All shamelessly culled from the interwebs.
Three Thoughts to Aspire to …
Category Archives: ramblings
Aliens, but not as we know them
This is the title of an interesting article by Ian Bogost in the 7 April 2012 issue of New Scientist. In it Bogost posits the question: Are everyday objects, such as apple pies or microchips, aliens?
Answer: It depends how you think about what it’s like to be a thing.
I can’t link the article as it’s behind a paywall, but here are a few salient snippets.
[E]verything is an alien to everything else. And second, the experience of “being” something else can never be verified or validated …
[W]hy should we be so self-centred as to think that aliens are beings whose intelligence we might recognise as intelligence? … a true alien might well have an intelligence that is, well, alien to ours …
[L]et’s assume they are all around us, and at all scales – everything from dogs, penguins and trees to cornbread, polyester and neutrons. If we do this, we can ask a different question: what do objects experience? What is it like to be a thing? …
[W]hy is it so strange to ponder the experience of objects, even while knowing objects don’t really have “experiences” as you or I do? …
This kind of engagement will necessitate a new alliance between science and philosophy … From a common Enlightenment origin, studies of human culture split. Science broke down the biological, physical and cosmological world into smaller and smaller bits in order to understand it. But philosophy concluded that reason could not explain the objects of experience but only describe experience itself …
Despite this split, science and philosophy agreed on one fundamental: humanity is the ruler of being. Science embraced Copernicus’s removal of humans from the centre of the universe, but still assumed the world exists for the benefit of humankind … Occasionally animals and plants may be allowed membership in our collective, but toasters or [electronic components] certainly aren’t …
[W]hat if we decide that all things are equal – not equal in nature or use or value, but equal in existence? … then we need a flat ontology, an account of existence that holds nothing to be intrinsically more or less extant than anything else …
Thomas Nagel … famously asked what it was like to be a bat, concluding the experience could not be reduced to a scientific description of its method of echolocation. Science attempts to answer questions through observation and verification. Even so, the “experience” of all objects, from bats to Atari computers, resists explanation through experimentation …
The world is not just ours, nor is it just for us: “being” concerns microchips or drilling rigs as much as it does kittens or bamboo.
So perhaps the people who apologise to things when they throw them away aren’t quite so mad after all!?
Quirks
My friend Katy blogged a few days ago about her quirks — inexplicable things ones does and habits one has. And I thought rather than post a long comment for her I’d write what follows.
Quirks? Yes, I’ve got my fair share of them; maybe more than my fair share. Who hasn’t?
My friends are too polite to tell me about them — and they still remain friends — so I can only assume they’re not too annoying for most people. Or maybe that’s why I don’t have a huge circle of friends.
So what are my quirks? Hmmm … you really want to know? OK …
I repeat words in the middle of sentences. For instance I’ll say something like; “I wonder if maybe I — maybe I could borrow your saucepan?”. I don’t know how often I do it, but I catch myself at it every so often and think “WTF did I do that?”. It’s a sort of hesitation, although not quite. It’s not that I don’t know what I’m going to say because invariably I do, so that isn’t the cause, unlike most hesitations. It’s something much more automatic than that, like a little loop in the brain circuits snaps open.
I interrupt people; and talk over them. This is very annoying for them, and almost as annoying for me. I catch myself doing this and every time I kick myself in the ankle and say something like “f***ing dickhead — STOP doing that!” in my own ear. It isn’t just something I do on the phone, where there are no visual cues about speaking; I do it in face-to-face conversations as well. Again I don’t know why I do it. I’ve been moaned at for it over many years by parents, work colleagues, managers, friends and myself, but I still do it. It seems to be something I cannot break. We all have a collision detection system which kicks in when we start speaking at the same time as someone else. Usually it stops both people, who then either start again after a random delay or undergo some negotiation; sometimes only one person will stop leaving the way clear for the other. Clearly my collision detection system doesn’t work properly. Why?
I also swear a lot. I know I do. Hopefully it (usually automatically) moderates itself in polite company.
Like many people I have the thing about peeing. I have to pee just before I go out and last thing when settling for the night. Yep, even if I’ve been only 10 minutes before. I also have it when doing anything in the garden: within 10-15 minutes of starting anything in the garden I have to go to the loo.
Does nudity count as a quirk? Yes, I thought it would. As regular readers will know I’m comfortable being nude. I always have been; it’s how I was brought up. We have a naturally warm house (no the heating isn’t turned up high, if anything the opposite) and I don’t feel the cold easily (too much blubber!). Consequently at home I seldom get dressed unless I’m going out, someone is coming round or the weather is really, really cold. I always have a dressing gown or jeans & t-shirt to hand in case the doorbell rings. I even sit in the garden, near the house where essentially no-one can see, in the nude, although I don’t normally wander down the garden in full view of the neighbours. Mustn’t frighten the horses y’know.
I almost invariably have to sleep flat on my front, facing left. Don’t know why; I always have, even as a kid. I have to be really tired (or ill) to sleep on my back or side — although I do sometimes wake up on my back. Bloody annoying now I have a CPAP mask (because of the sleep apnoea); it would be much better and easier if I could get to sleep easily on my back. But then I suspect everyone has one position in which they normally sleep.
Another annoying thing I do is sniff. It is about the only way of clearing my nose. As a kid I was always being told to blow my nose not sniff. But blowing my nose was a waste of time; I never could clear it that way; it just didn’t work, whereas sniffing did. And that’s still the case. I assume it must be something to do with the structure of my nasal passages ans sinuses; and despite surgery. The catarrh in my sinuses annoys me, so I’m damn sure the sniffing annoys others. Sorry!
So there are a few quirks. I’m sure I must have lots of ohers that I’ve not noticed.
Dare you tell us about your quirks?
A Week in View
Dreary Weekend
I don’t understand.
Why is it that Easter is always such a miserable weekend?
No, I don’t mean the weather. OK, so far today is dull and damp, but that isn’t always so.
Nor do I mean the fact that it isn’t the most joyous of Christian festivals. As a non-believer this weighs with me not at all, but I don’t dislike Easter on principle.
I’ve noticed, though, over many years, that Easter is somehow always a miserable, dull, boring, depressed and joyless weekend.
OK so as a culture (religious or secular) we’re not indulging in the festivities of Christmas. But Easter took over the old pagan Spring festival, when everything was growing again and there was more daylight than darkness. Even leaving the chocolate aside, there are flowers and cute Easter bunnies (which should really be hares anyway!). Despite the fact that I don’t do cute, that still ought to make Easter weekend joyful.
But it isn’t.
Why?
I don’t understand.
Cross Spotters
Oh dear! The Christians are fluttering in their olive trees again. Various clerics, most notably Cardinal O’Brien, Roman Orthodox Archbishop of all Scotland, are telling their flocks to wear a cross to signify their faith.
Why? Why do they have to be told? Are they sheep? [No, don’t answer that!]
And why do they need to do this? I don’t give a flying wombat what fictions you believe. I’m glad to say that’s your problem, not mine.
And yet most true believers already wear their faith on their sleeves and — very rudely — make sure we’re not allowed to forget it. But sure, if they want to wear an emblem, why shouldn’t they?** Who is to stop them going around adorned with badges and looking like a bus spotter? Moreover I’m sure the monasteries could find enough spare saints’ fingers for them all to have a few poking out of a breast pocket to complete the bus spotter look. The same applies to believers in any other faith, or no faith.
Most of us don’t need to advertise our beliefs on our lapels. But if others are sufficiently insecure in their faith that they have to remind everyone, including themselves, what harm? None really if they stick to just wearing a badge. But I bet they don’t. The harm is if, as so often, it becomes another nauseating means of proselytising beliefs. That’s something the rest of us have no need to do; indeed don’t believe in doing. We’re secure enough in our beliefs; beliefs which are personal and not to be imposed on others. We don’t need lots of other like-minded fools around us to convince us we’re right.
Yes, OK, fine if you want to wear a discrete cross, pentacle, Star of David, swastika or whatever on a chain round your neck. But is it just me who finds badges, bumper stickers, prayer beads hanging from driving mirrors etc. somewhat nauseating? And I don’t draw the line at religious symbolism. Badges for the Rotary Club, football club, train spotters guild are just as annoying. Why do we need to advertise our allegiances in this way? If we can’t spread our faith (whatever that is) by shining example then pretty poor show. Good works and humility, not faith alone.
Who are we to deny such poor benighted souls their comforts? Although can you imagine the outcry if they were forced to wear some identification, as were the Jews in Nazi Germany? They’d be up in arms quicker than a ferret down a drain-pipe.
Maybe I should have a supply of “There is no god” badges made? Or should we all have 42 forceably tattooed on our foreheads?
** There will always be employers who, rightly, ban jewellery for safety reasons. But that is really a side issue.
Give Us this Day Our Daily Conundrum
If, as according to some Christians, alcohol is so bad,
why did Jesus turn water into wine?
Marriage
There’s recently been a lot of brouhaha over the UK government’s suggestion of making marriage available to (male and female) homosexual couples.
The Christian churches are up in arms because they see it as devaluing (or worse) the sacrament of marriage.
Put plainly, this is bollox.
Neither the church, nor any other religion, owns marriage. Arguably it may have done once, in the days before developed civil government, but no longer. In almost every civilised country there is a civil marriage option available as well as a religious one. The churches may have a ceremony which they call marriage. This does not mean they own the concept or the sole rights, although it does give them the right to choose who to allow to partake in their ceremony.
A heterosexual couple can have a civil marriage, so why can’t a homosexual couple? No-one is suggesting that the churches have to be a part of this if they wish not to. They are not to be obliged to marry homosexual couples and indeed they may choose (as they do now) who can marry under their aegis. Many heterosexual couples are denied a religious marriage for a whole variety of reasons.
And of course no couple has to marry or enter into any officially sanctioned partnership arrangement. And quite right too. So a coach and horses has already been driven through marraige as originally conceived by the churches.
I fail to see a problem.
There are couples who will choose a civil marriage and couples who will choose a religious marriage. Civil marriage will be available to all; religious marriage will only be available to those who can jump some arbitrary set of church defined hurdles. Just as now.
And come couples will choose to ignore the whole idea of marriage (by whatever name) and just live together. Horses for courses, and all that.
No change, really, except that the civil marriage net is being widened.
Although there is the suggestion of an anomaly with civil partnerships. As gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has pointed out the current proposals now discriminate against heterosexuals by allowing same-sex couples the option of marriage or civil partnerships but only marriage for heterosexual couples. Which is ludicrous!
I see no purpose in continuing with the civil partnership sham. Let’s drop it altogether and have just civil marriages. Either that or we have to keep both civil partnerships and civil marriages for all.
Or of course we could just ban marriage altogether — for everyone.
For other sane views you might like to read Betty Herbert’s blog, John Bingham in the Daily Telegraph and Marie Jackson on BBC News.
So You Missed … ?
More links to things you may have missed. Let’s start with some important items I should write whole blog posts about but just can’t stomach today.
Like I commented on Facebook, this first isn’t just wrong, or bizarre, or cruel, it’s obscene (and that’s not a word I use lightly or often). Georgia Rep Wants To Force Women To Carry Stillborn Fetuses … Like Cows Do. Maybe these loonies should be made to wear a stinking albatross round their necks. As has been said elsewhere if men had to endure half the things they impose on women better ways would soon be found, or minds changed. What price Christian charity? Again! Seethe!
Next, here’s an interesting alternative take on the validity (or not) of modern Christian claims of persecution. As it’s from the National Secular Society it’s probably as biased in the opposite direction! Caveat emptor!
Both of which remind me of this cartoon …
And while we’re on the church, let’s have an interesting sideways look from Friday’s FT, which shows just how bizarre is the Cathodic church’s attitude to gay marriage.
And here’s a worrying judgement handed down by the European Court of Human Rights, supporting the UK courts’ decisions, which appears to give the police carte blanche to do almost anything they like on the streets to restrict liberty, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and association. Very, very worrying.
And a final rant for today … this confirms what I maintained the other day that water companies are losing vast amounts of their water through leaks — possibly as much as 25%!
So now for an interesting piece of science. Apparently your soul is in your eyeballs. Yes really. Well actually it does make sense and does seem to agree with one’s intuitive experience.
So how do we think about nothing? This gives two totally different approaches.
And finally something rather splendid: an old church converted into a modern bookstore.
It takes the Dutch to find some good in Christianity. 🙂
Crossings Out
So the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Dr Rowan Williams, is standing down in nine months time. Appropriate timing? Is he being transmogrified into the Virgin Mary?
Meanwhile he has plenty of time to come out with a few more inanities.
Today, the day that he announced his pregnancy capitulation, he has said that wearing the cross does not offend non-Christians.
How can he possibly know? He isn’t a non-Christian.
Oh! Maybe he is! After all he’s Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s well known that Archbishops of Canterbury can believe six impossible things before breakfast. Recall too that memorable line from the Eric Idle version of the “List Song” in the ENO production of The Mikado:
Bishops who don’t believe in God
Chief Constables who do.
Full lyric here (complete with a couple of errors) and a video on YouTube (the list Song starts about 4m15s in).