Despite the lousy s/n ratio, this is why I still read Slashdot. Yes, I might have picked it up from the WP dashboard, but that might be several days from now. I’m now patched up to 2.1.2, and a quick check of the HTTP logs suggests that I’m OK.
Lorna's progress
This 8 hour time difference to the UK is a bit frustrating sometimes. I just called my mother’s ward at the JR to see how she’s doing; it’s 11:45pm here in Seattle, 7:45am over in Oxford. Of course the nursing staff is in the middle of morning hand-over, so it’s hard to get their attention, and if I wait until they’re sorted out it’ll be getting on for 1am here! [Sigh] Anyway, I was able to exchange messages with Lorna via the nurse, and things seem to be going OK. She should be moved to rehab (what used to be called a “convalescent home”*) on Monday.
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* From the Latin for “growing strong”.
"The lively and sophisticated world of non-belief"
To listen to some people these days, you’d think that atheists are the new Taliban. First we have the preposterous Colin Slee, Dean of Southwark, ranting that:
“atheists like Richard Dawkins are just as fundamentalist as the people setting off bombs on the tube”
And then sophisticated poseurs like Stuart Jeffries seek to portray the situation as a shouting-match between two equally dogmatic and intolerant factions: believers and unbelievers. Now Caspar Melville, editor of the New Humanist, provides a welcome rebuttal:
The evidence for [Jeffries] claim is depressingly shopworn. He quotes without challenge [from] Colin Slee… [and] criticises both Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens for their “aggressive” attitude to believers without addressing the substance of their many and complex arguments. […] Throughout, atheists and secularist are characterised as “dogmatic”, “evangelical”, “fundamentalist”, and as obsessed by God and the idea of belief, as Billy Graham. Jeffries is quite right to point out that these days secularists seem exasperated. But who can blame us when the case against unaccountable and undemocratic religious privilege is so misrepresented by articles like his?
Melville goes on to describe the diverse views of contributors to his journal and others, disproving the assertion of a uniformitarian quest to “airbrush” religion from public debate, to create a soulless, value free public sphere.
Ultimately I would think that believers of any stripe would be unwise to associate themselves with Jeffries’ wry cynicism. The logic of his position is that it doesn’t really matter what people believe, and we should accept all beliefs with a Mencken-like shrug. I don’t think so. For people like Dawkins and Hitchens and PZ (and me), belief matters – and irrational beliefs should be “named and shamed”.
Melville concludes:
Was this the same Mencken who wrote: “The evangelical churches are rapidly becoming public nuisances. Neglecting almost altogether their old concern about individual salvation, they have converted themselves into vast engines for harassing and oppressing persons who dissent from their naïve and often preposterous theology.” Hardly “respectful of others cherished beliefs”, was he? […] I suspect that if he were around now his arguments would be far closer to those of Christopher Hitchens than Stuart Jeffries would like to imagine.
Latex, handcuffs… and a donkey
Alec just drew my attention to this newspaper story, which I unhesitatingly nominate for the “Best Opening Sentence of 2007” award:
A man who was found dressed in latex and handcuffs brought a donkey to his room in a Galway city centre hotel, because he was advised “to get out and meet people,†the local court heard last week.
I also liked the following example of Irish legal compassion: He was also charged with damage to a mini-bar in the room, but this charge was later dropped when the defendant said that it was the donkey who caused that damage.
The whole thing is strangely reminiscent of Frank Zappa’s tour de force album from 1971: The Mothers: Fillmore East.
A fresh look
I just upgraded this site to WordPress 2.1.1, and while I was in the mood I decided to update the look and feel. Ever since the WordPress “widget” mechanism was introduced last year, theme designers have been cranking out some really beautiful styles, and I spent a happy hour browsing through the latest offerings. Eventually I picked MistyLook by Sadish Bala, and customized it with a header clipped from a photograph I took of a stormy Boston skyline as seen from Brookline. I wanted a simpler, cleaner look, and I think this works well. My one concession to fashion was to replace the traditional “category” list with Lee Kelleher’s “Category Cloud Widget”.
sounds from "lost in a black coffee"
I was just checking my blog dashboard, and saw a new a new incoming link from ventnoir’s lost in a black coffee. I clicked through, and a wonderful blast of music filled my headphones – Friends we used to know by Diorama. Check it out. Crank up the volume.
My mother's at the JR in Oxford with a broken hip
I learned today that my mother, Lorna Arnold had a fall while walking home from the shops, and broke her hip. She’s at the John Radcliffe in Oxford, where she had surgery yesterday evening. Obviously at the age of 91 this is a fairly serious matter.
I’m planning to phone the hospital around 11pm my time (7am in England) and I’ll update this entry with any news.
UPDATE: I just spoke to the nurse, who said that Lorna’s doing fine… blood pressure a little low, but otherwise excellent; she was awake most of the night, talking to the staff. I’m not going to try to talk to her now – the bedside phones in English hospitals are an expensive, hit-or-miss affair, and I doubt I could Skype-out – but I’ll check in with my brother soon.
The consequences of JBLU
We just landed at Washington Dulles from Boston, en route to Seattle. We’re now on a taxiway, with nowhere to go. All of the gates are full, and none of the planes are ready to go. The current plan of record is to plough the remote parking area (currently under a heavy blanket on snow), taxi there, and use the (in)famous Dulles mobile lounges to deplane us! It will be interesting to see how long this takes – we’ve been waiting here 30 minutes so far – and whether continuing passengers get to stay on the plane. (And what about bags?)
Until recently they’d probably have pushed back one of the departing aircraft and kept them sitting on a taxiway until it was clear enough to depart. But after the recent Jet Blue experience, no-one is going to do that – especially in Washington!
More anon….
UPDATE: We just pulled in to a gate, conveniently close to a Red Carpet Club – which is where I am now. United is currently showing a departure time of 2pm, which seems optimistic.
ANOTHER UPDATE: It’s just after 2 and we’ve boarded. Latest prognosis is 20 minutes to get the fuel sheet(!) and then 45 minutes to get de-iced. The snow has stopped, and we now have a steady freezing rain. Mmmm……
Of course the flight is full. Cancellations will do that.
FINAL UPDATE: We actually pushed back around 4:45pm EST, and after 4:45 of flying over unbroken cloud cover we reached Seattle at 6:30pm PST. According to the captain, ours was the only flight to make it out of IAD to SEA all day. After waiting around for my bag (I’d checked it, because it was overweight with some liquid contents) I got back to my apartment in time to watch the first episode of the third series of Slings and Arrows on Sundance. (Hat tip to Merry.)
Sorry for the hiatus
A whole week without blogging! Surely not…. Well, I’ve been spending the entire week getting Merry moved from the house in Chestnut Hill to a condo in Brookline Village. Moving house is always exhausting, fragmented, disconnected…. A further complication was that I was offline for several days, and I discovered that the web browser in my new Windows Mobile device won’t work with WP admin pages. I finally downloaded Opera and I’m now happily surfing on my phone. So why is Microsoft incapable of building a usable browser? And since they are, why not just admit it and license Opera?
How hypocrites really "support the troops"
The first two paragraphs of this story in the Washington Post make it very clear why no Republican (or Joe Liebermann) has any moral right to castigate others about “supporting the troops”.
Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan’s room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.
This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
[Hat tip to Jesus’ General, who puts the point even more graphically. And Maha cites it in her devastating fisking of the odious Jeff Jacoby’s slimy op-ed in today’s Boston Globe. Jacoby is one reason I don’t miss the Boston press too much.]