Depressing

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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

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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

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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.

Match Point

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Inspired by watching Scoop, I rented Match Point on DVD. This was the previous Woody Allen film that was set in England, like Scoop. The first thing to say about this film is that it is beautifully filmed. The camera work, lighting and locations are stunning. I watched it on my HD Apple Cinema Display whilst longing in my Mirra chair, drinking ice cold Woodpecker cider. Bliss. Story wise the film builds slowly with the introduction of the various characters. This is not a typical Woody Allen comedy, like Scoop. No this is a story about extra-marital affairs. The end is very good, if unexpected. Well worth renting if you haven’t seen it yet.

Scoop

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I went to see the new Woody Allen film, Scoop, when in San Francisco for WWDC. It was good. Typical Woody Allen performance with a few deja vue moments with bits very similar to his earlier films. If anything it was a bit short. The murder mystery suspense could have been longer in the middle. Well worth seeing though.

Or maybe there were 8…

| | Science

Heh! There has been a rival proposal to the one outlined in the last post about how to define a planet. The new proposal classes a planet as the largest body in its region of space that orbits a star. So by this definition the Solar System would have 8 planets and Pluto would not be one. it would be one of the Kuiper Belt objects. I vote for this proposal.

And then there were 12…

| | Science

It looks like the International Astronomical Union will vote next week on a new definition of what can be classed as a planet. The new definition will be any body that has enough mass to form a near spherical shape, due to gravity, and that orbits a star. Under this definition the Solar System will have 12 planets. In addition to the classical 9 at present there will also be Ceres (in the asteroid belt), Charon (which was formally a satellite of Pluto) and UB313 (which was discovered last year). The Charon on is interesting. As Pluto and Charon orbit a common centre of gravity, and this centre of gravity is not within the body of either of them, then this is now known as a double-planet. The Earth and Moon also orbit a common centre of gravity but this is inside the body of the Earth so the Moon is a satellite of Earth.

The new definition introduces a new subclass for the objects out beyond Neptune (mostly – Pluto/Charon do come closer than Neptune in part of it’s orbit) with orbits longer than 200 years. These will be known as Plutons. Ceres can be called a planet in the asteroid belt it seems.

I don’t like this definition. I’m not sure we can can come up with anything better though. As we discover more and more bodies, both in the Solar System and in other star systems, we need to have a definition of planet that is based on a scientific definition rather than historical discovery. My gut feeling is that we should have 8 planets in the Solar System. This would exclude Pluto, Charon and all the other small spherical bodies that are being discovered and that are predicted to be discovered in the future.

I’ve not seen any mention of Sedna. Using this new definition then it should be a planet. I wonder how the discoverer whose page is linked to above will react to that. He seems to be in the historical 8 planet camp.

The Trouble with Lichen – John Wyndham

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I finished Wyndham’s The Trouble with Lichen a few days ago. It was all right. Nothing special. Certainly not as good as the other 3 of his books I’ve read recently and outlined in previous posts. This I’ll take a break from Wyndham for a while. Reading Getting Things Done by David Allen at present to try and get a handle on all the different projects and tasks I have on the go. Certainly need the help!

Troublewithlichen

Thank the maker for BBC Internet streaming

| | General

I’m in San Francisco for Apple WWDC. When I was up in the wee hours this morning I was listening to BBC radio streamed over the Internet. A sanity saver when away if ever there was one. Said it before, but Radio 4 is worth the license fee on it’s own.

Isn’t US TV awful? Obviously they produce really good individual shows, Seinfeld for example, but the daily stuff is just dross. They do know how to do a mean bacon and eggs breakfast though 🙂

Walking and shopping planned in San Francisco today.

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