Celebrity Opinion

In todays age of mass social media, we have access to the thoughts of all and sundry at any time of day and night, usually unfiltered and uneducated. Mostly, this isn’t too much of a problem, we walk (or scroll) on by without giving random opinions a second thought, but when it comes to celebrities, we hold them to this odd standard of not allowing them to be anything but a celebrity unless it suits our narrative.

I recently saw a tweet aimed at Osher Gunsberg which started with “you’re a reality TV star” indicating that he should have stuck to the one thing the tweeter knew him for, but it was his very tongue in cheek reply stating that he would “from now on only be the one thing you allow me to be. Didn’t realise … that humans were not allowed to have multiple interests or skill sets” that got me thinking about celebrity and the disdain society seems to have for them if they express and opinion, no matter how educated that person might be about the subject matter.

Osher, for those who bother to look into the person behind the celebrity, has long had an interest in the environment and climate change, and has spoken to and engaged with many experts on the subject. He’s not a celebrity dropped in for an endorsement, never to be heard on the topic again. He is passionate about it and tries to educate himself.

We see this idea of celebrity shut downs when it comes to politics, especially. In Australia, we have compulsory voting so it’s not such an issue, but you notice it to a great extent with American politics. Celebrity endorsement is used to get people to vote for one party or another, one candidate or another, but in expressing an opinion they open themselves up to a barrage of hateful posts on every social media platform known to man, and this can have a detrimental effect.

The idea of hounding or insulting celebrities for having an opinion seems bizarre to me. You can attack the idea but the actual person should really be off limits. Clearly, there are going to be cases where the particular celebrity just spouts utter nonsense on an ongoing basis, but for the most part, they’re just regular people with regular opinions, they just happen to have a massive audience.

Celebrities are also subjected to criticism when they talk about things which have personally affected them. During the bushfires which devastated large tracts of land in Australia during the latter part of 2019 and early 2020, Russell Crowe’s property suffered much damage. Naturally, he used social media to thank the fire fighters and was berated for seemingly using his celebrity status to get his house saved, yet he had done nothing of the sort, and had, in fact, had his land used as a staging ground by the fire brigade to give them better access to other properties.

The trouble with social media is that it doesn’t give the celebrity in question ability to show the depth and breadth of their knowledge of or passion about certain subjects. If you saw a social media post from singer/songwriter Charlotte Church about physics you might scoff but if you listen to her on the podcast The Infinite Monkey Cage episode “Universe: What Remains to be Discovered” (02/08/16) you come to understand just how much she knows about science and just how much excitement she finds in the subject.

As Charlotte says in the episode, she doesn’t need to have formally studied science in order to learn about it. There are books, and podcasts, and documentaries that you can learn from. You don’t need to study astrophysics for years at university to have a love for the science behind it. Personally, I have spent many an hour listing to science and history podcasts because, even though I don’t always understand it fully, I can appreciate the expertise, I can increase my knowledge of the subject and find people who do understand the subject for me to follow up and read their works at a later stage. And it was Charlotte's absolute giddy excitement that inspired me to write this piece.

So, if you gain nothing else from this piece, please allow celebrities to speak their mind. You can agree or disagree with their position until the cows come home, but attack the idea not the person. As we tell kids in sport, play the ball, not the man. And, who knows, maybe you'll learn something from them.

An Athiests Guide to the Bible: Cain and Abel

In the previous Guide, Adam and Eve got kicked out of Eden for eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge after being convinced by a talking snake. Now we find out what happened to Adam and Eve outside the Garden of Eden. 

Then Adam had intercourse with his wife, and she became pregnant. She bore a son and said, "By the Lord's help I have gotten a son." So, she named him Cain. Later she gave birth to another son, Abel. Abel became a shepherd, but Cain was a farmer.

These biblical writers didn’t muck around, did they? Straight to the sex! And Eve got pregnant straight away. Now I know it’s possible to get on the first go, and it’s not really specified how long it took them to get pregnant, but it seems like it was almost instantaneous.

There’s also very little in the way of description of the pregnancy, or the birth itself. Clearly written by a male with little regard for women. Luckily, not all men have such little regard for the role women play in history. But let’s break down the pregnancy a bit.

God cursed Eve, causing an increase to her trouble in pregnancy and pain in childbirth. Neither of these are elaborated on at all. She’s the mother of mankind, surely some sort of description beyond getting pregnant and having kids is necessitated here? I don’t expect the writer to give a blow by blow account of the whole ordeal, but there’s not even so much of a mention of her being in any pain during labour at all, which she would have been as there were no doctors, no pain relief medications, and she wouldn’t have been to a parenting class to learn any breathing techniques. As a woman, full props to Eve. She did it the hard way, with only Adam to lend a hand and I’m sure he was next to useless, there never having been a birth before.

Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, Eve credits the guy who cursed her with the pain of childbirth. That is the last thing I would be doing. God’s help isn’t even mentioned, so what was it that God actually did to help Eve? It isn’t explained. As we will see in future guides, some things are detailed to a level that induces a coma when reading it, while other things are skimmed over as if they hardly matter. It’s infuriating, to say the least. 

After some time, Cain brought some of his harvest and gave it as an offering to the Lord. Then Abel brought the first lamb born to one of his sheep, killed it, and gave the best parts of it as an offering. The Lord was pleased with Abel and his offering, but he rejected Cain and his offering. Cain became furious, and he scowled in anger. Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why that scowl on your face? If you had done the right thing, you would be smiling; but because you have done evil, sin is crouching at your door. It wants to rule you, but you must overcome it."

If someone could tell me, based only on what has been written so far, why Cain’s offering was so bad, that’d be great, because I feel like I’ve missed something somewhere. Cain offered the product of his own labour, just as Abel did, yet one offering is better than the other.

Obviously the two are grown men by this point (or at least teenagers, given events that are about to happen) so did God tell the brothers what sort of offering to make? You’d think this would be worthy of noting down. It would go a long way to explaining why God rejected Cain’s offering.

Some versions of the bible make it seem that perhaps Cain didn’t bring the best of his harvest while Abel brought the finest cut of meat. Is this what is meant by “the right thing” and why is it a matter of good and evil? God sounds a little judgemental, and a little harsh. 

Then Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let's go out in the fields." When they were out in the fields, Cain turned on his brother and killed him.

He did what, now?

Could Cain have had some sort of brain injury, specifically relating to the area of the brain that deals with impulse control? If Cain had acted immediately, killing his brother on the spot, then this would be quite a good explanation but he displayed a desire to conceal the act by taking his brother to the field.

This leads us to a more psychological rationale for his behaviour – narcissism, sociopathy, psychopathy – there are many disorders in which the elimination of a competitor is a possibility.

Cain’s overreaction is somewhat understandable if we take a deeper look at it from a psychological point of view. Cain is the elder son, yet it seems that Abel gets preferential treatment. It’s not specified (another example of a bit more detail being warranted) but it would seem like this has been going on their whole life. God rejecting the offering was the final straw, and sibling rivalry only goes part of the way to explain how bad Cain’s reaction is.

If we look at it from the perspective of a person who has been made to feel like he’s not good enough his whole life, and is then told by the god who created his parents that he has done evil and is courting sin, I don’t think that would have gone down well and definitely explains the snap which leads to Abel’s death.

This mix of personality and triggering event could very well explain the actions of Cain, especially if he is still a teenager and has not fully developed impulse control.

But how did God not see this coming? He allowed Abel to die. He gave him no warning and, at this stage, had not set out the commandments. This all-knowing, all-powerful being seems pretty inept. I’m all for having children learn lessons on their own, but I’d step in if someone innocent was going to be seriously injured, let alone die. 

The Lord asked Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" He answered, "I don't know. Am I supposed to take care of my brother?" Then the Lord said, "Why have you done this terrible thing? Your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground, like a voice calling for revenge. You are placed under a curse and can no longer farm the soil. It has soaked up your brother's blood as if it had opened its mouth to receive it when you killed him. If you try to grow crops, the soil will not produce anything; you will be a homeless wanderer on the earth."

Curses seem to run in this family, and God seems to like doling them out. This one takes away the one skill that Cain seemed to have – an ability to grow crops. As far as other curses and punishments go, this one seems to be about the most accurate in in terms of punishment befitting the crime. It’s still harsh by modern standards but being made into a beggar gets Cain off pretty easily by biblical standards. 

And Cain said to the Lord, "This punishment is too hard for me to bear. You are driving me off the land and away from your presence. I will be a homeless wanderer on the earth, and anyone who finds me will kill me." But the Lord answered, "No. If anyone kills you, seven lives will be taken in revenge." So, the Lord put a mark on Cain to warn anyone who met him not to kill him. And Cain went away from the Lord's presence and lived in a land called "Wandering," which is east of Eden.

This is where things start getting a bit weird, chronology-wise. Cain is afraid that someone will kill him. Who? As far as we know, Adam and Eve are the only two people on the planet so far. If he talking about future people? In that case, he’d still have a good 30 years or so head start. But God doesn’t seem to notice this either. Or maybe he’s just setting his mind at ease.

Also, how would people know what the mark on Cain meant? Yes, all the people speak the same language at this point in the bible so they could get the information verbally, but that is an unreliable method of getting what seems to be a pretty important message across. Maybe God just put the information into their brain, in which case he’s interfering in the free will of man when it would have been far simpler to just interfere in Cain’s brain before any of this happened.

And so, we reach the end of another Guide. Next time we’ll look at the descendants of Cain and ponder where he got a wife from.

An Athiests Guide to the Bible: The Disobedience of Man (including “God Pronounces Judgement” and “Adam and Eve are sent out of the Garden”)

In the previous Guide we looked at the Garden of Eden as a place, now we are looking at the events that transpired there, according to the biblical narrative. As per previous Guides, I will look at the scientific likelihood, as well as the actual biblical story and how it fits within the scheme of other stories within the bible. So, let’s jump in …

Now the snake was the most cunning animal that the Lord God had made. The snake asked the woman, "Did God really tell you not to eat fruit from any tree in the garden?"

Well, I’ve never met a talking snake and we have quite a few species here in Australia, so I can’t speak to the veracity of this claim but if God is all-powerful then it’s very possible for him to make a snake able to talk or a woman able to understand snake. But all-knowing God didn’t know that in making the snake, this would happen? And we know that God supposedly endowed humans with free will, but did he do this for other creatures, too?

"We may eat the fruit of any tree in the garden," the woman answered, "except the tree in the middle of it. God told us not to eat the fruit of that tree or even touch it; if we do, we will die."

First off, God told Adam not to eat the fruit, now it’s that they can’t eat or even touch it? Me thinks God keeps moving the goalposts, or did the writers add a little flourish? We keep coming back to this duel idea of the bible being the word of God, in which case it should have no changes, additions, or contradictions, or it’s a book written by man to be used to explain a world they couldn’t explain and to control a population by appealing to a higher authority.

The snake replied, "That's not true; you will not die. God said that because he knows that when you eat it, you will be like God and know what is good and what is bad."

Again, God’s all-knowing/all-powerful vibe is taking severe hit because, even with the idea of free will, God has to know what every single possibility will be, yet he still created this as a possibility. Now the snakes calls out God as a lie, and is ultimately proven right, meaning that the snake could be seen as the good guy in this story, telling the truth, while God has lied from the get go.

The woman saw how beautiful the tree was and how good its fruit would be to eat, and she thought how wonderful it would be to become wise. So, she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, and he also ate it. As soon as they had eaten it, they were given understanding and realized that they were naked; so, they sewed fig leaves together and covered themselves.

In this section we find a small contradiction. In the previous Guide the tree was named – The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is often shortened to the Tree of Knowledge and the passage above certainly implies that it is simply knowledge that is gained from eating the fruit, yet why be so specific only a few paragraphs earlier in naming it Knowledge of Good and Evil? While it might not seem be too much of a difference, the knowledge of everything that God knows is vastly more than simply the knowledge of good and evil.

Regardless of whether we take the knowledge to be of everything or just good and evil, the realisation of nakedness is written as a bad thing, and we know from other passages in the bible that anything to do with sex, genitals or the like is regarded as sinful. It starts early in the bible, as we can see, and doesn’t let up. Whatever knowledge the tree has given to Adam and Eve has been placed within the tree by God, so God is responsible for not only their nakedness for it being seen as evil or sinful.

That evening they heard the Lord God walking in the garden, and they hid from him among the trees. But the Lord God called out to the man, "Where are you?" He answered, "I heard you in the garden; I was afraid and hid from you, because I was naked." "Who told you that you were naked?" God asked. "Did you eat the fruit that I told you not to eat?" The man answered, "The woman you put here with me gave me the fruit, and I ate it." The Lord God asked the woman, "Why did you do this?" She replied, "The snake tricked me into eating it."

Problem number one is that when Adam and Eve hide from God, he apparently doesn’t know where they are, and has to call out to them. This whole passage reads as a parent who knows their child has done something wrong and is playing dumb. It seems a little petty for an all-knowing God to be playing such a human mind-trick on Adam and Eve.

But then problem number two is that Eve lies. The snake doesn’t trick her. He was absolutely truthful. Why does she lie? Surely having eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, and now being as wise as God, she knows that God is all-knowing and will surely know she is lying. It’s a bizarre circumstance.

Then the Lord God said to the snake, "You will be punished for this; you alone of all the animals must bear this curse: From now on you will crawl on your belly, and you will have to eat dust as long as you live. I will make you and the woman hate each other; her offspring and yours will always be enemies. Her offspring will crush your head, and you will bite her offspring's heel."

Here we come back to the scientific inaccuracies of the bible. All-knowing God curses the snake to crawl on its belly, which it does, and to eat dirt, which it clearly does not. It sounds more metaphorical than a literal eating of dirt, but did the people who wrote the bible know what snakes eat, or did they actually assume that snakes ate dirt?

The idea of snakes and humans being enemies is also somewhat dubious. It is highly likely that an innate fear of snakes, due to many of them being poisonous, is responsible for this part of the curse. We also know that many people are not afraid of snakes or, at least, a live and let live relationship with them. The concept that all of Eve’s offspring would be afraid of snakes is obviously not true, yet all-knowing God says it will be.

Lastly, I’m not sure that snakes are particularly afraid of humans, and probably have not enough brain power to come up with the idea of any other species as being an enemy. Snakes, depending on species, are only aggressive when threatened. I once went bushwalking through a local national park and came across and red-bellied black snake sunning itself on the path. I am not particularly afraid of snakes but I live in Australia and many, including red-bellied blacks, are poisonous so I have a healthy respect for their abilities. My first thought wasn’t to kill the snake, I was in its territory. I just waited for it to slither off into the bush and continued on my way. It wasn’t worried about me and I wasn’t worried about it, we just avoided each other.

And he said to the woman, "I will increase your trouble in pregnancy and your pain in giving birth. In spite of this, you will still have desire for your husband, yet you will be subject to him."

This part annoys me, as a woman. First of all, God lied to Adam and Eve when he told them they’d die the same day if they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Then he doles out a punishment far in excess of what the “crime” calls for. This makes God out to be a petty, vengeful god with no moderation or sympathy. Also, God is clearly male or created by males, with the style or explanation of the punishment – pain for something only women can go through and subjugation.

And he said to the man, "You listened to your wife and ate the fruit which I told you not to eat. Because of what you have done, the ground will be under a curse. You will have to work hard all your life to make it produce enough food for you. It will produce weeds and thorns, and you will have to eat wild plants. You will have to work hard and sweat to make the soil produce anything, until you go back to the soil from which you were formed. You were made from soil, and you will become soil again."

And what is God’s punishment for Adam, who is just as culpable as Eve? A bit of hard work in the garden. A bit of weeding, and cultivating the land. Doesn’t quite seem fair. As I have already mentioned, the bible has a misogynistic bent throughout its entire duration, and that misogyny has pervaded Christian culture to this day.

I have to say, not all Christians are misogynistic, but many do cling to the tenants set out in the bible which has caused many problems all over the world. I’m not even talking about extremists, or fundamentalists. We will deal with different reactions to events that go against biblical societal norms as we continue through the bible with these Guides.

Adam named his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all human beings. And the Lord God made clothes out of animal skins for Adam and his wife, and he clothed them. Then the Lord God said, "Now these human beings have become like one of us and have knowledge of what is good and what is bad. They must not be allowed to take fruit from the tree that gives life, eat it, and live forever."

So, now we’re back to the knowledge being that of good and bad. This explains why God had to make clothes for Adam and Eve, rather than the fig leaves they were wearing since eating the fruit, because they haven’t become wise like God, as described earlier. We also find God using the word “us” implying other God-like beings. This is completely in line with religions which predate Christianity and Judaism. The God of the bible is just one of many Gods or God-like beings. This actually makes far more sense than monotheism and we’ll talk about the idea of monotheism versus polytheism when we get to the ten commandments.

Also, what’s the deal with Adam and Eve not having eaten from the Tree of Life already? If I were in the Garden of Eden and was told there was a tree which made you live forever, it’d probably be the first tree I’d eat from. But the bible is full of these little oddities.

So, the Lord God sent them out of the Garden of Eden and made them cultivate the soil from which they had been formed. Then at the east side of the garden he put living creatures and a flaming sword which turned in all directions. This was to keep anyone from coming near the tree that gives life.

God is really weird. Instead of removing the Tree of Life to avoid tempting anyone to get to it, he put a flaming sword and some creatures there to protect it. Obviously, it’s a powerful sword because it was created by God, but of all the things he could have done, why a flaming sword? And which living creatures? Dragons? That’d be pretty cool. Moths? Not exactly the scariest of creatures. A large 3 headed dog like in Greek mythology? We’ll never know, I suppose.

In the end, this part of the bible is a way to explain certain things in life – like pain during child birth and the need to cultivate the land – and to give an excuse for the ongoing degradation of women by painting them as weak in being “tricked” by the snake and to continue the subjugation of women as it’s their curse and God’s will (as opposed to allowing themselves to be governed by the free will given to them by God.)

Until, next week …

A Good Read

There are constantly lists coming out of books you should read before you die, or great summer reads, or the top ten books of all time. This is not one of those lists. It is a list of books, but they’re books that I have loved reading. They’re not necessarily the best books, they may never win prizes, though I’m sure some of them have, but they are books that I have fallen in love with.

I’m also not going to go on about why I love each book. I’m simply going to list them, in no particular order, by title and author. I’m not trying to persuade you to read any of them but, if you do, that’s great. I just want to give you a few books you might not have heard of, or forgotten about, that you could, perhaps, put on your list one day.

So, here are 20 books that I have loved and I hope you love, too.

 

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. 

Hamlet by William Shakespeare. 

Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park. 

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. 

When Galaxies Collide by Lisa Harvey-Smith. 

Beachmasters by Thea Astley. 

The Complete Adventures of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie by May Gibbs. 

Vineland by Thomas Pynchon. 

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard.

 

The Witches by Roald Dahl. 

Rose Madder by Stephen King.

 

Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel.

 

Dr Space Junk vs the Universe by Alice Gorman. 

The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. 

The Norton Anthology of Poetry by Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter and Jon Stallworthy. 

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.

 

The Rise of Life by John Reader. 

Animalia by Graeme Base. 

The Adonis Strategy by Alex Fazakas. 

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll.

What are your favourite books? Are they from your childhood? Do you stick to a genre, or branch out? Why do you love them? Do they remind you of what was happening in your life at the time? What is the power of books for you?

The Burden of Proof

I, as an atheist, am often confronted by the idea of the burden of proof. It’s something that seems so simple, yet gets people so worked up. It is defined as the duty to prove a disputed assertation and the burden of providing that proof falls to the person making the assertation. To my rational brain it seems as though it would be difficult to argue any other way of applying the burden of proof. So, let’s look at some examples.

In criminal law with an assumption of innocent until proven guilty, the burden of proof is on the prosecutorial side of the system. They must prove, usually to beyond reasonable doubt, that the person is guilty. The person charged with the crime is presumed to be innocent, making their burden far less – they simply must maintain that position. Should evidence be produced that sways the presumption from innocent to guilty, the burden of proof shifts in the opposite direction.

In philosophy, the burden of proof arises when two people have a dispute over a claim made by one or the other of the participants in the conversation. The claimant is the one who must prove their case. The person disputing it, if they make no claim of their own, has no burden of proof. Often the person making the claim will try to shit the burden of proof to the person disputing them by claiming that their position is correct because the other person can’t prove it’s not correct. This is known as a logical fallacy, specifically the argument from ignorance.

You can get into all sorts of debates over what constitutes proof, and what the strength of that evidence may be. This will vary depending on what field you're talking about. In subjects like mathematics, a proof is very rigid; in philosophy, it is more subjective.

I have used the example of the baseball in previous posts, but for anyone who hasn’t seen it or heard it before, it goes like this:

The burden of proof lies upon the claimant, in this case, the person with the baseball. In this case, the proof is quite easy to produce, and not everything can be proven, but that’s ok. What you don’t try to shift the burden to the other person because you can’t back up your claim. You'll earn a lot more respect and be given a lot more leeway if you simply state that you don't have proof, that you are operating from a position of faith, or that you cannot explain the proof in a logically sufficient manner.

Pride in a Job Well Done

Today I say the above thread on Twitter. It resonated with me on a deep level. I thought to myself about any times I’ve tried to tell someone about my accomplishments and, mostly, they’ve been met with responses I could only call muted. I don’t like to big note myself. I have always been surrounded by people who were better than me at pretty much anything. That’s part of the problem when you go to an academically selective high school, and compete to a high level in sport. There’s always someone better than you, and even if you come first this time, you probably won’t next time.

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. This is what drives us to become better – as people and as a society. You being the best at something drives someone else to be even better. You are an inspiration, and that is a good thing. It is an important thing. But that’s not what this about. It’s not about being overtaken by someone more talented. It’s about what happens when you tell someone about your accomplishments, especially when many years have passed since you achieved them.

It took me a long time to realise that, essentially, people don’t care about what you’re proud of unless it helps them or makes them feel better. I teach gymnastics for a living but that’s not the sport I excelled at. And I use excelled with some trepidation. As a roller skater, I never thought I was all that good. I had fantastic coaches who had competed at world championships, I was never going to be that good. Even as a teenager, competing at a national level, I didn’t think I was any good because I had friends who were representing the country.

Then, I made it into a team to go to the world championships, but I still didn’t feel like I’d really made it as the events I was competing in were seen as lesser events because they were team events and not individual events. What should have been a crowning glory made me feel like I didn’t deserve to be there.

When I teach kids to skate, I tell them that I competed at a world level. It’s not so much for them, they’re just there to have a bit of fun. It’s for the adults in the room, because a qualification doesn’t mean much in sports. Parents want their kid to be taught by the best, and a national champion and national representative gives me credentials other coaches can’t claim. It doesn’t make me a better coach. It just sounds better.

That kind of self-praise is acceptable to society. It’s almost expected. But if you’re proud of something that is seen as not mattering, you’d better keep it to yourself. I’ve been writing poetry since I was a kid. I would have been about 13 when I wrote my first one. The teacher thought it was really good and praised me in front of the class. If I had stood up in class and said, “I’ve written a really good poem” I would have been ridiculed.

Ok, so that was high school, and people mature but still, as a society, we like to cut down tall poppies. We don’t like it when people think too much of themselves, even if it’s deserved. And when you get that reaction – that disdain – you second guess yourself, you think twice before saying anything, and you keep your pride under wraps because it’s ok to be proud of others, and it is ok to be proud of yourself, just don’t say anything.

In the tweet the author mentioned about “celebrating with the right crowd” and it would be so nice if we all knew which crowd we could express ourselves with before we did it and got shot down, especially in those formative years. Sometimes, the only one you can celebrate with is yourself.

It does get better as you get older. You find your crowd. But it’s still not always easy to say when you’re proud of something, just like it’s not easy to say when you’re upset about something. So, this is me saying I’m proud of what I’ve achieved in life. I’m proud of my sporting achievements. I’m proud of my university degree. And I’m proud of my writing. Because if I’m not, who else will be?

Missing Travelling

I love travelling. The exploration, the seeing of things in real life that you’ve only seen in pictures, and the sharing of the experience, even if you do the actual travelling alone. It’s probably the thing I miss most during this whole pandemic. My friends are just a text message or phone call away. I don’t miss them the same way I miss travelling.

It’s not the going outside so much. I can handle the staying inside. I will make it out the other side of this pandemic in roughly the same shape as I went into it. What I miss about travelling is the escape from reality it provides. For a week or a fortnight or a month, you get to be full of wonder and you get to be awestruck. You can get work out of your head. You can not worry about putting the bins out. You can just be.

My travel bucket list is pretty simple. I want to set foot on every continent. I want to see Tuvalu before it disappears under water. And I want to go to places I’ve never been before. So far I have been to 6 of the 7 continents. I only have Antarctica to go. It will happen one day and the planning of that adventure will be just as exciting as the going.

But you don’t have to spend a fortune or go a long way to make travel significant. My son and I love going on road trips. We will sit with a map and plan where we want to go. The destination is just one part of the planning, though. The fun part is looking at what we can see along the way. It sounds terribly cliché, but it’s the journey that makes the destination worthwhile.

I miss those discussions with my son. We still talk about where we want to go but it doesn’t have the same sense of being able to actually go or do. I miss the excitement of discovering a place to see we didn’t know existed before, saying, “I can’t wait to go there” and actually going there.

As much as I miss the planning that goes into travel, though, I also miss the spontaneity of travel. The turning a corner and finding a beautiful garden. The entering a museum and realising there’s a new exhibit. The driving a backroad and seeing a sign to a lookout you didn’t know was there.

When this pandemic is over, and we all go back to our day to day lives, I hope that we can appreciate the ability to do those things we missed doing. Not just appreciate it the first time, though, but appreciate it every time we do it. I want to appreciate the anticipation. I want to appreciate the planning. I want to appreciate the going and the seeing and the doing. I want appreciate the getting there and I want to appreciate the getting home.

And that’s also what I miss about travel. I miss appreciating getting home.

Funny and Smart: The thinking person’s crumpet

If you ask most women what they think of as sexy you might get an array of answers to do with what physical attributes that they find attractive. You might also find answers that are less quantifiable, like the spark in their eye, the way they walk or even less specifically a je ne sais quoi. But do you know what’s really sexy? What really gets someone like me swooning? The brain.

Ok, not many people are going to find the actual brain sexy. That’s a fairly niche fetish. It’s more what comes out of the brain. The personality, the humour, the intellect – the way people use their brain is just about the sexiest thing you can have on this planet.

Now, everyone is different, some people will find one expression of the brain incredibly desirable, while someone else will find a completely different expression of the brain desirable. It’s just like physical attraction. There’s no right or wrong, but there are some more mainstream attractions than others.

The perennial question is the dinner party guest list, and who would be on it. The idea is to pick 5 people with whom you’d like to have dinner, disregarding location, age, or any other real-world limitations. So, I’m going to play a variation of this. I’m going to give a list of 10 men (being that I’m a cis hetero woman who literally couldn’t narrow down this list to without an great deal of angst) that I find incredibly smart, funny and, of course, sexy, and I am completely disregarding the fact that most of them (if not all) have a spouse.

So, let’s begin …

Craig Ferguson – If you've ever watched Craig as the host of "The Late Late Show" on CBS in America, you’ll know how sexy, and how funny, and how incredibly smart he is. While he’s had his ups and downs in his life, what has shone through is a quick wit and a huge amount of intelligence. His smarts cross multiple areas, from the concrete to the esoteric. He can wax lyrical about almost any subject, bringing a sense of humanity and a sense of humour to the discussion, along with a sexy Scottish accent and a killer twinkle in the eye.

Adam Rutherford – If you want someone who is properly smart, you can’t do better than someone with a PhD in genetics. Mix that with a wicked sense of humour and dashing good looks, and you have a downright sexy individual. I have often fallen asleep listening to one of Adam’s podcasts, not due to the boring nature of it, but due to the fact that I just can’t stop listening and 27 episodes later, it’s 3am and I am sound asleep, still listening to his brilliantly funny and smart take on all things science.

Sean Finegan – as one third of the comedy group “Foil Arms and Hog” his comedy credentials are clear, but dig a little deeper and you can clearly see the intelligence behind the comedy that he performs. There’s the ability to understand the human condition in a way that makes seeing the funny side of some quite serious ideas possible. And Sean’s terrifically easy on the eye. This heady mix, along with a delightful Irish accent, mean I could watch hours of his work and never get bored, or turned off.

Brian Cox – I fell for Brian before I knew he was a genius; I fell for him as a musician. Then he got even sexier by being smart, and not just smart, but astrophysicist smart. His show with Robin Ince, “The Infinite Monkey Cage” show off his humour, and his ability to laugh at himself. So many seriously smart people are seriously lacking in humour, but Brian is often happy to be the butt of the joke, and often his own joke. He’s the current pin up boy for scientists not just for his looks, smarts and other talents, but for the mix of these elements.

Tim Minchin – (finally an Australian on the list!) You could pick Tim up and put him into just about any situation and he’d not be out of place. He’s equally at home cracking a joke, singing a song, or discussing the meaning of life. His personality overflows with compassion and sincerity, and a desirability for more knowledge. The ability to weave these aspects of his self together and then implode them in such a charismatic manner is what make him so incredibly attractive.

Greg Jenner – for a history buff like me, Greg embodies everything that I wanted to be when I studied history at school and at university. He is (along with the rest of the very clever people responsible for “Horrible Histories”) the reason behind my son’s insatiable appetite for history. The fact that he is smart but also feels so approachable, especially to kids, makes him incredibly sexy. His ability to inject humour into some very dark aspects of history is to be commended, to the point we can even forgive him being a Spurs supporter.

Matt Parkinson – we know he’s smart because he’s an excellent quizzer on the TV show "The Chase." We know he’s funny because he’s a successful stand-up comic. So, does this mean he’s sexy? Yes, it does, and he is. Even when he’s trying to dispatch contestants, his cheekiness and sarcasm oozes out of him. He’s a commanding physical presence but it exudes charisma that draws you in. He’s the sexy school teacher all the mums drool over at the school gate, but better. He's got that meet-you-at-the-pub vibe playing off the not-out-of-place-at-a-fancy-cocktail-party vibe. Irresistible.

Russell Howard – comedians who can blend social responsibility and actual humour deserve all the medals. He might swear like a trooper but there’s a childlike innocence to the passion Russell brings to his comedy. It’s completely endearing. His mind is incredibly sharp and only the best political commentators can inject humour, and only the best comedians can bring a gravitas, yet Russell does both incredibly well. He will have you laughing, and crying, and laughing again, all the while your fantasising about having your way with him.

Ken Dutton-Regester – you might not have heard of Ken until right this second but, with the twitter handle of @the_funkydr to live up to, he’d want to have something going for him, and does he ever. He’s a Australian cancer researcher who uses his humour and good looks to engage with people about a serious subject. How is that not considered sexy? Being passionate about something is very sexy and being able to pass on that passion makes his even sexier. Plus, he’s pretty hot, anyway.

Jon Richardson – last but definitely not least on this dinner party list, Jon seems to find himself on lists of “blokes you're ashamed to admit you find sexy” or some variation of this, and I’m hear to tell you that there is no shame. Jon is intelligent. Most good comedians are. But if you’ve seen him on “8 out of 10 cats does countdown” you will know that he’s not just funny-smart, he’s smart-smart. He’s not what you would call traditionally handsome, but he is very cute. He has the boy next door attractiveness blended with that nerdy sexiness.

What have I learnt from this little exercise? I have a penchant for residents of the United Kingdom but I knew that already. Being multi-talented is a huge turn on but, again, I already knew that, too. Maybe I've learnt that you’re never too old to have a crush on someone, and that if more people aspired to be smart and funny, there’d be a lot more sexy people in the world, and the world would be better for it.

An Athiest's Guide to the Bible: The Garden of Eden

We’ve covered off the first several billion years (or 6000 years, depending on which camp you’re in) of Earth’s history in the previous Guide. Now we’re going into a bit more detail with the Garden of Eden. We’re looking at the mechanics of the Garden of Eden, not the events: that comes next in the next Guide.

When the Lord God made the universe, there were no plants of the earth and no seeds had sprouted, because he had not sent any rain, and there was no-one to cultivate the land; but water would come up from beneath the surface and water the ground.

Again, we have this conjoining of the universe and planet Earth. In the bible, the Earth is the entire universe. We could be even more narrow in our interpretation, and state that the Middle East in the entire universe because, for all intents and purposes, the writers of the bible didn’t travel much so had no idea of what was outside of their sphere of influence.

Also, the idea that rain is the only source of water above ground is nonsense as we know of many plants which collect water from the atmosphere in the form of condensation.

Lastly, plants don’t necessarily need cultivating to survive. Many areas of the world are not cultivated by humans, some not even inhabited by humans. We know, scientifically, that plants existed long before even simple animal forms, therefor cultivation is a redundant idea when talking generally about plants. Cultivation, in fact, is only needed when plants are grown as crops for consumption.

Then the Lord God took some soil from the ground and formed a man out of it; he breathed life-giving breath into his nostrils and the man began to live. Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the East, and there he put the man he had formed.

Laying aside the physical impossibility of soil turning into flesh, if we agree that the God of the Bible is all powerful (read: magic) then it is within the realms of possibility that this God could fashion a human out of soil. It’s not an uncommon device for gods from various cultures to fashion humans out of soil, clay or rock of some sort.

It’s also entirely possible for that god to create a garden in which the human they’ve just created can live. The God of the Bible is not only all powerful but all knowing, so they knew that man would need somewhere to live and something to eat.

He made all kinds of beautiful trees grow there and produce good fruit. In the middle of the garden stood the tree that gives life and the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad.

In the midst of this garden are these two trees. Of course, no evidence has been found for the existence of either of these trees but the concept of them is fascinating. If I were creating paradise for the creature I had just created I’d want there to be a tree which gives life to those who eat its fruits. Seems pretty reasonable. Then there’s this other tree: the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad (hereafter known as the tree of knowledge). You’d think knowledge would be a wonderful thing for this creature, this human, to have, especially as you’ve given them the task of naming everything. But it’s not just any knowledge, which might be useful. It’s knowledge of good and bad. But we’ll come back to this in a moment.

A stream flowed in Eden and watered the garden; beyond Eden it divided into four rivers. The first river is the Pishon; it flows around the country of Havilah (pure gold is found there and also rare perfume and precious stones.) The second river is the Gihon; it flows around the country of Cush. The third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria, and the fourth river is the Euphrates.

There is some debate about the exact location of the Garden of Eden, given than only two of the rivers listed are still called what they are in the Bible: the Tigris and the Euphrates. What became of the Pishon and the Gihon rivers is a mystery, as they are no marked on any modern maps. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers join in modern day Iraq, near Basra.

Flowing south is the Shatt al-Arab River, also known as Arvand Rud, which runs into the Persian Gulf. This could be the original stream that flowed through the Garden of Eden. A possibility of some note for the Pishon Rover is the Karun River which joins the Shatt al-Arab River at Khorramshahr in Iran. The Gihon River is somewhat harder to nail down. There are several canals which could follow the paths of ancient rivers. It is entirely possible that the river simply no longer exists.

Some biblical scholars get around this ambiguity by arguing that the flood of Noah’s time (which we will come to in subsequent Guides) has altered the landscape so much that the terrain of the present bears little resemblance to that of the time of the Garden of Eden. I would argue that, given the Bible was written after Noah’s time, the writers might have been able to at least given a more accurate description, with the modern equivalents named in conjunction, especially as it is supposed to be the unerring word of God.

Still others conjecture that it is impossible to tell where the Garden of Eden really was because, when Noah and his descendants named all the places post flood, they could have simply done as early British colonialists did and named things after what they were familiar with, and so the rivers known as the Tigris and the Euphrates might not be in the same location as they were pre-flood, just like there is Wales in the United Kingdom and New South Wales in Australia. This means that the original rivers could have been anywhere in the world. It’s a convenient loophole, if you ask me.

So, where was Eden? Nobody really knows but, if you take the position of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers as they are now, and take the Karun river to be the modern name of the Pishon River, the Garden of Eden was probably located somewhere in the region of the Khuzestan Province of Iran, possibly stretching as far as the Persian Sea.

Then the Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and guard it. He told him, "You may eat the fruit of any tree in the garden, except the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad. You must not eat the fruit of that tree; if you do, you will die the same day."

This passage raises two questions. The first being, why didn’t God want the human he has created and placed into the Garden to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge? Surely, with God being all knowing, he could see what was going to happen and wouldn’t put temptation in the way. That’s what I’d do, anyway. As a mother, I wouldn’t put a whole plate of cakes in front of my child and tell them they could eat any of the cakes except the one with blue icing, and then be surprised when they ate the one with the blue icing. The caveat, of having said that they’ll die if they do means very little, because the first human would have no concept of death any more than a very young child does.

The second question I have is with exactly the caveat I just mentioned simply because it’s not true. We’ll come to the whole eating of the apple in the next Guide but I will touch on it now. Adam, being that first human that God created and told not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, didn’t die the same day as eating the apple. We know this because the bible mentions his expulsion from the garden and his children, etc. We could take dying in a more metaphorical sense. This could lend some plausibility to the die-the-same-day concept. It could be taken in a “you’re dead to me” way, in that God rejected them, much as those loving Christians reject their atheist offspring. It could also mean that on that day, Adam brought the concept of death to himself and that previously he was immortal. Either way, it’s a pretty harsh punishment for eating an apple. But we’ll discuss that more in the next Guide.

Then the Lord God said, "It is not good for the man to live alone. I will make a suitable companion to help him." So, he took some soil from the ground and formed all the animals and all the birds. Then he brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and that is how they all got their names.

Now, I don’t know about you but, if I were God, I wouldn’t leave it to a human to name all of my creations. Humans are notoriously bad at naming things. This is why we have scientific names for things, because people are really, really bad at naming things properly. Take the mantis shrimp, for example. It is neither a mantis, nor a shrimp. It falls directly into the say-what-you-see category of naming things. If I were God, I’d get so cranky at Adam for getting all the names so badly wrong, I’d kick him out of the garden for that.

So, the man named all the birds and all the animals; but not one of them was a suitable companion to help him. Then the Lord God made the man fall into a deep sleep, and while he was sleeping, he took out one of the man's ribs and closed up the flesh. He formed a woman out of the rib and brought her to him. Then the man said, "At last, here is one of my own kind - Bone taken from my bone, and flesh from my flesh. "Woman' is her name because she was taken out of man." That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united with his wife, and they become one. The man and the woman were both naked, but they were not embarrassed.

And so, we come to the creation of the as yet unnamed Eve. All powerful god couldn’t just make a woman out of soil, like he did Adam. Don’t be silly, that’d just make another man. He had to take a bone from Adam, obviously one that was superfluous to requirements, to do that. Did God not know how DNA works? What he was essentially doing was creating a clone of Adam. Now, I’m not up with the latest cloning techniques but I do know that if you clone a male, you’re going to get a male. So, this whole bone being necessary to avoid God just making another man is completely absurd, because of the laws of cloning and because, well, God is all powerful. It’s also bizarre to me that God didn’t realise earlier on when he was creating all the companion animals for Adam than none of them were going to work.

The last part of this passage is really odd. They were naked but not embarrassed. Well, they’d only just been created, so they didn’t know what embarrassment was, or nakedness for that fact, just like babies. And being embarrassed over nakedness is very much a social construct, not an inherently human one. Again, we’ll deal with this a bit more in the next Guide as we deal with consequences of eating the forbidden fruit. The concept of concealing the human form as a way to hide nakedness is a fairly recent idea. Early man used clothing in a far more practical manner, for protection from the weather. Even today, we see tribal societies who wear little to no clothes and have no concept of embarrassment about the human form, much to the horror of many a Christian missionary.

Next week, we’ll dissect the story of the disobedience of man, where Adam and Eve eat an apple at the behest of a talking snake.

James Cook and the problem with colonialism

James Cook was a Captain in the British Royal Navy who was known for exploring a lot of places, using his expertise in navigation and cartography. He claimed to have discovered a few places, which he hadn’t really, and ended up being done in on an island of Hawaii.

So, now that’s out of the way, we can talk about the effect that people like Cook and colonialization generally had on the world. While they did much for making the world more connected, they did it in a way that all but obliterated any culture they came into contact with.

From an Australian perspective, Cook wasn’t even close to discovering it. He may have been the first from Britain, but he wasn’t the first European, and definitely not the first human. The credit for that goes to the indigenous population, the multiple Aboriginal nations who inhabited the land, having travelled across from Papua New Guinea some 60,000 years prior.

It takes a pretty confident bloke to rock up somewhere, see other people, and think they’ve discovered somewhere new. It’s also pretty poor form to declare a place full of people “terra nullius” and just move in. Ok, that wasn’t Cook as such, but it was the colonialists who came after him.

The British culture was very heavily dependent on ownership and, more specifically, land ownership so when the came to Australia and found these people who were, to them, other and who observed no ownership of the land so far as the British could see, they saw no problem with simply claiming the land as their own.

While this was a problem in and of itself, it has led to a whole raft of other problems, notably racism. Racism stems from the idea of other based solely on the outward appearance of a person. We know now that the idea of race within the human species is pretty ridiculous considering the miniscule variation between individuals on a genetic level. It also seems ridiculous to judge a person based on the amount of melanin they produce, and to then decide that the amount of melanin bears any relation on what sort of a person they are.

Of course, first you have to see them as people, which the British didn’t. While it is a myth that they were covered by the Flora and Fauna Act until 1967 (you can find a good breakdown of this here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-20/fact-check-flora-and-fauna-1967-referendum/9550650), they were seen as something less than the while settlers.

Fast forward to today, and the long reaching effects of those colonialists is still being felt. We see people raging against the co-called privileges that the aboriginal community enjoy, in the form of affirmative action, etc. What people don’t see is the underlying discrimination which still exists towards Aboriginal people that makes these initiatives necessary.

On the other side of this is the blame laid at the feet of all those with British or just white European ancestry for the misdeeds of those colonialists as if we (speaking as someone with both British and general European ancestry) were somehow culpable for the actions of people to whom we might not even be related.

Yes, I enjoy a certain amount of privilege as a person of white colouring, but I also suffer discrimination as someone who is female, and of a lower socio-economic background. In a perfect world, all people would be judged by who they are rather than what they are but we stuck with a legacy of a people long since dead which we must discard but not forget if we are to move forward as one people because, if we forget, we are doomed to repeat, and repeat and repeat, until the end of time.

First Date

Being single for most of my life, I've had my share of first dates. Most of them have been disastrous. I rarely go on second dates. So, what was wrong with them? Where do I start? But this piece isn't about the terrible, awful first dates. It's about the good one. The only one that's actually worked. And why I am stuck in this terrible holding pattern because of Covid-19.

Let's talk about what makes a good first date. Male or female, these same tips apply.

1. Turning up on time.

I don't even wear a watch and am notoriously punctual. In fact, I am often early, which isn't always great, but it's better than being late. Now, I'm not talking about being a minute or two late. I'm talking about anything more than 5 minutes. If you're going to be late, let the person know. In the modern age you have zero excuses for not letting the other person know. Whether it's a phone call or a text or a facebook/twitter/kik/whatever-other-social-media-platform-you-have-been-talking-through message, it's easy enough to do.

When you turn up on time (or at least let the other person know you're running late) it tells the person you're meeting that you value their time, not just your own. It shows consideration. And it means you're able to prioritise.

2. Listening to the other person.

Listen is a great skill to have in life. It will get you a lot further than not listening. But just listening isn't where it ends. You have to actively listen. What's the difference? When you just listen, you take in the information, possibly store it for later. Active listening is where you engage with what the person is saying.

How do you engage? By asking questions, by recounting related stories of your own, by discussing ideas their topic has brought up. It's not talking over the top of them, or just sitting there saying, "uh-huh" or some other meaningless utterance.

3. Be polite.

This doesn't mean you have to agree with everything they say, but it does mean showing a bit of respect when they do say something you disagree with. It also means, be polite to others around you. Don't talk down to the wait staff. Don't abuse another customer who bumps into you. And don't be loud to the point of domineering so that others, including your date, can't enjoy their meal.

4. Offer to pay for the meal.

I don't care if you're a man or a woman, offer to at least pay for your share of the meal. It's up to the person who arranged the date to accept or refuse your offer. If it's gone really well, and you think there's a strong possibility of a second date, think about offering to pay for the next one if they refuse your offer and pay for the first themselves.

If you're not going to offer because you can't afford it, don't order something expensive. Order as if you were paying for it because at the end of the meal, they might just turn around and expect you to pay anyway.

5. Don't expect anything.

It's the first date. Even if you've hooked up through Tinder and they're flirting the whole way through the meal. Both parties have the right to say, "ok, I've had enough" and walk away. You don't have the right to expect anything - not a hug, not a kiss, and definitely not going back to whichever place for whatever you're lucky enough to get.

Also, don't expect that they are exactly the same in real life as they are online (if that's where you met them) because hardly anyone is. Personally, I'm far more talkative online and tend to be more reserved in real life. I've discussed this in other blog pieces, so feel free to trawl through them if you're interested. They might be a bit shorter, or taller, than you expected. They might be thinner or fatter than you expected. They might dress in a way you didn't expect.

In the end, what someone looks like shouldn't matter, but everyone has their limits. If someone turns up that looks nothing like their photo because it's 20 years or 50kg out of date, you can accept it and enjoy the date with the person who showed up or you can be polite and excuse yourself.

6. Expect the unexpected.

Yes, this is in complete opposition to the previous item. Yes, it does make it confusing. That's life. Deal with it. What this means is really pretty simple - be prepared.

Not expecting to pay for your meal - take your wallet anyway. There's nothing worse than hearing your date say, "oh, I've forgotten my wallet" so don't be that person, especially if it's going well, because it's not a good sign and probably won't get you a second date.

Not expecting to have sex - take contraception anyway. Ladies, if you're on the pill, make sure you've been taking it regularly, there's usually a 7 day stretch when you've missed one or when you first start taking one where the likelihood of the pill not working is increased. Gents, not every woman who says she's on the pill is actually on the pill, or is taking it correctly. Both women and men should have condoms with them, just in case.

Not expecting to drinking - have a taxi/uber/ride share account set up, or know the bus/train timetable. If you drive to the location, either don't drink or give the bar staff your keys.

7. Don't turn up wasted.

Whether that's through drink or drugs, it's a bad first move. Your mates might encourage you to have some Dutch courage, but overdoing it is not the way to go. There's not really a lot to say about that one - just don't do it!

8. Be yourself.

It's really hard to keep up a persona for a long period of time. Eventually, your date is going to find out, whether that's on the date, in a months time or after a year. It's not fair on the person your dating to lie to them about who you are. You want someone to fall for you, not some version of you that doesn't exist in the real world. If you're a geek, own it! Do not be afraid to be unashamedly passionate about something. Not everyone shares the same passions but that doesn't necessarily make a bad date.

9. Remember something about your date.

If you've only met briefly, or met online, try to remember something that they're interested in, and that you want to learn more about. It gives you common ground, and shows that you are interested in them. There's nothing, I don't think, more flattering than being remembered. So if they've mentioned they like tropical fish and you've been to the Great Barrier Reef, saying, "I remember you saying you like tropical fish" gives you a good in to not only talk about something you have first hand knowledge of but is something that you can share.

10. Don't bring guests.

Unless you're on a date for swingers, turning up to a date with extras is never a good idea. If you're nervous and want your friend to be nearby, that's fine IF THEY'RE AT ANOTHER TABLE ACROSS THE ROOM. It is unacceptable for you to bring your friend on the actual date. Anyone who follows me on twitter will know the story of the date I had where the guy had not one but two guests with him - his brother and his friend. It did not end well for him.

So what does make the perfect first date? Whatever you want it to be. The above is just my advice. It's not the law. It's not a guarantee. For me, the perfect first date was one where the guy showed up on time, he was polite and respectful, he listened and he asked questions. We had coffee in the park on his lunch break. It wasn't fancy, it wasn't long. It was an icebreaker. Yes, there were a few awkward silences. We had a laugh about them. We didn't kiss 'til our second date. We'd been seeing each other nearly a month before we slept together.

It hasn't been easy. We've had our ups and downs, our moments where we wondered if it would work out at all. But without that first date, none of the rest of it would have happened. You have to take chances in life. Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don't, but if you don't try you'll never know what might have been. It took me far longer than it should have to work that out, so if you're young and reading this please take my advice and don't be afraid to ask.

Remember, the longest journeys start with a first step ...

Balance

Does everyone deserve an equal voice, even if they’re wrong?


We see it all the time, but especially when an election is coming up: the idea of balance in reporting, that both sides get an equal stake in the air time or print media to put forward their views and that one side is not unfairly left out of the process.


But sometimes, we see it when an incident has happened and you just know that there’s a right answer and a wrong answer, but the media will give just as much air time to the wrong answer as if it’s just as deserving of the attention as the right answer.


Ok, this can be subjective, and some people might agree with what I perceive as the wrong answer. I’m not by any stretch saying that I am the arbiter of right and wrong. It’s just that, well, sometimes, it’s obvious.


Take medical breakthroughs, for example. This most often occurs when vaccines are made or new medications are being trialled. The journalists will report on the story, because we (the public) like to know what’s going on in the world, especially if it’s going to affect us or someone we know. The trouble comes when they give a pseudoscience practitioner air time as if they are just as credentialled as the doctors who have just spent many years developing the medical breakthrough in question.


I would like to see journalists, if they insist of talking to every crackpot with a conspiracy theory, actually take them to task over their claims. If they complain about the level of scary sounding things in vaccines, like formaldehyde, ask them if they’re aware that there is a significantly higher amount of it in fruit (in that particular case) and don’t let them off with just spouting their own agenda without asking them to back up their claims, just like the scientists and doctors have to.


Another example is the recent protests in America over reopening certain states prior to case numbers falling, or a vaccine being available. They’re no protesting against reopening the state. They’re protesting for it. One woman stood, face covered so she couldn’t be identified, with a placard that read “Sacrifice the Weak” and it turned my stomach. But people like her are not only being photographed, they’re being interviewed on local, state, national and international broadcasts as if their opinion that we should let the old, the infirm, the disabled and the immunocompromised die is as valid as the vast majority of people who are crying out for people to stay at home and maintain social distancing methods in the midst of a global pandemic.


In the modern world there is little excuse for ignorance if you live in a developed nation. I will end this piece with a quote that sums up this whole problem, by Isaac Asimov (American writer and professor of biochemistry):

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'

Social Responsibility

The obligation to act for the benefit of those around you, as a concept, is not new. It is, in fact, as old as man (as far as we know). Tribal communities often lived, and still do in some instances, communally, sharing resources and making sure all members of the tribe were looked after. A colloquialism that gets bandied about is “it takes a village to raise a child” and this harks back to this sense of community and social responsibility.


For the purposes of this piece I will keep my observations to what is colloquially termed western civilisation, specifically Australian, American and British societies, as they are three I receive the most information from, and which has been the basis for my study of history in my previous life as a university student.


What does social responsibility look like? The answer is incredibly multifaceted, and it depends hugely on the scale you’re talking about. It can range from the social responsibility any one individual feels, to the social responsibility we impose on multinational companies.


So, let’s break it down.


From a personal perspective, social responsibility is living your life in such a way as to not bring harm to others within your community. This could be not breaking the law, not being rude, being a productive member of society, helping those who may need it, sharing your knowledge and creating an environment in which others can operate without fear or favour.


From a corporate perspective, the responsibilities that any individual might feel is scaled up depending on the size of the business. While an individual may feel a social responsibility to keep the environment clean, the multinational corporations have the influence and money to actually be able to do this on a scale that may be effective.


Today, we tend to outsource our social responsibility. We give to charities rather than help those in need ourselves. While a pooling of resources is a good idea, it removes the personal connection to that responsibility. We also tend to use social responsibility as a mitigating factor to counter something we do that, perhaps, isn’t so great for society. Think about industries which are mass polluters such as coal and gas companies pumping boat loads of carbon into the atmosphere. They might give a portion of their profits to a charity or initiative which cleans up the ocean. The portion of their profits that they give is usually miniscule but still a huge amount more than most people can give, even collectively. They will also use the argument that they are being socially responsible by creating jobs in third world or developing nations, when it could be argued that they are simply exploiting those people for profit as they can pay them less and work them longer.


Social responsibility is leading by example. It is raising your voice to speak for the oppressed. It is valuing your worth and recognising the worth of others, not in a monetary sense, but in a social sense. How can you make your world better? How can you create a society in which people come out the other end a better person that which they entered it?


It might seem too hard a task but there are ways in which we can be socially responsible and in which we can influence others to be socially responsible. You can make a personal decision to be the best person we can be. We can make a personal decision to try not to make the world a worse place for someone else to exist. It’s impossible to get through life without hurting anyone but if we can be aware of our actions, and take responsibility for our actions we can develop a more socially responsible lifestyle.


The funny thing about social responsibility is, it’s contagious (in a good way) and we can purposely spread it. If you find a company that is being socially responsible, talk them up. We live in an age where communication to a wide audience has never been greater. You use your money to support that company over a less responsible company. You tell your friends and family about this company. Maybe they make the swap, so their dollars are going to the more socially responsible company. Then they tell their friends, and so on, until the less socially responsible company starts to see a hit to their bottom dollar. At which point, the less socially responsible company will either continue to lose money or become more socially responsible.


We can also pressure our politicians into making more socially responsible decisions. We can do this directly by voting for those with policies which are socially responsible or, once elected by writing to them and letting them know our feelings. It might not seem like one person can make much of a difference but one drop of water started the Grand Canyon, and the more we come together and use the power of our tribal cohesiveness and fervour to create the change we want the more we will create a world we want to live in.


Oh, now where have I heard that sentiment before? If you automatically said Mahatma Gandhi, based on the quote “Be the change you want to see in the world” then you’d be close but not quite there. This quote does exist but it’s not directly attributable to Gandhi himself. Nonetheless, it’s a terrific way to look at life because social responsibility begins with personal responsibility, whether you’re just making it by or the CEO of a fortune 500 company. So, to pull out another popular quote, go forth and prosper, but in a socially responsible manner.

Homeopathy: Harmless treatment or dangerous quackery

Let's get one thing straight, right off the bat. Not all homeopathy is created equal. In and of itself, some homeopathic "therapies" are indeed quite harmless. The harm comes in the claims made by those selling the "treatments".

What is homeopathy? It is a pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine. Thanks, Wikipedia. The basis for homeopathy is simple - if you give a healthy person a substance and it makes them sick in a particular way, then a diluted version of that substance, when given to a sick person with the same symptoms it will cure them. The dilution process is repeated to such an extent that the solution being taken is often completely devoid of the original substance.

Seems harmless enough, doesn't it? Like a placebo? Except placebos aren't given to people in lieu of medicine except in the trial phase of a medication or treatment. Regular patients don't get handed a placebo at the pharmacy and told it's an effective medical treatment.

If you had cancer, and I said to you that I had a medicine which would cure your cancer, you would want to be sure it worked. If I was a good homeopath, I would be able to convince you of this, despite there being absolutely no evidence which would stand up to even basic scrutiny. You take the "cure" I'm selling. You spend lots of money on months or even years of treatments. You might see an initial improvement in your overall well being - that's the placebo effect. If you believe a treatment will work, you can convince yourself it is working even if it isn't.

A positive frame of mind has been shown to have short term positive effects on a person. In pain studies, especially. People use hypnotherapy, breathing and other mind-over-matter techniques during child birth, in particular. This is where the placebo effect can be useful. Parents will also use the placebo effect on small children when they have a bump by giving them a bandaid to make the pain magically disappear. The bandaid is doing nothing for the bump, the parents soothing voice and the distraction of the bandaid are usually what is doing the trick, as well as the child not understanding how pain or bandaids actually work.

But back to you and your hypothetical cancer. You've been taking my homeopathic medicine for months, maybe years. You initially felt better but, as the cancer is still progressing, the symptoms return and are quite possibly worse. If I'm really good at my job I can convince you to try a different treatment or change the dosage of the original. Your cancer will keep progressing. It will eventually kill you.

If you decide that my treatments aren't working, no harm no foul, you can just change over to scientific medicine, right? Well, maybe. But maybe not. Even if you can start scientifically designed medical treatments right away, you are probably in a worse position that you were before I started treating you, so the medications you're now getting might not work as effectively, or at all.

You might think that's an extreme example and that most people use homeopathy for things that aren't going to necessarily kill them. They might use it for a cold or the flu. What's the harm there? Except the pain to their wallet, there probably isn't one for the person taking the treatment. In fact, a recommendation for many low level infections is to keep well hydrated, so drinking a homeopathic concoction is probably quite good, in that sense. But they would have had the same result from drinking a glass of water every day, and saved themselves a lot of money in the process.

The harm comes from thinking that the homeopathic treatment is speeding up your recovery and that you are no longer contagious to other people. The harm comes from that person advocating homeopathic treatments to others who might then seek that kind of treatment for more serious conditions. The harm comes when parents treat their child with homeopathic allergy treatments at the exclusion of all other medicine and that child dies.

So why are homeopathic treatments as popular as they are? Because people like to think they are putting natural things in their body. It's also why natural remedies and organic treatments sell so well. The clients hear the line about "the body healing itself" or the familiar sounding ingredients and are comforted. That is the stigma of science. People distrust what they don't understand.

A classic example of this mistrust is the di-hydrogen monoxide experiments that have been conducted, usually by university students. They convince people to sign petitions to ban the substance. The substance is, of course, a fancy way of saying water. But they used a "chemical" name which sounds a little like an actual substance you wouldn't want to ingest - carbon monoxide - and it scared people into signing a bogus petition to ban water because they didn't want their foods washed in di-hydrogen monoxide.

Homeopathy works on the same principle. It tells people that scientific medicines with long, scary-sounding names are not to be trusted, but their unproven elixir will work wonders.

I'm not telling you that science has all the answers. No scientist worth their weight will tell you that either. What they will tell you, however, is that the medicines available go through rigorous testing, must meet incredible scrutiny, and are pulled from shelves when proven to be ineffective.

Would I go anywhere near a homeopathic treatment? Not if my life depended on it.