[Clearing out my drafts folder while I wait for my meeting to start and discovered this. Dunno if it's any good or why I wrote it.]

Splendid wrap up of the Darwin Anniversary last year in the London Review of Books (it’s not short).

The reviewer focuses on the question  Why Darwin? After all, there are plenty of people (ok…not plenty of people…a few people) who have made as big a contribution to science as Darwin - Einstein, Newton, Gallileo - why is Darwin such a big hero?

According to Dawkins, Darwin’s idea wasn’t just a great one (‘the most powerful, revolutionary idea ever put forward by an individual’), it is essentially the only idea you need to explain life and all its phenomena: ‘Charles Darwin really solved the problem of existence, the problem of the existence of all living things – humans, animals, plants, fungi, bacteria. Everything we know about life, Darwin essentially explained.’

After a roundabout tour that disses evolutionary psychology and the New Atheists, the reviewer settles on the idea that, even without Darwin, someone would’ve come up with Natural Selection [er...they did - ed] just as someone would’ve discovered oxygen without Priestley [er.... -ed] or  figured out calculus without *Newton [now you are just messing with me - ed]. But Darwin’s great contribution was not that he was one of the greatest scientists of all times. It was that he was a great writer.

You can still say, with perfect accuracy, that the Origin is much more than its ‘essential’ theory of natural selection: it is a book, a magnificent theatre of persuasion, ‘one long argument’ (as Darwin called it), supported by masses of arduously compiled evidence, ingeniously organised and vouched for by a special individual, with known special virtues and capacities.

It so happens that I am reading The Descent of Man at the Moment, so I have recent experience of Darwin’s writing. It really is magnificent. When you think that he was writing about cutting edge science - not a popularization - and that, in fact, he was the one doing the cutting… it just takes your breath away.

If you have tried reading The Origin and got stuck at the pigeon chapter like I did, give Descent a try. You won’t regret it.

* For all the received wisdom about the inevitability of discovery, it was surprisingly hard to come up with a third example to make my joke work.

Someone reads my blog!

Thank you!

It’s customary, whenever someone publishes a list of the 100 best anythings, to go down the list and

1. Complain about the missing entries.
2. Complain about the entries that don’t belong.
3. Take perverse credit for the entries that are there.

Without further ado, here goes on the 100 best novels since 1923:

• I have only read 14.
• But have seen the movie of another 9.
• Hated one.
• Failed to finish another.
• Why isn’t there more Graham Greene?

I have been meaning to read Cuckoo’s Nest for ages. I think it’s finally time.

I recently finished Michael Shermer’s Science of Good and Evil and reviewed it on Facebook.

I have been enjoying Michael Shermer’s blog and writings in Skeptic magazine for a while now. His interviews with creationists are particularly spectactular. This book? Not so much. The title of the book should’ve been “meanderings thoughts about ethics from a libertarian agnostic.”

The Libertarian side of Shermer came to the fore in a couple of blog postings over the last few days when someone asked him how he squared his libertarianism with his self-professed status as a skeptic.

In a nutshell, I am a libertarian because conservatives are a bunch of gun-totting, Hummer-driving, hard-drinking, Bible-thumping, black-and-white-thinking, fist-pounding, shoe-stomping, morally-hypocritical blowhards, and liberals are a bunch of tree-hugging, whale-saving, hybrid-driving, sandle-wearing, bottled-water-drinking, ACLU-supporting, flip-flopping, wishy-washy, Namby Pamby bedwetters. There’s a better way. Libertarianism.

In one post he rattled off the Libertarian Manifesto and the comments were jammed with all the usual criticism of libertarian ideas but this one captured the problems just so.

“If Marxism is the delusion that one can run society purely on altruism and collectivism, then libertarianism is the mirror-image delusion that one can run it purely on selfishness and individualism. Society in fact requires both individualism and collectivism, both selfishness and altruism, to function. Like Marxism, libertarianism offers the fraudulent intellectual security of a complete a priori account of the political good without the effort of empirical investigation. Like Marxism, it aspires, overtly or covertly, to reduce social life to economics. And like Marxism, it has its historical myths and a genius for making its followers feel like an elect unbound by the moral rules of their society.”

This quote comes from an essay in American Conservative. The quality of the essay is mixed but it has a couple of real gems - freedom as a downpayment on future freedoms.

In each of these cases, less freedom today is the price of more tomorrow. Total freedom today would just be a way of running down accumulated social capital and storing up problems for the future. So even if libertarianism is true in some ultimate sense, this does not prove that the libertarian policy choice is the right one today on any particular question.

and

Empirically, most people don’t actually want absolute freedom, which is why democracies don’t elect libertarian governments. Irony of ironies, people don’t choose absolute freedom. But this refutes libertarianism by its own premise, as libertarianism defines the good as the freely chosen, yet people do not choose it. Paradoxically, people exercise their freedom not to be libertarians.

It’s a couple of years old, but this is the most delicious hostile review I think I have ever read.

Any sane person who starts reading Godless will soon ask, Does Coulter really believe this stuff? The answer is that it doesn’t much matter. What’s far more disturbing than Coulter herself (and she’s plenty disturbing: On the cover photo she has the scariest eyes since Rasputin) is the fact that Americans are lapping up her latest prose like a pack of starved cats. The buyers cannot be political opponents who just want to enjoy her “humor”; like me, those people wouldn’t enrich her by a dime. (I didn’t pay for my copy.) Rather, a lot of folks apparently like her ravings — suggesting that, on some level at least, they must agree with her. And this means that the hundreds of thousands of Americans who put Coulter at the top of the best-seller lists see evolution as a national menace.

Coyne on Coulter’s Godless in The National Review

If 200 pages of penis jokes and a history of sex studies and gynaecology sounds like your idea of fun, then this is the book for you.

Highly recommended!

One of my new favourite blogs, Secular Right, has an open thread on Ayn Rand.

I have never met a real life objectivist but the ones I have come across online have been batshit crazy and they are always engaged in pitched battles with batshit crazy liberals trying to live down to Rand’s caricatures. Between them they generate more heat than light. It was a pleasant change, then, to come across some mostly well-reasoned arguments for and against Rand’s fantasy land.

I made my opinion clear in my review of Atlas Shrugged. It was good to hear the case for the other side but they didn’t quite shake my first conclusion that, as adolescent budding-philosophers, they thought of themselves as Hank Rearden driving his train into Dagny Taggart’s tunnel.

Some snippets of the conversation:

Ayn Rand was the first person to define and present a rational philosophy for living in this universe. Once you read her works, you’ll have a rational philosophical base with which you can evaluate the ideas of the so called “experts” around you, in newspapers, on radio, on TV etc. You’ll come to the conclusion that these so called “experts” have massive flaws in their thinking and their ideas.

As I said, to the extent that Rand attempted moral complexity with the Rearden character, that is it. But to the extent that there is conflict in that storyline, Rand makes it a very easy choice for Rearden. Has there ever been a reader, ever, anywhere, in the history of this book who ever wondered, even for a millisecond, what choice Rearden would make?? Some precocious, but misguided eleven year-old, somewhere, maybe. No, we all know how he was going to choose, because Rand does not present Rearden with two moral positives (or moral negatives) and explores how and why Rearden would choose between them. What she wrote was not complexity, but the minimum necessary to recite on her ideas about people freeing themselves of the ideas which lead to what she saw as emotional repression.

Bingo. No one in Rearden’s family has any redeeming values. They were rotten through and through. Most people Rand would call “altruists” would have advocated Rearden dumping the lot of them, too.

In toto, Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism offers individuals certainty—which feeds their ambition and results in their happiness. Her philosophy will add years to man’s existence and has jump-started an entirely “new ball game” in his continuing accumulation of knowledge.

I just flipped through the first 150 pages of the paperback of ‘Atlas Shrugged’ and confirmed my memory: there are no “speeches,” yet, though in its thousand-some pages ‘Atlas’ contains a number of them, e.g., one on love and sex, another on the soul of an artist, another on the moral meaning of money, and, of course, a very long one outlining Rand’s entire system of philosophy.

These are tightly integrated with the action of the story which is actually an otherwise lean and fast-paced mystery of epic scope, containing effective thrills and chills — and much subtle, beautiful and profound poetry, so often missed by many who think they already know what to expect.

i just did a word count, John Galt’s speech is 32,000 words long. I’m not sure in what universe that’s considered “lean” and “fast-paced.”

Did you ever seriously think that Francisco was not putting on a show at being the playboy? That Dagny would end up with Galt? That Rearden would enjoy sex with Dagny? That Lillian would reject the Rearden metal bracelet? Is there any morally ambiguous characters in the whole book? Did anyone ever question whether one of the characters was an antagonist or a protagonist? Even for a second? If she printed the strikers’ words in a different color like they do with Jesus in some bibles, I don’t think she would have been that much more obvious than she was.

The thread was not completely batshit-crazy-free but I’d tried to avoid quoting them.

I’ll let Officer Barbrady have the final word.

There are so many things which is pedestrian, substandard, ridiculous, and nonsensical about the characterizations, the plot, the theme, and the dialogue that it is difficult to know where to start.

It convinced Officer Barbrady to never read another book again.

Finished. What a delight!

This one is a lot less prescriptive than The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and what one learns, one learns by osmosis.

The book skips around a lot of different ideas and it reaches deep into the toolbox of the design artist. Sometimes too deep, I thought - but perhaps I am not the target reader.

The pictures are nice though.

When I was a lad, it was the law that every school had a religious assembly and, at my primary school especially, we used to sing 3 or 4 hymns every morning. In the assembly hall, we had two enormous (to a 10 year old) contraptions that dangled enormous hymn sheets from the ceiling.

One of the occasional duties of a 10 year old at my school was Hymn Sheet  monitor. There were two monitors to each hymn sheet contraption and, when the music teacher said ‘Hymn number 127′, one of the monitors would undo the rope from the cleat and lower the contraption from the ceiling. The other monitor would then rummage through the giant (to a 10 year old) sheets of paper looking for hymn number 127. After lots of searching and then hefting of hundreds of sheets - each bigger than a 10 year old hymn sheet monitor - the first monitor would heave on the rope to return the contraption to the ceiling and then hang on with all his strength while the other monitor belayed the rope to the cleat.

Then the singing would commence.

The singing was fantastic. I remember one time, we had a visit from the Mayor of Bexley in all his mayoral robes and he pronounced that “he would always remember this as the singing school”.

We sang every one of those hymns. There were the hymns that every one knows like What a Friend we have in Jesus and All Things Bright and Beautiful and Onward Christian Soldiers but there were also a few pop-songs-turned-hymns like Lord of the Dance, Morning has Broken and Any Dream Will Do from the latest (and first) Rice/Weber blockbuster and plenty of obscure songs that I have never heard before or since.

I was reminded of one of those obscure songs last week - my absolute favourite - when I read the most beautiful passage in the New Testament in Luke while camping at Sunset Beach.

36 And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee’s house, and sat down to meat. 37 And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, 38 And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.

I loved that song. I wish I remembered all the words. I have the melody down on my harmonica but my memory, and Google fail me for the lyrics.

Here’s what I have:

Said Judas to Mary, “O what will you do
With your ointment so rich and so rare?”
“I’ll pour it all over the feet of the Lord
And I’ll wipe it away with my hair.”
She said.
“And I’ll wipe it away with my hair.”

Said Judas to Mary, “O think of the poor.
Think of all of the riches you can give to the poor
Something something something
If, your ointment, you sell it today.”
He said.
“If your ointment, you sell it today.”

“Tomorrow, tomorrow, I’ll think of the poor.
Tomorrow.” she said. “Not today.
For today I must think of my only true Lord.
For my Lord who is going away.”
She said.
“For my Lord who is going away.”

It’s funny how memory works - for that song to spring back into my mind so nearly complete after 30 years. I wish I remembered the rest.

It’s funny too how our collective memory works. So many of the most vivid, rich scenes spring from throwaway one-liners like

7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

and

11 And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh.

The whole nativity is only 20 verses of Luke, less than that in Matthew and not covered at all in Mark and John. Matthew and Luke made those little bits up but, in 2000 years, we did the rest.

I have tried reading the bible about a dozen times but I always start with Matthew or Genesis but my eyes go all blurry at the all the begats in Matthew Ch1 and the bewildering number of people that appear and disappear in Genesis so I decided to skip Matthew altogether this time and go straight to Mark. What a fine idea that was.

I have been reading a little bit at bedtime  and I have actually been looking forward to it every night. It’s a good read. All the well known stories are there (the later ones anyway. Mark didn’t cover the nativity stuff.  Matthew and Luke made that stuff up to fulfill some earlier prophecy) and they are told in a very distinctive style. The stories are very precise in some details but he just glosses over big chunks of the rest of the story.

It’s odd which details get the precise treatment and which ones don’t. It’s almost as if he were just writing a story that would have been already familiar to his readers - or maybe he was jotting down the memories of an older companion who insisted that he get this bit just right.

Another odd facet of Mark is the way he has Jesus saying “but don’t tell anybody” after every good deed and, when he tells a parable, he explains it to the disciples in private so that no one else would understand. For someone who came for our salvation, the J-dude was pretty secretive with his advice. Or maybe Mark just wanted to show that he had some inside scoop that wasn’t available to the common Galilean Fanboy.

All the  books I have read on bible criticism seem to concur that Mark wrote after the destruction of the temple in AD 70. In other words, about forty years after the traditional date for Jesus’s death (that’s a bit like me writing about England winning the world cup “There are people on the pitch! They think it’s all over! ….It is now!” but Israel in 4BC had no mass communication. He also wrote in Greek in a country far away from the lands he talks about with such precision.

Maybe he was writing on behalf of a disciple (who was, presumably, illiterate)? That would explain all the obscure references - “make sure you tell them about the tax collector at Capernaum!…” - and big omissions and all the insider details.

Mark was supposedly the source for both Matthew and Luke which makes their accounts third hand at best. Let’s see if Luke does as good a job as Mark. The start looks promising…

Inasmuch as many have taken in hand to set in order a narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed.

Now, who was Theophilus, I wonder…