Milk and cookies

At long last, Oreos are set to become widely available in British supermarkets. This BBC report explains how best to enjoy them: 'Twist, lick and dunk'.

Banksy in London

The BBC has a report and video on Banksy's latest offering - a graffiti project in a London tunnel:-

A disused road tunnel in south London has been turned into a giant exhibition space by graffiti artist Banksy.

Murals in the Bristol artist's famous stencil style appear with work by 29 other artists in a half-mile stretch of the tunnel in Leake Street, Waterloo.

It's nice to see the attention Banksy's work is getting. I live in his home city, so I first came across his work on the street. I like it - it breaks the dull monotony of gray, and there's humor in it too.

Sick note

No blogging from me today - same reason as before.

Thursday roundabout

Michael Totten has postcards from the Balkans.

Sunny at Pickled Politics has some thoughts on the launch of British Muslims for Secular Democracy.

There's a host of Maydays at Neo-neocon.

Savage Minds looks at internet fundraising as a means of financing research projects.

Vodkapundit offers Seven Random Parental Observations.

And finally,

There's plenty of visual excitement at new sci-blog Illusion Sciences. [Via MM]

Lesbian action

From the BBC:-

Campaigners on the Greek island of Lesbos are to go to court in an attempt to stop a gay rights organisation from using the term "lesbian". The islanders say that if they are successful they may then start to fight the word lesbian internationally.

The issue boils down to who has the right to call themselves Lesbians. Is it gay women, or the 100,000 people living on Greece's third biggest island - plus another 250,000 expatriates who originate from Lesbos?

This thing could maybe spark off similar actions in any number of European cities - I'm thinking Frankfurt, Hamburg, Condom.

Four books

Started reading but couldn't really get into "War Reporting for Cowards" by Chris Ayres - I just found it irritating.

Dipping into a textbook of Cognitive Neuropsychology by Ellis and Young - fascinating.

Ploughing through Heidegger's "Being and Time" - difficult but thought provoking.

Just bought but haven't started reading John Gray's "Heresies" - it was remaindered.

Rich dilemma

Self-confessed food snob Daniel Gross' Moneybox column in Slate ends with a lament:-

We're spending obscene amounts on food we don't need at a time when so many others are genuinely struggling to pay for enough basic sustenance to get them through the day.

I don't see the problem. Nobody's forcing him to spend his money lavishly, are they?

[Via Samizdata]

HP 2.0

Harry's Place is back (after the usual month-end bandwidth problems) but at a new site and with a sparkling new design.

The eponymous Harry even turns up to give a welcoming address.

(Don't forget to update your bookmarks)

Tiny jellyfish

Image: Petr Kratochvil at Public Domain Pictures

Small minds

Not being religious, we didn't introduce the kids to religious stories when they were young. That sometimes led to problems. One day, driving along on a family outing when No 1 Son was about three years old, we passed an old country church.

Look, Daddy. That's a church.
Yes. Yes it is a church.
Jesus lives there.
Does he?
Yes.
Oh. Okay.
Jesus kills people.
Does he!?
Yes, look [pointing to the churchyard] that's where he buries the bodies.

Mac and I smiled at each other as we drove on - that special smile parents share when their young children say such wonderfully daft things. I spent some time with No 1 Son thereafter, putting him straight on the Jesus story. But still, what he said was funny.

However, it's not funny when an adult says something equally as daft. This from Ctl at Dean's World:-

Of course science leads you to killing people. It’s generally not scientists who do the killing, of course. As a group, scientists (being academics) are probably among the most physically cowardly of our species, and are therefore among the most gentle. While it’s true that politicians who start wars rarely themselves fire shots in anger in those wars, science doesn’t generally lead to killing in a direct manner, such as by proposing a theory that someone needs to die.

Science leads you to killing people because the scientific method is inherently amoral (note: amoral, not immoral).

Here's an example Ctl gives of how science kills people:-

The danger is that when the nanotech researcher gives a lecture that religion shouldn’t get in the way of his research, a less gentle man might attend and conclude that the same principle means that religion shouldn’t get in the way of his being a murdering dictator.

The researcher who gave the lecture will complain that he never meant that, and that the dictator is abusing what he said. But the abuse is only in the trivial sense that the dictator is correctly applying the principles that the scientist expounded towards a goal which the scientist doesn’t want him to.

Where do you start in responding to this sort of thing? I'm going to go ask one of the boys, I'm sure they have to deal with ideas like this in the playground every day.

Global credulity

After only recently telling us there has been no increase in global temperatures for the last ten years, the BBC now highlights a report which predicts there will be no increase in world temperatures for the next ten years.

This paragraph is a lulu:-

The projection does not come as a surprise to climate scientists, though it may to a public that has perhaps become used to the idea that the rapid temperature rises seen through the 1990s are a permanent phenomenon.

So, if I understand it correctly, the BBC seems to be saying that scientists have known about this all along, but somehow the general public has wrongly come to expect constantly rising global temperatures.

Where on earth did people get that idea? The BBC don't say.

Words in performance

It's the final day of National Poetry Month. Throughout the month, I've been featuring performance poetry videos from HBO's "Def Jam" poetry series, and in case you hadn't noticed, I've now collected all those posts together on one page which you can access in the sidebar features under "Words in performance".

Seeing as it's the last day of NPM and I wanted to bracket the collection with performances by Saul Williams, the next post belongs to him. His versatility, presence, verbal dexterity, dramatic skill and the audacious inventiveness of his work mark him out as one of the very best of the slam poets.

Incidentally, if you're interested in learning more about the origins of slam poetry then "An Incomplete History of Slam" by Kurt Heintz is a good place to start.

Coded Language

Saul Williams on Def Poetry

Wednesday roundabout

Michael Weiss at Snarksmith: "No Flies on Syria, According to Scott Ritter".

Cobb on the American lifestyle - neither generalizable nor sustainable.

Airshipworld reports on Festo AirJelly with video of the thing in flight.

Clive Davis has a short note on Humphrey Littleton's atheism.

Language Log: "split infinitives are grammatical, unobjectionable, and often highly recommended".

And finally,

Science Punk has a cool many-handed clock - I want one.

Death and science

Via Instapundit: John Derbyshire quotes Ben Stein from a recent interview with Paul Crouch of Trinity Broadcasting Network:-

Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.

Crouch: That’s right.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Has Stein completely lost it?

Zoe Brain had some musings on the Philosophy of Science yesterday, including a clip from Jacob Bronowski's "The Ascent of Man" where he talks about the mindset behind the Holocaust - it wasn't science.

Sign Language

Rives on Def Poetry

Defrauding democracy

The Times comments on the recent report from the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust which says the British electoral process is vulnerable to large-scale fraud:-

Rowntree is not the first organisation to point out the shortcomings of the British democratic process. The Council of Europe, the Electoral Commission and the Electoral Reform Society have all highlighted serious defects. So has Richard Mawrey, QC, presiding over an election court established in 2005 to examine a scandal in Birmingham. He said the system would “disgrace a banana republic”.

Also in the Times, Libby Purves calls for the abolition of postal voting on demand because of widespread fraud.

Dire warning

This would really put a cap on things:-

Opec, the oil producing cartel, has warned that the price of crude could keep rising to reach $200 a barrel.

If that happens then, in line with Stephen Leeb's predictions, we're in for "hyperinflation, double-digit interest rates and a cascading collapse of the world economy".

Thinking about kin

There's an interesting sounding new paper featured at the Center for Evolutionary Psychology: "The Architecture of Human Kin Detection" by Debra Lieberman, John Tooby, & Leda Cosmides:-

Humans in all known cultures feel differently about family members than they do about non-family members. To greater or lesser degrees, they are willing to sacrifice some of their own welfare to help family members, and they feel usually disgusted at the prospect of having sexual contact with nuclear family members (those who are genetic relatives). They also often feel incest to be morally wrong, and generally oppose brother-sister and parent-offspring incest in others.

What causes these phenomena, and what previously unknown facts about the human mind/brain can be discovered by using them as the basis of a research program?

A further detour

Writing the phrase "further distanced" in the previous post gave me pause for thought. I had no hesitation spelling it "further" rather than "farther" but I wondered about the distinction, so I looked up common usage.

Merriam-Webster has this to say:-

Farther and further have been used more or less interchangeably throughout most of their history, but currently they are showing signs of diverging. As adverbs they continue to be used interchangeably whenever spatial, temporal, or metaphorical distance is involved. But where there is no notion of distance, further is used . Further is also used as a sentence modifier , but farther is not. A polarizing process appears to be taking place in their adjective use. Farther is taking over the meaning of distance (the farther shore) and further the meaning of addition (needed no further invitation).

Hmmm. I thought I'd check out what Language Log had to say on the matter but it seems the subject is too dull even for them.