Humanism is never having to say sorry

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Butterflies and Wheels 
A Trumpet Blast Against the "New" Humanism

by R Joseph Hoffmann

What the New Humanism isn't about is the intellectual self-confidence that calls a spade a spade and faulty judgment faulty. Intellectualism is unkind. Smart is mean. Spirited debate may incur feelings of low self-esteem, especially among the losers. But then, dumb is dangerous - in life, art, and politics.

Never mind that it's religion that encourages blind agreement and intellectual submission, or that what we look back on as "the enlightenment" was forged in the fires of the bitterest scholarly debates the West had ever seen, or that thousands of very, very bright men and women learned what being sorry meant because their apologies were extracted from them through violence to reason and conscience.

Never mind the robust intellectualism of old humanists - a Huxley, a Dewey, a Santayana, a Lippmann, What would a New Humanist make of Lippmann's comparison of an average voter to a theater-goer walking into a play in the middle of the third act and leaving before the last curtain? Should he apologize to hoi polloi? Or Russell on the same theme: "Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man." Elitism. Pure elitism. We should apologize for that.

The legacy of great minds and bold ideas crashing like cymbals in the orchestra of human progress has become a sad reminder of the aristocracy of intellect that American democracy - for reasons unclear to me - has moved beyond.

The New Humanism wants to move beyond it, beyond the cruelty of intellect to where truth is what you feel it is and where confession is good for the soul.


Pole dancing

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Look down, look up, look out!



There is...a growing body of evidence that the Earth's magnetic field is about to disappear, at least for a while. The geological record shows that it flips from time to time, with the south pole becoming the north, and vice versa. On average, such reversals take place every 500,000 years, but there is no discernible pattern. Flips have happened as close together as 50,000 years, though the last one was 780,000 years ago. But, as discussed at the Greenland Space Science Symposium, held in Kangerlussuaq this week, the signs are that another flip is coming soon.



The Blair Years

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A selection from The Time's list of analysis since Blair took over the Labour Party in 1994.

From the late unlamented Bernard Levin to Anatole Kaletsky who raised questions about Blair's state of mind four years before Mathew Parris famously suggested our dear leader might be barking mad:
Bernard Levin 1994
Labour at last has a modern leader ready to sweep to power and end this sorry era. The longer and more frequently I contemplate Mr Blair, the more I like the cut of his jib...And at last Labour has found a leader to win and to deserve to win. From now until polling day I am a Blairite, and then I shall give three thousand cheers as he enters 10 Downing Street.

Mathew Parris 1994
Tony Blair is the next leader of the Labour Party (oops!) but he could just as well have been the leader of the Conservative Party or the Social Democratic Party or the Liberal Party or the Green Party, or Archbishop of Canterbury, or a progressive missionary, or in charge of Bob Geldof's PR, or director of a major charity, or chairman of English Heritage, or general secretary of a small, service-sector trade union, or a management consultant, or King Herod, or manager of a small plastics factory in Enfield where he is also sidesman in the local church and takes his daughters to pony classes in a newish Volvo.

Ben Macintyre 1997
Their trip to Buckingham Palace completed, the invitation to form an administration proffered by Her Majesty and accepted, Mr and Mrs Blair stopped their car in Whitehall and walked to Number 10 clasping, double-handed, the hands that reached from behind the packed barriers on either side of Downing Street. Looking pale, but with passionate fervour, Mr Blair sounded again the keynotes of his campaign and emphasised the "huge responsibility that is on me and the great trust" reflected by his huge electoral mandate. He was interrupted by deafening cheers as he pledged to "govern in the interests of all our people, the whole of this nation". The Blairs gathered their three children and entered Downing Street to meet the applauding staff. The door closed. A new chapter opened.

William Rees-Mogg 1997
For the moment it is the victory which matters. Tony Blair will have to be a great Prime Minister if he is not to be a great failure. He has reformed his party; he has won his overwhelming majority; now the most difficult part of his job is to come. The logical doubts still remain. He has never told us how he will reform wefare, how Labour can pay for health and education, or whether he will join the single currency. Failure is not only possible, but even likely.

Anatole Kaletsky 1999
Apart from a feeble joke about foxes and the distracted, almost embarrassed, expression on his face during some of the mawkish moments, there were only two things wrong with Tony Blair's millennial speech in Bournemouth this week. It was dishonest and stupid...If we assume that Mr Blair really believes in this Manichaean duality between respect for the past and preparation for the future, then it becomes just about possible to understand the blood-curdling belligerence of his speech and its bizarre Messianic peroration about "national salvation". But if that is really the way he thinks, then serious questions must surely arise about his sanity.

Mathew Parris 2003
He keeps retreating into a hopeless, desperate optimism: another sign of lunacy. He seems to have promised the Americans he could deliver Europe, and told the Europeans he could tame America. There was scant ground for hope on the first score and none on the second. The belief that irreconcilables can be reconciled by one’s personal contacts and powers of persuasion is a familiar delusion among people who are not quite right in the head. While each futile promise is in the process of being demonstrated to be undeliverable, he goes into a sort of nose-tapping, “watch this space” denial. When finally the promise is abandoned he turns insouciantly away — and makes a new promise.

Ann Treneman 2006
On television this event may have looked good but, in reality, it was as cheap as a fake Rolex. Mr Blair emerged from one side of the Jag. At first I thought he was glowing but that was only his tan. He gave us a wave. I don’t know why because we weren’t waving at him. Perhaps he is practising for his upcoming Legacy Tour or perhaps he has picked up this tip from the Queen: when in doubt, wave. Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, popped out of the other side of the Jag. The PM still has one friend.
And this:

Channel 4 News online asked 10 leading columnists to each give their verdict on 10 years of Blair rule in just 10 words.

My two favourites are:

Melanie Phillips: "His incoherent triangulation created a void, into which he fell."

and Tony Parsons: "Somebody else's villa in Barbados. Somebody else's son in Iraq."

For what it's worth here are my ten words: "Doctor Kelly was found this morning, he had killed himself"




Oh no he won't

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Nick Robinson : Blair - he'll be missed
It is now a staggering 952 days since a weakened Tony Blair first declared that he would not seek to go "on and on and on" and promised he'd leave office before fighting a fourth election. You may, by now, be thoroughly sick of the wait. However, I have no doubt that he'll be missed. I mean that not as praise, but simply as a prediction. For a decade he's been more than just another politician. In an era obsessed with celebrity he's been near the top of the "A list". He has been one of the few enduring characters in our national soap opera. When he led the tributes to Princess Diana, millions mourned with him.
There have been 11 Prime Ministers during my lifetime and I can say with absolute certainty that not a single one (not even old Winnie) was missed when she/he finally went. The Diana reference is particularly telling. A year after her death there were virtually no signs of the mourners who had sobbed through her funeral.

Blair is a lightweight who arrived just in time for the superficial, sound-bite, gesture-ridden world of the nineties. If Robinson thinks Blair will be missed he should get out a bit more. I think he means HE and his media mates will miss Tone. For the rest of us it has come 951 days too late.


So you CAN sell anything online

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Tumbleweeds! Decorative year round!

... If they don't tumble we don't sell them!..

The tumbleweed is a nuisance to most inhabitants of Western Kansas. The Russian thistle bushes are everywhere. They clog drainage ditches, pile up against fencerows, and have even been known to cause traffic accidents. (via)




But this Kansas woman has built a nice little part-time business flogging them over the net as home decoration.


Yeah, right

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Teacher 'upset' at 120mph claim

A head teacher has told a court he "refuted" claims he had been travelling at 120mph shortly before a crash which left another driver in a wheelchair. Paul Davies, 51, from Hirwaun, told Merthyr Crown Court the claim regarding his speed had "angered and upset him".

On Wednesday, he told the jury how he "refuted" earlier claims by a witness he had been travelling at 120mph as he overtook a car moments before the collision. He told the court how he was driving at 60mph and blamed large amounts of rainwater on the carriageway for the reason he lost control of the car.

He told the court how he had never driven at more than 80mph in his...



...two-litre Subaru Impreza STI. (Very, very quick - Insurance Group 20, say no more)

Hold Up! He's been driving for 35 years, he's driving at 60 and he loses control of a 4-wheel drive Subaru renowned for its  superb handling and roadholding?!

Guilty or not, get that man off the bloody road.


UPDATE: 10/05/07 - GUILTY!

Paul Davies, 51, head of Cwmdare Primary School, who collided with a car driven by Kelvin Palmer in May 2006 on the A465 Heads of the Valleys Road, leaving him in a wheelchair was found guilty of dangerous driving at his trial at Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court and will be sentenced in three weeks. He was given an immediate driving ban by the judge.

Bernard Powell, defending, read character references from Davies' friends and colleagues to the court. Alan Maddox, chairman of the governing body at Cwmdare Primary School, described him as "honest, trustworthy and helpful", while Tony Ashton, whose children are taught at the school, said Davies was "a man of unimpeachable good character".

The jury, however, thought he was a liar.




Pro what?

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Irish teenager wins abortion fight
A pregnant Irish teenager won her high court battle in Dublin today to be allowed to travel to Britain to have an abortion....Previously the Irish Health Service Executive had stepped in and put the 17-year-old, who is from the eastern province of Leinster, in its care and prevented her from making the journey.

The executive prompted a legal battle by informing police that it wanted officers to stop her from travelling and wrote to the Passport Office refusing its consent for a passport....However, Mr Justice Liam McKechnie ruled today that there were no statutory or constitutional grounds for stopping her from travelling to the UK for the operation...In court last week, the executive made a U-turn and dropped its opposition to her travelling to the UK, and said it would let her go on the grounds she has consent from her mother and a judge. But the process was further protracted on Saturday when a district judge refused to give consent.

Also during the hearing, the court heard from a barrister, appointed by the state to represent the unborn child, who maintained that the foetus...had rights and was protected under the constitution. Anti-abortion protesters and a pro-choice group staged rival demonstrations outside the court.
Notice that the anti-abortion demonstrators are not referred to here as 'PRO-LIFE'.


I wonder if they had those cute images they are fond of displaying. You know, the ones of foetuses sucking their thumbs and smiling?


I bet they didn't have any images of babies with anencephaly. I wonder why not?


The foetus this woman is carrying has anencephaly, meaning most of its brain and skull will fail to form, and it will be dead within 72 hours of its birth so I suppose the use of the term 'life' as in Pro-Life, would have been stretching things somewhat. 

The 'life' of the woman who would have had to carry this, effectively moribund, child to full term and then deliver it as normal counts for nothing, of course.

Fucking bastards.