The Vatican has been ordered by Italy's Supreme Court to pay compensation to the town of Cesano near Rome after a long court battle over whether or not Vatican Radio's 60 masts have caused cancer in local children.
The court has found the evidence 'coherent and significant' that children in the area are six times more likely to develop leukemia.
I covered this story last year and all is not what it appears to be.
To sum up what I wrote before:
1. The Italian Navy also has masts in the area
2. The data submitted to the court is highly flawed.
3. There is no good evidence that masts cause cancer or of how cells are damaged by radio waves (see my original article for links to Quackwatch).
4. Italy has one of the highest rates of childhood cancer (leukemia and lymphoma) in the world.
5. There is insufficient data on the Cesano region to compare with Italy as a whole to tell if the rates really are higher.
The consumer association backing the residents' claim has said that 'Finally justice is done'. Vatican Radio has said that it is 'disappointed' by the ruling.
Parents with sick children can't be blamed for looking for someone or something to blame, some way of making sense of what has happened to them to restore a sense of order in the world. Compensation may make them feel they have more control over the situation and are not so much victims. But blaming the wrong cause means that the real cause goes unexplored.
While there may be a certain irony in the Vatican being called to account for something it didn't do while (so far) getting away with something it did do (sanction the abuse of thousands of children), irony's gain is science's loss.
Thursday, 17 March 2011
Sunday, 13 March 2011
Fear and Loathing in Sex Education: 2
The Christian Institute is trying to whip up publicity and alarm parents again with more lies about sex education in their latest report, Too Much, Too Young.
Their widely quoted press release says that 'Explicit sex education materials are being pushed by public bodies for use in schools with children as young as five. One of the controversial resources encourages children aged five and over to learn about anal intercourse, oral sex and prostitution'.
However, their report is not about what is happening but about what may happen if sex education (SRE) is made compulsory and if some of the currently recommended materials are used more widely.
Enter the world of fear-mongering fantasy.
The report includes extracts from some of these resources. Some of the worst offenders are the BBC and the award-winning book by Babette Cole, Mummy Laid An Egg. It also names local authorities currently recommending them.
Particular culprits campaigning for mandatory sex education are the Sex Education Forum, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and the Labour Party (even though Ed Balls seriously watered down the Children, Schools and Families Bill, as I wrote about at the time.)
Far from promoting hot sex for five year olds, the Sex Education Forum's website has a fact-based approach to sex education in which primary school children learn about relationships with family and friends, body changes, feelings, emotions, keeping safe, life cycles, gender and other entirely age-appropriate information.
One of the CI's main fears is that control of sex education will be taken away from schools and handed to Government. This would particularly affect faith schools who can currently teach sex ed 'according to their ethos' which can mean anything from excellent fact-based information to morally biased, factually inaccurate religious propaganda. A unified approach to sex ed would seem like a good thing to most people, ensuring that all children are taught to the same standard, adequately prepared for adult life and that all teachers are well-trained and resourced. But the CI would rather treat children like mushrooms ; keep them in the dark and throw bullshit at them.
Not surprisingly, some of the offending extracts from current resources featured in the report talk about homosexuality in a morally neutral way and the CI will be having none of that.
The report also has action tips for parents about how to find out what is being taught in their child's school and how to complain if they need to. And the implication is that they will need to because 'It is important for parents to recognise that today's sex education is quite unlike anything they may have seen during their own school days'.
For most of us, this would be a good thing. But not for the CI. Take up arms: your child too could have this forced on them. No child is safe!
Mike Judge, head of communications at the CI said that: 'the current approach to sex education has comprehensively failed to reduce teenage pregnancy and abortion rates'. Checking statistics is apparently not his strong point; the rates are still some of the highest in Europe but the under-18 conception rate fell in 2009 to its lowest since the early 80s.
Jumping on the bandwagon is the Campaign For Real Education. That's 'real' as in archaic and fundamentalist. Nick Seaton of CRE commented that 'Some of this stuff could destroy someone's childhood if it upset them too much'. The website has such gems as 'SRE is little more than education in birth control' and 'Politicians required teachers to promote National Socialism in pre-war Nazi Germany and International Socialism in the former Soviet Union. Would a true democrat use schools for similar purposes here? Surely, if we were living in a genuine democracy, the law would allow parents the right to withdraw their child from all areas of PSHE/C, not just SRE'.
Firstly, citing the Nazis loses you any argument and secondly, parents can legally withdraw children as even the CI report notes. Maybe the CRE didn't get the memo. According to Ofsted figures, only 0.04% of parents currently do take their children out of sex ed lessons.(Ofsted 2002, Sex and Relationships HMI 433). This is not nearly enough as the CRE would prefer all parents to use the withdrawal method.
Not far behind the CRE is the Family Education Trust. I've already written about their lovely booklet, What is Love?. (In a nutshell, love is just saying no to the ugly sex until you are safely up the aisle. Or terrible, terrible things will fall upon you). I've also covered their report Too Much, Too Soon, which has such pearls of wisdom as 'there are some sexual practices that it may be better not to know anything about at all, at any age'. Sharp-eyed readers may notice the similarity in the title of this report and the current Christian Institute one. Copycats.
This time, the FET's Norman Wells said: 'Introducing sex education at an early age runs the risk of breaking down children's natural sense of reserve.
'Far from being a hindrance, children's natural inhibitions provide a necessary safeguard against sexual abuse and casual attitudes towards sexual intimacy later on'.
This seems to mean that if children are taught the facts, they are more likely to be abused. Both the logic and moral implications of this statement are loathsome.
These organisations do not represent the majority of parents, or even the majority of religious parents but they are loud, relentless and unashamed of using emotive, manipulative, evidence-free methods.
Finally, five year olds are not now and never will be encouraged to learn about anal sex.
Their widely quoted press release says that 'Explicit sex education materials are being pushed by public bodies for use in schools with children as young as five. One of the controversial resources encourages children aged five and over to learn about anal intercourse, oral sex and prostitution'.
However, their report is not about what is happening but about what may happen if sex education (SRE) is made compulsory and if some of the currently recommended materials are used more widely.
Enter the world of fear-mongering fantasy.
The report includes extracts from some of these resources. Some of the worst offenders are the BBC and the award-winning book by Babette Cole, Mummy Laid An Egg. It also names local authorities currently recommending them.
Particular culprits campaigning for mandatory sex education are the Sex Education Forum, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence and the Labour Party (even though Ed Balls seriously watered down the Children, Schools and Families Bill, as I wrote about at the time.)
Far from promoting hot sex for five year olds, the Sex Education Forum's website has a fact-based approach to sex education in which primary school children learn about relationships with family and friends, body changes, feelings, emotions, keeping safe, life cycles, gender and other entirely age-appropriate information.
One of the CI's main fears is that control of sex education will be taken away from schools and handed to Government. This would particularly affect faith schools who can currently teach sex ed 'according to their ethos' which can mean anything from excellent fact-based information to morally biased, factually inaccurate religious propaganda. A unified approach to sex ed would seem like a good thing to most people, ensuring that all children are taught to the same standard, adequately prepared for adult life and that all teachers are well-trained and resourced. But the CI would rather treat children like mushrooms ; keep them in the dark and throw bullshit at them.
Not surprisingly, some of the offending extracts from current resources featured in the report talk about homosexuality in a morally neutral way and the CI will be having none of that.
The report also has action tips for parents about how to find out what is being taught in their child's school and how to complain if they need to. And the implication is that they will need to because 'It is important for parents to recognise that today's sex education is quite unlike anything they may have seen during their own school days'.
For most of us, this would be a good thing. But not for the CI. Take up arms: your child too could have this forced on them. No child is safe!
Mike Judge, head of communications at the CI said that: 'the current approach to sex education has comprehensively failed to reduce teenage pregnancy and abortion rates'. Checking statistics is apparently not his strong point; the rates are still some of the highest in Europe but the under-18 conception rate fell in 2009 to its lowest since the early 80s.
Jumping on the bandwagon is the Campaign For Real Education. That's 'real' as in archaic and fundamentalist. Nick Seaton of CRE commented that 'Some of this stuff could destroy someone's childhood if it upset them too much'. The website has such gems as 'SRE is little more than education in birth control' and 'Politicians required teachers to promote National Socialism in pre-war Nazi Germany and International Socialism in the former Soviet Union. Would a true democrat use schools for similar purposes here? Surely, if we were living in a genuine democracy, the law would allow parents the right to withdraw their child from all areas of PSHE/C, not just SRE'.
Firstly, citing the Nazis loses you any argument and secondly, parents can legally withdraw children as even the CI report notes. Maybe the CRE didn't get the memo. According to Ofsted figures, only 0.04% of parents currently do take their children out of sex ed lessons.(Ofsted 2002, Sex and Relationships HMI 433). This is not nearly enough as the CRE would prefer all parents to use the withdrawal method.
Not far behind the CRE is the Family Education Trust. I've already written about their lovely booklet, What is Love?. (In a nutshell, love is just saying no to the ugly sex until you are safely up the aisle. Or terrible, terrible things will fall upon you). I've also covered their report Too Much, Too Soon, which has such pearls of wisdom as 'there are some sexual practices that it may be better not to know anything about at all, at any age'. Sharp-eyed readers may notice the similarity in the title of this report and the current Christian Institute one. Copycats.
This time, the FET's Norman Wells said: 'Introducing sex education at an early age runs the risk of breaking down children's natural sense of reserve.
'Far from being a hindrance, children's natural inhibitions provide a necessary safeguard against sexual abuse and casual attitudes towards sexual intimacy later on'.
This seems to mean that if children are taught the facts, they are more likely to be abused. Both the logic and moral implications of this statement are loathsome.
These organisations do not represent the majority of parents, or even the majority of religious parents but they are loud, relentless and unashamed of using emotive, manipulative, evidence-free methods.
Finally, five year olds are not now and never will be encouraged to learn about anal sex.
Saturday, 5 March 2011
Am I Not A Man? No I'm Bloody Well Not.
I get mistaken for a man on a fairly regular basis. A lot of tall women suffer from this: Miranda Hart used the idea in an episode of her sitcom Miranda and Tamsin Greig mentioned it in a recent interview in the Radio Times. Are we some sort of reverse lady boys?
I've been mistaken for a man in India, North and South America, mainland Europe and Africa as well as here in the UK. Tall + blonde = American while tall + brunette = man, it seems. In France, a small child once pointed at me and said "Maman, un travelo!" (mummy - a tranny!). In Mombasa, a gang of kids trailed after me and my male travelling companion shouting 'Homosexuals!', thinking we were both men.
The problem is that people see what they expect to see, they don't look properly and fill in the gaps from scanty evidence because it's easier than closely inspecting everything and everyone they see. That would take too much time and effort for the brain. Unlike failing to discriminate between a rustle in the bushes and a tiger, there is little cost to getting gender wrong so no incentive to be more careful. Apart from getting a hard look from me. It used to upset me a lot as a teenager but now I'm used to it and can't (usually) be bothered to reply.
It's an example of confirmation bias.
In my case, they see something tall looming over them. If they're a shop assistant and sitting down, they look at where a head would be on an average size woman, don't see one and assume: man.
With confirmation bias, any further evidence that might disconfirm the initial hypothesis is ignored - hair, hips, make-up, breast size, voice. Information that confirms preconceptions or prejudices is favoured. Tall = Man. Tall = Man. Tall = Man.
There is a conscious or unconscious assumption still that women are petite, delicate things. A lady looks like Audrey Hepburn or Angelina Jolie not Miranda Hart - or me. I've had a charming gentleman lean out of his white van and inform me that I'm 'too tall for a girl'.
Sometimes they have the grace to apologise but very often after calling me Sir, they just carry on regardless even though they have recognised their mistake as I can tell from their expression.
Another response is a long conversation about how tall I am, whether my parents are tall, have I always been tall (yes, I was born this height), if I have trouble getting clothes/shoes/a boyfriend and can I please reach the jam down from the top shelf for them. It's like being public property in a way; people assume they can comment on my appearance (often coming up to me in public solely to do just that) in a way that they never would if I were black, for example (ooh, you're black, you're very black, are your parents black, do you like being black? etc etc etc).
Then there are the assumptions about my sexuality. And let's not even go into the fun I've had with short straight men over the years. No, I am not your personal Everest.
Ranting aside, the brain uses short cuts or heuristics in information processing. Heuristics are basic rules used to make decisions and judgements that work well in most cases (or we wouldn't have evolved the tendency to use them) but sometimes lead to errors. If height distribution is a bell curve with most women in the central bulge, then the height/gender heuristic works well. But for those of us at the lanky tail end of the curve, it fails.
In other words, it's not their fault for making a cognitive error, it's my fault for being freakishly tall (six foot and a tiny bit, if you've never met me).
So expecting people to open their eyes and look properly at me is not a realistic expectation: they have evolved to be fuckwits. Sorry, that's not very ladylike, is it?
I've been mistaken for a man in India, North and South America, mainland Europe and Africa as well as here in the UK. Tall + blonde = American while tall + brunette = man, it seems. In France, a small child once pointed at me and said "Maman, un travelo!" (mummy - a tranny!). In Mombasa, a gang of kids trailed after me and my male travelling companion shouting 'Homosexuals!', thinking we were both men.
The problem is that people see what they expect to see, they don't look properly and fill in the gaps from scanty evidence because it's easier than closely inspecting everything and everyone they see. That would take too much time and effort for the brain. Unlike failing to discriminate between a rustle in the bushes and a tiger, there is little cost to getting gender wrong so no incentive to be more careful. Apart from getting a hard look from me. It used to upset me a lot as a teenager but now I'm used to it and can't (usually) be bothered to reply.
It's an example of confirmation bias.
In my case, they see something tall looming over them. If they're a shop assistant and sitting down, they look at where a head would be on an average size woman, don't see one and assume: man.
With confirmation bias, any further evidence that might disconfirm the initial hypothesis is ignored - hair, hips, make-up, breast size, voice. Information that confirms preconceptions or prejudices is favoured. Tall = Man. Tall = Man. Tall = Man.
There is a conscious or unconscious assumption still that women are petite, delicate things. A lady looks like Audrey Hepburn or Angelina Jolie not Miranda Hart - or me. I've had a charming gentleman lean out of his white van and inform me that I'm 'too tall for a girl'.
Sometimes they have the grace to apologise but very often after calling me Sir, they just carry on regardless even though they have recognised their mistake as I can tell from their expression.
Another response is a long conversation about how tall I am, whether my parents are tall, have I always been tall (yes, I was born this height), if I have trouble getting clothes/shoes/a boyfriend and can I please reach the jam down from the top shelf for them. It's like being public property in a way; people assume they can comment on my appearance (often coming up to me in public solely to do just that) in a way that they never would if I were black, for example (ooh, you're black, you're very black, are your parents black, do you like being black? etc etc etc).
Then there are the assumptions about my sexuality. And let's not even go into the fun I've had with short straight men over the years. No, I am not your personal Everest.
Ranting aside, the brain uses short cuts or heuristics in information processing. Heuristics are basic rules used to make decisions and judgements that work well in most cases (or we wouldn't have evolved the tendency to use them) but sometimes lead to errors. If height distribution is a bell curve with most women in the central bulge, then the height/gender heuristic works well. But for those of us at the lanky tail end of the curve, it fails.
In other words, it's not their fault for making a cognitive error, it's my fault for being freakishly tall (six foot and a tiny bit, if you've never met me).
So expecting people to open their eyes and look properly at me is not a realistic expectation: they have evolved to be fuckwits. Sorry, that's not very ladylike, is it?
Saturday, 12 February 2011
Leading Apes Into Hell - the Spinster's Revenge
A collection of tweets twitted in the run-up to Valentine's Day to add a bitter taint to the saccharine bliss of happy couples in no more than 140 characters. Now with added extras.
They that die maids, must lead apes into hell (old saying).
Preparing for Valentine's Day. Have bought gun and several boxes of ammo. Happy couples beware, I am the Spinster's Revenge and I am mighty.
Spinster's Revenge Valentine's Day Plan 2: Circulate divorce statistics.
Valentine's Day Spinster's Revenge 3: He's thinking of your best mate when he's kissing you. You know, the really pretty one.
Valentine Day Spinster's Revenge 4: In 2002 and 08 Saudi Arabia's religious police banned sale of all Valentine's Day items. Quite right too.
Valentine's Day Spinsters' Revenge 5: When she's blowing you, she's thinking about that lovely pair of shoes she's going to buy.
Valentine's Day Spinster's Revenge 6: Love will tear us apart, remember.
Valentine's Day Spinsters' Revenge 7: Love is like a butterfly - best asphyxiated and impaled on a pin.
Spinster's Revenge 8: Each man kills the thing he loves/From all let this be heard/Some do it with a bitter look/Some with a flattering word.
Valentine's Day Spinsters' Revenge 9: Andreas Capellanus - "True love can have no place between husband and wife" (The Art of Courtly Love).
Valentine's Day Spinsters' Revenge 10: Cupid is naked so he can crap all over you more easily. Sooner or later, he will.
(11) Love is handsome and love is fine/And love’s a jewel when it is new/But love grows old and waxes cold/And fades away like the morning dew
(12) What is commonly called love, namely the satisfying of a voracious appetite with a certain quantity of delicate white human flesh. Henry Fielding.
Valentine’s Day Spinster’s Revenge 13: Sooner or later that endearing little habit will make you want to stab him in the eye.
Valentine’s Day Spinster’s Revenge 14: Lock and load. Will the apes please form an orderly queue.
Notes:
The expression 'leading apes into hell' appears in The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, and John Donne's Paradoxes and Problems, for example. In all cases, a familiarity with the expression is assumed. Being a maid and a spinster were, in this case, synonymous.
A spinster was a female spinner - one of the few jobs available to unmarried women in earlier times. Similarly, the name Brewster means a female brewer, Webster a female weaver and Baxter a female baker.
Tweet 1: The intention is to shoot one half of the couple so that the other one is miserable. Shooting them both is far less effective. And bullets are not cheap.
Tweet 2: The median length of a marriage is 11.5 years. Cohabitees who then marry are 60% more likely to split up within 10 years.In 2008, of all decrees awarded to one partner, rather than jointly to both, 67% were awarded to the wife. The incidence of separation is particularly high around anniversary months. And if marriage is so great, why does the government try to bribe people to do it with tax breaks?
Tweet 8 is from The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde
Tweet 9: Andreas Capellanus wrote The Art of Courtly Love, which I read at college (in Mediaeval French, not the original Latin). In common with many writers of the time, he thought romantic love was a terrible, destructive thing best avoided. See Guinevere and Lancelot, Tristan and Isolde.
Tweet 11: From the traditional song The Water is Wide
Valentine's Day is suffering from the recession. The 2010 V Day market was worth just over £232 million, compared with £290m in 2009. Over 2.3 million bunches of flowers were bought last year – 29% fewer than in 2009. The statistics don't indicate how many bunches of flowers were bought from the garage on the way home from work. Not do they include cack-handed cards made by small children that make parents go all teary-eyed.
There is an old belief that if you see an owl on Valentine's Day, you will die a spinster.
Thursday, 27 January 2011
The Short Agenda
I am currently being harried, vilified and persecuted in certain sections of the media about the policy of my bed and breakfast establishment, Tall Towers, of not allowing short people to stay.
It's true there is a sign in the lobby that says You Must Be At Least This Tall To Stay Here and that no one under five foot ten is welcome. It's true that Tall Towers is registered as a business for tax and Health & Safety. But it is also my home. And in my own home, it is my right to follow my own deeply held beliefs. As my website states: I have few rules but please note that out of a deep regard for height, I prefer to let double accommodation to tall people only. I will not allow short people to share a bed under my roof in which they might procreate more short people.
Bleeding heart liberal Guardian-reading pinko commie nazis may try to make us believe that short people are normal but why should my beliefs be trampled on by their tiny feet? This is not the England my ancestors fought and died for. The obsession with equality has now reached ludicrous, as well as oppressive, proportions. I am not shortophobic, I am an honest, law-abiding person. I am just standing up for what I believe. Which is that short people are just plain wrong.
Some may question the wisdom of sinking my life savings into this establishment and then restricting who can stay here, especially in these hard times, but I am not in this for the money. I do it because I love meeting people and offering them hospitality. Tall people.
There have been incidences of short people wearing high heels, pretending to be tall in order to book a double room. This is persecution and publicity-seeking, pure and simple.
A tall MP has come to my defence. She said: "If Tessera ran a grocery shop which refused to serve short people then that would be discrimination but to refuse to facilitate their activity by providing a double bed is not. It is the once lawful exercise of conscience against particular deeds".
It gets worse. The attempt to foist the short agenda onto society has spread to education. In short geography, children will be forced to study Japan and regions of the world where pygmies live when they should be studying Holland, Scandinavia and the Rift Valley (home of the Maasai). In maths, they will be forced to study only short division instead of long division and in science they will learn about the evolution of the pygmy shrew, chihuahua and the bee hummingbird. Alas, this short curriculum is no laughing matter. Absurd as it sounds, this is but the latest attempt to brainwash children with propaganda under the camouflage of education. It is an abuse of childhood.
And the other side of that particular coin, as we are now discovering, is that values which were once the moral basis for British society are now deemed to be beyond the pale. Tall values.
When qualified, accredited therapists offer out of the goodness of their hearts to cure people of being short, they are hounded and threatened with being struck off, and their witnesses are intimidated by the short mafia. In America, these cures have been made illegal but British bodies (bless them) are holding out.
As if this wasn't enough, now comes, apparently, short drugs policy. When the Government announced the appointment of GP Dr Lofty to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, he was targeted in an astonishing attack for his 'stringent views'. For he is also a member of the Lanky Community, which is dedicated to re-establishing tall values in society. Dr Lofty has often stayed at my B&B with his lovely tall wife and three fine tall children.
Short people have their place in society, which is reaching for things on low shelves. They are welcome to stay in their own B&Bs, to watch short films and to eat shortbread. They are not welcome in my B&B. My health is failing but I will defend my beliefs to my last, bankrupt breath.
All donations or complaints should be addressed to my lawyers, the Longshanks Legal Centre.
It's true there is a sign in the lobby that says You Must Be At Least This Tall To Stay Here and that no one under five foot ten is welcome. It's true that Tall Towers is registered as a business for tax and Health & Safety. But it is also my home. And in my own home, it is my right to follow my own deeply held beliefs. As my website states: I have few rules but please note that out of a deep regard for height, I prefer to let double accommodation to tall people only. I will not allow short people to share a bed under my roof in which they might procreate more short people.
Bleeding heart liberal Guardian-reading pinko commie nazis may try to make us believe that short people are normal but why should my beliefs be trampled on by their tiny feet? This is not the England my ancestors fought and died for. The obsession with equality has now reached ludicrous, as well as oppressive, proportions. I am not shortophobic, I am an honest, law-abiding person. I am just standing up for what I believe. Which is that short people are just plain wrong.
Some may question the wisdom of sinking my life savings into this establishment and then restricting who can stay here, especially in these hard times, but I am not in this for the money. I do it because I love meeting people and offering them hospitality. Tall people.
There have been incidences of short people wearing high heels, pretending to be tall in order to book a double room. This is persecution and publicity-seeking, pure and simple.
A tall MP has come to my defence. She said: "If Tessera ran a grocery shop which refused to serve short people then that would be discrimination but to refuse to facilitate their activity by providing a double bed is not. It is the once lawful exercise of conscience against particular deeds".
It gets worse. The attempt to foist the short agenda onto society has spread to education. In short geography, children will be forced to study Japan and regions of the world where pygmies live when they should be studying Holland, Scandinavia and the Rift Valley (home of the Maasai). In maths, they will be forced to study only short division instead of long division and in science they will learn about the evolution of the pygmy shrew, chihuahua and the bee hummingbird. Alas, this short curriculum is no laughing matter. Absurd as it sounds, this is but the latest attempt to brainwash children with propaganda under the camouflage of education. It is an abuse of childhood.
And the other side of that particular coin, as we are now discovering, is that values which were once the moral basis for British society are now deemed to be beyond the pale. Tall values.
When qualified, accredited therapists offer out of the goodness of their hearts to cure people of being short, they are hounded and threatened with being struck off, and their witnesses are intimidated by the short mafia. In America, these cures have been made illegal but British bodies (bless them) are holding out.
As if this wasn't enough, now comes, apparently, short drugs policy. When the Government announced the appointment of GP Dr Lofty to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, he was targeted in an astonishing attack for his 'stringent views'. For he is also a member of the Lanky Community, which is dedicated to re-establishing tall values in society. Dr Lofty has often stayed at my B&B with his lovely tall wife and three fine tall children.
Short people have their place in society, which is reaching for things on low shelves. They are welcome to stay in their own B&Bs, to watch short films and to eat shortbread. They are not welcome in my B&B. My health is failing but I will defend my beliefs to my last, bankrupt breath.
All donations or complaints should be addressed to my lawyers, the Longshanks Legal Centre.
Wednesday, 12 January 2011
The Death of Atheism?
Atheists are breeding themselves out of existence. Or rather, not breeding. The religious, meanwhile, have evolved to go forth and multiply - according to the media.
The first round of 'news' stories was based on a paper called The Reproductive Benefits of Religious Affiliation by Michael Blume. The story has now come back because of a paper by Robert Rowthorn: Religion, fertility and genes: a dual inheritance model
Blume says that religious people have evolved to produce more children than the non-religious, even in developed countries (he cites Switzerland as an example). He suggests that this is because belonging to a religious community provides more co-operation in child-rearing and that such communities particularly benefit women of reproductive age as religion promotes marriage and fidelity.
This got reported (for example in the Sunday Times) as 'over evolutionary timescales of hundreds or thousands of years, atheists had fewer children and the societies they belong to are likely to disappear'.
Evolutionary timescales are rather more than hundreds of years - unless you're a fruit fly. The reporting ignores many other key factors. For example, most atheists have religious parents, they don't just spontaneously generate. There are more openly atheist people now than there have ever been. Figures on church attendance, religious affiliation and belief in the UK, for example, showed a marked decline in younger people - who have yet to breed.
However, in many societies, it is still hard - even dangerous - to be openly atheist; social traditions that encourage and facilitate large families are likely to influence even non-believers who live (covertly) in them. The Atheist Doomsday scenario also ignores the fact that in third world countries, people have more children regardless of their religion because they are needed to work to support the family and because more children die young. The research looks only at birth rates, not long-term survival rates. While a country's religion may encourage this kind of breeding, there are many more factors than faith.
The reporting also assumes that the current geo-political and religious status quo will hold for long enough into the future for evolution to have an effect and for atheists to be wiped out. Moreover, religion may apparently encourage fidelity but human nature is sneaky just like all animal nature. Believers were delighted with March of the Penguins as it appeared to show faithful penguin couples - except they're not. Just like many other animals, penguins have evolved to be opportunistic and will sneak off for some extra-conjugal mating whenever they get the chance. If the punishment for being caught is high (like stoning, say), this may deter some but will just increase ingenuity in others who will pass on the sneaky gene to their children...
Furthermore, how many atheists were there even 2000 years ago let alone 100,000? Without knowing this, we can't even begin to look at any possible evolutionary effects. There was no non-believing control group in the Iron Age.
The Telegraph version of Robert Rowthorn's paper is 'Believers' gene will spread religion, says academic'.
Except he doesn't. Rowthorn posits various possible scenarios. One is that religion becomes more widespread because religious people breed more so the genetic propensity to believe and breed spreads. He mentions the Blume study. But in that study, religiosity is measured by attendance. This may work in most current Western cultures but in some parts of the world, non-attendance is almost impossible because of social pressures. Similarly, in Elizabethan times, it was illegal not to go to church so by that measure, everyone was religious.
In addition, Rowthorn says that 'heritability studies suggest there is currently significant variation in genetic predisposition towards religion'. So not all religous people are equally religious although he does assume that 'all religious adults... have the same fertility irrespective of their genes', which is quite a big assumption.
Another scenario is that religions where people do not marry out will continue to breed at a much faster rate than the rest of the population - he cites the Amish and Haredi Jews as examples. However, Rowthorn points out that while they could vastly increase their numbers, as groups grow, the chances of defection increase as members are more likely to come into contact with outsiders and because it is harder to control larger groups. As people from third world countries move to the West, there will be economic restraints on having very large families to factor in.
He doesn't look at the problems of inbreeding in such groups, which may reduce survival fitness as harmful mutations spread.
Finally, he posits a scenario where defectors from religions take their religious genes with them. Presumably these are the weaker variants or people wouldn't be able to lose their religion in the first place. Going with his argument, these defectors will take their genes into the general population where they will manifest themselves in secular ways, for example as a respect for authority. He doesn't consider, for example, the fact that some defectors leave because they are gay and can live openly in mainstream society. The likelihood of them breeding is considerably reduced (although not eliminated).
Two rather over-simplified papers base their findings on very narrow parameters and assumptions, ignore complicating factors and other potential influences (culture, economics for example) even though genes never work in isolation but in tandem with the environment. They are reported as heralding the death of atheism.
It's true that some developed countries are producing fewer children. Just to muddy the waters, the birth rate in Italy and Ireland, strongly Catholic countries, is also falling as people ignore the priests and control their fertility.
While some religious groups in this country might be only too happy to see the death of the 'Dawkins' gene, they might also like to consider the scare stories about how Muslims will out-breed all other groups in Europe. Not so smug now, then.
The first round of 'news' stories was based on a paper called The Reproductive Benefits of Religious Affiliation by Michael Blume. The story has now come back because of a paper by Robert Rowthorn: Religion, fertility and genes: a dual inheritance model
Blume says that religious people have evolved to produce more children than the non-religious, even in developed countries (he cites Switzerland as an example). He suggests that this is because belonging to a religious community provides more co-operation in child-rearing and that such communities particularly benefit women of reproductive age as religion promotes marriage and fidelity.
This got reported (for example in the Sunday Times) as 'over evolutionary timescales of hundreds or thousands of years, atheists had fewer children and the societies they belong to are likely to disappear'.
Evolutionary timescales are rather more than hundreds of years - unless you're a fruit fly. The reporting ignores many other key factors. For example, most atheists have religious parents, they don't just spontaneously generate. There are more openly atheist people now than there have ever been. Figures on church attendance, religious affiliation and belief in the UK, for example, showed a marked decline in younger people - who have yet to breed.
However, in many societies, it is still hard - even dangerous - to be openly atheist; social traditions that encourage and facilitate large families are likely to influence even non-believers who live (covertly) in them. The Atheist Doomsday scenario also ignores the fact that in third world countries, people have more children regardless of their religion because they are needed to work to support the family and because more children die young. The research looks only at birth rates, not long-term survival rates. While a country's religion may encourage this kind of breeding, there are many more factors than faith.
The reporting also assumes that the current geo-political and religious status quo will hold for long enough into the future for evolution to have an effect and for atheists to be wiped out. Moreover, religion may apparently encourage fidelity but human nature is sneaky just like all animal nature. Believers were delighted with March of the Penguins as it appeared to show faithful penguin couples - except they're not. Just like many other animals, penguins have evolved to be opportunistic and will sneak off for some extra-conjugal mating whenever they get the chance. If the punishment for being caught is high (like stoning, say), this may deter some but will just increase ingenuity in others who will pass on the sneaky gene to their children...
Furthermore, how many atheists were there even 2000 years ago let alone 100,000? Without knowing this, we can't even begin to look at any possible evolutionary effects. There was no non-believing control group in the Iron Age.
The Telegraph version of Robert Rowthorn's paper is 'Believers' gene will spread religion, says academic'.
Except he doesn't. Rowthorn posits various possible scenarios. One is that religion becomes more widespread because religious people breed more so the genetic propensity to believe and breed spreads. He mentions the Blume study. But in that study, religiosity is measured by attendance. This may work in most current Western cultures but in some parts of the world, non-attendance is almost impossible because of social pressures. Similarly, in Elizabethan times, it was illegal not to go to church so by that measure, everyone was religious.
In addition, Rowthorn says that 'heritability studies suggest there is currently significant variation in genetic predisposition towards religion'. So not all religous people are equally religious although he does assume that 'all religious adults... have the same fertility irrespective of their genes', which is quite a big assumption.
Another scenario is that religions where people do not marry out will continue to breed at a much faster rate than the rest of the population - he cites the Amish and Haredi Jews as examples. However, Rowthorn points out that while they could vastly increase their numbers, as groups grow, the chances of defection increase as members are more likely to come into contact with outsiders and because it is harder to control larger groups. As people from third world countries move to the West, there will be economic restraints on having very large families to factor in.
He doesn't look at the problems of inbreeding in such groups, which may reduce survival fitness as harmful mutations spread.
Finally, he posits a scenario where defectors from religions take their religious genes with them. Presumably these are the weaker variants or people wouldn't be able to lose their religion in the first place. Going with his argument, these defectors will take their genes into the general population where they will manifest themselves in secular ways, for example as a respect for authority. He doesn't consider, for example, the fact that some defectors leave because they are gay and can live openly in mainstream society. The likelihood of them breeding is considerably reduced (although not eliminated).
Two rather over-simplified papers base their findings on very narrow parameters and assumptions, ignore complicating factors and other potential influences (culture, economics for example) even though genes never work in isolation but in tandem with the environment. They are reported as heralding the death of atheism.
It's true that some developed countries are producing fewer children. Just to muddy the waters, the birth rate in Italy and Ireland, strongly Catholic countries, is also falling as people ignore the priests and control their fertility.
While some religious groups in this country might be only too happy to see the death of the 'Dawkins' gene, they might also like to consider the scare stories about how Muslims will out-breed all other groups in Europe. Not so smug now, then.
Friday, 7 January 2011
Should you join a gym in January? No.
January is traditionally the time when we're supposed to make health-based resolutions - lose weight, drink less, quit smoking, get fit. Weight Watchers and their imitators ramp up their ad campaign and even Sainsbury's is selling rowing machines.
If your resolution is to join a gym - forget it.
Don't get me wrong, I love the gym. I'm there four mornings a week.
But there are lots of reasons why you shouldn't join a gym.
1. It's expensive. You're looking at around £500 a year for a decent gym. Some are cheaper if you pay for the whole year up front, others let you spread the payment with monthly direct debit. You may think that paying all in one go will make you commit. It won't. You'll end up having arguments with yourself about why you should go and why there are excellent reasons for not going and damn, I feel guilty and I'll really go next week, honestly, just shut up and let me eat this pizza in peace. Personality disorders will ensue.
Monthly payments might seem a safer option but many people don't get around to cancelling their DD and some gyms don't make it easy to quit once they've signed you up. And on top of the annual fee, you may well have to pay a joining fee which has no purpose other than gouging more money out of you to pay for the huge effort of putting a bit of data into a computer. Gyms rely on people joining in January but more than that, they rely on them not going more than a few times. Figures vary, but up to 60% of people drop out before six months. If everyone who joined a gym went and kept going, you wouldn't be able to get in the door. If you're part of that 60%, thank you for paying for my gym to get lots of new equipment that I can use in peace.
2. Guilt/punishment. A woman in my gym said to me 'When I'm as slim as you, I can stop coming'. This is a common attitude - exercise as penance or punishment. I pointed out to her that the only reason I stay in shape is that I keep going. She wasn't happy. A lot of women (and it is mostly women) see exercise as something to be endured to achieve a goal - generally weight loss. They hate every moment. Exercise speeds up weight loss but it's still going to take time. I've seen women weighing themselves after every session as if they might magically have dropped five kilos just by flogging themselves half to death on the step machine for 40 minutes.
Exercise burns calories but not very many. It works by perking up your metabolism so you burn more calories even when resting. So a weekend of beer and pizza cannot be atoned for in the gym on Monday morning. If you weigh around 155 pounds, an hour of vigorous aerobics or weight training could burn around 490 calories. One slice of pepperoni pizza has around 350 calories. That's one slice. You need to burn 3,500 calories more than you take in to lose one pound. So if you ran really really fast for over seven hours and ate nothing, you might lose a pound. Or die.
3. It's hard. If exercise was easy, everyone would do it and we'd all look like athletes. It takes time. Muscles do not just ping out overnight. That's why so many competitive body builders use steroids. I worked in a gym for a few years while I was researching my PhD and taught weight training circuits. I watched sane, sensitive men become a competitive, grunting mass of testosterone as soon as they got near the big muscly men. They'd try to lift the heaviest weights they could find, get disheartened that they didn't turn into Mr Universe and give up. Or do themselves a mischief.
4. It's time consuming. If you're going to be in the gym three or four times a week, it has to become part of your life. You have to get up early or make time in the evenings and weekends. You'll also have to lug a heavy bag full of stinky clothes around with you.
5. The gym isn't for everyone. Weight training, cardio work or classes don't suit everyone. Some people find it hard to work out alone, others don't like doing it with other people. And not everyone can cope with the changing rooms. This may sound like an odd thing to say, but some women are so painfully unhappy with their bodies that they writhe around under a towel to get changed and won't shower in the communal showers if the individual cubicles are busy. I can't speak for men as I've never been in a men's changing room (damn it) but I'm told there are man-type pressures too, mostly around eye contact while naked and getting your nob out in front of other men. You will have to get naked in front of others at some point, if only for a moment. You will also go bright red, get all sweaty and your hair will look terrible. Gyms are full of mirrors so you will see yourself looking like crap from every angle. This can be hard to take if there's a cute guy/girl working out next to you but if you're more interested in pulling than pumping, go to the pub.
Obviously, some people do join a gym, love it and stick with it. I did. It's part of my life and I don't have to think about it, I just do it - and enjoy it. This doesn't make me a Good Person, it makes me someone who suits the gym.
6. It's January. It's horrible outside, especially early in the morning when it's cold, dark and probably wet as you head to the gym. And cold, dark and probably wet when you leave work. Setting yourself tough targets at this time of year can be pretty unrealistic, a triumph of faith over reason. Give yourself a break. Start with something you may actually achieve. Go for a fast walk for half an hour three or four times a week for three months. If you can't manage that, there's no point doing anything more demanding (or expensive). Your credit card is already weeping after Christmas. If you can manage it, do you still want to join a gym? There are lots of other ways to exercise that may suit you better.
7. Suck it and see. A lot of private gyms do free tasters, a one day or sometimes three day pass. Just going to a gym, looking around and getting the sales pitch isn’t enough. You need to go at the time you are planning to go to see how crowded it is, who else is in there (big scary men hogging the Smith machine or women hogging the step machines, for example) and whether what’s on offer really suits you. Council-run gyms don’t tend to do this; for health and safety reasons they won’t let you loose on your own without doing an induction course. This applies even if you’re a regular gym user so it’s not so much about making sure you don’t injure yourself as getting more money out of you.
Chat to the staff while you’re there. Do they know their stuff? Do they look you up and down and raise an eyebrow? Do they give a toss? Do they speak something approaching English?
Then sniff the changing room. If it smells like something died in there, walk away.
8. Don't say to me 'I really should join a gym' or 'I've been to the gym three times now' or even 'Can you design me an exercise programme to do at home?' You may be the exception to the rule but I can pretty much guarantee that if I spend time and effort designing a workout for you and teaching you how to do it, you'll do it for a week. Or maybe two. And then make excuses every time you see me. And then hate me because I make you feel guilty. I really don't need it.
9. If you ignore everything I've said and join a gym - hoorah! If you're still going regularly in a year's time, let me know and we'll have a really big cake. Because gym + cake = balanced lifestyle. It works for me.
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