UFO, Oakland, California

A California resident named kevinmc360 has posted this to YouTube:

I’d have to credit this as a pretty good bit of film.  Not only does kevinmc360 establish some preliminary reference footage of conventional, identified aircraft in the area (there’s a big airport in Oakland), but he also provides a good, steady commentary, refraining from the hyperactive whoops and exclamations and unfounded assumptions that often blight UFO clips.

That these lights are ‘UFOs’ is a given: they are flying, and they are as yet unidentified.  Beyond that, the user makes no claims.  They are presumably a regular occurrence, in view of his ability to say that they will appear in ten seconds (or the fact that he’s there recording them at all).  Since his infrared camera appears to have a fairly small aperture, covering only a tiny portion of the sky, it’s possible that he could see the objects off camera before he aimed at them to start recording.  On the other hand, he is heard to remark in the commentary that the objects cannot be seen with the unaided eye, and can only be seen in IR.  He asks his wife to confirm this, and assures us that she agrees.

So the universal question with UFO movies persists: “How come you were filming that particular piece of empty sky at that particular time?”

On the comments for his video, kevinmc360 says:

“They are not visible with the naked eye. They can only be seen in IR. They fly With out navigation lights turned on, They are over Oakland ATC. One of the most congested ATC’s on the planet.”

This is interesting in itself – although not being an expert in American ATC procedures I don’t know whether there might be any circumstances in which a military flight (which several people suggest it might be) might be cleared across a busy TMA without running lights.

Some suggest the lights are birds, but this seems unlikely to me.  The manoeuvre noted whereby the objects spread out for a moment before grouping back together does seem birdlike, as does the formation itself, and birds, being warm, would appear in infrared.  But the scale doesn’t seem quite right, although of course with featureless lights it’s difficult to see whether they’re small, close and slow as birds would be, or large, fast and distant, as for aircraft.

They are not visible with the naked eye. They can only be seen in IR. They fly With out navigation lights turned on, They are over Oakland ATC. One of the most congested ATC’s on the planet.

Dawkins on Catholicism

Just been listening to Dawkins on the radio. This time he was enjoying himself on a programme about Mary, the mother of Christ in Christian theology:

“One of the amazing things is that there’s not just one Mary.  There’s Mary of Fatima, there’s Mary of Knock, there’s Mary of all sorts of other places; and these people seem to think they’re different Marys.  It’s as though you haven’t just got a polytheism with one Mary and all the saints, you’ve got about a dozen Marys.  Pope John Paul II believed that when he was narrowly saved by an assassin’s bullet[*], the bullet was deflected from the vital part of his heart not just by Mary but by Mary of  Fatima, as though there are lots of different Marys.  I mean the polytheism is just too good to be true.”

This is a common criticism of Catholicism, often advanced by those who haven’t stopped to think about the difference between revering something and worshipping it.

I’m not Catholic.  Never have been.  But I’ve worked in offices and in big companies.  Oftentimes, the senior management types will have ‘personal assistants’ – secretaries, of a modern kind – people who take their calls, arrange their lives, and generally see to things.  The PA often sits in an ante-room.  By necessity, they have the ear of the manager.  But the PA is still not the manager.

In much the same way, Catholics believe that the saints – those humans who have been sanctified by virtue of their faith and their deeds – reside in Heaven with God, and can intercede with Him on our behalf.  In other words, offer a prayer to a saint, and you’re asking that saint to have a word with God for you and see if they can arrange matters as you’d like them.  That’s quite different from praying to the saint because you believe they have the power to change the world directly.  Now if you’re a polytheist, as I am, then you acknowledge a number of gods, and recognise that each of those gods has power over their own particular domain.  If you want to win a battle, offer prayer to Mars.  If you want love, speak to Venus.  If you’re worried about domestic issues, Vesta’s the one.  And so on.  That’s polytheism, because each of these gods is a god in His or Her own right.  That’s not the case in Catholicism, as any Catholic would tell you if you bothered to ask them.

(To offer Dawkins the maximum possible benefit of the doubt, it might well be that the Roman Catholic attitude towards saints might possibly have evolved from ancient Roman polytheistic practices, but that’d be speculation on my part and I certainly wouldn’t base anything significant on the idea.)

But what I found particularly interesting is the contrast between Dawkins’ attitude towards ‘Mary worship’ here, and his attitude towards Hinduism in his 400-page polemical tome The God Delusion.  In that book, he says of Hinduism, a polytheistic faith:

“[Hindu polytheism] isn’t really polytheism but monotheism in disguise.  There is only one God – Lord Brahma the creator, Lord Brahma the creator, Lord Vishnu the preserver, Lord Shiva the destroyer, the goddesses Saraswati, Laxmi and Parvati (wives of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva), Lord Ganesh the elephant god, and hundreds of others, all are just different manifestations or incarnations of the one God.”

It’s interesting to see how he seeks to re-work a polytheistic faith so that he can include it in the rather narrow definition of ‘religion’ on which he bases most of The God Delusion, yet cheerfully re-works Catholicism so that he can declare it polytheistic when it suits him to do so.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Dawkins is a hugely intelligent man and, The God Delusion aside, a gifted writer.  It’s just a shame that he so often allows his contempt for religion to lead him into such inconsistencies.

—
[* I'd be picking nits if I openly chuckled over the idea of the Pope being "saved by an assassin's bullet", funny as it is.  Even the rather superior Richard Dawkins is entitled to make the occasional slip.]

Part White Witch?

I fear that this post may lead you, my reader, to believe that I spend time looking at sleb gossip sites.  I really, really don’t.  But I do trawl Google for stories and snippets relating to some of the things this blog’s concerned with.  In this case, the search came up with an item on the website for something called ‘eleven: the celebrity channel’ (*barf*) about Ashley Cole’s new girlfriend.

Apparently, she’s a ‘kooky ex-lapdancer’, and she’s said:

“I’m part white witch – fond of potions and making my mates’ dreams come true.”

Eech.  Careful not to choke on all that fluff.

But did you notice that bit at the beginning?  She’s “part” white witch?  What the hell does that mean?  “White witch” is a term usually used by someone who isn’t quite sure whether they want to be a witch or not.  They like the idea of being all mystical and cool, but… witches are all evil and nasty and cackly, aren’t they?  So just to make sure everyone knows what a bang-on,. decent, cuddly person they are, they tack on ‘white’, so there’ll be no confusion.

Most modern witches will point out that witchcraft and magic aren’t ‘white’ or ‘black’.  It all depends on how it’s used.  Now, you could say that someone calling themselves a ‘white witch’ is simply saying that they are a good-hearted person who will only ever use magic for good.  The problem there is that no-one ever believes themselves to be evil.  Whether you’re good or evil is something you won’t be able to see.  Only other people can determine that.

And every mage should know that effecting any change in the natural order will bring positive and negative effects.  Say your mate wants a new job, and you (assuming you believe in spells and the like) cast a spell to see that she gets it.  Assuming she wouldn’t have got it without the spell, you’ve essentially denied that job to someone else, who may have needed it to look after their starving family.  How ‘good’, how ‘white’, is your action then?

But what troubles me most is the idea of being “part white witch”.  Which bit is the ‘part’ part of?  Is this woman ‘part witch’, in which case, how on Earth does that work?  It’d be like being ‘part doctor’, or ‘part musician’.  Or, alternatively, is she a witch who’s ‘part white’ – in which case does she cast evil spells as well?  In which case, why stipulate ‘white’ at all?

Or did she possibly just pick a few words she thought would sound cool and chuck them at a greasy sleb mag?

Generalisations

And while wandering the Global Innertubes in relation to the last post, I came across a fragment of a debate on blasphemy, between epic brain Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens.  Both men are of the atheist persuasion.  Their debate covered some of the basic questions about God – and I’m assuming, because the ‘video’ doesn’t make it clear, that they’re dealing with the God of the monotheists, rather than religion in general.  Even so, it interested me because those arguments that relate to the monotheists’ “one true God” are quite often directed by militant anti-religionists at religion in general, and this scattergun approach is where a lot of my problems with atheists tend to arise.

Here’s the ‘video’ (it’s not really a video; someone’s taken the edited soundtrack of a part of the debate and put ‘helpful’ illustrative stills over it).  Needless to say, I offer the usual caution about linking through and reading the attached comments – it’s likely to make you lose all sense of humanity’s worth.  Still, have a listen:

Drawing Mohammed

Found an interesting blog today.  It was a post from Greta Christina’s blog on 20 May this year, and represented her contribution to, and feelings about, Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.  Briefly, this was an Internet reaction to the pulling of a South Park episode which featured the Prophet Mohammed dressed in a bear suit.  In light of the violence and brutality stemming from the publication of those cartoons in Denmark in 2005, Comedy Central apparently decided the risk of violent retribution from fundamentalist Muslims was too great.  On 1 January this year, a man was shot by police at the house of one of the original cartoonists, claiming as he was dragged away that he wanted to kill the artist for insulting Islam.

The episode, and its aftershocks, are a sorry incident in the history of Islam.  They made it a lot easier for non-Muslims to believe that Islam really was the mad, savage, oppressive religion its critics claimed it to be.  And while the majority of Muslims are in fact as peace-loving and decent as anyone in our Crazy Modern World, the faith does, it must be said, boast its own share of those who would apparently like it to be mad, savage and oppressive.

(Which isn’t to say that there aren’t plenty of lunatic fanatical Christians, or, for that matter, lunatic fanatical atheists, pagans, Sikhs, Buddhists, and so on.  Every point of view has its idiots.)

Still, Greta decided to join in the Interwebs campaign and draw her own version of Mohammed as a stick man.

“I wish I were a better artist, and could draw something other than a stick figure. But I actually kind of like its purity.”

Having drawn her picture of Mohammed (at least, of a stick man she’s labelled ‘Mohammad’ – and in fairness it’s probably still better than I could do), Greta takes a moment to explain her reasoning, to pre-empt the likely accusation that she’s causing religious offence for its own sake:

Littlejohn on Police Paganism

A recent report has ‘revealed’ that about 100 members of the British armed forces are pagans. Well, actually, the exact numbers are not all that clear from the news reports, because the people doing the reporting don’t really have much idea what constitutes ‘pagan’ and what constitutes something else. The Daily Mail article on the subject says:

“Around 100 UK service personnel – some taking part in the war on terror – class themselves as pagans. Another 30 are witches, according to figures.”

Presumably none of those who are pagan are also witches, and none of those who are witches are also pagan. Which would be unusual. And I’m not sure why it’s of particular significance that “some are taking part in the war on terror”, any more than one would make the same passing point about Christian or Muslim personnel, or atheists.

The article goes on:

“Pagans – who consider Stonehenge a place of pilgrimage – worship goddesses as well as gods and believe in the existence of spirits and other magical beings. Practitioners of the faith take part in rituals to celebrate seasonal festivals. Often held in woods or caves, on hilltops or seashores, members will meditate, chant, play music and dance, and recite poetry. Pagans believe that casting spells can help people in their daily lives.

[...]

Under the Equality Act 2006 it is illegal for Armed Forces chiefs to discriminate on the grounds of someone’s beliefs.”

But not, fortunately, for newspapers. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been treated, a year ago, to the Mail’s last brush with paganism, courtesy of professional pompous reactionary whingebag Richard Littlejohn, a sort of human Twat-O-Tron, who was no doubt paid handsomely for his comments on the then newly formed Pagan Police Association:

On Race

Edward James Olmos, the actor and social activist who played Admiral William Adama in Battlestar Galactica, speaks at a BSG retrospective at the United Nations:

Accidents Will Happen

Some oil industry wallah was being grilled (or fried, or whatever you have to do to oil people) on the radio this morning about the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The interviewer raised a recent (perfectly accurate) comment by a forecaster of doom that declining supplies of oil meant that increased efforts to harvest oil from deep-sea fields – as in the Gulf – meant increased chance of accidents.

The oilie was quick to dismiss the concern, with its implication that it might be a good idea to start looking at cleaner energy sources: “Accidents will happen,” he cheerfully admitted, but went on to point out that oil is by far the most convenient, most easily stored energy source, and it’s cheapest to handle.

It does this…

Oil spill off the Mississippi Delta (NASA)

… but it’s most convenient. Well, hoorah.

Now, tell me again why we absolutely must never ever invest in nuclear fission energy generation? Something about – what was it now? – possible accidents causing environmental catastrophes?

Evil Symbols!

This is precious.

There’s a common feeling amongst (some)(neo)pagans that Christianity is a problem; that, if left to its own devices, it would once again embark on witch-hunts and the persecution and oppression of those who don’t accept its doctrines. That the followers of the merciful God would be more than happy to start with the flogging and burning again – just to ensure the purity of the poor unbelievers’ souls, you understand.

I’ve never been one for that point of view. Most Christians of my experience (at least, those I’ve been explicitly aware are Christian) have been relatively decent, honest and open-minded people; never once have I encountered the prejudice and discrimination reported by some pagans. Generally the response I get if the subject of religion comes up is somewhere between polite indifference and fascination.  As a result, I generally have a perfectly amiable relationship with Christianity, in the main.

Maybe I’ve just been lucky.

And it may help that I live in Britain – a country generally renowned for its diffidence when it comes to matters of religion. For example, we’ve never been all that concerned about religious disestablishment – certainly not to the degree that America supposedly is – because, well, we just don’t really think about religion all that much. Britain’s ‘native’ Christianity (as some people try to style it, ignoring its Middle Eastern origins) does little in most people’s lives except mark time: christenings, weddings and funerals commonly take place in churches because, well, that’s where they traditionally happen.

The Romans, Charlemagne and HBO

One of my favourite TV shows – perhaps unsurprisingly, given my religious affiliations – is the HBO series Rome.

The two-season historical epic (as it’s no doubt been described) relates the goings-on surrounding Julius Caesar’s rise to power, his assassination, and the subsequent civil war between the followers of Marcus Antonius and Octavius Thurinus, later Augustus, (technically) the first emperor of Rome.

The story is told partially from the point of view of these significant historical characters, and partially of two legionaries, Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus, who were heavily fictionalised versions of two solders mentioned for their heroism and cameraderie in Caesar’s account of his Gallic campaign.

The series is extremely worth watching.  Seriously.  If you’ve any interest in ancient Rome, but for some reason haven’t seen Rome yet, do so at once.

Having recently watched it again, I was wandering the Internet looking for scraps about it, and found an article on entertainment news site Variety. The article mentions the annoyance of (presumably some, rather than all) Italians that the Roman characters were played by what they called ‘Anglo-Saxons’:

“Many Italian journalists and commentators just don’t want to see their history depicted by Anglo-Saxons,” says RAI drama exec Paola Masini. “Watching British actors playing Romans rubs a lot of people the wrong way and prompted the press to find fault with the historical accuracy.”

Thing is, there’s a problem here for those raising this objection.

The events depicted in Rome took place – at the time of writing this – between 2,059 and 2,041 years ago. And, ethnically speaking, some interesting things happen when you’re dealing with a time-frame like that in a specific area such as Europe. The ‘Anglo-Saxon’ complaint is spurious (this being the kindest word I can think of to describe it):

If we’re talking about genetic heritage, there is no longer any way to make a visual judgement on who is of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ descent and who is not.  Correspondingly, there is no way to know who is Roman descent and who is not on the same basis. Our ethnic and national lines have blurred so often that it’s meaningless to apply ancient terms like these based on the physical appearance of a modern person, whether or not they may have a ‘Roman nose’.

You may or may not have heard of the ‘Charlemagne Formula’.  I’m not sure it’s actually even been called that, but loosely, this is the theory that everyone in Europe – and everyone descended from European colonists – is a blood descendant of Charlemagne. Yes, that Charlemagne: Carolus Magnus, or Charles the Great, not-quite-Roman emperor in the 8th and 9th centuries AD.

The reasoning goes thusly: if you trace your family tree, you’ll find that for each generation you go back, the number of your contemporaneous ancestors will double. Two parents; four grandparents; eight great-grandparents; sixteen great-great grandparents; and so on. Conversely, the population of Europe started out pretty small, and grew larger over the course of history. There is, therefore, a point – usually accepted as being around the 12-13th centuries AD – at which the number of your ancestors in a single generation exceeds the number of people alive in Europe at the time. And, in fact, you don’t need to look much further back than this – perhaps as recently as the first century AD – to find that everyone alive in the world today has an ancestor in common.

This is a frightening idea for some, I realise. Those whose entire self-image and worldview is based on the fear of people who look different will inevitably feel threatened by the fact that modern racial divisions are, well, modern.  That the vast insurmountable chasm between them and those whose faces they dislike so much is actually no more than a crack in the pavement.

And this, needless to say, is why it’s so utterly pointless to insist on the preservation of the ‘indigenous’ British, as do so many brick-headed nationalists of the BNP’s stripe.  To do so ignores the plain historical fact that there are no ‘indigenous’ British, unless you’re willing to go back at least 700,000 years to when the first specimens of the homo genus arrived in what is now the British Isles (feel the outrage of the BNP: we’re all homos, too!).  And given that we all share an ancestor at just 2,000 years ago, it is a given that everyone currently alive between the north and south poles could rightfully claim descent from the same ancient individual. Thus, everyone in the modern world not only shares a common ancestor with, but is inevitably descended from, those earliest ‘indigenous Britons’.  Though since at that time there was no country called ‘Britain’, nor ‘Britannia’, nor was there a tribe of people called the Pritani (from whom the name ‘Britannia’ came), it’s pretty silly to argue that there were ever any ‘indigenous Britons’ at all.

All of which shows that much the same point can be made to the Italians who complained about those ‘Anglo-Saxon’ actors: firstly, Anglo-Saxon England (‘England’ originating from ‘Land of the Angles’) was invaded and conquered by the Normans in AD1066 (1819AUC). The Normans came to dominate England as the new aristocracy of England a good few years before that 11th-century convergence point, and this means that, as with Charlemagne, every European, or modern person of European descent, is descended from King William the Bastard (‘the Conqueror’ being his less colourful cognomen). Those Italians seeking to confuse ‘modern Italian’ with ‘ancient Roman’ can only go back a thousand years before running into the mathematical fact of common ancestry. They – and the modern English – are descended from the ancient Romans as certainly as they – and the modern English – are descended from Charlemagne. For most people, this unknown but unavoidable ancestry is of no interest. They’re more concerned with the lines on modern maps and the current differences between ‘races’. But it is a fact, and it does mean that your nationalistic ideas about heritage and ‘racial purity’ might not be as sound as you think. In fact, it’s quite possible that they are utter and total balderdash codswallop.

Are you listening, Griffin?