Category Archives: beliefs

beliefs, links, medical, natural history, nudism, science

Your Interesting Links

More interesting items you may have missed. Lots of science and medicine curiosities in this edition, but its should all be accessible to the non-scientist.
Who thinks mathematics is boring? You won’t when you see the beauty of mathematics in pictures! I’m definitely worried about image four.


Chemicals have a bad name. Wrongly! Manmade or natural, tasty or toxic, they’re all chemicals.
Shifting to the zoo-world, here’s a piece on the curious and improbable tale of flatfish evolution.
Beaver! No not that sort! Honestly your minds! I’m talking about the beavers that have been reintroduced to Scotland, and which are doing well.
Concrete jungle. Yes, it certainly is a jungle out there. Our cities, yes even the most urban and built-up parts of them, can be important wildlife habitat.
Bananas are in trouble and we don’t have a solution to save our favourite fruit. Oh and they’re quite an interesting plant too.
All our food is toxic, innit. Actually, no. But here’s why the fear, uncertainty and doubt are far too easy to believe, and how to counteract it.
On the continuing saga of why chocolate is good for us, but just not in the form you like it.
Five-a-day doesn’t add up. It’s not all marketing hype, except when the arithmetic is wrong.
Turnips. The humble vegetable that terrorised the Romans and helped industrialise Britain.
What do you mean you thought apples grew on trees? Well, OK, they do but originally not the trees you thought. An interesting piece on saving the wild ancestor of modern apples.

Farting well? It could mean you have a good healthy collection of gut microbes.
Just don’t read this next story over dinner. It seems we eat parasites more than we realise.
And another that’s definitely not safe for mealtime reading … A long read on some of the work going on behind faecal transplants, and how they’re being so successful in treating stubborn illnesses.
Lads, here are three cardinal rules from a urologist about care of your plumbing.
Phew! So now let’s leave the scientific and medical behind us and more on.
Naturism is the practice of going without clothes — and it’s not shameful, embarrassing or ridiculous.
Still on naturism, here’s one young lady’s experience of being clothes free at home.
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And here are some more views on the way the new Nordic sex laws are making prostitutes feel less, not more, safe.
From
Vagina in the workplace — a story. The closing ideal has to be a good way forward, surely.
Changing tack (yes, OK, about time!) here’s part five of the ongoing series from a black cab driver about Waterloo Station. OK, hands up, how many of you knew it was a war memorial?
And finally, the BBC have unearthed a box of forgotten letters sent from occupied France during WWII. See you never know what’s in that dusty box in the attic!

beliefs, freedom of speech, links, nudism, sexuality

Your Interesting Links

Interesting items seem to be coming thick and fast at the moment, so here’s another instalment of links to items you may have missed. And not so much boring science stuff this time!
Apocalypse? So what would happen if all our satellites fell from the sky? Yep, apocalypse may not be far off the mark!
Do you wear glasses? Or lenses? Ever wondered whether you could see without them? You can. Here’s how. And it really does work!
The strange story of a tetragametic woman — that’s someone made from four gametes (two eggs, two sperm) rather than the usual two. This is a form of chimerism and as chimeras are normally detected only because of external abnormalities (for example differently coloured eyes) we don’t really know how common it is.
We know the phases of the moon influence the behaviour of many creatures from big cats to owls, but how much does the moon affect human behaviour?


An interesting short read on saffron, that brightly coloured spice from crocus flowers.
While on plants, this stunning piece of sculpture was carved into an olive stone in 1737.
And so to religion … here’s an interesting evolutionary tree of religion.
Allegedly the human mind is primed to believe in god. If so, how is it that atheism is on the rise?
Meanwhile archaeologists have been staring into the mists of time and come to the conclusion that Britain’s oldest settlement is Amesbury, near Stonehenge, in Wiltshire. Doesn’t seem too surprising to me.
An American mother takes a very sensible look at nudity and how it does not cause any problems for kids.
And to finish on our usual theme of sexuality, here’s a considered response to the Nordic conception of controlling prostitution from a Canadian sex worker.
These final two items may not be safe for those of a pathetically puritanical mind; they are included here in the interests of normalising our attitudes to sex and sexuality.
Girl on the Net asks whether blowjobs are anti-feminist. Spoiler: No, because feminism is a state of mind not an attribute of “things”.
And really finally, with the spotlight on Girl on the Net, here’s an interview with her in the University of York student newspaper, York Vision (it was called Nouse in my day!).

beliefs, nudism, personal

On Nudity and Naturism

I’ve just added two new pages to my Zen Mischief website.
On Nudity and Naturism — in which I explain my views and why I believe we need to normalise nudity (and sexuality) rather than marginalising and criminalising it.


Nudity and Naturism Quotes — from a wide variety of people; some great and/or good; some ordinary; some unknown.
I’ve been meaning to write these pages for a long while, and today was the day.

beliefs, books, science

Book Review

John Conway, CM Kosemen, Darren Naish
Cryptozoologicon, The Biology, Evolution and Mythology of Hidden Animals, Volume I
(Irregular Books, 2013)

This is strange book. It is one I wanted to read and I was given a copy for Christmas. It sounded as if it would be interesting.
What the authors set out to do, and they are up front about stating this, is to look at some of the myths of strange animals unrecorded by science and then to look at how plausible the myths are and what the animal might be. They write a couple of pages about each of the 28 creatures they choose. All of which is fine, if eccentric.
What they then go on to do is to speculate wildly about history, evolution and taxonomy of each creature as if it were real. They do say repeatedly that what they are indulging in is speculation, but they acknowledge that it will be misinterpreted by the wilfully minded.
As they say on the cover blurb:

Cryptozoologicon is a celebration of the myths, legends, evolution and biology of hidden animals. Always sceptical, but always willing to indulge in speculative fun, Cryptozoologicon aims to provide a new way to approach cryptozoology: as fictional biology.

And in their Introduction:

For each cryptid, our entries consist of three sections. We consider it important that people understand exactly what we have done. In the first section of text, we briefly review what people have said beforehand about the given cryptid. We refer to the key accounts and describe what the creature is supposed to look like.
In the second section, we present an evaluation of the reports, make a conclusion about the identity of the given cryptid, and decide whether the accounts refer to a real creature or not. Given that we have included quite a range of mystery animals in our book — some of which are fairly ridiculous and others of which have essentially been debunked — our conclusions range from the open-ended to the “case closed” type.
Finally, we include a third section of text in which we deliberately jump onto the bandwagon of speculation, and wax lyrical about the identity, evolution and biology of the cryptid concerned, tongue firmly planted in cheek.

Yeah, “fictional biology” is about the size of it. I had hoped that it might present some interesting new evidence for something. It doesn’t.
And I had hoped that even if it didn’t the book might be amusing. It isn’t that either.
I found it tedious beyond belief. There is nothing here except a regurgitation of the already known myths and their debunking with some wildly speculative and very tedious fiction. The text is extremely dull; not especially poorly written just unimaginative and not sparkling. On top of that I dislike the large colour illustrations; that’s down to their style rather than content; for me they didn’t add a great deal.
The book could, indeed should, have been interesting; and this could have been done with very little extra effort.
For me this book just didn’t work. I found it incredibly tedious and in fact gave up reading attentively no more than half way through and skipped through the remainder.
Unless you have to read this book for some reason, frankly I’d give it a miss.
Overall Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

beliefs, history, ramblings

Things to do Out of London in December

A few days ago IanVisits published (as usual every month) a rather super list of things one can do out of London during the coming month — ie. December.


The list is full of wonderfully festive events including Christmas tree festivals, boy bishops, torch-lit processions, mummers, football and tar barrels. Many are (or are based on) very ancient traditions especially to do with mid-winter fire and light festivals. You can find the full list here. I commend it to you!

beliefs, current affairs

Not Already!!

Watching BBC Breakfast yesterday (22 October) I spotted my first Remembrance Day poppy if the year. It was being worn by some female, the head of one of our plethora of regulators, who was being given an easy ride of an interview.
This is obscenely early, given that Remembrance Day (11 November) isn’t for another three weeks.
But then, as I’ve said before, I sometimes think I’m the only person in the country who finds everything about Remembrance Day sick and obscene. I’m with novelist Evelyn Waugh who in his youthful diaries described Remembrance Day as

… a disgusting idea of artificial nonsense and sentimentality. If people have lost sons and fathers, they should think of them whenever the grass is green or Shaftesbury Avenue brightly lighted, not for two minutes on the anniversary of a disgraceful day of national hysteria.


And no, before you start, that doesn’t mean I’m unpatriotic or un-anything-else. It means I have no wish to glorify war and prefer to go forward rather than continually look backward — and believe the country would be a better place if everyone did this.
Remember: those who look backward get turned into pillars of salt.

beliefs, current affairs, freedom of speech, nudism, personal

The Pornography of David Cameron

So David Cameron is intent on restricting internet access to anything which he deems might in someone’s eyes be pornographic.
This is so prattish and dangerous it makes me angry on just so many levels.
Just who does DC think he is to tell other people what to think, say and look at? How dare he impose his (apparent) morality on anyone else? Imposing one’s morality on someone else is frankly … well … immoral!
This is government censorship. Given that freedom of speech and belief is enshrined in international law, that probably means the UK would be in violation of international law.
A freedom which exists only when it is in accord with your views, is no freedom at all.

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These two images are perfectly legal, and must remain perfectly legal. If you don’t want to see them, don’t look. If you don’t want your kids to see them, take responsibility yourself for looking out for what your kids view.
The proposals are impractical and pretty much unenforceable. Any law which is unenforceable is (a) bad law and (b) a waste of time. It is impractical because of the complexity of the internet and the fact that everyone is not dependent on just one service provider but many.
What is even more worrying is that there is absolutely no evidence to back up the necessity for this. On the lack of evidence see, for example, here, here, here and here.
It’s about time that we let people make up their own minds and take responsibility for their own actions — ie. develop their own sense of morals and responsibility. We’re becoming a nation of the molly-coddled; people who have to have everything done for them; who are unable to think for themselves or cope for themselves; people who cannot cope with adversity. People cannot be protected by outside agencies from all dangers and risks — that way lies a mixture of amorality (because people won’t have to think) and a police state. In the words of Thomas S Monson (Pathways To Perfection):

When we treat people merely as they are, they will remain as they are. When we treat them as if they were what they should be, they will become what they should be.

Goethe says the same:

If we take people only as they are, then we make them worse; if we treat them as if they were what they should be, then we bring them to where they can be brought.

Or looking at it another way, in the words of the great Spanish ‘cellist Pablo Casals:

Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage.

If we want people to be responsible, then we have to treat them as if they are responsible.
Finally, as I’ve said many times before (for example here and especially here) sexuality and nudity need to be normalised, not marginalised and criminalised. Only by doing so are we likely to drastically improve the nation’s overall health and well-being.
It is time to be a leader, not a cow-herd with an electric cattle-prod!
[PS. No of course rape, violence and child abuse are not acceptable; no-one is saying they are! But blanket censorship is not going to get rid of them; it will just drive them further underground and into the hands of the criminal fraternity.]

beliefs, personal

Five Questions, Series 4 #1

Sorry, it’s been too long since I posed the five questions of Series 4, and thus my answer the the first of the questions is long overdue. So here we go …



Question 1: What happens after we die?

Well wouldn’t we all like to know! However it seems to me that this is one thing we can, by definition, never know. That doesn’t mean that all the reports of “near death experiences” are meaningless or imaginary; they may well not be. But clearly, despite appearances, the people experiencing them aren’t actually dead, so they don’t (and in my view never can) tell us what happens after we die.

As a scientist the reality seems to me to be summed up in the words of Genesis 3:19:

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

and the Burial Service from the Book of Common Prayer:

Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life …

(Isn’t that just so much nicer English than all this modern stuff?)

So yes, the scientist in me says that we disintegrate back into the environment for we are no more than a collection of chemicals: earth, dust and ashes.

However … our thoughts can go on: as books, music, art, whatever. In that sense we may be dead but our brains are never buried, never lost, ever immortal.

And yet. And yet there remains that nagging little doubt somewhere deep inside which says that there is some form of reincarnation. Not in the Biblical sense of a Day of Judgement. More perhaps our “soul” (whatever that is) gets chopped up in some way and distributed (with bits of others?) to future beings. Who knows? We can likely never prove it. But it would explain a lot. And it would be a whole lot more fun than earth, dust and ashes.

beliefs, words

Words: Atheism, Secularism and Humaism

Today let’s look at three words which seem to be becoming increasingly misunderstood and misused: atheism, secularism and humanism.

Atheism
1. Disbelief in, or denial of, the existence of God or gods.
2. The doctrine that there is no God or gods.

Secularism
1. The view that religious considerations should be excluded from civil affairs or public education.
2. The doctrine that morality should be based solely on regard to the well-being of mankind in the present life, to the exclusion of all considerations drawn from belief in God or in a future state.

Humanism
1. A system of thought that rejects religious beliefs and centres on humans and their values, capacities and worth.

Hence one can be a secularist without being an atheist, although the reverse is I suspect rather difficult. While atheists are generally secularists, at least in Europe so are most believers because they know their own freedom of belief depends on freedom from the belief of others. Humanists are by definition atheists.

Atheism challenges belief but secularism challenges religious privilege. Humanism replaces a belief in god(s) with a belief in Homo sapiens.


And yes, for the record I am both an atheist and a secularist. I’m also a humanist but not one who identifies with humanism as an organised belief system, a là British Humanist Association — I don’t do organised belief systems!