:: gia’s blog ::

Last year I did a run-down of my year and thought I’d do the same again this year.
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via WaterKula

During the Republican primaries I was thinking “You know, if McCain wins the nomination and ends up winning the election, it’ll be OK. He’s not completely batshit insane, certainly compared to the Bush White House. So if it happens, I’ll be OK with it.” I was always going to vote Democrat, of course, but wasn’t massively worried about McCain.

I have now completely changed my mind. With this whole Sarah Palin thing, McCain has shown that he is clearly chaotic and dangerous. He should not be in charge of a country which has so very much at stake. America has a chance to step out of the darkness, a chance to wake-up, a chance to join this wonderful world we live in. This will NOT happen with McCain in the White House. If he puts so very little thought into who he chooses as his running mate – the person who could end up being the Vice President of the country for 4 whole years- what amount of contemplation will go into, say, starting another bloody war?
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The very wonderful Bill Maher has a documentary coming out this autumn called ‘Religulous‘. I am so seeing this.

The very wonderful Bill Maher has a documentary coming out this autumn called ‘Religulous‘. I am so seeing this.

Some more videos from behind-the-scenes on Brian’s new Horizon on Time are up on YouTube.

The documentary explores the idea of Time – what we think it is, what it isn’t and asks ‘does it exist at all?’ He talks to all kinds of people from the Director of the US Naval Observatory which keeps the Master Clock, to cosmologist Max Tegmark (who acts out what it would look like if he were to fall into a black hole), to theoretical physicist Neil Turok who talks about how Time may *not* have had a beginning. He explores Einstein’s theory of Time as well as newer theories of ‘granulated’ Time…

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Some more videos from behind-the-scenes on Brian’s new Horizon on Time are up on YouTube.

The documentary explores the idea of Time – what we think it is, what it isn’t and asks ‘does it exist at all?’ He talks to all kinds of people from the Director of the US Naval Observatory which keeps the Master Clock, to cosmologist Max Tegmark (who acts out what it would look like if he were to fall into a black hole), to theoretical physicist Neil Turok who talks about how Time may *not* have had a beginning. He explores Einstein’s theory of Time as well as newer theories of ‘granulated’ Time…

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I am an atheist. I wasn’t raised in a religious household – though I did my first Communion and went to a couple Sunday School classes because my grandparents insisted- but certainly never believed in what I picked up about Christianity through osmosis. Before I starting thinking about it properly, I believed there was ‘something more’, but was never able to really define what that meant. I used to facetiously say that I believed in The Force.

When I was 19, I saw the film ‘Jesus Christ Superstar‘ (US) and said to my friend, ‘Judas is so cool!’. She laughed and I had no reason why. I hadn’t learned that Judas was hated by Christians for betraying Jesus. When I learned this, it seemed truly bizarre:
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I am an atheist. I wasn’t raised in a religious household – though I did my first Communion and went to a couple Sunday School classes because my grandparents insisted- but certainly never believed in what I picked up about Christianity through osmosis. Before I starting thinking about it properly, I believed there was ‘something more’, but was never able to really define what that meant. I used to facetiously say that I believed in The Force.

When I was 19, I saw the film ‘Jesus Christ Superstar‘ (US) and said to my friend, ‘Judas is so cool!’. She laughed and I had no reason why. I hadn’t learned that Judas was hated by Christians for betraying Jesus. When I learned this, it seemed truly bizarre:
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Wow! I only just read that Phil Plait is the new President of the James Randi Educational Foundation!!! Yayayayay! That is sooo massively cool. I know Phil, you know, he’s like my friend and everything. I know the President of JREF. I totally do.

… of the Dinosaurs.

Artwork by Derek Chatwood

… of the Dinosaurs.

Artwork by Derek Chatwood

What a great time I’ve had over the past five days! As you will have already known, Phil Plait was over in the UK to visit CERN with us over the weekend. You can read about it on his site and, of course, the podcast he and Brian did will be going live soon, too.

Last night, Phil did a talk at Skeptics in the Pub. I was so happy to see Andrew Jaffe and Violet Berlin who both wanted to meet Phil. They only got a few brief moments with him as Phil was mobbed by the throngs of people there.

Phil is now on his way back home. I think he had an excellent time and hopefully he’ll be back soon.

This afternoon, I’m off to the House of Commons for the Intelligent Robots in Science and Society seminar. I’m really looking forward to it. I met up with Julian Mayers this morning (he’s producer of the CERN Podcast) and found out that he’s going as well! Weeeeee!!

After today… X Files…

I want to explain why I think many proponents of Global Warming are ‘fundamentalist’ in their beliefs and behaviour. This is prompted by my previous post and the conversation with Christian X Burnham in the comments.

I started recycling before it was fashionable. I used to walk carrying bags filled with glass, paper and cans to the nearest recycling containers. Then I used to ride my bike with all the recycling. I did this for well over 10 years before my council started home collections. I used washable nappies with my son. I’ve not used disposable menstrual products for almost 10 years now. I’ve used cloth shopping bags one out of two times I go shopping for almost 10 years now. I filled my toilet cisterns with bottles of water eons ago and when it’s just my son. I have never left the tap running when I brush my teeth and go INSANE when Brian does it. I have a water meter. Half of the lightbulbs in my house are those horrible fluorescent things. I’m obsessive about turning off lights in rooms I’m not using and regularly go around turning off all the lights Brian and my son have left on (and shouting at them about it). I wash my clothes at 30 degrees (C). I’ve never owned a clothes drier. I’ve owned three different cars – two were Fiat 500s, one is Brian’s old Ford Focus- all of them were bought when I was working daily in a place which took 1.5 hours each way to get to via public transport (namely: Sky Sport, Network of the World, Three Mills for Sunshine). When my son was in nursery school I would ride 20 miles a day on my bike taking him to and from school. When he was in primary school, we’d take the bus… until I started on Sunshine. Whereas before I got rid of my other cars fairly soon after finishing my job, I’ve kept this car because I need it. Either I drive him to school in 15 minutes or it takes up to 45 minutes on the bus – each way, there, back, there, back. I don’t have the time for an extra 2 hours of travelling a day to take public transport.

I could go on with my ‘green credentials’, but I hope you get the point.

I’ve been pretty keen on cutting down on ‘rubbish’ for a while so have recycled and reused for ages. I’m positive it’s because of this public service film that was always on tv when I was growing up. I grew up in the oil-crisis 70s and so have always turned off lights and kept my heating down. It’s just how I was raised.

So I do all this because I want to, it makes me feel good and because I want the planet to be a nice place to live – I don’t want air pollution and litter everywhere. But that’s really my motivation. I don’t think I have the right to force anyone else to do any of these things. I’d like it if other people wanted to have clean air and less rubbish, too, but I can’t force anyone to want that.

The difference between me and a Global Warming fundie is as vast as the difference between someone who helps an old lady across the road and the Taliban. Let me explain.

Doing good things for other people is hardwired into us. Empathy and selflessness are needed for the survival of our species. Equally we need to be selfish in order to ensure the survival of ourselves as individuals. People constantly have an internal battle between being selfish and selfless. Some lean more towards one than the other.

Many religions worked out that being selfless is better for everyone. If *everyone* helped everyone, no one would need to be selfish. So they wrote all kinds of stuff about loving thy neighbour and helping the poor and giving to charity and forgiving and generally being a good person to everyone. Great.

Now one doesn’t need to be religious in order to do good things for other people, that’s clear, but equally one doesn’t need to be an atheist to do bad things (I wonder what percentage of criminals in jail believe in God?). Still many – not all- religious people think that one can’t truly be a good person unless they believe in God. Most religious people will tolerate non-believers, but when it comes down to it, a non-believer is a bad person because they deny the ultimate Good ie God. For many Christians and Muslims, if you don’t believe in God you are evil and it doesn’t matter if you spend your life doing charity work and giving all your money to the poor, you are, as one of my relatives believes of me, an evil, nasty horrible person who will burn in Hell. Your deeds do not matter, your intention does. This, incidentally, is why it’s perfectly acceptable and desirable for a fundie Muslim to blow themselves and many others up – because their *intention* is good.

One step up from that is the religious person who doesn’t want there to be ANYONE alive who doesn’t believe exactly what they believe. They use physical and psychological threats in order to make other people comply. Some resort to actual violence.

I think where we are at right now is the ‘psychological threat’ stage of the whole Global Warming thing. What is the difference between ‘If you don’t change your whole entire life and do everything inhumanly possible to save the planet YOU WILL DIE A HORRIBLE WEATHER RELATED DEATH!!!’ and ‘If you don’t believe in God and follow every single rule he has decreed YOU WILL BURN FOREVER IN THE FIREY PITS OF HELL!!!’…? And when someone says, ‘Hey, I think there might be a different/better way of doing things’ they are met with cries of ‘HEATHEN!!!’. And if someone says, ‘I don’t want to stop driving my car/wear a burkha’ the fundies try everything they can to force that person to do something they don’t want to do. And we can’t even question things in polite company for fear of being branded an evil person and getting shouted and screamed at by a fundie.

The other week Deek/Dean Whitbread (the guy in this video, Google him, I won’t give him a link) actually told me during a discussion about ‘the environment’ that he couldn’t see any reason why people needed to fly in planes. When I tried telling him, ‘No, you don’t have any reason to take a plane, other people do’, he went mental shouting ‘blahblahlah! No they don’t! anticapitalistnonesense!!! blahblahblah!!’ I tried to say that it was his choice if he didn’t ever want to fly again, but he couldn’t force anyone else to not fly, but that was met with, ‘80ssocialistnonsense!!! blahblahblah!!!!’

I don’t see why that’s any different from someone who is anti-choice when it comes to abortion. Can anyone tell me what the difference is?

This is the big problem with the whole Global Warming thing, Environmentalists have become Fundamentalists… And really the claims of ‘But it’s too late not to do anything drastic!!’ sound a whole lot like, ‘The end is nigh!’ Don’t believe me? Why not read what Patrick Moore, founder member of Greenpeace, thinks of what the environmental movement he started has become…

I am very, very wary of believing anything I’m told without questioning it. As I get older I analyse my ‘beliefs’ more and more and try and make sure I can rationally justify everything that I do, say or think. Once I started doing that I found a lot of things that I previously believed were built on nothing more concrete than, well, belief. So whereas I see the valid points in the whole Global Warming thing, I’m not a ‘true believer’. The good things I do aren’t motivated by Global Warming and I think there may actually be some other things we need to focus on immediately that are more important than Global Warming. (I don’t think saying that invalidates any of the ‘environmentally friendly’ things I do… does it?)

If you think I’m a bad or evil person for thinking that Global Warming isn’t the single most pressing problem the human race faces, then I invite you to look at your own beliefs and work out what they are built on. Here are some questions to get you thinking:

• Do you want to help all people on the planet or do you think that humans are like a cancer and only do harm to the planet?
• Do the good things people do for the environment, sometimes even unknowingly, count even if they don’t believe in Global Warming, or do they have to support Global Warming for it to really make a difference?
• Do the good things people do for the environment like having their loft insulated and their windows draft-proofed count even if they also do ‘bad’ things like drive short distances they could walk?
• Is there a point at which people are doing enough for the environment or can they always do more?
• Is Western civilisation built entirely upon ‘sins’ like money, waste and science?
• Is progress bad?
• Do you think the government should legislate to force everyone to live ‘ethically’?
• Do you think people should be punished for their ‘sins’ such as driving cars, taking a plane, using a clothes drier instead of hanging their laundry up?
• Is Jeremy Clarkson the devil in disguise?

That last one is a trick question.

I decided to try a bit of video…(about 6 minutes long)

Watch Video

I’m watching loads of TED Talks as Brian and I are off to TED in a few weeks (look at Friday’s speakers *ahem*). There’s just so very many excellent talks… I saw this one this morning and thought at least a few people here would be interested in it.