Happy Easter

I apologise, in advance, for the content of this post. If you're offended by someone being offended by the clergy, best look away now.


The BBC reports that Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury is planning to use his Easter address to say "There's more to life than money".

Errr

No shit, Sherlock!

Sorry - I know that's no way to speak to an Archbishop...

No shit, Your Grace!

Apparently the top ranking Roman Catholic Archbish, Cormac Murphy O'Connor, was to do pretty much the same thing.

I was brought up to go to church - CofE - and I have a huge amount of empathy with the Christian ideal - in fact in the ideals of most of the Abrahamic religions.

On the face of it there are lots of arcane rules, guidelines, observances from the Ten Commandments to the teachings in Leviticus, to the various deadly and cardinal sins etc, etc

But it seems to me that if you ignore the downright silly ones and, excuse me whilst I sideline Commandment #1 (I am the Lord thy God...etc) then it all pretty much boils down to:

- Live your life not at the expense of others.

- Look after people less fortunate than yourself.

I'm an atheist. I never did believe in God but I believe in both of those principles. I'd like to think I do so because they are the right things to do in any civilised society and not because some omniscient being will give me a slap upside the head if I fail.

Anyhow - back to the Easter message. I don't disagree with what they're saying but isn't it just a little patronising?

It's quite an easy thing to say from the comfort of the Bishop's palace. Yes, I know that when they're further down the greasy pole of the holy pecking order they endure relative poverty and work very hard for their crust. But bedecked in their Easter finery and preaching that others should not want designer clothes is a dangerous thing to do, IMHO.

The people for whom they hope this message will mean something will likely know little or nothing about the entirety of ecclesiastical life and would, understandably, feel there is an element of hypocrisy.

This is the problem with organised religions. Not the core of the doctrine, but the way it's delivered to the masses (pun intended).

We all crave security.

Security in being loved by friends and family.
Security in knowing we can be ourselves and not have to fit someone else's mould.
Security in knowing we can pay our bills and feed our children.
Security in knowing our educational or work experience will give us employment.
Security in our faith, perhaps.

It's very easy for those of us who have that sort of security to sneer at those who aspire to it, or what they feel is a near enough replacement.

I know this is going to sound at odds with my last post where I made quite a big deal about money not being everything...but this is about people with some influence potentially making other people feel bad.

So come on guys...

Encourage new parishioners in by giving them a community they can be secure in. Let's not exclude those people who might need that security most...

Who?

Well, it depends on the church, and indeed on the parish.

For example - those whose sexuality is not exploitative and yet frowned on; those who don't fit the parish template; those who choose not to marry but to live together anyway...the list goes on.

There are great examples of clergy who really create an atmosphere of acceptance and a congregation that gives a sense of place and community to all that attend.

Sadly, it's the other type that cause a disproportionate amount of hurt and alienation.

Let's have less of that, eh?




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Lack of Critical Thinking

Baroness Greenfield has kicked up something of a shitstorm.

It would appear that she declared, in the House of Lords, that the use of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are likely to lead to "infantilisation".

Either in league with or coicident with this piece of "research". I qualify the expression research because, having read the fuller version of the paper it seemed to be taking a whole load of other research, that didn't seem to be directly related to the subject of people vs the internet.

The conclusion that the good lady and Aric Sigman seemed to draw was that:

A) There is a lot of research that says lonely people are less healthy than not-lonely people. Lonely isn't really explained as to whether it's a psychological or physical state...so it doesn't make any comment as to whether alone = lonely.

B) People who use the internet must be lonely

Ergo

C) Social networking sites make you ill.

Now - all this could be completely misrepresenting both Baroness Greenfield and Aric Sigman but certainly what is being reported, for the most part, is some panicky "The internet will damage your children" message.

Whilst their hypotheses may be not unreasonable, they seem to have made a big leap from several well documented, widely understood and known studies to a conclusion about something that wasn't covered in the studies.

I'm a reasonably intelligent woman (on a good day) with a pretty good grounding in scientific principals. I'm also confident and articulate enough to listen to what others say and appraise it critically. Others are not so lucky and could take what the good Baroness says as irrefutable and not open to question.

The theme was taken up in Woman's Hour on R4 today (I loathe and detest the programme but I was making coffee in the kitchen and it was on). A chap was being interviewed about his opinion about the evil thing that Twitter is.

The implication was that it was potentially rife with paedophillic grooming of the young and innocent and that Twitter were doing insufficient to counter it.

When asked whether young users were a big part of the Twitter populace he said "errr no, not at the moment". When asked if there had been reports of such problems he said "errr no" again. Then when asked whether the measures put in place by the likes of Beebo and Facebook were strong measures (for example age verification and parental permission) that couldn't be easily circumvented by a kid of reasonable intelligence he was forced, once again to say "errrr no". Thereby creating a complete farce out of the interview and his earlier rant.

What a waste of time!

But the point is that in the meantime the Daily Mail style of reporting has already taken hold in some minds and "The Internet" is once again labelled as a bad thing.

On a lighter note, whilst looking up some references I did find this article from the Guardian and that made me giggle.

Why did I post the picture at the top of this page?

Well, a couple of years ago I suddenly found myself needing to find a new and wider group of friends. I have been wholly successful in this and would count about 10 new people as very close friends (two of whom are sharing my house temporarily) and at least another 10 as good, sound acquaintances. Are they people I know "in the real world"? Yes. How did I meet them? Via the internet.

The people in the picture are in that 20 or so people.

In addition to all these people I spend real time with, there are another 4 or 5 people I reasonably regularly chat with by various internet means who I haven't met yet. Do they enrich my life? Hell yeah...why would they not? We share observations, photographs, jokes, articles about this and that...you know, just like real people do. That'll be cos they're real people.

As a shy woman, I can tell you it's easier to meet someone face to face after you've exchanged a few e-mails. There's a bit of common ground laid and you've probably already weeded out the people who you're not going to hit it off at all.

So, maybe it's best to have plenty of contact with real people (that sounds reasonable, after all) but my hypothesis would be that it's better to have virtual friends than none at all and that a virtual hug, might not be such a bad thing if that's the only way you can get your hugs just now.

So let's have a sense of proportion and a bit of rigour in our research papers, please.


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On pedantry

Completely random image...








A recent debate with a contact on Flickr who is a teacher of English (amongst other things); a discussion with a colleague today and a caffeine fuelled rant this afternoon has me wondering...

To be pedantic, or not to be pedantic.

Said Flickr contact includes in his photostream pictures of misused apostrophes.

I (and others) join him in his everso genteel raging against the perpetrators of this crime against the language.

Today there was a workplace epistle that used the word "unanimously" where the words "by a majority" should have been. My colleague says she's been waiting for me to read it and make a comment (yep, I'm really that predictable).

Also, I hear the expression "...even more unique..." used on Radio4. I grumble at the radio.

So I ask the guy on Flickr (being a professional an' all...whereas I'm more of a numbers girl) whether, in fact, if the meaning of the message is successfully transmitted does it really matter if the syntax, spelling and grammar don't quite cut the mustard?

His opinion is cautious...yep communication is important but he qualifies it with

"And yet I think there's a beauty to be found in a well-formed sentence, whether it's one of your own or one that you've read"

I've never met this chap but I think I'd like him...for he encapsulates my thoughts in an elegantly turned phrase.

However, I still can't help but wonder whether the arcane rules of spelling and grammar are the equivalent of Latin Masses and Victorian table manners. Are they a way for the elite few to make themselves feel superior to the ignorant masses?

Meanwhile, I'll sit in my elitist, smugness and thoroughly enjoy language well-used in engaging yet approachable writing...even when it's dialogue on the TV like this.

Meaningful

When we hear the word "average" we know what it means and we know it's a good number to know because it tells us something useful, right?

Wrong.


I work in an industry where numbers are used all day, every day.

Still, we bandy average around far too frequently for my liking.

When we say "average" we generally use it to describe a common value within a set of data.

If we're talking about the number of days a service provider make take to do something for us, we might talk about something being turned around on average in 10 days.

As a customer, that gives us a measure of expectation.

In this example we'd probably calculate the "average" by adding up all the numbers of days that a sample of work took the company and divide it by the number of values we added up. That would be the arithmetic mean.

I don't have a problem with calculating the mean, per se ...but a lot of people forget that in order for them to be useful values the underlying numbers need to conform, more or less to what is typically called a "normal distribution"

The graph at the top of the page shows normal distribution. If you calculate the arithmetic mean of the numbers being graphed here you'll get the number in the middle of the graph - at the place the incidence is most frequent.

However, if the graph of the numbers you're looking at doesn't form this sort of shape then there's little or no point calculating an arithemetic mean.

Imagine for a second that graph is flipped upside down. Now the most frequent incidences of the numbers are at the beginning and end of the graph. If you calculate the arithmetic mean, it'll still come out as the number in the middle of the graph but now it represents almost none of the data in the data set. Ergo...it's just a number that doesn't tell you anything about what you can expect in the real-life stuff underlying the data.

Averages are OK but context is everything

The mystery of the mayonnaise

So...there's an advert for Helman's mayonnaise. It's voiced over by Anthony Worrall-Thompson. I think his cooking is m'eh but I guess he knows what he's talking about when it comes to food...right?

The ingredients for this gloopy, unpleasant, ubiquitous sandwich adhesive are eggs, oil and vinegar or lemon juice. A simple enough thing.

Still -given it's pretty much all fat it's high in calories.

So - there's a "lite" version. This is what AWT is advertising.

The gist of the advert is:

"We know it's important to keep the quality of ingredients high so we kept in the free range eggs, the oil (which is naturally high in omega somethings) and the vinegar. So all we removed were the calories"

Errrrr... so now calories are an ingredient?

I know they don't teach proper domestic science at school any more but is anyone really going to fall for that?

/rant