Random 10

OK, GoodMathBadMath shamed me into doing my duty. Hello, iTunes, whatcha got for me today?

  • “Voodoo City” by Black 47 (from Home of the Brave)
  • “Had to Cry Today” by Blind Faith (from Blind Faith)
  • “The Test That Stumped Them All” by Dream Theater (from Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence)
  • “If You Leave” by Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (from The Best Of O.M.D.)
  • “KDX 125” by the Pet Shop Boys (from Relentless)
  • “Begonia Seduction Scene” by Porcupine Tree (from On the Sunday of Life)
  • “Melatonin” by Radiohead (from Airbag/How Am I Driving?)
  • “A good thing” by Saint Etienne (from Tales From Turnpike House)
  • “Baby’s Callin’ Me Home” by the Steve Miller Band (from Children of the Future)
  • “Beyond the Invisible” by Enigma (from Love, Sensuality, Devotion)

Deprecating limbo

Yahoo! Reports! That! the Catholic Church buries limbo after centuries:

In writings before his election as Pope in 2005, the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger made it clear he believed the concept of limbo should be abandoned because it was “only a theological hypothesis” and “never a defined truth of faith.”

“Defined truth of faith.” So when it comes to faith, truth is whatever one defines it to be? That way madness lies….

Fear of a Blank Planet: one week to go

The buzz around Porcupine Tree’s Fear of a Blank Planet is amazing. The critics are certainly impressed: my old school friend Paul Smith sent me an early draft of his review in which he talks about the challenging nature of the music:

It’s official: I love this album – but it’s taken three weeks of my life to let it weave its special charm. Whether it is the best thing the band has recorded is still very much open for debate, but it is a very special release from a very special British band.

Then on Monday I was sitting in the doctor’s waiting room, browsing the latest Sound&Vision magazine, and they were waxing lyrical about the album. And after praising the 5.1 version (which I have on order) they go on to tease…

You can get that mix right now in DTS 5.1 on a limited Special Edition CD+DVD of Planet that also includes a 40-page booklet. But fans of high-resolution sound will want to know that a DVD-Audio edition (with extras) is due in September. S&V acquired an early copy, and the sound is superb…. Porcupine Tree’s music has simply outgrown two-channel stereo.

Sigh. Where’s my credit card?
PT will be touring the US to promote the album starting next month. In fact the first show is on May 8, right here in Seattle at the Showbox. It’s going to be a busy few days: I fly down to San Francisco on Friday May 4th, so that I can go to Steve and Wendy’s wedding on the 5th. On the 7th I’m going to visit my colleagues at A9 in Palo Alto, then I’ll fly home and get psyched up for Porcupine Tree on the 8th. Mmmmm….

Inference

If you were to read the following sentence in a news item, could you correctly recreate the rest of the story?

The Salt Manufacturers Association said the evidence did not prove that salt reduction would have any significant health benefits for the majority of people.

If you deduce from this that there is new, overwhelming evidence that limiting salt intake has dramatic health benefits for the whole population, you’d be right. It’s a great time-saver: just flip to the bottom of the story, check out the industry association reaction, prefix it with NOT, and you don’t need to read the rest of the story.

It's hard for satire to stay ahead of reality these days

Several years ago I came across an incredibly funny satirical novel called Jennifer Government by Max Barry. American corporations rule the world; everyone takes his or her employer’s name as their last name; even government is not immune. Appropriately manic; lots of fun; presumed one hit wonder; forgot all about him.
And then a couple of weeks ago I was browsing through an airport bookstore (“Get used to disappointment”) and found Barry’s new book: Company. This is the perfect novel for everyone who has read a management guru’s book and wondered, “What would it be like to actually try that out here, where I work?” Now imagine an entire organization that, unbeknownst to its employees, exists only as a laboratory for experimenting with such management fads! Let the fun commence….
Not quite as strong as the earlier novel, but still a most enjoyable (and twisted) romp.

The DNA of Religious Faith

David Barash, professor of psychology at the University of Washington, has just published a comprehensive survey of the debate between critics of religion and its apologists. On the one hand, we have “[t]he four horsemen of the current antireligious apocalypse… Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and Carl Sagan”. On the other, Barash spotlights those who would seek to reconcile the irreconcilable. Francis Collins, the geneticist and head of the Human Genome Project, comes in for some probing questions:

What, then, is his basis for accepting some Bible stories and not others? If Collins is simply clinging to those tenets that cannot be disproved, while disavowing those that can, then isn’t he indulging in another incarnation of the “god of the gaps” that he very reasonably claims to oppose? What about, say, those loaves and fishes, or the Book of Revelation? And does the director of the Human Genome Project maintain that Jesus of Nazareth was literally born of a virgin and inseminated by the Holy Ghost? If so, then was he haploid or diploid? Is it necessarily churlish to ask what it is, precisely, that a believer (layperson or scientist) believes? In the devil, angels, eternal hellfire, damnation, archangels, incubi and succubi, walking on water, raising Lazarus?

Well worth reading in full.

Is this what people mean by "sophisticated religious viewpoints"?

We are frequently told* that Dawkins, Harris et al are at fault for critiquing a crude and simplistic view of religion. Most Christians, we are assured, have far more sophisticated beliefs which “fundamentalist atheists” don’t understand. But then what are we to make of Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney, who appears to believe in a literal Noachian flood:

A few fixed points might provide some light.  We know that enormous climate changes have occurred in world history, e.g. the Ice Ages and Noah’s flood, where human causation could only be negligible.

I suppose that he could simply have been carried away by his passion over the subject of his editorial – global warming. After all, he had earlier said:

In the past pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate capricious and cruel gods. Today they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

Maybe he gets it from his boss…..
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* Certainly I am frequently told, in comments on this blog!