James Randi, Madness, Madness 2, Smartphone, Offensive Word

The great magician, James Randi died, aged 92. In his later years he tried to expose all forms of fake science.

A Quack Selling Medicines
unknown artist
Photo Credit: Wellcome Collection [Public Domain]

... Mediums, dowsers, astrologers, clairvoyants, faith-healers, mind readers, spirit guides and anti-vaxxers also featured among Randi's targets after he moved on from escapology to exposing all forms of pseudoscience, on principle but with a showmanship that made him reliably more compelling than his subjects. This made him immeasurably valuable to sceptics. Addressing homeopathy, for instance, he appreciated that argument alone would have less impact in demonstrating the staggering uselessness of these royal-endorsed products than his filmed consumption of a homeopathic overdose...

Now with Randi gone, life got more comfortable for purveyors of pseudoscience and, it follows, less so for their prey, the public...

Now, with lizard-believers hosting UK anti-mask/anti 5G/anti-Covid-19/anti-vaxx/reportedly antisemitic rallies in Trafalgar Square, and with quack remedies and conspiracy theories disseminated by the White House as well as by social media, his death only underlines the absence of comparably effective sceptics to counter lies more baleful than Doris Stokes's "I'm getting an Eileen"

Long before Covid-19 elicited interventions from influencers... Randi had warned against celebrity contributions to vaccination panic.

"We have a Dark Age of sorts facing us," he wrote in 2010, a time when Andrew Wakefield seemed to have done his worst, "one in which a generation of children may be decimated through the ignorance of the public, fuelled by irresponsible public figures who assume expertise they do not possess"...

(Catherine Bennett, The Observer, 2020)

Some celebrities are such because they are very talented in some aspect of their lives. Actors, sports stars, musicians etc. Listen to them carefully when they are talking about acting or their sport or the music they produce. They know what they are talking about - that is their expertise. Do not assume that they know what they are talking about when they venture onto medical, scientific or other areas of life. Treat what they say with much more critical awareness. 

Madness

.A train is hardly out of place on a railway line. It is however, when it is made of white fabric and attached to the back of a wedding dress.

The First Madness of Ophelia
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)
Photo Credit: Gallery Oldham [CC BY-NC-ND]

Network Rail has criticised the "plain stupidity" of a pair of newlyweds who decided to get their post-ceremony photographs taken on a set of live tracks.

The bride and groom posed near Whitby, North Yorkshire, renewing fears that social media is behind a surge in people trespassing on the railways...

People are believed to have been using the railway as a backdrop for social media  posts and wedding photographs during the lockdown while reduced services were operating...

The incident reflects a heightened demand for wedding photographs that allow brides and grooms to stand out on social media. Residents near a cliff in Sydney where a 21-year-old woman from Lincolnshire fell to her death in January while posing for a photograph have also warned of couples sneaking over the perimeter fence for extreme wedding photographs. The white cliffs of Beachy Head and Birling Gap in East Sussex have become so popular that the authorities have told people not to pose on the crumbling and unstable chalk...

(Graeme Paton and Emma Yeomans, The Times, 2020)

Crazy in love.

Madness 2

As his people eke out a living on less than £2 a day and fall ill from drinking unsafe water, Africa's most boastful playboy politician has shared footage from his £38,000-a-night-stay on a private island in the Maldives.

After an enforced lull in his jet-setting routine, Teodorin Obiang, 50, the vice-president of Equatorial Guinea, has returned to extravagant form by sharing images from his idyllic break with his 99,000 followers on Instagram...

He checked into the Unesco world heritage site resort [Voavah] this month, leaving the west African state to weather the double economic shock from the coronavirus and a plunge in the price of crude oil, which provides about three quarters of state revenue,..

Tartar Robbers Dividing Spoil
William Allen (1782-1850)
Photo Credit: Tate [ CC BY-NC-ND]

An aerial shot of the five-acre island in the Baa Atoll shows Mr Obiang's 76m Ebony Shine, which has a private cinema and a staff of 22, moored near by among the reefs. He was reunited with the $115 million boat last September after it was held for three years by the Swiss authorities while they were investigating allegations of money laundering. It was eventually released when Mr Obiang's government paid $1.3 million in fees after successfully arguing that it actually belonged to its Ministry of Defence and that its dive facilities were used for training people in the navy.

His father, President Obiang, 78, is the world's longest-serving president and Equatorial Guinea's first family have never been shy about their extravagance even as they were investigated for plundering their oil-rich state where 1.3 million live in wretched poverty. President Obiang once paid $55 million for a Boeing 737 jet with gold-plated lavatory fittings.

In February judges in France handed the younger Mr Obiang a £25 million fine for embezzlement as well as a suspended three-year jail term in absentia after finding that he had pillaged his state coffers. Prosecutors estimated that he had amassed assets worth €150 million (£126 million) in France alone...

(Jane Flanagan, The Times, 2020)

Smartphone Madness

'Anxiety', Head of a Girl
Jean-Baptiste Greuse (1725-1805)
Photo Credit: Victoria Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND]

I'm as deeply in love with my smartphone as the next person, but I'll tell you one thing about it that annoys the hell out of me: that's when I'm juicing it up, and it gets to 80 per cent, and it beeps and informs me "battery sufficiently charged".

Gets me every time that information. "Shut it, phone," I have taken to responding, "I'll be the judge of that." 

Because, hey, I'm just not an 80 per cent kinda guy. I want max power, all the time. I get jumpy when it dips to about 97 per cent, let alone 80. That's pretty much next door to zero in my book, and we all know modern life cannot be sustained for any length of time with a dead mobile.

What's more, as it issues the liberty-taking "battery sufficiently charged" alert, the phone also sees fit, without so much as a by your leave, to switch over from the power-saving yellow icon mode I favour to the juice-draining full-on green level I am otherwise careful to avoid. Something needs to be done.

(Robert Crampton, The Times, 2020)

Why get so worked up about nothing? And what's all this business about "we all know modern life cannot be sustained for any length of time with a dead mobile"? You're having a laugh aren't you?

Offensive Word

The Fight for the Platform
John Holland 111 (1830-1886)
Photo Credit: York Museums Trust [Public Domain]

Parents have questioned the need for the head teacher of a leading boarding school to apologise for using the word negro during an assembly following a backlash from students.

Samantha Price, 46, head of Benenden girls' boarding school... has "unreservedly" apologised for using the word during an assembly on Black History Month.

Explaining the origins of the month, Ms Price said that when it began in 1926 it was called 'Negro History Week' in America. After the assembly she received complaints from some girls who feared some would think it was acceptable to repeat it and said it was as offensive as the n-word...

She added; "In hindsight I recognise that it was not necessary to use the specific word and I accept that by using this word at all I have caused offence to some pupils. Clearly, this was never my intention and I unreservedly apologise for that error."

Some parents at the school have leapt to Ms Price's defence saying that there was no need for her to apologise and that she should be praised for promoting equality... One parent told The Times:

"Language and the use of certain words have certainly changed over time, but I am 100 per cent certain that Sam Price would not have used the word negro for anything other than to promote education and debate"...

Another parent... told The Times that the teacher was only quoting a historical fact but the "rumour mill" among pupils had led some to believe she had  said the n-word...

(Neil Johnston, The Times, 2020)

Here  we go again. The origins of Black History Month began in America in 1926 when it was called Negro History Week. This, apparently, is what the teacher in question informed the children during an assembly. Nothing controversial there except some children complained about the use of the word - negro. Apparently, there was no intention, by the head, to use the word in any derogatory manner but to some she caused offence.  

By apologising the head sets a dangerous precedent. There could be many situations in the classroom when the use of words by the teacher could cause offence. If I use the word actress to denote a female actor might that cause offence? Can the teacher use the word blacklisted or in a history lesson use the word blackboard? What about fat, slum, foreign food, and tax man. Pronoun use could become a nightmare too! 

*... The issue at Benenden is not that this or that word was used, which may or may not have caused controversy; what is at stake in this school and in hundreds of others is academic freedom. It is only a small step, a transgression already made in many classrooms, from a discussion of current policy to an assumption by a politically correct younger generation that it has the moral right to censor "objectionable" views, to pillory those deemed racist, sexist, transphobic, and to insist that pupils study only what they, not their teachers, regard as relevant and progressive...

Schools are not extensions of social media, places where pupils can pick and choose what they want to follow or learn, or environments where they can ensure their own views and priorities are dominant...

Of course pupils should be engaged in what they are learning. The best teaching recognises today's concerns and engages with them. But the whole concept of no-platforming is anathema to the art of debate and persuasion. Any attempt to impose blanket moral or racial guilt will never foster empathy or understanding. This should never be the basis on which classrooms function. Schools must vigorously assert their standards and not submit to modish mob hysteria.

(Times Editorial, 2020)