The Tarantella
Look what PZ got! A present in the mail. You have to look – I don’t do pictures. Text text text, that’s all I do.
He’s got all these jealous comments. People saying they’re green, they want one, they’re envious, can they hold it, etc.
So I thought I’d say – I’m getting one too! [dances around]
It hasn’t arrived yet, but it’s on the way. As Coturnix said in comments – ‘That is so nice of him.’ Indeed.
Yeah, saw that. Thought of you; I taped it, but I don’t think UK videos play in the US or I would have posted it over.
And now you get one, from the Man himself. as you Americans would say, that totally bloody rocks.
I’ve also checked that it actually works (British PAL to American NTSC can be problematic), and it plays fine on my Mac.
Now the only catch is that I’m having a party at my place, and I have to clean and cook instead of watching it. Maybe once the event starts I can retire to a quiet corner and enjoy it.
Thanks, Don. A very kind reader posted part 1 last week (I will say who kind reader is once I have asked [and received] permission to do so), which means I will be able to spread enlightenment by loaning it to friends and perhaps random people on the street. I’d have been too clingy to let go of it if it were the only copy I had…
Shame about party, PZ. Of course, you could always skip the cleaning part!
Flip-side being wtf goes on when all the US networks are so sh1t-scared of losing advertising revenue ? Still, v good news guys. And congrats getting a signed copy !
Firstly, congratulations, both of you. No idea when I’ll get a chance to see it. Secondly, however, I was very much hoping that when I got back to my computer there’d be a thread appropriate to what I wanted to contribute and I think this is it. No, I’m not expecting an autographed DVD anytime soon, but on Friday night I caught Salman Rushdie live, mainly reading and plugging “Shalimar the Clown,” but also discussing other concerns we share with him. Completely SRO. I did have a chance of a chair at one point, but graciously offered it to my companion, so spent a couple of hours in rapt discomfort on the floor in the aisle, which was also filled to bursting with various combinations of buttocks, feet and knees. The pain I go through for my B&W street cred…
Anyway, I couldn’t not give you guys a few relevant quotes you (probably) won’t have access to elsewhere. I’ve omitted the “um”s, but retained the “you know”s. He had a few nice obvious laugh lines like his reply to the question as to why he now lives in the States: “Well, you know, of course the real reason is I’m an enormous fan of George W.Bush.” Also, a somewhat unnecessary disclaimer that got the reaction he expected: “Let’s just be clear: I’m not in favour of Islamic terrorism. I mean, in case there was any doubt about that, that’s not my view.”
He mentioned his grandmother being “scary” and followed up with: “And my grandfather was the opposite. My grandfather was very gentle. He sometimes tried to be scary but he didn’t fool anybody. And he was – unlike me – he was very religious. I mean, he was a practicing Muslim. He went on the pilgrimage to Mecca, he said his prayers five times a day every day of his life, you know. And yet, for me, he was then and remains now a kind of image of tolerance and civilisation and open-mindedness and culture.”
He was asked about an interview in which he was quoted as linking Islamic terror to a sexual fear of women and clarified as follows: “Well, it’s clear that Osama Bin Laden is not a feminist. The twentieth century – the twenty-first century might be a different place if he were. No, I think in a way, in this interview that was published, they – the journalist – somewhat oversimplified what I was trying to say. Because I was trying to say two slightly different things. I was trying to say, first of all, it is true, in my view, that it is a part of the project of conservative Islam to keep women in their place, in a very secondary and very sequestered place, you know. And you see that from the behaviour of those cultures towards women, you know. I wasn’t trying to say that that’s the project of Islamic terrorism, you know, but I’m saying it is a part of the mindset of conservative Islam. Separately I would say that cultures in which the central moral axis is between honour and shame, rather than, in the West, let’s say in Christian culture, roughly speaking, between guilt and redemption, you know, the morality of such a culture operates differently when it’s an honour culture and the force on the individual self of a sense of having been dishonoured is much, much more powerful than that phrase would mean to a Western mind, you know. And its consequences in terms of action can be much more extreme. And I’ve been writing about this, I think, all my life. I mean, ‘Shame’ is a novel I wrote, you know, in 1983, which deals with a very similar investigation of honour culture, you know. Why is it that in certain conservative Muslim families girls are murdered by their brothers and father because they had a love affair with somebody thought to be inappropriate? You know, I mean – to kill your child, you know, because she – to kill your sister because she – because she – kissed the wrong guy. You know, it’s a very hard thing to understand, you know. So I was trying to say that this is a culture in which that very strange axis between honour and shame is somewhere at the centre of how people make choices.”
Needless to say, there were many other interesting things said, more to do with the novel at hand, but I thought it’d be nice to share some of the above with you.
Well you thought correctly, Stewart – how immensely helpful of you. I think I’ll put that in a comment out on the page, so that more people will see it.
Thanks, glad it was appreciated. Maybe you’ll dare to edit his spoken style more than I did (“you know”).
Meanwhile, may I return this thread to Dawkins? Trying to keep tabs on reactions, I came across this (http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/54557.html) by Ron Ferguson. It contains the following:
“Alister McGrath, who holds a PhD in molecular biophysics and used to be an atheist, was, and still is, an admirer of Richard Dawkins. Now professor of historical theology at Cambridge, McGrath subjected Dawkins’s writing to a critique in his recent book, Dawkins’ God. His considered verdict was that the God of Richard Dawkins was a caricature.
If you’re going to allow a man a microphone for two hours of prime viewing time, it’s the duty of the show’s producer to ensure that the protagonist’s views are scrutinised by his most able critics. Silence. And this was a programme that was supposed to be dealing with evidence?”
I have two main reactions. I can only conceive of someone being caricatured when there is actual knowledge about that person or being. How can you caricature a figment of the imagination, seen as so different from culture to culture?
Secondly, I concede that Ron Ferguson has a right to his opinion regarding “the duty of the show’s producer” to have critics scrutinise something that is to be given two hours of primetime broadcast slot. It is extremely rare for anti-religious views to be aired at all, which is not the case in the other direction. For Ferguson to make this comment about the viewpoint given so much less time than uncritical, unchallenged religious viewpoints seems to me clear evidence of an extreme bias on his part. If this were a truly consistent view, and not one merely trotted out for the occasion of defending faith from Dawkins, he would have to rant and rave against religious broadcasting for the other 51 weeks of every year.
I could make a third point about Ferguson’s use of the word “evidence,” but I fear I might choke to death from laughter.
How to get pissed off by Frank Furedi:
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CAF37.htm
Or should I say relieved (“Despite the claims of the anti-religious crusaders – especially in the US – that the Christian right is on the rise, in fact in cultural terms it is increasingly marginalised.”)?
BTW, I’ve seen one piece (“Honoured lecturer defends religion” http://www.hertsessexnews.co.uk/news/mercury/hoddesdon_mercury/2006/01/20/honoured%20lecturer%20defends%20religion.lpf)in which they’ve tried to use the mere fact of Dawkins’ airtime against him. Dawkins is referred to three times in the report: as “a TV scientist,” “TV geneticist Richard Dawkins” and as “the atheist scientist.” Well, when you can’t refute his logic, what remains other than to tar him with the brush of being a media personality?
Horizons are doing a piece on ID, could be interesting – or more likely just irritating:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/war.shtml