The most unAmerican person in America

At 2144 on Friday, March 11th, 2005 – exactly five years ago – I published my first blog post.

xD.

BBC News report here. The fire seems to be out, and while there are still lots of people making the area safe, there’s only a few people using hosepipes on the building at the moment.

It’s quite interesting to see everything being co-ordinated – fire, police, ambulance, water board, gas board, Hackney council and the assessors all there, knowing what they’re doing and with a command centre set up to handle it all.

It seems the fire started in the Prophet, a restaurant in buildings on the corner of Tabernacle Street and Worship Street. It’s near the office, so I wandered down (fearless citizen journalist that I am!) to take a couple of pictures. The smoke doesn’t seem to be going upwards so much as along Worship Street, but it’s really quite dense; you couldn’t see the platform the firefighters were using when the smoke blew in front of it.

Click on any of the images for a larger version.

View Larger Map

xD.

As you may or may not be aware, Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort published an edition of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species with a fifty-page creationist introduction, including such gems as

“Adolf Hitler took Darwin’s evolutionary philosophy to its logical conclusions.”
“…Darwin was a racist.”
“Darwin believed that women were not as competent as men, and less intelligent than men, but they were better than a dog.”
“The legacy of Darwin’s theory can be seen in the rise of eugenics, euthanasia, infanticide, and abortion.”
“DNA… presents a formidable challenge to Darwinian evolution.”

H/T The Don’t Diss Darwin Institute.

As you may or may not be aware, the Gideons International place copies of the Bible or the New Testament in hotel rooms across the world – close on one and one-half billion since their foundation in the early twentieth century. I have to mention, as it’s International Women’s Day, that the Gideons always refer to their members being “businessmen and their wives” or similar.

How about we take a leaf out of Cameron and Comfort’s book (well – not quite; we’d be honest) and come up with a simple, short atheist introduction to the Bible that travelling atheists can print out and put inside any Bibles or other holy texts that they find in their hotel rooms?

Any takers?

xD.

I do not doubt the Armenian Genocide for a moment; however, as I argued a couple of years ago, both it and the Shoah are sui generis; there is nothing to be gained in giving its nomenclature an official imprimatur and much to be lost. Firstly, I think the precedent of governments sanctioning official histories is worrying; secondly, given that the US is a functioning and liberal democracy, it is unlikely to change the nature of the academic debate; thirdly, it stokes tensions between Turkey, Armenia and their diasporas, negatively affecting a strategically sensitive part of the world; fourthly, it worsens relations between Turkey and the US; fifthly, it smacks of special interest lobbying; sixthly, it achieves nothing good.

I can understand why the situation might be different for current or recent atrocities, where the denunciation of a crime as a genocide might spur the action, say, of something like ICT-Y or ICT-R, but I do not see the advantage at all in raking over history. We have quite enough of the nightmarish weight of history fouling the relations between states. If this resolution passes, would it not be logical to expect similar condemnations of the Holodomor, or the killing of Native Americans, or every other entry in the long catalogue of human brutality.

House Resolution 252 (of the 111th Congress) has been passed 23-22 by the Foreign Affairs Committee. Introduced by Rep Schiff, a Democrat from California, its title is “Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution”. It has soured relations between the US and Turkey and has led to the Turkish ambassador to the US being recalled for consultations.

Just over two years ago, I wrote about House Resolution 106 (of the 110th Congress), titled “Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution“.

Similar resolutions were introduced in the 106th and 109th Congresses, both by Rep. George Radanovich, a GOPer from California’s 19th district.

It was introduced by the same Rep. Schiff. The resolution was passed by the Foreign Affairs Committee 27-21 to the House, where no action was taken. It did have some effects, though; as my interlocutor Ewan Watt pointed out, it soured relations between Turkey and the US, leading to the Turkish ambassador to the US being recalled for ‘a week or ten days of consultations’.

I reiterate the points made at the time made by myself and an interlocutor, Ewan Watt, at the time: this resolution is the result of special interest lobbying, damaging to relations between the US and Turkey and, most of all, I do not feel that is the role of the government to be an official arbiter of history.

The texts of the two resolutions are identical. The first resolution was not debated on the floor of the House, as I understand it, because of pressure from George W. Bush. I can only presume that the reintroduction of HR.106 is with the intention of having it debate and passed on the floor of the House. Rep. Schiff believes he has as many as eighty thousand constituents of Armenian descent in his district. Why so many other representatives support the resolution, I don’t know, but I wonder if the primacy in the White House’s mind of the healthcare debate means it will be unwilling to spend political capital on stopping this motion.

I see this resolution as unnecessary and irresponsible; I hope it does not reach the floor of the House.

xD.

Jonathan Ross for a year – £5.6m
Anne Robinson for a year – £3m
Graham Norton for a year – £2.5m
Jeremy Clarkson for a year – £1.8m
BBC’s talent bill for a year – £229m

BBC Asian Network for a year – £12.1m
BBC 6 Music for a year – £9m

Finding new talent, serving non-mainstream interests and closing a gateway into mainstream British culture – priceless.

Some things in life money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s Mark Thompson.

Figures taken from a fantastic graphic in today’s Guardian illustrating just how dopey scrapping 6 Music and Asian Network is.

xD.

EDM 908

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE REPORT ON HOMEOPATHY

That this House expresses concern at the conclusions of the Science and Technology Committee’s Report, Evidence Check on Homeopathy; notes that the Committee took only oral evidence from a limited number of witnesses, including known critics of homeopathy Tracy Brown, the Managing Director of Sense About Science, and journalist Dr Ben Goldacre, who have no expertise in the subject; believes that evidence should have been heard from primary care trusts that commission homeopathy, doctors who use it in a primary care setting, and other relevant organisations, such as the Society of Homeopaths, to provide balance; observes that the Committee did not consider evidence from abroad from countries such as France and Germany, where provision of homeopathy is far more widespread than in the UK, or from India, where it is part of the health service; regrets that the Committee ignored the 74 randomised controlled trials comparing homeopathy with placebo, of which 63 showed homeopathic treatments were effective, and that the Committee recommends no further research; further notes that 206 hon. Members signed Early Day Motion No. 1240 in support of NHS homeopathic hospitals in Session 2006-07; and calls on the Government to maintain its policy of allowing decision-making on individual clinical interventions, including homeopathy, to remain in the hands of local NHS service providers and practitioners who are best placed to know their community’s needs.

Tredinnick, David
Simpson, Alan
Russell, Bob
Pound, Stephen
Dismore, Andrew
Simpson, David
McDonnell, John
Campbell, Gregory
Cohen, Harry
Corbyn, Jeremy
Drew, David
Gray, James
Hancock, Mike

Or possibly three. Or four. Anyway, some excellent write-ups of the encounter between Simon Singh (huzzah!) and the BCA (boo!) today at the Royal Courts of Justice are available from Jack of Kent, Crispian Jago and Padraig Reidy at Index on Censorship, and I very definitely commend them to the house.

I want to quote something quoted by Jack from Simon’s defence QC:

“Scientific controversies must be settled by the methods of science rather than by the methods of litigation…More papers, more discussion, better data, and more satisfactory models-not larger awards of damages-mark the path toward superior understanding of the world around us.”

Underwager v Salter, 22 F.3d 730

A slightly shorter version is Professor Frizzelle’s Instant Classic:

Let’s hear your evidence not your legal muscle

Quite.

xD.

Quite.