There are very few things less enticing to the British public than the sight of CJ in the bath. While occasionally Marmalade the lunatic kitten comes to balance  precariously on the edge of the bath tub, and watch the great pink hippo wallowing in the foaming waters, human beings seem to find the mere prospect revolting. So I apologise in advance for calling this scene to your minds, and hope you have not recently eaten.

It was Wednesday evening: I was sitting in the bath, reading a book on Biblical Archaeology, and rather wishing I wasn’t, when I began  to ponder what to write about for the RD.net Science Writing contest. And then – Eureka! I leapt foaming from the bath, hurtled excitedly out in to the kitchen, skidded across the lino and hearing someone in the living room frantically hid my modesty behind a bemused Cuddles-cat. Not an easy task, I can assure you…

The Bathtub Fallacy

And in that moment of inspiration in deciding what to write about, I perfectly illustrate the first of the perils of myth-making in the writing of  History of Science;  what I shall call the Bathtub Fallacy. I am sure many readers have heard of Archimedes supposed moment of revelation inthe bathtub, how he leapt out cying Eureka, and excitedly solved a problem. Reading the history of Science mere mortals like I can feel inspired – will I dream of a snake eating it’s tail, and work out the structure of Benzene tonight? (bit late!) Perhaps in a flash I will work out an elegant solution to the world’s energy needs? And this is the Bathtub Fallacy – the belief perpetuated by the anecdotes by which we make the process of discovery and science understandable, the human interest bits, that genius and a moment of sudden insight alone solves scientific problems.  If it did we would spend all out time in the baths. I could of course have called this the Apple Concussion Fallacy - the well known story about Newton and a n apple falling on his head, but as my street is singularly lacking in apples, and I have never been nearly brained by anything heavier than a stray conker from a tree, I didn’t, and you all have to live with the thought of me in the bath instead.

Me in the bath with the maddest hair yet: for the sake of your sanity I have my shirt on!

The danger of the Bathtub Fallacy is that there is an element of truth to it: yes, insights do arrive like this. What is often not made plain by historians is the vast struggle, the endless hard work, and the single minded devotion to the problem which occupied the genius for maybe months or years before the answer came in a creative flash. Trust me, I have spent many years laying on my bed, sitting in the bath or staring blankly out of the window waiting for my Nobel Prize winning insight. Sadly, it seems you need more – work, dedication, study, and perhaps a little obsession. The bathtub fallacy is not a myth as such: these things happen– but the inference pure luck, the will of the gods, or sitting in the bathtub is what counts is very dangerous to the would be scientist, and I think when reading the history of science one should not emphasize these serendipitous moments, but concentrate more on how the heroine or hero prepared for their ‘revelation from on high’.

The Persecution Complex

My title, aimed at a little free controversy, was Damning Darwin. Why? Have I suddenly become a member of the Buttplugg, Arizona, First Church of Flanders, and adopted Young Earth Creationism? Nope. Long term readers of this forum will know that I have argued passionately that the response of many 19th century Christians to Darwin’s work was one of polite interest, enthusiasm, or overwhelming support. (You can say the same about Copernicus actually.)

Evolution was pioneered in America by the devout Evangelical Asa Grey, writing Darwinia (1876) which reconciles his Evangelical beliefs with orthodox Darwinism, and indeed being the only non-British member of the Darwin circle who saw Origin of the Species (1859) prior to publication. He dedicated much of his life to publicising and popularising Darwinian Evolution.  A large number of Evangelicals were already evolutionist and many of the objections raised to Darwin’s ideas (like those of Soapy Sam Wilberforce) were primarily scientific not theological. The Evangelicals response was extremely positive.  John Van Wyhe (Historian of Science, Cambridge University, leader of the Darwin Online Project)  published a very interesting article in BBC History magazine — January 2009 – Volume 10 in which he exposes ye olde myth.

Charles Darwin

Now, who accepted evolution in those first years? It’s a who’s who of Evangelicals  — BB Warfierld, AH Strong, Van Dyke, Landey Patton, AA Hodge, WT Shedd, James McCosh — all hard core Evangelical leaders.  Let us not forget Frederick Farrar, James Orr, Charles Kingsley and Henry Drummond, who Henry Morris castigates for misleading Christians – the father of YEC loudly denounced the dreadful treachery of his Evangelical forebears in accepting Darwinism or other forms of Evolutionary theory.  These Evangelicals critique the science from time to time, but accepted fully its theological compatibility with their Evangelical beliefs. Others like Rev.Macloskie, JD Dana, GF Wright, JW Hulke etc were evangelicals who fought hard for the scientific NOT just the theological acceptance of evolution – one could go on, but many historians of science and religion have already surveyed this territory and found that on both sides of the Atlantic works in favour of Darwin in Christian circles far outnumbered the minority opposition of Darwin. So who damned Darwin? It was not the Church of his day. One of those famous stories everybody know is the debate between Bishop Soapy Sam and TH Huxley – which of course is nothing like what people believe it was.  The myths were already building fast even by then, indeed before the end of the 19th century, one of the most famous being about the debate between Huxley and Wilberforce over the On the Origin of the Species. There is a superb essay on the history of this by JR Lucas here, — http://users.ox.ac.uk/~jrlucas/legend.html

So why this conflict myth, which I will dub the Persecution Complex? It was not actually created by the Fundies, the nut-jobs and the loonies. It was created by serious historians of science with an axe to grind. The fact it is a steaming pile of poodle jism has done nothing to stop it becoming accepted uncritically, and the myth has inevitably created a backlash of Christian fundies who think they are defending Biblical Truth, and who are managing to actually be far less theologically sophisticated than their 19th century forebears. Henry Morris created a lot if it in the 1960’s — and we all have to live with it today, but the myth started long before.. Two men gave us it — John William Draper wrote the History of the Conflict Between Science and Religion (1874), the second Andrew Dickson White, with The Warfare of Science (1876) and A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896).  Draper was alarmed by the declaration of Papal Infallibility in 1875; White was responding to the criticism he received from conservative Christians on his secular appointment to a University position. Neither condemned all religion – Draper was concerned only with Roman Catholicism, White’s target was Protestant fundamentalists, but this is often overlooked. The books were dismissed by scholars as flawed and filled with canards, but a myth had been born.  This one is more dangerous than most – it gave us YEC…

Ya Canna’ Change the Laws of Physics!

Darwin of course attracted a lot of sympathy and support for his brilliant work right from the start: geology had already demonstrated the Earth to be many millions of years old (though limited by Kelvin’s calculations on the sun which gave the Earth an age of not more than 25 million years – which led to his and many other physicists rejection of Darwin’s idea of Natural Selection as physically impossible. The debate between physicists and geologists over the age of the Earth was ongoing, until the understanding of the actual processes involved in the sun (fusion not combustion)  showed the geologists were right. Physicists however probably were greater opponents of Darwinism in the early years (as pseudo-science that defied our understanding of physical law) than Evangelicals. I think we can call this the Wicked Stupid Opponents fallacy, where people who raised objections to the ideas of the genius are seen as mere muppets who were just being awkward for the sake of it. I fear Thomas Kuhn’s idea of paradigm shift has made this even more of a threat – those who resist fringe scientific ideas today are seen as hidebound reactionaries, like the men who laughed at Einstein.   Unless that is the new scientific ideas resisted involve little grey men having abducting rural farmers for a quick probing session: then you are OK to doubt, and I’m with you as it happens.

Lord Kelvin, critic of Darwin

Yet time and time again we are reminded of the sad story Alfred Wegener and Continental Drift, and how his ideas were rejected by a hidebound geological establishment. Sure they were, ‘cos until the 1950’s or 1960’s other theories explained the data just as well if not better!  There is no ’sin’ in doubting some new radical claim (or an old one) and we should respect Kelvin for his common sense objections, not belittle him (Darwin wasn’t keen on him – he refers to him as “that pale spectre”.)  The historians of science often work in a world where ‘history is written by the winners’ – watch out for this…

The Myth of the Lone Gunman

And this I think brings me back to my problem with last year’s celebrations of Darwin. No look, I’m a fan. I own several standard lives, Darwin’s books, have read through the Darwin Correspondence archive and have enthusiastically supported a number of Darwin related projects. Yet increasingly I find myself frustrated that Darwin is misunderstood, misrepresented, or just a caricature. And really, I think the ultimate problem is that Darwin is not all that important.

If I asked someone on the street in Britain why Charles Darwin was important they might well say “he discovered Evolution”, completely oblivious to the fact that Evolution was widely known, and to some extent accepted, before Charles. I could point to Lamarck, Buffon, Charles’s grandfather Erasmus or probably the greatest popularizer of the theory, the Scottish writer Robert Chambers.

A few people might say more accurately “he invented the idea of Natural Selection” – except of course he did not, and the idea can be found back as far as the Ancient Greeks, and especially in some of the pre-Socratics. He did however introduce the phrase, retaining it too the 5th edition where he uses Spencer’s “survival of the fittest.” A curious circle here: from the political economics of Thomas Malthus, who inspired Darwin, to Darwin to Herbert Spencer and his “social Darwinism” of political economics again.

What Darwin did, and his importance, is that alongside Alfred Russel Wallace he collected so much evidence for the idea of Natural Selection that it, in spite of grave objections from the physicists of the day – for it was in violation of the known natural laws of physics which dictated a younger Earth, but so was Uniformitarianism in Geology, so something had to give – anyway what he did was make the first reputable evidentially solid case for the hypothesis of Evolution by Natural Selection.  That was clearly a work of great importance, and worthy of our respect.

Much Darwin believed was wrong – his notion of how inheritance worked was nonsensical, and not to my mind really that far from Lamarck’s, though Lamarck gets a bad press, why I know not really – sure I know about the tragedy of Lysenkoism, but it may be more understandable than those unfamiliar with plant breeding believe – anyway – Darwin’s & Wallace’s idea would have gone nowhere without Mendel’s breakthrough – genetics.

So what is the fallacy of the Lone Gunman? Simple – the over-praising of Darwin obscures the actual history of the idea, and how a scientific hypothesis was refined, developed across a number of research communities, and slowly advanced against a series of seemingly fatal objections; how an idea, Evolution by Natural Selection, that was very ancient –and fairly obvious.  If you could not infer something of the sort from animal husbandry and breeding stock, well poor old Johnny Ray  and the Linnean system had pretty much classified the Animal Kingdom in a way that shouted “look, lifeforms are diversifying”.

We have lost sight of the history of Evolution as an idea, have allowed myths about a supposed widespread conflict between religion and science to obscure the actual truth of what happened back then, and all too often imposed our own ideological nonsense on the history of science. We have made it all one man, elevating him to a saintly role, and creating pious hagiographies, that espouse the myth of the Eureka moment, of a man who revolutionized science – and ignoring the quiet dedicated work of the many who worked before, were contemporary with, or the tens of thousands who have developed our knowledge of morphology and evolutionary biology since.

Darwin is Dead - Science Lives!

We need a poster of Darwin with a safety pin through the nose, Sex Pistol’s cover style. We need to metaphorically defecate on his grave, to drag him from the ridiculous pedestal where he stands taunted by Creationists, who unfairly understand Evolution =Darwin: because we implied it was so! We need more New Scientist headlines saying “Darwin Was Wrong!” not less, more real understanding of the history of science, and more realization that science is a progress done by women and men, not just bearded geniuses of another age.  No lone gunman, no bearded genius from a far away country gave us modern science: it was built on the work of thousands of anonymous hardworking men and women, and geniuses are justthe pop stars of the science worlkd – the ones who we all remember.  Maybe next time you pick up a history of Science book, and get very excited by the hero’s amazing successes and triumph over adversity, it is worth remebering that for that one great thinker, a thousand more dedicated researchers worked quietly building the framework for thei rbreakthrough.

We all stand upon the shoulders of giants: but we see further when we are supported by a human pyramid of dedicated scientists we never get to read books about too:  it’s good to be reminded of that fact.  The Hollywood Myth of the maverick who takes on the system and wins is endearing and sells books; but in the end the mountains of journal articles, the decades collecting specimens, and the humble assistance of the  millions who selflessly dedicate their lives to increasing human knowledge counts for more.

Richard Dawkins Forum Science Writing Contest damns Darwin!

Why did early Christians choose to celebrate Christ’s birthday on December 25th?  Well not all did. To this day different Christian Churches celebrate Christmas on different days – the Orthodox Christmas is January 7th. However in the west the festival has been fixed at December 25th since the early Third Century. So why?

The world was believed to have been created on March 25th – Adam’s birthday. Jesus as “Second Adam” (see Pauline Epistles) was assumed to share this birthday initially. So March 25th was probably the original birthdate celebrated. Being a Prophet, he was also believed, in accordance with custom, to have been born and died (like Shakespeare) on the same day. Passover may well have fallen on March 25th, so the Crucifixion was then, so again, Jesus’ birthday by this logic!
 

All Christian antiquity (against all astronomical possibility) recognized the 25th of March as the actual day of Our Lord’s death. The opinion that the Incarnation also took place on that date is found in the pseudo-Cyprianic work De Pascha Computus, c. 240. It argues that the coming of Our Lord and His death must have coincided with the creation and fall of Adam. And since the world was created in spring, the Saviour was also conceived and died shortly after the equinox of spring

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01542a.htm

So the jump is from birth to conception – add nine months to March 25th, and lo! December 25th! All entirely based on Jewish contemporary thinking; if coceived not born on March 25th, Jesus was born on December 25th. Wot no Mithras???

Around 400CE St. Augustine wrote in On The Trinity

For He is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since. But he was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th.

So there, that is the real,and fairly odd ot our minds reasoning that led Christmas Day to be on December 25th – nothing to do with pagan festivals upon that date, of which there were none.

Almost everyone “knows” Christmas derived from Mithraism, or Saturnalia, or Yule, or whatever. From this weak claim often follows the stronger claim Christianity is really just reinvented paganism.  I strongly suspect it is a nonsense, and in this post I will explain why…  It all started for me when Stephen Fry repeated on QI the old chestnut about Mithras being celebrated on December 25th, and his supposed similarities to Christ. This annoys me, and the fact that it keeps being promulgated shows a remarkable lack of critical thinking, or willingness to examine the evidence. I have briefly summarised here some of the problems with this, and provided links.

Now if you hold it as an article of non-faith that this is true, fair enough. I like to challenge beliefs, and have mine challenged, but I do think this argument is an embarrassment. I refuse to be precious about others beliefs or lack thereof,and while this is a sceptical blog, this strikes me as an excellent chance to apply some sceptical and critical thinking…  Anyway I decided to do a quick survey of modern scholarship. What I found was that in fact pretty much nobody in academia believes any of this anymore: no more than many of them believe in Christianity.

The solstices not important in Pagan antiquity?

Now according to scholars of Roman Religion, there were no religious festivals between Saturnalia (17th December, celebrated 17th – 22nd in some periods) and January. I am not convinced soltices featured largely in pagan religious thinking, based on my examination of the evidence. I suspect the obvious link may well be a result of modern neo-paganism where there are strong associations though with solstices. In fact my survey of ancient paganism has found very little evidence that the solstices were actually at all significant – it seems to just be something “everyone knows” again.

The Myth  of the Myth of Mithras

A lot of people saw Stephen Fry on a QI Christmas special a few years back talk utter garbage about Mithras and the supposed many other Crucified god celebrated on December 25th. Let’s start with Mithras.We often see long lists of supposed analogies between Mithras, a middle eastern deity worshipped from India, trough Persia to Rome in various forms, and Jesus Christ.

Now if you want to know what we know about Mithras, we have two sources – the archaeological evidence, and the literary sourcesl . Sadly scholarship is not something that Mithras advocates seem to value much.  In a spirit of boredom, and with a vague idea it might be handy for work, I undertook this challenge – well grabbed what we could from what was available — and looked ta what was to be found.

Two things became clear; one, was that many classicists seem to hate Christianity. Secondly, they don’t hold at all to the copy cat hypothesis!

I started with Manfred Clauss, The Roman Cult of Mithras: The God and His Mysteries, translated by Richard Gordon, (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press 2000) Who better than a man named Claus, sorry Clauss, to study the issue of December 25th?

“Most of the parallels between Mithraism and Christianity are part of the common currency of all mystery cults and can be traced back to common origins in the Graeco-oriental culture of the Hellenistic world.“  Clauss, p. 168.

As Zalmoxis once said on RD.Net, Mithras was well known for his manly love of bulls...

The similarities Clauss finds are:

1. Water plays a significant part in the two religions.

2. Mithras the god is born from a rock. In the eastern Church, Mary, the theotokos, the mother of God, was linked as the rock from which Christ was born. (The latter appears to be the origin of the completely misstated and erroneous views of the birth of Jesus and the birth of Mithras, simplified and distorted beyond recognition. One of the Church fathers also noted that there was a belief in his day that Christ was born in a cave, and the Mithraic rites were celebrated in caves, or temples constructed to resemble them. Compare this with the usual claims about Christ and Mithras’ birth.)

3. To their followers Christ and Mithras were divinities of light and the sun. Christ is the Sun of Righteousness, Mithras the Victorious, or the Unconquered Sun. This was according to Clauss the Christians distancing themselves from the Pagan ideal.

4. Clauss accuses Christians of taking over Sunday and December 25th from Mithraism, note, however, the argument of many other scholars that December 25th was a Christian festival co-opted by the cult of Sol Invictus, if this actually happened (see later). Sunday had been observed by Christians since the 1st century, and there is no early evidence of a similar Mithraic festival.

Clauss really doesn’t eem to like Christianity, but due to its lack of internal organization the cult of Mithras had barely any means of defending itself against attacks by Christians and the abominations of the age. It was scattered in numerous small congregations which not recognizably connected with one another. There was no hierarchy to bind several congregations together p. 171.

5. There was a ritual meal in Mithraism. Justin Martyr expresses surprise at the similarity. He was writing about 150 AD and claimed it was a diabolic imitation. It was the Christians who raised the question of the similarity, and Tertullian was to continue the theme. Clauss notes an offering of bread and wine is known in virtually all cultures, and the meal as a means of binding the faithful together and uniting them to the deity was a feature common to many religions. It represented one of the oldest means of manifesting unification with the spiritual and the appropriation of spiritual qualities. Now the Christian eucharist clearly and explicitly derives from the Jewish Passover meal, celebrated since antiquity. The blessing of the consecrated elements the bread and wine in the eucharist is based on the baruch ha-matzoh, the Jewish meal time grace.

As an aside reading Clauss reminds one more than anything of the incredible symbolic and mythological distance between the Gospel narratives and the activities of Mithras, which are far, far stronger and more obvious than the supposed similarities.
Anyway, to cite one version, from a well known source fo the supposed likenesses, which we keep seeing…

# Mithra was born on December 25th.

Nope, no evidence for this at all. So in fact, there are no early references at all to Mithras having been celebrated on December 25th. The Cult of Sol Invictus was indeed celebrated on this day once at least, but scholars make a distinction between the two these days – and that celebration was actually instituted in the reign of Elagabulus (218-222AD). It is generally considered to be part of the post-Christian reaction: December 25th was being popularised as the date of Christ’s birthday then, most popularly by Sextus Julius Africanus in 221AD book.  And just to be pedantic, the differences between Mithra (Persian) and Sol Invictus as worshipped in Roman culture were huge.  (see Michael P. Speidel Mithras-Orion: Greek Hero and Roman Army God (Leiden, E.J. Brill 1980), if you want to pursue this point.

# He was considered a great traveling teacher and master.
# He had 12 companions or disciples.

Not found these yet, but there is no mention anywhere of this. He is surrounded by the torchbearers in iconography, is this where that came from?

# He performed miracles.

Yep, who didn’t?

# He was buried in a tomb.
# After three days he rose again.
# His resurrection was celebrated every year.
# Mithra was called “the Good Shepherd.”

No he wasn’t. The two torchbearers who lift him from the rock had been likened to shepherds – Clauss (p.69) specifically denies that they are shepherds in any way or form, and refutes this nonsense. The version here is a garbled version of the claim.  The rest of it has no basis at all in fact.

# He was considered “the Way, the Truth and the Light, the Redeemer, the Savior, the Messiah.”
# He was identified with both the Lion and the Lamb.

He is associated with the serpent and the raven. Maybe in bad light, or they were wearing fancy dress? Er, no. Well not that I have found so far. If I find it I’ll tell you straight away. He was associated with firing arrows in to a rock to create springs, and above all else killing a bull, creating life by doing so. Does that help? He did have sex with a rock that gave birth to his son, later killed in a duel with Aries and turned in to a mountain. Oddly enough you rarely hear that bit. He was born himself by springing naked from a rock, holding a torch and dagger and wearing a phyrgian cap.

# His sacred day was Sunday, “the Lord’s Day,” hundreds of years before the appearance of Christ.

Any proof of this? Like any at all? Hulllooo down there? Earth calling evidence???! I can’t find any.

# Mithra had his principal festival on what was later to become Easter, at which time he was resurrected.

Really? Er, so how come I can find not one word on this anywhere, apart loony from loony websites derived from each other? As Easter’s date quite clearly derives from the ancient Jewish Passover festival’s date, as it  says in the Bible, why the heck would anybody in their right mind believe the date derived from some mythical Mithraic ceremony know one has ever actually seen any evidence for???  This is simply rubbish I’m afraid. All of it. It’s Erich Von Daniken for modern conspiracy theorists and Christianity bashers. At least one decent pagan site run by a Mithras worshiper (and a decent scholar) sets this nonsense right.

# His religion had a Eucharist or “Lord’s Supper.”
Well it had a meal as part of the religious rites. My money however, and i think any sane pundits, is on the theory the Christian Eucharist derives exactly from where it says it does – the Jewish Passover meal.

There is a lot of bull about poor Mithras

I then turned to  Roger Beek’s The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire, Oxford University Press, 2006. It’s a heavy book, technical, and interesting — Chapter 6, Cognition and Representation with its material on neurology and evolutionary psychology is especially fascinating but contentious. This is the kind of book which people who believe Religious Studies is a) isolated from the scientific mainstream and b) has no purpose or content, should try to read. I am going to start by saying that if that those who assert  that Paul’s Christology is derived from Mithraic ‘doctrine’ and mythology they should really read chapters 7 to 9 inclusive of this book, and then explain how Christianity resembles the iconography, mythology and cosmology described therein.  I’ll briefly discuss the book, but I would encourage all interested parties to read it – it is highly technical, and I can not begin to do it justice here.

The book begins with the now traditional comment on how Franz Cumont (1910) the first major figure in Mithraic studies has been long superseded, and then looks at problems in the traditional ways of interpreting and understanding Mithraism. It never even seems to occur to Beek that Christianity and Mithraism are not absolutely distinct — some interesting insights from Beek though

“Mithraism typically expressed itself in and through the medium of the visual arts, just as early Christianity typically expressed itself in and through the medium of the spoken word, and before long the written word.” p.20

Beek notes that one of the problems is that the methods of scholarship devised for studying early Christianity have been applied to Mithraic studies, where they may not be as fruitful, and may be highly deceptive.  He notes the centrality of the Tauroctony, the Bull Killing, as we might expect. At no point did I discover any suggestion that Mithras was ever associated with the Bull, and was sacrificing himself: this appears to be one of the many spurious myths created by the Pagan Christ authors.  It is noted several times that the symbols of a dog, snake, scorpion and raven are included in the tauroctony. Guess what? no lions or lambs!

On Christianity and Mithraism Beek writes

“Both originated in the first century CE (Mithraism a decade or so later than its peer), and both grew and flourished in the same milieu.” page 54

I think this leaves little room for the Mithras = Christ myth, but moving on, Beek’s position here is that Cumont misunderstood the “religion of Roman Mithras”. he saw it as a doctrinal faith with beliefs, modelling his understanding on Christianity — a misunderstanding. From Burkett ’s Mystery Cults (Harvard, 1987) I had already discovered that the Mysteries were not like Christianity or Judaism – they made no exclusive claims, but rather offered initiatory routes to experiential/theurgic understandings. I think a closer analogy might be like a medieval Christian going on pilgrimage to a shrine of a saint, or a modern Catholic paying especial devotion to the Virgin Mary by conscientious recitation of the rosary. I may have misunderstood – but that is the picture I get: a set of mystical initiations based upon symbolic truth – a mystical freemasonry might act as one analogy perhaps? Most Mystery cults were not exclusively initiatory – you could worship Isis without initiating in to her mysteries – but Roman Mithraism was. Yet you could worship Mithras, Isis and the Roman State gods with no clash at all — you were adopting a personal cult, but it did not claim to represent universal reality the way Judaism or Christianity or even Roman Paganism did.

A couple of passages of Beek seemed worthy of mention, while off the topic in question, seem directly relevant to the topic of this forum generally –

Moving on, more from Beek…

Same brain, same mind. Consequently, one may argue with some confidence from the way we form ‘religious’ representations now to the way the ancients formed them then. Given the comparatively rapid and radical shifts of culture, we are on much firmer ground with the phylogenetic and the ontogenetic than with the socio-cultural.” p.95

I’ll skip a bit, and end with my favourite quote from Beek – if you find this interesting you really might want to pick up his book…

Here one may surely assume that just as there is nothing distinctly ‘religious’ about the mental event of forming representations of beings not normally encountered in the natural world, so the concomitant neural events do not differ, or do not necessarily differ, according to whether or not the representation’s belong to the subjects religious world. Different neuronal groups do not fire in different ways whenever the mind is, as it were, ‘doing religion’. The human brain has no dedicated circuits for religion or ‘the sacred’.

I found that all rather interesting, though contentious.

Anyway another book, this time published 2006, done, and I’m no closer to finding any evidence to support the famous claims of a Mithras – Christian parallel – indeed quite the contrary. I also read Burkett, Mystery Cults, Harvard, 1987, as mentioned.

Ok, moving on, I think the next stage is to show where this all started — with the work of Franz Cumont in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He is always cited as the scholar who said Mithraism was the source of Christianity, and while his work has been endlessly critiqued and superseded, especially since the 1950’s, his archaeological/historical investigations of Mithraism were the first great modern treatment of the subject. So here we are addressing the very father of the Mithras/Christ movement – and so what did he really have to say?

I’m using Franz Cumont’s The Mysteries of Mithra, translated by Thomas J McCormack, Second Edition, The Open Court Publishing Company, Chicago, 1910. Yes, 1910. That is how recent the scholarship these claims are based upon is. And it will come as no surprise at all to readers of this blog to discover that Cumont never actually said many of the things we have been led to expect. In fact completely the opposite! I positively encourage you to check my findings- Cumont is also online.

Firstly, he seems to doubt Roman Mithraism preceded Christianity – Beek (2006) as you may recall places it a decade later.

Cumont wrote “The propagation of the two religions had been almost comtemporanously conducted, and their diffusion had taken place under analogous conditions.” p.188

He goes on, like every other Mithraic scholar, to discuss the two religions as separate faiths – which they clearly were.

He then notes ” a point of resemblance between the two antagonistic creeds was that at the outset they drew their proselytes from among the inferior classes of society; their propaganda was sat their origin essentially popular” (p.189)

Antagonistic? Yes. Cumont’s central thesis in this section is that the Roman Empire used Mithraism as a means of warding off the increasing influence of Christianity. If they were variations on a theme, or as alleged last night by another poster the same thing, why on earth would the Romans do this? Not a strong argument, but a point worth considering.  And then he continues…

“By the side of these resemblances [yes, the ones above: appeal to poorer classes and dated from same era, spread quickly] considerable differences are to be remarked in the methods of procedure of the two adversaries.” p.189

Er, but this is the  Cumont who thinks Christianity derived from Mithraism? No, he never though that at all. That’s what we have been told he thought. It’s not what his book says – but hang in there, because I have found why people might think that is what he said — I’ll get to that shortly…

So what are the differences?

* Christianity spread through the Jewish diaspora, and the Mediterranean – some scholars suggest up to 10% of the Roman Empire was Jewish or Judeo-sympathisers in the first century.

* Christianity was an urban phenomenon. Mithraism was urban and rural.

* Christianity was a missionary religion. Mithraism was a mystery cult, and decidedly not.

* Mithraism moved with its adherents – soldiers, political functionaries and slaves.

* Mithraism gained ground in the army and the political arena – areas where Christians owing to their pacifism and non-conformism were rare.

* Mithraism was strongest in the Danube – Christianity in Asia-Minor and Syria

Enough of the differences – Cumont then develops his ideas of a Mithraic doctrine – and here at last we come to the heart of the matter, and the alleged evidence for Christianity deriving from Mithraism.

And so, at last we come to the famous Cumont similarities of doctrine. Here is his list, based on his dubious reconstruction of Mithriac ‘doctrine’

1. Both used the term “brothers” for members.(note: I have found no later scholars citing this) Mithraism was a male cult, unlike Christianity where women were important in this period.

2. Both used baptism (note: I have found no later scholars citing this)

3. adherents received the power to combat evil spirits (note: I have found no later scholars citing this)

4. Expected salvation from a “Lord’s Supper”. (note: I have found no later scholars citing this)

5. Celebrated the birth of the Sun on December 25th, in the phase of the religion when the mystery cult was made a public religion. Now Cumont dates this crucially to 273AD, not 218-223AD.  So  then Africanus’ book (and December 25th as a popular Christian holiday) predate the Sol Invictus festival by fifty years…

6. Both preached abstinence, continence, renunciation and self control, as well as categorical systems of ethics. (So both were sexually repressive by pagan standards? ) (note: I have found no later scholars citing this)

7. Both believed in a Heaven and Hell (IU would imagine so , but note: I have found no later scholars citing this)

8. Both believed in an a ancient Flood (as do many many religions but note: I have found no later scholars citing this)

9. Both believed in a Last Judgement, Resurrection of the Dead, Destruction of the Universe. (note: I have found no later scholars citing this)

10. Mithra was a ‘mediator’ similar to Christ as Logos as in Alexandrian theology, an intermediary, and part of a trinity. (note: I have found no later scholars citing this)

11. The killing of the Bull was a sacrifice to save humanity. (note: I have found no later scholars citing this)

12. Both used solar imagery.

You can read these for yourself in Cumont, p.191 to 193. Unfortunately, they are at the heart of the material that modern Mithraic scholars reject. You see the problem is that Cumont interpreted Mithraic iconography -statues, friezes, paintings etc, to generate his doctrinal system, using the only yardstick he had to hand – Early Christianity. And unsurprisingly he found they were similar!

And there is the root of the Pagan Christ Mithras myth. However, let’s look at Cumont’s dodgy list and the wonderful 12 facts peddled today and see if he would have endorsed them…

# Mithra was born on December 25th – not in Cumont, or any other source. Cumont believes his festival was on December 25th, but crucually dates it to 50 years after Africanus’ book popularised it as the date of Jesus’s birthday, and it was the winter solstice and an obvious time for a solar festival anyway!

# He was considered a great traveling teacher and master. - not in Cumont, or any other source.

# He had 12 companions or disciples - not in Cumont, or any other source.

# He performed miracles - yes! A hit!

# He was buried in a tomb. Most people are, but nope not in Cumont, or any other source.

# After three days he rose again.not in Cumont, or any other source.

# His resurrection was celebrated every year.not in Cumont, or any other source.

# Mithra was called “the Good Shepherd.” not in Cumont, or any other source.

# He was considered “the Way, the Truth and the Light, the Redeemer, the Savior, the Messiah.” - not in Cumont, or any other source. Cumont did believe he had some of these attributes, but not these titles. Dubious – half right?

# He was identified with both the Lion and the Lamb – not in Cumont, or any other source.

# His sacred day was Sunday, “the Lord’s Day,” hundreds of years before the appearance of Christ, not in Cumont, or any other source.

# Mithra had his principal festival on what was later to become Easter, at which time he was resurrected - not in Cumont, or any other source. Clearly thsi derived from Judaism to Christianity anyway!

# His religion had a Eucharist or “Lord’s Supper.” – the same, and true, there was a ritual meal in both. Clearly this derived from the Passover meal in Judaism to Christianity anyway!

So even Cumont, supposedly father of this whole connection, the one academic source which is claimed to support the association, doesn’t??? Somehow I am not surprised

So why did Cumont come to be so strongly associated with these claims, when he saw Christianity and Mithraism as distinct and antagonistic?

Because he believes that Christian art may have developed techniques and models from Mithraic poses. p.196 I think the passage discussing this on p.228, possibly cited out of context, may well be the real basis for the Pagan Christ myth.

So did Cumont think Mithraism and Christianity derived from one another, or were the same? Absolutely not — he goes on to say
“It would be wrong to exaggerate the significance of these likenesses.” p.197 He goes on to discuss these differences for the next three pages, and I think your patience may be exhausted for the moment. I was amused as his note it would have been a tragedy for physics if Mithraism had triumphed – he feels it would have retarded science far more than Christianity (p.198).

Yet whether you believe in Christianity of not, if you believe reason and truth are important, I ask you to consider – is there really any case? The best case I have found was proposed almost 100 years ago, is completely discredited in modern academia, and is in fact almost totally misrepresented by those who claim to be heirs to his ideas, as I hope my list demonstrated.  So really – is it true that Mithras was Christ?  No – it’s complete and utter woo. You may well disagree, and all I ask is that if you do, you provide me with evidence to back your assertions. And I would recommend as so often the excellent SkepticWiki here.

If not Mithras, Osiris or Horus?

OK, that took a lot less time than I feared. Before I hit the books, I decided to trace the claims backwards to their source as best as I could. The lady who provided the previous statements name came up, as did her books and website which one often sees linked. Then I saw her source – James Churchward…

Now I’ve kicked around in occult circles for years, and am friends with all sorts of believers, and have a good knowledge of this sort of thing. I also write roleplaying game supplements for various US publishers. I like this sort of stuff, and I knew that name instantly –I think those who propagate this stuff would be less than happy to acknowledge that one of the ultimate sources for their claims was

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Churchward

DO LOOK AT THE LINK!

Tom Harpur has poularised this stuff again recently in his book The Pagan Christ – I would read W Ward Gasque’s review if you want a consideration of his case. If you still need convincing it’s rot, look at Grenme’s brilliant analysis here. He goes through and demolishes each of the purported Jesus-Horus connections.

I grow weary. Tomorrow I will look at the Chronography of 354, when Mithras really was worshiped and the true reason why December 25th was accepted as Christ’s birthday. (Hint: it’s nothing to do with paganism)

cj x

Wedded to the past? Really?

Usual response to caste system and atrocities by categories of Indian Citizens:

Category a) Literate, employed, salaried, insured persons in urban India:

“Caste system does not exist, untouchability is a bygone phenomenon, used by present day dalits to grab political and economic gains.”

Category a1) Indian academics, the same class of citizenry as above albeit with important sounding verbiage:

“Historically, stigmatized subjects have claimed political recognition on the grounds of their experience of violation and vulnerability: historical suffering and the experience of violence have ground claims to rights, recognition, and social redistribution.” 

Category a2) NRI’s to some interested phirang’s curiosity to above article:

a2) “Perhaps, Chapra is not in our country!”

Phirang: “It says 70 km from Patna.”

a2) “Oh Patna, you mean Bihar? Oh that is not India!”

a1) Beloved academia’s take on the same:

“The State in Bihar has never existed as a disinterested arbiter, particularly on the issue of land struggle. With its deep feudal character firmly “embedded in caste”,1 Bihar has always remained a party to the conspiracy“

Since all we ever hear is from a), a1) and a2) either in popular media or from academia, we could perhaps ask who exactly they are?

1)   citizen a) are you a dalit?

2) citizen a1) are you a musahar?

3) citizen a2) are you a bangi?

What percentage of Indian citizens are likely to be a), a1) and a2) and positively affirm these questions?

To what percentage of a), a1) and Bihar visiting a2) does the state of Bihar not exist? What remote possibility of a), a1) and a2) dying the death of Manoj Kumar Majhi? If the answer is nil, does it mean the state exists for these categories? 

Just who might you all be? In this caste less, atrocities punishable, equal opportunity providing, civilized human dignity guaranteeing, ancient-modern value laden country = Democratic, Socialist, Republic?

—-

Response to above article from non a) categories of citizens:

b) Landed, political-socio-economic controllers in rural India:

“Salle, Hope it is a lesson for the rest!”

c) The rest:

“What was Manoj Kumar Mahji thinking?”

This, my beloved country!

To free it for the rest of the citizens to breathe, to be human, to sit on a f**king chair without being bloody murdered, to be free of murderers, rapists, greed and power suffused self-glorifying organisms passing for humans -this makes sense “to be absolutely free of the past, requires total revolution, “

And to this bit of correctness: ”historical suffering and the experience of violence have ground claims to rights, recognition, and social redistribution“

Dear a1) maybe we want to cleanse our souls not with any damn recognition and redistribution at your hands but with blood, maybe this here below comes closer to how we feel.

“colonialism hinduism is not a thinking machine nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its most natural state … and will only yield when confronted with greater violence.”

My post on the Reverse Robin Hood started a lengthy and interesting discussion – thanks to Andrew Oakley and Tom Ruffles for their comments. Part of the discussion came to revolve around the role of risk and unpredictable elements in people’s personal financial situations – and I must admit that I am woefully unqualified to comment upon this. Down in the City of London there are extremely highly paid analysts who sit all day fiddling with formulae to try and predict market fluctuations, and this country must have tens of thousands (at least) of highly trained and highly paid experts in exactly this area – underwriters. I have no idea how successful these methods are, but I’m assuming they must have some value. After all, if you know the outcomes of ten thousand decisions made previously, then maybe another 40 year male with a fairly academic past and many years freelancing and living without visible source of income becomes predictable. Sure, you might make errors in regard to individual outcomes, because you can never have all the data -and the same applies to market analysts – but you might hope that on average you would do well (– though as we shall shortly see, I am not actually convinced this is true!)

I think at the heart of the discussions of the last piece was the question of individual responsibility for financial outcomes. The poor may always be with us – unless we manage an imaginary “true communist” equality of money, which would end the moment someone bought  something, by definition someone is always poorest. It is certainly true that we don’t seem fond of absolute measures of poverty, and this can lead to problems in our understanding and policy decisions – poor children in the UK today are probably a lot better off that say poor children in the UK in 1950 -most have shoes and a meal a day at least?

I think, and I may be wrong, that Andrew thinks most financial outcomes are predictable, given good planning and money management. Tom and I (and again this is my impression, speak up if i am misrepresenting you) are more inclined to believe that random factors may play a large role in how ones personal finances pan out. I don’t think any of us think its all one or the other: Andrew clearly accepts that random factors can cause problems, but simply believes they can often be mitigated by shrewd money management. Tom and I suspect that some situations may place one in a position where no matter how careful one is, you may end up in real trouble. Yet clearly many people who end in financial trouble have been extremely reckless, and at least partly instigators of their own downfall. (And I would go as far as to say that the State does much to cushion the blow these days compared with in the past, and that equally our culture is geared to actually promote fiscal risk taking, indebtedness and bad financial management by individuals. But I would say that, I don’t have any credit card etc, wouldn’t I?)

The Deserving (and Undeserving) Poor

In fact it seems to me we are rehashing one of the great debates of the last few centuries. It certainly filled the 18th century mind – and it was a major theme of 19th century thought. We are back on the question of the deserving versus undeserving poor.

In my last piece I commented on how I missed the security of the bi-weekly giro, and having my dole money guaranteed. I sympathised with those who work, and are on bitterly low incomes. I may have here been apparently aiming at a deserving/undeserving poor distinction, but that was not my intention – I was actually trying to point out that for many self employed, freelance and entrepreneurial types there lives are marked by a greater degree of uncertainty in financial matters than for those who receive state benefits. If you look at what the average UK soldier serving abroad is paid, or many low grade civil servants, you will notice they face the same problem. Those in manufacturing also have the problem – the uncertainty of th future of their jobs. So at least on the dole you can plan, to some extent, and know it will never be more than 13 days till your next payment — assuming they are still bi-weekly – the days when I used to sing a little song to thank God (and the British taxpayer) for my giro  have long since passed…

Now once we get  in to the deserving/undeserving poor debate we instantly hit problems, and are conditioned by our Right Wing or Left Wing political roots. After all, the modern Conservative and Labour parties were shaped by these questions, and the response, be it Socialism or Social Darwinism or whatever is deeply ingrained in how we see the world. People always say to me “I’m not interested in/don’t understand politics” Actually they are an ddo – they just don’t feel any interest in what happens in Westminster, and don’t understand the minutiae of the British system or what the parties stand for – but they generally can grasp the actual politics, because it comes down to Big Questions which are easily graspable, if impossible to easily answer.

I’m not going to rehash all the thought of two centuries and political responses here on the so called deserving and underserving poor. I will note it is my gut feeling that no one hates the undeserving poor more than the deserving poor do – the British Working Class appears to me to have a real horror of “benefit scroungers”, “junkies”, “drunks” and “gamblers” and others they categorise as the undeserving poor.   I’m not actually convinced the categories are all that important – if you place genuinely stupid people (and half of British citizens are below average IQ for a British citizen after all!) in a situation where they are offered easy interest free credit, mortgages for huge amounts based on nothing more than what you can lie to claim you earn, and then bombard them with shows about exotic foreign holidays and advertisements implying their lives are not worth living without the Gizmogadet 2000 what do you honestly expect to happen?

Politicians Are Predictable

Before I start the heart of my argument though, I guess we should consider wht this deserving/undeserving dichotomy may not be useful. To Labour, well it’s obviously nonsense: they see people’s financial situation as situated in a wider social context, so that market forces and teh economy are responsible for poor people, not the fact these people are reckless or lazy. To the Conservatives – well Cameron has told the fat and the poor it’s their own fault.  That’s me told twice then!  In fact he is keen to qualify this  –

“Of course, circumstances — where you are born, your neighbourhood, your school and the choices your parents make — have a huge impact. But social problems are often the consequence of the choices people make.”

So both political parties manage to continue the debate by stating the bleedin’ obvious, in line with their Left and Right wing prejudices. Of course if you are laid off because your factory closed because US mortgage brokers gave money to people who never could or would repay it, it is not your fault if you suffer financial catastrophe.  And of course if I go out and spend all my weekly disposable income  on, I dunno,  Dominos Pizza (thats easy – one medium 11″ pizza, one chicken wings starter for dinner tonight — and I have absolutely nothing left after that for the rest of the week for food, electric, water or gas bills — job done!) then it’s my own stupid fault. I could have bought  pasta, cous cous, jacket potatoes, some cheese, butter and a loaf of bread, and still had a fiver for the bills.Trust me, I bloody know!

So Labour blame the economy & society, the Conservatives the individual. Or rather that is there emphasis – both clearly realise that both are true. The Victorians tried a slightly more novel approach – the Poor House, where you were locked up, separated from husband or wife (to stop you breeding more poor kids) and set to work, while being lectured on the folly of your choices. I dunno if it worked, because it was not really for the benefits of the inmates, but rather designed to inspire horror and a real terror of ending up in there. Many of these buildings still stand, bleak reminders of the social trends which culminated in the inscription over the gate at the concentration camp at Auchwitz – “work makes you free”. Yeah right…

The gate at Auchwitz - "works makes you free", a great lie that long predated the Nazi's

We have heard a lot in recent weeks about Labour’s pledge in the Queen’s Speech to abolish child poverty. I’m genuinely baffled by this one – the major cause of child poverty might just be poor parents who don’t look after them properly or can’t, because they have no money? No if those parents are poor because of the credit crunch and losing their jobs, or are poor because their parents spend all their money on SKY TV and drinking down the boozer, whether Labour or Conservatives are right, what difference does it actually make to the poor kids? Might I hazard a guess that poor kids of the undeserving poor are just as miserable as poor kids of the deserving poor? Neither chose which family to be born in to after all?

Let’s go budget!

Still, at last I will address my main point – how predictable is financial disaster? Using this handy budget calculator and basing my figures on an 18K salary, with no kids, renting in a cheap area (in this case Derby) I can assure you that a couple will struggle to survive, let alone save.  In fact I worked out after the cost of getting to work, bills, council tax, rent, and a £50 weekly food shop their disposable income is less than a hundred pounds a month. Unless one partner is earning maybe 21k + a year, you can’t afford to actually have a homemaker or stay at home partner anymore, because our economy is predicated on dual income households now. In my figures I was scrupulous to keep costs to an absolute minimum – these puritans do not drink, smoke, go on holiday or eat out. (They do have internet and phone though!) Yet they can not possibly hope to weather any unexpected financial set back, and are budgeting only £10 a month for clothing. They might be able to put maybe £10 a month in a savings account – but to get interest much above the rate of inflation they need to tie their money down for a long period – which is exactly what you don’t want to do if you are trying to save against sudden unexpected costs. And let us remember that HSBC have declared that current account customers don’t want interest on their money, as they would prefer it went on higher rates on other accounts! I don’t recall them asking me, I must have been out that day.

Now a lot of this comes down to energy costs – maybe they will fall. Here Labour’s analysis scores points, because gas, electric and petrol prices have a major effect on most households finances, but are not controllable by the individuals. Rents have remained pretty much static, while of course mortgage costs have generally plummeted again with the drop in interest rates. Unless you are Governor of the Bank of England this is again outside your control — I have no choice but to pay the rent, my main priority, and I always do. These factors do seem n the buget I looked at to make a huge difference.

So financial responsibility, what you spend your money on – sure it is important. But it only cuts in when you cease to be poor. In my situation it does not seem to make a lot of difference – when your disposable income is under £80 a month, you ain’t gonna have many choices to make.

CJ & the Beggars

This actually reminds me of something which appalls many of my friends. When I have money, I sometimes slip a quid to a genuinely messed up looking beggar on the streets. “but they will spend it on drugs or booze!” they cry. And I reply “good for them!” Why? Because actually when you are really poor, it’s not the lack of money which really degrades and makes you miserable – it is the fact you no longer get to make many choices. I can reliably predict what I will eat next week, and the week after, and the week after that. I won’t be buying much, because I can’t. I might get to make the choice between two titles in a second hand book shop if I am lucky. Poverty erodes choice, and erodes personal responsibility - because you can’t learn how to be responsible when you have nothing to be responsible with.

The Inevitable Passing Reference to the Credit Crunch

As Axel and others who have listened to me moan over the years know, I had long been predicting a Credit Crunch based on the fact that UK mortgages no longer bore any resemblance to actual bricks and mortar costs or annual incomes and salaries.  This was not based on any economic brilliance on my part, but upon a simple understanding that if people defaulted and banks stopped lending, well a lot more people would face the situation that the deserving and undeserving poor face every day – No Credit. In fact a good way of telling how depressed a part of town is is to go in to a shop, and look for the felt tip sign posted above the counter “Strictly No Credit”. Then go to the richer part of town – and see the Store Card adverts, and the endless encouragement to take interest free credit (“subject to status” – in other words if you are CJ and you have wandered in here, piss off!).

The Undeserving Middle Class

Many of the “undeserving poor” may actually have high incomes I guess – and far more choices – they just made bad ones, and are now faced with ruinous credit card debts for that holiday they enjoyed in some hot exotic location, the repayments on their flash car, and the huge amounts they spent at Waitrose and Threshers or wherever rich people shop. A couple of generations grew up expecting a nice house, nice car, nice holidays and well nice things – hell I’m heading in to a Jamie Reid single cover for the Sex Pistol’s

Jamie Reid's bleak cover for the Sex Pistol's Holidays in the Sun

Perhaps when we talk about the undeserving poor, who blew their money on bad choices, we actually mean the British Middle Class- the people who actually had the capacity to make serious financial choices in the first place? Maybe that is why this is so deeply ingrained in Cameron’s view of poverty – because he reflects the deserving, hard working and frugal middle classes, and the deserving poor working class (who make the best of very limited means), who can’t imagine  how people would make reckless choices like investing in the markets,  pensions  or shares?  I jest of course – but I do notice that bastion of Conservatism the Daily Mail seems a lot more worried about “House Prices Plummeting” than about how those working for the NHS on 12k a year like Lisa are meant to pay their share of the rising gas bills? Should we not castigate those foolish enough to irresponsibly put money in houses in the belief property prices will never fall, or who could not read the small print that reminded them that the value of their investments could go down as well as up? But enough teasing the noveau pauvre! It may shock many people, but I love the British Middle Class, who encapsulate much which is great about our nation – I just get tetchy when one group  are labelled undeserving, profligate and irresponsible, but others who made equally bad decisions, but are seen as unfortunate victims of greater forces - regardless of the party proclaiming the double standard. Maybe it is just my inherent left wing biases showing?

It seems clear to me that the middle class investor who lost big in the Credit Crunch and the working class person who lost their job are equally victims of circumstance, and that they can not really be held to blame for their choices – but the investor did get to make more choices in the matter than the person laid off. Yet for some reason they attract more sympathy? I actually feel deep compassion for both – ’tis rough on all at times…

So Let’s Get Back To The Point

So how predictable are financial emergencies? This was where we started, and where we return. I’m going to look to an unlikely source to resolve this – after all I have no statistical data at hand – David Hume, the great Scottish Philosopher.  (Of course I recall Dire Strait’s song Industrial Disease (link contains sound)- listen to it and you will get the joke – but anyway…) Hume made famous The Problem of Induction: nd the second part is relevant here -

presupposing that a sequence of events in the future will occur as it always has in the past (for example, that the laws of physics will hold as they have always been observed to hold.)

Which brings me back to those market analysts and underwriters, who try to generalise rules from past data, and who try to make models that predict based upon that data. How well do they perform? I dunno, I’m guessing that is sensitive commercial data. My guess is not that well.  Some will get lucky, some unlucky, and ost will perform as well as the data they have available and inherent unpredictability of financial markets allow.  Because yes, as I have been hinting, I think markets are fundamentally unpredictable, and I think personal finances are similarly chaotic.

The Tory emphasis on sound fiscal planning and personal responsibility makes  a lot of sense and to some extent is rooted in our Judeo-Christian heritage (but then read Job!). The fundamental assumption is that people are to a large extent responsible for their personal financial outcomes. I question this assumption on a  number of grounds. Firstly, the playing field is not level.  I have done pretty well in some ways in terms of education and using the talents I have – I’d like to believe that I might have done better if I had more opportunities when younger, and particularly if I could have got a PhD in something I wanted to so I could keep lecturing, the single thing I was best at. Hey, shit happens. A few knocks, set backs and I sunk forever in to the great unwashed. It happens. Others start off much worse off, and do much, much better. But no one can pretend on average we are an equal opportunity society yet. Born poor, you tend to stay there you know? (Darwin in one of his few reactionary moments argues this was good, or humanity would cease to struggle and evolve. This was why he opposed Trade Unions and industrial reforms. Shame, he was remarkably liberal in most ways!) Still for 10K I could have returned to lecturing – and then I could have had a slightly rosier future. But I never had it, could never borrow it, and my studentship applications never worked out.

Secondly, the future is not predictable. Why? Because we do not exist in a financial vacuum. All kinds of decisions from others, from the gang of muggers who decide to use your head as a football, to the decision of American mortage brokers, to government policies, to the laws of the land and moral responsibility, set limits on personal freedom and choice, and upon the outcomes we face. The citizens of Herculaneum and Pompeii might have saved and practiced Stoicism and financial probity, but on August 23rd, 79AD, they learned that living under an active volcano was not so wise.

I saw plenty of right wing US claims a few years back that the victims of the 2003 Asian Tsunami should have chosen to live somewhere safer — but few explanations as to how that was a financial reality for them, or how they were meant to assess the risk they faced. I suspect a lot of them may have not fully paid attention to the subduction class in their plate tectonics education at school, as obviously this must have comprised part of their elementary school education? Well maybe not. Maybe they lived where they did because they knew no better, and because their families had always lived their, their livelihoods were there, and Alfred Wegener’s theories on Continental Drift passed them by because they were dreaming of affording another goat next year? Can anyone really blame them for not knowing their worlds were about to catastrophically change? No – because very few people if any knew that.

And this is how I perceive the world: we are perhaps little more in control of our lives than those people were. Financial outcomes are not predictable. All we can do is try to save when we can, to alleviate poverty and distress where possible, and to try our damnedest to actually help people make informed choices, and drag themselves through.  We are like doctors – preventative medicine is laudable and a great cause, and we should encourage sensible health measures – but if a new disease like SARS or a new Flu breaks out, a new unforeseen disaster – we can only fight to save the victims.  We might have made all kinds of contingency plans, and perhaps like Mormons we have stockpiled a months canned food for this scenario or similar, but ultimately, if a hacker cleans our bank accounts out, we can only check if we were following sensible security precautions. If the bank’s computer system was compromised. and yet we can’t make a mortgage payment while we try to get compensation sorted, whose fault is it?

Chance, risk, the unpredictable, the irrational and unpredictable actions of others – for long I have worried that our economists assume markets are rational, when all the evidence shows me that humans are often quite irrational in their economic activity – all these things clearly impact upon us. Of course our personal responsibility is vital;  of course we must plan to make the best uses of our resources to cushion us against the blows of fate – but ultimately, rugged individualism is possible only to  the extent one has the power to make choices, and the resources to prepare – and the poor have far fewer options here??

I’m sorry to write so much – thanks to everyone who took part in the previous discussion. I fired this off in an hour, in one sitting, so it might not make a whole lot of sense. Thansk to anyone who troubled ot read i tthrough.

cj x

This conversation here reminded me of this first post i had written, it is one of the posts that is most regularly read for some odd reason, readers use the tag ‘dark indian girl’ to reach here, i wonder about it sometimes .

Valli’s Beauty

Not the Tamil God’s tribal consort, but just someone known to me. Valli, husband and young son arrived in Bangalore as migrants. What they sought? What they got? Interesting line of inquiry, but, here, I want only to share few stories that I heard from Valli.

Valli did not land in the usual receptacles meant for poor villagers fleeing drought and other nasties, i.e, the sprawling slums of Bangalore city. Instead, she got housing within the grounds of a regal bungalow owned by an elite Anglo-Indian family, thanks to husband’s green fingers. He was hired as the resident gardener. Valli, got into the bungalow routine. Thus, knew the tea-making, serving and other genteel stuff.

Valli as I remember her then, was in her late thirties, around 5′2, very dark skinned, not the blotchy kind, but the uniform shade, with even facial features. She wore thick rimmed glasses, giving her the appearance of a stern professor with an exotic hairstyle. Wish I could draw, for describing that style is difficult. Hair was tucked in a way that had the ends of her tresses framed around her head in a fan shaped arrangement. Her gait was proud and erect. Her form was slender.

Death of the aging patrons, brought Valli and family to the slums. A reluctant Valli started as housemaid and baby sitter to families in the neighborhood. She gained the reputation of being a loyal but fastidious worker. In the meantime, the extended family from the village kept coming into the city, in a steady stream. As the drought did not go away, the elections always got over, with it, promises of better rural life, while other nasties just got nastier. Valli kept track of the in coming clan members, doing her best to keep the men from succumbing to alcohol, and women from prostitution.

Valli and husband, could never do enough for their only son. The story of her becoming a mother after many years of marriage, was recounted in great detail, every moment of motherhood was magnified for Valli. Poor eyesight had always plagued her. She would tear up while recalling near total blindness, for the first three years of her son’s life. The way she traced her baby’s features and kept him safe from danger, always transfixed her listeners. Herbal medicines and glasses helped her regain her sight to some extent.

When it was time to find a bride for the beloved son, Valli was teased by other women, where will you find the perfect girl? Are you going to find him a fair one? No, was the prompt reply. “Amman pola”, meaning dark like the village goddess, she said. She was dead serious and would explain in her clear voice, that in her community pale skinned girls were not sought after. Beauty is dark. Period.

Take home messages for me from Valli’s anecdotes came in handy at different points.

It took me a long time to realize that girls like me in School were not part of any cultural activities (read on-stage), not because we lacked grace in our movements, or articulation in our voices, but simply because we had little too much melanin. Did not do too much harm to my psyche, though (I am dark and thick skinned, I guess).

A sometime Sunday activity by girls in my hostel, was reading aloud the Hindu matrimonial ads, each girl would pick her community section and read it out, to the sneering rest. We concluded, here within the pages of Hindu matrimonial ads was the sign that Indians were indeed unified. No matter what caste, profession, age, or whatever, they all sought a FAIR girl.

As I follow arguments all over the world about objectifying women’s bodies and its effects, the manner in which Valli objectified, her would be daughter-in-law, always amuses me. For the sheer counterpoint it brings to the prevailing notion of a Nation obsessed with light skin. Then again, Valli spoke about her community, probably there are more Indians out there who are not terrified of the ‘pigment’. Just that their voices are not in all the noise that gets heard.

OK, a word of explanation. Lisa was doing a pharmacy paper on this subject, and I thought I’d do my version, using some of her notes and stuff. See what you think!

The argument that religious belief is a form of delusion is a common one. In psychiatric terms it is not correct; DSM IV clearly states that this, where delusions are stated not to include ‘articles of religious faith’. (American Psychiatric Association, 1994, p. 765)”

DSM IV does contain a new category of religious or spiritual problem –

“V62.89: This category can be used when the focus of clinical attention is a religious or spiritual problem. Examples include distressing experiences that involve loss or questioning of faith, problems associated with conversion to a new faith, or questioning of other spiritual values which may not necessarily be related to an organized church or religious institution. (American Psychiatric Association, 1994, p. 685)”

This was adopted for the fourth edition. It has proven controversial – but this refers to psychiatric problems related to religious belief, not religious belief in itself. Delusions can of course take on religious aspect, and some religious beliefs may be delusional, but a standard definition of delusion,

“A delusion is a false, unshakeable idea or belief, which is out of keeping with the patient’s educational, cultural and social background; it is held with extraordinary conviction and subjective certainty” (Sims 2003)

Cultural and social background clearly excludes most ‘mainstream’ religious beliefs. A woman who believes her cat is a deity may be delusional; a man who rips out the hearts of victims to offer them to the sun god is delusional, unless he happens to be an Aztec priest of a former era, in which case arguably the definition would endorse his beliefs. Religious belief in itself is clearly not a delusion. in psychiatric terms.

Are religious people, if not delusional, still psychotic? Some have argued that the religious are neurotic, and that religions roots lay deep in personality issues ( for example, (Freud, 1939)). Others have looked for neurological and organic problems, most famously Michael Persinger with his ‘God Helmet’ experiments. These however were not double blind, and when replicated without the subject knowing if the machine was running or not or the purpose of the experiment did not work, showing suggestion at the root of the claimed results. (Granqvist 2005)

At the heart of the discussion of whether those who believe in a God are psychotic must be whether that belief, theism, is a false belief. Richard Dawkins has become famous for asserting “there is no evidence for God”, (Dawkins, 2006) but the claim is clearly untrue – many people claim to have experienced gods, and there is much evidence offered. When challenged he asserts he means “there is no scientific evidence for God”. This however is equally problematic – the basis of all modern Science is methodological naturalism –

“It is an epistemological view that is specifically concerned with practical methods for acquiring knowledge, irrespective of one’s metaphysical or religious views. It requires that hypotheses be explained and tested only by reference to natural causes and events.” From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy)

As such questions of God’s existence can not be admitted as scientific questions, and no scientific evidence can be offered. Also The Problem of Induction is settled in all modern Science by Hume’s assumption (see http://18th.eserver.org/hume-enquiry.html) of a universe governed by Natural Laws which are uniform and constant, which precludes direct Divine Intervention. If a God or Goddess exists it will be invisible to Science because of the axioms underlying all Science.

Science is not the only way of understanding however – the questions “how do I feel today?”, “what caused the First World War?”, and “does my mother love me?” are meaningful but not scientific. One can quite rationally argue a proof of a Creator using modern cosmology,  (see Davies 2006, Rees 2000)  or philosophical arguments. such as the Kalam Cosmological Argument  – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalam_cosmological_argument

References

American Psychiatric Association (1994) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, DSM IV. Washington: American Psychiatric Association.

Davies, P (2006) The Goldilocks Enigma, Allan Paul

Dawkins, R (2006) The God Delusion, London, Black Swan

Freud, S, (1939) Moses and Monotheism, London, Routledge.

Granqvist et al (2005) ‘Sensed presence and mystical experiences are predicted by suggestibility, not by the application of transcranial weak complex magnetic fields’ in Neuroscience Letters, 379(1), p.1-6

Persinger, MA (1983) ‘Religious and mystical experiences as artifacts of temporal lobe function: a general hypothesis. in  Journal of Perceptual and  Motor Skills. Vol 57( Pt 2):p. 1255-62.

Rees, M, (2000), Just Six Numbers : The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe, Phoenix

Sims A (2003) Symptoms in the Mind: An Introduction to Descriptive Psychopathology.3rd Edition,  Saunders.

Attended the book reading of ‘Mathematics of sex’.

 The book ought to be valuable for all interested in the gender question though the data is specific to the US, issues dealt within it should be relevant anywhere. Definitely contains lots of thinking material for parents with girls.

The review goes something like this: 

Nearly half of all physicians and biologists are females, as are the
majority of new psychologists, veterinarians, and dentists, suggesting that
women have achieved equality with men in the workforce. But the ranks of
professionals in math-intensive careers remain lopsidedly male; up to 93%
of tenure-track academic positions in some of the most
mathematically-oriented fields are held by men.

Three main explanations have been advanced to explain the dearth of women
in math-intensive careers, and in The Mathematics of Sex, Stephen J. Ceci
and Wendy M. Williams describe and dissect the evidence for each. The first
explanation involves innate ability--male brains are physiologically
optimized to perform advanced mathematical and spatial operations; the
second is that social and cultural biases inhibit females' training and
success in mathematical fields; the third alleges that women are less
interested in math-intensive careers than are men, preferring
people-oriented pursuits. Drawing on research in endocrinology, economics,
sociology, education, genetics, and psychology to arrive at their own
unique, evidence-based conclusion, the authors argue that the problem is
due to certain choices that women (but not men) are compelled to make in
our society; that women tend not to favor math-intensive careers for
certain reasons, and that sex differences in math and spatial ability
cannot adequately explain the scarcity of women in these fields. The
Mathematics of Sex represents the first time such a thorough synthesis of
data has been carried out to solve the puzzle of women's
underrepresentation in math-intensive careers.

------

Here, I am trying to put down the highlights of the more interesting part of the reading -the Q and A session with authors Stephen and Wendy. 

Audience: Maybe two men and many women and girls who don’t need a book or statistics to tell them what they live through as most came from math intensive departments. They were there to confirm or contest the major observations in the book.

Wendy: It is a non issue with lopsided numbers in any area as long as it was because women made an informed decision about not being in those careers, however it has to be analyzed and rectified if the numbers reflect some unconscious and conscious biases towards making and sticking it out with these careers.

Stephen emphasized that girls were better or equal mathematicians right through school, and the first drop  in numbers begins in the choice they make for undergraduate courses, the ones who persist and opt for math intensive graduate courses continue performing just as well as the boys. After Ph.D, females are still on par with their male colleagues in job placements, renumeration, publishing, advancements etc. However, in their thirties a major bleeding out of females from math intensive careers happens.

Wendy took over to say, the need for having a family  and unwillingness to relegate childrearing to third party (nannies) is one of the big reasons for this age/stage specific drop out. Analyzing this it is evident that women cannot postpone their decision to bear children if they want to avoid infertility issues with older age. However, this period also critically co-incides with the time when high productivity is expected of young faculty and women take the drastic decision to drop out of careers that they had invested and excelled in all along. Usually never to get back to the system.

Is this an individual loss or loss to the country? The country has invested equally heavily in the training of these women and just when they are about to make a contribution, they reach this impasse. The female attrition is a big loss to the country just as it is to the personal.

Responses that I recall which were interesting, amusing and insightful:

1) A girl from math dept: is there data to show fall in female representation as one goes higher in heiarchy of elite institutes? if the usual explanations don’t account for this, would it indicate sexism is more prevalent in these places?

Others from the same dept : “Of course !”

2) What about non math-intensive careers, why is there no drastic fall there, the biology and early to mid-career demands for high productivity must exist for say law? How have the women overcome this?

Authors answer: Those careers are equally demanding and one does see a fall in the highest levels and few women make it partners, yet such jobs seem to be a little more friendlier to decisions of family and work. And Wendy wondered if it has also to do with female preference for careers that provide an interface with people, making it bearable to hang on in tough times, unlike  math-intensive careers which can be isolating. 

(I found the answers unsatisfactory. None of this explains 93%  male domination.)

3) Another student from math dept, detailed how she started to see fewer and fewer females as she went into higher levels. And contested the data in the book that there were equal number of females at the graduate level. She said in her experience she found herself usually among the very few or sometimes the only one.

Response from a much older faculty: “Looks like little has changed from my time ” to the younger women’s chuckling and sound of weary laughter at all these revelations!!

4) A male student: How come motherhood becomes so important that women take such decisions, the man is the parent too, why does he not have the same response?

Authors: It is changing to some extent.

A mother of 1 year old: “Have to run to pick up my baby (it was after 5.30pm), but want to say my bit, something happens post childbirth, maybe hormones or something that clicks into the mother not the father.” 

Student to this:” Really? Interesting! what hormones does one need to clean the bathroom?”

Wendy: When women give up the decision to have families/children then they are exactly like their male colleagues, so none of theories on brain apititute, biases etc are needed.

5) Question: In the 6% of women who have managed to remain in their careers and reach the top positions, is there data on how many of them chose not to have families and how many have families?

Authors: No clear data, but most of these women are non American, immigrants from European countries, where math ed. is always a push. So, once identified as good in math, the entire system gets them to focus only to enhance their aptitude in it.

Response to this: How does that explain the US having lower numbers of women excelling in math?

Wendy: That is a paradox, one would expect women from more patriarchal societies (Turkey), with lesser freedom to make choices would lead to them not taking up math-intensive careers but the data shows otherwise. One wonders if when presented with choice, women inherently choose what is more satisfying of their need to be in non-isolating careers? 

Indicators of solutions (from random reading over the years):

Studying department structures and cultures-

Departmental attrition data from one state show that the difference between male and female rates of undergraduate attrition from computer science varies by institution. This analysis suggests that departmental factors are important in attrition from CS. Some CS departments inhibit female persistence at the undergraduate level while other departments promote persistence. The observed variation encourages research that compares departmental characteristics such as structure and culture, and relates them to departmental outcomes. Shifting the research focus to departmental characteristics and outcomes will identify effective methods for retaining women.

By taking a hard look at work-family policies-

Employee Assistance Plans, dependent care flexible spending accounts, and emergency child care are associated with increases in the percentage of associates who are female.  Second, these policies are linked to reductions in the turnover rates of associates.  This, combined with the first finding, indicates that work-family policies help retain female employees. Overall, these findings suggest that firm provision of work-family policies can play an important role in retaining female employees without hurting firm profitability. 

Additional useful material is here

The “Rail For Valley” group has recently suggested to build a “light-rail line” from Chilliwack to Vancouver. Light rail is in quotations since their plan is more of a commuter rail line than an actual light-rail line.

Much of the route of this “light-rail” line duplicates existing rapid transit investments, which makes very little sense (The Millennium Line has been built, it makes no sense…why are they ignoring the Millennium Line? It’s delusional. Get over it: SkyTrain was built.)

This light-rail supporters also assumes that such a line would be able to use the existing right-of-way (ROW) rail corridor. The thing is, Translink must negotiate with the different rail operators to be able run such a line. Depending on the situation, transit service schedules must be planned around the schedule of the rail operators, which isn’t as easy a task as it sounds, especially for busy rail corridors like the ones used by Vancouver’s Amtrak and Via Rail. In recent years, the City of Vancouver and CP Rail have gone to court, fighting over the Arbutus ROW’s usage. (Keep mind that there will be more rail freight service as Vancouver grows as an Asian-Pacific Gateway, making it more difficult for transit planning).

The plan also assumes that Broadway is a wide boulevard that can handle centre medians when light-rail is built (thus, the absurd low estimates on the construction costs they have for LRT). Unfortunately, that is not the case, which is what UBC SkyTrain Group has been stating all along. Broadway will be restricted to one to two general lanes of traffic per direction, with kilometres of parking restrictions. Referring to previous engineering plans conducted in the 1999 technical study, there will be little room for centre median stations and almost no room for station expansions.

Service frequencies for such a line will also be low and will be more akin to a commuter rail line rather than a proper frequent light-rail line.

Rapid transit has many modes, and light-rail is just one of many modes: it is not the solution for every corridor and to every situation. It’s about time that light-rail supporters grasp that concept and figure out what they really want.

It’s astounding how the UBC SkyTrain is portrayed by some as the SkyTrain to UBC, and nothing else but UBC in between.  Right?  Wrong…terribly wrong. 

Let’s focus on potential station areas.  This is why the term “Millennium Line West Extension” should perhaps be used instead.

1. Finning Station – There are many plans in redeveloping False Creek Flats area.  Initially part of False Creek, the area was filled in for industrial use early in the 1900’s.  Today’s, it’s still largely industrial but it is also the home to Great Northern Way Campus (a technology post-secondary campus formed by UBC, SFU, Emily Carr, and BCIT).  The campus is slated for a massive overhaul, which will be designed and planned largely around the station built in the middle of campus as part of the Millennium Line extension.
2. City Hall Station – Linking up with the Canada Line, the City Hall area is already bustling commercial and residential area.  It is the Central Broadway Business District, an extension of the Downtown Vancouver core.
3. South Granville Station – The South Granville area is one of the largest outdoor retail areas outside of the Downtown core.  The corner of Granville and Broadway is still busy area even when the transfer point for Richmond/suburbs bound passengers has been moved to Cambie/City Hall area. It is part of the Central Broadway Business District.

Of course, there are many more in between, but these areas are growing, have plans to grow, and will continue to grow.  The Millennium Line extension simply acts as a catalyst for increasing development.  Is this a line just for the students of UBC?  Sure, they can use it, but it’s not just for them. 

A full list of Millennium Line West Extension stations from the existing VCC-Clark Station:
- Finning
- Main Street/Kingsway
- Cambie (connects with Canada Line)
- Oak Street/Vancouver General Hospital
- Granville Street
- Arbutus Street
- Macdonald Street
- Alma Street
- Sasamat Street
- and finally, UBC

Notice how the proposed Millennium Line West Extension station locations parallels the stops on the existing 99 B-Line bus service, which carries more than 60,000 passengers per day. 99 B-Line bus stops:
- Commercial/Broadway
- Clark
- Main
- Cambie
- Willow/Vancouver General Hospital
- Granville
- Macdonald
- Alma
- Sasamat
- Allison (UBC Village)
- UBC Loop (UBC Terminus)

I want to say, FINALLY! but i think i’ll wait. But i’ll definitely say, Yeah, to Nepal. One small Hindu nation country has the moral courage to acknowledge this ancient but persisting atrocity. 

——-

Manoj Mitta, TNN 28 September 2009

NEW DELHI: If the recent genome study denying the Aryan-Dravidian divide has established the antiquity of caste segregations in marriage, the ongoing session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva looks set to recognize caste-based discrimination as a human rights violation. This, despite India’s opposition and following Nepal’s breaking ranks on the culturally sensitive issue.

Nepal has emerged as the first country from South Asia — the region where untouchability has been traditionally practiced — to declare support for the draft principles and guidelines published by UNHRC four months ago for “effective elimination of discrimination based on work and descent” — the UN terminology for caste inequities.

In a side-event to the session on September 16, Nepalese minister Jeet Bahadur Darjee Gautam said his county welcomed the idea mooted by the UNHRC document to involve “regional and international mechanism, the UN and its organs” to complement national efforts to combat caste discrimination. This is radically different from India’s stated aversion to the internationalization of the caste problem.

Much to India’s embarrassment, Nepal’s statement evoked an immediate endorsement from the office of the UN high commissioner for human rights, Navanethem Pillay, a South African Tamil. Besides calling Nepal’s support “a significant step by a country grappling with this entrenched problem itself”, Pillay’s office said it would “like to encourage other states to follow this commendable example”.

The reference to India was unmistakable especially since Pillay had pressed the issue during her visit to New Delhi in March. Pillay not only asked India to address “its own challenges nationally, but show leadership in combating caste-based discrimination globally”. The granddaughter of an indentured labourer taken to South Africa from a village near Madurai, Pillay recalled that in 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had compared untouchability to apartheid. Adding to India’s discomfiture, Sweden, in its capacity as the president of the Europeon Union, said, “caste-based discrimination and other forms of discrimination based on work and descent is an important priority for EU”. If this issue continues to gather momentum, UNHRC may in a future session adopt the draft principles and guidelines and, to impart greater legal force, send them for adoption to the UN General Assembly.

The draft principles specifically cited caste as one of the grounds on which more than 200 million people in the world suffer discrimination. “This type of discrimination is typically associated with the notion of purity and pollution and practices of untouchability, and is deeply rooted in societies and cultures where this discrimination is practiced,” it said.

Though India succeeded in its efforts to keep caste out of the resolution adopted by the 2001 Durban conference on racism, the issue has since re-emerged in a different guise, without getting drawn into the debate over where caste and race are analogous.

I have a slight cold today; meanwhile poor Becky who should basking in the Balearic’s has a horrendous one. Of course her holiday is marred by constant rain anyway — but even so, sounds like she is pretty miserable. All around me people are catching dreadful colds, as the t -shirts of summer give way to the pullovers of autumnal England. The weather turns cold, and in the word of Bowie “you’ll sneeze and catch a  cold; cos you left your coat behind”, sentiments echoed by folk wisdom for centuries. Dress up warm in the cold, or you’ll catch cold. Yet intelligent sceptics know this is all rot – the common cold is caused by a virus, and nothing to do with weather. It’s all been debunked for years. But has it really? Or is this actually a myth?

Actually, I think it isa myth. I did a quick  search on evidence based medicine and statistical research, and found this

http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0954611108003429

So colds are associated with colder weather.

We need to think it through though – correlation is not necessarily evidence of causation (though it very often is!)

So–

1. The cold virus is likely to be dormant or less active in winter at sub-zero temperatures?
2. Yet people still get colds in winter, and cold weather does appear at the anecdotal level to be related to the common cold.

So why?

Well, what if we are constantly exposed to cold viruses in the environment? Then we might expect that given equal exposure, we would all be ill equally across the seasonal weather and temperature changes throughout the year.

Except: our immune systems might vary? We might be equally exposed, but more susceptible if the immune system was depressed. So could cold weather somehow depress our immune systems?

Cold virus from http://viraldiseases.wikispaces.com/

So does immune resistance vary with body temperature? Makes no sense, as our internal body temperature remains relatively static, and homeostasis is designed to allow an organism to adapt to prevailing conditions? However, what if variation in exposure to external temperature conditions leads to physiological shifts in the immune system? If so, going from a war environment to a very cold one or vice versa MIGHT actually depress our immune system resistance, even for only a few minutes — allowing a window for the cold virus to take effect in the host.  So it’s not the cold that causes us to catch colds, but sudden changes in temperature.

Logically then in an English winter going from a hot room to a freezing cold night could lead to an increase in cold infections by temporary immune system suppression, and as the virus despite the cold conditions that are less than optimum for replication is still present in the environment, colds increase. It would be exposure to rapidly varying temperatures rather than the cold itself which would lead to the illness.

An obvious objection: then we would expect to see more of all viruses in times when people pass from very warm environments so to very cold ones — but we may well do so, it is just that the highly infectious and environmentally prevalent common cold would appear more than say measles, allowing for the folk belief to arise from actual observations.

Of course this is probably rot — I know nothing worth knowing bout the subject, just speculating.  But if there was some actual enzyme or other change associated with the nose and eyes that might cause brief immune suppression during rapid temperature change as the body adjusts, that might well be the way that the common cold normally enters the body, and that might be worth investigating?

Anyway hope Becky is recovering and enjoying her holiday, and best wishes to everyone else cursed with a cold this week!

cj x

Interesting discussion on the JREF today. One poster complained that Derren Brown as was “bad as Uri Geller” – not sure how bad that is meant to be! -after he talked nonsense about how he did the Lottery trick that intrigued the nation, rather than revealing how he did it. ( I think I know how he did it, but I’m not saying!)   Anyway, I don’t believe a word Derren Brown offers as explanation in his book or in his TV shows for how he does his tricks. BUT I’m not sure that is a bad thing. He is an entertainer. He entertains.
His book is a cracking read, and I recommend it, but I would not take it too seriously!
I was down the pub Thursday  night, and I  made a shot glass pass through the solid table while people watched. (OK it was under a napkin at the time it dematerialized, but everyone will tell you it happened.) I was asked how I did it, so I whittered about Planck, atomic structures, poltergeist effects and materialization mediumship, and repeated the trick twice more while they watched. I di it again at the Two Pigs on Saturday, unfortunately knocking over my drink all over myself and soaking my friends in the process.

Yes it was a trick. Of course it was a trick. Everyone knew it was a trick, Everyone knew my patter on how I did it was complete nonsense. But it was fun.

And I never did reveal the secret. Am I bad a person for this? If anyone had started to embrace a paranormal belief system on the strength of my conjuring trick I would have immediately said “hey, this is how I did it.” (The trick is more Tommy Cooper than David Cooperfield, so no one was really going to be seriously impressed!)  As it was I told those who asked where they could buy a book where they could learn many much better tricks. But was my fake parapsi patter (and being actively involved in parapsychology I like to think I do it well) really immoral? Do I not have a responsibility to protect the intellectual property of the designers of magic tricks?

I sypathise with those annoyed with Deren Brown, because he said he would reveal how he did it, and he did not,  but I can’t believe anyone would take Brown’s ‘explanations’ remotely seriously?

cj x

Canada Line riders fill coffers with cash

VANCOUVER – The Canada Line could reach its ridership goals sometime next year rather than in 2013 as forecast, TransLink spokesman Ken Hardie said Friday.

That would likely save TransLink — and taxpayers — millions in subsidies to the Canada Line’s private operator.

Hardie made the optimistic assessment after the line averaged 80,000 trips per day in its first five days of operations.

It had been forecast to reach 100,000 trips a day in 2013, and TransLink is required to subsidize the operator until that point is reached.

“The 100,000 ridership represents the point when the line generates enough revenue, with bus service savings to cover payment to the concessionaire,” Hardie said.

He said the steady passenger loads this week have been good news for the Canada Line.

Between 7 a.m. on Wednesday and 7 a.m. Thursday, the line recorded more than $45,000 in ticket sales, with $37,000 of that in cash and fare-saver tickets, $5,700 in credit and $2,900 in debit.

The number of cash sales, he said, likely means people are testing the system ahead of Sept. 7, when TransLink cancels or diverts several of its long-haul bus routes to Bridgeport Station to encourage passengers to ride the Canada Line.

“What that means is there’s a higher level of sampling going on now,” Hardie said, adding, “Things have got off to an excellent start on the Canada Line.”

The biggest peak in ridership has been in the afternoons, coinciding with the arrivals and departures of most international flights.

“There’s an incredibly steady flow of passengers,” said airport spokeswoman Rebecca Catley. “We’re seeing a lot more people coming off with bags. People have embraced it quickly.”

The airport has added extra staff on the floor to guide travellers to their departure lounges or help them find the train once they arrive in Vancouver.

August is typically the airport’s busiest month, with the third weekend usually recording the highest number of passengers coming through.

But Catley said it’s not just travellers using the Canada Line: More people are coming to the airport to watch planes land and take off from the airport’s new observation deck.

“It’s just surprising. That area has always been very quiet and now it’s teeming with people,” she said. “Everything has gone very smoothly; the people are very excited.”

Jason Chan, spokesman for Canada Line operator ProTrans BC, said other busy stations are Waterfront in downtown Vancouver and Richmond’s Bridgeport, the only station where TransLink has a park-and-ride facility at the nearby River Rock Casino.

Just before 4 p.m. Friday, swarms of people were pouring in and out of Waterfront as packed trains headed out toward Richmond-Brighouse and the airport.

Kathleen Lapointe, who lives in Richmond, took the train into Vancouver for a course and said she’s “planning to use it all the time now.”

“I’m very happy,” she said. “I’m so glad it’s here.”

ksinoski@vancouversun.com

Source: Vancouver Sun

Now to be fair, there are still many passengers taking the Canada Line for their own personal enjoyment, but much of it is now everyday commuters as well as passengers to the airport.   On average, there are at least three passengers on board each train car with luggage, presumably going to the Airport or Sea Island Centre, Air Canada Operations.  It’s safe to say that the Canada Line has been more successful then previously anticipated.  In fact, ProTrans BC, the private company operating the Canada Line, feels slightly under staffed and is continually hiring station attendants.  Station attendants not only help passengers with the Canada Line and related transit connections, but also do fare checks, something the SkyTrain attendants do not  usually do.  Personally, I received more fare checks on the Canada Line than I have on the SkyTrain system for more than two years.

Impressive numbers.

The numbers do include people touring the Canada Line and the novelty will eventually wear off, but it will only result in a marginal dip in ridership over the next few weeks. The Canada Line’s initial ridership success is a good sign for things to come, and bus integration hasn’t even occurred. We are well in our way into achieving 100,000 boardings per day.

colonized janta

For a colonized people, the most essential value, because it is the most meaningful, is first and foremost the land: the land, which must provide bread and, naturally dignity. But this dignity has nothing to do with human dignity. The colonized subject has never heard of such a ideal. All he has ever seen on his land is that he can be arrested, beaten, and straved with impunity; and no sermonizer on morals, no priest has ever stepped in to bear the blows in his place or share his bread. For the colonized, to be a moralist quite plainly means silencing the arrogance of the colonist, breaking his spiral of violence, in a word ejecting him outright from the picture. 

colonized intellectuals

by way of its academics, have implanted in the minds of the colonized the essential values -meaning Western values -remain eternal despite all errors attributable to man. The colonized intellectual accepted the cogency of these ideas…. but during the struggle for liberation, when the colonized intellectual touches base again with his people, this artificial sentinel is smashed to smithereens… All those discourses appear a jumble of dead words. Those values which seemed ennoble the soul prove worthless because they have nothing in common with the real-life struggle in which the people are engaged.

What happens when the colonized intellectuals are in fact the original colonizers of the janta, the convolution is not a spiral of violence but spaghetti of violence, ends don’t end, they begin and slither doused in blood, Fanon would need more than psychoanalytical tools to unwind this orchestrated mess.

Fanon’s Algeria and the spiral of violence                                                                              Dalits India and the spaghetti mess

Source: The wretched of the Earth, good reads that Anant Maringanti suggested to me over at Kafila, actually it was Fanon’s ‘Black skin white masks’ that he recommended but this one fascinated me more. It has some great one liners, like this one

 The minimum demand is that the last become the first.

And many more such gems, street smart and savvy at once, it almost makes me feel like i am sitting amongst my cousins from the village listening to their sarcasm laden recounting of caste-related incidents. Capturing the bitter  mirth at the pretensions of the upper caste intelligentsia would be very much like Fanon’s writings; insightful, sharp and dare devil. I am almost done with these books and typically i’m skimming his other writings too and when i run into Anant again on the web, will probably say to him no dear, Fanon helps somewhat to understand the dalits double consciousness, ours is a stranger concoction, than what he studied and analyzed.

Images: from the internet

Hey chaps and chapesses, I have been meaning to share this for a while. The excellent UK Sceptics, whose forum is linked if you look on this blog have released a pdf newsletter which deserves a wider readership. You can download it here –

http://ukskeptics.com/newsletters/2009-1.pdf

It really is sound stuff- like me thy are methodological sceptics, not a priori sceptics. Briefly a methodological scepotic employs sceptisim and questioning as a way of answerin qustions, of investigating an issue – but does not presuppose an outcome to the enquiry. An a priori sceptic knows that certain things are bunk, and sets out to prove this, and reinforce their existing views.  Anyway the level of scholarship and the excellent common sense bodes well for the UK — so do have a look, and even if you are a “believer” in some religion or phenomena – we all are after all believers in some things, only if the claim the sun will rise tomorrow! – don’t be put off by the word sceptic. Have a look!

There are also details on the forthcoming Muncaster Conference, mentioned previously on this blog and my Facebook.

cj x

An accident involving two light rail trains in San Francisco has injured over 40 people, causing delays for the entire six line light rail system.  This accident happened at West Portal Station, which serves four of the light rail routes in San Francisco.  This is one of the largest light rail accidents in recent history, though less tragic than the Metro accident that claimed 7 lives in Washington, D.C several weeks ago.  At this point, it is not known whether it is a mechanical failure or human error, but what is known is that accidents can also happen on light rail systems.  This is just one more point for why the rapid transit rail extension to UBC must be built as a SkyTrain extension of the Millennium Line to prevent such accidents from occuring.  SkyTrain uses a rolling block signal system which allows it to operate high train frequencies safely. In its 23-year history, there has not been any major accidents with SkyTrain because of the reliability of the computer system with SkyTrain.  Should there ever be even the tiniest glitch in driverless operations, the entire SkyTrain system will be automatically shut down trains for manual inspection of problems..

Scores injured in San Francisco light-rail crash
The Associated Press

More than 40 people were taken to hospital after one light rail commuter train rear-ended another in San Francisco on Saturday, officials said.

Reuters reported that four people were in critical condition.

The San Francisco Municipal Railway L train ran into a K train at the boarding platform about 2:30 p.m. PT, officials said.

“This is probably one of the largest multiple-casualty incidents in recent years (in San Francisco),” said Pat Gardner, a deputy chief with the San Francisco Fire Department.

Gardner said 20 people suffered moderate injuries and another 21 were “walking wounded.”

Witnesses said the westbound L train barreled into the K train as it emerged from a tunnel connecting downtown San Francisco to the city’s western neighborhoods.

Judson True, a spokesman for the San Francisco Municipal Railway, said investigators were looking into “mechanical and human issues” that may have contributed to the accident.
Driver suffered serious injuries

The front of the L train was smashed and its operator was among the three with serious injuries. The K train suffered less damage, witnesses said.

They reported that more than a dozen people sat on benches along the boarding platform after the crash, some of them holding bloodied heads.

Rescue workers set up a triage system to isolate the most severely injured, bandaging their heads and immobilizing their necks on stretchers before they were trundled to waiting emergency vehicles.

“We thought a bomb went off,” said Mike Burke, a San Francisco banker who lives near the crash site.

“Lots of people (in the trains) were still sitting in their seats with their heads thrown back, stunned,” said his wife, Linda Burke.

Nine people were killed and more than 70 injured June 22 when a Metro train slammed into another train stopped on the tracks in Washington, D.C. The cause has not been determined but investigators say equipment that is supposed to detect stopped trains had failed periodically in the days leading up to the crash.

On May 8, more than 50 people were injured when a Boston subway trolley plowed into another train. Authorities say operator Aiden Quinn, 24, went through a red signal while typing a text message on his cellphone. Quinn was indicted on charges of grossly negligent operation and was scheduled to be arraigned Monday in Suffolk Superior Court. He faces three years in prison if convicted.

Source: CBC

Several consortium’s are currently in the bidding to build Honolulu’s new metro lineThe Honolulu Metro project.  Bombardier, featuring Advanced Rapid Transit technology (SkyTrain), is among the competitors to build Hawaii’s inaugural rapid transit rail line.  Bombardier is currently viewed as the favourite competitor and should it win the bid, it would be the first American city to build a modern fixed guideway ART system after New York’s 2003 completion of its airport Air Train. The rail technology we commonly call SkyTrain has been rapidly implemented around the world in the last decade.

3 bidding for Oahu rail
Two train suppliers now say they won’t submit bids
Monday, July 6, 2009

Vancouver's SkyTrain system, considered comparable to the rail system planned for O'ahu, uses trains built by Berlin-based Bombardier Transportation, among the companies competing for Honolulu's rail contract.

Two major train suppliers have pulled out of the running to provide vehicles and systems for Honolulu’s planned rapid transit system.

That leaves three companies competing for the estimated $230 million city contract scheduled to be awarded next year. The vehicles and systems contract is a small part of the $5.4 billion rail project. However, the style of the rail cars chosen will determine much of the system’s overall character.

Two companies that won’t be providing the trains are Paris-based Alstom and Sacramento, Calif.-based Siemens Transportation Systems Inc. Both companies confirmed last week that they won’t be bidding on Honolulu’s project.

That probably makes the world’s No. 1 train supplier, Bombardier Transportation, a favorite for the deal. So far Berlin-based Bombardier Transportation; Genoa, Italy-based Ansaldo STS and a consortium led by New York City-based Sumitomo Corporation of America are the only other competitors that have announced interest in the contract.

Siemens, which calls itself the nation’s No. 1 maker of light rail vehicles, did not explain why it’s not interested in the project. Alstom, which says it is No. 1 in the high- and very-high-speed train sector, said it decided not to bid on Honolulu’s project based on the level of competition and the size of the city’s contract.

“We took a look at this one and said, ‘Yeah there’s three real good competitors,’ ” said Charles Wo- chele, an Alstom vice president for marketing and business development. “We know them well, we compete with them. If our car fit better with the specifications and we had something that was a little closer fit, we’d go after it. But we’re chasing some big projects in the Mainland right now and you can’t chase them all.”

Source: Honolulu Advertiser

I was just thinking: we have Robert Lancaster’s excellent Stop Sylvia site, which I think is an excellent cause, and now we have other similar sites dedicated to stopping prominent woo’s.

I originally intended on the morning of April 1st to open www.stop-cj23.com but sadly the domain registration would have taken too long and cost money. And I don’t have any money (more of which in a moment!)

It is not for me to boost his ego by pointing out what an-arch proponent of woo the poster known as CJ.23, Jerome, Chris Jensen Romer or in his purple phase “undecipherable squiggle symbol” is. Let us just say that he is well known to hang out in all the places the usual suspects can be found – parapsychology, ghosthunting, paranormal TV, history and philosophy of science, Science Festivals, occult convocations, General Synods and on Rainy Days and Mondays the Dawkins and JREF forums.

And what does he do? He peddles woo. What woo? All sort of woo. Who do? you do – er no, I think that is heading in to a Bowie lyric. Anyway, he often acts as a religious apologist on this very forum, peddling the most disturbing (and researched) claims about factual distortions, misapplied logic and pseudohistory, and is on record as disputing almost everything from “there is no evidence to God” to “theism is irrational” to even “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” On one occasion he sank a slow as to agree with Larsen.

Given his history of involvement with both mainstream parapsychology, paranormal TV from Discovery’s Ghosthunters (not the silly US plumbing one. ) to Most Haunted and Most Haunted Live, and his interminable use of bandwidth arguing pedantically about silly pointless things, I think CJ must be stopped. Worst of all he is An Anglican, a particularly virulent breed of literalist Creationist monstrosity, who make “sinners in the hands of an Angry God” look mild with their famous “cake or death” mantra.

So I have decided to end his reign of woo, and get rid of him. How? It’s simple. CJ is broke, having gone to the Edinburgh Science Festival (Saturday precursor events excellent) and then with an SPR Study Day, and investigation in a Castle and then the Cheltenham Science Festival in the next few weeks. He is tremendously broke. He needs money, and fast! So how can he get it?

Well, I will set up www.stop-CJ23.com and solicit donations from the sceptical community of course! (I’ll also advertise both sceptical books, and even woo books on Nazareth not existing if I can make a few tax free quid out of it. Do you believe in UFOs, astral projection, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full-trance, mediums, the Loch Ness monster and the city of Atlantis? If there’s a steady paycheck in it… I’ll believe anything you say” to quote Ghostbusters.)

So rather than supporting the excellent StopSylvia, please, think for a moment. Would you not prefer to stop cj.23? Pretty please? Just a few donations, and I promise he will head off to a series of conferences and eventually Barbados or similar, and you will never be troubled by him again. So I plead of you – help STOP CJ.23!

cj x

Sexual violence is incomprehensible to me and as such I must avoid thinking aloud on this subject as it has been outside of my personal experience or study. But I do want to understand what is that I perceive and process while reading, hearing and seeing images of sexual violence, particularly related to dalit women.

My involvement with dalit issues keeps sending me down paths that invariably vortex into sexual violence.  There are surprisingly few texts that have researched the sexual politics of dalits. Though the words ‘dalit women and sexual abuse’ are almost synonymous in the popular media as well as in serious writings.

I am particularly intrigued by a couple of paragraphs from two books that dwell at some length on this topic in different ways, one by Vidyut Bhagwat and the other by Kalpana and Vasantha Kannabhiran on dalit women.

One paragraph relates to the supposed ‘silence’ of dalit women and the other to the supposed ‘manhood’ of lower caste men.

Vidyut’s observation of dalit women in rural and urban centers.

First she states:  

Women who are part of toiling masses are leading their life as beasts of burden and often as victims of dominant caste onslaught. It is but natural they are mute.

And then wonders:

But dalit women in urban centres taking care of homes and children at times teaching in schools and colleges or most of the time playing the role of housewives have not yet come out. We do not know how they perceive themselves and the world around them. Particularly, wives of political leaders, professors, doctors, executives are strangely silent.

In the categorical statement “it is but natural they are mute” is she talking of verbal silence, silence in the popular language or is she saying that there is no reaction to circumstances and resistance to injustice and violence?

For me, verbal silence can sometimes be very loud and menacing. I have used it to get my way through many passive-aggressive battles quite effectively. However, in those instances, the ones at whom it was aimed at astutely perceived my silence.  No outsider could have probed the silent struggle and be able to give weightage to the outcome. In that respect what does Vidyut’s observation of ‘mute’ actually mean?

Mute because they don’t revolt physically, individually or in groups? For that I ask you to look at the image of Lalgarh protest here, and does one see resistance? Is it silent or loud, armed resistance or a democratic protest?

In this image I do see and hear a loud silence. Media being a beast of burden, toiling to keep the governments happy, it is but natural they are mute. Academicians, liberals, feminists, activists in designer khadi are also strangely silent. Should one wonder about this?

The protest intermixed with many other issues was also about physical abuse of both men and women.

To read, toiling masses as silent masses is extremely simplistic. How does one reduce a human being as complex as the next one, to something like an unreacting mass of living cells? That is an incorrect analogy, even cultures of cells in a petridish will react to adversity; resist, learn, adapt and by these actions over a period of time they will change the effect of the adversity or die out.

Now lets take her wonderment at urban dalit women’s silence:

Does the movement from rural to urban and becoming professionals and wives of professionals guarantee articulation? If this is a general rule or observation with all women, then we truly have to wonder why this is so with dalit women? How is the perceived silence among rural women connected to the urban women’s silence (again perceived)?

Could it be the memories of rural oppression persists even as they move out into a different cultural, political and economic space? Is there a collective memory operating among dalit women about oppression and methods of resistance, and how deep and complex is it?

The sensitivity and should I say the caliber to read into the psyche of the dalit woman and her response to sexual violence is missing, evident in such blanket statements.  

Lets go over to the Kannabhirans reading of the Chilakurti atrocity:

Gender within caste society is thus defined and structured in such a manner that the ‘manhood’ of the caste is defined both by the degree of control men exercise over women and the degree of passivity of the women of the caste. By the same argument, demonstrating control by humiliating women of another caste is a certain way of reducing the ‘manhood’ of those castes. This is why. While Muthamma was paraded naked in the streets of Chilakurti, the men of her caste who unable to bear the sight covered their eyes, were derided by the aggressors who said, ‘open your eyes. Are there no men amongst you? This insult is double edged. On the one hand gender is defined by the capacity for aggression and appropriation of the other. On the other hand the lower-caste man could only cover his eyes because the structure of relations in caste society castrates him through the expropriation of his women.

This on the face of it seems like pretty sound explanation, so with a magic wand if we push the upper caste down the ladder, upper caste men lose their ‘manhood’ when their women are appropriated and humiliated, right? Any caste that finds itself at the bottom of things, will experience it, any human aggregation that finds itself stripped of its protection from civil society; such as during war and unrest, experiences this.

Substitute caste in that paragraph with war, and nothing changes. 

The uniqueness of caste being that the forces keeps it in a war like exploitative situation. It must be the longest war in the history of mankind, and with that -the longest history of resistance. Dalits did not die out, that is the proof of their resistance and also proof of the pace at which the aggression keeps evolving.

The Chilakurti analysis is not specific to the dalit man being unable to protect and the dalit women being appropriated and humiliated, I see it as a general explanation for any man and woman, high or low caste, Asian, African or Caucasian finding themselves pitted against a horrific oppressor. The burly Scotsman would have shut his eyes when his clanswomen were humiliated by the English. Any man, anywhere loses his ‘manhood’.  Any woman. anywhere becomes ’silent’ just arrive at the right concoction of factors that lead up to to it. A variation of what happens between Tutsis and Hutus, Serbs and Bosnians, Gujarat Hindus and Muslims. The amazing aspect of dalit atrocities is that it does not peak, it remains as a constant background noise.

I learn nothing from these observations and analysis in these books except a lot of recycled academic verbiage. Articulation delivered through unseeing eyes and deafened ears only indicates the comfort of safe jobs and privilege of the authors.

So does it matter what gets written about dalit women in dusty academic books? Yes, it does, as one can see bits and pieces are taken out from these books and find their way into the public sphere, extended by journalists who attach these sentences to their daily bread articles on atrocities. And I run into variations of these statements by loud ‘feminists’ on the web routinely. Tiresome and mediocre! Repeated with such conviction and surety, that I loathe the thought of a dialog with them. Another instance of silence, perhaps?

May I gently suggest, please turn your weak analytical skills and the light on the perpetuators of  the evil. They require reformation.

We will describe ourselves. Leave it to us.

Image: Sanhati website

Sources: a) Dalit Women in India: Issues and perspective. b) De-Eroticizing Assault: Essays on Modesty, Honour and Power.