Archive for July, 2013

Recently, we’ve been having a chocolate off. Having gathered samples from Bon Bon’s, Hotel Chocolat and Charbonnel & Walker, we then set about the arduous task of trying to discern which one was the best.

Unfortunately, after extensive tasting and testing, the results have come back inconclusive. More research will be required before we can announce our findings.

Quite a few people have suggested Alain de Botton’s book “Religion for Atheists” to me, and I also read Jack’s review with interests a few months ago. Given the brevity of the book, I decided it was certainly worth a quick read to see what it was all about.

The book begins by saying suggesting that the least interesting question we can ask of any religion is whether it is true. This has been a point of some criticism from reviews but I wonder if many have actually missed the central point of the assertion.

What Botton actually means, and perhaps a better way to phrase it would have been, “given we know religion is completely untrue – there clearly isn’t a god and we all know it – what interesting discussions can we have about it?”

From this perspective, his comment makes make more sense and also perhaps explains why he paints religion in such a positive light. It isn’t that he is wearing rose tint glasses, but merely starts from a point where we acknowledge religion is both untrue and destructive, but there are some good features that have allowed it to flourish. Of course I don’t know if this is the case, Botton does not state it, so perhaps he is guilty of the rose tint after all.

The book consists of a series of chapters looking at various aspects of religions and how they could be implemented in a secular way. Laying out restaurants to encourage discussion with strangers, creating mile stones and celebrations, and delivering academic lectures with the passion of evangelical preachers are just some of the suggestions that spring forth.

I read them with mixed reactions, some I like, some not so much. A stronger focus on interesting delivery of academic content for example would certainly have improved my university days. I often struggled to stay awake in lectures and remembered nothing, in which cases a smaller amount of repetitive information would have actually increased learning.

Milestones also play an important part in our lives – this is clear from the half a million people that attended a Humanist ceremony this year. As Jack points out, the historical tradition and grandeur of gradation helps to provide such an occasion in the secular world already though.

In summary, I think Botton is generally on the right track, but then I would, holding the same position. Religion has endured throughout our history, and even onto the days when we know it is patently false, because it provides for our “spiritual” (for lack of a better term) needs. Extracting these into a secular context is essential to removing superstition from our society. Whether Botton’s suggestions are the way to do it remains unclear though.

Following the recent elections, we handed over to the new committee at White Rose and celebrated with a meal at Las Iguanas. The restaurant itself was a big disappointment – it took an hour and a half from us arriving to the food being served, but the company was good.

Recently, I’ve been making more of an effort to get down the fish market every Saturday to pick up some fresh food.

Book twelve in the Discworld series follows the adventures of Magrat Garlick, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg as the travel to Genua to do some good old fashioned fairy godmothering.

I thought the book took quite a while to get going – I was 15-20% of the way through before they even left for Genua but after that it picked up. Nanny Ogg has firmly cemented herself as one of my favourite characters from the series.

Last Saturday there was supposed to be a Leeds Speakers’ Corner.

However, a couple of days before, the council pulled the plug on the event because they said the area was in use for Sky Ride, a large cycling event. Or so I was told anyway. So just to clarify, freedom of speech in Leeds is cancelled, in case it interrupts Rupert Murdoch’s bike ride.

What I think is more concerning however, is that the organisers of LSC, decided to accept this and call the event off. Not turn around and say in a polite voice “do fuck off, we have freedom of speech in this country and if we want to turn up to a public space and speak our mind, we will do”, but say OK, that’s fine, we’ll just stay at home and keep our traps shut then.

Perhaps we can stay in and watch some serious analysis on Sky News instead.

I first attempted to read Ulysses while we were in Dublin last year, as it seemed culturally appropriate, but having made it through the first part I soon found myself overwhelmed by the complexity and seamless tradition of abstract and concrete ideas expressed throughout the novel.

Not to be beaten though, I recently gave it another go. Now that I have made it all the way through, looking back on what I’ve done with my life so far, reaching the end could be the most impressive achievement.

I started off making the amateurish mistake of trying to follow the plot and work out what was going on. As Joyce darts randomly between things that are actually happing and the various thoughts that flow from each of the characters, discerning reality from imagination is a tricky business indeed.

A much better approach is to simply lay back and enjoy the language. What wondrous language it is though, a beautiful river of descriptive and colourful English in which a lexicon of over 30,000 words are employed in a novel only 265,000 words long. Joyce constantly switches between writing styles while presenting a vivid picture of life in Dublin in 1904.

It was also interesting to find out that the novel had been twice adapted into a film. Interesting, because I can’t think of a novel that would be less well suited to such an adaptation. The beautiful of Ulysses is in the language and in the picture painted in the mind of the reader – filling in the gaps surely could only damage the experience.

Last Sunday the UK celebrated the first Brit to win Wimbledon in 77 years.

Except it wasn’t. It was 77 years since Fred Perry won the men’s singles title, but the last winner of a women’s singles title was Virginia Wade, a mere 36 years ago in 1977. The Guardian sums up the newspaper headlines:

Times: “Murray ends 77-year wait for British win.”
Telegraph: “After 77 years, the wait is over.”
Daily Mail: “Andy Murray ends 77 years of waiting for a British champion.”

You can argue that it was implied that they were taling about the men’s singles title, but that is as much the point – we forget about our female players because the men’s game is considered more important than the female one.

Many people have taken this is a commentary on how we should reflect on our attitudes about women and care more about the women’s game. But this is a universal problem – nobody cares about women’s football. Or women’s golf. Or women’s rugby. Or indeed almost any sport! The men’s game is almost always considered more important.

The simple solution, therefore, is to stop segregating sportspeople by gender.

Do away with men’s and women’s tennis, and just have tennis, where everyone is allowed to complete on the same terms. No more would a female winner of Wimbledon be related to merely being the “women’s title winner”; she would be crowned the greatest tennis player of them all!

I first wrote about this in 2011 while nobody was watching the women’s world cup final that was being shown on BBC3, instead of BBC and ITV simultaneously as the men’s game is. Japan won, by the way.

Combining the competitions into one would stop the second class treatment of women’s sports and allow them to achieve to the highest heights, rather than being restricted by a very opaque non-metaphorical ceiling.

You can argue that women would not be able to compete with men at the same level, but this is, I’m sorry to say, the very definition of prejudice. You have to treat people as individuals and give them the same opportunities are everyone else. Saying “women are often weaker than men, so we’re going to prevent all women from competing” makes no sense in civilised society. Try telling Venus Williams she is too week and feeble to play against you – she’s 70mm taller than I am!

If you should still insist that it would be unfair on women who never get a chance to win, consider that most people don’t. I’m never going to win a Wimbledon tennis title; I an entitled to special circumstances that allow me to win despite not being the best also?

Switching to a characteristic other than gender quickly makes you realise how silly the split gender argument is. Imagine if we decided to split long distance runners based on their skin colour. Have a black marathon and a white marathon. How ridiculous! But when it comes to gender, we find it perfectly acceptable, almost certainly because that is what we have grown up with.

In the modern day, as we strive towards an equal, fair and just meritocracy, everyone should be allowed to compete in the same competition – regardless of skin colour, sexual orientation, or gender.

I’ve done the political compass loads of times over the years, but I thought it would be interesting to see how my views change over time, so I’m going to post my result here for reference.

For comparison, here is a bunch of political leaders mapped out too. Click to enlarge.

As part of Gabriele and Tim’s recent house warming, we took advantage of the good weather to do a riverside BBQ. It turns out Tim is quite the BBQ chef!