http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/the-real-global-warming-signal/

As this article concludes, there’s no excuse for genuine skeptics. Those who claim to be skeptics… well, check the evidence.

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/5845/kirk_cameron%E2%80%99s_monumental_reveals_subtle_influence_of_christian_reconstructionism

Ross Gittins, economics journalist, in the Business section of the Sydney Morning Herald:

http://www.smh.com.au/business/what-jesus-said-about-capitalism-20120408-1wjmm.html

This came up in the context of clergy abusing people – the specific context was financial rather than sexual, but it serves for that as well. It also works for corporate abuse of individuals.

Such discussions tend to run immediately to attempts to either blame or exonerate the institution, but that is deeply unhelpful to the victims, and to potential future victims. Rather than get tangled in ‘whose fault?’, it’s far more productive to focus on ‘how do we fix this?’ This while recognising that the results of some forms of abuse can never be truly ‘fixed’ – which is why it’s important to focus on making sure the abuse is not perpetuated.

So here it is:

1. yes, [it] happened
2. No, it was not right (it was wrong) – a clear ethical stance
3. [we] are genuinely sorry – if authentic remorse is possible within an institutional frame
4. [we] will clean up whatever mess this has caused
5. [we] will endeavour (with clear and clean adjustments) to ensure this does not happen again

Very simple, very powerful.

From Robert Reich: http://www.salon.com/2012/04/05/the_romney_fable/

Well worth a read…

93 kg now, so 11 down from where I started, and travelling well. The following is advice for me as much as anyone else, but I thought I might as well share.

The keys are:

1. It will take time. A sensible, sustainable weight loss rate is half to 1 kg a week. I’ve been running at a fairly consistent kg a week so far, and am currently at 93, so 11 kg down from the start, in about 9 weeks (the first few are the easiest to lose). Set your time horizon to a year or so for your target weight, but with continuous improvement across that time. Any quicker and you’re doing dramatic stuff that is likely to get reversed.

2. It’s not ‘a diet’, it’s your new diet. Dieting is not a temporary thing, and you go back to your current eating patterns when it’s done. It’s a permanent change. So it needs to be a proper, balanced diet of stuff you enjoy.
3. Exercise is important, but it doesn’t have to be extreme. A halfhour walk each day is better than none, and things you enjoy are better than things you endure. If the gym is something you enjoy, great, but it’s not compulsory. Just get your body moving, because that speeds up your metabolism. It also reminds your body to burn off fat, not muscle.
4. Water is your friend – drink heaps! Two reasons: it helps keep your system clean and flush out wastes, and it replaces other drinks that are loaded with calories, which is pretty much all of them. Even the ‘healthy’ stuff like fruit juice is heavy on calories, let alone soft drink (pop) and energy drinks and so on. Alcohol also has a lot of energy in it. Water – with a bit of lime or lemon juice for flavour, if you like. Just switching your drinks alone can make a huge difference.
5. With food, smaller portion sizes – ask for a small instead of a large. Or better yet, make your own.
6. It’s OK to be a bit hungry. In our society we seem to see hunger as a problem in need of an urgent solution, but a couple of hours of being hungry just makes a meal better and more enjoyable.
7. Having said that, be kind to your body. Love it, don’t hate it. Don’t feel as though you are punishing it, but as though you’ve stopped punishing it!
8. Fresh vegetables (as much as you can eat), fruit (a few servings a day), things like brown rice that fill you up better than white, oats, meat very much in moderation, maybe only one meal a day, beans and legumes. You probably know all this stuff, but just choosing the good food is also choosing the food that is much less energy dense (i.e. fattening). Potato chips have *8 times* as much energy as the same weight of potato… so eat the potato! You could eat 4 times as much, be much fuller, and still halve your calories.

I guess I could go on for 10 commandments, but that’s probably enough to be going on with.

Discussion from Mano Singham on the co-optation of the label ‘Christian’ by the religious right. I don’t follow him to his conclusion, but do think there’s a fair bit of work to do in rehabilitating the name of Christ on earth (and I’ve noted before that ‘taking His name in vain’ is much more and different than just verbal blasphemy).

http://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2012/03/29/a-dilemma-for-liberal-religionists/

Good article from Salon: http://www.salon.com/2012/03/20/santorums_bad_porn_science/

Like many of the experts consulted, I’m not pro-porn, I’m anti-bad-thinking and anti-bad-science.

One of the creators sent me the link below, and I think it’s interesting. I’m posting it as a discussion starter rather than because I whole-heartedly agree with all the claims made, but I think it’s interesting.

http://www.onlineeducation.net/education-failure

OnlineEducation.net

(even though I’m not an atheist)

When I read that his ideal society is The Culture: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/03/13/this-is-not-the-church-of-ftb/ (FTB = Free Thought Blogs)

And, if you don’t know what The Culture is, you clearly have not read enough Iain M Banks. Here’s a short course from the man himself: http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm

…and have probably said so before.

Look at the facts and the data and the evidence, rather than just perpetuate nonsense.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/03/08/digit-length-ratios-and-overinterpreting-the-data/

http://apps.facebook.com/theguardian/p/36vmx/tw

Excellent article on ‘helicopter parenting’ of college-age kids, and the damage done:

http://www.salon.com/2012/02/28/parenting_secrets_of_a_college_professor/

…on why progressives shouldn’t get *too* smug about the big swing to the ‘loony right’ on the part of Republicans. He’s right (although he does conveniently gloss over the huge convenient weapon (heheheh) that Clinton handed the Republicans).

http://www.salon.com/2012/02/27/the_terrifying_race_to_the_loony_right/

Not there yet, obviously, but here’s the first month of the weight loss journey in pictures. I’ll post more each month until I get where I’m going…

7 kg (about 15 lb) lighter between these two photos, though.

I’ll probably keep updating this post, for comparison, and just link it in a new announcement post each month. I estimate it’ll be 5-6 months in total.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/24/rick-santorum-obama-college-plan-indoctrination-_n_1299403.html

More education is apparently a bad thing.

… but I did.

When the ‘faster than light neutrinos’ thing came out a few months ago, this is what I posted: http://www.bravus.com/blog/?p=2599

This article seems to suggest that I was right, and that the problem was with the experiment, not the theory. Einstein was right after all…

http://www.livescience.com/18603-error-faster-light-neutrinos.html?utm_content=LiveScience&utm_campaign=seo%2Bblitz&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social%2Bmedia

{there will be a pic here when I’m not on my iPad. In the mean time you can google it, but the peak should be at 70% not 50%}

Lowering taxes will increase revenues only if your economy is to the right of the peak, which most studies place at about 70%. No major developed economies are on that side of the curve. Therefore those Republicans and others on the right who claim that lowering taxes will increase revenue either don’t understand economics or are fibbing.

This is surrealist Rene Magritte’s painting, entitled ‘The Treachery of Images’. The French text translates to ‘this is not a pipe’.

People will say ‘Of course, it’s not a pipe, it’s a painting of a pipe’. And yes, that’s true, and yes, that’s related to what Magritte was about… but it’s just too bald and simple. If the meaning of the art can be got across in a simple declarative sentence, why even bother with the painting?

Art works (and I realise I’m beyond armchair amateur in talking about this stuff) by allusion and resonance and by a connection with our experiences and ideas. For example, the title of the painting, which is not painted on it, suggests a slightly different intention. The fact that the image looks very much like an advertisement for a pipe from the era is something else again. Just playing with contradition is also a theme – it reminds me of the old Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy text adventure game, where it was necessary to hack your own brain to allow you to cope with having tea and no tea at the same time.

Someone (it’s variously attributed) once said ‘Writing about music is like dancing about architecture’, suggesting that it’s impossible to fully convey the messages of one medium in another. Doesn’t eman writing about music is pointless – I want a connoiseur and critic to point out features of the music I hadn’t noticed, and I love reading about music – but it does mean that reading about the music is never a substitute for listening to it.

In the same way, a description or ‘explanation’ of an artwork in simple declarative sentences is never a substitute for engaging with it.

Another example that got me thinking about this is Tool’s song, from the ’10,000 Days’ album, entitled ‘The Pot’. Here it is, in a video that includes the lyrics (I’d suggest listening to the track first with your eyes closed, to engage with it as music, and only later watching the lyrics vid):

Now, the very shallowest level of analysis takes the title ‘The Pot’ as being about marijuana, clued in by the ‘you must have been high’ line. As I tend to say in other contexts, there is no one right answer, but there are wrong answers… and if that’s not one it’s probably close. I’m sure that perhaps that’s one layer of allusion that Tool (a subtle band if ever there was one – except when they’re not) included, but it’s not the focus of the song.

A second layer requires some background knowledge, and it’s interesting but to me it’s one of those ‘it’s a painting of a pipe’ things. It’s presented as though it’s the whole story of the song, when it’s a fragment. The band Incubus has a song called ‘Megalomaniac’, which I’ll include here for completeness:

The rumour was that the song was about Tool’s singer and songwriter, Maynard James Keenan, and that ‘The Pot’ is a response to that.

It’s possible, I guess, that this is one of the things that got Maynard thinking about the notion of hipocrisy, but obviously to explain away ‘The Pot’ as a simple revenge song is to diminish its universal themes.

So ‘The Pot’ of the title is the one that calls the kettle black: witness the line about ‘piss all over my black kettle’. Then there are lots of deeper layers of allusion. A ‘kangaroo court’ is an unjust court of self-appointed judges.

With these few ideas and reference points, but working broadly with images and ideas and poetry, listening to ‘The Pot’ can be a richer experience. But treating it as Umberto Eco’s ‘open work’ – one that is rich and open to multiple interpretations and reactions, not closed – is a more rewarding experience.

I realise that what I like is artwork that is too large for me, that I cannot contain. If I feel there are more meanings there than I can fully grasp and explain, it makes me happy… which is one way of thinking about the distinction between art and not-art (which I otherwise find a fairly tedious one).

Here’s to experiencing and engaging with art on its own terms.

Blog has been quiet lately – not so much because I’ve been busy (though I have) but because (a) with close to 1500 posts, it sometimes feel as though I’ve said everything already!, (b) there are so many other avenues to share thoughts, from Facebook to Twitter to forums, and many of my friends see things on multiple ones and I don’t want to bore them and (c) a lot of what I’m thinking about these days would be likely to upset or offend various friends – in one direction or another.

But the post I’m working on now, for a bit later this morning, is back to the kind of thing I enjoy most: juxtaposing diverse things and thinking about them a bit. There mightn’t be a heap of them, but it *is* nice to still have this blog to share them when they do crop up.