RosieBell

On Yer Bikes, All of yiz

From The Observer:-

A 2008 Sport England study showed that 1.8 million of us cycle once a week or more, not including commuters, and it is the second-fastest-growing sport in the country after athletics. But the difference is most obvious in our cities. There has been a 107% increase of people cycling on the capital's main roads since 2000, according to Transport for London; it has also risen dramatically in Bristol (up 27% since 2003), Sheffield (60% since 2000) and Leicester (43% since 2003). A ride-and-go cycle scheme was recently set up in Bristol and a London version - which promises to have 6,000 bikes and a docking station every 300 metres - will launch next May.

What explains this cultural shift? A partial list of factors might include ever-rising petrol prices; the 7/7 attacks in London; an increasing awareness of environmental issues; the introduction of the congestion charge; the launch of the Cycle2Work schemes, which provide tax-free bikes funded by the government; erratic public transport; the Tour de France visiting the UK in 2007; the eight gold medals won by British cyclists at the Beijing Olympics last summer; concerns over swine flu. And then there are people who just want some exercise.

Nevertheless, cycling still only accounts for 1% of all journeys taken in the UK (and 2% of trips under two miles), a shameful total compared with 18% in Denmark and 27% in the Netherlands.

God or the New Statesman?

Mehdi Hasan, Senior Editor (Politics) at the New Statesman has been given a hard time over at Harry’s Place for some remarks of his which indicated that he thought that his religion (Muslim, Shi-ite) is superior to other religions or atheism.  His actual words given in a speech were:-

“The kaffar, the disbelievers, the atheists who remain deaf and stubborn to the teachings of Islam, the rational message of the Quran; they are described in the Quran as, quote, “a people of no intelligence”, Allah describes them as; not of no morality, not as people of no belief - people of “no intelligence” - because they’re incapable of the intellectual effort it requires to shake off those blind prejudices, to shake off those easy assumptions about this world, about the existence of God. In this respect, the Quran describes the atheists as “cattle”, as cattle of those who grow the crops and do not stop and wonder about this world.”

It is a frequent charge against atheists, that they are a set of unfeeling materialists, and of course it is totally untrue.  Wondering about this world in all its variety is common enough in atheists eg PZ Myers who says:-

If we want a signifier for the human condition, imagine the culture we would live in now if, instead of a dead corpse on an instrument of torture, our signifier was a child staring in wonder at the stars.

Anyway, Hasan defends himself:-

So, what did I say, back in February, prior to joining the New Statesman, that has sent one corner of the blogosphere into such an angry frenzy? In the section from the speech quoted prominently (and, once again, out of context) at Harry's Place, I seem to [no, you did – what’s this “seem”?] refer to atheists as "kafirs", as "people of no intelligence" and as "cattle". In fact, I am quoting from the Quran - where the word "kafir" simply means "non-Muslim" or "non-believer" and it is in this sense (in fact, in its atheistic sense), and no other, that I used it. I do, however, acknowledge that in the hands of a few Muslim extremists, the word has taken on more sinister connotations. Perhaps it is a time for a debate on the future of this term - or, alternatively, to reclaim it from the bigots and radical Islamists. The Quranic phrase "people of no intelligence" simply and narrowly refers to the fact that Muslims regard their views on God as the only intellectually tenable position, just as atheists (like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris) regard believers as fundamentally irrational and, even, mentally deficient. As for the metaphorical use of the word "cattle", that has no more pejorative charge than does the word "sheep" when applied by atheists to religious believers [so in fact it is pejorative, in fact insulting and it’s no excuse that Richard Dawkins does something like it – he’s a rude sod often enough] - plus, you will note that I also refer to unthinking Muslims as "cattle" in the same speech, which was addressed primarily as a critique of my co-religionists . . .

He also protests that he is not an Islamist (which isn’t part of the accusation) and doesn’t seem to have grasped what his critics, condemners and denouncers are getting worked up about.

Here’s some advice to Mehdi Hasan:-

Your average Leftist or Liberal in this country has traditionally been an atheist or an agnostic.  If s/he has some religious impulses s/he would tend to keep them quiet.  If s/he did think their religion was superior to other religions or atheism s/he would couch it in jocular tones eg “I was brought up a Catholic and I have a faint sense of the invincible ignorance of my Protestant friends” or “My old Presbyterianism makes me a little suspicious of those who still follow the Whore of Babylon.”  Apply the same kind of mild jokiness about any lingering suspicion you have of religions that aren’t yours, or about non-believers.

Atheists are allowed to insult the religious as god botherers, believers in the Spaghetti Monster and tooth fairy etc, or, in Richard Dawkins’s words, state that bringing up a child in religion is a form of child abuse.  The religious can only retaliate with mild protests at being insulted.  If they talk about the blindness and darkness of atheists they sound like a bunch of crazies from an earlier, stranger age. Fortunately the Christian religion, at least, teaches forgiveness.

Of course the devoutly religious have played a part in leftist and liberal causes over the years.  One I can think of in Britain is Bruce Kent.  Peace movements are full of Quakers. In this country at least none of them would ever utter a derogatory word about other religions or atheists.  Whatever you think of the doctrine of other religions, or the behaviour of their adherents to your own crowd in the past or at present, shut up about it.  The general sense is that there are many paths to God, and you don’t want to compare and contrast what windings these paths take.  (Scientologists, though, are fair game.) 

Leftism and liberalism, post the 1960s especially, hold various truths to be self-evident.  This was best expressed by Salman Rushdie, who in high desperation under the fatwa, went through a conversion to Islam then recanted.  I read an article by him about what made him recant, which I can’t find, but to paraphrase, when he had seen the imams or priests or whoever talking on television about homosexuals, women, violent punishments etc, all his post 60s liberal and leftist blood had boiled and he knew where his real home was – among the ardent supporters of:-

• the equal rights of women and gays;
• no discriminating against anyone on grounds of colour or creed; and
• freedom of expression;

and among those with a hatred of any religious authority that pronounces against any of these tenets. 

These truths being self-evident, when you read your holy book you must concentrate on the pieces that do not contradict them and skip or soften the rest.  You cannot serve God and the New Statesman, at least in the post 1960s incarnation, which many of us used to regard to be the full and proper representation on earth of left and liberal principles.  In our eyes, the New Statesman offering a special voice to the religious is falling into heresy, and we will burn it at the stake of non-subscription and non-purchase.

Narcissitest

Answer the following questions:-
 
Question 1

Do you do quizzes which purport to find out:-
 
(a) how Calvinist you are
(b) how male/female you are 
(c) if you were a line on the London Underground, which line would you be.*
 
Question 2

Do you publish the results on your Facebook or blog or Twitter in the form of:-

(a) (rueful sigh) 55% Calvinist,
(b) (gulp) 73% female
(c) (self-indulgent chuckles) the Bakerloo line.
.
 
Answer yes to Question 1, you are a self-absorbed narcissist.

Answer yes to Question 2, you are an ironic self-absorbed narcissist
 
*Blog friends who I know are brighter than average were doing this on Facebook.

Amis strikes again

Flying Rodent takes an amusing swipe at Martin Amis’s latest excursion into political writing.  Amis has a habit of hearing about nuclear weapons, Stalin and islamist theocracy, reading a few books on the subject and then bringing us the news that these are very bad things.  His latest offering has been on Iran. 

I’m assuming that Amis has never visited Iran and knows about three words of the language, so therefore he feels he can pronounce on the “Iranian soul”.  I look forward to a counter essay on the British soul from a non-English speaking Iranian (treacherous and cunning and omnipotent is quite a common assessment according to what I’ve read).

Actually I don’t want to be hard on Amis.  This piece is less rococo in style than normal and, assuming it’s accurate, is an interesting potted history for those of us who know almost nothing of Iran except for what’s in the news, the film Persepolis and Reading Lolita in Tehran.  Oh, and The Persian Boy by Mary Renault.

Another reason not to be hard on Amis is that I can see the difficulty he finds himself in.  Like many of us, he is appalled by a well armed theocracy.  Like many of us, he’s aghast at the rule of the priests with their hypocrisies and ridiculous certainties, whose pronouncements and actions show their evil nature by the fact that if they were not cruel and unjust they would simply be laughable.  (The hand of God rigged an election). He admires the bravery of those rebelling against that kind of regime.  He’s excited and moved by this information but he can’t turn it into his natural work, which is a novel.  If he was dealing with a Christian theocracy in the USA he would know the background and be able to do so but this is happening within a totally foreign religion, culture and language.  It would be like writing The Persian Boy, i.e. require a lot of research, with the disadvantage of having living people telling you you’ve got something totally wrong about how people address each other, the kind of music people listen to, how the average person behaves at a mosque etc.

Kingsley Amis used to dig at his son for not writing poems.  A verse-writer can present their fear, anger and sympathy in a poem or song or two, but a prose writer has to produce essays or novels.  Amis can’t do the novels on the topic so has to produce essays.  He’s famous so they are published.  He is no worse informed than your average Comment is Free columnist, but he has a fancier style and is allowed more space, so is therefore ridiculed. 

Man and Machine

In a pub last night I heard a young guy do a cover of Richard Thompson’s 1952 Vincent Black Lightening:-

It’s a gorgeous song, wildly romantic, telling the perennial story of the outlaw dying young while his lovely woman weeps at his deathbed:-

Says James, in my opinion, there's nothing in this world
Beats a 52 Vincent and a red headed girl
Now Nortons and Indians and Greeveses won't do
They don't have a soul like a Vincent 52
He reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys
He said I've got no further use for these
 I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome
Swooping down from heaven to carry me home
And he gave her one last kiss and died
And he gave her his Vincent to ride

Lyrics here:-

Is there any other song that can make you feel the love a man can have for a beautiful machine?

The Quiet American or Miserable Englishman

Piece over here about the politics of Graham Greene's The Quiet American:-

“Impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance,” Pyle [the quiet American and CIA agent] embodies all that Fowler [the narrator, a clapped out old journalist] (and Greene) can’t stand about Americans: too much money, too much confidence, and too little self-awareness. Cruising the streets of Saigon in oversized Buicks, air conditioning everything in sight (to Fowler’s dismay, even the U.S. legation’s lavatories), passing out cigarettes as if they exist in infinite supply, and quoting York Harding, zealots like Pyle proceed on the assumption that American know-how backed by American values can make short work of even the most perplexing difficulties. Born and raised a Unitarian, Pyle takes God’s existence as a given, his faith reinforcing his conviction that America’s purposes necessarily reflect God’s will.

As eager and as earnest as he is naive, Pyle first cultivates Fowler as a source of information, but soon falls in love with Phuong [Fowler's Vietnamese girlfriend]. Professing his intention to do the right thing by everyone, Pyle promises Phuong that which Fowler cannot: he will make her his bride, taking her back home to New England to live happily ever after. When Phuong accepts, Pyle compensates Fowler with apologies and assurances of his own everlasting friendship and respect.

They made The Quiet American into a film starring Michael Caine as the clapped out old journalist.  I found myself rooting for Pyle to marry the young woman and get her back to the USA, where she might have a chance of a reasonable life in a tract house, with a few children, a decent alimony after divorce, and the chance to run her own business and remarry, like the resourceful Vietnamese GI bride in Oliver Stone's Between Heaven and Earth.   She would at least be marrying a clean-living healthy young man who loves her. She is unmarriageable in her own society, and Fowler is so much older than her that he looks like one of those elderly German sex tourists holding hands with a teenaged Thai girl.  He's such a miserable sod as well as being an opium addict.  She would have been much better off with the enthusiastic Pyle, however naive his  view of America's mission in the world.

One Trick Pony

Marina Hyde
Paid to be snide,
She’s got the trick of it,
But isn’t she sick of it?

Katyn

The film Katyn by Andrzej Wajda was a bit of a plod.  It sounds awful to say that, since the material it deals with, the murder of 20,000 Polish officers by the Soviets in 1941, is serious and horrific and Wajda’s own father was one of the victims.  Europe last century was an abattoir and Poland one of the bloodiest rooms:-

The Germans killed more than a hundred thousand Poles when suppressing the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Had the Holocaust not happened, these "reprisals" too would be regarded as some of the greatest war crimes in history. In fact they, like the starvation of Soviet prisoners of war, are scarcely recalled at all beyond the countries directly concerned. German occupation policies killed non-Jewish civilians in other ways as well, for example by hard labor in prison camps. Again: these were chiefly people from Poland or the Soviet Union.

…..

The geographic, moral, and political center of the Europe of mass killing is the Europe of the East, above all Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic States, lands that were subject to sustained policies of atrocity by both [Soviet and Nazi] regimes. The peoples of Ukraine and Belarus, Jews above all but not only, suffered the most, since these lands were both part of the Soviet Union during the terrible 1930s and subject to the worst of the German repressions in the 1940s. If Europe was, as Mark Mazower put it, a dark continent, Ukraine and Belarus were the heart of darkness.

What kind of fictionalisation can do justice to facts like these?  The film Katyn is constructed so that the mass murder is in the last scenes, when the officers as if in an efficient assembly line are taken out one by one from their prison trucks, shot in the back of the head, and their bodies buried in the woods.  The earlier scenes show the officers in their POW camp and then the aftermath of their slaughter, as their families wait for news of then, overjoyed when the name of a husband or son is not on the latest list of the unearthed bodies. The Soviets having blamed the massacre on the Germans, attempt to co-opt the families of the victims to denounce the atrocity in anti-German propaganda.  Everyone’s life has been distorted by the suffering of their country. Some compromise with the regime to keep surviving, or to keep Polish culture surviving.   Others stay defiant, and do not stay free or live long. 

The acting is good and it looks fine.  But the film just isn’t big enough for the story.  I suppose a film that did such things justice would be totally unbearable to watch.  I find King Lear unbearable to watch and that only deals with a few mistreated aristocrats.  Or is it Stalin’s "One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic" and being able to take on this kind of subject matter is something a feature film simply can’t do?  The audience can only engage with a few representative human beings, not a whole mass. On such times and events documentary facts are about much as we can take.

I’ve seen a few of Wajda’s films before – Man of Iron, Man of Marble, Danton.  Man of Marble was pretty good, taking a worker-hero propaganda figure as the central character.  The other two were like Katyn, workmanlike films about strong subjects that didn’t quite reach the heights to which they were aiming.  

Science for the Non Scientist

For holiday reading I took The Faber Book of Science edited by John Carey, an anthology of short pieces about various scientific breakthroughs and discoveries.  It’s good holiday reading as I could sit on a train, read an essay in a few minutes, then go back to watching the scenery. I found it an inspiring read.

A physiologist friend had given me the book for my birthday, in an effort to educate me out of my blank-headed ignorance when it comes to science. I disliked science at school and I still remember my lightness of heart when I had finished the last General Science exam I would ever have to do and being scolded by one of the teachers for skipping down the corridor singing while others were still writing their papers to show they had grasped something of the rudiments of physics, chemistry and biology.

I was never interested in the experiments we had to do but I like to read about aspects of the earth, or the universe.  About black holes for instance, or evolution, or tectonic plates – those are huge ideas, and cut humanity down to size.  However, humanity, or some members of it like Darwin, Mendeyev and Curie, grow large again for their patient observation and their relentless passion for discovery.

Carey included Orwell’s essay about toads. Orwell, in another life, would have been a good naturalist.  I can imagine him as a vicar like Gilbert White in the eighteenth century observing field mice or in the nineteenth century as a colonial administrator who published a book on The Flora and Fauna of the Punjab.

Everyone gets on their bikes

Very good news here:-

Europe is running out of bikes thanks to a British cycling boom that has caught the world's biggest bike manufacturers on the hop.

Bike shops are struggling to meet demand, which has tripled in the past 12 months despite massive price hikes. And that was before yesterday's start of the Tour de France, usually an annual sales trigger for armchair cycling enthusiasts.

The bicycle bonanza, which saw annual sales surge more than 20 per cent in June, comes as the rest of the UK high street struggles, with retail sales tumbling. Two-wheeled commuters are fuelling the surge, as more people embrace pedal power instead of battling with the Tube or driving.

From besuited commuters on folding Bromptons to Lance Armstrong-wannabes on sporty road bikes, Britain, it seems, is dividing into cycling tribes. Even fashionistas are in on the scene, following the lead set by the likes of model Agyness Deyn and the actress Chloë Sevigny.

Business for bike shops is booming partly because of the good weather: bike sales track ice-cream sales when the mercury rises. But bike experts also point to the popularity of the Government's "Cycle to Work" scheme – which uses tax incentives to entice employees onto two wheels – to explain the sales surge. The scheme is estimated to account for as much as half of all sales in some bike shops. One of its biggest operators, Cyclescheme, said it had doubled the number of vouchers, which are exchanged for bikes, it issued in the past 12 months.

Mark Brown, director of the Association of Cycle Traders, said: "Cycle to Work has been really important as it reduces the cost of cycling and means it's no longer just for enthusiasts. It has reached a tipping point, which is getting more people on to their bikes."

It’s a pleasant surprise to hear that a Government incentive scheme a) was directed to a sensible end; and b) actually worked.

They also give this statistic:- 354m trips on National Cycle Network in 2007, up 5 per cent.

Presumably someone is standing somewhere counting the cyclists.