Why did the 2011 summer riots happen?

Here's an essay I recently wrote for political and economic anthropology. Dunno what grade I've got yet.

How can anthropological analyses of post-industrial crises in British cities help us to understand the riots in English cities in August 2011?

INTRODUCTION “We are all middle class now”, John Prescott triumphantly announced in 1997 ahead of a general election. This statement echoed an already looming truth in British politics – the working class were no longer represented in parliament. It is not difficult to imagine the shared feeling of discontent and discomfort which arose within working class communities when faced with the realisation that the Labour party were no longer on their side. Given this wilful ignorance of a significant portion of the population, it does not seem surprising that this attitude culminated in widespread national riots in the summer of 2011. Yet the political reaction to the riots was not one of sympathy and worry, but of disgust and condescension (Hedge 2012).

The death of Mark Duggan was believed to spark the riots, but the message was soon lost in a flurry of violence and anger. Their original anger, directed at the police and intended to display their unease at an unlawful police murder of an innocent man, soon became more vague and reflected a general sentiment of inequality, unfairness and oppression from police and, by extension, a dominant class system. It became clear that the rioters were seeking “an overwhelming sense of power” in a society which made them feel powerless and downtrodden (McIntyre 2011). Yet this message was lost, and anybody trying to reaffirm it was shot down and criminalised by politicians and the media, e.g. Darcus Howe (Hersh 2011). They were ignored and the riots were put down as “petty crime” and general acts of thuggery. In a society where politicians and the media choose to trivialise matters of such importance and blame everyone but themselves and the system they regulate (Hedge 2012), anthropological studies can offer a lot in terms of interpretation of the riots and the discontent with the status quo displayed by the rioters. In this essay, I will list and outline some of the possible motives for the riots which can be explained anthropologically.

INTER-CLASS DISTANCING When trying to understand the riots, we must analyse the relationship of the two major viewpoints involved; specifically those of the middle class and the working class. What is immediately clear in ethnographic research is a growing contempt for other classes and a “mutual misunderstanding” and disdain (Evans 2006:28) when trying to conceptualise a different class of people. Evans' study of Bermondsey working class families indicates that they are proud of their values and even display a kind of competition with “posh” people who they feel look down on them (Evans 2006). This indicates a natural resistance against dominant perspectives of the working class, which stereotype them as beaten down, submissive people among "slums, dangerous roads, old factories, cramped schools, stunted lives" (Heath 1973, cited in Wiener 1981:162). This negativity directed towards the working class, while possibly accurate, may not be welcome and illustrates misunderstanding and in some cases, ignorance.

The statement that “we are all middle class now” is a blatant sign that not only have the working class been forgotten about, but they are being shunned as something which Britain does not want or need. As a working class Bermondsey woman claims, “we are the backbone of the nation and no one gives a fuck about us” (Evans 2006:31). It is clear that middle/upper class British citizens are blissfully distant from their working class counterparts, and vice versa. When this is taken into consideration then it is no surprise that the riots highlighted such a dire conflict between the social classes.

CONFLICTING PERCEPTIONS OF WORKING CLASS CULTURE Unfortunately, there is quite a lack of ethnographic research centring on the middle class's relationship with the working class (Edwards, Evans & Smith 2012). On the other hand, anthropological descriptions of working class conditions can give us an idea of how middle class academics perceive their working class subjects (e.g. Engels 1892), and it is occasionally a perception drenched in pity and horror at the relative poverty and squalor of people in post-industrial societies. Patronising tones are used to describe their lack of education and 'brutishness'. A whole host of negative words are used to describe working class culture in anthropological literature and this reflects certain biases in middle class attitudes.

The working class themselves, however, take pride in their class and claim to have more life experience and general knowledge of the “real world”, which contains poverty, violence and ill health. They contrast their lives with the relatively sheltered lives of the middle class, as is the case with Evans's Bermondsey community: “They dunno what it means to get by” (Evans 2006:32). Furthermore, “they dunno 'ow to 'ave a good laugh, 'cos of that stiff upper lip” (Evans 2006:32). Evidently, many working class people can see benefits of poverty that the higher classes cannot, ergo this anthropological study illuminates further misunderstandings between classes in Britain which could have caused some of the tension which was expressed during the riots.

PRIMARY SOCIALISATION Many anthropologists have studied the effect that these differing perceptions have had on the upbringing of British working class children, in a world which does not expect much of them simply due to their class and/or position in a post-industrial location. Social mobility in a post-industrial society is very limited, and this is mirrored in the upbringing of children. Children in these areas learn their place from a young age, partially through the education system. The defining features of the middle class is a good job, which they reached by attaining a good education, which is communicated by teachers constantly in schools. Therefore, children learn that without education, they cannot be successful. The problem arises with this understanding:

Tension is created within this social class structure, however, because the system for establishing value through formal educational qualification […] conflicts with other means for gaining status that depend on completely different kinds of social participation about which working class people might be fiercely proud. (Evans 2006)

Additionally, in alternative ethnographic studies of childhood education in post-industrial areas, Allison James (2002) found that teachers would look into the family background of the child by visiting their home prior to the commencement of teaching, so that right from the start the teacher has assumptions about what the child will achieve. By simple application of this self-fulfilling prophecy, the teacher's treatment of the child will change and the child conforms to the image that they have been prescribed. Thus from an early age, the child learns their place in the world indirectly through their class, and this shapes further social interactions and their view of the educational attainment they fail, or do not wish, to grasp. Together with the naïve political view of education as an easy path to social mobility, this makes the child's future rather uncertain.

DESTINED TO A LIFE OF CRIME? It would seem, from ethnographic research of education in post-industrial areas, that the structure of schooling is biased against the working class - especially after the New Labour focus on vocational courses, which are now arguably synonymous with low academic attainment. Coupled with the strain on employment opportunities which is inherent in post-industrial areas (Dawson 2002, Young & Mills 1983) it seems as if the working class face great difficulty fitting into the system laid out by the government.

This could explain why post-industrial areas in crisis, with high levels of working class citizens and unemployment, have correlating levels of crime to match. As Evans (2006) points out, working class children learn to socialise with their peers in a way that doesn't conform to the kind of socialising needed to move up in the world, and so they must try and apply their earned status on the streets in different ways. This could all too easily lead to involvement in gang warfare and drug dealing, as it is this kind of business they are more accustomed to. Thus, people in post-industrial regions become more acclimatised and desensitised to crime and violence, and so rioting would seem like an obvious outlet for their frustrations.

UNSTABLE, UNCERTAIN LIVES As a result of job insecurity and uncertainty about the future, a level of fear and anxiety arises among working class populations. in post-industrial cities like Ashington, which was once a thriving mining city in the north of England, the industry (in this case, a mining industry) leaves and the now-redundant workers remain in poverty and unemployment, while their families are forced to leave the town because of the lack of opportunity for work (Dawson 2002). In these times of change, chaos and some level of anomie can present itself and become an issue. Bourdieu states that violence can be a direct result of job insecurity and uncertainty:

"Competition for work tends to generate a struggle of all against all, which destroys all the values of solidarity and humanity, and sometimes produces direct violence." (Bourdieu 1998:84)

He goes on to explain that "insecurity is the product not of an economic inevitability [...] but of a political will." (Bourdieu 1998:84). Whilst this is a rather grand statement and a sort that we have come to expect from Bourdieu, it is backed up by Wiener (1981), who also blames the values of the dominant class for the stagnation of post-industrial regions. This theory holds some relevance in that it highlights the idea that economic decline and crises in post-industrial Britain is directly linked to politics, and this was likely picked up on by rioters, even if they could not adequately express the source of their discontent.

THE LIMITS OF ANTHROPOLOGY When thinking about the post-industrial crisis in Britain, what appears endlessly in the ethnographic literature is study on racial relations and multiculturalism. While it is an important issue to consider, unfortunately it doesn't shed much light on the 2011 riots, as they seemed to have no racist undertones. If anything, the riots showed solidarity between all races in the cities involved, as the riots were “mostly white people” protesting the death of Mark Duggan, who was black (McIntyre 2011). The riots appeared to be a solidarity of the working class against “the police” - most likely the entire system they feel oppressed and dominated by; the system devised by the ruling classes. It bears noting that working class communities feel closer to people of other races than they do to people of the middle and upper classes. "Anthropologists tend not to set out to study social class, but find that it emerges as relevant in the process of investigating human collectives of other kinds" (Smith 1984, cited in Edwards, Evans & Smith 2012:2).

There seems to be a certain degree of tiptoeing around issues of tensions caused by social class systems in political, economic and anthropological literature. Perhaps it is seen as a taboo subject, or perhaps it is not seen as important. However, it could also be due to the fact that modern politicians tend to use race as a scapegoat for class tensions rather than admit that the fundamental class structure associated with capitalism may be flawed or problematic, or that their policies are encouraging tension and decreasing social mobility. This kind of racial scapegoating can be seen in the shocking comments by historian David Starkey, who, when reacting to the riots, claimed that “the whites have become black” and essentially blamed the riots on “black culture” which has supposedly taken centre stage in the UK.

CONCLUSION It appears that more ethnographic research needs to be done into class in Britain if we are to fully understand the effects of the post-industrial crises. However, from what exists and from pioneering works of the last few years, we can shed light on some of the main causes of class tension. Whilst abstract theories can be useful, more contemporary study could bring up questions we had not considered before.

Words: 1981

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bourdieu, P. 1998. Acts Of Resistance. Translated from French by Nice, R. 2000. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Dawson, A. 2002. Leisure and Change in a Post-Mining Mining Town. In: Rapport, N., ed. 2002. British Subjects. Oxford: Berg, pp107-120.

Engels, F. 2009. [orig. 1892]. The Condition of the Working Class in England. London: Penguin Books

Evans, G. 2006. Educational Failure and Working Class White Children in Britain. Britain: Palgrave Macmillan.

Evans G., Edwards J. & Smith K. 2012. The Middle Class-ification of Britain. In. Evans G., Edwards J. & Smith K. eds., Class, Community and Crisis in Britain, special section of Focaal, Journal of Historical and Global Anthropology, Vol 62, 2012.

Hedge, N. 2012. Riots and Reactions: Hypocrisy and Disaffiliation? PESGB: Annual Conference. Oxford.

Hersh, J. 2011. London Riots: BBC Interview Gets Testy. Huffington Post, [online]. 10/09/11. Available at: <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/09/london-riots-bbc-interview_n_922857.html> [Accessed 22 March 2012].

James, A. 2002. The English Child: Toward a Cultural Politics of Childhood Identities. In: Rapport, N., ed. 2002. British Subjects. Oxford: Berg, pp143-162.

McIntyre. 2011. Manchester & Salford Riots, BBC Newsnight. [News Report]. 2 Sep 2011. Available at: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsAwdIaDPNw > [Accessed 22 March 2012].

Young, K. & Mills, L. 1983. Managing the Post-Industrial City. London: Heinemann.

Wiener, M. 1981. English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850-1980. Cambridge University Press.

This essay got me my highest mark at university so far.

Critically examine the character and purpose of violence in middle-late Bronze Age or Iron Age communities, using archaeological evidence.

Introduction

How can we best analyse the use of violence in the past? This question has plagued the minds of archaeologists for decades and is not one that should be taken lightly, because like many difficult questions in this subject, it can lead to false assumptions when treated with disregard. The evidence of violence in the archaeological record can often be ambiguous in nature, leading some archaeologists to develop theories of violent practices in the past which are based on pure speculation. Speculation is not always a bad thing as imagination is a virtue in archaeology, but it can occasionally be problematic because it is not accurate. It is for this reason that we should be careful when interpreting the evidence available to us and not to draw conclusions from ambiguous data, which could lead us to make unfair and unfounded assumptions about past life. It is not very common to find evidence which is unequivocally linked to a certain type of violence. There are certain prerequisites for assumptions of violence in certain cases, as argued in the following quote:

“It is very difficult to demonstrate intentional

attacks from child skeletons unless caused by

weapons, or if the remains come from the site of a

known act of violence, or the bones show several

lesions in different stages of healing.” (Campbell,

2003, cited in Jimenez-Brobeil et al, 2007)

In this essay, I will critically explore the evidence we have for middle-late Bronze Age violence and critically evaluate how much it, and the interpretations of the archaeologists who have studied it, can tell us about the nature, causes and purpose of violence in various middle-late Bronze Age communities across the globe. I will recognise the importance of several factors such as social structure, religious practices, identity and politics in the practice of violence in the past.

Issues

The character of violence even today is hard to pin down, as there are numerous forms in which it takes, such as organised criminal violence, self defence and political warfare. We must not undermine the complexity of Bronze Age culture or indeed human nature and we must consider all options when analysing human remains and artefacts for evidence of violence. The problem we face in trying to determine the character of violence in the archaeological record is that not all injuries are skeletal, and there could be violence we are not picking up on such as strangulation and flesh wounds. Such marks of violence would not show up on a Bronze Age skeleton, and without skeletal damage we cannot really be sure of the nature of violence in the community even if weapons are found.

Domett and Tayles (2006), in their study of Bronze Age inhumations in Thailand, outline some of the problems that osteoarchaeologists face when studying skeletal injuries and evidence of violence in human remains. Not only is it impossible to determine when in the individual's life the injury occurred, but even if the damage left a mark on the skeleton, fractures often heal up so well that they leave no lasting evidence on the skeleton. Fractures that are found on skeletal remains are often indistinguishable from post-mortem breakages. Unless there is a clear shape in the injury of a weapon of some kind then it is difficult to determine how the injury came about, as some individuals may have also been more prone to fractures than others due to bone conditions like osteoporosis, which make seemingly harmless accidents more dangerous and damaging. Thus, it is not easy to draw a solid conclusion about a violent attack on most skeletons.

A clear example of a case in which some of these problems arise is located on the site of Tormarton, Gloucestershire (Osgood 2005), where 4 adult male skeletons from the early-middle Bronze Age were found lying on their faces in a ditch which had been hastily covered in rubble. Two of the men show skeletal trauma to the skull and pelvis in the shape of a spear shaft and blade respectively, which indicates a very humiliating and painful death, however the other two bodies show no signs of injury, although they have been dumped in the same place as their brutally murdered peers which would suggest that they were also murdered. This leads me to suspect that we may be finding bodies similar to these two which show no signs of a violent struggle, and so we may never know if they were actually the victims of a murderous attack. This kind of problem makes an accurate analysis of Bronze Age violence rather difficult, as we may never know just how accurate we really are.

Warfare

However, of all types of violence, warfare is perhaps the easiest to identify. This is because not only do we see evidence of skeletal damage and weaponry as I have mentioned above, but also huge fortifications. Aranda-Jimenez et al (2009) analyse the evidence of warfare in early-middle Bronze Age Argarian communities and point out that cases such as Cerra de la Encina show large defensive structures which would have required extensive and labour-intensive work to construct and to maintain (Aranda & Sanchez 2005, cited in Aranda-Jimenez et al 2009). The fact that these large defensive enclosures were built around these Bronze Age settlements on hilltops where the view was good suggests that they were regularly under threat by neighbouring communities, as otherwise the significant upkeep of the fortifications is difficult to explain.

Aranda-Jimenez et al (2009) go on to explain that other evidence for Argarian violence, such as the presence of specialised weaponry in burials, which has classically been used as evidence for warrior violence in Bronze Age Spain, does not necessarily indicate that the weapons were used in combat. In tombs where weapons such as swords, halberds, daggers and knives were found, there were no other distinctive elements of warrior burials found which could indicate that the men buried were warriors. It is this way that the authors highlight the problem of traditional thought in archaeology of automatically associating the presence of weapons with warriors and functional/political violence. Instead, the authors suggest that the weaponry could signify status and/or wealth in their community, as artefacts like swords and halberds have been proven to be symbolic in that they possess “the highest social value among funerary objects” (Lull & Estevez 1986, cited in Aranda-Jimenez et al 2009:1041). This theory is further supported by the presence of other high status objects such as jewellery.

The idea that symbols of violence and warfare are also symbols of power and status is one that has seen much study. Fokkens (1998) highlights how images of weaponry were often used in conjunction with the symbol of an erect penis to symbolise power and virility. This signifies the link between violence and manliness in Bronze Age communities and is shown through cave art in Scandinavian rock art, where men are sometimes symbolised as having swords in scabbards, standing on boats and having erect penises (Coles 2003 & Fokkens 1998). Treherne (1995, cited in Armit 2011) argues that the aesthetics of the “warrior's body” became a crucial part of the image of masculinity in the Bronze Age. Further evidence to support this image is the Roos Carr figures of the late Bronze Age which symbolise male virility as well as violence and possibly territorial struggles, as symbolised by a boat, some weapons and the intimidating nature of the figures (Hull City Council 2008). This could possibly suggest that virility itself was used as an intimidating weapon in the form of rape. However, this is merely speculation and there is no evidence to confirm that this is true in the case of Bronze Age Scandinavian society.

Societal pressures as a cause of violence

The nautical theme of the Roos Carr figures is not the only evidence to suggest that violence can be caused by arguments over territory. To refer back to an earlier example, the defensive enclosures of Bronze Age Spain also signify a battle fought to keep and protect a settlement and its people. Towards the end of the Bronze Age, communities started building hillforts to defend their settlements, which related to the earlier linear ditches or “ranch boundaries” which were used to separate territories belonging to different people and fields used for farming or grazing cattle (Cunliffe 1990). With this increase in agriculture and permanent settlement in the late Bronze Age, therefore leading to a rise in territoriality, there would have been a similar rise in violence and warfare as people fought to takeover or defend land.

This evidence also signifies an important change to social structure in that individuals and lineage groups in the late Bronze Age were claiming authority over land, which suggests increasing pressure over land and possibly an increase in population size (Cunliffe 1990:335) which in turn made claiming land for lineage groups more and more important as their families grew in size. Linked in with this comes the issue of resource pressure. As Cunliffe (1990:335) says, “pressure for change is seldom monocausal” and we must consider a wide range of factors that would have made people more protective over their land and potentially engage in violent acts, or feel threatened by violence.

There are numerous sorts of pressures which could cause communities to resort to violence, as Fyllingen (2003) in her analysis of two interesting sites in Nord-Trøndela, Norway, in which archaeologists in 1968 uncovered a large collection of human between 20 and 30 skeletal remains dating back to the early-middle Bronze Age. With much evidence of violent trauma and only one real artefact – a bone pin – it raised questions about the character and purpose of violence in this area at the time. She describes one of the sites as the mass grave of “a society in distress” (Fyllingen 2003:31) which was plagued by ill health, hard labour demands and, of course, violence. The injuries shown on the skeletons indicate that a majority of the victims were killed whilst they were trying to defend themselves, unarmed, and that most of the attacks aimed at the victims were intended to kill (as the multiple injures to the craniums suggest). Men, women and children were all violently killed and placed in this mass grave. However, not all victims died from their injuries straight away and a lot of the skeletons showed partially or completely healed wounds. Fylligen states that this evidence suggests that the occurrence of such violence was commonplace in this society.

Fyllingan attributes the regularity of violence in this Norwegian Bronze Age culture to the social hierarchies described by Kristiansen (1982, cited in Fyllingan 2003) which made up Bronze Age communities and led to inequality, which in turn led to conflict and violence. Because the two sites Fyllingan were close together and similar in nature, she hypothesises through Kristiansen's work that Norwegian culture at the time was structured in a way that meant conflict was rife and that every member of the society was engaged in constant warfare, which was brought about by the chiefs. However, she goes on to make some very enthusiastic and unfounded judgements that she draws from social anthropological theories of ritual and war heroes, without backing it up with related archaeological evidence. From the evidence she presents, including the fact that the heads of the adults at one of the sites seem to be arranged in a particular way (indicating post-mortem beheading), I would hypothesise that the violence displayed at these sites in Norway were caused by social inequalities (as described by Kristiansen, cited in Fyllingan 2003) and a longing for elevated social status. I would take this one step further and suggest that the citizens of the community felt pressured by social norms and the expectations of their chiefs to take part in warfare. The purpose in partaking in this form of violence, therefore, would be to gain a desired social status and to appease a chief.

Abstract Thoughts

There are several other slightly more abstract theories that could be thought of to explain the sites at Nord-Trøndela such as personal conflict, like revenge for a past misdeed or an ideological disagreement. However, it is very had to underpin personal conflict in the Bronze Age as there is no record of it. We cannot see what is not buried under the soil, as such we cannot see things like ideologies which may have existed only in the minds of those in the community.

Another cause of violence which has been woefully ignored in the vast majority of archaeological studies is mental illness such as psychosis, schizophrenia etc. A recent study of homicides due to mental disorders in the past 50 years showed that there are fluctuations in the rates of mentally disabled people who commit homicides and it is unclear why, however it is always a prevalent occurrence throughout history (Large et al, 2008). It is also possible that violence could have occurred in the Bronze Age due to alcohol/drug use. From the end of the early Bronze Age, there is a rise in the need of alcohol for feasting and it is possible that when so many people are together in one place, they could become intoxicated and violence could break out. There are clear ethnographic examples in which feasting and intoxication leads to conflict, competition and violence (Hastorf & Johannessen 1993:132, cited in Hamilakis 1999). However, this is another area that has not been studied well enough in archaeology. These cases would suggest that there is not always a clearly defined purpose to violence.

These kinds of abstract theories for violence could very well contain some truth, but the archaeological record does not contain many examples of these theories in practice in the Bronze Age. Perhaps this is because they were not an important part of society, or perhaps it is because there is just no archaeological evidence even though it happened, but I think it is most likely to be due to the failings of the archaeological community over the years to assimilate enough evidence and compile a detailed report on these matters.

Conclusion

To conclude my essay on the character and purpose of Bronze Age violence, I will make some final points. From all of the evidence I have presented here, I can tell that there are many facets of violence and it would take a much longer essay than this to go through all of them, but I have done the best I can to pinpoint which are the most significant aspects. Firstly, political warfare was one of the main ways in which violence manifested itself in the Bronze Age, as it was just beginning to take off towards the middle-late Bronze Age to later flourish in the Iron Age. It accounts for a large amount of archaeological evidence for violence in that time frame and serves the purpose of settling feuds between different communities.

Secondly, resource pressures and other societal problems which put strain on communities, such as famine and personal disagreements often lead to violence as a means of expressing frustration, settling disputes or bringing about justice (such as a punishment for a crime, although this is lacking in archaeological evidence). Thirdly, the hierarchical structure of many Bronze Age societies and the value it placed on status caused people to follow the will of a chief and try to achieve their ambitions.

Finally, I argue that there is a severe lack of archaeological evidence for Bronze Age violence and its purposes, namely the theoretical purposes I have mentioned at the end along with things like human sacrifice (Hughes 1991). There must be more archaeological investigation done before we can say we have exhausted all of the options for this question which cannot be answered with a non-extensive mono-causal explanation.

Words: 2,632

Modern Art - My Opinion

Ok, so I've decided to make this blog post after reading Tom Milsom's tumblr and seeing his and other artists' vendetta against anyone who doesn't like modern art. A lot of people claim that anyone who doesn't like modern art doesn't "understand" or "get" it. I'm going to define what I think the "point" of modern art is.

Modern art, as I understand it, is there to make you think about the world in a way that you wouldn't normally, and to view every day things which you may not notice on a daily basis through different lenses.

In this post I've included a piece by Richard Serra. A lot of people say "it's a bit of rusty metal against a wall, what is there to get?" but this is a piece about balance and equilibrium. When you see it you have several different feelings about it. Perhaps it is a metaphor for balance in life.

I see the point of modern art, I know its aims and all of that stuff. What I don't like is the way in which artists try to meet their aims. Surely modern artists would like for their work to be as accessible as possible and something that enlightens as many people as it can? My point is, there are easier ways to make a point about balance than putting a sheet of metal against a wall. To me it seems like a very half-assed way of making a point and invoking an emotion.

If I really really wanted to make a point about balance, I would write something. Maybe to make it even more understandable, I would do diagrams in a scientific fashion. I would explain my intentions and point clearly.

I'd like to state that I'm not saying modern art should be "dumbed down". There are ways of making things obvious and understandable without compromising the beauty and artistic nature of it. Just look at poetry and prose. It can be very descriptive and clear and still very beautiful. To me, this image looks like it's been taken out of a book with no context given. Without any kind of context, it's rather frustrating to try and second-guess what the artist is trying to say. If I took a diagram out of a science book, would you enjoy trying to figure out what kind of diagram it was and what it meant? I certainly wouldn't. It could be illustrating something brilliant like the formation of a supernova, but I would have no idea and it would be lost on me.

What gets my goat the most is being called ignorant for not instantly understanding a piece of modern art. It's not my fault if I don't get the 'point' of the piece, it's the artist's fault for not making it more accessible and understandable. I feel like when interpreting a piece of modern art I'm trying to fill in the blanks. It's like reading a poem where half of the words have been taken out at random and I need to guess what has been taken out.

And sure, maybe some people would enjoy looking at a diagram and trying to work out what it means, or trying to fill in the blanks of a poem. However it feels like those people are doing all the artist's work for them.

My last point is this. I know that some pieces don't have a specific "point" to make, they are just there to invoke emotion. However when a piece is so simple that the physical act of creating the piece isn't admirable at all and the emotion it invokes is the main attraction, especially when the emotion is not clear and you have to kind of "make it up" in your head, I do stop and wonder if it's worth the hassle.

I don't need that piece of metal against a wall to think about balance, I could just go outside and look around. There are plenty of things leaning against my walls in my house. Or maybe I could just, you know... think about balance. I don't need to see it in front of my eyes to have the same emotion.

What I like about traditional art is that it gives you a LITERAL view of something you've never seen before. I've seen a rusty bit of metal balancing against a wall before. I can understand that other people find that piece interesting but I personally don't. I'm sorry if that puts a bee in your bonnet. Not everyone can like the same thing as you.

To any fan of modern art who's angry, distressed or upset upon reading this (or any post by someone who they feel doesn't "get" modern art), I'd like to point out one thing. I'm a heavy metal music fan, and constantly get criticism from others that heavy metal is "just noise". Yet you don't see me writing tumblr posts about how ignorant everyone else is for not liking heavy metal. Unlike you, I accept that people have differing opinions to me and that doesn't make them ignorant. Not everyone enjoys heavy metal, or modern art. GET OVER IT.

Stories of a 10 year old genius

I recently came across the school books of my 10 year old brother, who has Asperger's syndrome. The syndrome makes him incapable of socialising properly, meaning he refuses to take part in class activities or do anything with the other kids. This makes teaching him quite a challenge.

At his school they decided to give him one-to-one support from a TA and allowed him to type his work on a computer as that's where he felt most comfortable. While he was working in the corner on his own he wrote some very interesting things which were printed off and stuck in his book. The following is from his English book. I may post more from other books as it is all completely mind-boggling.

It starts off with the usual 10 year old drivel they made him do, but then he goes into a "big write" where he is allowed to write his own story. I hope you enjoy it. Note: I have not changed a single part of this, from the spelling mistakes to the spaces and dashes.

Fireplace

Thursday 9th September 2010

LI use narrative structure and past tense in writing.

Lesson intro using connectives.

Robin was scared of the sheriff.

Robin's hands trembled as he picked up the arrow.

Robin feared the sheriff as his hands were shaking in fear as he picked up the arrow.

Robin was shaking in fear of the sheriff as he was picking up the arrow.

BIG WRITE

Title:

The Guider

Story:

Somewhere in England, lived a normal man. And he no more knows his destiny, then a tealeaf knows the history of the east India company.his name is john tarrion, and one night, in one uniqe dream, he saw the guider...

The guider told him that to become destin for greatness, he must...

Eat the cheese..." eat the cheese?!" says john, "yes you must eat the cheese, and this dream will be returned." says the guider."but I'm not hungry!" says john.

"just eat the cheese so I can return this dream already!"says the guider.

"ok ok ok!"says john, john eats the cheese and wakes up in the morning.

"hmm..." john thinks that the dream could be special..."nah, it was just a dream."

Says john, john goes to work and when he returns home and goes to sleep, the dream returns as said.

"I knew it!"says john."you're the galaxy's last hope."

John wakes up in the next morning and finds that his house was moved to a strange rocky land."let the games begin."says the guider.the guider trains john."but why me?!"john angrily replies."because...the master says so..." replies the guider sounding scared.the guider tells john to follow the quardrants on the spaceship he is told he was trained to use.he goes in and somehow understands how to fly it and follows the quardrants. And there he finds a space station oriting the bigger space station and in the smaller space station lies a teleporter. John goes through it and there lies a mysterious figure that starts walking towards him."who's there?!" screams john at the top of his lungs."tell the guider, you've sw him." Says the mysterious figure.the mysterious figure disappears and john goes straight to the guider and without stopping, john tells the guider that he saw him..."go and retrieve the golden water."says the guider. John goes into the same spaceship and explores the universe and finally comes at top speed onto the planet "earth"! and, due to a terrible miscalculation of scale, his entire ship is almost swallowed by a small fly...the ship is only one third as big as his house so he suffered terrible demands for air resistance, escaping earth was going to require some serious speed power & muscle. His first attempt got him crashd on a small piece of grass. And finally, after 27 attempts, he finally left earth and got on his way to find the golden water. Dawning through space at an incredible speed, he finds a small blue planet and lands on it, luckily this time the calculation of size works perfectly...

Or so it seems! He was a giant compared to the beings on it, and he asked if anyone knew where the golden water is, and only one replied saying"its in sector 999999999999999999 alpha fifty."

"any simpler quadrance?"asks john.

"alpha nine, just say it in the ship you have." "thanks,!" john happily replies. John gets in the ship and says "alpha nine", and the ship goes to auto pilot. A few hours later, he crashed down onto a planet and manages to escape with the ship beyond repair. But then he saw it.the golden water... a whole five meter long river of it. About roughly 10 meters deep, stretching as far as the eye can see. The shining golden water reflects enough heat to burn the fuel leak in the ship as it blows up in a ball of fire and somewhat confusing radiation.john creeps into a hole that suddenly cracks open with the top whooshing into the sky! In the cave it is silent and a single drop of fresh cold-golden water falls on john's head..."you've collected some!" says a voice sounding like the guider.

_________________________________ --- ----_____

--- -- Aaaaaaaahh!! -- _ --- __

Says john by a matter of fact, who is thinking about how odd this event is...

he falls through the vortex next to the guider and the golden water is extracted and put into a rather confusing thing that looks like the kind of thing you would hae a wedding thing in...

The Garden of Eden According to Francesca Stavrakopoulou

Today I learned a lot about the study of Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou, a senior lecturer of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter with a PhD from Oxford University. She makes some very interesting claims about the story of Eden and the Fall which I'd like to share in this blog post.

So I'm assuming you all know the story: God creates a beautiful garden for Adam and Eve, who are created completely innocent. The snake shows up and tempts Eve to taste the fruit, who then tempts Adam, and so God expels them from the garden to live a life of suffering and death. It's the foundation of the notion of original sin and the biblical origin of the idea that we're all born bad people.

Dr Stavrakopoulou (I'll call her Dr Stavra for short) thinks that the origin of this story is not what we'd think. She believes that Eden was a real place on Earth, a man-made garden created by man.

In ancient Near-Eastern culture, kings were seen to have a special link to the Gods. They were the connection between the physical world and the heavens. One of the roles of the king would be to construct a lavish garden for a God to dwell in, and some of these extravagant gardens are pictured on reliefs such as the one featured on the right from Nineveh. It matc

hes descriptions of the Garden of Eden, with flowing water. It also has a very visible tower on it belonging to a king. Gardens such as this were believed to be a place where there is a true connection with God, unlike anywhere else.

Dr Stavra therefore believes that Eden could have been made by human hands. Not only that, but she also believes that Adam himself was a king. He was the gardener of God, given the task of keeping the garden and looking after it, all the while maintaining a close relationship with God, similar to the Near-Eastern kings. The fact that Adam was a king is not mentioned in Genesis, however Stavra claims that an earlier biblical account is a previous version of the story, and it describes the fall of the king from his garden.

The sin in this case was not eating a fruit. In Ezekiel 28:6-19, a king is described as having gained too much ego and considering himself to be as good as God. This is comparable to the Genesis version, where eating the fruit results in having knowledge like God does. God sends a message to this king, the King of Tyre:

"You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you. [...] Your settings and mountings were made of gold; on the day you were created they were prepared. You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you." - Ezekeil 28:11-15.

This much earlier mention of Eden says that the king believed himself to be "as wise as God" and had participated too much in dodgy trade business and violence. The punishment God gave him was to send all his enemies against him in an act of defiance to his reign and to bring him down, banishing him and all his successors from the throne. It speaks of a fire which burned down his palace in front of him and his people.

It is believable enough that a king's ego could turn nasty and cause people to want to bring him and his kingdom to an end. However, Dr Stavra's claims become a bit more bizarre. She claims that the Garden of Eden may not have been a garden at all, but a temple.

1 Kings 6 tells the story of King Solomon building a grand temple to God in which he can dwell, and she believes it was this temple which was the Garden of Eden in which the King and God could have an intimate relationship. But how can a temple be a garden? The passage describes the temple as having walls not of stone but of fine cedar, with the floor made of pine and no stone to be seen. Into the stone was carved gourds, palm trees and blooming flowers. Cherubims of olive wood guarded the temple, as they did in the Genesis account of Eden. There were pillars, at the top of which was images of two hundred pomegranates and lilies, and a vast image of "the sea" stood upon statues of bulls. There were many basins and "sprinkling bowls" and gold images of flowers and leaves adorned the entire interior of the temple. It was a truly magnificent place.

The king says that this is a house for God, and God responds to him graciously and says that if the king were to ever fall out of line, he would smite the temple and cause all his enemies to turn against him and his city. Later on, God is displeased with Solomon and tells his enemies that he is going to take the kingdom from the hands of his successors and give it to those who will overthrow him. Apparently, Soloman's 700 wives and 300 concubines had turned him away from God and made him worship false idols, so his position as king was taken from him by God.

So this is Dr Stavra's explanation for Genesis. But what about Eve and the snake? Well she states that the symbol of the snake, before the book of Genesis, was a valuable religious symbol and wa

s worshiped in Christianity, for example the staff that Moses carried had the form of a snake. Snakes were also used in medicine and the snake is still visible on the emblem of pharmacies to this day.

Somewhere between these stories, snake-worship became associated with evil. Dr Stavra seems to believe that after the king showed his true colours, his ideas of snake worship also became evil and demonised.

As for Eve, it is common in the New Testament for women to be shown as evil temptresses who lead men astray and this could be reflected in Genesis, because at the time this was the vision of women and the blame was placed on Eve to relieve Adam a bit of his sin.

Well, that's that. I'm not sure how far to take Dr Francesca Stavrakopoulou's claims, they do seem a bit far-fetched, especially when she claims to know exactly where Eden was. However I thought it was an interesting thought and wanted to share it with you all.

For more information watch her BBC documentary on the subject "Bible's Buried Secrets: The Real Garden of Eden".

That's it from me for now, hope you enjoyed this and it wasn't too long!

60 Transitional Fossils in 4 Minutes

Heya. Sorry I haven't written a blog in a while, I've been busy, but to fill the gap until I finish all my work, here's a video I made this evening.

The Evolution of the Stickleback Fish

People often ask questions like "yeah, but how does evolution work though?" and "how can such massive changes happen so quickly and stick around?". They are good questions, and as it turns out, they've been answered.

In this post I'll look at the example of the stickleback fish, a small fish characterised by three little spines attached to its pelvis (right) which it can push out to counter predators, essentially turning it into a swimming pincushion. This was a very useful trait as you could imagine. However, over time the stickleback population began to move into more freshwater regions, where their spikes were a disadvantage as large insects like dragonflies could just pluck them out of the water by their sticking out spikes. As you would expect, the spiky sticklebacks began to die out and through natural selection a species of stickleback without the spiky pelvis began to emerge and thrive in the freshwater regions.

This is simple enough to understand on a basic level, but we can dig deeper. How did the stickleback lose its pelvis in the first place? Evolutionary biologist David Kingsley of Stanford University has researched into this question thoroughly and has come back with very convincing results. What he managed to do was isolate the stickleback's gene which was responsible for the production of the pelvis. What he found was that this gene is present not only in the marine sticklebacks with the pelvis, but also the freshwater sticklebacks.

What we can tell from this is that even though both types of fish have the same gene, there is something turning off that gene in the freshwater population - a kind of switch. These gene switches control when a gene is turned on and in what places. So as it turns out, it is not the genes themselves which are mutating, but the gene switches. As a result of this we find very different species can have very similar gene patterns, it's just that some of those genes are switched on or off.

It's likely that this is why we sometimes see mutations in the

human DNA that reveal parts of our ancestry, such as tails (yes, they do happen).

We share 99% of our genes with apes. Yet how do we look so different? The mutations needed for these changes are so so small, but can make such a huge difference in appearance. In my next blog post I might go into how the human brain actually evolved to be so much bigger than the ape brain.

It is all down to tiny mutations.

So what do you think guys, should I have been an evolutionary biologist?

Bands I've Seen Live

This actually has nothing to do with anything, I just want to keep a list of all the bands/acts I've seen live and this seems like a good place to do it. :)

• Linkin Park
• Heaven & Hell (before Dio died, R.I.P)
• Metallica
• NIN
• Soil
• Machine Head x 2
• Bullet for My Valentine
• Lamb of God
• Avenged Sevenfold (before The Rev died, R.I.P)
• Anthrax x 2
• Saxon
• Alien Ant Farm
• Skindred x 2
• Dead By Sunrise
• Iron Maiden
• Rammstein
• Pendulum
• Lacuna Coil
• Alice Cooper
• Gary Numan
• Europe
• Slayer
• Madina Lake
• Alestorm
• Sabaton x 2
• Turisas
• The Fab Beatles
• Bjorn Again
• Tim Minchin
• Dara O'Briain

This list should get bigger this summer!

Explaining the God Delusion with Social Anthropology

As many of you know I recently converted to Atheism. However, even now that I am an Atheist, I am still questioning the nature of faith and belief in religion. It is clear to me that we have found enough evidence for evolution for it to be logically considered more convincing than any religion. For the sake of this blog I will use Christianity as my main example as I know more about it than I know about other religions, but I'm hoping that the same principle can be applied to any religion.

I'm not making this blog to push my atheism on anyone else, nor am I making it to try and give evidence of evolution. I am making this blog post to investigate this question: why is it that when Christianity fails under the scrutiny of scientific evidence, the beliefs are still held worldwide and thought to be the best explanation of the world around us by many?

Power in Numbers

The statistics of the amount of atheists in the world has never been favourable. Wikipedia has this to say on the demographics of atheism:

"The demographics of atheism are difficult to quantify. Different people interpret "atheist" and related terms differently, and it can be hard to draw boundaries between atheism, non-religious beliefs, and non-theistic religious a

nd spiritual beliefs. Furthermore, atheists may not report themselves as such, to prevent suffering from social stigma, discrimination, and persecution in certain regions such as the Middle East, or, in cases where the situation is reversed, religious people may keep their beliefs secret in pro-atheist societies." - Wikipedia

Atheism has been pushed into the margins of society and looked down upon for as long as it has been around. Unfortunately, it is often the case that people will change their beliefs dependant on the society they find themselves in.

I am not the first to come up with this argument, Dawkins has been arguing it for years.

"If you'd been brought up in India, you would be a Hindu. If you were brought up in Denmark in the time of the Vikings, you would be believing in Wotan and Thor. If you were brought up in classical Greece, you would be believing in Zeus. If you were brought up in central Africa, you would be believing in the Great JuJu of the mountain." - Richard Dawkins ~2006

In my opinion, it seems fair to assume that your social surroundings play a vital role in determining what beliefs you hold. Only 2.5% of the entire population of the world is atheist, showing that science and archaeology are, for the most part, ignored by most of the earth. In places like Africa I can understand their religious beliefs, as they may not have access to information about how species really evolved (which is quite sad really, as Africa is where it all happened). However in places like America, it is utterly unacceptable in the information age for only 1.6% of the population of North America to express themselves as atheist.

At this point I would like to state: There is power in numbers. Not just physically, but mentally too. Religion can be seen as an "imagined community" - imagined, but not imaginary (Anderson 1983). Anderson uses the concept of imagined communities to explain nationalism, but I would like to use it to describe the religious community in the USA. Christianity is a socially constructed community, "imagined" and created by the people who perceive themselves as part of that group. His theory states that without anybody to imagine the community, the community dies. So if nobody believed in Christianity, Christianity would quickly wither and die and other beliefs would take over.

Similarly, because lots and lots of people are Christians, their faith is very strong. Like I said, power in numbers.

No Evidence, So Why Believe?

I would now like to talk about the philosophical teapot theory, which I find best describes the religious doctrine.

In 1952, a Bertrand Russell wrote the following for an article:

"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time." - Russel 1952

This idea has been reincarnated in many ways such as the Invisible Pink Unicorn, the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Dragon in my Garage. The point is, if you can't prove that something isn't there it doesn't mean that it IS there, because that's not yet been proven either. However, something as ridiculous as a celestial teapot or a Flying Spaghetti Monster can be seen as historical fact if enough people believe in it for long enough. If we found a 6,000 year old text which affirmed the existence of a Flying Spaghetti Monster, no doubt a religion would form around it and people would live their life by this fictional being.

In my opinion, there are two reasons that people become Christians and only two.

The first is that they are looking for an explanation and don't understand science enough to understand that the Big Bang theory and the theory of Evolution are very convincing. This is incredibly disgusting and should be fixed as soon as possible.

The second is that they find themselves in a society where believing in Christianity is the norm. Think about it. If you were born into a society where wearing crocs was the norm, you would wear them too right? Even though crocs are so ugly and atrocious and a crime against fashion, you might see this, but it doesn't matter because it's "tradition" and everyone does it. You would especially wear crocs if you had been told as a child that if you don't, you'll burn forever after you die, or will be eaten by the boogey man. If anyone from a different society comes along and says "Why are you wearing crocs? They're ugly!" obviously you would defend your stance fervently, but you wouldn't really understand why you felt so strongly about crocs. This is what I think is the case with the majority of Christians today.

Christians feel like they are able to defend their faith because they have the power of the church behind them. Religion is a social construction which brings people together and at the same time divides them. Human beings are social creatures, above all they just want to be accepted by others. Human minds are also very prone to indoctrination and brainwashing, an example of this is North Korea.

Hegemony

One of Gramsci's necessities for hegemony (total and utter ideological control) was isolation. This is one of the forms of control shown by the Christian faith which stares us right in the face. Parents with a strong Christian faith often want their children to grow up in a Christian environment, because as we've seen, the place you grow up shapes your beliefs and what you feel is the social norm. So the Christian parents isolate their children completely from any other religion. This is particularly prominent in the USA. They send their young child to a Christian preschool, where they are taught the teachings of the bible. Then they are sent to a Christian elementary school where they are taught no science, only biblical "facts". They are also taught, as little children, to fear that place called Hell that they might go to after they die. It's the same concept as telling a child that if they misbehave they won't get any presents from Santa Claus, but even more disgusting.

Christian children are not allowed to find out about any kind of magic like Harry Potter or dragons and are punished whenever they try to rebel against their Christian faith.

A similar example of hegemony like this is North Korea. In North Korea they are not allowed contact with the outside world, and told that North Korea is the best nation on the planet. If anybody tries to debate this, they are quickly "silenced". Total isolation, total control.

To exercise this level of control on any human being is horrible, whether it's the citizens of a country or your own child. To try and get your child to behave by making them fear the consequences so much they have nightmares about it is moral abuse and shouldn't be tolerated in this day and age. There are other reasons to be good apart from getting into heaven and children need to understand that as much as adults do.

Anyway, that's my two cents on religion for now. Maybe one day I'll write a book about it, lol. My blog posts are always so long it's a wonder anyone reads them at all! Please do tell me what you thought of all this if you read it and if you agree with the points I raised. If not, please tell me why. Ciao for now!

Forwards and backwards - a review of 2010 and other thoughts

And so I sit here with the christmas lights on the chipboard behind my laptop reflecting off the keys, providing a nice ambience, and during my last few days in Manchester this year I have time to contemplate.

Contemplate what? Anything and everything. There has been so much on my mind as of late I've been walking down streets of melted snow and ice under bare trees completely absorbed in my mind. Today as I walked down a street I've never walked down on my own before, I was thinking about the nature of our existence. This may seem surprisingly philosophical for me, but I just want to get this down somewhere and this seems to be a good place.

It seems like we are constantly taking two steps forwards and two steps back, in every way. I was looking at the BBC News on my phone and I saw that unemployment has risen sharply in the last 3 months and I silently begged for the conservatives to sort it out. A while ago I had a look at the unemployment rate of the last 50 years or so and saw that when Thatcher was in power, unemployment declined hugely but when Brown was our prime minister the level skyrocketed. It's like everything Thatcher did to bring down the level was pointless. Obviously it wasn't, but if you look at the chart that's the initial feeling. There's this feeling of reciprocity, where everything that is done is undone, redone, undone again etc. and the cycle never ends. As I think my mum said, "labour spend spend spend, tory cut cut cut".

The trees lose their leaves with the promise of getting them back in the spring, only to lose them again. Forwards, backwards, forwards, backwards.

Another thing I was thinking about was my university education and where it is ultimately going to lead me. A startling number of graduates I have met struggle to find a job after they graduate and yes, they end up back at their parents' home, which is most likely the last place they want to be after the 3 or more year struggle for independence. Back and forth. In and out.

And finally, our lives. We are born dependant on those around us, we grow up and learn to be independent and take care of ourselves only to be largely dependant again on the community and our loved ones when we get elderly. In a way it makes you think, we spend a lot of our lives striving for independence and to escape, but ultimately what is it worth?

It's worth everything, especially to me. The freedom you experience during the years of living in a new place or making new friends are the best years and worth every moment. You learn so much by meeting new faces, seeing new things, looking at things from a different perspective and learning about the world around you. Moving away from home, away from my secluded corner of the country has taught me so much about the world I live in and the people I share an island with.

More important than anything, since I have moved out I've been able to see my life as if I'm standing away from it, looking from a distance. Sometimes it's incredibly valuable to just look at your life with different eyes, from a different place.

Will I ever return to New Romney? No. Not for anything other than nostalgia. As I say goodbye to the corner of the world that I lived in for 18 years, I may miss it but I will not look back. Life is too fast to look back. You may spend all your time thinking about the past and let the present pass you by.

As 2010 comes to a close, and I get ready to welcome the new year with friends and alcohol, I will be looking to the future with excitement and imagination, for the world is my oyster right now. University is the crossroads, from here I can go in absolutely any direction I want. The control I have over my life makes me content.

So friends, have a very merry christmas and enjoy seeing your family! I'll see you on the other side.

Cute Gay Animals

Today I feel like talking about homosexual tendencies in animals. Just because I think more people should know about them, it's pretty cute.

The penguins in the picture above are the male chinstrap penguins Squawk and Milou of the New York Central Park Zoo, just one example of same-sex courtship among animals. This is hardly the first time we've seen this, there were also the male penguins Roy and Silo who took a strong liking to each other and showed the classic signs of penguin lurrrve whilst also completely dismissing the attention of female penguins. They were also determined to "adopt" a chick as their own, as a lot of same-sex animal couples do.

"At one time, the two seemed so desperate to incubate an egg together that they put a rock in their nest and sat on it, keeping it warm in the folds of their abdomens, said their chief keeper, Rob Gramzay. Finally, he gave them a fertile egg that needed care to hatch. Things went perfectly. Roy and Silo sat on it for the typical 34 days until a chick, Tango, was born. For the next two and a half months they raised Tango, keeping her warm and feeding her food from their beaks until she could go out into the world on her own."

Cute, huh? Of course it doesn't stop with penguins. 8% of male lion and ram sexual interaction is males mounting other males.

45% of male elephants, both African and Asian, will engage in same-sex bonding and mounting. Such encounters are often associated with affectionate interactions, such as kissing, trunk intertwining, and placing trunks in each other's mouths. Male elephants, who often live apart from the general herd, often form "companionships", consisting of an older individual and one or sometimes two younger, attendant males with sexual behaviour being an important part of the social dynamic. Unlike heterosexual relations in elephants which are fleeting, homosexual relations may last for many years. Quite sweet isn't it, how homosexual relationships between elephants last a lot longer than heterosexual ones?

Experts estimate that at least 90% of giraffe sex that happens is male-male sex and 1% is female-female, leaving only about 9% of giraffe sex heterosexual and actually reproductive.

Maybe one day I'll write another blog about the strange sexual habits of giraffes, they're quite disgusting, but that's for another time I think. If we can take any lesson from this, it's that being gay is totally natural. I seriously doubt these animals are actively choosing to rebel against the system and be different.

Debating Intelligent Design

I wasn't sure whether or not to make this blog yet, but it's been playing on my mind all day and if it wasn't this it was going to be about the vikings finding Greenland and then abandoning it in the 15th Century for no apparent reason, but that just seemed too boring. This is what I really want to discuss.

In this blog I just want to discuss my own reasons for not believing in intelligent design and the idea that a loving, benevolent god created us exactly as we are.

One major argument creationists use to defend the creation myth is "complex things like the human eye could not have evolved as perfect as they are now, they work like a machine and therefore can't have evolved".

I'd like to present an analogy to disprove this. Let's say we have a designer of cars. The cars he designs are generally good, they work. You can drive around, there's a windscreen to see through and the engine is very cleverly designed to used fuel to power the car. However the clutch might stick sometimes, that's just a minor flaw, you can take it to the garage and get it fixed, that's how clever he is! He designed something that when it breaks, you can spend lots of money and time fixing it. Not only that, but sometimes his cars break beyond repair before you've even used it, but you are refused another one so you have to use a car which you can barely even drive on the road for the rest of your life. What an intelligent car designer, right?

In this scenario, if this man really designed cars, nobody would buy them because of how faulty they are. Would you describe this man as intelligent? Because I definitely wouldn't.

By comparison, let's look at the human body. It's generally good, you can walk around and there's eyes to see where you're going and you're very cleverly designed to run on food. However your heart might stop sometimes, but that's alright! You can just go to hospital and get it fixed. How clever! Not only that, but sometimes you get cancer or heart disease or leukaemia or a severe mental disability or deafness or blindness or physical deformity before you're even born, but you can't get another one so you have to live with this horrible illness for the rest of your life. Whoever designed this must be really intelligent.

And FYI, the human eye is anything but perfect. Not only are the light-receptive photo cells all facing the wrong direction, there is a big blind spot through which the nerve fibres and blood vessels pass. The only reason we can even see is because of the huge amount of work the brain has to do to restore the image to how it should be, otherwise we'd be seeing upside-down. And that's just the start. Eyes are prone to myopia, astigmatism and retinal detachment. If it wasn't for HUMAN inventions like glasses and laser eye surgery which were all made by SCIENCE, some of us wouldn't be able to see a thing. ( For more information on this, please visit this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7yAEh-PU4M ) Personally my eyes are bad to a factor of -4.5, and to put that into perspective, average reading glasses are about -1.25.

My question to people who believe in intelligent design can be summarised like this. If there was an intelligent designer who made us perfect, why don't my eyes work? Why do they require science to function? Sorry, but to me this seems like science 1 - 0 religion.

Ok, onto the second part. The other most annoying argument that creationists often use is "Well look at the mountains, sunsets, oceans, they're all so beautiful! It must be a gift from God."

This is probably the argument that upsets me the most. You think the world is perfect and beautiful and made by a loving creator who loves each of his "children"? The world itself disproves this ridiculous notion.

First let us quickly consider the thought of beauty. I'm sure we all would agree that sunsets are a very nice sight to see and preferable to other things, like a slug. Not many people watch slugs for their astounding grace, beauty and peacefulness. But it is true that if we had nothing like the slug to compare the sunset with, the concept of beauty to describe that item would not exist.

Beauty is entirely a socially constructed concept, which is incredibly obvious in modern society. Why is a slim woman with lots of makeup and smooth hair more beautiful a larger woman with greasy hair and a droopy face? And don't give me the "everyone is beautiful" crap, a very small number of people would look at the second woman and think about her beauty. There is a certain socially established idea of what beauty is and isn't, and it differs from culture to culture (in certain societies, a fat woman is seen as more beautiful).

So now we've determined that beauty is defined by humans. This is only one reason that beauty is not a reason for God's existence.

But even with that argument aside it's not viable to believe that the wonder of nature was made by the intelligent, loving god of the bible. I think to believe so is to be incredibly incredibly ignorant of the world around you.

According to you, god lovingly allows poverty, famine, plague, birth defects, autism, asperger's syndrome, down syndrome, conjoined twins (parasitic and otherwise), miscarriages, drought, earthquakes, wild fires, floods, tsunamis, greed, hunger, selfishness, murderous intent, depression, suicide, genocide, leprosy, avalanches, sandstorms, lightning which kills, deadly animals everywhere which kill us...

That's not to mention the environment he bestowed upon us. Most of the planet is totally uninhabitable, plus we depend on fossil fuels which will one day run out and we orbit around a star which is one day going to explode. We risk every day random climate change and a meteor strike. He also gave us deadly bacteria which are perfect for living in our bodies (I did see an excellent video about this, will put it here if i find it).

In summary, we live in a hostile environment where everything wants to kill us. If god can do amazing things like save a baby in an earthquake (out of the thousands that he killed) and create the Earth in seven days, making Adam from dirt and Eve from bone, why can he not help us out a bit?

What I can conclude from this is that if there is a divine creator, he is one of three things: cruel, stupid or uncaring of his creation's fate. I think you would agree that none of these accurately describe the god of the bible as most people like to see him. Although, the word 'cruel' can be very nicely given to a god who demands worship based on no reliable evidence or else burn for eternity in the flaming pits of hell.

If there is a god, he hates us. I'd rather not believe something like that, it's completely stupid.

If anyone would like to see some interesting youtube videos relating to the creation/science debate, just hit me up and I'll recommend you some brilliant ones!

Redefining Islamophobia

In this post I just want to present a quick response to the idea of "Islamophobia" and what it has been claimed to stand for. I think it's important that this word is not misused too often, as it can seriously make people look stupid.

Let's go over some of the ways in which people use the word. If somebody is described as an Islamophobe, it is most likely that they have done or said something which is offensive to the Muslim community. It's a word commonly used to describe anyone who has a hatred of Muslims.

So what is the difference between Islamophobia and racism? Surely both harbour an irrational hatred, right? Wrong. Racism is a belief that one race of people is, in one way or another, inferior to another. It's characterised by a prejudice of an entire race, not just a few extremists.

Now let's go over Islamophobia and what the word actually means. The word 'phobia' I'm sure you're all aware of - it means an irrational fear of something. Arachnophobia is an irrational fear of spiders even though they can't hurt you, hippopotamonstrosesquipedaliophobia is a fear of long words, etc etc. So the literal meaning of Islamophobia is an irrational fear of Muslims. Wait, what?

Imagine someone who has an irrational fear of Muslims. He walks down the street, sees someone in a burka and runs off screaming. Ridiculous. However there are people who are scared of Muslims irrationally, terrified of an entire religion based on a few extremists who've blown themselves up. They're afraid to get on a plane in case it gets hijacked and explodes.

On the other hand, an irrational fear of Muslims can be seen as a bit of an oxymoron. Isn't it ok to be afraid of a group of people who preach hatred and kill anyone who converts from Islam, and force women to cover themselves up or else stone them to death? A group of people who are making their way across Europe and to the USA, trying to gain respect whilst at the same time doing crazy things like burning poppies and yelling about British soldiers burning in Hell? How can a fear of these people be irrational?

If you apply racism to this case, you would still be wrong, because it's not a fear of ALL Muslims, it's a fear of a few extremists. HOWEVER, if you apply it to ignorant people who think that every single Muslim in the world is like this, you'd be absolutely right. As long as they didn't think Muslims were inferior to themselves, then you'd be talking about racism.

If you look at society properly you'll see that people like the example above who think that every single Muslim in the country is out to get them you'll see that not many people actually think that way. Most of the people who are branded with the name 'dirty Islamophobe' actually just criticise Islam and disrespect some of the horrible things it influences people to do. That is neither racism nor Islamophobic. It's a rational conclusion that stoning women to death is generally not a nice thing to do. It's not Islamophobic because it's based on rational thought, and it's not racist because it doesn't claim that the entire religion is inferior, as there are a lot of Muslims who do not stone women or crash planes into buildings and the like. In fact the majority of Muslims are alright to live with. A lot of Muslims actually make an effort to integrate into the society they move into, and I'm sure nobody who isn't racist or Islamophobic has a problem with that at all.

If anybody is Islamophobic, it's the entire country as a whole. We are terrified of insulting Muslims in case they blow us up. We bend over backwards to appease them so that they won't get butthurt about what our actual beliefs are. Take this example.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11765420

In a toy farm set, the pig was removed after concerns that it would offend Muslims and Jews. Now, my brother actually had this play set before they removed the pig and I honestly don't understand how it could have offended anyone. If it had come with a shotgun to kill the pig with and a knife to chop it up, then yes it would be offensive. But you can't seriously believe that Muslims and Jews want to deny the existence of pigs altogether? Even Muslim mothers wrote in to say that it was absolutely ridiculous to do. This is just another example of "political correctness gone mad". How terrified do you have to be of Muslims and Jews that you are actually attempting to speak for them and guess what is going to offend them just in case they complain that you're not turning Britain into an Islamic or Jewish society and decide to kill people?

Not only is it cowardly, it's patronising. Do you really think that extremist Muslims are going to target the Early Learning Centre for their next bombing? Honestly.

Another case of this the fact that my sun cream got confiscated from me at the airport last summer. Why? In case there was a bomb in it. We also can't take printer ink onto planes, why? In case there is a bomb in it. This country is terrified of Muslims.

As you can see, Islamophobia is intrinsically embedded into British society, and yet we call rational thinkers and critics of the Muslim faith racist Islamophobe nazi evil bastards? If you want to call them anything, call them freedom fighters. Striving for the freedom of speech which Muslims would prevent us from having, given their way. Have you also noticed that nobody who criticises Christianity is called racist? Why is that? I'm not going to discuss that here, I think this blog post is long enough already. But nobody is scared of Christians, because whilst some of them are completely insane, the most they ever do is protest outside abortion clinics and military funerals. There is no Christianophobia. People are only scared of Muslims and there is a reason for that.

But yes, this blog post is long enough, I could go on for hours on this topic but I just want this post to be about the definition of Islamophobia and how wrongly the label is given to people. Maybe some other day I'll talk about Islam itself but for now I want to seem relatively impartial, don't know if that's worked... please tell me if you have any thoughts on this at all. I like hearing people's opinions!

Trains and Windows

It was a tired morning and the sky yawned as I bought a one-way ticket to Salt lake city and boarded the 805 Amtrak headed north-east.

The train dipped in and out of the empty gorges whose walls were still black from the dynamite blasts that once dug them out of the ground,

and the window collected the broken images outside whose only purpose left in the physical world was to entertain the endless parade of Amtrak voyeurs passing hour after hour through the valley;

a dead sofa, a gasping tyre and a hoodless dodge with no wheels that sat sunken in the red California clay.

Unimpressed, the train marched forward with a pointed tenacity matched only on occasion by a sad artist or an unemployed father of three, who planted themselves firmly on the tracks and surrendered quietly as the train delivered them back to the city of ashes

where we're all from and where we're all eventually going.

Then in an instant, the sun set and the yellow dusted shadows froze grey and dusk swallowed the whole valley without remorse... because of course there's nothing really to swallow, it's just motion.

The motion of a steel train and its wide-eyed passengers who watch the moments collect one by one on their windows

blending seamlessly into an animation, fleeting and fictional.

- Jack Conte, Trains and Windows collection. Just thought I'd share that with you, it's my favourite piece of lyric.

Potter Prayers

I would like to invite you to pray with me.

Our Headmaster in heaven

Hallowed be thy beard.

Your army come,

your will be done,

in Hogwarts as in Godric's Hollow.

Give us today our daily spell.

Forgive us our trespasses

because we really wanted to go to Hogsmeade.

Save us from dementors,

and deliver us from He-Who-Must-Not-be-Named.

For Hogwarts, the magic, and the horcruxes be yours

Now and forever.

Amen.

Please be seated.

I should probably explain why I wrote that. It's not just because my lecture was cancelled and I'm quite bored, but I was having a conversation with another atheist on youtube and we were talking about the notion of the Bible being a fictional text written 6000 years ago, in Dara O'Briain's words, "to get the kids to go to sleep on a long donkey ride to Jerusalem".

So if this is true and a large portion of the world prays to a fictional character in a book, what will it be like in 6000 years time or so? What will happen when idiots from the future dig up Harry Potter? How easy would it be to start a religion?

Very, I say. There is already a university course in Durham about philosophy in the Harry Potter books. Fandom can be likened to religion in some aspects, as I can relate to having been heavily involved in the Death Note fandom for a few years.

J.K. Rowling can be likened to Moses, the scribe of God's will and commandments. The God in question would be Dumbledore, watching us from heaven. If you have read the seventh book, you may remember Harry having an out-of-body experience where he meets Dumbledore on a bench (correct me if I'm wrong). In this way, Harry is akin to Jesus, doing the bidding of his "father" Dumbledore.

We can be sure that Albus Dumbledore was like a father figure to everyone at Hogwarts, who were his "army". He advised people, he instructed people to do his work and he was seen as a loving figure who cares about all of his children.

In this analogy, I'd like to say that Lord Voldemort is Lucifer himself. Once an angel, Tom Riddle (student at Hogwarts under Albus Dumbledore), he rebelled and decided to dabble in dark magic. He was therefore condemned by Dumbledore and cast out. Voldemort then set out to turn people to his side, hence we can bring in Adam and Eve. While I don't know who the very first followers of the Dark Lord were, but we can be sure that with the help of his snake Nagini he convinced people to eat the forbidden fruit, and cast unforgivable spells which Dumbledore had instructed them to not do.

This is where Harry Potter differs from the Bible. Instead of punishing all of the students of Hogwarts for what Tom Riddle convinced people like Wormtail to do, he built up his students into what the Daily Prophet was calling his army of students, ready to ride up. In this scenario we can liken the students at Hogwarts to God's followers.

So you've probably already guessed what all of this makes Harry. Grew up with his aunt and uncle in Little Whinging until he set out into the world and devoted his life to doing what Dumbledore wanted. Dumbledore was no doubt a good father figure for Harry, therefore reinforcing the idea that Dumbledore is the Lord your God. He endured many hardships in his life, being tempted by Lord Voldemort to surrender himself to see his parents again. Harry resists this temptation, much like Jesus does in the Bible when he is in the desert.

In the seventh book, Harry is "killed" by Lord Voldemort. He is "dead" for while, carried around by Hagrid. Suddenly, he rises from the dead and defeats Voldemort with the help of his disciples, the Order of the Phoenix (and Neville).

Not only do the teachings of Harry Potter mirror the Bible, but they also provide a good moral grounding. Love thy neighbour (Harry ends up not hating Draco so much), be the good Samaritan (Chamber of Secrets, Harry saves Ginny whereas Lockhart ignores her suffering) and believe in Dumbledore and you will be saved.

Of course my analogy so far hasn't taken muggles into consideration. However as the Bible says that while we should love our neighbour, it contradicts itself a bit and also says "a fool says in his heart there is no God" and so I can't come to a conclusion on whether or not muggles are non-believers. I'll leave you with that to think about, not leaving out the fact that the Dursley's scorned the idea of magic and are seen in a very negative light in the books.

Well, I think I've wasted enough time now. Might actually write an informative blog soon when I can decide what to write it on. For now, Dumbledore bless your souls.