Barefoot in the wilderness
in search of understanding

You can't give it away

I’ve seen some stupid things in my time, but this is quite impressive.

Quantum computer solves problem without running

I know quantum mechanics is odd, but this is one of the oddest things I’ve ever read!

UK Govt spending on ID cards

The UK Government is spending £63 000 a day on its identity card scheme, for a total already exceeding £32 million. All on a scheme that hasn’t yet been approved by Parliament.

Detainees tortured to death by US military

Ekklesia is reporting on a study of US military records. These show that at least 8 (possibly more) detainees have been tortured to death by the US military during the Iraq war. And 34 deaths meet the US military’s own definition of a homicide. However, only 12 people have yet been punished – and the worst penalty imposed was only 5 months in jail.

pax et bonum

Had your say...

So, you had your say about the name of this blog, and no a one of you picked my favourite name from the list

Of course, after the event, Anne (my lovely wife) pointed out that she read it as “bottom logic”, which isn’t really what I was looking for! Anyhow, I’ll ponder the results and see whether I’ll take any notice of them or not! Any further thoughts, anyone?

pax et bonum

Word on the web?

Writely is a word processor in a browser. Still in beta, but could be very useful, especially for people who need to collaborate on the same documents.
(_Apologies to whoever I got this from but I’ve lost the source!_)

The Life of David

Guardian Unlimited is running an interview with David Attenborough, and it’s fascinating. I’m sure almost any British person knows David Attenborough, but I’m less sure about the rest of you. If you’ve watched a wildlife documentary but haven’t see his Life on Earth or any of the many, many others then you have simply not seen what a good documentary should be. It’s hard to believe, but it’s over 25 years since he reinvigorated (almost reinvented) the wildlife documentary and, judging by some of the programmes I’ve seen on certain channels of the TV, it looks like there are still quite a few film-makers who haven’t caught up yet! People have tried to capture exactly what he brings to his programmes, and I guess it’s the combination of knowledgeable enthusiasm that never veers into lecturing with a friendly, avuncular style that never becomes annoying, plus a dash of genius for spotting the story to tie it all together without ever letting the story become anthropomorphic. For the seminal Life on Earth, that story was evolution; for others it’s been animal behaviour, the oceans, the polar ice caps or whatever. Whatever it is, he continues to carry it off with style even now, as he (joy of joys!) starts filming a new series on frogs and other amphibia.

pax et bonum

Losing fair use?

In the USA (unlike the UK), copyright law explicitly recognises the right to make backup copies of music that you buy as well as to make “fair use” of CDs by, for example, copying a CD you buy to your MP3 player provided that you are only using one copy at a time. However, the Recording Industry Ass. of America doesn’t like this, because it means that you only buy each album once. They’d much rather you bought the same album once on CD (to listen to on your stereo), once as an download (to listen to on your PC), once more as a download (to listen to on your iPod), yet again as a download (when you buy a new PC, because the download won’t play on the new PC), and so on and so forth. In other words, they want to extract as much money as humanly possible for the privilege we’ve always taken for granted of listening to music we’ve bought however and wherever we like.

Indeed, the RIAA is now even claiming that (explicit decisions by the US Supreme Court notwithstanding) fair use rights don’t include ripping a CD you’ve bought so that you can have it on your mp3 player, nor even to make a backup! Apparently, they believe that it’s now up to corporations to make and interpret the law.

(_Thanks to the EFF for the info._)

pax et bonum

Now that is small

There’s a 4 GB hard drive in there!

(_Thanks to The Register for the info._)

pax et bonum

Emailing the MP

With the ID-card bill before the House of Commons again today, I thought it was about time I emailed my MP again. This is an nice, easy task thanks to WriteToThem.com – they make it very easy to send an email to your MP (UK only, though, sorry!). Fill in a form, reply to a confirmation email and Bob’s your uncle!

Here’s what I wrote to my MP (Andrew Lansley, Conservative).

(click for more)

Blair on security

The Financial Times is apparently reporting that Tony Blair will be emphasising national security in his speech to the Labour Party spring conference this weekend.

The prime minister will say: “There cannot be opportunity without security. There cannot be strong communities without security. Providing security is our duty. To try to fight the new security threats of the 21st century without the laws and resources that are needed would be an abrogation of duty. Labour is strongest when it is on the side of the people.”

And, while few would seriously argue that security is a bad thing, I would question his apparent assumption that it is the most important thing. I would not want to live in a society that was too secure – for it would not be free. As Benjamin Franklin said, “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.“ I don’t always agree with Americans, but the man had a point, I think. The need for security must always be balanced by the need for liberty, and when a government wants to take away rights that were hard won for British subjects hundreds of years ago, we must demand extremely good reasons why. Especially if they want to take away those rights permanently.

(_Thanks to No2ID for the tip._)

pax et bonum

Managing hydro power

Hydroelectric power is often touted as a good, green source of electricity. But, as with anything else, it has to be managed well. For example, this story about Uganda apparently running too much water through the dams at the outflow of Lake Victoria (the world’s second largest freshwater lake, bordering Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya), which has led to the lake becoming drained. It’s already lost 3% of its volume and its levels are at an 80-year low, “leaving international ferries stranded far from their jetties, fishing boats mired in mud, and towns running low on water.”

pax et bonum

Xgl

Novell has announced that it’s donating the code for its Xgl graphics system to the X.org. This is an improved architecture for the X server upon which Linux (and other *nix clones) desktops are based. And it’s really quite exciting. They’ve improved the way it works and the way it integrates with graphics hardware in the PC, which means that it now does funky stuff like true transparency (see through windows to other windows underneath them). Also, they’ve…borrowed…ideas from Mac OSX, like animating the window minimise action (they zoom down into the task list and zoom up again, rather than just disappearing as at present) and the way OSX’s Expose feature works – to find a window on a busy desktop, it will shrink all windows down so that they fit into the screen, letting you pick the one you want before they all return to the way they were (and movies even keep playing while they’re shrunken). And even OSX’s “spinning cube” animation is now present – instead of simply replacing one virtual desktop with another, it maps them to the face of a cube and spins it. Hard to explain, but it looks very pretty. Go and check out the movies on Novell’s announcement page.

pax et bonum

Freecycle again

A while ago, I posted about Freecycle – an organisation that helps stuff change hands, from those that don’t want it to those who do. It’s recycling, only it’s direct from person to person, and the stuff gets used “as is”. You post a message to your local group that you have something to pass on, and are soon (hopefully) flooded by offers from people to take it off your hands.

Well, we finally got round to signing up ourselves, and it’s been pretty nice. We’ve gained lots of space by passing stuff on, and even gained a useful trundly underbed storage box, too.

It’s good, it’s useful and it’s environmentally friendly. Go see whether there’s a group in your area!

pax et bonum

Here and there

Here’s a fun thing – a site that will show you where in the country (UK only, I’m afraid) people with your surname live. It’s based on 1881 and 1998 census returns, so you can even see how your family’s moved around over the past 100 or so years. The ethnicity and social indicators are interesting, too. My family name is staunchly British, and generally working class (“Shared staircase” is the commonest social grouping, which means living in low-rent blocks of flats).

If you’re interested, here are the results for my surname:

(click for more)

Where there's smoke...

This is a good analogy for the whole faith/works thing
(_Thanks to Dr Moose for the link._)

BNP aiming for religious right?

The British National Party is to campaign on the grounds that it’s defending Britain’s “Christian culture”. It is even garnering support from some extremist Christian groups. The churches must speak out against its attempts to shackle the Christian faith to a racist agenda and the politics of hate.

pax et bonum

The theology of Intelligent Design

This post comes from one of my recent posts to an email forum where Intelligent Design has come up again (thanks, in this case, to a recent BBC Radio 4 programme about it). The crucial point, it seems to me, when discussing ID in Christian circles isn’t to debate the science – that will sort itself out and, anyway, most people don’t have the background to understand properly the arguments being made by the ID crowd. Rather, we need to think clearly about the theology of this theory. When parts of the Christian Church are proclaiming ID as part of the Christian faith, we need to look carefully to see whether it is, in fact compatible with that faith. And I believe that it isn’t. It has serious theological problems that arise from the compromises that were made when devising it.

(click for more)

Election

Alastair is writing a series of posts about the theology of election (not the political sort!). He makes some very interesting points, and asks some pertinent questions. In particular, the articles on the relationship between election and sin, and about the sovereignty of God bear close attention. Although I’m not sure I’d follow quite the path he’s treading here, he certainly has some valid criticisms of the standard Calvinist and Arminian positions. Worth a read!

pax et bonum

Creationism in the UK

The Education Guardian is reporting that Creationism is on the rise in the UK. Regular visitors will be unsurprised to learn that I think this to be a Bad Thing! However, one interesting aspect of this is that the Royal Society (the original scientific society) has decided that it needs to mount an educational effort to let people know the true state of affairs in science. One aspect of this is a forthcoming public lecture entitled (provocatively) Why Creationism is wrong. And this is well and good, but they’ve made an unfortunate mistake. They’ve asked Professor Steve Jones to give the talk. Now, I can understand why – he’s a gifted communicator of science and an expert in evolutionary theory. However, he’s not talking from within a faith community. It would have been better, I think, to find someone who could do that; someone who is Christian or Muslim (for Creationists are found in both religions, and elsewhere) and yet can communicate the science well also. It’s not like we’re short of scientists with faith…

pax et bonum

Darwin's birthday II

More on “Evolution Sunday” – the celebration of Charles Darwin’s 197th birthday, which I talked a little about yesterday. Here’s something we don’t hear about often – a huge groundswell of moderate opinion, cutting through the hysterical Creationists and IDers who declare to all who will hear that Christians cannot accept the scientific theory of evolution.

A variety of denominational and non-denominational churches, including Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Unitarian, Congregationalist, United Church of Christ, Baptist and a host of community churches, participated in the event, which grew out of Zimmerman’s ‘Clergy Letter Project’, another effort to dispel the perception among many Christians that faith and evolution are mutually exclusive.
Zimmerman got more than 10,000 Christian ministers to sign a letter urging school boards across the country to “preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge.”

Yes, that’s 10,000 Christian leaders signing the letter supporting the teaching of evolution. Kind of puts the numbers of people making a noise about ID into perspective, doesn’t it?

(_Thanks to Ekklesia for the info._)

pax et bonum

Church schools

Ekklesia is discussing a report on the social makeup of church schools in this country. Apparently:

almost 19% of children living in the postcode area of church schools were from families eligible for free meals, but only 14% of the schools’ intakes were… The Church of England’s chief education officer, Canon John Hall, said…“If there were covert social selection for church schools – of which there is no actual evidence in this report – we would deplore it and seek to root it out.”

Now, I think that it is a good thing for the Church to run schools. I hope that we have something to offer to schools and their students. I also think that the other religions should also be able to be involved in schools in similar ways. However, if “church schools” are, in effect, socially selecting for nice middle-class children, there’s something very wrong. Christian schools should surely be doing what they originally did – offer better education to those who would not otherwise have access to it.

In other words, I would expect Christian schools to contain proportionately more of the disadvantaged children. Something is going wrong, I think.

pax et bonum

Trampling on symbols

Fr Tobias of In a Godward direction dwells on the idea of how (and, indeed, whether) mistreating a symbol equates to mistreating the thing symbolised. The trigger for this is the recent outcry over the cartoons of Mohammed – for symbols of the prophet are forbidden in Islam.

Tobias suggests that being too concerned for images is itself the problem, and quotes a very moving passage from the novel Silence (_Chinmoku_) by Shusaku Endo. In this passage, a priest in Japan has to choose between the torture and execution of his flock, and trampling on an image of Christ to show that he has forsaken his faith and hence losing his authority and place.

The priest raises his foot. In it he feels a dull, heavy pain. This is no mere formality. He will now trample on what he has considered the most beautiful thing in his life, on what he has believed most pure, on what is filled with the ideals and dreams of man. How his foot aches! And then the Christ in bronze speaks to the priest: “Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled only by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.”

Symbols carry powerful meanings – but they are not always the meanings that we think of.

pax et bonum

Darwin's birthday

Charles Darwin’s 197th birthday was celebrated this weekend by various churches preaching about evolution being reasonable for Christians to accept, and even by the Pope saying the same thing. Predictably, the views of the moderates could not be left alone:

Responding, Robert Crowther of intelligent design lobby group the Discovery Institute [said]: “We think it’s hypocritical and essentially a PR stunt to get attention for an idea that is clearly losing favour with the public.”

Since when was the rightness of anything (least of all the claims of science) judged by whether it was in favour with the public?

(_Thanks to The Register for the info._)

pax et bonum

Dropping Knowledge

Mike at WorD pointed me to Dropping Knowledge. Among other things, they’ve an excellent set of questions (framed as posters), which are well worth a look. Some of the best questions recently, to my mind, include:

Do people really want the western version of freedom?

Why is aggression viewed as strength, and peacefulness as weakness?

Is individual freedom necessarily good?

Check it out. Thought-provoking stuff.

pax et bonum

Muslim Action Committee

So, muslim leaders from across the UK have met under the auspices of the Muslim Action Committee (MAC) to debate what should be done about the publication of the now-infamous Danish cartoons featuring Mohammed. The interesting point about this, it seems to me, is that this is the largest meeting of these leaders ever held in this country. And this must surely be a good thing. If the majority moderate voices are to be heard, we need an over-arching group like this. So, let us hope that this crucible forges a new way for the Muslim community in the UK to speak up, over and above the extremists.

For what it’s worth, their suggestions sound eminently reasonable to me – changes to the Race Relations Act and the Press Complaints Commission code to give Islam the same protections as Christianity, Judaism and Sikhism. They would like the publication of images of Mohammed to be prohibited by the PCC code (a voluntary code of behaviour, not a legal instrument) because it cannot avoid being grievously offensive; but they uphold the right to discuss, debate and criticise their Islamic faith. “He said Muslims could accept a one-off publication of such an image as a misjudgement and said this was why it took several months for anger at the cartoons, first published in October, to gain momentum.“

I’ve heard other stories about this, including allegations that certain imams deliberately faked even more offensive cartoons in order to stir up anger and hatred. And that may well be true. But let’s hope that the moderate majority gain a louder voice. On all sides.

pax et bonum

Bush's invitation not all it seems?

The US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba has been in the news for a while, largely because of the allegations that the detentions are illegal under US and international law, and that the US is practicing torture there. The Bush administration has claimed that none of this is true – and that, even if it is, their actions are fully justified (although they won’t tell us what those actions are, of course).

Back in June 2005, George W. Bush said to those who were concerned about the goings on at the camp: “You’re welcome to go down yourself…and take a look at the conditions.“ Well, a group from Witness Against Torture took him at his word and travelled to Cuba, walking 60 miles to get to the camp. They spent a 4-day vigil outside but weren’t allowed in and, after returning to the USA, they’ve all been served papers by the US Government and face jail terms of up to 10 years. Why? Because the US Government forbids its citizens from travelling to Cuba!

What’s going on here? First, the US sets up a detention camp somewhere it forbids its citizens from travelling to. Then, no less a person than the President makes the explicit suggestion that anyone concerned about Guantanamo should travel there to see what’s happening. When people take his offer seriously they are not only not allowed to “take a look” but they are facing serious jail terms as a result! Something’s not right here. Not least, that the US Government appears to take travel restrictions more seriously than allegations of torture.

(_Thanks to Ekklesia for the news._)

pax et bonum

Taxation and theft

There’s a notion that I’ve come across a few times in the blogosphere that baffles me somewhat – the idea that taxation (any taxation) is “legalised theft”. To start with, this phrase is a oxymoron: “theft” is precisely the removal of property from someone else without the legal right to do so. If we put that to one side and deal with the apparent intended meaning, it is of course true in a trivial sense. In other words, taxation is a legalised way to take money from the taxpayer. The question is, though, whether it is in any way reasonable to append “theft” to the action. Is it really “theft” for the government to pass a law that allows it to take money from its subjects? Or, in other words, is the government morally entitled to levy taxes?

To look at this a bit, let’s take a different example but a related one – the law courts. Here, we have a situation in which the government has passed laws that allow it to take money from certain people under certain circumstances: if someone breaks the law, they often have to pay a fine. For example, the government may impose a speed limit on drivers. By their nature, speed limits are arbitrary choices (there’s no clear dividing line such as “50 mph is safe, 51 mph isn’t”) but legally enforced ones. If we are caught driving above the speed limit, we may be fined. I don’t think many people can have a problem with this principle (however much they may be annoyed by the “restriction of their freedom” of this example). We have broken no universal moral code by driving 5 mph faster, merely the human law of the land. If, however, we concede the morality of taking money from lawbreakers, we have conceded the entire principle – the government is morally entitled to take money from its subjects under certain circumstances. If the government passes a law that imposes a tax, we are legally obliged to pay it. If we say “No”, we become lawbreakers and subject to fines – which we agree are morally allowable.

The question is thus not a simple one of whether governments can “legalise theft”, as is often said. Opposition to the principle of taxation must arise elsewhere, and it is the task of those who oppose taxation to show us why they take this moral position. I’ve not seen a valid defense yet – but I’d like to!

pax et bonum

Good and bad analogies

Tobias has written an interesting post about how the analogy between male-female love and divine-human love has been misapplied to the homosexuality debate. In particular, he points out how the same logic often used to claim that all marriage must be male-female was also used in history to claim that monarchy was the only divinely ordained system of government.

the image of king and subject, or master and servant, is consistent from Genesis to Revelation (and far more frequent than the imagery based on marriage). On this basis, the Stuarts advanced the notion that Monarchy alone was the divinely willed form of government. Surely this is a similar example of taking a symbol to literal extremes.

An interesting thought!

pax et bonum

Bono is on form

Bono preached a storming sermon the other day – to GW Bush and co. at his prayer breakfast. The man’s got guts

it’s not about charity after all, is it? It’s about justice.
Let me repeat that: It’s not about charity, it’s about justice.
And that’s too bad. Because you’re good at charity. Americans, like the Irish, are good at it. We like to give, and we give a lot, even those who can’t afford it. But justice is a higher standard. Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice; it makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties, it doubts our concern, it questions our commitment…
I want to suggest to you today that you see the flow of effective foreign assistance as tithing. Which, to be truly meaningful, will mean an additional 1% of the federal budget tithed to the poor…
1% is a new partnership with Africa, not paternalism toward Africa, where increased assistance flows toward improved governance and initiatives with proven track records and away from boondoggles and white elephants of every description. America gives less than 1% now. We’re asking for an extra 1% to change the world, to transform millions of lives – but not just that and I say this to the military men now – to transform the way that they see us.
1% is national security, enlightened economic self-interest, and a better, safer world rolled into one. Sounds to me that in this town of deals and compromises, 1% is the best bargain around.

pax et bonum