Jesus versus Santa

According to a BBC report, a Catholic priest in Novara, Italy, has caused a stir by telling children that Father Christmas doesn't exist.

The priest said he had never intended to hurt anyone, but it was his duty to distinguish the reality of Jesus from the story of Father Christmas which was a fable just like Cinderella or Snow White.

I don't know about you, but I find this really funny. All we need to complete the picture is a department-store Father Christmas teaching children to distinguish his own reality from the story of Jesus Christ, which is a fable just like Cinderella or Snow White.

In a reality contest with no holds barred, I think Father Christmas would have a distinct advantage: "Children, think about it: when did you last get a present from Jesus?"

Sid Meier's Somalia

I was reading a news article about Somalian pirates today when it occurred to me that Somalia, from everyone else's point of view, rather resembles a barbarian settlement in Sid Meier's Civilization game.

However, the barbarians in the game make a nuisance of themselves on land and I haven't noticed them taking to the sea; the Somalians are much more aquatic.

In the game, there's only one way to deal with barbarians: as soon as possible, you march in and wipe them out, with superior technology or superior numbers, or both. Real life tends to be less simple.

President Obama

I've been a bit surprised by all the hullabaloo over the election of a new US president. Let's try to make some sense of it.

Q: Will President Obama make everyone's lives much better?

A: Probably not. He's a politician, not a magician. He'll do the sorts of things that US presidents normally do.

Q: Will he at least be a better-than-average president?

A: Maybe, but we'll have to wait and see. No-one actually knows; not even the man himself.

Q: Will he do good things for black people in particular?

A: Probably, but to a very limited extent. He'll want to make some kind of gesture to his black supporters, but without antagonizing his non-black supporters, who are more numerous.

Q: Is the election of a half-black president a sign of US moral superiority over other countries?

A: No. The USA has a much larger black minority than most other predominantly white countries. According to Wikipedia, the USA is 80% white, 12.8% black, and 1.6% "multiracial" (I omit other categories). The UK, for example, is 92.1% white, 2% black, and 1.2% multiracial. Other European countries probably have even smaller black minorities. If it takes the USA this long to elect even a half-black leader, it's not surprising that it takes other countries even longer. However, if a politician similar to Obama appeared in the UK, I think he could attract plenty of votes. Obama himself seems popular in most countries, at least at the moment.

Wikipedia as a translation aid

Recently one of my correspondents asked me the Spanish word for paragliding. Probably I'd heard it before, but I couldn't think of it, and my big Collins dictionary didn't have it. So I looked up 'paragliding' in Wikipedia, and when the English page came up I then switched over to the Spanish version of the same page. Bingo, there was my translation: 'el parapente'.

As there are Wikipedia pages in many languages, this is a rather general-purpose method, although it's mainly useful for nouns and for the more popular languages. There are Wikipedia pages in, say, Punjabi and Tibetan, but not very many pages.

South Ossetia

I have a generally very low opinion of the Russian government, but I'm disconcerted to see that it appears to be in the right (and the Georgian government in the wrong) in the conflict over South Ossetia.

As far as I can tell from reading up quickly about the situation, South Ossetians are historically distinct from Georgians and have for years been operating unofficially as a separate country, with a large majority in favour of independence from Georgia.

Recently Georgia attempted to assert its claim to South Ossetia by military force: which was not only morally wrong (in my opinion) but also pretty stupid, given that many people in South Ossetia hold Russian passports, that Russia has previously shown interest in the place, and that Russia's army is many times bigger than Georgia's.

That Georgia is now suffering in the conflict seems entirely the fault of its own foolish government.

It's geographically unfortunate that South Ossetia takes a sizeable and inconvenient bite out of central Georgia: Georgia without South Ossetia is a rather odd shape. However, if the South Ossetians don't want to be part of Georgia, I don't see why they should be.

It seems hypocritical for the US government to complain about Russian aggression, when Russia can claim to be supporting the right to self-determination in South Ossetia just as most Western countries are doing in Kosovo.

Intellectual property and theft

It rather irritates me to see frequent aggressive allegations by interested parties that copying files of 'intellectual property' is theft.

Theft means taking an item belonging to someone else. After the theft, the thief has the property and can use it; the original owner no longer has it and can't use it.

When a file is copied, no-one is deprived of the copied item. The author and any other rightful owners still retain their original copies.

The author may be deprived of a payment to which he feels entitled, but this is not a matter of theft. You can't be robbed of money you've never had.

Whether copying files is immoral is something for people to argue about. Whether it's illegal is something for politicians to argue about. I won't try to argue those larger issues here. I merely point out that 'theft' is the wrong name for it.

In practice, a large proportion of people make unauthorized copies of files, and therefore seem to believe that it's a moral thing to do, or at least not very immoral. If the propaganda floating around convinces them that 'theft' is an appropriate description of what they're doing, there is a danger that they'll come to regard other kinds of theft too as moral — or at least not very immoral. I think it would be better not to use words so inaccurately.

I also think that people who think they can stop unauthorized copying, or reduce it to a minor problem, are trying to hold back the tide. Like it or not, this is something that is not going to go away.

Personally, I still make a habit of paying for books, music, etc. Maybe that's just because I'm not young enough to be accustomed to the new way of doing things. I feel that the moral position of intellectual property owners is arguable either way, and not as clearcut as they mostly think it is. Certainly, the continuation of copyright restrictions for decades after the author's death seems to me absurd, and I don't understand how it can be justified.

Tibet

There seems a lot of heated argument these days for and against the idea of self-determination in Tibet; I can agree in part with both sides.

• Some people say that China is denying self-determination to Tibet, oppressing Tibetans, and trying to settle Tibet with Chinese people in order to outnumber the Tibetans.
• Other people (mostly Chinese) say that Tibet has been part of China for a long time, that Chinese rule in Tibet is improving the living standards of Tibetans, and that foreigners have no right to criticize because their own countries have denied self-determination to other peoples in the past.

All of these claims by both sides may be true simultaneously. But both sides seem to have blind spots:

• The Free Tibet crowd seem to be forgetting that the issue of self-determination is world-wide. I support the right to self-determination myself, but I support it for all peoples everywhere, not just for Tibetans. The Chechens and the Palestinians and various peoples of ex-Yugoslavia, for instance, have surely suffered worse than the Tibetans. The Basques are not suffering (except from the excesses of their own extremists), but their position is in principle similar to that of the Tibetans. Spain doesn't accept self-determination for Gibraltar either. Argentina doesn't accept self-determination for the Falkland Islands.
• The Chinese nationalist crowd seem to rely on the argument that self-determination is a modern right that was never observed in the past. If what we're doing in Tibet is bad, they say, then what your countries have done in the past was even worse. This is true, but irrelevant. By the same argument, China could practise slavery and point out that other countries have done it too. If you're a good person, you act in a good way. If you act in a bad way and try to justify yourself by saying that other people have done it too, the fact remains that you're still a bad person.

The nine billion faces of God

A kindergarden teacher was going round her class, looking at the paintings they were doing.

Little Carol was very intent on her work, although it didn't make much sense to the teacher.

"What's that going to be, dear?" she asked.

"It's a picture of God," explained Carol.

"But nobody knows what God looks like."

"Well, they will in a minute," said the artist.

---

My mother heard this on television and passed it on. I rather like it: I don't read any particular moral into it, but I think it makes a good short-short story.

Warm at last!

Now the temperature is hitting 27°C, I feel at last in my element, the air is warm and supportive instead of cold and hostile. I don't need clothes for warmth, not even in the night. These are human, welcoming temperatures.

True, it can be uncomfortably hot in the car, or if I go for a long walk in the sun, but I accept this with good humour.

My skin is too dry in winter; it's happy in the summer. I can open windows. Nature is not at war with me. Rejoice!

Free speech and the law

It's come to my attention that France, England, and probably other countries have laws against “inciting racial hatred”. Recently, Brigitte Bardot (elderly film star and animal rights activist) was fined 15,000 euros under the French law for complaining about Muslim ways of slaughtering animals—and ranting about Muslims destroying her country while she was on the subject.

We already have laws against slander, libel, inciting violence, copyright infringement, and probably others that all limit free speech to some extent. Do we really need laws against inciting racial hatred (whatever that means) as well? I think not.

As far as I can see, “inciting racial hatred” basically means expressing any negative opinion about a particular group of people (in French law not necessarily a race).

I'm afraid that some groups really are not nice people and deserve to have negative opinions expressed about them. To take a few examples: the Nazis of the 20th century; the Mongols who invaded eastern Europe in the 13th century; the Christian crusaders and members of various Catholic inquisitions. If you have negative opinions about a particular group of people, you may or may not be right (in any case it's a subjective judgment), but I think you're entitled to your opinion and you should be entitled to express it. Of course they should have the same right to express their opinion of you.

As for the people in the 20th century (not just Nazis) who had negative opinions about Jews, I'm not in sympathy with them but I think they were entitled to that opinion and entitled to express it. What they weren't morally entitled to do was to kill Jews and steal their property, both of which were of course grossly immoral and should have been illegal.

The increasing legal restrictions on free speech seem to mean that you should consult a lawyer before expressing any opinion in public. I think this regrettable, and it suggests to me that the law has gone too far.