, I am the mere plaything of demography here. The overwhelming majority of world citizens, especially Europeans, want Bush removed. Fascinatingly, this demographic plays out with brutal efficiency in the United States as well. If you explore the New York Times wonderful election graphic, you'll find that the overwhelming majority of Americans who live near an international airport or any city big enough to be worthy of international attention voted for Gore in 2000 and will vote for Kerry in 2004. You're only likely to truly believe that George Bush is the man to protect you and your family from deadly attacks if you live near some distant haystack that no self-respective terrorist would think worth the trouble. If the people of Boston, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles are brave enough to face the terrorist threat as carefully aware citizens of a mainstream world, how come the rural hicks with their arsenals of private weapons are so scared? Because they, like their leaders, are willfully ignorant. See you in court.

Forsaking Valhalla

2004-09-08T18:13:00.000-07:00

Now the death toll passes 1000.

This is just the count of American deaths in the most recent newsworthy conflict. The ongoing crusade to destroy the evil oppressor and bring our people freedom and safety.

It doesn't count the allies, civilians and enemy soldiers dead.

I watched Live from Baghdad two nights ago, a film about the CNN newscrew who kept coverage in Baghdad the last time we waged war in the city. Trucks of troops, shipped off to battle to fight the enemy in the hope that God Will Prevail. "Do you believe in paradise?" asked the nervously ecstatic taxi-driver.

What mark on a conscript's uniform makes his death legitimate? What myth enables young men to be torn from their loved ones at gunpoint and sent off to death or glory? I could be gone in a flash, my family destroyed for the ego of my leader.

Of course, we are the good guys in this war. Many things distinguish our leaders from Saddam Hussein. But our myths are the same.

To die in defence of ones country, ones clan, ones gods, in Crusade or Jihad: the young warrior goes straight to heaven, paradise, Valhalla, to feast in glory till the world is remade. The Knights of the Round Table who fell on Camlann field - their names are immortal, their glory lives on. Maybe they might have beaten the invaders. Maybe insurgents in Iraq will still defeat the world's most powerful nation. It happened once in America.

Old legend dishonours a peaceful death. In English cathedrals the graves of those who died in battle have a Lion at their feet: the graves of those who died peacefully a Dog.

I wish for a Dog's death. Quietly, old, beside the fire. May my glory be the way I loved and cared, not the way I died.

All honour to those whose lives have been taken in the service of freedom. And many conscripts to tyranny: their deaths too are honourable within the old myth. But a horrible waste. I do not know if they go to Valhalla, but they leave their families to weep and their lives unfulfilled.

The thousand dead died not to save our skin from the terrible weapons that the evil one held ready against us. Some of us suspected this to be a tall tale before the war started: all of us know it now. The dead are dead because our leader decreed that he save us in this way. George Bush has been given no better vision of greatness. When his people were attacked, he knew only one way to defend them.

We need new myths. We are humanity. No race of people is my enemy, and I need no ancient King to rise and fight them. There are evil fanatics: but they are not a people, they are not a religion, they are desperados of the old myth clinging to the coherence we have given them. They must be fought precisely, tenaciously, without distraction, exposed to the whole world, left with no mythical enemy to unite ordinary citizens against.

No more glory in violent death. No greatness in ordering war and promising paradise for the killed. Such myths are for the past. We need new leadership.

And what of the Republicans?

2004-09-03T16:06:00.001-07:00

So I watched a fair bit of the Republican convention - partly as a newcomer and fly-on-the-wall to America, I felt it important, though I fully expected the spectacle to be more informative than the speeches.

I was not disappointed. By God, they're a class act. The confidence, the strength of the claim "we are for America" and "we are 100% right" carries such conviction. None of the Democrat's simpering worry that someone might suspect them of having principles that might interfere with government - the Republicans have principles and they don't give a damn if you disagree with them. They don't even give a damn if those principles are inconsistent, ill-educated, insular, and dangerous - all those appelations are just so many long words spouted by girlie-men liberals who, like me, are out of touch with the American mainstream and easily brushed aside.

All forgotten is the importance of weapons of mass destruction. Now it's the Republicans pointing out that a boxcutter can be a weapon of mass destruction, so Iraq was clearly still dangerous. According to General Tommy Franks, we all believed, like the President, that weapons of mass destruction were there, so the President and his Republican Guard can't be blamed for an honest mistake (in spite of the warnings of the United Nations, the arms inspectors and millions of protestors around the world - see July 20th posting We told you so!!!). The General also moved the crowd to cheers with his claim that "we can fight the war here or we can fight the war there" as a justification for invasion. The bravado, the machismo, the raw strength! By contrast, the Democrat whimper that "there" is a pretty big and varied place and it helps to be more specific about where and who you fight sounds weak and indecisive - just too picky and after-the-fact to be properly American.

Speeches from the lady whose travel business is booming thanks to government contracts - more cheers, even though most of the delegates should have been cringing at the thought of a Republican government spending its way out of recession. The lady hosting a meeting in Pennsylvania - she's black, she's Republican and proud of it, and tax-cuts "du-uh - I like more money in my pocket, raise your hand who doesn't!" Of course I like more money in my pocket, but I don't take out a pay-day loan every month to create the illusion, I budget and spend within my means to make sure that the money in my pocket is real and stays there. However, it did give me the idea for a new business venture - "COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATIVE PAYDAY LOANS", the idea being that people take out a loan that their children are liable for in order to be able to spend more in the short term. Would you ever do this as an individual? Of course not. Would you vote for a government who does it for you? Well du-uh, of course you would.

Now John Kerry - he's in favour of big taxation and big spending, and in spite of the President's promises to get more people into school, more people into college, more people into adult education and more people into healthcare we know that the President is in favour of keeping spending tightly under control - low taxation and the economy depend on it. Except for money for war. Unlike wanton spending on WELFARE which is fuelled by TAXATION, wanton spending on WARFARE is fuelled by PATRIOTISM. As the President put so clearly, John Kerry's questioning of the wisdom of this spending and the use to which it is being put is not a sign that he's willing to be careful with the people's money, it's because he is not a patriot - and this desire for checks and balances proves that he is also not a conservative.

And so I rant on. As far as I could tell, not one piece of Republican rhetoric stood up to scrutiny if considered as part of a supposedly coherent whole. Of course, one expects that in politics - every leader will give you a stronger, safer, more caring country and all for less money, and any leader who fails to promise this will not be elected. However, this was extreme - I have not heard such wanton inconsistencies glossed over, such follies cheered, and yes, such flip-flops endorsed, in a long time. The President's speech even legitimized the invasion of Iraq claiming that the United Nations resolution had provided for it - after spending months failing to get such a resolution and then saying "what the hell, we don't need the UN anyway!" it seems that the UN was willing all along. The policy of courting allies is despised as weakness, while at the same time the credit is taken for having so many allies.

But the Republicans are strong - they know their business, they know that the electorate will put truth and reason to one side and vote with images and totems, and those they provide. President Bush's speech was a keystone and a marvel. With the death-toll mounting, with 17 more civilians killed by an American bomb in Iraq that day, with the freedoms America rebelled from Britain to protect suspended, and with the number of Americans in poverty and without healthcare increasing steadily, his call to follow him in bringing continuing freedom and posterity to America and a grateful world rang clear as a bell. Standing alone but among the cheering multitude, he is the beacon of democratic freedoms, a first among equals, a man of simple faith and firm conviction, no more than an American citizen but capable of spreading God's liberty to mankind like no other. He has no pretensions, and no other man on earth could do such a fine job. Four more years.

What a day that was ...

2004-08-20T15:44:00.000-07:00

On Thursday, August 12th, 2004, I became a (conditional) permanent resident of the United States. On the same day, the Supreme Court of California acted to overturn the marriages of 3,955 same-sex couples, many of whom were married on the same day as Maryl and me, this springtime. It seems that Maryl and I are intricately entangled with the issue of Gay Marriage. What a chain of coincidence - first we were married on the same day, then our right to abide together (vital for an international couple) was granted on the same day that theirs was prevented.

Maryl knows some cool people (birds of a feather, of course). Before the day was out she'd had a call from the organizers of the protest which marched to City Hall that evening, asking if we'd come and speak and sing to them. Of all the things I never expected on this trip, we found ourselves infront of several hundred people, trying to comfort them with support in their season of oppression.

In Thomas Paine's words, "a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defence of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason."

Many in the older generations will have a hard time realizing that restricting the rights of marriage to one category of applicants is precisely that - a restriction on freedom and the pursuit of happiness. Many surveys (for example, this article in the Seattle Times) show that the swing is inexorable - younger people see less and less reason for this form of discrimination. The writing is on the wall - when these changes happen (look at slavery, women's suffrage, interracial marriage), opinions never go back. Future generations are appalled at the barbarity of their recent forbears, and the arguments that were used to justify such institutionized repression.

I'm not trying to cause a big sensation. I'm just talking about my generation.

Sensation will arise only through resistance to natural historical processes. You can delay emancipation, you cannot halt it. The stalwarts of delay will only be remembered as a historic embarassment to a progressing society.

Several kind people have sent Maryl and me photographs and video footage of our performance in front of City Hall. The balance is rotten and the vocals are simply awful. But when my grandchildren ask me "where were you?", I'll be proud to show them "we were there".

Because our grandchildren won't be asking "Which side was right?". But they might be asking "What did you do?"

On a lighter note ...

2004-08-01T05:56:00.000-07:00

I celebrated my 30th birthday party last weekend and I'm now officially a grown-up, I think. We toured downtown Pittsburgh and the beginnings of the Ohio River on a World War II Ducky Boat, were hosted for a wonderful dinner by MaryMichael and Rich Tribone from MAYA, and on Friday night Maryl organized a stupendous fireworks display over the water. (Many onlookers thought that this was for the baseball game rather than Dom's birthday, but that didn't bother me one bit.)

To celebrate this landmark, I'd like to include a poem written a dozen or so years ago by a fellow who happened to have fallen in with a team of fundamentalist Christian missionaries in Bolivia. No history or politics today - just a bone fide Red Wine Wibble.

***

Meditations on a Peppered Steak

It was a lovely cut of meat
(Or at least, appeared so from my seat)
And so my steak I for to eat
Did intend.

My first impression had been right
For as I knew from very first bite
I was to spend a delectable night -
A Godsend.

One sorrrow only marred my bliss
For Bacchus company I sore did miss
There was no consolation this
Could ammend.

And this alone my joy did take,
For 'tis confessed e'en by scoundrel and rake
That food and wine together make
Perfect blend.

So if you take me out to dine
Be sure to give me lots of wine
Else bugger off and bugger swine!
(My friend.)

John Kerry - a cut above the democratic convention

2004-07-29T20:55:00.000-07:00

The conventions that pass for democracy in America shock and sadden me. Manicured men and women with fill-in-the-gap slogans. I learned quite early on that right answer was "John Kerry". Who's going to make everything wonderful? Who's got a wonderful war record? Who's a tremendously nice family man? It's quite an easy game - even if he was going to fly to the moon and bring back the green cheese, the answer would be John Kerry. Apparently this is what the TV loving American public wants most, and it's enough to make any thinking person consider the virtues of Plato's benevolent elitism very seriously.

That this recitation of conventional phrases about what a nice person someone is passes for democracy is a travesty, and a disgrace to the philosophical and literary giants who founded this country. It is a far cry from the British party conferences I'm used to watching, which dabate policies and make real decisions. The Labour Party Conference is probably the scariest week of the year for Tony Blair - in the USA it's more like a teenage cheerleading camp.

Thus it was with more of a sense of duty than of hope that I listened to John Kerry this evening. But he surprised me. He talked about real issues, including the ones that make me, an immigrant, committed to America. The value of the Constitution. Being repected by the world, not just feared. Those who preach family values should value families. A system where a mother with breast cancer is working while undergoing chemotherapy because she's terrified of losing her job and her children's healthcare isn't a system that values families. A system where elderly couples scrimp on their medication, and the profit margins for drug companies grow and grow, is no way to honour thy father and mother. A nation should only ever go to war because it has to, and never without first making a plan for winning the peace.

For me, Kerry's reference to faith, which he does not wear on his sleeve, was particularly moving. "I don't want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God's side." To a lifelong Christian, there could be no more favourable contrast with the arrogant presumption that a vote for Bush is a vote for Jesus and the teachings "Be afraid, hate thine enemy and live by the sword!"

I don't think Kerry got full marks for body language, for fake smiles, for baby-hugging adorability and for all the plastic Hollywood rubbish that is supposed to count for more with many Americans than whether a president will do a truthful, intelligent and honorable job. But if he does become President then America will once again have a leader who will meet face to face with other international statesmen and women, to represent the world's most influential nation with the dignity it deserves.

You can read the speech here, at www.johnkerry.com. I recommend that you do - I haven't done it justice here.

We told you so!!!

2004-07-20T07:16:00.005-07:00

There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The mounting number of official reports, intelligence experts, former weapons inspectors have all confirmed - Blair and Bush were wrong. Ignorant, deceitful, wishful, putting the crusade before the evidence - whatever the reason, they were wrong.

And we were right. The peacenik, liberal, leftist, bury-the-head-in-the-sand appeasers were right. When we marched in the streets to say "we are being lied to," we were right. When we carried banners saying that the North Korea had WMD and Iraq had oil, therefore we'd go to war with Iraq, we were right. Even without access to all the intelligence reports that Bush and Blair saw but we didn't, we were right.

Why? How did this happen?

Simple. Blair and Bush wanted to go to war. They want to be Churchill, Eisenhower, George Washington and King Arthur all rolled into one grand world-saving extravganza. They want this so badly they believe that the world depends on it, and for them it does.

Why the desperation for Weapons of Mass Destruction?

Again, simple. It was the only way that the actions of Islamist terrorists could be used to justify war against an unrelated Arabist regime. The wave of fear and anger from the attacks on America of September 11th 2001 had to be turned into an excuse to wage war against a completely different enemy.

A brutal enemy, an oil-rich enemy, an evil man who Iraq and the world is better off without. No doubt. But it could have been done much more effectively. The aplomb with which the Allies (all two of us who are left, and a few hangers on) have squandered the goodwill of the whole world counts as one of the most tragic public relations fiascos of all time. If Bush was running a small company instead of the world's most influential nation, he'd have been fired long ago.

And we were lied to. They took our people into war in the cause of their grand plan for world salvation, and to get us poor sheep to follow along and cheer as the pretty orange colours on CNN bloomed on our TV screens, we had to be frightened into believing that without Big Brother Blair and Bush protecting us we'd have Saddam's chemical poison dropping on us in no time at all.

We knew. Millions of us all over the world. Stand up and be proud! Claim it long and claim it loud! Share your voice with the military, diplomatic and intelligence experts who knew as well. Never again let Fox News and the hawks of the Republican Guard tell us that they know best, that their militancy is vital to protect our happy bubble of liberal democracy. We know the world, and we know Blair and Bush better than they know themselves. And we knew it long before the official reports confirmed our every fear.

We told you so.

Protecting Marriage

2004-07-16T19:42:00.000-07:00

Over the past weeks we have heard many times that those who wish to "Protect Marriage" should be acting forcefully to prevent the right to marry your loved one from being extended beyond heterosexual couples. In spite of the biblical norm of polygamy and Jesus' dismissive attitude both to marriage (Matthew 22:30) and to the ties of blood-relations (Mark 3:31-35), those who seek to limit freedom to choose and freedom to love have every reason to try to portray both Old and New Testaments as bastions of heterosexual monogamy.

The idea of protecting the sacred by limiting its freedom is of course not new. The Bible should be protected by preventing its translation into vernacular languages; the right to vote should be protected by preventing women from voting; the value of education should be protected by limiting its scope to the children of the rich. The early Church almost split because a few rebels refused to confine the Good News to the original Jewish congregation.

If you seek to protect institutions in this fashion, turn not to the words of Jesus - he was far too liberal in spreading the love of God to all people.

Fortunately, help is at hand from other quarters. For example, Lenin said "It is true that liberty is precious - so precious that it must be rationed."

He also said "A lie told often enough becomes the truth."

Moving to Pittsburgh

2004-06-17T20:22:00.000-07:00

I want to live in a cheap cheap town,
Silicon Valley just gets me down -
Look at your rent with a big big frown
Look at the hills as they all turn brown!

***

So Maryl and I are moving to Pittsburgh. Being in California has changed both of our lives (after all, we met here!) but I like the effects of rain too much to become a true Californian. The land grows green but only briefly, the grass gets prickly, and I could never buy into the gold rush to bloom before things dry up again.

It is a strange time - during the past couple of years, our agressive foreign policies have antagonized the world, and I have met so many thoughtful, funny, gently ironic and downright lovely Americans that I want to be one of them. So we're settling in Pittsburgh, named after the statesman who did so much to ensure that English would be spoken in New Mexico as well as New England, and scene of George Washington's partriotic training in service to George III (and to the Ohio Land Company, part-owned by Washington's big brother).

So we're bucking the trend and going to an old city languishing in post-industrial grandeur, eclipsed for decades by less grinding and more glittering prosperity. A lad from West Yorkshire should fit in right well!