The Unreasonable Man

Blasphemy is a victimless crime.

(Quoted bumper sticker)

Richard Dawkin responds, here [link] to the critics of The God Delusion.

The Canadian war museum agrees to rephrase a plaque that talks about Dresden as a controversial action. Veterans were upset. History must be rewritten to placate them. Giving in to veterans’ feelings is more important than writing impartial history in a museum.

I shall not be visiting that museum.

South Korea agrees to halt all Christian missionary work in Afghanistan, in return for the Taliban releasing its Korean hostages. Saving hostages and giving in to the very Taliban bullies you are fighting is more important than doing what is right.

I shall not be visiting Afghanistan.

Life is full of experiences, and now I have another one to add.

No, I am not talking about drugs.

During my recent holiday, due to a combination of hard work (walking in the heat every day), moderate eating, and a stomach bug in Egypt that had me eating nothing for some days, I lost almost 5 kg (10 lbs). And even though I was certainly  not overweight before, those 5 kg make all the difference. 71-72 kg now, as opposed to the previous 76-77. I am around 1.82m (6′1″, I guess).

No more of this for me:

And I feel great! keeping off weight reduces my chances of developing high cholesterol, heart problems, and diabetes. Plus - I feel good, and I feel thin - my stomach is flat now, and I fit into all my older suits. Fantastic.

Now. The price. The price would appear to be that I have to eat and drink half of what I want at every meal now.  Will that work - can I keep this weight off? And a separate question: is it worth it? Eating and drinking are two of life’s great joys, and having to eat less reduces that joy very significantly.

Those antipasti in the picture look great, but will I have to spend the rest of my life just saying no?

I shot a couple of very nice ladies yesterday. These ladies run a wine importing business and host a wine radio show.

In the test shot here, I am holding their signature wine glass. And if I say so myself, I am quite proud of the lighting setup I came up with to do that glass properly without umbrella reflections showing.

I am not travelling anywhere in the near future. A good time to talk as dispassionately as I can about airport security, or what passes for it in North America and Europe.

I am constantly amazed that no-one else seems to protest at the freedoms that are being taken away from all of us, for no good reason. Authoritarian, discourteous, even threatening security staff? Taking off one’s shoes? Forbidden “liquids and gels” and toothpaste? Single bags (in the UK)? All these rules are based on nonsense, designed to intimidate, and affect people’s freedoms materially. But questioning them is out of the question  like promoting murder or paedophilia, it is just not done. Nor is it a static situation: every terrorist attempt increases the security stranglehold, and we spiral down ever so gradually into a police state.

And unnecessarily so. To see how security should be done, look at Israel. No El Al aircraft has been hijacked since 1968, in spite of frequent attempts. And Israel does security with two things lacking in Europe and America: intelligence and respect.

The first factor is intelligence, and the corresponding absence of knee-jerk reactions. Israel does not, for instance, find it necessary to restrict people to one bag, or to have them remove their shoes or to restrict liquids.  And I pretty much promise that if it is not necessary in Israel, it is not necessary, period. It is always encouraging to see how it can be done. Screening and profiling is of course a necessity - everyone knows that a shifty-looking 22-year old Palestinian (or Jewish right-wing extremist) with a backpack statistically represents a higher risk than a 48-year old family man travelling with his wife and children.

But that is where the respect and courteousness kick in. In Israel, even suspect people are treated with respect and politeness. Yes, it will take such a suspect person much longer to clear security. But it is done politely - none of the police-state shouting and ordering about that typifies the NTSB in the USA.  A young Palestinian man will face more questions - but he does not face insults, either to his honour or to his intelligence.

And that is the way we should do it over here as well.

Instead, we do the reverse. Several my visitors from the UK last week commented on the intimidating handguns carried now by Canada’s border guards.  They commented on the fact that these guns are both intimidating and stupid: after all, after arriving on an airplane, it is virtually impossible that people are armed. The travellers’ conclusion: the weapons are there as a display of power and intimidation. As long as no-one protests, it will be a case of “police state, roll on”.

And that is something we should all be worried about.

I have my basement photo studio, with four strobes (key, fill, background and hairlight) - leading to consistent simple portraits like this self-portrait:

(click for larger image)

I know. Boring.  But professional and reproducible, at least.

(click for larger)

My sites never go down. or of they do, it is because of a multi-level failure. All at the same time, this happened:

• Bell Canada had a sever problem with the router serving our location. So no bits went in or out.
• A long Power cut - Oakbabwe Hydro. Battery depleted.
• BIOS set to not start again
• I am in a sales meeting all week.

All this all together. Groan! But now all back up.

I am in a week-long corporate meeting; executive management meeting for three days, then sales training with 18 people. This means little blogging for a few days.