the greycat blog

In a deeply stupid move Birmingham City Council has blocked its vast army of employees from accessing atheist websites. The atheist sites are blocked under a policy that prevents staff access to ’sites that promote witchcraft, the paranormal, sexual deviancy and criminal activity’, says the BBC. It’s not quite clear into which of these categories atheism is deemed to fall.

The National Secular Society says the move is discriminatory (and it does look that way, given that sites relating to ’Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other religions’ are apparently not being blocked, but atheist sites are) and they intend to fight the Birmingham ban. However, this quote from National Secular Society President Terry Anderson caught my eye:

It is discriminatory not only against atheists but they also are banning access to sites to do with witchcraft. Witchcraft these days is called Wicca, which is an actual legitimate and recognised religion.

It’s nothing of the sort: everything about ‘wicca’ from its name downwards is a load of made-up tosh. But then the opinion of a professional secularist on what is or is not a legitimate religion is bound to be a little warped.

Reporting on the arrest of the cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot in the Netherlands, the Wall Street Journal reveals that the Dutch Government certainly has its priorities right in the fight for free speech and liberty against obscurantism and religiously-inspired totalitarianism. Officials from the intelligence service, the interior ministry, the prosecutor’s office and other high-powered state bodies, under the leadership of a senior counter-terrorism officer, to create the top-secret …

Interdepartmental Working Group on Cartoons.

The title hardly sounds ominous, but the existence of this body is deeply troubling to anyone concerned about free speech (not to mention the priorities of government). The group is intended to alert Dutch officials to any cartoon-related dangers the Netherlands may face (unfunny Garfield strips? No, I don’t think that’s what they mean) and has no censorship role, we are assured. But then, no imposition of censorship is needed when an entire culture is bending over backwards to censor itself.

More at Greenspiece and Gates of Vienna.

It’s spreading and it has to be stopped. I refer to the tendency, widespread in the United States but increasingly evident here, to use ‘alternate’ as if it means ‘alternative’.

It doesn’t, and there’s no excuse for getting it wrong. These two words mean quite different things. Here is the distinction, in capitals, so that nobody misses it.

‘ALTERNATE’ MEANS ‘EVERY OTHER’. ‘ALTERNATIVE’ MEANS ‘ANOTHER’.

Visualize yourself on an upper floor in a burning building. In front of you is a staircase, but it is enveloped in flame. ‘Use alternate stairs!’ shouts a voice from somewhere outside. So you do: you set off down the stairs using every other tread, because that is what it means to use alternate stairs. And you burn to death. Your would-be rescuer knew that there was another staircase at the other end of the building, unaffected by the blaze. That’s what he wanted you to know about, and that’s why he should have shouted ‘Use alternative stairs!’

Next week: why you are very stupid if you use ‘decimate’ to mean ‘destroy’.

Back in November I had pedantic remarks to make about a tragic story from Afghanistan: ‘BBC English: the decline and fall continues’. The point was that the BBC, in reporting the possibility that UK ‘friendly fire’ had killed two Danish soldiers, reported the story as MOD investigating claim UK ‘friendly fire’ killed two Danish troops. ‘If one individual had been reported dead’, I mused, ’would the headline have referred to the killing of “one Danish troop”?’

Well, CBS News has indeed broken that particular stupidity barrier with their headline today, reporting on the deaths of three British soldiers in Afghanistan: ‘Afghan Violence Claims 100th British Troop’.

Why is this stupid? Here’s an article that explains all. Here’s another, with added lefty hand-wringing (more of the same here, in the fourth paragraph down).

UPDATE: They’ve corrected it to ‘100th British soldier’, which is nice to see but doesn’t really make up for their initial dumbness.

In case you weren’t aware of the background to yesterday’s news that a group of Muslim scientists and clerics want a global time based on Mecca to replace GMT, two invaluable videos available at YouTube present the cutting-edge Islamic science underlying the Mecca Time movement. They both feature Dr ‘Abd Al-Baset Sayyid, a scientific luminary from the Egyptian National Research Centre.

The first video, ‘Science in Islam: Mecca is the centre of the world’, is from Al-Majd TV, Saudi Arabia, and dates from 16 January 2005. Highlights of this discussion include the claim that the Ka’ba emits short-wave radiation, that ‘this radiation is infinite’, and that this is why anyone living in Mecca or travelling there will live long, be healthier, and be ‘less affected by Earth’s gravity’. The existence of the ‘zero-magnetism zone’ halfway between the north and south poles ‘where the pull is equal from both sides’ is also considered: ‘the magnetic force has no effect there’.

The companion piece to this is ‘Science in Islam: Mecca Time must replace GMT’ from Mihwar TV, Egypt, recorded on 26 December 2006, in which Dr ‘Abd Al-Baset Sayyid expounds the benefits of Mecca Time. In Greenwich the magnetic field is 8.5 degrees, while in Mecca ‘the magnetic field is zero’. This means that when time is measured from Greenwich there is a discrepancy of 8.5 minutes ‘between the northern and southern hemispheres’. ‘Air traffic’, warns the doc darkly, ‘cannot be organized in this way’. There’s also a lot of fascinating information about blood, circulation, magnetic force, and why circling the Ka’ba will fill you with energy (clue: it’s all about going from right to left).

Such is the world of modern Islamic science, in which religious fundamentalism meets Time Cube. You infidels are educated stupid, not comprehend the zero-magnetism Mecca Time truth of Earth-centre infinite radiation wisdom.

Even the time must submit. ‘Muslim scientists and clerics’ want the world to adopt Mecca Time, reports the BBC:

Muslim scientists and clerics have called for the adoption of Mecca time to replace GMT, arguing that the Saudi city is the true centre of the Earth. … The call was issued at a conference held in the Gulf state of Qatar under the title: Mecca, the Centre of the Earth, Theory and Practice.

One geologist argued that unlike other longitudes, Mecca’s was in perfect alignment to magnetic north.

Some geologist. (1) Magnetic north is constantly on the move. (2) The line of longitude upon which Mecca is situated also passes through, for example, the Russian cities of Yaroslavl, Voronezh and Rostov-on-Don, so presumably those places (along with others in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Ethiopia, Kenya …) would have equal claim to whatever divinely-ordained distinction is claimed for Mecca. (3) There are also alignments of the earth’s magnetic field where magnetic north and true north are the same, but such lines are not equivalent to lines of longitude and anyway Mecca isn’t on one.

He said the English had imposed GMT on the rest of the world by force when Britain was a big colonial power, and it was about time that changed.

I find the notion of Royal Navy battleships circling the globe coercing people into setting their watches according to British diktat rather appealing, but it didn’t really work like that. GMT was adopted as a standard by consent, not imposed by force. Perhaps the distinction between the two is not well understood in Islam.

According to the Gulf Times’s report on this gathering of dunces, a man called Yasin a-Shouk has invented an Islamic watch that runs anti-clockwise. If the standard of scientific knowledge on display at this conference is any guide, the symbolism is appropriate: for Islam, intellectually at least, time does indeed run backwards.

[P.S. How long are pious Muslims going to permit this infidel organization to go on associating the name of the Holy City with commercialism, gambling, and garish decor?]

From the ‘has the world gone mad?’ department:

Pantomime gun must be registered 

A Cornish village drama group has had to register a toy gun with the police to comply with health and safety rules. Carnon Downs drama group in Cornwall have also had to keep their plastic cutlasses and wooden swords locked up for the pantomime, Robinson Crusoe. Producers of the show called the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) rules ‘farcical’. A spokesman for the HSE said the rules were designed to make risks ’sensibly managed’.

The gun produces a flag with the word ‘bang’ written on it.

Marks and Spencer, colossus of the UK underwear market and home of the £4 bag of carrots, is having a hard time, and is discounting prices so that people will go back to buying things they don’t need with money they don’t have, just like in the good old days. Just-knighted M&S chief executive Stuart Rose was interviewed (audio clip here, .ram format) about all this on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme this morning, where he explained to Sarah Montague that M&S doesn’t engage in low retail tricks like using discounts to increase sales:

ROSE: … we reduced our opening prices by 6 percent … you have to run very hard to pick up the 6 percent deflation …

MONTAGUE: If you have to discount by 6 percent to get this fall -

ROSE (interrupting): It’s not discounting, Sarah, it’s positioning yourself in the market as a retailer that offers value.

So there we are. The likes of Tesco and Sainsbury’s may cut prices, but Marks & Spencer positions itself in the market as a retailer that offers value.

Speaking of value, much was added to the interview by the fluent and incisive commentary of business editor Robert Peston: ‘Well I think, this is, you know, an important moment, Marks & Spencer is the market leader in clothing, this is, you know, a a a a disappointing performance, and what you have to decide if you’re looking at it from from from from my perspective is, is this because Marks & Spencer itself has made a mess of it or is it because the market is really difficult. … Well, I think, you know, the the the the the the big question er for Marks & Spencer is really whether or not, you know, the the the the the the the the business is strong enough to weather this.’

Sir Stuart’s words did M&S no end of good: their shares plunged 18% in the first two hours of trading this morning.

The very welcome news of Gillian Gibbons’s release has fed the light of tolerance and fair-mindedness that ever burns on BBC News ‘Have Your Say’ pages.

‘She should have served her sentance’ scrawls Mike from Colwyn Bay. ‘If you break the law you should expect to be punished’, he goes on, apparently thinking this both clever and relevant, and ends with a point that obviously weighs very heavily with him (heavier than ‘justice’ or ‘humanity’ for example): ’This must have cost a small fortune. She was only jailed for 15 days - she should have served her time (its not like it was 15 years!!)’.

An idiot from Edgware opines that ‘She deserves two or three lashes - if just for her naivéty’. ‘Common sense has prevailed’ says Chris W, ‘but had it been used in the first place and the teddy bear not been named it would never of happened in the first place.’ Never of happened? By your clueless illiteracy shall the value of your comment be judged, Chris.

Of course, in the end these things are all our fault, as MisterXY of Leeds reminds us: ‘Have you forgotten that we once rulled these countries and sucked out their resources? Or went into countries and bombed them to oblivion?’

Then there is Carla, from Norwich. Words fail one when confronted with the likes of Carla, from Norwich. Carla, from Norwich, is the sort of person who leaves one questioning whether all the effort that went into human evolution was really worth it. Here’s what she says, in full:

I am horrified that Ms. Gibbons has been let off so lightly. Even I, an average white Brit know that it is blasphemy in the eyes of Muslims to name something like a Teddy after their Great Prophet. I would NEVER disrepect another person’s belief’s in this awful way. Surely it is clear that it could be and would be seen as offensive. Ms. Gibbons claims to know about Sudanese culture and to respect it but she has committed an offence in their eyes - one that surely she must have been aware of. I say she should shut up and serve her 15 days then lead a quiet life elsewhere. We need to respect and understand the faiths of others if we want our own to be respected!

Where does one start? It’s very difficult to engage meaningfully with someone who thinks being dragged through the courts for a non-existent crime, threatened with public lashing, deprived of liberty, and having mobs calling for your execution, counts as ‘being let off so lightly’. As for all this respect Carla is so keen on, if respect is to be worth having it has to be earned; simply having it demanded of one is not sufficient. If those Muslims who think Gillian Gibbons’s treatment was justified (and many, many Muslims fervently disagree with them) want respect they have hardly gone the right way about earning it. Fortunately I do not judge Islam by the standards of the bigots of Khartoum, any more than I would wish others to judge Great Britain by the standards of an idiot in Norwich. 

It seems Gillian Gibbons, the Sudan Teddy Bear Teacher, is to be freed. This something about which we should be very glad, but it is not something for which we should be grateful.

Apparently she has been ‘pardoned’ by the Sudanese president. That can hardly be the case; only someone who was guilty would need a pardon.