251. Town moves against Islamic school

Comment #185187 by hungarianelephant on May 27, 2008 at 7:03 am

150. Comment #185178 by al-rawandi on May 27, 2008 at 6:38 am

I have long said that Islam doesn't cause violence. And it really doesn't, people are violent, however Islam facilitates violence because it creates dichotomies, and it reinforces these to the exclusion of almost all reconcilliation.

Something of a digression. I've just (finally) finished Carl Sagan's Cosmos. He points to studies showing that people are very unlikely to become violent in adulthood if two conditions are met:

• physical contact during childhood (i.e. weren't you hugged as a child)


• lack of strong repression of sexual expression during adolescence

He goes so far as to suggest that these should be considered fundamental human rights.

Islam doesn't do terribly well on the second test.

And I can think of one other place with high sexual repression and high rates of violence. Now where would that be?

252. Town moves against Islamic school

Comment #185140 by hungarianelephant on May 27, 2008 at 4:32 am

Well, this has moved on a little since last night.

78. Comment #185018 by Vinelectric on May 26, 2008 at 5:31 pm

hungarianelephant

Muslims do not fit in this town. We are Aussies, OK

Hypocrites, how about Aussies integrating with Aborigines.

I'm not sure why you want to engage in point scoring by attributing to me a quote from one of the protestors, and then playing the moral equivalence card. What's your point, anyway? That because of what happened to aboriginal people over the last two hundred years, Australians have no right to question immigration?

81. Comment #185023 by Vinelectric on May 26, 2008 at 5:50 pm

I don't think that will happen given the constant stream of fresh immigration from third world countries. Would it be sensible to offer a monitored and standardized religious syllabus as an option to parents be any good?

Or - here's a mad idea - we could stop fresh immigration from third world countries, at least where it's intended to preserve a stupid, backward, repressive culture.

253. Town moves against Islamic school

Comment #184887 by hungarianelephant on May 26, 2008 at 10:46 am

Granton

I'm not sure what your point is. I wasn't arguing against faith schools (though I'm certainly happy to agree with you). You asked what integration would take, and I made a suggestion. Arguing that another church school would also be divisive doesn't address the issue, even if a more familiar one might be treated differently.

As I said, it might very well be that some of the residents of Camden are racists. But I'm not prepared simply to push them into that category without better evidence than this.

It's become virtually impossible to say anything remotely connected with race without being denounced as racist, the greatest thoughtcrime of our age. And many of these people are relatively unsophisticated, and speak more plainly than is politically acceptable.

When someone says "I am not a racist but", what they might mean is, "I am not a racist, but have genuine concerns that some people are determined to characterise as racist". What others hear - and especially the BBC - is "I am a racist and am in denial". I see no reason to presume the second meaning every time.

And we should be particularly alert for it, because Muslims are now trying to play the anti-race card by portraying anti-Islamic sentiment as (a) racist, or (b) akin to racism. We should call them out on this, not play along.

254. Town moves against Islamic school

Comment #184876 by hungarianelephant on May 26, 2008 at 10:21 am

17. Comment #184873 by mordacious1 on May 26, 2008 at 10:20 am

No questions, but I know racism when I see it.

So does the BBC. I hope your radar is a little more accurate.

255. Town moves against Islamic school

Comment #184874 by hungarianelephant on May 26, 2008 at 10:20 am

Granton, same way as everyone else. Trying to set up a school to maintain continued separation doesn't count as integration, in my book.

What colour are Lebanese, by the way?

256. Town moves against Islamic school

Comment #184870 by hungarianelephant on May 26, 2008 at 10:13 am

mordacious1 - Yes. Next question.

257. Town moves against Islamic school

Comment #184867 by hungarianelephant on May 26, 2008 at 10:05 am

The BBC always seems to be looking for racism. Even so, this is about the best it could do here:

Muslims do not fit in this town. We are Aussies, OK

Thing is, that's not actually racist, is it? The person who said it might be a racist. There might be racist undertones. But the fact is that there are large numbers of Muslims in Australia who have no intention whatsoever of integrating with the rest of the populus. And nothing in this proposal would seem to indicate that it's about to start.

What seems to have happened here is a meeting of local people to try to discuss matters which will affect them locally. That's democracy in action. Some will see the proposal as a foot in the door to change the area radically. They may be right or wrong, but it's hardly unreasonable to raise the discussion.

258. That's it. Texas really is doomed.

Comment #184824 by hungarianelephant on May 26, 2008 at 9:06 am

Does anyone know who sits on these boards? Are they like non-execs in public companies - turn up for the lunch and vote the CEO another pay rise?

259. Richard Dawkins on The Big Questions

Comment #184774 by hungarianelephant on May 26, 2008 at 6:29 am

426. Comment #184766 by Diocletian on May 26, 2008 at 6:13 am

... and you don't see anything ironic about the fact that you posted basically the same comment on three different threads?

Who made you the RD.net comment police anyway?

260. Repulsive but right

Comment #184771 by hungarianelephant on May 26, 2008 at 6:24 am

44. Comment #184768 by phil rimmer on May 26, 2008 at 6:21 am

What I find often happens is that their views aren't substantially altered, but their reasons for holding those views become more rationally based.

Surely you don't mean that theists sometimes invent ex post facto rationalisations to explain their prejudices???

261. Repulsive but right

Comment #184769 by hungarianelephant on May 26, 2008 at 6:22 am

37. Comment #184742 by Corylus on May 26, 2008 at 5:12 am

"Repulsive but right" or "repulsive because he's right?"

I'd think that for some, it's a combination of the two. If Hitchens were wrong, then he's merely an outspoken, blunt, poor deluded fool. Whereas if he's right, then he's tearing apart the warm and fuzzy theist universe. If you're less than 100% convinced, that has to be an unsettling feeling.

There's a video somewhere on this site with an exerpt which goes something like this:

Hitchens (on video): Mother Theresa's lack of faith shows that I'm right.

Comedian (in studio): Hurray, I'm right! Life has no meaning! (laughter from audience)

Better to know that your beliefs are nonsense than to have to think about how to give your life some meaning?

262. Mail-boat record 'proves Darwin stole his original ideas from a Welsh scientist'

Comment #184728 by hungarianelephant on May 26, 2008 at 4:11 am

25. Comment #184723 by hyposcada on May 26, 2008 at 3:39 am

I'm sure Matt (Ascaphus) will clarify whether he was referring to you or Roy Davies. However, in your ire you seem to have missed the point.

In science publication is everything. It is irrelevant from the point of view of scientific priority that Joe Smith discovered natural selection four hundred years ago if he never got around to publishing his idea.

Davies is arguing precisely the opposite - that what is relevant is where the ideas came from, and specifically that Darwin stole them.

I'm pretty sure that most non-scientists would agree with the first part of that argument. You're welcome to argue against it, but if you want to come here and criticise other posters for not getting their facts straight, you might be well advised to choose your language more carefully when talking to reporters. "Everyone credits Origin of Species as being the place the idea was first published" is not accurate.

263. Richard Dawkins Responds to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #184717 by hungarianelephant on May 26, 2008 at 3:12 am

371. Comment #184627 by clearmind on May 25, 2008 at 9:18 pm

Ten what is the expression for?

5 x 2 =

Now a question for you. If it takes a pirahna three days to walk to Bucharest, what colour is my granny's cat?

264. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #183951 by hungarianelephant on May 23, 2008 at 9:31 am

epeeist - Wasn't Peterloo a pro-democracy demonstration? I didn't think it had anything to do with the unions.

265. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #183945 by hungarianelephant on May 23, 2008 at 8:56 am

575. Comment #183944 by al-rawandi on May 23, 2008 at 8:50 am

Again ... Bar Council ...

Sorry, it's Friday afternoon and I am looking forward to a pint.

EDIT - These points are well made. Margaret Thatcher was elected in 1979, primarily on a platform of sorting out the unions. The closed shop was abolished, secondary picketing was criminalised and strikes required a ballot of the members. It was not pretty.

There are some on the left who regard Thatcher as a sort of hate figure. I have recently - 17 years after her departure from office, mark you - heard it seriously suggested that this octogenarian should be hung as a traitor to the British people.

The thing is, many of these people have never had to try to work with the unions. In the three elections she fought, she managed to garner more votes from union members than the opposition. In other words, she was more popular with members of the very bodies she was "smashing" than with the general public.

It's all about vested interests.

266. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #183943 by hungarianelephant on May 23, 2008 at 8:39 am

So is the Bar Council. What of it? ;)

267. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #183939 by hungarianelephant on May 23, 2008 at 8:23 am

565. Comment #183930 by Bonzai on May 23, 2008 at 7:59 am

You are confusing value and price. You probably don't get pay a lot if you work with inner city children or look after seniors. Volunteers actually provide very valuable services as oppose to say, chemists working for tobacco companies to make cigarettes more addictive, scientists who make WMD or lawyers do corporate mergers. I know it is not always easy to weigh contributions based on "value", but clearly it is not satisfactory to equate value with the price one gets pay for. Usually, you get reward more handsomely if you cater to wealth and those who own it, which is not the same as contributing to "society" in some intuitive sense.

Let's agree on that, even if I have been a blood-sucking corporate lawyer.

Now what?

268. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #183936 by hungarianelephant on May 23, 2008 at 8:14 am

563. Comment #183928 by al-rawandi on May 23, 2008 at 7:56 am

No way. Ownership of companies can be traded on an open exchange. The prices driven by performance of the underlying companies. Derivatives can also be traded, independent contracts for buying and selling of stocks in the future based on expected performance or under performance. The stock market is simply a place where ownership in companies is exchanged between buyers and sellers.

Yes. However, that makes a very big assumption. It assumes that the liability of the shareholders is limited to their investment in the company.

Why so? Because if the company is not interposed, then the shareholders are principals. That makes them liable for the trading debts of the company. In theory, that could be sorted out by having liability in proportion to ownership. But in practice, that stops working as soon as one of your co-shareholders fails to honour a debt.

The value of the shares in the company then becomes dependent on two more imponderables - your own creditworthiness (creditors look for the deepest pocket), and that of your co-shareholders.

Like it or not, the only way to eliminate this is with limited shareholder liability, and for obvious reasons that requires the company to be treated as a legal person.

Does it require all the rights of a "real" person? No. But at minimum it needs to have the rights necessary to conduct economic activity in the same way as a natural person.

I can see some valid arguments for preventing corporations from making political donations. However, applying the same logic, trade unions shouldn't make them either. And furthermore, someone is going to have to explain to me why corporations should not also be banned from making charitable donations.

269. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #183927 by hungarianelephant on May 23, 2008 at 7:54 am

559. Comment #183923 by Quetzalcoatl on May 23, 2008 at 7:48 am

I suppose one example might be that I wouldn't like to see the healthcare system becoming fully privatised. Reason being, obviously, that provision of healthcare to those that need it but cannot afford to pay for it would be restricted.

I'm not so sure about that. Even if you accept the principle of socialised payment for healthcare (now there's a minefield), it doesn't follow that the delivery needs to be by government.

Insert a substitution, and see how it reads:

I suppose one example might be that I wouldn't like to see the food industry becoming fully privatised. Reason being, obviously, that provision of food to those that need it but cannot afford to pay for it would be restricted.

270. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #183922 by hungarianelephant on May 23, 2008 at 7:44 am

556. Comment #183919 by al-rawandi on May 23, 2008 at 7:39 am

Corporations should not be treated as entities, politically or otherwise ... They shouldn't be treated as a "person".

You realise that you just killed the stock market?

271. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #183877 by hungarianelephant on May 23, 2008 at 4:42 am

OT: I have a friend who works for a US law firm in London, with the concomitant salary and absence of work-life balance. She was once charged £1000 by a plumber as a call out fee.

£1000? she said. I'm an associate in a US law firm and I can't charge that kind of rate.

No, said the plumber. When I was an associate in a US law firm, I couldn't either.

[EDIT - this was of course before a large number of Poles moved to London, and started charging a reasonable rate and turning up when they said they would. That's a free market for you.]

272. Richard Dawkins Responds to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #183875 by hungarianelephant on May 23, 2008 at 4:37 am

Surely there must come a point where you have to say that a string of words bearing some resemblance to English is not, in fact, English. Where, philosophically speaking, do you draw that line?

What Would Wittgenstein Do?

[EDIT - excellent post by Incredulous, if sadly wasted on the likes of wooter.]

273. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #183858 by hungarianelephant on May 23, 2008 at 3:35 am

538. Comment #183854 by phil rimmer on May 23, 2008 at 3:28 am

I have no fear of state intervention in many areas where the market is just too dumb or short sighted or unable to establish a (morally) fair value for things.

Earlier in the thread, Bonzai and I had an inconclusive discussion about investment in technology.

The market typically heavily discounts future returns, in favour of immediate dividends or speculative capital appreciation. The typical investment cycle is around 2 years, much shorter than development periods for, say, new drugs or fusion reactors. Practically speaking, this doesn't mean that you profit by taking the long view. It means that you go bust, as the major investors won't stick it out with you and the developer runs out of money before getting a product to market.

How, if at all, would you propose to address that?

274. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #183855 by hungarianelephant on May 23, 2008 at 3:30 am

534. Comment #183845 by epeeist on May 23, 2008 at 2:35 am

Marx was right about the social conditions prevalent in Victorian society. They were vile, any reading of history will confirm this. Further, they were the fault of laissez-faire capitalism.

This is possibly a nit-pick, but I think this conclusion is capable of being misunderstood.

The mill owners were able to establish an economic, and more importantly a legal, framework which suited their interests. It involved indentured apprenticeships, signed up to by children between the ages of 5 and 9, for the whole of their childhood. They worked between 12 and 16 hours a day in dangerous conditions, and if they ran away they could be forced to return and work overtime to pay off their fines. By any reasonable standard, this was indistinguishable from limited-term slavery.

Subsequently the indentures were abolished, contracts declared not binding on minors, and decent working conditions imposed. The largest impetus to decent working conditions was not in fact legislation, but tort law, which gradually became accessible as the industrial and provident societies paid for test cases, and chipped away at the legal barricades.

Conditions were a consequence of laissez-faire capitalism, certainly, but only because of the context of undue respect to vested interests. As ever, it's the vested interests you have to look out for.

Btw, I was in Quarry Bank Mill a couple of weeks ago. A fascinating place.

275. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #183852 by hungarianelephant on May 23, 2008 at 3:15 am

536. Comment #183849 by phil rimmer on May 23, 2008 at 2:50 am

Excellent post.

One of the many problems with all Marxist formulations is that once you look beyond the soundbites, the actually concepts are impossible to pin down.

What does "need" mean, as in "to each according to his needs"?

There's no answer to it. "Need" is a linguistic game. Subjectively, it means whatever you consider as a priority. It's also code for "give this to me and shut up about it", especially when used by special interest groups lobbying government. Watch a two year old promote his "I want" to "I need" for a working demonstration.

But that's never going to suffice in a socialist state, so you need an objective definition. And there isn't one, except whatever the state says it is.

Whether the state is appointed democratically or arbitrarily, is formal or informal (as in the sort of 1930s Spanish view of anarchism to which D'Arcy seems to subscribe), it takes a view, and short of brainwashing the population, will never be fully agreed upon.

276. In God's Name

Comment #183580 by hungarianelephant on May 22, 2008 at 9:54 am

171. Comment #183549 by irate_atheist on May 22, 2008 at 8:55 am

At my alma mater, one wasn't actually charged for the privelege. The bursar missed a trick on that one, I think.

Come to think of it, I don't remember that we were either.

They were very strong on the lunch, though. Possibly because it was a rare chance for the chef to show what he could do when his budget wasn't limited to £1.68 per head.

277. In God's Name

Comment #183493 by hungarianelephant on May 22, 2008 at 7:22 am

167. Comment #183488 by epeeist on May 22, 2008 at 7:15 am

There is an old and poor joke about an American visiting Christchurch college in Oxford

Heretic! It's Christ Church, a Tudor anglicisation of the Latin "Aedes Christi" (house of Christ), and hence no more a college than "St Edmund Hall".

It's also not true that you get an MA just by paying a fee some time later. You also have to turn up and eat lunch, and not have been in prison in the meantime. So there.

278. 'Reverse Evolution' Discovered in Seattle Fish

Comment #183481 by hungarianelephant on May 22, 2008 at 7:08 am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution

279. Richard Dawkins Responds to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #183467 by hungarianelephant on May 22, 2008 at 6:51 am

Well you can't make diamonds out of bricks.

Unless you're God. What's that? God doesn't make diamonds out of bricks? Oh. Never mind.

280. Richard Dawkins Responds to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #183453 by hungarianelephant on May 22, 2008 at 6:39 am

[Trying desperately to change the subject]
Anna, are you very small, or is that turtle very large?

281. Teenager faces prosecution for calling Scientology 'cult'

Comment #183451 by hungarianelephant on May 22, 2008 at 6:37 am

115. Comment #183422 by Barry Pearson on May 22, 2008 at 5:13 am

But as far as I can tell, the same restrictions about using the word "cult" don't apply outside immediate hearing or seeing range, for example in this forum.

That's wishful thinking, I'm afraid.

Posting in a public forum is "using ... words ... within sight ... of someone". If you know that scientologists are likely to read your posts, calling them a cult is the same as putting it on a sign outside their church.

Section 29J supposedly protecting freedom of expression only works against "this Part", i.e. Part IIIA, which was introduced by the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. It doesn't affect section 5 in any way. In other words, the stuff about "religious hatred" is just tagged onto what was there to begin with, and they can get you under "insulting words" without needing to consider the religious aspect.

282. In God's Name

Comment #183401 by hungarianelephant on May 22, 2008 at 3:43 am

122. Comment #183299 by Mitchell Gilks on May 21, 2008 at 7:21 pm

The way you fix the muslim birth rate problem is the same way it has been slowed in every other country; the emansipation of women. Once women are nolonger resigned to being baby mechines, and given control over their own reproductive system, their birthrate will greatly reduce, and become analoguous to the birthrates of cultures with gender equity.

Or, we could work on a pill which enables people to choose the gender of their babies, and hand them out for free. Then every stupid backward family will consider it some other family's job to produce the seven daughters to marry their seven sons.

Course, that may leave you with a generation of sexually frustrated Muslim men, which may be a teeny weeny flaw in the proposal.

283. Richard Dawkins Responds to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #183400 by hungarianelephant on May 22, 2008 at 3:37 am

279. Comment #183356 by clearmind on May 22, 2008 at 12:28 am

I am from Romania.

Any chance you can post in Romanian, then? It might make more sense.

Well, it's worth a shot anyway.

284. Missing matter found in deep space

Comment #183394 by hungarianelephant on May 22, 2008 at 3:17 am

So we're ruling out the theory that the missing matter is the polystyrene chips that the universe came packed in, then?

285. Teenager faces prosecution for calling Scientology 'cult'

Comment #183392 by hungarianelephant on May 22, 2008 at 3:12 am

102. Comment #183145 by mrjonno on May 21, 2008 at 12:51 pm

The law he was arrested under seems to be vague and badly worded. It means a single policeman has to make a value judgement about how much offensive/hatred etc is being generated etc.

In this case he got it wrong however I hardly think this is the end of the world. The police do have a right to arrest you if they suspect you of commiting a crime. Whether you have or not committed the crime is actually irrelevant The important word is suspect.

Excuse my bluntness, but that whooshing sound was the noise of the point whistling past your head.

As other posters have pointed out, the most invidious aspect of Section 5 is precisely that it places all the judgments in the hands of the policemen present. This enables them, on the spot, to decide whether you are showing insufficient respect and accordingly whether they should arrest you.

Whether or not this plucky young man will be prosecuted is beside the point. The point is that the police can effectively tell him to stop what he is doing because they personally disapprove of his behaviour. Most people will comply at that point. Others can be arrested. It is difficult to think of a more effective means of suppressing free speech - or most likely particular forms of free speech - if that is what you want to do.

This is not some obscure and unused law nestling in the increasingly unwieldy statute book. It is the prime weapon of the police up and down the UK. Worse, they don't even seem to realise how illiberal it is. Any given episode of Night Cops on Sky One shows section 5 in action. It is shocking what the police get up to. But they actually seem to be proud of the fact that they can arrest someone who has committed no other offence, in front of the television cameras, for telling them to "fuck off and leave me alone".

In another case, an Oxford student was arrested and fined for telling a mounted policeman that "your horse is gay", and "I hope you feel comfortable riding a gay horse".

All this - well, maybe not the bit about the gay horse - was predicted by pinko lefty lawyers when it was enacted during the Thatcher years. Subsequently those same pinko lefty lawyers got themselves into government. But by then, they had discovered that it was quite useful to have such measures on the statute book. They enable you to do more or less whatever you like, such as arresting Free Tibet demonstrators when the Chinese premier is in town.

For those of you who think that Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights will come to his aid, think again. Here's why:

ARTICLE 10

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. this right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or the rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

Yup, that's right. Freedom of expression is subject to pretty much whatever government says it is. Sooner or later, people will cotton onto the fact that despite its name, the ECHR is intended as a means of oppression, not liberation. I hope they don't find out too late.

In a proper country, you have freedom of expression enshrined as the cornerstone of the constitution, not some pleasant optional extra. And even more importantly, you would have, y'know, a principle that criminal legislation has to have a sufficiently precise meaning that people know exactly what it is that they are not supposed to do. Due process, if you will. These ideas used to be considered important in England. It's hard to say exactly what happened.

</rant>

286. Free Speech

Comment #182521 by hungarianelephant on May 20, 2008 at 10:21 am

Er, I thought the clue was in this bit:

Click on the image above to play video.
quicktime Video requires QuickTime Player 7. Download the free player here.
11.8 MB : 20:52

287. Richard Dawkins Responds to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #182517 by hungarianelephant on May 20, 2008 at 10:15 am

142. Comment #182511 by MaxD on May 20, 2008 at 9:47 am

I thought you were an elephant of Hungarian ancestry.

That would just be ridiculous. Can't you see it's a metaphor, man?

288. Richard Dawkins Responds to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #182510 by hungarianelephant on May 20, 2008 at 9:41 am

MaxD - Even a blind pig occasionally finds a truffle.

289. Richard Dawkins Responds to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #182507 by hungarianelephant on May 20, 2008 at 9:36 am

I concluded that wooter was Malaysian some months ago. Not on doctrinal grounds, but on the basis that his posts read - and I use the word loosely - a lot like badly written, badly translated IT manuals. If you didn't know how to insert the SD card before you read the instructions, you certainly wouldn't know afterwards.

Admittedly, I've also subsequently concluded that he is an implementation of a random comment generator written by epeeist, the Duracell bunny, the product of several generations of incest, and of course a fuckwit. Consistency hasn't greatly troubled me.

290. Non-religious summer camps develop niche

Comment #182467 by hungarianelephant on May 20, 2008 at 7:42 am

7. Comment #182457 by Cartomancer on May 20, 2008 at 7:22 am

I was so disappointed to find that a "Camp Quest" didn't involve limp-wristedly mincing around the countryside, simpering and lisping at passers by, while trying to find a magic sword, rescue a damsel in distress and uncover buried treasure...

Do you think there's a market for such a thing? Maybe in Oxford after the Pimms runs out ;)

291. God and Science Collide in Nation's Capital

Comment #182449 by hungarianelephant on May 20, 2008 at 6:40 am

Extraordinary, but legitimate, interventions in the physical world permit quantum tunneling through cosmic wormholes or certain symmetries to snap spontaneously. It would be perfectly fair for a science-savvy God to use nonlinear dynamics so that tiny fluctuations quickly build up to earthshaking results â€" the famous 'butterfly effect' of deterministic chaos theory.

However, the best tricks God appears currently able to manage are (a) to write "I am brilliant" in a tomato, and (b) to draw pictures of his mum in a grilled cheese sandwich.

When he gets out of infant school, stops playing with food and starts doing some real work, we can have a proper discussion.

292. Mayor challenges pope during Genoa visit

Comment #182444 by hungarianelephant on May 20, 2008 at 6:18 am

I've read this article several times in the hope that it might say something important that I've missed.

What the blue fuck does "restate principles while at the same time avoiding transforming ethics into a political battlefield" mean? Anyone? Bueller?

293. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #182434 by hungarianelephant on May 20, 2008 at 5:51 am

"Not enough time" is also one of wooter's complaints. It seems to be a creationist thing.

The idea of geological time is one which we humanoids struggle to grasp. It might seem like a long time since Bush was elected, but in geological terms it is nothing. The entirety of human history is nothing. If you stretched out your arms, and the distance between your fingertips represented the planet's history, you could remove the whole of the industrial age with a single stroke of a nail file.

Quine correctly refers to 1% of 1% of 1% per generation, something which we would not even notice. To put it another way, one generation as a proportion of elephant history is roughly equivalent to 30 seconds of a human life.

At the same time, we can see marked physical differences between humans today and, say, during World War I. We know this because we have millions of medical records of army recruits to prove it. To be sure, many of the differences are not genetic, and the basic body plan has remained the same. But if we can see a noticeable difference in just four generations, what might a million look like?

If this is hard for most of us to imagine, it must be doubly hard when your imagination is deliberately suppressed by a dogma which says that life was created 6000 years ago on a Wednesday afternoon.

294. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #182409 by hungarianelephant on May 20, 2008 at 2:21 am

510. Comment #182282 by D'Arcy on May 19, 2008 at 3:12 pm

But we are talking of a particular type of private property society, capitalism where there are essentially 2 classes, one that owns and the other that works.

That's the nub of it, isn't it?

And the problem is that this analysis is essentially false. Sure, there's a small rentier class that owns property and doesn't work. But if it doesn't do it in a smart way, it doesn't last very long. The rich of today are generally not the descendants of the rich of 100 years ago, and you can guarantee that the rich of 100 years hence will not be the descendants of the rich of today. Britain alone generates more than 800,000 new businesses, or rentiers per year, which hardly suggests fixed classes.

The problem is that the division between "capital" and "labour" is illusory. Individuals have a capacity to do work - "human capital" if you like - and they rent that capacity out for a particular return. Most choose to do so on a standardised basis, where they get a guaranteed return for a guaranteed input. We call this "wages". They are free not to do so. They could employ their capacity in a different way with possible higher rewards and higher risks, perhaps with the input of other borrowed capital. We call this "entrepreneurship". Or they could take their capacity to a different "employer", possibly on different terms.

It was not always thus. In the mills where Engels was inspired, the labour provided was mainly that of children. They would typically become indentured apprentices around the age of 9. This meant that they would sign up for the length of the apprenticeship, which was around 10 years, a period which meant that they would probably never see their families again. The work was hard and dangerous. They could not take their labour elsewhere, and if they ran away could be forced to return to the mill by court order. They had little choice in signing in the first place, and even if they did, the only reasonable alternative was starvation or being worked to death in the workhouse.

In short, proper notions of a free society had been set on one side to enable this "labour" to be provided on exploitative terms. An appropriate solution might have been the one which was actually employed in the West - regulations on working conditions, abolition of child labour, abolition of the indenture etc. Marx and Engels took a different view. It did not end well.

The false division between labour and capital leads you to conclusions like this:

The idea of socialism is that the resources of the world should be used for the benefit of the whole population and not to support a privileged elite and an under privileged majority. (emphasis added)

This only makes sense if you treat (a) non-human resources and (b) individuals' capacity to work as "resources of the world". Quite apart from the questionable moral assumption, you are inevitably led, as al-rawandi points out, to a situation in which people are told how they must employ their capacity to work.

295. Brown says embryo research is key to life

Comment #182176 by hungarianelephant on May 19, 2008 at 10:36 am

109. Comment #182168 by Mitchell Gilks on May 19, 2008 at 10:21 am

My point was not that species have no decernable difference. It was there there is no difference that justifies moral considerations for some species on not others, if your moral considerations are based on what I explained mine are based on.

I understood that, and apologise for paraphrasing in a way which could be misconstrued.

The point stands, though. The lack of a discernible difference between A and B, or between Y and Z, does not mean that there is no discernible difference between A and Z, even if admitting that means you have difficulty deciding how to treat intermediates.

296. Mayor challenges pope during Genoa visit

Comment #182166 by hungarianelephant on May 19, 2008 at 10:14 am

13. Comment #182142 by Auraboy on May 19, 2008 at 9:14 am

Well the increasingly fundamental position is to push for the complete repeal of abortion access EVEN in the case of rape, incest or possible death for the mother. I've seen this argument pressed for in various places and I imagine there must be some U.S states with such intention.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attorney_General_v._X

Footnote: Successive Irish governments have made three attempts to hold a constitutional referendum to ... wait for it ... reverse this decision. It's lost the lot, and since most of the abortion hypocrites (who think abortion is OK as long as you have to go to England to get it) are literally dying out, they will probably give up now. That hasn't stopped people talking the Lisbon Treaty into another abortion referendum. Actually I wonder what referendum wouldn't be regarded as having anything to do with abortion.

297. Brown says embryo research is key to life

Comment #182160 by hungarianelephant on May 19, 2008 at 10:04 am

Mitchell, you seem to have walked yourself up a blind alley.

my entire point and argument as been to demonstrate the arbitrary nature of cutting off ones moral considerations at the line of species, with zero cause that would universally justify equal rights for the human species but no other. As there is no equal quality of all human beings that other animals do not possess in some form as well.

On that basis, you're apparently not prepared to make any distinction between species.

This doesn't seem any different from insisting that as there is no clear distinction between foetuses at any given stage of development which ought to give rise to greater or lesser rights, that therefore the only clear line is conception, therefore all abortion is immoral.

It doesn't really work. We can all see that an eight celled embryo is not the same as a 39 week foetus, and we can all see that a human is not the same as a cow, and we can all respond appropriately. It's very unsatisfactory that we can't find a good, clear, bright line of distinction, but it doesn't follow that we should make no distinction.

Tell me why I'm wrong.

EDIT - On further consideration, it's actually apparent that most people can't, or at least don't, really consider the issue much further. The cow is not human, therefore we're not going to bother thinking about whether it has any "rights" (whatever they are - another discussion entirely).

This, and our total detachment from the process by which we get our food, leads us towards overuse of nitrates, veal pens and battery chickens. Which, I would be the first to add, I can't condone. It's possible to buy your meat from a butcher who can assure you that the animals have lived reasonable lives, roamed around and exhibited their natural behaviour before they are painlessly slaughtered and eaten. It's possible to show this concern without even committing yourself to a vegetarian position, let alone arguing against all exploitation of animals.

Whether there is a strict logical rationale is, for practical purposes, beside the point. What matters is that, if people bothered to think this through, the battery chicken industry would probably disappear before the end of the year. They don't, and it won't.

298. Brown says embryo research is key to life

Comment #182115 by hungarianelephant on May 19, 2008 at 8:37 am

65. Comment #182080 by ThoughtsonCommonToad on May 19, 2008 at 7:45 am

Thanks for your summary. I'm struggling with some of this.

We'd all agree that there's a difference between killing an ant and killing a chimpanzee. But I don't quite see what suffering has to do with it. Obviously it's not the actual suffering which is (solely) relevant, because we would still regard it as "wrong" to anaesthetise a chimp and kill it painlessly. If actual suffering is taken out of the equation, what's the relevance of capacity for suffering? Why would we regard that as axiomatic?

I also don't see why we wouldn't regard ourselves as "exploiting" cows. Is this just a linguistic exercise? We breed them selectively, feed them what we want, keep them how we want, then kill them how we want. By any reasonable interpretation, this sounds like "exploitation", just like anything else we treat as a resource. It doesn't necessarily import that we treat them callously or arbitrarily, or that the farmer doesn't have a genuine and heartfelt concern for his cattle, irrespective of his economic interests. It certainly doesn't imply that exploiting them is wrong.

Am I missing something important here?

299. Surviving an unholy school war

Comment #181987 by hungarianelephant on May 19, 2008 at 3:48 am

I think we're in danger of missing one of the key points here, which is the collaboration of the parents.

If you were on the receiving end of corporal punishment, you didn't tell your parents, because that would make it worse. The treatment was being administered by priests and nuns, the upstanding representatives of the church. Ergo, they must be right, you must have done something wrong and you were deserving of further punishment.

This is one of the most malign aspects of religion. The priests were given too much trust, especially with children and the vulnerable. There's no doubt that this very factor led to a great deal of the sexual abuse perpetrated by priests. Paedophiles signed up for the preisthood precisely because it would give them trusted access to children: see Ferns report on clerical sexual abuse in Co. Wexford.

Left to their own devices, the congregation are much more reasonable, pragmatic and "Christian" people than their leaders. There might have been a general prejudice against homosexuals, but the fact that Uncle Tom and "Uncle" Sean shared a house and were obviously rather close would be ignored until the priest started fulminating against them. Even Bishop Casey, who had a child in America and raided church funds to look after him, has been accepted back by his former congregation, who would have every right to brand him a hypocrite and a sinner.

Btw, I'd recommend the film "Song For A Raggy Boy", which is about institutional abuse in an industrial school (the last of which was only closed in the 1990s). Not sure how widely available it is outside Ireland.

300. These dim-wits believe in anything but God

Comment #181985 by hungarianelephant on May 19, 2008 at 3:22 am

On the Chesterton thing:

This is treated as axiomatic, but looking around a semi-religious country, such as Ireland, you might come to a rather different conclusion.

It's rare to find a fundie pious believer who also believes in non-religious crap like tarot and water-divining. It's also rare to find anyone prepared to describe themself as "atheist" who subscribes to it.

In between, you have the Sunday Mass-goers, who manage a veritable buffet of God, fairy trees, holy water, astrology, rosary beads, the banshee, purgatory (whether or not doctrinally abolished), UFOs and a few side orders of their choice. Yes, indeed: the majority of Irish people resemble Cherie Blair in their belief systems.

Suggested fix:

People who stop stop believing in everything the Church says about God don't believe in nothing until they've applied some critical thought to it, in the interim they believe in anything.