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Links for 2006-01-11

10 replies on “Links for 2006-01-11”

I believe that’s the back of the underwear, which is both padded and armoured …but has no hatches 🙂 Further, I think Dainese originally made protection for Moto-X, but the shorts were used for skateboarding, snowboarding, mountainboarding, etc

I thought the same with the Richard Dawkins programme. There were a few occasions where he got so angry (perhaps understandably) that he came across as the nutter over his interviewee.

Whether you agree with him or not, Dawkins is not exactly the nicest piece of work. He often starts out being somewhat rational, but it can all fall apart. I’ve been at an event where he was speaking in person; his talk was pretty good, even though I disagreed with his opinion at points. But when, in the discussion following his talk, he was challenged by an audience member on several points – an audience member who, to be fair, happened to be a priest – Dawkins became what anyone else would probably call fanatical – and eventually, very, very ad hominem. Quite unpleasant to watch.

Dawkins is occasionally irritating, but compared to the terrifying American fundie Christian priest – fixed grin, homicidal eyes – and the American fundie Jew-turned-Muslim – wants to kill atheists – he was a pussycat… and way out of his depth.

Dawkins’ problem is that, through his conceit, he reckons he’s more scientific than he really is. I’ve never heard him consider any sociological or anthropological research seriously — but these are scientific disciplines all the same, and very closely related to his own biology. There are all sorts of scientific reasons why the persistence of religious belief is not at all surprising, and until scientists like Dawkins really accept that human behaviour is as much a topic for scientific research as any other, they’ll keep wheeling out this polemical crap.

And one more things — I don’t know who wrote the blurb on the C4 website, but the following:
“Individuals may even accept Dawkins’ atheistic and scientific deconstruction of the myths they have grown up with but still defend and nurture the matrix of institutions, practices and relationships which make them who they are.”
includes an irritating misuse of the word “deconstruction,” when presumably what the writers meant was “destruction.” A possible definition of deconstruction:
“A philosophical movement and theory of literary criticism that questions traditional assumptions about certainty, identity, and truth; asserts that words can only refer to other words; and attempts to demonstrate how statements about any text subvert their own meanings: “In deconstruction, the critic claims there is no meaning to be found in the actual text, but only in the various, often mutually irreconcilable, ‘virtual texts’ constructed by readers in their search for meaning” (Rebecca Goldstein)”
As far as I am aware, Dawkins has never been interested in deconstruction.

On DRM, you may find yourself agreeing with Shelley. I don’t, but my impression is that the debate’s emotional as much as it is rational – there’s a big, big pain barrier (for many of us) involved in accepting DRM, in any shape or form, and what people are saying on one side of the barrier doesn’t have much purchase on people on the other side.

I thought Dawkins came across as a nice guy, a bit impassioned at times. I don’t know how he kept his temper during some of the interviews with those crazies – “you don’t know how to dress your women” indeed. Although I’m not religious myself, I do think he’s presented a rather extreme version of an argument though – religious people aren’t all psycho loonies. Some are even quite nice. Still, kudos to C4 for showing this.

“I think the one thing I like most about real world people moving onto the internet is how much they have to deal with the same crap as the rest of us”
You really mean that? There’s a bit of nasty schadenfreude in that. I’m sure you don’t mean it they way I understand it.

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