Author name: Ian Robinson

Michael Palin – Diaries 1969-1979 The Python Years

| | General

Finished reading Michael Palin’s excellent Diaries 1969-1979 The Python Years yesterday. I loved it. It gives an inside view (abridged admittedly) of the birth of Python, the ups and downs and tensions within the group and the transition from the TV series to the films of the 1970’s. Palin’s thoughts on the Ripping Yarns TV series are very welcome as well. All in all a wonderful read. I note that on 12th July 1979 petrol hit £1 per gallon. It nearly hit that per litre a few months ago! I hope there will be another volume. I want to read about the making of the film Brazil, the making of the Monty Python’s Meaning of Life (I’m sure there where some tensions in that process), although the initial writing for the 4th Python film just makes an appearance towards the end of 1979 in this volume. Reading some of the entries I wondered how so many activities were crammed into some days. As a counterpoint to some of the hectic days we also read of Palin’s family life and more normal activities. I really enjoyed it.

David Gerrold wrote in his book World’s of Wonder that “…your first million words are for practice. They don’t count.” Meaning that to be a writer you have to write a lot of words. Like any activity you get better with practise. Want to play the guitar? Learn chords and practise. Want to be a good bowler in cricket? Get in the nets and bowl. Want to be a writer. Write lots of words, sentences, articles and stories. Practise, practise, practise. Good advice from Mr. Gerrold I reckon. I started a diary of sorts myself whilst reading Palin’s book. Mainly in response to Gerrold’s maxim on writing, rather than hoping the diary will be of any interest to anyone. No one will see it until i croak anyway! On a technical note I’m using the Journal feature of SOHO Notes as the place where I write and store my daily scribbling. I have a few articles and other ideas that I want to write and the more writing I do the better I’ll get at it!

Hubble Space Telescope top 100 images

| | Science

Hubble has returned many stunning images in its lifetime. Hopefully now that NASA plan to send another service mission to replace faulty parts and install updated instruments it’ll continue to provide images for a few years more. There is a collection of the top 100 Hubble Space Telescope Images at the spacetelescope.org site.

The God Delusion – 6 reprints already!

| | Uncategorized

Wow. It seems that Richard Dawkins’ new book has been reprinted 6 times since it was release in September. it’s selling like hotcakes. A quote from the publisher:

Publishing Director Sally Gaminara, who commissioned the book for Bantam Press, said she had always thought the book would be a success. She said: “We have had the book reprinted six times and it was only published at the end of September. That’s an awful lot for a hardback book. I always have high hopes for my books and always tipped this book to sell well since the day I read the manuscript and thought it was absolutely wonderful. The book is very much of its time, with an increasing amount of conflict over religion. I do see this book on top of the bestseller list at Christmas. It is an ideal present — how many people celebrate Christmas for religious reasons?

Happy days.

Faith schools

| | Uncategorized

So the Government are going to bring forward legislation that will require faith schools [1] to take 25% of their pupils from other faiths and none. This is a good first step as long as those who are not from the faith ethos of the school are not forced to take part in religious and semi-religious activities. There should not be prayers etc. at the end of assemblies without giving everyone (including those whose parents are of the faith of the school) an opportunity to leave the room. It looks like only new schools will have to follow the rules if they are implemented. Why can it not apply to existing faith schools? Surely if the concept is valid for new schools then existing schools could implement it as they take in new pupils each year. Then over a few years the existing schools would be operating under the same rules as new ones.

And why 25%? Why not 50%? If the school is taking state funding then it should be open to all pupils irrespective of their faith. I’d like to see schools that took pupils based on there academic ability and/or proximity to the school. However in the real world this is unlikely to happen for some time given the penetration of faith schools. But 50% of other or no faith seems like a good compromise to me.

[1] Aren’t faith schools a daft concept in the first place. They should be schools, not places where parents belief systems can be forced on children. Teach tham about all religions and none and then let them make up their own minds.

Depressing

| | Uncategorized

Why is there so much religious nonsense about at the minute? The first two items on the news on BBC Radio 2 at 13:00 today were a story about an employee of British Airways who is suing them for religious discrimination because they told her to cover up a piece of jewellery depicting a cross. The second story was about the Muslim teacher who was suspended for refusing to remove her veil. The BA worker is complaining because she says other religions don’t have to cover religious clothing such as a Sikhs head covering. When you look into the story it turns out that BA don’t ban religious jewellery but just request that it is worn under the BA uniform. The worker in this case however wants to flaunt her religion and is using the fact that other items, like headscarves, are allowed to claim discrimination against Christians. The fact that turbans and headscarves are impossible to hide under the BA uniform seems to have escaped her. Sigh.

As for the teacher who has been suspended. She is claiming that she just wants to wear the veil in the presence of men. I’ve just seen her interviewed on BBC News 24. She was asked if there had been any men on the panel that interviewed her and if she had worn the veil during the interview. She was very reluctant to answer the question and it had to be put several times. It turns out there was a man on the panel and that she was not wearing the veil during the interview. Why was it okay not to wear the veil then? I sense someone trying to make a political statement rather than a religious one.

The God Delusion – Richard Dawkins

| | Uncategorized

I finished Richard Dawkins new book The God Delusion last week. I’m not sure many people will be surprised to learn that I agree with the points and argument presented in the book almost completely. There are a few minor points that I don’t agree totally with. One being the invocation of the The Anthropic Principle, in the guise of a planetary version, in relation to the discussion of the origins of life on Earth. I don’t think it’s required. Obviously as the Earth contains life then, from a weak anthropic standpoint, the conditions we find on Earth must be favourable. But I don’t think we need to invoke a planetary version of the Anthropic Principle for this. Dawkins argues that the formation of the original life was probably a very improbable event but given the number of stars and planets in our galaxy, indeed the Universe, then if on even a very, very small number of these planets such an improbable event occurred then there would be many planets where life had started. We just happen to be living on one of them.

I’m comfortable with the Anthropic Principle (the weak form) when used in relation to the Universe. If the Universe didn’t have laws that allowed creation of stars, planets etc. then we simply wouldn’t be here to ponder and discuss it. But I don’t think we need to use it to explain the origins of life. The laws of chemistry show that molecules self assemble. So in any environment that has the correct chemicals then I think molecules will form and some of those molecules will be able to catalyse the formation of copies of themselves. Some will be better at this than others and therefore will be subject to Darwinian natural selection. Thus in any system where molecules can form and compete for resources we have the first step up the far side of Dawkins’ Mount Improbable.

The God Delusion is a wonderful book. Everyone should read it. Seems many are as it’s top of many best seller lists and has had several reprints to take the number in print, in just 2 weeks, to 100,000+. I promised several people a review of the book here. I plan to read it again and record references in Endnote for future use in discussions with creationists and ID proponents. I’ll post more comprehensive thoughts after that. But the bottom line is get a copy and read it.

Thegoddelusion

New book…

| | Science

Brian May (of Queen fame) has a new book coming out in October. It’s Co-authored with Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott. The book is called “Bang – The Complete History of the Universe“. Some of you may know that May was a PhD astronomy student in the early days of Queen. He completed his thesis and a paper on the dust that causes zodiac light in the Solar System was published in Nature. His supervisor (IIRC, it may have been the viva voce board) asked for changes to the thesis. Twice. Queen was just hitting the big time at the time and the result is history.

Interestingly May is now updating the thesis for resubmission under the supervision of his supervisor when he did work on one of the telescopes in Tenerife. Apparently he wrote the riff for Tie Your Mother Down whilst sitting outside the telescope one night. One of my favourite songs.

My copy of the book is on order. Update: you can preview the book here.

More good news

| | Uncategorized

Despite what spin the Church of England might have put on the churchgoing figures that where released last week the fact is that people are abandoning churches, and religion according to other surveys, at a high rate. Happy days. Some stats:


6.3% of the population go to church on an average Sunday, compared to 7.5% in 1998
29% of churchgoers are 65 or over, compared with 16% of the population
9% of churches have no-one under 11 in their congregations

Roll on the day when when religion is studied as ancient history.

MBA Technology Management

| | Technology

I’ve signed up for a first course in a series that are required for an Open University MBA (Technology Management). Given that I’ve got about another 20+ years to work in the IT infrastructure sector I think this’ll help me add more value for the clients and companies i work for in the future. I’m starting with the course Technology management: An Integrative Approach as this is relevant to the work I do at present. I’ll do the pure management Stage 1 course after the technical stuff I think.

Scroll to Top