This hiatus is going to extend for a bit. Some things I'd like to mention, though.

THING THE FIRST: ajodasso, a skilled poet and medievalist, has a chapbook for sale. I am no good at poetry criticism, and am unfortunately still stuck in "I knows what I likes" mode, but I likes her stuff. Maybe you should consider buying it? It is only $5US.

THING THE SECOND:Go see this movie:



THING THE THIRD: Before reading this article, I read one of the books mentioned within, and started to read another. Fantasy noir is basically my favourite sub-sub-sub-subⁿ-genre at the moment, and the stories I have in my head for writin' would fit in very nicely. I think maybe you guys should think about checkin' out this stuff.

That's all for now. I'll try not to vanish for too long, guys.

I'll be back as soon as I feel better. Meantime, browsing the internet with ads never ceases to amuse:

A little while ago, Doctor Nokes of Unlocked Wordhoard asked what sort of courses an aspiring medievalist ought to take at university. Amidst the cries of "Latin!" and "German!" (I need to get on that), one chap recommended mathematics. He points out the interplay between a culture's mathematical understanding and its worldview, pointing to some interesting facts about various dead cultures which I didn't know:

[T]he Mayans had a numeration system that was uniquely suited to astronomy but sucked for computation. Despite having a zero (necessary for advanced arithmetic), they had a mixed-base number system that made even simple addition difficult; consequently they had exquisitely accurate calendars but not much else using math. The ancient Egyptians had a kick-ass multiplication algorithm that actually may be superior to ours, and they had a fraction system that was so useful that it stuck around through medieval times. But their fraction system relied heavily on table lookups and memorization, and so while an amazing variety of arithmetic was do-able, solving equations of the type we teach junior high schoolers to do nowadays was well-nigh impossible. And thus because of the way the Egyptians structured their fractions, the world's technological development was kneecapped until the invention of modern fractions and decimals.

This is fascinating as all hell. Do any of you very clever people know anything more about this sort of thing?

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Other interesting medievalisms (also from Nokes, who is a great resource), is this factoid. In what is now a part of modern Russia, a heating system unique to Korean architecture has been uncovered. I didn't even know that there was a tenth century Korean empire/kingdom that stretched out that far. This is fascinating stuff.

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The whole damn medieval blogosphere is abuzz about the recently-uncovered Staffordshire Hoard, so I would be remiss in my blogging duties if I didn't mention it at all. Besides it is REALLY FREAKIN' COOL. A Flickr set can be found o'er here, a feature for which I greatly admire the museums and art galleries in question. [They are also using Twitter, apparently. The tag is #staffshoard] For some live feeds, see the Wordhoard.

The hoard dates from the late seventh to early eighth centuries, which means it is only just earlier than the characters of my thesis! [Or potentially around the same time, although that seems unlikely.] The king I am studying, Ecgfrith, was a hostage in Mercia as Penda was invading Northumbria- and Mercia is where the hoard was found. So I am saying that there is a tiny, teensy weensy chance that the hoard is contemporary with the subject of my thesis! A shame my thesis looks at Northumbrian relations with Ireland, and so the two are completely unrelated.

The composition of the goldhoard seems to be mostly martial at this point- sword fittings, bits from sword belts, that kind of thing. Most goldwork is 'feminine'- brooches and the like, or coins. So far as I'm aware, no coins have been found as yet either. Intriguing.

Some of the comments I've seen out there are surprised at the level of quality of the goldwork, but I'm not. Anglo-Saxon craftsmen were some of the best of their time, and this period is a high point in English culture.

I'm going to stop rambling incoherently now, but you guys really should check out the Flickr set. This is freakin' cool.

If Goodkind had actually written the philosophical treatise he imagines his books to be, he’d be guilty of creating strawman arguments that are so absurd they make a Volokh Conspiracy comment thread look like a reasoned and fair minded intellectual exchange. The bad guys in The Sword of Truth are all communist caricatures. They have no normal human emotions, but rather are propelled to their actions only by a fierce hatred of life and freedom...

Susan Simpson, of the brand-new yet flourishing law blog The View From LL2 on Terry Goodkind's The Sword of Truth.

I loved that series as a teen, before I realised just how hateful it really, really is. Gang rape! Every few chapters! Wee! Individualism is the Only Way, and Individualism means Subsuming your Will to the Great Richard "Gary Sue" Cypher. Woo!

I've been meaning to post this for about a week:


Oh, Carl Sagan.

Download it here.

Other things in my 'Blog Fodder' bookmark folder which are tangentially related:

Crazy Krishna Creationists disbelieve in the moon landings. Because, of course, the Baghavad Gita and other holy texts say that the moon is inhospitable, so how could humans have possible gone there? Never say that creationist lunacy is limited to Christians.

Luckily India's government doesn't listen to these crackpots: their own mission may have found water on the moon. The relevance of this to future space exploration and colonisation is obvious.

Seriously, how neat is it to live in these times?

So asks a cock-stain vice chancellor at Buckingham University.

The answer? Is NO.

No, you stupid doucheweasel, women's bodies are not a perk of your job. No, they are not something at which you may myopically leer. No, they are not something you may wish you could touch with your slimy, greasy little hands.

No.

I hope that a female student on your campus hits you in the fucking nuts. With a cricket bat.

This applies to all us dudes, guys. Women aren't there for us to fucking fantasise about. We are a bunch of arrogant fuckwits when it comes to women's bodies, but surely we can learn that they are not for us. Right?

Fucking hell, I thought this shit was over with two decades ago.

Becoming Charlemagne: Europe, Baghdad, and the Empires of A.D. 800, Jeff Sypeck.

I am a terrible person, you know. Jeff Sypeck sent me a copy of his book over a year ago, in return for a donation to the Paralyzed Veterans of America. I was happy to do so, because I am pretty fond of disabled people getting better care, and also because it meant that I received a copy of an excellent book about one of my favourite medieval figures. At the time, I promised that I would review the book right here. It has taken over a year to get around to it.

Becoming Charlemagne narrates in vivid detail the events that led a Germanic barbarian king to become Charlemagne, a name now associated with the idea of a greater Europe, the Holy Roman Empire -a term Karl would have never heard- and tainted by Hitlerian pseudo-history. It is not a complete biography of the man, and I think Sypeck did the right thing by focusing on the handful of years surrounding the coronation and constructing an image of the era in as much detail as possible.

The book is split in two parts; the first half details the setting, the empires and peoples of the late 8thC. There is one chapter on each of Aachen, Byzantium, Alcuin,¹ Baghdad, and the Jewish peoples of Europe. The second draws together narrative threads from the first to construct the events which help define the next millenium or so of European history. The first half of Becoming Charlemagne is the most fascinating to me- I have studied Charlemagne before, and the details of his accession to imperator do not intrigue me nearly as much as the Sypeck's portrayal of the powers of the time. Your mileage may vary.

As a general rule, this is most unusual for me. The kind of history I prefer to read is the dry, dull stuff so derided by generations of bored school students. I like political history, the careful analysis of sources, and king-names (even if I can never remember them). Then again, I enjoy etymology.² Sypeck doesn't write this kind of history, although his love affair with the oft-ambiguous source is clear in his notes and his attention to detail.

What Sypeck writes is more narrative, more flavoured with real people, real consequences, real emotions. He describes the medieval world in taste and scent as much as in political movement. One can imagine the riotous marketplaces of Baghdad, the mud-splattered contempt of Greek emissaries to the pathetic German capital of Aachen, the exhaustion of Isaac as he leads the elephant Abul Abaz across the entire world.³ The court of the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid is described in terms which make me wish a West Wing-style television drama would be set therein:

When duty called [Harun] rode into battle or made the pilgrimage to Mecca; otherwise, he quietly enjoyed his world of earthly delights. He delighted in the company of his pious and wealthy cousin Zubayda, who was also his favourite wife and the mother of his heir apparent. His friends all came to him, among them the physician Jubrail bin Bakhtishu, who dined with him nightly, and Ibn Abi Maryam al-Madani, a storyteller and legal expert who lazed around the palace and haunted the harem.

These kind of details brings a level of detail to the political and social changes rippling across Europe a clarity and a narrative power exactly as required in popular history. Sypeck does an excellent job.

He is careful not to get carried away and ascribe as historical fact things which his imagination has conjured, but sometimes these things are some potent images. The events leading to King Karl becoming Karolus serenissimus Augustus are exciting and bloody, and would make for wealth-making film. After the famous botched blinding attack on Pope Leo, the pontiff escapes over a wall, perhaps lowered by his chamberlain. Sypeck speculates about details which medieval chroniclers would never give us:⁴

Albinus the chamberlain sneaking along a cloister in the dark or bribing a guard to look the other way; the pope, accustomed to fine robes and flattery, being lowered over the wall like a latrine bucket; and the furious Paschalius and Campulus [the conspirators] berating their flunkies at daybreak while wondering, with growing desperation, what in God's name they were going to do next.

Screw the latest cartoon series from the 80s, scriptwriters. Write me a movie about that.

[An aside: I have long bemoaned the loss of the Frankish epics and grammars to history, despite Charlemagne's attempt to preserve them. Yet who could not grin at Sypeck's note that "the monks who collected the old pagan songs probably had to extract them from weird old coots"?]

If I must, as I always do, bring up a note of discord in Becoming Charlemagne, it is this: there is so little about the women. There is more than often there is in work on the period, if only because of Empress Irene, of Byzantium. Yet aside from noting that Karl loved his daughters, and turned a blind eye to their affairs, there is little about the women in this world. Is this a simple lack caused by lack of evidence? Almost certainly.

Yet when speaking of Irene, the impressively fierce empress who blinded her own son to ensure her rise to power, Sypeck falls back on stereotypically gendered language. This is incredibly irking. She is described as 'brooding' over her fragile reign with 'motherly zeal'. Seriously? Motherly zeal? This woman had her own son blinded. 'Motherly', whatever that means, is the last word I would use to describe her. When describing the moment of her son's butchering, he wonders if she prayed for a moment for Heaven to help for the way she is.

I find it difficult to believe that he would write such words into the mouth of any fierce, male usurper. Why write them into the mouth of a fierce, female usurper? Irene is one of the powerful women of the whole period, and she would surely not brook such disrespect.

On the subjects of Becoming Charlemagne, on the rise of Karl to become Charlemagne, on the intricate and fragile international state of Aachen-Rome-Constantinople-Baghdad, and on the eventual collapse of the empire, Sypeck writes with careful attention to detail and -to mix metaphors- paints an intricate picture of medieval Europe as the western half of the continent changes into something new.

I recommend Becoming Charlemagne as an excellent starting place, and a brilliant finishing work. It is a good book to start reading about Charlemagne, and his time, and the middle years of the early middle ages. It is a good book to get some personal details about peoples and lands. High schoolers and undergraduates in history who don't know very much will alike find it a good place to start- as will anyone who gets their learnin' about the middle ages from the movies.



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1: He is just as fascinating as any city or Empire, so I was pleased that he got a whole chapter almost to himself. Go Alcuin!
2: I'm also really exciting at parties.
3: Someone should novelise that particular journey. No, really. I'd buy it.
4: Icelandic saga writers, on the other hand, would have. This may be the crucial point about the difference between the historical sagas and 'history'.

It is poetry Wednesday! In honour of the mood I was in for much of last week,¹ this week I present an exerpt (ll. 1-26) from the opening lines of the Old English poem The Seafarer. You should delve into Google and find a translation of the whole thing- it's only a long hundred (120) lines long, and it's well worth the read. The edition is the modified teaching edition from Mitchell and Robinson's A Guide to Old English, although the typos are all mine. So is the fairly-literal translation, part done in class, part at home. [The lack of division between half-lines is the fault of LJ.]

Mæg ic be me sylfum soðgied wrecan,
siþas secgan, hu ic geswincdagum
earfoðhwile oft þrowade,
bitre breostceare gebiden hæbbe,
gecunnad in ceole cearselda fela,
atol yþa gewealc. Þar mec oft bigeat
nearo nihtwaco æt nacan stefnan,
þonne he be clifum cnossað. Calde geþrungen
wæron mine fet, forste gebunden,
caldum clommum, þær þa ceare seofedun
hat'ymb heortan; hungor innan slat
merewerges mod. Þæt se mon ne wat
þe him on foldan fægrost limpeð,
hu ic earmcearig iscealdne sæ
winter wunade wræccan lastum,
winemægum bidroren,
bihongen hrimgicelum; hægl scurum fleag.
Þær ic ne gehyrde butan hlimman sæ,
iscaldne wæg. Hwilum ylfete song
dyde ic me to gomene, ganetes hleoþor
ond huilpan sweg fore hleahtre wera,
mæw singende fore medodrince.
Stormas þær stanclifu beotan, þær him stearn oncwæð
isigfeþera; ful oft þæt earn bigeal,
urigfeþra; ne æng heleomæga
feasceaftig ferð frefran meahte...

( Translation )


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1: Although not the weather! Aside from the apocalypse this morning, the past few days have been humid and warmth-soaked. You know, I don't think I've ever even seen a natural icicle, let alone been hung about with them?

Today, Wednesday 23rd September, the world ends.



Red clouds blanket the earth, devouring our citizens.



The capital is already overwhelmed.

This is something I need to remember:

You would not tell a person with spinocerebellar degeneration that it's their fault the cells in their cerebellum are dying; that they could fix themselves if they were as worthy as other people; that they could walk if they were good enough; that they could wake up if they weren't so pathetic. And you would never tell someone with a brain aneurysm that that thing in their head waiting to rupture and kill them in one of the most painful ways imaginable wouldn't be there if they didn't SUCK SO BAD. [...]

So why, oh why, oh why, would you ever tell yourself that the chemicals or nerves or whateverthefuck in your brain are malfunctioning because you are a worthless human being? That shit doesn't happen.

marika_kailaya on depression, and the brain.

I mean, it's all true. But remembering it? Is hard.

A documentary about swords, narrated by John Rhys-Davies,and features interviews from Mortensen and That Guy Who Did Darth Vader's Fight Scene. There should be not reason for me not to be excited about it, yet my glee is tempered with caution.

The documentary is entitled 'Reclaiming the Blade' and I must ask: reclaiming it from what? The sword is one of the most glorified tools in human history, an icon of the age of chivalry, of Arthurian legend, of holy knights and courage in the face of adversity. There is nothing from which to reclaim the ideal of the sword!

The trailer opens with "At our first need of defense from oppression... it was born." Yet the sword has been far more used as a weapon for oppressing people than a tool for freedom. It was expensive to manufacture, useless for any other purpose than war. A peasant uprising would use their tools as improvised weapons. Unskilled warrior levies relied upon spears, bows, axes: tools as much as weapons.

The sword in modern fantasy is often noted as two-edged, that it can be used to defend the helpless as easily as butcher them. Yet unlike an axe or a bow, it is an object only suited for murder. In this, it was like most modern weaponry. I would hope that the documentary itself acknowledges this, and points out the bloody history of the blade. Yet, with an opening like that on the trailer, I expect it to be a glorification.

So, I am cautious. I think I'd probably watch it if I found it for sale somewhere, though.

When I was speaking with the Muslim students a while back, they presented something I will generously call an argument for God. It is something we've all seen before, about things which are unseen in the real world being unimaginable and ergo God must exist because we can imagine Him. Moreover, all cultures have a God, or at least gods, in their religious framework, pointing to a universal God.

I responded that if that were the case, then surely dragons must exist. After all, most cultures have dragons, or dragon-like creatures, in their mythologies and dragons are pretty dang neat. It would be cool if they existed! [If only because their six-limbed body plan would fuck with taxonomists.]

They responded that as there are mighty fossils, and big lizards and the like, that it is not inconceivable that dragons are simply humans mutating existing-things with their imagination. Which is pretty reasonable. Unfortunately, it utterly shatters any pretense that the argument they presented means anything.

One of the first things my old introductory religion textbook discusses is a variety of theories about the development of religions.¹ Some of these are very nineteenth century and paternalistic, some are crazy (hi there Freud), some are reasonable. The point however is that it is fairly clear that religions have developed.

'Basic'² religions, the term for religions practiced by many indigenous peoples and the like, have features greatly reduced or altered in modern religions. Taboo, specialist language, animism, magic, sacrifice- I can point to each of these items in modern Catholicism, and they remain in many other religions less obviously. Yet not all such religions include gods of any shape, let alone of a shape that could be called monotheistic or universal. Some religions focus on the spirits of departed ancestors, others upon the primeval spirits/local gods of the elements, specific locations or the like. If 'God' was truly universal, concealed in all world religions, then surely He would be found within those forms which have not developed in the direction of organised religion?³

Obviously this only applies to the 'universal God' argument put forward by these guys. Many monotheists with whom I've had this argument claim that the non-monotheistic religions and belief-structures of the world are the work of devils or angels, trying to lead or push people around the true God.

So their God is no more universal than my dragon, and just as easily explained. If some religions start with spirit worship (let us pray to the lightning that it will not strike us as it did the Other People), they may gradually develop in the direction of polytheisms and then monotheisms. It is quite easy to see a potential leap from 'things possessing human-like will, which may be supplicated' to 'god-spirits' and then 'only one of them is the true god'. In fact, we see something very akin to that development in Ancient Egypt.

Equally, a culture may instead retain their rich network of spirits, beasts, magic, and storytelling, weaving it into the kind of luxurious tapestry that makes religion so fascinating.

The thing which I do not understand is this: I was speaking to these students on the grounds of Sydney University, which stands upon land taken from the Gadigal peoples of the Eora nation.⁴ They are a people amongst many others who hold some of the richest and most fascinating beliefs I have ever had the good fortune to encounter. A group of mythologies which only include God-like figures rarely, if ever. An alien tapestry of surreal beauty which Islam and other such monotheisms can not even emulate.

How could they stand in this country and claim that their God is seen everywhere?



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1: The very first thing is a discussion of the definition of religion which is way harder than you think and a big part of why I didn't like Dennett's Breaking the Spell.
2: The textbook's term, not mine. Hopfe and Woodward, Religions of the World, p. 14. I have the ninth edition; Amazon stocks the eleventh.
3: In case creeping exhaustion makes me unclear, allow me to say this: so-called 'basic' religions are not 'primitive' or atavistic in any shape. They have developed exactly as much as any other religion in the world, just in different ways. Exactly as all modern forms of life have spent as long evolving as other modern forms, to resort to bad analogy.
4: I am absolutely not qualified to discuss this. I am very much a colonist, and I only learned teeny pieces of Aboriginal mythology in school. I may need to be hit with a clue-by-four here.

There will be a proper Sunnandæg hæðenum post later on, but there are some quick things I want to talk about first.¹ Just briefly. The last of the three is important, so if you're in a hurry you could just read that one?


My new favourite atheist blogger, the Blag Hag, yesterday organised a piratical protest against a pestilential preacherman.² Watching his hate-filled drivel flail against their antics will warm the cockles of the coldest breosthord.


I heard about this ages ago, and forgot to mention it: a new book published by Yale about the Muhammed cartoon debacle will not include the cartoons in question. [H/T] The pointlessness of this is what offends me. I applaud the idea of a book discussing this sort of idiocy, but what is the point of such a collection of paper if it cannot include the source of the controversy? It would be akin to releasing a book about palaeography without including a single example of a medieval manuscript. Utterly without point.

I have long wanted to own this t-shirt, but various of my friends and loved ones refuse to allow me. Truly, I would probably get beaten to death wearing such a thing, so their concern is appreciated. Yet this is not a case of deliberately seeking to offend; it is a case of writing about a thing that did offend some people. Including the things in question is only good scholarship. Not including them for fear of causing offence is the opposite.


I've mentioned engaging with liberal Muslims lately, and this is a thing I hope to continue doing for a little while longer. Conversations with one of my co-workers, the effervescent Nailya, have discovered that she herself is one such specimen.

She has consented to be interviewed by me on the topic. I have never interviewed anyone in my life,³ so I throw this question to you guys: what do you think is important to ask her? Ideas for questions, and requests for a format are welcome.

[At the moment the vague plan is an audio-only interview, and I have some ideas for questions, but I'm interested in what you want.]


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1: I need to find more time to blog, because there is so much neat stuff out there.
2: Translating Old English does horrible things to me.
3: Not strictly true- I interviewed the owner of my local gamestore in my old hometown, once. Thing a) is, that was for schoolin' and thing b) is, I sucked at it. I'm a scholar, not a journalist!

This week has Goddamn sucked, for the sort of reasons that I don't go into publicly anymore. I just have to say that everyone who says that exercise will drag you out of depression is either a fucking liar, or has never actually been depressed. Yes, I said in the first week that it improved my mood- but at the start of that week my mood was not nearly as bad as it has been this week. This week? Exercise made me worse, not better.

I did it all, but got almost no university work done as a compromise. Fucking woo.

I haven't yet rewarded m'self -and I'm not sure that I deserve it- but I will go to one of my local gaming shops tomorrow. When I was in there the other day, I spotted some In Nomine gamebooks which I owned not, on sale for cheap. I think I shall purchase them, if they are still there.

I'm thinking of stepping things up a notch next week, and doing a little more on the off-days. Maybe. We'll see how we go. In the meantime, Week 4 of running is going to SUCK. OW.

Practical Tokens of Affection, Katie West.

This is kind of a weird experience for me, because I don't read a lot of poetry and I don't know a lot about photography, and Katie West is both of those things with their powers combined. It means that I think it is really great, but people get upset with me when I write such short reviews as "this is super neat you guys!" Maybe I should write something a little longer.

I discovered Katie West when she wrote a review of Joey Comeau's Overqualified, and said pretty much everything anyone could ever say about it. [I'm not kidding; go read that review.] I gave her an admiring once-over, liked what I saw, and hung about. Waiting.

Practical Tokens of Affection is her limited edition second collection. It is poetry and microfiction as well as a lot of self-portraits. Some of them are nude, and some of them aren't, and all of them are sexy and vulnerable and proud and fierce and other adjectives. Wait. I'm rambling, and doing this backwards.

Practical Tokens of Affection is Katie West's first collection of poetry and short fictions, and she includes a selection of her famous nude and semi-nude and sexy self-portraiture amongst the words. And the words! Practical Tokens is fucking adorable. Katie writes about love, and sex, and betrayal. She writes about being in love with someone who doesn't love you, but they do, only not really and you don't really love them but it's aching and beautiful and the feel of their skin is smooth and perfect so you don't give a damn. It's glorious and lovely and romantic and hot and sweaty and moonlit and dusty and dirty and so utterly human and gleaming-eyed and you just have to love it.

The photos add punctuation, rolling blue-tinted skin and proud-vulnerable tits and edged-soft eyes and flowing hair, which all intermingle with her prose and poetry to make it more than either a collection of words or a photoset. It creates something personal out of a thing which may have been tawdry, or pretentious; it makes it yours. Which it is, because every poem is about me, every photo is about a woman I've loved, and the book is dedicated to 'those who read'; both.

It is as pretentious as fuck, and I love it. Like the latter half of my bizarre simile, it isn't perfect. The pages are a touch too glossy, the construction a little obviously self-published, and occasionally the writing feels a little self-aware. Like a nervous lover, or that time you kissed your best friend and it was right but you knew exactly where every awkward finger was, the way your legs were twisted oddly.

Basically, those details don't matter. This is a book pleased to be owned, and Katie West is a poet to watch, and a photographer to read.

Remember, love is easy, you are complicated, and it's good to make mistakes.

Given that I had dinner with friends tonight, I think it is appropriate that this week's poem is Catullus 13, sometimes called "An Invitation to Dinner". I translated this for class approximately two years ago, and am too cidered-up to check it thoroughly. Have fun finding mistakes, guys.¹

Cenabis bene, mi Fabulle, apud me
paucis, si tibi di favent, diebus,
si tecum attuleris bonam atque magnam
cenam, non sine candida puella
et vino et sale et omnibus cachinnis.
haec si, inquam, attuleris, venuste noster,
cenabis bene; nam tui Catulli
plenus sacculus est aranearum.
sed contra accipies meros amores
seu quid suavius elegantiusve est:
nam unguentum dabo, quod meae puellae
donarunt Veneres Cupidinesque,
quod tu cum olfacies, deos rogabis,
totum ut te faciant, Fabulle, nasum.

( Translation )



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1:I have added line breaks to the translation to make reading a little easier.

Via Unlocked Wordhoard a few weeks ago, I present for your edification and delight a list of Uncomfortable Movie Plot Summaries.

Some of my favourites:

• DEEP THROAT: Medical anomaly earns woman new friends.
• DOCTOR FAUSTUS: Scholar leans nuances of contract law.
• RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK: American yahoo murders soldiers and desecrates religious artifacts for money.
• CORALINE: Misfit discovers she is special person in a secret world just beside our own.
• MIRRORMASK: Misfit discovers she is special person in secret world just beside our own.

Oh, Neil Gaiman.

Of course, Dr. Nokes' list of the more medieval-themed ones are great:

• BEOWULF: Colonists hire assassin to drive natives from land.
• CONAN THE BARBARIAN: Petty thief murders religious leader.
• LABYRINTH: Girl is negligent baby-sitter. [and I would also add is the jailbait love interest of David Bowie]
• LORD OF THE RINGS: Midget destroys stolen property.
• MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL: British comedy troupe inadvertently creates language lab for nerds.
• ROBIN HOOD: Disgruntled veteran protests taxes.

There was a bit of discussion over at the Wordhoard about how accurate the Robin Hood description was. I gotta say, my summary would have been closer something like Disgruntled veteran protests taxes, commits terrorism, keeps money. Or So-called freedom fighter ignores plight of working class.

After all, Robin Hood doesn't fight for the serfs- taxes aren't levied on them.

There is this annoying tendency for people to talk about various religions as homogenous blobs. "Islam" says this. "Christianity" means this. "Buddhists" are this. In the case of Christianity, this is patently absurd, given the wide variety of sects, faiths, and individuals within the umbrella term 'Christian'. A Catholic is very different from a Protestant from an Anglican from a Low-Church Anglican from a daiskmeliadorn. For example.¹ When I studied religion, briefly, my lecturers liked to talk about 'Christianities' and 'Buddhisms' to deflect this, and when I remember I like to do the same.

This becomes more complicated when it comes to Islam. The Qu'ran proclaims itself divine truth, and prohibits these kinds of sects. This is in obvious contrast to the splintered nature of Christendom. There does of course exist the well known Sunni and Shi'a, and there are a few others. Presumably also individual followers have their own ways of interpreting scripture, as occurs in every religion... but you would never know it unless you looked for it. (Or thought about it, I guess.)

To many outsiders, Islam is just 'Islam'. Muslims are just 'muslims' and that is all there is to it. The Qu'ran is hard, rigid, unyielding, like the patriarchy it so inflexibly advocates; muslim women are oppressed kittens, &c. &c.

I've been having some conversations with Muslim folk about the place, and some interesting facts are coming to light. While I always knew that the stereotypes were so much nonsense, actually speaking to the Muslim advocacy group on campus turned up some interesting details.

Evolution: When I mentioned biology, every single one of the kids present did not hesitate to agree with evolutionary theory. They admitted to being evolutionary theists, obviously, but in no way were they creationists. A group of twelve or so Muslims at a university is hardly a careful survey, but I strongly feel that this puts the lie to claims that the rise of Islam is equivalent with a rise in creationism.

Dawkins makes this claim in Greatest Show on Earth, and it annoyed me.² Sure, the rise of fundagelical Christianity correlates with a rise in creationist idiocy, but to assume that the growth of popular Islam does the same? Hmm. Although the point could be raised- how liberal were these Muslims to whom I spoke? If they were really quite liberal, then they could hardly be taken to be representative.

Homosexuality: For myself, a good benchmark of how crazy someone is (after creationism; I refuse to debate creationists anymore) is their attitude to homosex. Generally I find the two are correlated; religious folk who are into denying science in one area (evolution) usually deny it in another (homosexuality is natural). Imagine my surprise when these quite liberal Muslim kids turned out to be against The Gay Conspiracy.

The usual canards were trotted out: it's unnatural; if everyone were gay, we'd have no kids; God opposes it so it must be bad. It was so cliche, and they were friendly, so I allowed it to roll over me like water, and moved on to other topics. I'll get them next time, Gadget.

This really struck me as odd- they were polite, friendly, and absolutely did not utter a single condemnatory word. The contrast with Christian fundamentalists -including those I've encountered on campus- was striking.

Qu'ran: Only one of them had read the entire Qu'ran, and she had indeed read it in Arabic. The rest had at best read parts of it, or had parts explained. It appears that Muslim services (for want of the correct word) are conducted in Arabic, in a similar manner to the medieval (and until recently modern Catholic) Christian latin Mass. This struck me as significantly odd. While most religious people haven't read their own holy text/s, I am used to encountering people who at least have services in their own tongue.

I knew that the Qu'ran was not supposed to be translated, but I had assumed that everything else would be in the local language. This bears further investigation- I think I should find a local mosque (I would obviously get permission to come as an atheist first) and take a peek.

Women: Blah blah they were wearing headscarves (except one) but they weren't treated by the guys around as idiots or lesser (and in fact I spoke mostly to the women) blah blah headscarves aren't oppression blah. The depiction of Muslims as cowed women and cruel men is oftentimes (at least) nonsense, and racist. We know all this already, let's move on.³

What's the point of this? Just to point out that Islam is not as monolithic as it is sometimes convenient to believe. Certainly at least this small group on the University of Sydney are friendly, cheerful evolutionists, and that is a good start. They are a damn sight more friendly than the local Catholic group, or the EU folk at the University of Queensland, and a hell of a lot less fanatatical and single-minded.

Yet they are still homophobic, still do not understand how atheists can have morality, still trot out tired old arguments in defence of the existence of God we have all already heard. Except on these points, I think the issue lies with us. With me. Too often atheists rail against Christianities, or compile clever arguments agaisnt them and throw nothing more than a token nod to other monotheisms.⁴ We really have to stop this. A good first step would be to engage with Islams on the ground level.

It would also be nice if we could manage to not be racist or sexist while we did it



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1: This particularly irritates me when it comes to Buddhism, a topic for Another Day.
2: I didn't mention this in my review. Partly because I forgot, partly because it was a few words out of a 437 page book, and not that significant.
3: Although the point that the headscarf isn't inherently oppressive had to be beaten into me by a succession of women who are all smarter than I.
4: And in case my point wasn't clear: almost never to polytheisms, or non-theistic but still woo-ey religions.

*NOTE: I wrote this while at work, at around 2130, after having woken up at six a.m. In contrast to my usual policy, I may heavily edit this if it turns out that I said something stupid. In the meantime: I probably didn't mean it, and will redress it as soon as possible.

Another Saturday, another week worth of exercise. I decided that I wanted to get back into the ol' swinging balls of fire on the ends of chains, although it has been over two years since I last practised and I never really got around to trying it with fire. Anyway! I decided to add in some poi practice to the ol' exercise regime as a cool-down from the morning run.

So far it's working out, although it turns out that I am far too lazy to do it on non-running days. So it goes.

Speaking of running, there was the fun moment during my warm up when I dropped my (still-broken) glasses. And the left lens promptly popped out. Wee, fun times. Luckily it was pretty easily repairable, but I guess the gods are trying to tell me Us-damnit, B, get some new fucking glasses. You dipshit.

This week's reward for actually getting it all done (as well as the last of the Dresden Files paperbacks, Small Favour) is Richard Morgan's Sword-and-Sorcery fantasy, The Steel Remains. I had read this review from famed internet antagonist, i_am_lane and simply had to have this book. He had me at 'gay sex'. A few chapters in, and it's pretty good.

That is all. You may return to your regularly scheduled internets.

Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.

When I was eight, I wanted to be a paleontologist. Sometimes astronomer battled for that exalted position, but by the time I was eight, it was firmly paleontology. When I was twelve, I wanted to become a chemist. During my first year of university, I encountered Drosophila melanogaster and genetics, and wanted to become a geneticist when I grew up. At some point around this time a host of long-delayed reactions descended upon me, and I lost my mind. By the time the cloud partially dispersed, some years later, I had decided to become a medievalist.

If I had read Dawkins' Unweaving the Rainbow at the time, I would have remained dedicated to becoming a scientist.

If I had read The Greatest Show on Earth, I would have remained dedicated to becoming a geneticist. Or I could have chosen chemistry. Perhaps a palaeontologist?

Dawkins' latest is a love letter to biology. It is billed as another one of his in-your-face attack books, this time aimed at creationists, and in parts it is. Certainly he does not hesitate to lunge his rapier-wit into the exposed flank of the creationist behemoth, but this is scarcely more than an aside. The evidence for evolution is so overwhelming that the jabs are scarcely worth the effort it takes to read, let alone that it took for them to be written.

No, the focus in Greatest Show is didactic. Human endeavour has painstakingly rolled out the very stuff of life before our eyes, and Dawkins takes a childish -here the sense is wide-eyed and eager, not petulant- glee in showing each step of the evidence. I get the very strong impression that he is grinning, joyous and excited, all the while. Except when he has a cold, as he notes when discussing viruses.¹ "Look!" he seems to cry, "Look at how neat this stuff is. And how WEIRD. And oh oh check this out!" It is utterly adorable, yet at the same time Dawkins' tone is so delighted, he is careful to explain what it is he is demonstrating.

Anyone who has read Dawkins before knows that his is a prodigious talent for explanation. I do feel that he has restrained himself somewhat in Greatest Show. All too often he hesitates, points out that the item under explanation is too complex to go into greater detail, and gives a more succinct explanation. I suspect the reason is that he simply lacked room- the book is already 437 pages long. To go into more depth than he has would require a first year evolution textbook, not a work of popular science.

What he does manage to cover is incredible. While I did not learn anything about evolution as a whole that I had not already learned, there are some amazing details here and there.² If I had ever learned about Belyaev and his foxes, I had forgotten it. I am glad that Dawkins chose to spend so much time discussing this fascinating experiment and am the richer for it. The Hillis plot for demonstrating the tree of life in a circle is equally fascinating, looking somewhat like a cityscape of some barely-imaginable future.³

There are some minor quibbles which I must make a desultory effort to address. While I appreciated much of Dawkins' asides and rambling tangents, occasionally he expressed ideas to which I am in opposition and this was distracting. Personally, this was more than redeemed by his occasional references to Australian good humour and colourful language, because I am always a sucker for people I admire loving my country. In an otherwise bright book, the occasional grouchy aside is slightly jarring. Yet by the same token, without the grouchy asides there would not be the humorous and nostalgic anecdotes, which add so much in texture to Greatest Show. Perhaps this is less a quibble than a feature?

Slightly more serious are Dawkins' focuses on the gene as the sole unit of selection, and a 'designer' as benevolent. While I also feel that the gene-centric view of natural selection is pretty accurate, I am aware that not all biologists agree with Dawkins. It would have been nice to see him address that in an an otherwise neutral book on the facts of evolution. Similarly, his attacks on the 'designer' myth focus a little too much on how a kind creator could create animals that thrive on suffering. While this works on religious creationists, it is less effective on ID-creationists, who maintain that the designer is not necessarily good nor evil. This is not so great that he is arguing against a straw man -far from it!- yet no acknowledgement is made of the fact that not all creationists think 'their designer' is a good guy.

Really, though, these are the teeniest, the tiniest of nitpicks. The Greatest Show on Earth is an absolutely wonderful book, one that I am proud to have read. Within the evidence for evolution is carefully and systemically laid out, with no presumed knowledge and no condescension that one does not already know of the subject. It is Dawkins at his nature-loving, explanatory, digressing best; a joy and pleasure to read. I unreservedly recommend it.



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1: Not 'viri' or (ugh) 'virii', the pseudo-Latin plurals people sometimes use. 'Virus' is an English word derived from the Latin, and not the Latin word itself (which means 'poison' or 'slime'). As a certain kind of Modern English word, the plural is formed with 's'; hence 'viruses'.
2: Not that this is a criticism: I have not only more science education than many, I read very widely, and lived with a genius palaeontologist for some years.
3: The colour plates also include a photo of a simpler version tattooed on the back of Dr. Clare D'Alberto, which must surely win an award for coolnes value in a tattoo.