Friday Stuff #3

Oh lordy! Yes yes, here it is! Friday things number #3 packed with a load of nonsense links so you can all waste your lives away. None of you ever seem to thank me for my internet foraging skills, it’s a thankless job I can tell you, thankless. Thinking about it, it’s not even a job – I have to pay to maintain this site. Hot piss, I’m stupid.

First things first. The philosophers S Club 7 tried to convince us that Goodbye is the hardest thing to say, but I now know different. Apparently, according to the clever peoples, the hardest thing to say (in English) is “the sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick” which is why I’ve decided not to hang out with Sheiks near any type of farmland – a sentence especially dangerous during times of ruminant pandemic I suspect.

Sooooo… photographicalism! I really liked Helena Kvarnström's work, all barren and full of pastels. Awkward but each photo has a warming charm to it. Erwin Olaf’s work does the same but with more abstraction and most lurid colouration – check the series entitled hope with its expressions so blank they could be varnished and hung on a hunter's wall. My fav type of photography tho, especially on the web, is photojournalistic stuff and Julian Li’s work from Cambodia is ace.

I forget about webcomics. I considering I like webcomics made by average peeps which can and can’t draw I should remember to read them. Xkcd.com’s stuff stimulates both my comedy and geek centres of the brain, something which was last achieved by the Monkey Island series of games waaaaay back when the internet was all fields. The new Dr McNinja is completely on form: irreverent, stupid and therefore 100% more awesome that most web stuff.

Talking of awesome... The most awesome T-Shirt comes from the merchandise of Dinosaur Comics. Click the picture to see the design. Awesome.

Odd things were found on the CIA’s website by the DefenseTech blog. they write about a truly bizarre personality test which starts “Which activity would you like your mission to include? Rock climbing / Dining on haute cuisine / Surfing the waves” and uses the answer to dispel myths about the organisation. For some reason most Americans must believe the CIA posess superpowers and kick-ass Bond-esque cars with oil slick buttons and the like.

Not as odd as the university professor who stripped in front of his students. This happen in the west but China. A country with some of the worst cases of censorship and abuse of press freedom in the world. Surely this sort of thing is like writing your own obituary.

Next on to alleviating some of your dreary boring lives...

Chapter one: If you’re like me, you’ll hate losing. Losing is for losers. Fortunately I’ve bested most strategic games and am now taking lessons in fighting like a ninja. If you ever want to beat me at anything you’ll have to start at the bottom and learn hard. Why not start with the mother of all strategic games: Rock Paper Scissors by reading this strategy guide.

Chapter two: winners like cartoons. So do popular people. I know geeks do to, but if you don’t think about it too much you’ll be safe from spots and NHS glasses. This blog compiled a list of loads of cartoons uploaded to YouTube. Woo!

Chapter three: Everyone loves lists. Here’s ailing sell out resting-on-laurels magazine Rolling Stone's list of the top 500 albums of all time. I own them all. Except the shit ones.

5 things in 10 words

(or.... music I’ve listened to this week recommended in ten-words)

Feist – Let it die (2004):
BrokenSocialScene member (and Peaches’ old flatmate) makes cool solo record.

Jenny Lewis with the Watson Twins – Rabbit Fur (2006):
Think gospel and country melodies stripped into stunning white soul.

Iron and Wine - Our Endless Numbered Days (2003):
Thoughtful melodic and adult; autumnally finger-picked, talented, song writing.

Erlend Øye– Unrest (2003):
Nordic ex-kings member stays wistful with added beats and electronics.

The Redneck Manifesto - RMNMN (2006):
Sonically buzzing EP given away free on Dublin instrumentalists website.


tags: music | reviews

The pope says something enlightened

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Emperor Michael Paleologos II

On Thursday night, when reactions to Pope Benedict’s speech were surfacing, I began a blog entry. In this I discussed why he shouldn’t apologise and why we had the right to say what he said. This is somewhat a moot point now, as it seems the whole of the west thinks a similar thing. Rallying behind freedom of speech. Instead I’d like to look at the context of what he said. In hindsight, and having read the original lecture, it seems now the former Professor of Theology’s speech is highly enlightened.

The Pope was giving a lecture about faith and reason and how Western science and philosophy had divorced themselves from faith. Contained in the talk was the now infamous quotation. This has been taken so far out of context one can think that the lecture was demonising Islam - something which was only mentioned in a quotation and occupies around two-three paragraphs. What we fail to read in the newspapers is how the Pope described this opinion of Manuel II as "astoundingly"* and "surprisingly harsh". The Pope said that this historical reference reminds him as why spreading the faith through violence is unreasonable.

So why are Islamic councils and nations issuing a barrage of requests for apology and retraction. If we look at how the Pope continues the Michael II quote...

"Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death..."

As quoted by Pope Benedict XVI

This couldn’t be more poignant in the wake of reactionary bombings in Turkey. Lets not forget the headline-reasoning of a Turkish lawmaker compared the Pope to Hitler. An interesting hypothesis coming from “the most secular” of Islamic countries; a country which had Mein Kampf as a bestseller last year. A Turkish novelist, in defence of her novel which refers to the deaths of Armenians in 1915 as genocide, puts it succinctly. “If there is a thief in a novel, it doesn’t make the novelist a thief.”

“The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative
criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application.”

Pope Benedict XVI’s closing remarks to his lecture

The pope gave a discourse about faith and reason; the Islamic reaction has ironically authenticated his themes. By looking at the context, comments like "It looks like an effort to revive the mentality of the Crusades." by Salih Kapusuz, illustrate how critics are ignorant of the lecture and have been swayed by simple headline commentary.

The best idiotic criticism came from Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Tasnim Aslam who with an unintentional irony announced “Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence”. The only thing the Pope could be guilty of is not understanding mass-media; then again, surely the vituperate condemnations come from this same flaw.

* this has been mistranslated into English as "a startling brusqueness"

Read translated excerpt from the speech on the BBC

tags ( Pope Islam benedict islamophobia Tasnim Aslam Emperor Michael Paleologos faith )

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

Here's a 40 minute documentary with and about Richard Feynman, physicist and Nobel laureate, by BBC's Horizon program. He talks succinctly and simply about the nature of science and understanding things, and how it relates to everyday life. As useful now as it ever was. Feynman, with Primo Levi, influenced my (scientific) thinking more than any other.

tags: ( Richard Feynman | BBC | science | documentary )