A female Doctor

The thirteenth Doctor is going to be played by a woman - Jodie Whittaker.

My reaction to this? I'm not as appalled as some. I tend to work on the basis that if this was a matter of "inclusivism" it should have happened years ago. If the aim of the regeneration is to unlock new dramatic possibilities, then a female Doctor is just as right as a male one.

It's worth pointing out that given the Doctor prioritises compassion, collaboration and communication over conflict and competition, he is already prioritising what would conventionally be called "feminine" values.

However, there is one thing ... as a wise old man (over 900 years, regardless of the body he appeared in), the Doctor corresponds with one of the main Jungian archetypes. For a heavy but enjoyable romp through some of what this means from the point of view of fiction, read The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker. In effect, what it means is that there are certain "classic characters" who are recognisable throughout the world of narrative. One of these is the "wise old man" - which recurs most obviously in wizards like Gandalf, Dumbledore, Merlin and Cadellin. Our ideas about how the Doctor will behave are shaped by the fact that he incarnates this archetype. When people say, "But the Doctor has to be a man!" is it because they are prejudiced in some way, or is it because in their mind the Doctor occupies this archetypal space? From my point of view, it's "just a drama" - the writers can do what they like with it. But maybe that's because, not having a TV in my formative years, I never had a specific Doctor that I thought was "the definitive one".

What will happen when the Doctor is incarnated as a woman? Is it possible for a woman to be a "wise old man", in Jungian terms? Or will we end up seeing the Doctor conform to a different archetype? The "wise old woman", maybe? Will that be a noticeable change in focus? Does that matter? The whole gender thing - whether such a thing even exists as something more than a social construct - is being widely debated. It will be interesting to see whether fiddling around with archetypes casts any more light on the question. In fact, I'm more interested in answers to these sorts of meta-questions than I am shocked by him incarnating as a woman.

Incidentally, I don't know the extent to which the writers are aware of Jung and archetypes. They probably just want to write a good episode and not worry about the rest. That's the clever thing about the archetypes - for the most part, they sit there in people's unconscious ....

"Ender's Game"

We went to watch the film Ender's Game on Friday. I had been looking forward to the film for a long time.

Orson Scott Card published the book Ender's Game in 1985. To get things in historical perspective, this was the year that Windows 1.0 was released. It looked, according to Wikipedia, like this.

The internet was not commercialised until ten years later. In this context, Orson Scott Card was talking about something which behaved like the internet - not just from the point of view of technology, but as a medium of cultural exchange - and also virtual reality.

It would be easy to assume that large sections of the film were 2013 glosses of the 1985 book - but the fact is, Card's view of the future as portrayed in his books was close enough to where we are thirty years later that it is basically recognisable - if you read the book today, there's nothing terribly anachronistic about the world it portrays, and there's much SF that hasn't aged as well as that.

Other reasons that I was impressed by the book were:

• Rather than a bland philosophical naturalist, or artificially pantheistic world in which everyone lacks any sort of cultural identity, in Card's world, people have national and religious identities, within the context of what seems to be something like a world government. This is reflected in the film.
• Children are portrayed as morally complex. Probably a bit too morally complex - the idea of Ender being a small child (i.e. about 6!) doesn't make it into the film - I guess he's supposed to be closer to 12. And the language and imagery that shapes the children in the book is omitted as well - the alien race, the "buggers" become "formics", for example. But the book portrays a childhood world that is much closer to reality than what tends to be presented by children to adults. This in itself makes Ender's Game an interesting subject for children's literature.
• Some of the ideas in the book are really life shaping. Look up Demosthenes' "hierarchy of foreignness." Again, think of how xenophobic and insular the world was in 1985 - Europe was still divided by the Iron Curtain. In this context, Card was making the case that, if other people shared our humanity, or even if inhuman but communication was possible (!), then there ought to be an alternative to war and destruction.

Orson Scott Card is a controversial figure, due to his opinions on homosexuality. How should you deal with a writer who has opinions about issues which you strongly disagree with? Obviously when people are saying things in public, it's reasonable to disagree with them in public - and they need to be prepared to defend their beliefs. However, ought we to disregard someone's teaching on childhood and education because they persuaded the mother of multiple illegitimate children that he fathered to put them into a foundling hospital? And yet, look at the influence Rousseau continues to have on education. Many of Card's perspectives are hugely positive. Is it really not possible to take and affirm the good, whilst opposing the things you consider to be bad?

So, what of the film? Technically, very good. It was a real shame that the complex political and social aspects of the relationship between Valentine and Peter aren't developed - but you have to sacrifice lots when you go from your average book to your average film. And I'm sure the people who read the book as children or teens would love to have seen more games in the battle room. However, what was brought out much more strongly in the film was the climax - not the final battle, but what happens after. I'm trying to avoid spoilers here - but suffice it to say that Card's message about the need for tolerance and almost pacifism, is made clearer in the film than it was in the book.

"The Medium is the Message"

I don't know whether Marshall McLuhan's famous quote was ever intended to reflect upon the situation we have today with the media.

It would be kind of comfortable to think that the news media were detached observers, providing information about the state of the world to people who would not otherwise have access to it. For at least a century, this has failed to work in the context of newspapers. Even a relatively concise history of the early part of the century, such as The Making of Modern Britain: From Queen Victoria to VE Day, highlights the way in which the newspapers barons sought to influence opinions, and eventually to shape the political dialogue.

For a long time, it felt (at least, to those of us with no real axe to grind - okay, so by not being "part of the solution" perhaps we were really "part of the problem") as though whilst the newspapers were partisan, it was at least possible to trust the BBC to be detached and objective. But in the last few months, I have become less confident in this.

It has always been the case that certain programmes ("Today" on Radio 4, "Newsnight" on BBC2, "Question Time") had a public profile that was large enough to match the gravitas of anybody they chose to interview. But at some stage, either the editorial staff or at least the presenters seem to have become aware of this, and no longer happy with merely presenting the news, have seemed to want to direct the news.

Interviews on "Today" rarely seem to be opportunities for a genuine give and take between journalist and interviewee. Instead, the journalist jumps from thread to thread, trying to find a way of getting the interviewees to say something ill-advised or lose their patience, or find a subject that the interviewees aren't able or willing to give a straightforward answer to, feeling little compunction about interrupting them, and more intent on preventing anything being broadcast that the interviewees have prepared to say. The debate on the political side has ended up controlled by spin doctors, who are priming people at government level about what to say. But the net effect is that interviews cease to be an opportunity to hear how politicians justify the issues of the day, and instead becomes a verbal sparring match between two people, with little interest as to what useful information, if any, the listening audience will take away from the interview.

On top of that, particularly over the last few weeks, with the establishment of the new government, it has become obvious that not only the newspapers, but also the BBC, have a bias to "generate news". So news organisations with editorial input, including the BBC, directed much effort to trying to find weak points as the coalition between the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives was established. In its presentation, this moved beyond a simple scrutiny of policies, and much closer to a sustained attempt to attack the coalition, and undermine the government. That is no longer news reporting: that is an attempt to generate news.

The same thing happened this week, in my opinion, with both the Question Time issue, constructed by the BBC, and the David Laws issue, largely constructed by the Daily Telegraph. In the case of Question Time, in the week of the Queen's Speech, a platform was given to relative diehards - John Redwood, Alastair Campbell - who frankly have little to do with the attempts to forge a new form of government in the UK. In the case of Laws, the media have not really done anything to improve the financial accountability of elected representatives, but have succeeded in generating coverage of the private life of an MP (something he had specifically been trying to protect) and depriving the government (and thus the country) of an intelligent minister. But no doubt they got lots of hits on their website, and got themselves talked about.

It is too much to expect that any news organisation can be a completely detached observer anywhere. But surely most people still believe that what they read, hear and see should reflect the issues of the day, not be seeking to shape them. It would be great if the mainstream media spent less time convincing themselves that McLuhan gave them a mandate to try and shape society.

The World is Changed

A review of "The Elements", by Second Person, posted on Amazon.

I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the ... metal.

Once mighty men in high towers with vaults of gold and armies of assistants ruled the music industry. In many cases they were only obliquely concerned with the quality of the music, and more interested in whether it would ultimately add to their gold. Their cynicism grew, culminating in the mental laziness of reality TV shows and an increasingly rapid turnover of people who they could exploit as “the next big thing”. Through all these years, the really significant artists were those who controlled their own destiny, independent of the record companies.

But with the rise of the new media came a new breed of artist. It is possible to take work directly to the small people – people without vaults of gold, but people in their millions. Sellaband is an agency which seeks to link new artists and “believers” who are prepared to back them with anything from $10 upwards. If a band can raise $50,000 from believers, then the CD can be produced.

Second Person is one such band. Concepts albums are themselves as old as the industry, of course, and “The Elements” is one such. There are five tracks, each named after one of the ancient Chinese elements, with bonus video content. The music is well crafted and easy to listen to. Julia Johnson's voice reminds me of Leigh Nash's – but the musical style is more a gentle version of Fauxliage than Sixpence None The Richer. It is categorised as “trip hop”, though also somewhat confusingly as “post trip hop”. Perhaps that means the sort of thing that you'd listen to the morning after an “intense” party. Whatever, it is fairly mellow music that you can either play loud and enjoy, or have in the background.

The lines being drawn

(H/T Evolution News)

Adam Rutherford, of Nature, believes that your presuppositions determine your ability to do science.

...were I in a position to offer Guillermo Gonzalez tenure, I would deny it for the precise reason that his, yes, religious views about purpose in the universe explicitly mean he is a crap scientist, regardless of his ability to generate valid data...

From which it is logical to infer that he thinks that Kepler, Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, Maxwell ... are also "crap scientists".

Hmm. Now I have at least two options, here. Option one is to conclude that he is right, and that all of these people are crap scientists because of their presuppositions. Option two is to conclude that he is a crap journalist, and no serious journal should be employing him (... and any journal that does employ him is thus not serious). Now let me think ....

Trading Cards on the Internet

No matter how bad an idea it seems before you have children, at some stage one or more of them will decide that he or she wishes to try and collect a whole set of trading cards. The only ones that our offspring have been that interested in are the Doctor Who "Battles In Time" ones.

As we have now completed the third "new" Doctor Who series, the size of the deck of cards has correspondingly grown, and it now numbers 675 in three series.

Unless a series of trading cards are incredibly popular, there are unlikely to be enough people seriously collecting them in the circle of a child's friends to make it feasible to complete a collection. So, I thought to myself, why not write an internet based thing that would allow trading with a wider circle of people?

I made some progress, with PHP and MySQL - I was able to select multiple decks, write details of individual cards, set up cards available to trade and wish lists, scan other peoples' lists to look for possible exchanges. But, as with the Open Solutions thing I came up with, one of the real problems would be making the site known. Additionally making it look good and testing it was really more than I thought I was able to achieve.

There are other swapping sites around - like this one. But although this has a section for trading cards, it isn't really designed for that sort of transaction. I knew what I was looking for, conceptually, and was interested to find something very close to it the other day - here. It's not beautiful - but it does seem to offer a good system for getting in touch with people who want to trade the same thing as you. Now to see whether we can get closer to completing the collection!

How Music Works from YouTube

For those people who weren't lucky enough to catch the series when it was on television, here's a taster that somebody has posted on YouTube. Now all we need to do is pressurise Endemol into releasing a DVD boxset - actually, it would probably get onto one DVD at a pinch!

Derren Brown - Instant Conversions

Interesting couple of videos - if you click through to the first one, you'll get a link to the second part. What are my thoughts, as a Christian?

I would agree that there is manipulation within religion, including Christianity, as Derren Brown says:

Religions tend to encourage either high energy crowd activity or candlelit monotony to invoke a suggestible state amongst the congregation. Many revivalist preachers seem to have a magical touch that brings the power of the Lord into a person.

The conclusion that might be drawn from this film is that "religion" is more to do with semi-hypnotic suggestion than the power of God.

In actual fact, the Bible itself (in 1 Corinthians) says that ecstatic religious experiences (if we can generalise from speaking in tongues to the whole range of such experiences) are the least useful component of our makeup as Christians. They may be edifying for the individual believer - and those people who had those "experiences" doubtless thought after they had had them that something significant had happened - but the experiences are at best confusing for other people, and may well lead them to the conclusion that the people having the experiences are out of their mind.

It's significant that ecstatic religious experiences are not the sole province of one religion. For example, glossolalic speaking in tongues isn't only a "Christian" phenomenon; it is found in other religious traditions. (I would suggest that the speaking in tongues referred to in Acts 2 for example was something different - this can be discussed elsewhere.) And there are other forms of religious experience - falling over, trances, visions and so on - that can be found in other religions.

However, there are Christians who are gravely unhappy with the use of manipulation - or indeed any showmanship - in Christian meetings, and frequently they are the ones who are also most wary of deriving anything from nonrational religious experience. I would argue that whilst Christianity ought to engage our emotions, this should not be held in contrast with engaging our mind. Our emotions ought to be engaged because our mind is engaged. If Christianity is true, then our experiences ought not to be "irrational" or "nonrational" but profoundly "rational". And there are many people who don't put down their emotional response to Christianity to something they don't understand, but to something that they do understand, even if they can't fully explain it. There are many other aspects of Christian experience - generosity, hospitality, forgiveness, explaining the Bible, compassion, self-sacrifice and so on. I doubt Brown would argue that his piece invalidates the behaviour of people like Wilberforce, Elizabeth Fry, Martin Luther King and so on.

It was interesting that the minister from whom Derren Brown sought to obtain an endorsement wasn't prepared to simply accept his word about what he had done, but wanted to talk again. In terms of the power of suggestion, it's worth pointing out that when a person stands in front of you with a camera crew saying that they are here for a particular reason (perhaps backed up by a covering letter?), your instinct isn't to assume that they have come to do the opposite. I seem to recall Richard Dawkins being particularly disgusted when a similar trick was played on him by anti-evolutionists, who got him to look silly by asking for evidence for his belief when he wasn't expecting it. There are many more examples of this in the evolution/creation/ID debate, on all sides.

It's also interesting that the minister didn't suggest that this sort of manipulation was an appropriate way of seeking to reach people with the Christian message - he was keen to build genuine relationships with people, so that he could tell them about Christianity. And it's also worth pointing out that the group of people who Brown addressed came to a meeting that they knew was going to be about spirituality - regardless of the fact that they were all atheists or sceptics, they willingly put themselves into an environment where they could reasonably expect their beliefs to be challenged.

So in summary, I would echo the implication of this piece that we need to be wary about the power of suggestion and manipulation - and those that practice it - in the religious arena, as much as any other. However, Brown's little experiment doesn't invalidate the whole of religion, and although he is a sceptic, I don't expect he would say that this experiment alone wraps it up for religion.

Rhapsody in Blue on Channel 4

Many, many years ago, when Channel 4 was still young, they ran a series of programmes which were pieces of "classical" music which had been given "pop" videos. I think they did the last movement of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, amongst other things. But more significantly, they did Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue".

No, it wasn't that one ....

The back story for the video was that a band were playing "Rhapsody in Blue" in a bar, whilst the barman was trying to close it for the night. It was shot in black and white, and it was excellent - both musically and as a piece of video.

Does anyone know where I can find it? Before you suggest, if it's on YouTube, it's not listed under anything terribly obvious.

Comments on Jennifer Government by Max Barry

What does your dystopia look like? The two most famous are probably those of Orwell (“Nineteen Eighty Four”) and Huxley (“Brave New World”). Max Barry offers another dystopic vision in “Jennifer Government”.

Here, it is the corporations who are all but sovereign – their relationship with government an uneasy balance of power, government being no more than another consumer choice. The police provide a service that can be paid for, as for that matter do the National Rifle Association. People bear their employer's name as a surname – John Nike joins the roll of great villains, a ruthless man who seeks to transcend even his own corporation. Jennifer Government is the “straight cop”, trying to prevent the corporations getting out of hand, but even her daughter has the surname “Mattel”, as she is in a school sponsored by the toy manufacturer. (Preferable, she feels, to the Macdonalds school....).

The heart of the story is a fictional promotion of urban footwear, in which some rogue Nike employees decide that nothing will make a particular range of trainers more desirable than assassinating a few of the people who own them. Hack, a much lower-level employee within Nike, finds himself the person tasked with carrying out this contract – but in a fit of conscience, he goes to the police, which leads to them offering to carry out the contract on his behalf. So far, so good – Nike, or more specifically, John Nike, goes from strength to strength, whilst Jennifer Government seeks to identify and make accountable the person who did this, as she tries to balance the needs of her patient, lonely daughter.

The book is an enjoyable read, though the number of characters is perhaps a little unwieldy. It reminded me of early Ben Elton (“Gridlock”, “Stark”) without the diatribes. I can't really disagree with those reviewers who suggest that it was written with a TV or film version in mind, though given the control of those media by corporations, one wonders how likely it is that this would ever be made! Also, sympathetic characters are somewhat light on the ground. This doesn't take away from a page-turning story, though, and if you are looking for a lightish read that fits ideologically with the reaction against consumerism, following a couple of months of reading Al Gore or Gore Vidal, this could be the book for you.

Max Barry's website is here, and here's a link to the Nationstates website, a semi-humorous country-management game which was where I first heard about Jennifer Government.

Darwin or Design?

(H/T Telic Thoughts)

People interested in the issues surrounding Intelligent Design may be interested in an audio-book that has been put together by Jason Rennie, called "Darwin or Design?" It consists of a series of 25 interviews with a range of people who are connected with the arguments - both pro and anti-ID. The first interview is with the scary P.Z.Myers - who in real life is not quite as scary as his Pharyngula persona might suggest. Nick Matzke, who according to William Dembski has put together the most coherent explanation for how an apparently irreducibly complex system might evolve, is also interviewed. There are interviews with Michael Behe ("The Edge of Evolution"), Guillermo Gonzalez ("The Privileged Planet"), Mike Gene ("The Design Matrix"), Del Ratzsch, Elliot Sober, Denyse O'Leary and others.

A couple of thoughts on this. The internet offers the opportunity for far wider discussion and interchange than was offered by traditional media and publishing, and also a much more direct access between writers and their readers. This is an excellent example of this. The Darwin or Design website includes a discussion forum - the making available of the book is only a first step.

And on issues like this, in particular, if the argument could move away from two sides being suspicious of each other and bashing one another, and towards a real dialogue, we could perhaps see a return to the sort of engagement with ideas that was typical of the golden age in Athens, for example.

Just think ...

... of a really original idea for a children's film. Then tell your friends about it. Two variations of that idea will appear in cinemas within two years.

It's obvious, really. There are teams in studios brainstorming ideas. "Insects? No - we've had those recently. Fish? Finding Nemo and A Shark Tale. Penguins? March of the Penguins and Happy Feet. Zoo animals ending up in the wild? Madagascar and The Wild. Rats? Flushed Away and Ratatouille. Wild animals interacting with humans? Open Season and ... well, you get the idea." When one studio gets its teeth into a really good idea, the likelihood is that another studio is also going to get its teeth into one very similar.

So what do you reckon? I think we must have a couple of bird films soon to appear. And a couple about trucks. Remember, you saw it here first.

Just think of a really sweeping generalisation ....

How do you read?

From Miss Mellifluous

Hardback or trade paperback or mass market paperback?
The format isn't a determining factor, and I rarely have a choice!

Online purchase or brick and mortar?
I love bookshops, but the proportion of my books that are bought in them is low. Amazon is just too easy and cheap, and life is too busy.

Barnes & Noble or Borders?
Any university-standard bookshop will do.

Bookmark or dog-ear?
Neither. What do you call those ribbon bookmarks that Bibles and books like that have? I'll use those, if they are there – Robert Lacey's Great Tales from English History has them, which are what I am currently working my way through (H/T Amanda and Jonathan). And a good reason for having a hardback is that you can mark the page with the dust cover.

Mark or not mark?
Rarely mark – though I might put a piece of paper inside with some jotted notes.

Alphabetise by author or alphabetize by title or random?
With shelves and books as varied as ours, they just fit in wherever they can.

Keep, throw away, or sell?
Keep and lend, or give away. Lending is good – it makes it look as though there aren't so many books kicking around.

Keep dustjacket or toss it?
Keep, to protect the book as long as possible ....

Read with dustjacket or remove it?
With jacket.

Short story or novel?
Either – but novel is more likely. And non-fiction substantially more likely.

Collection (short stories by same author) or anthology (short stories by different authors)?
Collection.

Lord of the Rings or Narnia?
Lord of the Rings

Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks?
Hmm. Normally stop reading when Liz is tired .... Ouch! Okay, when I'm tired.

“It was a dark and stormy night” or “Once upon a time”?
Yawn. Neither. “When we consider the subject matter addressed by the title, we must first bear in mind the following ....” Now, that's a promising start!

Buy or Borrow?
Buy, or receive.

New or used?
Normally new.

Buying choice: book reviews, recommendation or browse?
Recommendation is about the only one that works at all for me.

Tidy ending or cliffhanger?
Whatever fits the story.

Morning reading, afternoon reading or night time reading?
As the opportunity arises.

Standalone or series?
Both.

Favorite series?
Um, does The Lord of the Rings count?

Favorite book of which nobody else has heard?
Nobody else?
To the best of my knowledge, nobody I know has read Through a Glass Darkly, by Jostein Gaarder, which was probably the most moving book I have read as an adult.

Favorite books read last year?
Human Traces, by Sebastian Faulks. A Meaningful World, by Ben Wiker and Jonathan Witt.

Favorite book of all time?
Um, can I not count the Bible and Shakespeare, on Desert Island Discs rules?
Actually, that doesn't help much. A Francis Schaeffer Trilogy, perhaps.

Pass it on. And don’t forget to buy a beautiful custom made bookmark.

The Power of the Urban Myth

(H/T Telic Thoughts ... again!)

The Guardian proposes a new understanding of the polarisation of opinion in the UK today - three ways, between religious fundamentalists, atheistic fundamentalists, and the "enlightened, tolerant" crowd. This is, in my opinion, a healthy article, as it recognises the danger of atheistic intolerance to religious freedom. It reports on the current tensions between Christian unions and student unions in a fairly liberal way - certainly much more so than one might have expected given the newspaper's left-wing credentials. The article argues for reasoned debate to be conducted in a public arena, and concludes:

What should such a public square be like? It might not be Menckian, but it could be based on respectful understanding of others' most cherished beliefs, argues Spencer: "We should be more willing to treat other value systems as coherent, reasonable and even valuable rather than as primitive or grotesque mutations of liberal humanism to which every sane person adheres." It is, at least, a hope, albeit one, given our current climate, in which it would be foolish to place too much faith.

- a sentiment which I have a lot of time for - see also here.

However, what leads me to post is the fact that it presented again a kind of darwinist "urban myth" - or an "icon of darwinism", if you like.

In 1860, one year after the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, and TH Huxley, the naturalist described as "Darwin's bulldog", went toe-to-toe at Oxford's Natural History Museum. According to a contemporary report in McMillan's magazine, "The bishop turned to his antagonist with smiling insolence. He begged to know, was it through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey? Huxley rose to reply ... He [said he] was not ashamed to have a monkey for his ancestor; but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used great gifts to obscure the truth ... One lady fainted and had to be carried out."

No case is really made from this, other than to suggest that the church was feeling threatened at the time. So from that point of view, I suppose you could argue that it doesn't really matter. But that's not how it was. Here is a more thoroughly researched account. To quote from it:

One of the most distinguished of the Darwinians was Joseph Hooker, Assistant Director of Kew gardens. But to read his account of the proceedings is to meet the view that Huxley had caused hardly a stir. He had not even had the strength of voice for his stinging reply to carry. According to Hooker the person who really won the day for the Darwinians was ... Hooker! In fact, the more closely we look at the legend the more suspect it becomes. The idea that Huxley won a famous victory was not even countenanced in Leonard Huxley's heroic Life. The result of the encounter, though a check to the anti-Darwinian sceptics, could not be represented as an "immediate and complete triumph for evolutionary doctrine". This was precluded by the "character and temper of the audience, most of whom were less capable of being convinced by the arguments than shocked by the boldness of the retort." One of Huxley's most recent and empathetic biographers, Adrian Desmond, agrees that talk of a victor is ridiculous. The Athenaeum put it rather well: the Bishop and Huxley "have each found foemen worthy of their steel, and made their charges and countercharges very much to their own satisfaction and the delight of their respective friends."

There is an additional, perhaps surprising, reason why we should not speak of victors. Instead of anti-Darwinians being converted by either Huxley or Hooker, we know that at least one Darwinian was de-converted in the debate.

The thing is, the more times an urban myth is repeated, especially in reputable places like the UK broadsheet newspapers, the harder it is (these days) to establish the truth - reliable accounts are swamped in search engines by the unreliable ones, more books are written presuming the unreliable accounts to be true, and so on.

There is no shortage of similar accounts where the truth ends up obscured by spin, of course - and perhaps hardly anywhere more so than in the religion/science debate. The "Inherit the Wind" version of the Scopes trial - which was actually used as a metaphor for McCarthyism - is far better known than the actual version, despite the actual version being a matter of public record. Compare the Brecht version of the trial of Galileo with the Dava Sobel version - again, it is the "religion versus science" one which is better known, and less factual. People will go on suggesting that Michael Behe thought that astrology was scientific - when that wasn't the point he was trying to get across in the Dover trial. People will make more of the fact that Judge Jones is "religious" and "a Republican" than the legal opinion that he did not have authority to define what science is. People will go on suggesting that Sternberg was wrong to do what he did in printing Meyer's article on the Cambrian Explosion, when as I understand it, due process has concluded that he acted properly. No doubt people on "the other side" will be as keen to point out occasions when people "on my side" have been guilty of spinning the truth as well.

There is such a thing as truth - true truth, that isn't just a case of "one person's story against another's". Both sides in any debate need to do what they can to present facts as accurately and openly as possible. The short-term expedient of winning a few people over to a distorted version of the truth can't be allowed to drive debates - people have to be presented with the most accurate available information, and allowed to make up their minds based on this. There is a part of me which fears, with the explosion of spin and distorted versions of events, that we are improbably on the verge of a new Dark Age, simply because nobody will really know anything any more.

Intelligent Design and "12 Angry Men"

“Inherit the Wind” is a famous film that was made at the end of the 1950's, supposedly about the Scopes Monkey Trial. In actual fact, it was really about McCarthyism rather than evolution, and takes substantial liberties with the history of the Scopes Trial.

But that's not important right now. A contemporary film, “12 Angry Men”, gives us more insight into the debate between Intelligent Design, creationism and darwinism. In this film, a jury gather in a jury room to consider their verdict after a trial. The evidence seems overwhelming that the defendant should be found guilty – and just one of the jurors dissents from this. And yet, by the end of the film, the defendant is unanimously acquitted.

What does this have to do with Intelligent Design?

The Discovery Institute have co-ordinated a list of scientists – currently numbering over 600 – who are prepared to say: “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”

Opponents of ID are scathing. “That's nothing,” they say. “Why, we have nearly 800 scientists on our list supporting evolution. And we've restricted our list just to those people called Steve, or something derived from Steve.”

But this misses the point that ought to be obvious to anybody who has watched “12 Angry Men”. At issue isn't the number of dissenters, or the size of the majority. It's the fact that dissent exists, and won't go away. (In actual fact, of course, even if dissent doesn't exist, this has no bearing on the truth or otherwise of a proposition. It is of course possible for something to be false and believed in by 100% of people. This bears ultimately on both sides of the debate.) When Einstein first suggested relativity, how many people really dissented from the Newtonian understanding of the universe? There were one or two loose ends, but I don't think there was anything that would really have shown that it needed a fundamental rewrite. The fact that a relatively small number of scientists have “issues” with darwinism doesn't mean their dissent is irrelevant.

In the early 1980's, as a teenager, I was unhappy with the idea of what darwinism did to biblical interpretation, but the most substantial case against it was found in Sylvia Baker's creationist pamphlet, “Bones of Contention” - a booklet that doesn't look terribly substantial as a challege these days. I assumed that the case for darwinism would get stronger as time went on – they just needed to tie up the loose ends. But instead, the challenges have got stronger, and more scientifically substantial. Rather than the detail of observations showing that darwinian mechanisms “obviously” work, they show that either darwinian mechanisms are far more powerful than was ever conceived by Darwin, or that there is a designer. In all sorts of areas, holes have appeared in the naturalistic understanding of the universe, when a big picture overview previously would have suggested that the show was all over except for the final curtain.

Those 600+ scientists – and the others who haven't appended their names, and those of us who aren't doctors, but understand enough about science to be intelligently informed about the debate, and the general population who simply don't accept the modernist, reductionist analysis of what it means to be human – need to be convinced of the case for darwinism – not by bullying into silence, or by pointing out that there aren't many of us, or by being ridiculed, or by being criminalised, but by the scientific case being made. We speak the same language. We can read scientific papers. We can interpret evidence.

Bring it on!

"Blue on Blue", Leigh Nash

I got this for Christmas, and I am a little disappointed.

Leigh's voice (Sixpence None the Richer) has lost none of its gorgeousness. It's a well produced, musically pleasant CD. You could put it on and nobody - not even great-grandma - would be in the least offended by any of the songs on it. But frankly, it's too nice. Too many of the songs are about the fact that Leigh is now happily married and deeply in love. Wonderful. But the poetry and struggles that were conveyed in the songs Matt Slocum wrote for Sixpence are just not there.

I see Windows Media Player classes it as "Religious". Integrity Music (I think!) also slapped a sticker on the front of the CD bought in the UK that took some soaking off. I suspect that this is a marketing ploy, because unless I'm missing something, the strongest religious content here is saying that being with somebody is "my idea of heaven", or that the somebody is "my angel tonight". Or "In heaven, love is everywhere." Oh please, Leigh. Perhaps the songs are really Christian devotional taking pop as their idiom - but when they become indistinguishable from saccharine pop, they have lost too much of their edge.

Some of the songs are a step above. "Nervous in the Light of Dawn" (for which Slocum had a writing credit) and "Ocean Size Love" are the two I guess I like most of all. The words of "Just a Little" have good poetry about them.

But I bought this on the back of having worked my way through the Sixpence catalogue. I really don't think that people would start here and be inspired to go back and find out what else Leigh had done. If you think you might want to buy this, then please listen first to the outstanding "Divine Discontent" or "This Beautiful Mess".

How Music Works with Howard Goodall

This was an excellent programme. Now where can I get a DVD of it? Channel 4 say it's not going to be made available for sale, and there will only be one repeat on More4 sometime next month. Did anybody video it?

Pictures from South America

My wife's cousin James has been living in the west of South America for quite a few years now. Initially, he was doing tour guiding, but more recently he has focussed on photography. He has his own website, through which it is possible to buy copies of the stunning images.