Looking Back…
August 23, 2008
It seems I’m pulling in quite a few new readers at the moment. My daily page hit count has been around 184 over the past week or so, jumping up to 233 on one occasion. Not exactly in the same league as some out there, but a definite improvement and rather gratifying nonetheless.
So, I’d just like to take this opportunity to thank you all for helping my blog to grow. Your comments are always welcome (in fact, if you’re a new reader, please feel free to treat this as an opportunity to say hello — pimp your own blog, even, if you wish!)
Because so many new people are dropping by I thought it might be fun to look back at some of my earlier articles. I’ve picked five of my personal favourites. If you’re a regular reader and there’s an older article of mine that you like which I haven’t mentioned, please feel free to shout up!
Five of the Best.
- Drawing the Line. February 25, 2008. I like this piece because it gives an insight into how I write and, in particular, how I wrote Children of the Resolution. It was good for me to read it again. Especially at this “between-projects” time.
- Disability in Fiction. February 16, 2008. Another writing-related piece concerning expectation in writing.
- The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. November 26, 2007. The Richard Feynman Horizon interview — with a short introduction by me.
- You Can’t Say That. June 23, 2008. A rant on our ridiculous fear of causing offence. In part a tribute to the late George Carlin.
- Elvis, Marty Lacker… and Me. August 3, 2008. This is one of my all-time favourites because it provided me, quite unexpectedly, with the opportunity to exchange emails with one of Elvis Presley’s closest friends, Memphis Mafia member Marty Lacker. I may have a further update on this story in the not too distant future.
Well, I think that’s all for now. Take a look when you have time and enjoy. These five post probably epitomise pretty well just what I am about — or what my blog is about, at least!
Richard Feynman and His Bongos.
August 22, 2008
Never let it be said that Nobel prize-winning physicists haven’t got rhythm!
Richard Feynman. I’m a fan, as many of you will already know. He was an exceptionally talented man in so many respects.
This clip makes me want to have a go myself but, well… I’m not a physicist 
(I was going to post the orange juice clip, but I thought it might scare any young children who just happened to be passing through!)
Episode Three of “The Genius of Charles Darwin.”
August 20, 2008
As some of you may have noticed, I didn’t get round to writing a summary of the final episode of Richard Dawkins’s Channel 4 series “The Genius of Charles Darwin.” The truth is, I’ve only just got round to watching it myself — and forgot to make notes!
To make up for it, I’m going to suggest that you read the excellent summary provided by John over at Homo economicus’ Weblog. You could do a lot worse than add this blog to your feedreader. John has excellent credentials and his blog is always a good, well-informed read.
One thing I would like to talk about regarding this particular episode, however, is the attitude of teachers in British schools to the teaching of Darwin/evolutionary theory. In the course of this episode, we are introduced to a gentleman called Nick Cowan, who is a science teacher at Liverpool’s Blue Coat School (the school isn’t named in the documentary, but this gentleman didn’t take much finding!)
Mr Cowan can be seen in this segment, about seven and a half minutes in, and in the following segment — and if you haven’t already seen the documentary, or if you haven’t guessed, he is a creationist.
Watching, I was utterly dumbfounded. At one point, Dawkins asks the viewer if he/she would want someone like Mr Cowan teaching their children, and it was like being five and at a pantomime all over again! I actually shouted “no!” at the screen, that’s how strongly I felt about this issue.
Choosing my words carefully, I have to say that from where I’m sitting Mr Cowan’s credentials as a science teacher of any kind are completely undermined by the nonsense he spouts during this segment. If I had kids and this man was teaching them I would have been waiting at the school gates on Tuesday morning suggesting very strongly that he should be dismissed.
Now some might argue that because he isn’t teaching creationism as part of the science curriculum (he teaches it in a general studies class), I shouldn’t have an issue with this. But the man is a scientist, for God’s sake! (Yes, that was deliberate.) A scientist believing in God is bad enough, but I can just about accept that. But a scientist (okay, a science teacher — not always the same thing!) believing in creationism?… no, it’s too much of a dichotomy, and whilst he might be able to live with that and rationalise it using the unscientific intelligent design copout, I certainly can’t.
It is extremely depressing. People like Nick Cowan are potentially damaging our future understanding of science and quite possibly contributing to shortages of properly qualified scientists in science-related industries. Evolutionary theory is a fundamental part of biology. It’s vital that these kids have an accurate and truthful understanding of it, that they know just like I know, just like Dawkins knows, just like many, many of my regular readers know that it is a fact. The evidence is so overwhelming that it is now, in spite of what creationists and intelligent design proponents might claim, simply absurd to “believe” otherwise. It is a fact, as Dawkins points out, in the same way that gravity is a fact.
As my former headmaster, Phil Willis MP, says concerning the creationist packs that were sent to five thousand secondary schools in the UK back in 2006,
“This is quite frankly a distraction that science teachers can well do without.”
In April of 2006, the Royal Society summed it up quite perfectly, however. I leave you with their comment and the first segment of Episode Three of “The Genius of Charles Darwin”.
“Young people are poorly served by deliberate attempts to withhold, distort or misrepresent scientific knowledge and understanding in order to promote particular religious beliefs.”
Rainbows and Outlines.
August 19, 2008
Rainbows.
As I sit at my desk, looking out of the window and trying to think of something to blog about, the sun comes out on this otherwise quite miserable and rainy day and quite suddenly I see it. A rainbow. And I am reminded once again of the uniqueness of every viewed rainbow — the fact that if you and I were side-by-side looking at it together you would be seeing a different rainbow to the one I would see. In fact, my left eye sees a different rainbow to the one that my right eye sees. The explanation is fairly simple, but I don’t really want to comment on that. Instead, I want to share a quotation with you that this phenomenon brought to mind — a quotation that admirably expresses how I feel about science and life in general.
“The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is quite finite.”
– Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow.
I think Dawkins hits the nail on the head with this passage and I would seriously recommend this particular volume to anyone out there who hasn’t already read it.
The Yesterday Tree.
The chapter outlines for the next novel are still progressing steadily. I have about ten chapters outlined in, for me, great detail. It is opening out in a slightly different way than I would have expected, but at heart it’s still the kind of novel I want it to be — psychologically intense, dark, Kafkaesque, character driven but with a pacey, thriller-style plot. I will be glad to get the outline out of the way, however. It’s a pretty labourious process at times — write a bit, check a few facts, write a bit more, research police murder procedure, write a bit more… you get the picture — but it will make the whole process of writing the novel far less stressful. I’ll be able to concentrate much more on the language, on creating the feel I want.
It’s all in the preparation — isn’t that what they say?
Tenth of September 2008 — The End of the World?
August 17, 2008
Finally it’s here. Well, just about.
On the tenth of September next month, the Large Hadron Collider will finally (possibly!) get kickstarted, booted up — or whatever the hell it is they have to do to get a collider doing what it’s supposed to do.
“This major milestone in the LHC project will be covered live by international broadcasters. UK media organisations will be at CERN and at a simultaneous media event in London.
“CERN will webcast the startup (the link is on the CERN “first beam” page).” — for more see here.
Now that has to be worth watching. Why? Well, if some people are to be believed, the work of the Large Hadron Collider could in effect cause the end of the world/universe. Mini black holes will be created (fact) and they will grow and grow and grow, just like Alice, until we are all gobbled up (not fact.)
What LHC will largely be doing, in fact, is smashing together tiny particles called protons. When these particles collide, new particles are created. The scientists working at LHC are hoping to find a new particle called the Higgs. In short, the LHC will be asking some of the big questions about the universe, such as:
“How did our universe come to be the way it is?
“The Universe started with a Big Bang – but we don’t fully understand how or why it developed the way it did. The LHC will let us see how matter behaved a tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers have some ideas of what to expect – but also expect the unexpected!
“What kind of Universe do we live in?
“Many physicists think the Universe has more dimensions than the four (space and time) we are aware of. Will the LHC bring us evidence of new dimensions?
“Gravity does not fit comfortably into the current descriptions of forces used by physicists. It is also very much weaker than the other forces. One explanation for this may be that our Universe is part of a larger multi dimensional reality and that gravity can leak into other dimensions, making it appear weaker. The LHC may allow us to see evidence of these extra dimensions - for example, the production of mini-black holes which blink into and out of existence in a tiny fraction of a second.” – for more see here.
So make a date to be here at 8: 30 a.m. UK time on the 10th of September 2008. It should make for interesting viewing. I can’t wait to see the black hole gobbling up downtown Geneva!
Episode Two of “The Genius of Charles Darwin.”
August 14, 2008
As promised, this is my summary of the latest episode of Richard Dawkins’s new Channel 4 series on Charles Darwin, for the benefit of those overseas who do not have access to YouTube. These are in effect little more than notes I made whilst watching and whilst I’ve tried to be as accurate as possible, there may be a few errors — though I would hope not!
Feel free to ask any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them.
The Genius of Charles Darwin Part Two Summary.
Humans don’t have Dominion over animals. We are animals. We are the fifth ape. This raises questions about our morals and manners. Are they just a veneer? If survival drives evolution, why don’t we live in a purely dog eat dog world?
Is genocide etc a survival method?
This episode deals with the questions that Darwin himself skirted around — questions concerning the evolution of human beings, what it means for us to be evolved. The question is more urgent than ever. Darwinism is increasingly being attacked by religious groups and others for excusing selfishness and barbarism.
Dawkins takes us into the Darwinian heart of darkness to look for answers and hope.
Natural selection is the driving force of our evolution but that doesn’t mean that society should be run on Darwinian lines. Dawkins abhors it as a principal for organising society.
A brief summary of evolution by natural selection then follows.
At London Zoo back in the 1830s the arrival of the first apes outraged polite society. The young Charles Darwin saw the truth staring back at him, however. All life related, Darwin realises.
East Africa — the birthplace of Dawkins and more importantly the birthplace of the human species. Between five and six million years ago there lived in Africa an ape that had two children. One of those children gave rise to us, the other was destined to give rise to the chimpanzees.
Richard Leakey and his family have uncovered the hard evidence in the Rift Valley. Charts the evolution of our human ancestors. A brief examination of fossilised human skull development. Leakey talks about the way we react to the fact that we are the fifth ape. He tells a story about watching people at a zoo who in turn were watching apes. He says that you can see that as an individual looks at an ape he/she will be unconvinced that the ape is like them but as they look around at the other people with them they think, Yeah, there is a similarity between those people and the ape… (I’ve paraphrased this to make it clearer.)
We are so closely related to chimps that it isn’t entirely ridiculous to ask if we might breed with them.
We are the human animal. Dawkins has often wondered what it tells us about human society now. Half the world is still horrified by the reality of our origins. As we go into the break, Dawkins asks a black guy, “I’m an ape — are you an ape?”
“No,” he answers. “I’m a human being.”
Why should the fifth ape “love thy neighbour”? Darwin shied away from the evolution of man.
In Kenya, religious groups are trying to ban the National Museum exhibit of human fossils.
Turkana Boy. Homo erectus. More precious than the Crown Jewels to Dawkins (and me!)
The Evangelical movement in Kenya is running a “hide the bones” campaign. A minister shows a complete unwillingness/inability to understand evolution. He asks, “What is evolution’s goal?” Dawkins explain that it has none. It has no purpose or morality.
What does that mean for us/society? Struggle. Each working for its own benefit. Explanation of strangler fig.
Next Dawkins addresses the claims that Darwinian ruthlessness/purposelessness damages society. Business likes the dog-eat-dog concept. Summary of robber-barons and social darwinism. Similarities between economic systems and biological systems. A businessman says that there’s a risk to the analogy. Not a straightforward law for financial success. Merely an analogy.
Eugenics overview. A slippery slope to horrific consequences. Eugenics is not Darwinism. Hitler was not a Darwinist.
Darwin argued that evolution was driven by brutal struggle for survival. So why altruistic behaviour — grooming, warning cries etc? Brings on Steven Pinker to explain the brain’s evolution. Guilt and trust operate in much the same we as lust. Moral emotions can be explained in evolutionary terms, just like fear.
Darwin on peacocks tail. Tail wins sexual partners. Peahens perform “selective breeding” much like pigeon fanciers. This Darwin defined as “sexual selection”. Survive and be attractive.
A segment on American single women selectively breeding. Sperm donors. Their criteria for donors include everything imaginable — from shoe-size to pets. Do they want altruism/niceness, though? Yes! Don’t want typical alpha males. Nice guys win!
How did animals evolve “nice”? How can genetics explain altruism? We are vehicles for the genes inside us. They are “immortal” because they are passed on. Summary of the concept of the selfish gene.
If they are selfish, why do they promote altruism in bearer? The first part of the answer is kinship selection. Altruism directed at “family”. Parents protecting their offspring. The other part of the answer is “reciprocal altruism”; you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.
Humans are still “nicer” than this explanation seems to suggest, however. Dawkins explores this problem.
We are introduced to the primatologist Frans De Waal. He is critical of Dawkins’s selfish gene theory, of what he calls “veneer theory” — the idea that morals are a thin veneer on our underlying nastiness. De Waal then moves onto “social Darwinism” (yawn)… Dawkins also hates social Darwinism.
Dawkins believes the urge to help has ancestral roots. Hardwired into us. It benefited us once, we behave as if it still does. (And it does.)
But we also rise above natural selection. Altruism is the pinnacle of human civilization. Dawkins asks a charity worker why she feels the need to help/be good. She was a war child. She knows what it was like to be hungry…
Natural selection gave us big brains. We can empathise, plan and build a society we want to live in. Our evolved brains empower us to rebel against our selfish genes.
[Episode two can be seen here.]
Embracing The E-Book?
August 11, 2008
As many of you will already know, I’m fond of technology — especially technology that enables me to do things I wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. The Internet was a real groundbreaking development for me — enabling me to interact and work in a whole new, liberating way. Voice recognition software, although I fell out with it for a while, now allows me to get through vast amounts of work in a fraction of the time it would otherwise have taken. As well as the laptop before me, I also have a PDA and smart phone within reach, and another PDA in the drawer a few feet away. I have in total four different devices which have hard drives, and all of them get used (for storing TV programmes, movies, music, photos — all the usual stuff.) Something new comes on the market that I feel I might benefit from in some tangible way (I don’t believe in wasting money — especially money I haven’t got!), I get it when I can afford it.
One aspect of technological development that I have not as yet embraced, however, is the e-book. I’ve had hand-held devices for many years and was aware of Project Gutenberg from the time of its inception. I’ve tried various formats, and I have to say it will probably be a very long time before I give up traditional books — hardback or paperback.
Why? Well, this is the point where most traditionalists will trot out the standard response of “reading from a screen is harder on the eyes”, but that argument doesn’t really hold water any more. E-book readers are now available which convincingly reproduce the effect of ink on paper. Far better on the eyes and comparable to the real thing. So that isn’t it — for me, at least. No, my reasons for preferring traditional books centre around the tactile experience of reading — the individual feel and look of each book, the smell of ink on paper, the texture of the page, all of it. Fill your e-book reader with e-books and each and every one of them will look the same when you come to read them. By this I mean the e-book reader will not look any different, no artwork on the cover, no crinkled pages, no pencilled notes in the margin, just data on a device that you could all too easily mistake for someone else’s.
But of course, the content is what matters, isn’t it? If the book’s good, you’ll forget about how you’re reading it, right? I wish I could say that that was true, but in my experience it simply isn’t. A few years ago, I tried reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula on a PDA and, yes, it worked well enough but… I just couldn’t help feeling that I was missing out on something. It seemed somehow too clinical, too removed. The PDA kept me at a distance, it seemed. Getting beyond it and into the story seemed much, much harder than I had previously expected.
So for the foreseeable future I’ll be sticking to books — the old, tried and tested kind. At least until they come up with an e-book reader which replicates the individuality of each book to such a degree that it is indistinguishable from a real book.
Episode One of “The Genius of Charles Darwin.”
August 6, 2008
Last night, the first episode of The Genius of Charles Darwin was aired on Channel 4 here in the UK. The reviews I read this morning were, perhaps predictably, of the usual sneering variety — full of ridiculous statements such as “Dawkins, for such an enthusiastic Darwinist, seems to have no faith at all in social Darwinism” (of course he doesn’t; he is not nor ever will be a social Darwinist — episode two should clarify why, judging by the trailer) and, “He then proceeded to shout out the order of the evolution of species at them. “Fish! Amphibians! Reptiles! Birds! Mammals!” he yelled, as if the message would become plainer if it were delivered at elevated volume” (funnily enough, it didn’t sound at all like yelling to me!) As I read these reviews, from so-called professional journalists, I wondered firstly if they’d been watching the same documentary that I had and, secondly, how much these poorly informed imbeciles were being paid.
With this in mind, I’d like to offer my summary, as promised to Baba, of episode one. My main concern is to share the points Dawkins made during the show, for the benefit of those not living in the UK and with problems accessing YouTube. Where necessary, I will share my impressions.
At the very outset of the show, Dawkins once again stipulates that Darwin’s work is one of the reasons why he doesn’t believe in God. This has already been sneered at in the press (”as if we didn’t know already”), but it was a relevant and important statement. No duality can exist. It is one thing or the other.
The first programme essentially deals with who Darwin was and how he discovered his theory, what it is and why it matters. Dawkins wants to convince the viewer that evolution is a fact with undeniable evidence.
He begins at the time of Darwin’s birth two hundred years ago, explaining that sailors and explorers were sending home a dizzying array of animal specimens from all parts of Britain’s growing empire. Every animal was believed to have a unique place in God’s creation. At school in Shrewsbury, Darwin was taught that God had created the earth and all its rich variety of life just six thousand years ago. Today, thanks to Darwin we [some of us, at least] know, differently.
In the UK today, four out of ten people still cling to the old ideas. In order to attempt to show how little evolutionary theory is taught in our schools, Dawkins visits a class of 15- to 16-year-olds. He was immediately faced with religion-based opposition. One young man politely points out that he prefers the evidence of “the holy book”. There seems to be a complete lack of understanding of the difference between believing in something and having enough evidence to know that something is a fact. One pupil asserts that people can believe whatever they want.
Dawkins takes the class to the coast to show them fossil evidence.
Before seeing the results of this visit, however, we are told that Darwin as a child was probably as much of Creationist as some of these children. This leads into a biographical section. Those familiar with Darwin will already know much of this, those who aren’t should follow this link.
In 1831 at the age of twenty-two Darwin’s family connections secured him a round the world trip on the survey ship HMS Beagle. Over a period of five years he collected samples but wasn’t satisfied. He had doubts about the biblical story of creation. He questioned why God had made two very similar but slightly different types of Rhea birds. Dawkins retraces his steps on the Galapagos Islands. Darwin wonders why God would create different types of iguanas etc on more or less identical small islands? Were they related rather than separately created? The picture becomes all the more intriguing when Darwin discovers fossils.
We are then told that Darwin was struck by the difference in size between large ground sloth fossils and the smaller modern sloth. Darwin also immersed himself in the work of Charles Lyell, applying geological principles to the problem of life.
Back on the beach with the schoolchildren, Dawkins teaches them about fossils, layering etc. There is muted enthusiasm… an unwillingness to commit, accept. They seem to be learning, or paying attention, at least, but there is a definite barrier there. Very real and, for me, alarming. I can’t help but compare it to what it would have been like in my day. In my fairly run-of-the-mill comprehensive school in the late 1970s/early 1980s it would have been quite different. We’d have given Dawkins a hard time, but religion would not have been an issue — or at least not the issue it seems to be today. There certainly would have been at least one (me!) who would have been quick to share his atheistic tendencies.
Back to Darwin. He returned from his round the world trip changed. He is a celebrity. He sees that the various forms of life aren’t fixed. They must have evolved.
Without the benefit of modern tools such as the Internet, Darwin sent out thousands of letters to the experts of the day in order that he might accurately develop his theory. He saw cross-species similarities in skeletons and embryos etc.
Dawkins uses Emma Darwin’s piano to explain the scale of geologic time, an understanding of which is vital to Darwin’s theory.
Darwin still needed to understand how life had evolved. The process. He became fascinated by pigeons and realised that breeders had used “artificial selection”. Species can change. Nature works in a similar way. Natural selection favours those better equipped to deal with certain tasks etc.
We next visit Kenya, where Dawkins himself was born. It is a harsh environment — with the ”kill or be killed” way of life more than obvious. For the animals in the wild there is no central authority, no safety net. Darwin connects nature’s brutal reality with ideas from economic theory on population growth etc. Variation in individuals provides a crucial difference in chances of survival. Those better equipped to survive live on to reproduce. A fairly standard introduction to these ideas. Dawkins also adds that one species hones his skills on another. The predictable reference to an “arms race”.
In an attempt to highlight our personal war with viruses, Dawkins then visits Nairobi. We meet a prostitute with HIV resistance. We Europeans, we are told, are descendants of those who were able to withstand the plague. The unstoppable force of natural selection.
Back to Darwin. The point is made of just how aware Darwin was of the implications of his work — how upsetting it would be from the religious perspective. He was nevertheless persuaded to publish.
Next we are introduced to Randal Keynes, the great-great-grandson of Darwin. He describes Darwin as modest. He was confident of his theory but nevertheless doubted at times. On the Origin of Species sold out in two days and has never been out of print since (one hundred and fifty years.)
One gap remained. How were improvements preserved from generation to generation? This gap is addressed by genetics. Mapping of the genome is proof of Darwin’s “Tree of Life”. It is not a theory in the common sense anymore. Evolution is fact. Genetic code is proof.
Modern science answered Darwin’s problem. Fact.
Returning to the schoolchildren. They are still predominantly unpersuaded. Still no understanding of the difference between belief and knowledge.
To finish, I would just like to stress that this is just a very brief summary. Any mistakes are mine. (Incidentally, it appears that the show is in the process of being uploaded to YouTube. Watch this space.)
[EDIT: episode one in full can now be seen here.]
[EDIT: episode two summary can be seen here.]
