Planet Afterlife @ Seldo.Net

The most amazing thing about the Atheist Bus Campaign is that, by and large, the internet has responded good-naturedly.  Obviously, there are lots of critical comments, and even outright nasty comments.  But given the topic (religion versus atheism) the ratio of good comments to bad comments is astoundingly positive.  You’d expect the nasty to comments overwhelm the pro comments, but they really don’t.

What is the case, though, is that – both back in October when the British Humanist Association re-launched the Atheist Bus fundraising appeal, and today now the buses have officially hit the roads – many, many people comment on use of the word ‘probably’ in the phrase “There’s probably no God”.

A few people comment that they like the ‘probably’, because it’s a bit funny-sounding and casual and not quite as churlish as the alternative: “Fuck off, there’s obviously no God”.  However, most of web 2.0 commenters are critically-thinking freethinkers and (god bless ‘em, I’m one of them) we’ll stick our two penneth in whether you like it or not, and there’s a valid philosophical point to be raised that since all knowledge is ultimately conjectural anyway, we shouldn’t have to qualify every metaphysical statement…  Yadda yadda yadda.
But there’s another category of ‘probably’ criticism, perhaps even the most dominant strain in the Atheist Bus-commenting culture-virus.

Numerous articles (just one example) are not merely offering a philosophical objection to ‘probably’, but outright crowing over it, implying that anyone who supports the campaign must be a wavering, quavering agnostic of the most wishy-washy variety.  Journo bloggers and commenters all over the place are writing to the effect that use of the word ‘probably’ beams a glaring light through the thin veil of our bravado; even as the slogan was concocted somewhere behind Ariane Sherine’s omni-smiling face, she must have been telepathically absorbing the doubt and existential angst of every hedging heretic and every iffy infidel up and down the land.  So the detractors argue.
This is of course tosh.

As Richard Dawkins has pointed out, if he uses language – with reference to religion – which is less harsh, less personal, less cutting, less rhetorical, than the kind of language you can read all the time in trashy magazines, restaurant critics’ reviews, political debates and so on, then he is nevertheless reprimanded for being a hateful miser who doesn’t understand basic human emotion. He regularly receives far harsher, more personal, more cutting, more rhetorical counter-attack against his relatively nuanced criticisms than his words could possibly deserve.  Religion engenders a peculiar kind of wailing pedantry against us (happy millions of) non-conformists.

Snide attacks against the word ‘probably’ in the Atheist Bus Campaign are another example of this language which – because it happens to be remotely critical of religion – is held to an absurd, pedantic standard, by people who know better under almost any other circumstances.

Allow me to demonstrate.

Imagine, for example, an analogous criticism made against the Alpha Course’s latest adverts.  These were run all through 2008, at least across London, far more widely than the Atheist Bus Campaign will ever reach.  These adverts asked, “If God did exist what would you ask?”
Now, I can imagine lots of criticisms of these adverts.  Like “Why did you leave a big, white, empty space underneath which was ripe for hilarious graffiti, you muppets?”

But imagine for a moment that someone, somewhere, made the following criticism of this advert.  Imagine (it will be difficult, but try) that they might mean this criticism seriously:

“Ooh, looks like they don’t really believe after all!  Ha ha, their faith must be fading away.  Look! – their slogan is in the interrogative form!  They must be seriously doubting themselves.  Ha ha… I am so clever.”

I think everyone – whether inclined toward being an atheist bus passenger or an Alpha Course attendee or anywhere in between – would recognise such a criticism, immediately, for the infantile, pointless pedantry that it was.

“If God did exist…” is conditional.  “There’s probably no God…” is qualified.  Other than this the entirely comparable in terms of being a kind of staged equivocation.  Given the context of mass-appeal marketing, it should be blatantly obvious to anyone why that is the case.  Only the latter slogan, though, is lumbered with the cuckcoo criticism that it is actually a signal of failing confidence.
Not that the bus campaign should really need defending from the rather sad, weird criticisms of ‘probably’ that have dogged it, nevertheless here’s the best statement I’ve seen – from Ariane Sherine herself – of why ‘probably’ makes sense, and what might be hoped for from greater public understanding of the humanist position.

By Bob at 19:16PM

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Beyoncé has nothing on Michelle Obama.

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Some people are scarily obsessed with Eurovision. To my friends, I probably seem the obsessed one, but in my case it’s only mild. However, in 2006, thanks to a couple of press passes and a why not attitude, my friend Darren and I went off to Helsinki to check the contest out. It was amazing. Finland was so excited to be hosting the contest and everyone but the UK seemed to be taking it deadly seriously. Of course, we sent Scooch, and fully deserved the bottom two placing we got.

Last year, I became Lucio’s official Eurovision ‘correspondent’ on Capital FM in London and had great fun engaging London in the contest. We discussed who the UK should represent, were horrified when the decision was made and then took to deciding which country London should vote for. We went for Ukraine’s strut-tastic Shady Lady and Ani Lorak even dropped in for a chat.

So this year, we’re claiming to take it a bit more seriously, mainly by getting the bizarrely endearing should be couple of Graham Norton and Andrew Lloyd Webber involved. ‘Your Country Needs You’ replaces ‘Making Your Mind Up’ and started on BBC1 last night. At times it was spit at your drink funny but we didn’t seem to take the advice of Europe with the idea that we need to send an actual professional performer. Although Jade will certainly satisfy Adrian’s strutting criteria, surely her failure to make it so far, despite being signed twice must be an indication. The twins are frankly annoying and already failed at X Factor this year and Emperors of Soul were pointless. Solo men traditionally don’t do very well, so despite Damien and Mark seeming the most professional, I’m not sure they’ll win. That leaves the slightly lacklustre Charlotte. Not a brilliant selection - but in reality it’s more about the song. If Webby can pull together a fabulous ballad, then we’ll be in with a chance.

I’m vaguely tempted to go again this year, just because I really want to go to Moscow anyway and it’s a good excuse. I shall ponder.

By trixie at 20:19PM

2008 was a great year for pop music, singles and the chart. I feel like I’ve missed out on a lot of albums but the above are my favourites. I never really knew Elbow before but this album was just brilliant - musically and lyrically, Vampire Weekend continues to be exciting, bouncy and gleeful, and Neon Neon was a very strange idea turned into a great reality.  As ever I could endlessly ponder my songs of the year, and I’m really weird in how I define things. So while I might love ‘One Day Like This’ and ‘I Lust U’, I’ll include those via their respective albums in my albums list above because I don’t really think of them as singles just part of an album.

Song of the Year: Little Boots - Stuck on Repeat. It’s been out a bit but not properly properly so I was cautious about putting this in the 2008 chart, but it’s the only song that makes my jaw drop, still nearly a year after Victoria first sent it round. Totally brilliant and a huge year awaits.

Rest of Best: 2. Sam Sparro - Black & Gold, 3. Estelle - American Boy, 4. MGMT - Kids, 5. Miley Cyrus - See You Again, 6. The Saturdays - Up, 7. Solange - I Decided, 8. The Ting Tings - Great DJ, 9. Ne-Yo - Closer, 10. Chris Brown & Jordin Sparks - No Air

Most Listened to (according to Last FM): 1. Ben Folds - You Don’t Know Me, 2. Sarah Brightman - I Don’t Know How To Love Him, 3. Miley Cyrus - See You Again, 4. Sophie Ellis Bextor - Heartbreak Make Me A Dancer, 5. Ladyhawke - Paris Is Burning, 6, The Ting Tings - Great DJ, 7 Girls Aloud - Miss You Bow Wow, 8, Sara Barielles -  Love Song, 9. Little Boots - Stuck On Repeat, 10, Sam Sparro - Black & Gold

By trixie at 19:18PM

In 2007's review I decided to do more in-depth, thinking pieces, and I largely succeeded. My year was dominated by the election of our new messiah and your personal flying unicorn, saint Barack of Obama, but I got a bunch of tech stuff in there as well. I also quietly relaunched the Gay Geeks site, which is beginning to pick up steam.

January

• I resolved to never go out in the Castro again (I broke this several times)
• I explained why Obama is the technology candidate, and went into more detail later in the year.
• And attempted to persuade former supporters of John Edwards to support Obama when Edwards dropped out. (Edwards would later implode spectacularly in a sex scandal)

February

• The first genuine news broke of a Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo, and I was less than pleased. The acquisition talks went on for ever and ever and it still seems like some sort of deal is inevitable. Meanwhile, Yahoo! floundered around shedding billions in market capitalization and our CEO, the all-around nice guy Jerry Yang. His replacement has not yet been announced.
• I was inspired by Obama to get more involved in an election than I ever have before, mostly focussed on the primaries in California (we lost, but we still got nearly as many delegates since they are split proportionally, a fact of which the Hillary campaign was famously unaware).
• I ranted against "tolerance" of gay people, as if homosexuality was bad manners. Be oblivious, not tolerant.
• I talked about American self-confidence, and how central it is to American culture.

March

• I spent quite a lot of time researching why mobile phone technology sucks in the US in particular, and where the future lies for mobile technology: namely, voice will cease to exist as a separate class of data, and we will instead have complicated wireless Internet devices which incidentally carry VoIP traffic. This is happening much, much faster than I expected.
• I applied for a driving licence. I passed the written exam but had panic attacks just thinking about getting lessons, so I never got the licence itself.
• I laid out my vision of the future of the web (and then summarized it because the MTV generation can't read more than a page of text)

April

• The Olympics came and went, impinging on my world only long enough to weigh up the political implications and notice that Matthew Mitcham was hot, gay, and a gold medalist.
• Spring is always a time of low blogging, as I get out of doors a lot. Autumn is too, for similar reasons.

May

• My obsession with the election continued. I talked more about why I support Obama, and demanded Hillary leave the race (but she was having none of it). And I registered an old guy who didn't know he was allowed to vote, which was probably the most valuable thing I did for the whole election.
• A history of the Caribbean told me a lot about the region I thought I knew, but didn't.
• I declared that Twitter does not have any competitors. This remains true, and since Pownce shut down and Twitter largely got its reliability problems under control, there are not even any pretenders to the throne (Google's Jaiku remains in closed beta, and shows no signs of emerging anytime soon).

June

• Barack Obama won the democratic nomination for President, and I was overjoyed. McCain gave an awful, ridiculous speech that night, and a friend declared "it's done. We got this one."
• I expanded on my theme of the Emergent Web from earlier in the year by talking about the future of social software. In brief: the networks have been built, but the tools that make them useful are what are going to appear, and those tools require radically large amounts of processing power, on a scale which is only just beginning to become available.

July

• Google launched Knol, a shameless attempt to usurp and monetize Wikipedia, a move I declared as being indisputably evil. The article got a ton of traffic.

August

• I demanded that iTunes be split into more than one application.
• I wrote some short fiction for the first time in a while, and again in October.
• Barry gave his acceptance speech to a pretty big crowd.

September

• The hapless Sarah Palin appeared on the national scene, briefly invigorated the Republican base, and gave the McCain campaign a brief two-week lead in the national polls. Democrats freaked the fuck out, but I was unperturbed, and she eventually exploded memorably all over Katie Couric.
• Google released Chrome, its own browser, which included some genuinely revolutionary performance enhancements and has proven surprisingly popular despite some major problems. Google still seems uncertain whether it has released a reference implementation for other browsers or a competitor, and this probably reflects some internal debate.
• Google also released Android, the Linux of the mobile world, and I predicted that it would not make much impact versus the iPhone. I'm sticking to that one through 2009.
• The entire global system of credit and international finance crashed and burned, messily, destroying John McCain's hopes of becoming elected on the strength of his military experience.

October

• I revisited an article I wrote about gay life in Trinidad 10 years ago, and its surprising aftermath.
• I switched focus from the Obama campaign (presuming it in the bag) to the fight against California's proposition 8, against legions of Mormons, presumably in a collective case of sour grapes. It was passed in November, and I resolved to fight it -- in 2010.
• Obama was memorably endorsed by Colin Powell, and as Barack-doubters began to grasp at straws, I dismissed the Bradley effect, and was entirely correct in doing so.

November

• Mr. Obama won that little election, leading to spontaneous street parties nationwide, a completely unprecedented reaction to a presidential election.
• I outlined what I think Obama's national CTO should do, including a Department of Getting Stuff Done.
• Isaac and I came up with HTTP conversation codes along with some co-workers, producing one of the most-trafficked articles in my blog's 8-year history.
• I became completely obsessed with Were the World Mine, a brilliant film that I am going to buy on DVD and watch dozens of times as soon as it becomes available. It was very well-received critically as well.

December

• Isaac and I once again collaborated to produce Awful Gays vs. Awful Nerds, a cross-subcultural reference chart.
• I made the case for network neutrality, though there is much more I should say.

By at 11:38AM

It's the end of the year, so it's time for some zero-effort, phone-it-in "best of 2008" posts. This is the first.

I'm not a heavy user of the "favourites" (or, for Americans who can't spell, "favorites") feature of Twitter, but occasionally my followees make me laugh out loud. Given the total irony failure that is The Shorty Awards, I feel it's well within the bounds of good taste to publish my own personal list of best tweets for 2008, so here they are, in no particular order:

• @chromatic: Heated leather seats rule. It's like sitting on someone's face in a crisp alpine meadow. #
• @highindustrial: Don't judge Madonna's lifestyle choices until you've walked a mile in her vagina. No, seriously: four laps around that thing equals a mile. #
• @rickyromero: (in response to "Britney Spears is more like a stone than a human being." #) LEAVE FELDSPAR ALONE #
• @goldman: They changed the EDGE icon on the iPhone. Sometimes it's an o now. As in "O! my shit is slow." #
• @matthewbaldwin: I received a Google Alert because my name was on favrd for a tweet I wrote on Twitter. It's like gazing into a bottomless navel. #
• @hotdogsladies: I get the feeling most of these animals applied to San Francisco as their "safety zoo." #
• @minor9th: Technically speaking, Gloria Gaynor won't survive. #
• @someToast: God hasn't been seen on twitter in months and he's losing followers. I'm concerned. WHY HZ U FRSKN US? #
• @7au: "Two men enter! One man leaves!" I probably shouldn't blurt that out at my friends' [gay] wedding this evening. #
• @adebradley: My sellotape is 'pressure sensitive'. Does this mean when I press it down it sticks? Is that not _all_ sellotape? #

By at 03:43AM

As part of her Automatic Lovers tour in November, Little Boots slung on a keytar and covered a mid 80s synth storm by Freddie Mercury. Called ‘Love Kills’ it teamed the iconic singer up with lord of the keyboard Giorgio Moroder.

In the continuing awesomeness of Boots, this has now been properly recorded up as part of the Buffet Libre DJs next covers project which will be unleashed on New Years Day. I’ve also just received an album promo and am gleefully playing ‘Mathematics’ and it’s brilliant lyrics over and over again.

Get Love Kills here

By trixie at 19:48PM

Yes, this is Lily Allen covering Britney spears. Genius.

By at 05:23AM

This is lovely. It’s by a band called Passion Pit who are one of the fifteen bands on the BBC’s Sound of 2009 longlist. I was one of the voters in the poll but chose 1. Little Boots 2. Janelle Monae and 3. The Good Natured as my votes.

The trippy Sleepyhead was released as a single earlier in the year from their Chunk of Change EP and has a dreamy yet scary, weird Kate Bush style falsetto being patched together by the Avalanches sound to it. It’s simply three minutes of gorgeously delirious fun. The buzz for these Massachusets boys started round CMJ time and I’m pretty sure they’re going to be one of those bands that the hipsters heart until they get popular at which point they’ll be hated (cf Vampire Weekend). They’re recording their debut album now and will be playing in the UK in February.

Download Sleepyhead [legal MP3] from Spinner Mag

By trixie at 19:14PM

Making plans on a Saturday night for the last six months have been hell. While in previous years it didn’t really matter if you missed an episode or so of X Factor, this time round there was no way we were missing a single moment of Cheryl Cole time.

Two superstars were born this series. Alexandra and Cheryl. From the very first episode, Cheryl dazzled and proved that she really did have “the most beautiful eyes” Pete Waterman spotted all those years ago.  Honestly - is there anything more beautiful than Cheryl’s tear stained face? Despite the horrifying news that Eoghan won 6 shows (seriously!), it was always about the girls. From amazing Laura’s sudden defeat, Rachel’s transformation from brilliant auditionee to live train wreck, Diana’s claw, and Ruth’s rocking out to Alexandra’s win, the boys never stood a chance.

I’m so delighted Alexandra won and wow, what a show.  The duet with Beyonce was jaw-dropping, not only for managing to get her to perform, but watching Alex near collapse on her idol and the diva tastic hair flicking song itself. ‘Listen’ is my favourite Beyonce song and it’s impossible to watch this duet without feeling gleeful at Alexandra’s excitement and astonishment.

As well as a great result, the last two weeks of X Factor have also provided some comedy gold. Who could forget Eoghan’s song crashing as Diana left and as for this week? Well Alexandra snatching the winner’s CD off Dermot was funny enough for me, but also why was Mark from Westlife singing with severe and anger and don’t forget the very odd ‘Merry Christmas’ from one of JLS. Plus Cheryl herself made a bit of a boo boo in the press conference (flick to 1.28).

‘Hallejulah’ is breaking all sorts of chart records as we speak. I know it’s a bit of a gut wrenchingly music purist tune to cover, but despite the swelling key change I love it. It’s the first winners song I’ve ever bought.

By trixie at 19:32PM

My third blog at the Worcester News is all about how daft the annual spate of new stories on the topic of Christmas being banned is.  How this myth persists and gets re-invented every single December — despite the millions of fairy lights bedecking thousands of buildings, the tons of wrapping paper taped around billions of pounds worth of presents, the millions of Christmas turkeys consumed around most dinner tables in the UK — is beyond me.

By Bob at 09:14AM

The Wall Street Journal sparked new interest in the issue of network neutrality when it published an article claiming Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and others have quietly removed their support for net neutrality. They also claimed that famed techno-political activist Lawrence Lessig had changed his stance; he, however, says his position has always been as they described, and it's not changed recently. So I feel I should lay out my position.

The basic question in network neutrality is: should content providers be able to pay more to guarantee faster delivery of their content? For instance, Google's plan is to pay AT&T, Comcast and others to put servers actually inside their networks, thus delivering content faster. This sounds pretty innocuous, right? The market will solve, and better content providers will have the money to pay for better service. Everybody wins!

Pay for play

Except that the flip side of the question is: should Internet access providers be able to charge content providers for delivery of their content? As soon as you open the door to say that Comcast can charge Google $5/month to get priority delivery, you also give Comcast the ability to approach Microsoft, Yahoo! and everybody else and say "you're now getting 'standard service', which we've just redefined as 'painfully slow'. If you want 'super premium' service, which feels a lot like standard service used to feel, you need to pay us $5/month".

Would that ever happen? I'm sure no Comcast customer would dispute it; the company is not known for its great service. Additionally, the company has a history of lying about filtering their customer's Internet access, so we're not dealing with Mr. Ethical here. Furthermore, within any given municipality, there are usually only two or three viable Internet access providers -- often just one. So we can't rely on competition to keep these guys honest. It's a clear case for regulation: having dozens of companies compete to lay wire to people's houses is impractical, so instead you have to regulate the behaviour of the ones that you do.

It's a series of tubes

In short, allowing Internet providers to charge for access makes the incentives work the wrong way: instead of trying to reward their customers with a great Internet experience, it becomes in their interest to give customers a crappy default Internet experience to encourage providers to pay. Newcomers will have a crappy experience by default. So if the next Google comes along with a radically better search experience, it won't matter, because Google can copy them, and because Google has a ton of money to pay Internet providers, they can make their product seem better even if it's not.

The stifling effect this would have on competition would be undesirable, to say the least, and might even put the US at a competitive disadvantage: the US already significantly lags other developed nations in Internet access speed and penetration. This is no slight difference -- Japan's average internet access speed is more than 30 times faster than in the United States. These ISPs are doing a crappy job, and do not need any further rewards.

Lessig's analogy for allowing ISPs to charge for faster service, quoted in the WSJ article, is:

There are good reasons to be able to prioritize traffic. If everyone had to pay the same rates for postal service, than you wouldn't be able to differentiate between sending a greeting card to your grandma versus sending an overnight letter to your lawyer.

But I don't think this is an accurate analogy. To paraphrase Ted Stevens, the Internet is not like a mail truck. It's a series of tubes -- or even better, it's like roads. Like Internet pipes, it's not practical to build separate roads to everybody's house. They're a common resource. And while you can pay for your stuff to be delivered faster, it's travelling on the same roads and obeying the same laws as everybody else -- the guys charging you for overnight delivery are just arranging things better, consolidating delivery and logistics. You could think of this as faster servers, and better compression methods. But UPS does not get its own lane on the highway, no matter how much it pays.

What about air freight? Not everything has to travel by road. Surely the analogy breaks down? I'm not sure it does. Air freight is sort of like building your own trans-pacific cable to carry your Internet traffic. It's crazy fast, crazy expensive, and doesn't crowd anybody else out. And like air freight, the last bit before it gets to your house has to go over the same old roads.

No closing the door behind you

As I've said before, Internet access is not just a technology, it's a form of speech, like publishing, and it will be as fundamental to the next 100 years as publishing has been in the previous hundred. It needs to be encouraged and protected from vested interests who would stifle that speech. The big Internet players of today will not be the big players of tomorrow, and that's the way it should be. We should not provide an economic structure that will allow them to cling to supremacy any longer than they deserve to.

By at 09:07AM

Following on from the stats grabbing initial review of the new Fall Out Boy album, this was the review that was actually published back in October. It’s about to be finally released.

****

Could Fall Out Boy be any more perfect? They make songs you can stomp along to, give us the eyeliner hotness of Pete and have donated $50k to a pro gay marriage campaign. Three hoorays from Attitude. French for ’shared madness by two’, ‘Folie A Deux’, might be more thoughtful but remains packed with melodramatics that leave us pondering just how amazing an FOB musical would be.

Lead single ‘I Don’t Care’ steals a glammy beat from ‘Spirit in the Sky’ and almost sounds like a Xenomania production with campy ‘oohs’ sandwiching a dark chorus. With special guests including Pharrell and Debbie Harry popping up,  Elvis Costello delights on ‘What A Catch, Donnie’ - born to soundtrack the moment that goofy boy everyone laughs at has a Tyra style makeover becomes the fiercest girl in school.  Although nothing can top last album’s ‘Gay Is Not An Acronym For Shit’, the boys would still win awards for song titles  with the random likes of ‘Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes’ and the creepy, epic sounds of ‘Head First Slide Into Cooperstown On A Bad Bet’.

Though ‘27′ might claim ‘We’re all just fucked’, the anthemic (Coffee For Closers) stresses that ‘change will come’. Released on US Election day, Folie A Deux is ultimately the sound of a frustrated generation looking for a way out.

By trixie at 15:32PM

Unless you grew up watching Moesha, Brandy has unfairly struggled to make much of a long term impact on us here in the UK. Although we might still be slightly in awe of the fierceness of The Boy Is Mine, albeit over ten years ago, the average person may struggle remember many of her other 11 top 40 hits. Now returning after a four year break which saw the explosion of Beyonce and Rihanna as R&B superstars, is there any room left for in our hearts for Brandy? 

Her fifth album arrives after several years of personal trauma following Brandy’s involvement in a serious car crash. A vulnerable and revealing album, the title track calls out for forgiveness and declares herself as, ”fragile and broken, perfectly human”. Although names like Missy Elliot, Taio Cruz, Keri Hilson and Timbaland were all touted as writers on this album, it ends up being mainly written and produced by long term collaborator, Rodney Jerkins, aka Darkchild. Lead single, Right Here, hits the mark, with a haunting piano topline and retro ”oh oh ohs”, creating an almost gospel sound and reminding us how sweet Brandy’s voice can sound. Understated ballad Long Distance is just as good as If I Were A Boy and should be a global hit, beating with surging strings and tenderness. Expect to hear this one sound-tracking a heartbreaking moment on a Grey’s Anatomy finale sometime soon. 

Although there’s nothing as fiesty as 2002’s What About Us or jittery as the Timbaland produced Afrodisiac, midtempo highlights The Definition and Piano Man sound bang up to date practising their best Ryan Tedder impression by matching synths, drums and a sweet vocal to great effect. Plus our very own Natasha Bedingfield teams up with Brandy to write uplifting album closer, Fall. 

Concentrating on melodies and inspiration, Human, is a mature, sensitive album. Although complete with stunning vocals, its lack of daring and experimentation could be its downfall though, with her once faithful audience now utterly devoted to dancefloor driven R&B.

Originally published at BBC Music

By trixie at 15:25PM

Every generation has its fallen hero and Britney Spears is ours. Yet despite being released at the height of her madness, 2007’s Blackout proved that Britney could still create brilliant pop moments. Now, just over a year later, Circus arrives with an overwhelming swell of public support behind it.

While Blackout was 45 minutes of eye-rolling, crotch-crunching, but utterly brilliant insanity, Circus is, like Britney herself in recent months, a touch calmer. Sometimes it works, like on the disconcerting ‘Unusual You’, an electro ballad of Robyn-sized proportions, or the serene ‘Blur’, documenting Britney’s last two years through lyrics like “I can’t remember what I did last night”. Other times, like on the sickly ‘My Baby’ - an ode to her children including a mawkish reference to their “tiny hands” - it goes horribly wrong.

To be honest, though, all we really want from Britney is floor-filling pop to live up to ‘Womanizer’’s manic sirens. ‘If You Seek Amy’ is a secretly filthy playful romp, while ‘Kill The Lights’ is a scathing attack on “Mr Photographer” who stalks her every move. Our favourite moment lies in the slow-motion middle eight of ‘Shattered Glass’: we can just imagine Britney, in full diva mode, strutting through a icy forest, completely back in control.

Circus is an album of highs and lows, but there’s a danger we’re just so excited about Britney surviving that we’re happy to accept mediocrity. ‘Womanizer’ is probably the album’s only iconic moment, but it certainly proves there’s fight yet in the girl we’d almost written off for good.

Originally published by Orange Music

By trixie at 15:12PM

In a world ruled by downloads perhaps the flow of tracklistings, once pored over for hours by record labels, isn’t that important any more. It’s certainly not to Beyonce who, on this, her third solo album, has spread 11 songs over two discs in order to create a ‘concept’. Double albums usually make us pull an ugly face (Back To Basics, anyone?) but we guess at least this has a point, almost. 

Let’s explain. For this album Beyonce has split her personality into two. Disc 1, labelled ‘I Am’, reveals the ‘real’ Beyonce behind the makeup, baring her soul with insecurities about love. The simple, If I Were A Boy, is ably joined by the very strange, but wonderful Ave Maria and Ryan Tedder’s Bleeding Love-lite, Halo. Unfortunately when faced with six ballads in a row, you might find yourself dropping off into a deep slumber, no matter how good they are. 

You’ll wake up sharpish though when it’s time for disc 2, as Beyonce is gone, replaced by the hilariously monikered Sasha Fierce. Sasha is B’s on-stage personality and the hair flicking, stiletto strutting beats of Diva with it’s dictionary defining ”diva is the female version of a hustler” prove it. Yet though the electro pounding of Sweet Dreams or the wild Radio might be standouts here, there’s nothing that announces Beyonce’s experimental side like the raging Ring The Alarm from B’Day 

An attempt no doubt for credibility and importance, I Am … Sasha Fierce ultimately falls short of this goal. In a world where Rihanna seems to have released hit after hit, Beyonce, although the superior on-stage performer, needs to come back with something stronger than this if she wants to steal her sparkly crown back off the young pretender.

Originally published on BBC Music

By trixie at 15:04PM

With 15 million album sales and three Grammy Awards under his belt, you’d think it might be easy for Seal to make a successful album. Yet since the mid-1990s his popularity dramatically waned, with even the super contemporary Jacques Lu Cont produced System last year failing to make much of a mark.

Thus Seal has decided to return to his self-declared roots with his sixth album, the simply titled Soul - a collection of classic songs, produced by legendary Canadian producer David Foster, best known for his work with Celine Dion. Entirely a covers album, it features the work of Sam Cooke, Al Green, Otis Reading and James Brown to name but a few, and here enlies the problem. Choosing such definitive songs, and performing them, on the whole, with such a loyalty to the original recordings, simply makes us want to listen to those originals. Sure, there may be some novelty value the first time you hear a man sing Ann Peebles’ glorious I Can’t Stand The Rain or Deniece Williams’ enchanting Free but a faithful cover of If You Don’t Know Me By Now leaves us reaching for the Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes original, or at very worst Simply Red. Cover albums always face this risk, but Seal could have done with taking a leaf out of George Michael’s Songs From The Last Century album and finding some brilliant, but lesser known songs to scatter through the album.

Though there’s no doubt that Seal has a great voice, perfectly designed for singing soul music, ultimately Soul feels a touch too smooth. In his day Seal was an innovator - constantly pushing the genre boundaries of r ‘n’ b & dance music - but now we’re left hoping he finds some of that magic that seems to have been lost along the way.

Originally published at BBC Music

By trixie at 14:59PM

Isaac and I were chatting about our respective subcultures, geeks and gays*, and we noted that both groups have a bad reputation in certain quarters. In both cases, the bad reputation stems from a tiny minority who take some parts of the lifestyle** to unnecessary and irritating extremes, while neglecting some of the better parts. I call the homosexual variant of this breed "awful gays" (a term borrowed from Matt Lock), so we decided to call the other side awful nerds.

Twenty minutes in a Google spreadsheet later, we had hammered out a pretty good list of direct and indirect parallels between these two aggravating groups. If a couple of these sound like you, don't worry: we all have a little awful inside of us. But if all of these sound like you, you should probably take action, preferably something that involves me never meeting you.

I don't think I'm going to make a poster out of this one...

* though I fall into both, hence the community site for gay geeks that I run.

** insert usual caveat about there being no such thing as a "gay lifestyle", it not being a choice and there being a number of styles to choose from. Likewise, there are lots of types of geekery. Just go with us here.

By at 17:44PM

America

Britain

In triumph, and redeemed, American has united behind a president whose race differs from the majority of Americans, a president who promises change, and who does not hide his intelligence or his power. Inspiring.

We, in Britain, have got behind an old man who can’t dance.

The legend that is John Sergeant rivals Robin Hood for his anti-authoritarian riposte to Aunty Beeb.  Armed only with his lack of coordination and an expression perpetually hovering between bemusement and curmudgeonliness, Sergeant has single-handedly (or two-left-footedly - haha) unmasked the charade that Strictly Come Dancing is strictly about dancing.

It has actually been quite a success story.  A warm story.  The public conspired, depending on your view, in order to support the weaker contestant, or because they recongised something of their own flawed dance steps in the old duffer, or even because they wanted to make a national TV program less saccharine by forcing upon it an arse-backwards plotline so surreal that Monty Python could have invented it.

But there are always left-fielders, and some commentators are just more lateral-thinking than others.  One in particular has been lateral-thinking about the John Sergeant voting pattern so long and hard, that his opinion now originates from somewhere near the planet Mercury.

According to Justin Thacker, “Head of Theology” at the Evangelical Alliance, if you voted for little Johnny, then you are a selfish egotistical relativist who hates God and rejects the whole concept of objective truth!

“How does Justin Thacker know my innermost secret motivations?”, I hear you ask.  Well, Justin Thacker has a very good argument.  First he asks why people would possibly vote for Sergeant.  Justin Thacker knows it can’t be because Sergeant is a “soap star” nor because he’s “good looking”, because Sergeant is neither. (Bloody nice of you, Justin.)  Justin Thacker rejects that it could be Sergeant’s “wry sense of humour” or his “certain charm” or even “the great British tradition of supporting the underdog”.  No.  It can’t be any of those things.  Justin Thacker knows the best theory is that people wanted to “spite the judges”.  Okay… And do they want to spite the judges because the judges were mean to people?  Or because it would be a bit of a joke to get one over on them?  Oh no, Joe-public, I’m afraid not.  Your spite runs much deeper than that, and you know it.  And Justin Thacker knows it.  Listen to Justin Thacker.  Justin Thacker has privileged access to what you were really thinking:

The reality is that in our individualistic, consumer-driven age, the reigning Zeitgeist loves individual autonomy over public authority. We can’t bear the notion that there exists some external, objective standard against which things should be measured – whether in respect of dancing or morality or anything really. Rather, we want to be King, and all authority must rest with us. So, we get to be the arbiters of what’s true or false, good or bad. The idea of being held to account by some absolute standard is one that rails deeply against our current mode of thinking. Hence, we reject it whenever we can. It’s not necessarily that we think the standard is a bad one, we just hate the idea of there being one at all.

Watching TV with Justin Thacker must be a really fun night in.

Sounds about right, though, doesn’t it. You probably didn’t realise at the time, but you voted for John Sergeant because you hate the concept of truth! It’s so obvious now.  When you picked up the phone you were thinking; “Objectivity? Correspondence theory of truth? Pah! I’m going to vote for John Sergeant.  That’ll show them theologians, trying to force their concept of a mind-independent external reality on me.”

Justin Thacker’s most wise inferences know no bounds.  Believe it or not, the following sentence directly follows the above quoted passage:

Given this, it’s no wonder that the Christian gospel has a hard time being heard.

Yep, God hates the nation getting together to watch people doing lovely dances, because it exacerbates their hatred of objective truth, and the Bible is objectively true, and if they stay in watching light entertainment together as a family then people will miss their Saturday night Bible classes, damn it.

If Bruce Forsyth would only lead us in prayers at the start of each episode that would be fine, I reckon - but every week Justin Thacker tunes in and… no, still no worshipful obedience to the Lord.  Who does Bruce Forsyth think he is, an entertainer?  All this light-hearted community of enjoyment is antithetical to Justin Thacker’s God.  God would rather you read Leviticus at the weekend. Because it’s objectively true. Justin Thacker knows.

There’s no build up to this next complete non sequitur by the way.  You might not be able to see how it follows from the previous statements, but Justin Thacker is better able to grasp the subtle logical connections between things than you are:

For whatever else it is, it [the gospel] involves humbling ourselves before the creator of the universe and acknowledging that he is Lord, not us, that he is the only Rightful Judge. The problem for us, though, is that on that day when we stand before him there won’t be any public popularity vote to rescue us. Simply the Judge and us.

Is it me, or does the leap from Stictly Come Dancing to the FEAR OF GOD THAT YOU WILL EXPERIENCE ON YOUR OWN PERSONAL JUDGEMENT DAY BEFORE BEING CAST INTO THE FIRES OF HELL, imply that Justin Thacker might be taking it all a little bit seriously?

Justin Thacker obviously knows all about “public popularity contests”, of course.  Himself a true fisher of men, he insults pretty much the entire country. You don’t like Justin Thacker’s Truth? Then you must hate all truth! And this abstract philosophical hatred of truth controls you even when you’re watching Strictly Come Dancing.  Next you’ll be telling Justin Thacker you liked Bagpuss when you were young!!!  Justin Thacker won’t like that.  Justin Thacker is horrified.  There were no cats in the Bible, you bloody infidel.  And that means that every time you watched Bagpuss, that was another nail in Baby Jesus’s crucifix.

This whole pile of crock, coming from the “Head of Theology” at anywhere, is insane.  I mean actually mad.  I mean, just for starters you have to admire the take-out-my-brain-and-mash-it-into-a-loaf-of-unleavened-bread craziness of the twin line of reasoning that Thacker’s argument is based on. Firstly, that the judges on Strictly Come Dancing are in themselves comparable to The Literal Arbiters of Objective Truth, and the British public (consciously or unconsciously) think of them exactly that way.  Secondly, that the Lord God is merely the divine analogue of a judge on a Saturday night entertainment show, basically just passing out aesthetic condemnations on the inhabitants of His universe (”Hmm, your day was quite productive, mortal, I really believed your heart was in it, but you only managed one small charitable act, and hardly a pirouette in sight the whole day. 3 out of 10.”)

Some people just hate a feel-good story — in this case about how the public can unite behind a bumbling old man — if that story doesn’t even remotely involve Baby Jesus.  Justin Thacker’s mind boggles; however comical or warm the story may be, if it doesn’t have Baby Jesus in it then how could it possibly not be EVIL?  (I wonder, by the way, how many of the Sergeant-voters were Christian?  On Thacker’s argument you’d expect the good Christians, who all value truth so much unlike the rest of us, to vote diligently only for the best dancer. Because of course it would be un-Christian to feel, you know, what’s that word, compassion, for the contestant who dances like someone’s inebriated granddad.)

Judgement Day:  For your atrocious theology, your plain bad manners, and for having no sense of rhythm, Justin Thacker you are awarded… 1 out of 10. You are the weakest theologian, now please leave the house.

By Bob at 09:12AM

So, I’m technically homeless.

Well that’s not quite true.  In fact, it’s even worse.

I am now “living with my parents”.  It’s just like Failure to Launch, except my version is called Limping Back to Port.

Actually that makes it sound much worse than it is.  Housemate Suzie and I were both looking to move out, so we ended the tenancy in Worcester and I simply haven’t found some place to actually go and live, yet, so I’m only temporarily at the ‘rents.  Also, when I’m at home, I’m cooked for and mum does all my laundry.  So it’s pretty nice really.  Well done, mum.

Anyway, I’ve been commuting from Worcester to London at the start of each working week for eleven months now.  So despite the return into my life of the pleasant homecooking and the big TV in the nice middleclass village, I’m still scrabbling through the online services looking for a livable-in room in London.  I’ve seen a place with a carpet so stained it looked like a colony of rabbits had been left to breed and urinate all over it, before being individually crushed, their corpses subseqently rubbed into the threadbare weave.

I also found another place which was lovely (no dead-rabbit carpets), occupied by the live-in landlady and her sixth former son, and I decided to accept it.  But then the live-in landlady said she had reconsidered the situation; I would have been their first male lodger and she felt anxious about it.  On hearing news of this disappointing retraction, my temporary housemate/mother tried to console me.  She said:  “Oh.  Never mind.  She was probably just worried about paedophiles.”

There are no words.

In other news… Shortly before all this, 10 days before our year one anniversary, in fact, the girlfriend and I broke up.  Not for any of the normal boring reasons (loss of love, irreconcilable future plans, having an affair with some other woman’s avatar in Second Life, etc etc) but because she went travelling, and — part of me still can’t believe this is even true — she is now somewhere in the lower reaches of the Himalayas.  A lot of friends have said how sad or difficult this must be and how they can’t even imagine how horrible and tragic it must be.  You know, helpful things like that.  But I think — I hope — that we both have something of a bit of a “humanist” attitude toward it.  We only have so much time on the earth and being oriented towards an impossible goal — trying to pretend that a relationship is a relationship when you’re thousands of miles apart for months on end — probably isn’t going to help anyone.  We were great.  Things were good.  And there is always change.

Anyway, this all adds to an overriding feeling of the surreal I have at the moment.  Two weeks ago I was personally ranted at by a B-list celebrity (a household name) who said some awful things I can’t repeat.  It wasn’t a nice experience, but it was a fairly unique experience!  Yesterday I gave a talk to the South Place Ethical Society telling them rationalism isn’t what they think it is.  It felt great to dig out some of my Karl Popper, and tell them that in trying to justify what they believe they were actually terrible rationalists.  I love confronting people with the counter-intuitive consequences of Popperian rationalism.  And I’ve been living on couches and in “pods” half the week for nearly a year.  I’m more comfortable living out of my rucksack than most people are sitting in their front rooms.

Life is strange, is what I think I’m saying.  But I’m sure it will settle down a bit once I find a place to live down here and actually go back to the same place in the evening once in a while.  I love change, but if everything changes all the time it’s very difficult to focus on anything.

By Bob at 14:25PM

So at lunch today myself, Isaac and a bunch of other co-workers who would probably prefer to remain nameless were having one of those free-flowing, ultra-nerdy conversations that you only get when you concentrate a bunch of incredibly technical people in one place and then prevent them, through social convention, from talking about work. These are pretty much a daily occurrence at Yahoo! at lunch time.

The conversation somehow turned -- I think it was Isaac's idea, so perhaps he can illuminate us as to his inspiration -- to the idea of simplifying conversation by referring to common workplace situations by their equivalent HTTP status codes. This turned out to be incredibly easy, and possibly even useful.

For the non-nerdy, a brief explanation: HTTP is the language your web browser uses to speak to web servers to request your pages. It's how the web server knows which content (such as a web page) you want to see. This happens before HTML or any other language gets involved, and it's used whether the content you're requesting is a web page, a picture, a movie or a file to download. The status codes are how the web server tells your browser (aka your client) roughly how things went -- so your browser knows whether the page you're seeing is the page you asked for, or whether it's an error page, or any number of other things.

This maps pretty well to a conversation between a programmer and a normal person. The normal person -- a manager, or a product person, or a marketroid -- wants something from the programmer, and the programmer needs to tell them what's going on, and often they can't just do that by giving them exactly what they asked for. And since programmers are notably bad at communicating with normal people but notably good at being very accurate about codes, this translation guide can help.

I'm not sure how often we will end up actually using these in real life -- although people occasionally use 404 already, and I am absolutely positive that 502 is going to come in handy -- but they at the very least serve as a very quick way of reminding you what the codes mean, if you happen to be building a web service. And if you're me, you're building a new web service every other bloody day, because that's all they want these days, another goddamn web service. Ahem.

Without further ado:

Interesting side note: even at the protocol level, the programmer's expectation that it is nearly always the client's fault and hardly ever the programmer's fault is obvious.

These codes and their definitions are based on the HTTP 1.1 specification. We welcome suggestions for further refinement.

By at 02:20AM

isaac_schlueter: Apparently Obama met Leonard Nimoy once and gave him the Vulcan greeting. I did not know this.
Seldo: Obama is a huge nerd.
S: He collects Spider-Man comics.
I: yeah. spider man is totally a geek's super hero
S: He really is.
I: i mean, all comics are for geeks, but... spidey, i mean, he's a NERD.
S: And X-Men are the gay's super heroes.
I: hahahaha
I: totally
I: they're a big fabulous party.
I: with crazy costumes and afrikan queens.
S: Well, it was more that their powers only manifest at puberty
I: ah, that too
S: And some can remain hidden, while others are totally flaming, sometimes literally
I: yep
S: And people hate and fear them for no reason
I: they're a minority group
S: Plus they're obviously way better than normal people
S: It's pretty much a direct analogy.

By at 17:00PM

Were The World Mine (more info on Wikipedia) is a new movie from Speak Productions and it's pretty much my idea of a perfect movie: a musical based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream about a hot gay boy who discovers a potion that can turn anybody gay. There's singing! Dancing! Hot boys in glitter and silver pants!

The only problem: I can't find anywhere that's playing this movie. Keep in mind that I live in San Francisco, the town where, out of the whole world, you would most expect to find this movie in theatres. I can't find it anywhere in the world. This needs to be rectified. In the meantime, enjoy the pictures, the trailer and hell, the the full soundtrack (including surprisingly large chunks of dialogue) is already available on the Amazon MP3 store (yes, that's an affiliate link -- my first ever. I hear they're all the rage).

Here's a track from the album. I dunno if you think iambic pentameter sounds sexy when it's sung, but I sure do:

By at 16:38PM

Currently on Hulu, I am forced to watch -- 3 times per every half hour -- an ad for a product called Regenerist Eye Derma-Pod Anti-Aging Triple Response System. In addition to the reality-warping product name, it comes with this mind-blowing copy:

Regenerist Eye Derma-Pod puts the benefits of three treatments at your fingertips...for radiant, younger-looking eyes.
Resurfaces — regenerates surface cells, revealing younger-looking skin
Decongests puffiness — massage helps remove excess undereye fluids
Fills lines and wrinkles — microspheres help fill creases for a smoother look

1. What does regenerist mean? Maybe it's just a brand name, so I might let it pass
2. What is a derma-pod? It translates to "stuff you put on your skin", i.e. it's a cream.
3. The "Triple response" is actually all one function. It's like putty you plaster over the cracks in your face.
4. What is a "radiant" eye? Eyes do not glow, so this one is pretty much pure bullshit.
5. How exactly does it regenerate surface cells? The surface cells of skin are dead. You can't reanimate them. Nor can a topical cream cause your skin to grow more cells, the other possible meaning of "regenerate". This is also clearly bullshit.
6. How do you "decongest" puffiness? Puffy skin is not caused by congestion. And if massage helps remove excess under-eye fluid, then what is the cream for? You can massage your face without it.
7. Microspheres? This means "very small balls". That you are pushing into the cracks in your face. Grreat.

This is not even a particularly egregious example. All US cosmetic advertising (and there's a lot of it on Hulu) is similarly inane. Are there regulations about this crap? What you can and cannot say? I can't find any.

By at 14:54PM

There’s nothing intrinsically sinister about the title above, but probably a lot of people would interpret it somewhat negatively.  It illustrates the point that too much fear can make harmless situations overly suspect.

Last week a self-described “old man” wrote a letter to the Worcester News about how he felt about being suspicious in the park.

When my wife Joan died in the spring of 2006 we had been together for more than 62 years. One of our joys since moving to Barbourne was a stroll in Ghelevelt Park looking at wildlife and children playing on swings or splashing around in the paddling pool enjoying innocent fun.However, since becoming a widower, the park has now become out of bounds for old men like me. Why?

It has become very uncomfortable to sit in the park and enjoy the ambience of the place, owing to the weird knowing looks I get from young mothers with children.

I wrote back.

H A Kendall’s story is very sad (September 29) and he is honest and brave for speaking out.

Obviously, we must accept that diligence is due whenever we consider adults with responsibilities over children, and anyone taking advantage of any vulnerable person is to be abhorred.

But due diligence has been greatly over-inflated if a widower cannot sit in a park without receiving accusing looks. If the parents Mr Kendall mentions cannot imagine any reason beside sexual predation for why an old man might want to sit in a park, then their imaginations have been horribly warped. There is a climate of fear which affects not just old men in parks, but younger men, teachers, passers-by, even relatives of young people.

On a train last week a girl of about five started talking to me. I think the presence of my Nintendo DS broke down the social barrier!

Perhaps some of the looks we received across the carriage were, in part, due to surprise that two strangers should hold an open conversation on the tube at all, let alone an adult male returning polite enquiries from a child who is unknown to him. But that doesn’t fully explain the prolonged glares and my own absurd, fleeting sensations of danger.

Parents should worry about their children, yes.  Concern is understandable, yes, especially in a climate where sexual predation and sexual abuse are discussed more openly.

But people should realise that, in a sense, nothing sexualises children more than if we are constantly thinking of them as the potential victims of sexual predation.

Also… the music debate rumbles on, in the hideous form it has reached.

By Bob at 09:41AM

This increasingly unfocused, largely-syndicated-from-the-Worcester-News, hotchpotch mind-dump of a blog that I call Bob: Popper’s Troll-man Thing, now has a little brother over at — you guessed it — the Worcester News website.

See Bob’s Worcester News profile which should come complete with a short bio some time soon. My first post is “At Somerset House” and here’s a short extract:

I’ve never liked crowds. It’s not that I’m claustrophobic. I just hear “crowd” and I picture grey-faced suits stacked up on escalators closer than dominoes. Or I feel the crushing collective narrow-mindedness of a Nazi rally. And there’s something so sycophantic about a throng of gig-goers gyrating at the feet of some short-burning star, something so obsequious even about fans at a public lecture gushing as they line up to get their hardbacks John-Hancocked by the latest, greatest celebrity intellectual.

I had wanted to coin the term ‘celebrillectual’ for the end of that sentence but it didn’t quite fit.  There were no other hits on google for it though, so I really did invent it.  So I’ll coin it here instead: ‘Celebrillectual’. There, I just coined it.  It means anyone a bit famous for being at least a bit clever, but how famous/clever are two cumulative factors so that if you were really clever but only a celebrity to a particular niche then you could still be a celebrillectual, while if you were very famous but not really very clever then that could count, too.  But obviously some times these thigns go up and down together, where people are only a bit famous (for exampel if they’re only famous in the UK but not the US then that’s rubbish) and also they’re only clever in a narrow or not very academic way.  So at one end of the scale you’d have, like, Carol Voderman, Trevor McDonald, and Johnny Ball. Then up the top there’s folks like Salman Rushdie, Richard Dawkins, Noam Chomsky.

It will probably be quite a long time before my Worcester News blog has anyone classify me as a celebrillectual.  In fact it probably disqualifies me because even if I was really, really famous in Worcester, I’d have to be very, very clever to compensate for my relative lack of fame.

By Bob at 09:10AM

By M at 22:11PM

The vivisection debate rumbles on.

Obviously, in between trying to develop medical technology via vivisection, scientists should wherever possible work toward replacement development processes.  There is a complex cost-benefit equation, here.  How much time can we spend speculatively developing new ways of testing and developing medicines without non-human animal test subjects, when any such effort may be at the cost of actually developing cures right here and now?  Assuming that greater and greater theoretical understanding, computer modelling and so on, could eventually replace all animal testing, that’s great.  But right now that’s not the reality, and I don’t want to die of something potentially curable, because rather than using vivisection now we held off in order to develop a theoretical model, when actually tests which killed some mice might have achieved the same results.

I don’t get how people who are against vivisection can cite, as someone in this ongoing newspaper debate has cited, the study of human corpses as one of the viable alternatives to testing on animals.  I’m not denying that autopsy is sometimes a good way of understanding a disease.  But the point is that there would be many more human corpses to study if animal testing was stopped today.

Anyway, here’s today’s letter in the Worcester News, unedited text below.

Apparently, despite being subject to continual assessments of efficacy and benefit, and despite being conducted under multifarious laws and codes of ethics ensuring rigorous review, the truth is obvious to H Handy (Letters, 8th September).  Vivisection is “archaic” and completely unnecessary.

In saying so, Handy contradicts three independent enquiries in the last five years (the House of Lords Select Committee, the Parliamentary Animal Procedures Committee and the independent Nuffield Council on Bioethics) which all found that animal testing was scientifically sound and worthwhile.  (Despite this, anti-vivisectionists continue to call for “an independent enquiry” as if none had ever taken place.)

The Nobel Prize for Medicine has been awarded to researchers who used animals 71 times in the last 103 years.  Is the Nobel Prize committee hellbent on rewarding fruitless and unethical research?  H Handy must think that they are.

Handy asks us to imagine all the pain that laboratory research animals endure.  And allow me to agree that we must indeed accept this.  Just as surely as we should thank the veterans of just wars, just as we should be aware that each turn of the ignition key brings flooding and destruction ever closer, we should be aware that many of our medicines and medical procedures come to us at a terrible price.

But if H Handy can ask us to imagine the animal suffering again, I must ask one more time that we summon in our minds the would-have-been suffering and deaths of millions of people from, for example, smallpox if it had not been eradicated by 1979 (300-500 million died before 1979 in the 20th century alone).  Multiply out that hypothetical unnecessary suffering by the numerous other diseases and conditions cured or alleviated through animal research, far sooner than they could have been by conducting all research via human autopsy and the like.

No one said animal research was an intrinsic good in its own right.  No one said it was flawless (no research is). But vivisection is, by far, the lesser of two evils.  And that makes its pursuit an ethical imperative.

One final point.  H Handy is right that research animals themselves never (or only very rarely) benefit by the research.  However, it is worth pointing out that animal testing has resulted in numerous drugs and procedures which are used routinely by veterinary surgeons, day in and day out, to the benefit of pets, farm stock and wild animals the world over.

By Bob at 08:24AM

Remember the Bishop of Worcester basically saying that music pretty much gets its power from his favourite god?

Apparently, “the Bishop of Worcester is perfectly entitled to state that music (especially the one [sic] played in cathedrals) brings us closer to God.”

Which is of course true - he is entitled to say that.  But that’s completely besides the point, isn’t it.

Some people can’t stand any criticism [Worcester News, 3 September 2008, unedited version]

At the moment it seems like every time someone hears a criticism they don’t like, rather than either taking it on board or offering a counter-argument, they instead react as if someone is trying to actually ban them from holding their view.  It seems to be a defence mechanism.  People would rather say, “Hey, I have every right to my opinion,” than to actually think about the criticism offered against their opinion.

John E Iebole (August 22) notes that “the Bishop of Worcester is perfectly entitled to state that music (especially the one [sic] played in cathedrals) brings us closer to God.”

I didn’t say the Bishop wasn’t “entitled” to say anything he likes.  I’m not a censor.

But there is a world of difference between having the right to say something on the one hand, and being right in saying it on the other!

The Bishop had said (August 13) that “music has the power to move human beings deeply because it speaks … of the God who created us.”  I expressed that his statement felt to me like an over-confident gardener erecting a fence across a public footpath.  Music is a near-universal aspect of the human condition and associating it with monotheistic beliefs which we do not all share is a kind of metaphysical territorialism.  In other words, I said I didn’t like what the Bishop said.  In didn’t say he wasn’t “entitled” to say it.  Basically, Mr Iebole simply failed to address my points in any way.  Rather (probably without realising it) he simply threw up a completely irrelevant decoy about “entitlement”.

One further point, Iebole says he sensed “some anti-Christian barbs” in my letter, then he points me at the Bible!  Again, this kind of attitude seems to be nothing more than an attempt to shut down honest debate.  Just because I make a criticism of something a Bishop said, does not mean I’m “anti-Christian” in some kind of prejudicial way.  We hear much worse, much more personal criticisms than mine made in other domains (politics, theatre reviews, school playgrounds) all the time.  It is only the domain of religion which is so protected from debate that even a mild rejoinder is insinuated as a kind of hate speech.

That’s one thing I’m afraid you’re really not entitled to: you have no right to be protected from perfectly legitimate criticism.

This prompted a reply from one Linda Roberts who, frankly, I think just didn’t really read what I said.  So I wrote back again, published today.

Misunderstood for the second time [Worcester News, 15 September 2008, unedited version]

For the second time I am misrepresented with reference to the Bishop of Worcester’s comments on music.

Linda Roberts (10 September) believes “the Bishop of Worcester is correct in saying the playing of sacred music in church brings us closer to God.”  Well, okay, but this was very clearly not the part I objected to.

What I objected to was the further implication that all music, whether designated “sacred” or otherwise, derived its power from God.

Roberts also says I should “temper my views” and my “ways of expressing them”.  This is unfair.  Yes I was voicing a criticism (a mild philosophical criticism at that!) but unless you think religious representatives are exempt from criticism this shouldn’t be a problem in itself.  And if my words seem harsh, it’s probably just that religion is so often protected from normal standards of commentary.

Finally, Roberts expresses sadness that I “cannot experience” mystical feelings induced by church music.  Ms Roberts, there’s really no need to feel sad for me. Different musical genres appeal to different people, and there is probably plenty of music that I appreciate, even profoundly, which you would appreciate less.

By Bob at 14:15PM

Does that sound like me?

Worcester News, today, “Animal testing helps halt human suffering”:

Mrs Marilyn Brown, presumably referring to my own recent letters defending medical testing on non-human animals, writes (August 26) that she is in “despair” to see these arguments. She says she can only assume that the defence of animal testing is made by people “without compassion and/or ignorant of the appalling suffering of millions of sentient beings each year.”

Surely, Mrs Brown cannot be unaware that suffering human beings are also suffering sentient beings?

I specifically defended medical testing on nonhuman animals on the grounds that it helps to alleviate or end the appalling suffering of millions of human beings each year.

As horrible as it may be to inflict suffering on a small number (relative to the people who benefit) of non-human animals through our actions, this is surely better than leaving many more human beings to endure much greater suffering through our inaction.

To question the empathy, or lack of it, to be found in those debating this issue, is not to address the issue itself.

It is head-in-the-sand ignorance, let alone insulting, whichever side of the argument you are on, to try and paint this image that anyone who disagrees with you over vivisection is “without compassion and/or ignorant”.

Disagree by all means, but the pro-vivisection argument is deeply routed in a mature, consequentialist ethics, and is empowered at every stage by compassion for the suffering of others.

By Bob at 16:16PM

The Archbishop of Worcester kind of implied that music comes from God.

I think this is a bit narrow.

Worcester News, 22nd August, “Music is for everyone not just the religious” (unedited text follows below).

I agree with the Bishop of Worcester (Bishop’s Diary, 13th August) that great music can awaken “a realm of wonder”.

However, I’m not sure who exactly would be confused as to “why the Church should be so closely associated with a music festival”, especially the Three Choirs!  Surely the historical domination of the Church over artisitic life in Britain is well known. Across Europe it was very often the clergy who commissioned (one might even say ’sponsored’) classical and choral works. And for a long time any art without a religious motif risked drawing suspicions of non-conformism or outright blasphemy.

In fact, given the pressures to conform to cultural Christendom, it may surprise some to know just many great composers were not, in themselves, ecclesiastically motivated.

Beethoven, for example, adopted Goethe’s pantheism. Berlioz often stated his atheism, though he composed much church music. Bizet said of Christian writing “I find only system, egoism, intolerance, and a comlete lack of artisitc taste.” Brahms revealed his agnosticism in private letters and some of his lyrics deride the concept of immortality. Debussy was a neo-pagan. Delius was almost certainly an atheist.

The great Mozart turned from Catholicism to Freemasonry. He famously refused the priest access to his death bed (though of course Vatican lists still claim Mozart as one of their own). Paganini was a well-known atheist and left instructions for a non-religious funeral. Schubert, despite his Masses, said of religion “Not a word of it is true”.

Schumann, like Beethoven, was a pantheist. Strauss, inspired by Nietzsche in his irreligiousness, penned the infamous and beautiful Also Sprach Zarathustra, which the church roundly denounced as atheistic. Tchaikovsky appears to have been inspired to atheism by Flaubert. Wagner was an out-and-out atheist.

Today, now that church money isn’t required to fund musical professionals, far fewer notes are penned, as it were, to the glory of God.

I say all this because the Bishop says “music has the power to move human beings deeply because it speaks … of the God who created us.” I believe the Bishop is wrong to associate the source of musical potency with his God. Previous supposed deities of music have included Hathor, Myōonten, Saraswati, Apollo… Clearly the power of music is almost universal, transcending religious beliefs, and just as important to all the humanists, atheists and agnostics, who may well resent having the beauty of music continually boxed up in a religious package, as if it doesn’t really belong to them.

Music belongs to everyone.

By Bob at 11:52AM

Various reasons. I’ve been busy at work, busy at Glastonbury, busy flying around various European countries. The usual. My absence from the blogosphere has not helped by the fact that Facebook has recently been giving me that quick fix of Internet-based broadcast expression but with a lot less effort than is required to actually sit down and write something. But it’s time to stop the rot.

For once, I’ve had a weekend that I actually want to pen something about - and enough time on a slightly grey-looking Sunday evening to do so. Last weekend was all about G’s birthday weekend, too much Pimms and recovering from the effects whilst paddling around Chichester harbour and beyond in a vessel clearly not designed for such purposes but which worked surprisingly well.

This weekend has been similar, but with the Saturday festivities and socialising having been moved 40 miles south down to Brighton and the Sunday paddle consisting of the slightly more challenging 18 mile Maidstone to Tonbridge marathon, the latter having been completed in 2 hours, 48 minutes and 26 seconds (though estimated to be some three and a half minutes short due to the closure of the river at the last portage ).

Brighton was good. Sufficiently different from the last time round, a scary five years ago. There was still plenty of Park-based fun, the rather gusty yet still utterly fantastic beach - where fish and chips were eaten - a little bit of drinking, and plenty of meeting new people. My pictures are about to go on FB, which though no doubt missing a large part of the evening after I trundled back off to London I must say I’m still rather happy with.

Next time it won’t be so long

By Will at 13:51PM

By M at 15:06PM

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Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

By will at 11:58AM

People often ask me: "Rik, why on earth do you buy all that rubbish from the Oxfam bargain bin?" But that's another story.

What I want to talk about is when people ask me "Rik, where does a guy like you listen to music from these days?" After all, when you're an ex-teenage rave freak, used to work as a student DJ, have more than a passing interest in all things synth, and own a Jive Bunny album without shame, where do you go to satisfy that nagging urge for new music?

Well, the answer is that for a while, I didn't. Instead, I revelled in the warm neon glow of Radio Nigel. With the help of Nigel (run by a bloke called - wait for it - Steve), I rediscovered the 80s.  Contrary to those "party classics" that immediately spring to mind, there's actually a lot of "forgotten" 80s music out there that's actually not terrible. Martika, anyone? The Other Ones, New Order, Wang Chung, Murray Head, The Assembly? I could go on, but I'd rather you tune in.

And slowly but surely, you make your way back into the land of the living, to find artists like Rex The Dog, Tepr, datA and Trademark keeping the dream alive, albeit with a 21st Century twist. (Who knew that the Human League were still touring, by the way? Blimey.) But where can you, the poor impoverished reader, find and listen to all these people before buying an album or three? Simple. Pig Radio is your friend. Merely visiting their website will guarantee your face is flushed magenta with excitement, and that's even before you wrap your ears around the eclectic mix of new new things that burst forth from their playlist.

Finally, I know I'm about a year late, but this has been making me smile all week. Whatever happened to the Hardcore Cleaning Sensation?

By at 19:24PM

(This isn't the blog post I was planning to post, but I thought I'd throw this up while it was fresh in my brain.)

This is the second time recently that someone I know has remarked about how Thunderbird is worse than Outlook Express. It was an odd enough coincidence that I thought it worth a quick mention.

Now, I've used a fair few mail clients in the past - Pine (mmmm) and Netsc(r)ape Messenger, for example - and I used to be an Outlook user, of both the Express and "proper" flavours,. Conversely, I was glad to see the back of it. The Express version felt fragile and flaky (not to mention its Swiss cheese-like nature), and the full version was too enterprisey. I just wanted to do email - surely it's not too much to ask! (Eudora at the time wasn't free.)

Mozilla Mail was my next stop of choice, and it struck the balance far better for me. It was, however - like the Mozilla Suite in general - suffering a bit from the all-in-one clunkathon syndrome, and you did get the impression that it could have been more, well, alert, and generally a bit better than Netscape Messenger. Mozilla had the same idea, and smashed it all into bits, which brings us circuitously to Thunderbird.

I like Thunderbird mainly due to it's Ronseal-like qualities. Simply, it's a solid, no-nonsense mail client. It reads mail and newsgroups*, and it does it well. Since version 2 in particular, it's had decent filtering and search capabilities, and it's uncluttered and responsive. It even integrates with Google Mail so you can avoid using their hideous web interface.

What is Thunderbird "actually quite poor" at, then? Well, it's not crap at reading mail, that's for sure. It is quite poor at having flowery email templates. (As a rule, I don't use HTML email, so that's fine by me.) Against Outlook, integration with other services is poor. There is an integrated Calendar plugin, but it's not finished yet. But then again, the same goes for the free version of Outlook, and there's no changing that at all.

Steve mentions a "memory leak" which I thought sounded interesting, so I left my copy of Thunderbird running for a while. It's been sitting there for quite some time at around 82MB (I've got some big .msf files), and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Thunderbird for sure has a larger memory footprint than Outlook Express, but I'm not yet convinced it leaks memory in the same sieve-like fashion that Firefox does**.

So... thoughts? What else is Thunderbird rubbish at? No doubt there's more, but I'm not awake enough to remember. Comments appreciated!

*If anyone does that any more, that is.

**Yes, I know that's not really a memory leak; it's the tab caching being enthusiastic.

By at 23:31PM

It's going to be a busy month, really. Turnmills is closing down, so I'm off to see Mr Ferry Corsten play there in a couple of weekends time, accompanied by a plethora of people named Steve. It should be pretty good, but there's always the problem that the headliner DJ is always on at about 4am, by which time you're invariably too shagged out to stay awake, let alone dance enthusiastically like a loon.

Also, I'm going to be leaving these urban shores to head back to the balmy rural paradise of home during the Easter weekend, which should make for a nice break. I have a fair inkling that what I'll be doing will include at least this:

Mix in some Six Nations matches, a birthday lunch or two and some mates visiting from back home, and suddenly the old Moleskine is practically brimming with appointments.

Right, I'm off to do some late-night flat-scrubbing. If I get back in time, I'll blog about some of the software stuff that I've been looking/hacking/swearing at recently.

By at 20:32PM

I'm writing this blog entry from something really quite shiny. Yes, after all this time, I've finally bitten the bullet and bought a new home PC. A completely new one, rather than my usual tactic of cobbling together any old electronics to produce some semblance of a working system, replacing any item that's completely knackered with one that's merely slightly broken.

Now, for the first time in a long while, I'm the proud owner of a PC that:

• Has a PS/2 keyboard socket that's not inexplicably broken and doesn't prevent the mouse from working when anything's plugged into it
  
• Has a soundcard that doesn't arbitrarily stop playing sound and crash the whole system
  
• Is running an Operating System that doesn't date from 1999
• Doesn't have all of its drives held upside-down in using gaffer tape
• Can reboot without randomly losing at least one harddrive when starting back up
• Doesn't have a non-working floppy drive stuck in it because it won't come out
• Has a proper case that's not fallen to pieces, or been dropped countless times
  
• Doesn't have the speed and urgency of a snail in treacle
  

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the future.

By at 14:52PM

After all this time, I've finally got past the stage of just thinking about blogging something here to actually doing it. Quite an achievement, considering the size of the interim period in which I've done, frankly, bugger all.

For the first time ever since this site started, for example, I didn't wish all my friends Merry Christmas from here on Shinypixel. So for that I apologise, but then again given the amount of texts that I sent out over Xmas and New Year, I don't think I missed many people. (If I did, then... bugger.)

To continue in the usual vein of posting stuff that I've knocked up, here's an extremely rushed flyer for something that I produced in December:

Now, the more astute among you might have noticed that the 14th December wasn't on a Saturday, nor the 15th on a Sunday. How could a stickler for perfection such as myself make such a stupidly obvious mistake (and not notice until a whole day afterwards, no less)? Cast your eyes toward the right-hand side of the flyer, and squint a bit. If you still can't read it, then here's a translation: Flyer whipped up the morning after the office party by a seriously hungover DJHC.

And damn, was it a good party.

Before I bid you adieu, with fleeting yet teasing promises about exciting events to write about in future - that flashy-looking CD compilation in the top-right corner of the page, for example - here's an excerpt from some code which I'd written last week late at night, forgotten, and found again just moments ago before deciding to write this blog:

// Any one X needs at least 7 Ys to work as my extremely
// dodgy code doesn't seem to work with less. No idea why.
// Maybe it's because I'm coding it at 2 in the morning while
// listening to Phil Collins.

// *sigh*

See ya around!

By at 18:20PM

I've finally managed to get some free time. Well, free enough to start blogging again anyway. As luck would have it, there's another Hardcore Lives! day-long online beats-fest on to keep me company. I'd recommend that