Tuesday, 15th of January, 2002

Here is a fantastic interview with Richard Dawkins, initiated as a response to September 11, but covering much more ground. It's annoyingly formatted, from a Japanese site, but the interviewer asks good questions (it just doesn't differentiate between the interviewer's voice and Dawkins').
Dawkins discusses his anti-religious outlook, and how it's been confirmed by the events on September 11. Later he discusses the fact that his gene-centric neo-Darwinism (see The Selfish Gene etc) doesn't imply a dark social Darwinist picure, doesn't preclude morality, doesn't negate free will etc. He talks about how the human brain, because of its immense capacities (and see many of the writings of Daniel Dennett for much more on this), can cause us to behave in pretty anti-Darwinian ways; about how the welfare state is anti-Darwinian (and something he supports) and so on. In case you thought neo-Darwinist equals right-wing and Stephen J Gould et al equals left-wing, you can read Dawkins distancing himself from a kind of Thatcherite, "Darwinian", dog-eat-dog world of the survival of the fittest (which would equate to the extreme laissez-faire capitalist position). A quote:

Darwinism shouldn't be used as a justification for anything. Darwinism is just the explanation of how life came to be the way it is. That doesn't mean we have to follow it.

This is just the sort of thing I'd like to hear more from left-wing scientific thinkers. You don't need to water down your thinking on genetics and evolution or anything else, because you're scared that the way things are implies the way things should be… It should be made clear that ethics is separate from the brute facts of how things are; and that in a complex yet deterministic universe, our wondrous distinguishing feature is that we can exercise so much independent control over ourselves and our environment, and with this great power comes, of course, a responsibility to behave ethically (and to work out what ethical behaviour should be).

Bloggercode?. Oh well, ok:
B7 d t k+ s u- f- i o x e- l- c–
Am I a geek now?

Monday, 14th of January, 2002

Matthew Herbert's music (whether as Herbert, Radio Boy, Dr Rockit or Wishmountain) has always been too housey for my taste – the rhythms are just stilted and tedious, despite the fact that he gets called "funky" all the time, and despite the fact that he's an unargued innovative genius with the sampler… [Nevertheless, his recent Bjork remix on the Pagan Poetry single is fantastic!]
His politics, though, I can't fail him on, and his latest Radio Boy album project is fascinating. Go to The Mechanics of Destruction website to find out all about it. He uses sounds from various questionable sources to create a kind of anti-globalistation audio polemic, without the use of lyrics. Sound sources include McDonalds, Starbucks, the Sun newspaper, etc etc… And the album is conceived to be non-profit. It gets given away (at cost price) at gigs. Might be worth going to see him just to pick up a copy!

Here's what Herbert wrote in the current Wire magazine's 2001 Rewind section:

You are either with us or against us, stated George Bush. 2001 was the year of choices: whether you bought the 11 September merchandise or not; whether you wrote to your MP about Afghanistan, Iraq, Columbia, Turkey or the creation of a Palestinian state; whether you continued to use Esso petrol when they destroyed the Kyoto treaty; whether you boycotted Pret A Manger now that it is part of McDonalds; whether you cheered when Jeffrey Archer went down; whether the mainstream music industry continued to reward mediocrity; whether you thought "Get Ur Freak On" and "I'm A Slave 4 U" by Britney put a bite-size hole in the underground club scene; whether you guessed which editors, journalists and broadcasters had removed the politics from our interviews; or whether you still believe this organised noise we call music can change it all; or whether you did nothing. I've decided… if you're asking me to choose, George, I'm against you.

I'm with Herbert…

Sunday, 13th of January, 2002

And here's a little post-script to the above… Terry Jones, of Monty Python fame, writes in the Observer about the War on Terrorism, with typical incisive wit:
I remain, sir, Haggard of the Hindu Kush.

Saturday, 12th of January, 2002

My oh my! It's been a long time since I last posted! Oh well…

Strong plans for a re-design, I hope, and then I'll put up a best-of list for 2001 as well. In the meantime, some articles I've come across after reading this week's Spectrum in the Sydney Morning Herald.
An article by Linda Grant in today's Spectrum lead me to the Guardian's website to find the original article: The hate that will not die – about the growth of anti-semitism in the Arab world. It's actually a pretty even-handed article, that acknowledges the brutality of the state of Israel, and the equal racism of Ariel Sharon, but points out the scary amount of anti-semitism and gullibility about Jews in much of the Arab world, which goes far beyond opposition of Israel. Anti-Zionism often equates to anti-semitism, and Zionism (a complex, many-faced thing) gets simplified (so that anyone who supports the existence of a state of Israel is automatically a Zionist, and therefore a support of the atrocities of the extremist government).
It's particularly sad that the Left, who are supposed to be anti-racist, take on board so much of the rhetoric about Israel and Zionism…

Anyway, some related articles: the letters page about Grant's article has some interesting commentary from left-wing Jews, among others; and Ian Baruma, also of the Guardian, writes here about Jews and Zionists, and the blinkered thinking of some commentators on the Left (among others).

What's a left-wing Jew to do?…