h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Gee - is it only a trillion? We've barely scratched the surface then

>>t's just my experience..and indeed dear Ed will bring up the 'fellow traveller' stuff on occasion here. I daren't mention Halal ever again

Of course, you can...but knowing you to be a militant anti-vegetarian, I'll probably hector you on non-halal industrial meat production and will want some convincing before I'm convinced that you've thought things through before leaping on board that grubby bandwagon. Come back to me when you've proved your credentials on animal welfare.

My issue would not be your discussing Islam, but your ignorance. It's a Matthew 7:3 issue.

Rod, I like Ascent Study as well. Interestingly, that artist is principally a sculptor.

I was by the gallery this afternoon and had a close look at An Unseen Eye is Constantly Following Them and realized that its a reference to a Victorian prison designer whose name escapes me. I quite like it. http://visualartsalberta.blogspot.com/2011/04/neil-mcclelland-unseen-eye-is.html


Also, I notice they've put my Crucifixion of Eve online today:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--vRno0lSDPA/TZ37WOy0QiI/AAAAAAAAAKI/56kLS1Da6Vk/s1600/Richardson+2.jpg

>I&#39;ll probably hector you on non-halal industrial meat production <

You already did dear.

And am I find myself naturally eating less and less meat..I'm losing the desire for it, my dhals are getting better and better, but I continue to enjoy all manner of sea food. But no it's not a student habit I never grew out of...

>An Unseen Eye is Constantly Following Them<

Yep it's called the Panoptican, designed by Jeremy Bentham. We had to read Foucault at Goldsmiths..and I remember him citing it as an example of something or other.

Looked up now on web and found this,

'... the panopticon became all the more famous after the postmodernist philosopher Michael Foucault dissected its anatomy of power in his book Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison. Through Foucault’s writings, Panopticism has become a metaphor for modern “disciplinary” societies and its pervasive inclination to observe and normalise....'

blah blah..

from,

http://merlepatchett.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/prison-art/

That's the fellow! Thanks, Effers.

and, BTW, that Piranesi exhibit at the AGA was tremendous.

Is it right to burn poppies?
Personally I feel that whatever you want to believe is cool, as long as it is cool with you. I do, however, have a natural abhorrence for burning books. On that note, possibly, yes. It is wrong to burn the Quran. It is wrong to destroy books or stuff that does not fit with the way you look at things. We should all be able to read the Quran and compare it to the Bible.
Poppies though...
These are symbols. I wear a poppy because I appreciate the sacrifice made by my immediate family as well as my Global family. Thousands of young men died so that I could live in a free world. Thousands of people are still dying so that I can enjoy this privelege.
Is it wrong to appreciate that sacrifice? And because the poppy is so symbolic, is it ok to burn it?

"Firstly, we really are not talking about "Offence&"; here. Nobody has been prosecuted because Muslims were or might have been offended by a Qur'an burning. Please let's get the grounds for prosecution straight here. (I shall keep banging on about it until people listen, you see if I don't.) Secondly, while we might tolerate offence to Christians, we would not tolerate nail bombs being targeted at Christians of a particular sect. To chose a non-hypothetical example. Would it not be reasonable to consider religious aggravation in that case?"

For me though this is the essential reason why I am concerned in this case. In a nail bomb situation there is clear harm potentially being caused. THat that harm would be religiously aggravated i'd say is clear.

But for me cases like the one at hand are different. From what I have read (and I accept the ongoing caveat around our very much imperfect understanding of the case) there was no suggestion he was doing what he did "at" muslims or in a "muslim area". He does not seem to have specifically threatened action against anyone.

THe shouting of obscenities toward a specific religious minority is abhorrent, but the question is does it cause harm and should it be criminalised? I'd guess you can make a strong argument that the demonisation of a minority based on race/religious hate creates the conditions for much worse stuff including harm to happen.

But by that token the entire writing staff, editorial staff and proprietors of the Daily Mail and the Daily Express would be arrested and charged every day (actually I am kinda coming around to this idea !). Like I said earlier I am not sure that this is a price worth paying nor if it will even be effective.

FB

monkey

>>I get it now. This is the part you haven&#39;t grasped. The
prosecution wasn&#39;t on the grounds of ... <<

From 180 degrees to 90 degrees is getting closer but I will leave it
there. On a separate matter your apostrophes appear as &39 ...

Yes, I understand that the hootoo skin I&#39;m using screws up apostrophes. Not my fault. Unfortunately I can&#39;t find a permanent way of changing to the old skin (the Help system is useless*, and the advice I was given only worked temporarily). &#39;Fraid you&#39;ll either have to bear with me or change skins to mine.

Personally, I find the old skins crappy in other ways.





*There isn&#39;t even an announcement that I can see that there&#39;s a problem, fer chrissakes. You just have to wait until someone tells you off for not knowing telepathically.

FB:

I accept that the tabloids do more to incite racist violence than lone Qur&#39;an-burning nutters, or even the EDL.

Unfortunately they&#39;re crafty. They don&#39;t come right out and say (or yell) it as our Cumbrian person did: they simply report the news, albeit selectively and in a slanted way. Thus they give themselves the cover of journalistic respectability.

Obviously it is difficult to phrase laws which prevent the harm they do without impinging on freedom of the press. But surely the law should still do what it can elsewhere? I can&#39;t see an obvious slippery slope from prosecuting someone for yelling racist abuse* in the street to taking our Grauniads (or even Mails or Expresses) away from us.



* Remember: that is what he was convicted of, along with theft - not specifically of Qur&#39;an burning. I *believe* someone could also be prosecuted if they were to repeatedly yell ~You fat b*****d!~ in a crowded shopping street. The only difference here is the racially aggravated element. Yelling ~you fat b*****d~ would arguably do less harm than peddling pictures of anorexic models to teenage girls.

I'd like to think I didn't say it like that, it was a polite entreaty on a private thread on your homepage.

As for the permanent change you just need to bookmark the DNA based URL instead of the new one.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/

rather than

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2

And i'd agree the old skins are dated in the Web 2.0 era but whilst barlesque is effectively still beta it aint working.

FB

" Remember: that is what he was convicted of, along with theft - not specifically of Qur'an burning. I *believe* someone could also be prosecuted if they were to repeatedly yell ~You fat b*****d!~ in a crowded shopping street. The only difference here is the racially aggravated element. Yelling ~you fat b*****d~ would arguably do less harm than peddling pictures of anorexic models to teenage girls"

Hmmm.. the thing is if oyu are shouting "You fat bastard" at a fat person, or in front of fat people there then it is directional. You would be specifically harrassing and threatening someone. That is different from how I have heard this case decribed.

I think our essential difference is that I think the, harm vs offence thing, is ocnsiderably more blurred than you do. It seems to me that a big part of how this particular type of incident is considered aggratvated criminal harm is in part based on the offence potentially felt by people over what was done.

I know the central crux of your argument is that it has nothing to do with offence I rather suspect that you will not accept what I am saying. I wonder though if it was just the slogans that were being shouted (which if we accept the crime was mostly around the harm caused by tagetting a specific minority is surely the main pivot of the problem), had the culturally sensitive burings (Koran/Poppies) not taken place would the sentances have been the same?

I suspect not, and it is because I suspect not that I think that "offence taken" over acts that didn't harm anyone is a big driver in these criminal convictions. And this doesn't sit well with the part of me that feels freedom of speech and expression are *important*.

I know it is a difficult and inexact science around how do we balance competing and sometimes contradictory rights. The blalance between protecting minorities from persecution and defending robust free speech and expression is difficult. But it is precisely because it is difficult that it is entirely appropriate to consider if we are getting things right.

FB

It seems this case of prosecution of the Koran burner and sending him to prison for over 2 months is sending out the message,


'Hey Brits get terribly angry and potentially violent' and there'll be a law brought in to protect you from getting that way. It is so terrible that you have been so deeply offended that 70 days in prison is the appropriate punishment for terribly offending you'.

<>

I think it depends on the religious book.
If you steal a bible and burn it I suspect you'd get a less stringent punishment.

Similarly, burning a bible is much less likely (although perhaps it's stretching it to say completely unlikely) to result in anyone dying as a result.

Let's be clear the penalty he got for stealing a book was 30 days this is to run concurrently with his other sentance.

FB

>Let's be clear the penalty he got for stealing a book was 30 days<

I know people who have done that...none of them expected to get banged up. If there is some sort of disingenuous idea put about that the book burning had little to do with it..I simply don't buy that.

It's got to the point now that the the state has such a low opinion of people that some people need to be put away for incredibly trivial offences.

I know Ed argues that it is to do with incitement..but that shows what an incredibly low opinion he must have of people that he thinks that other than a few irrelevant clowns anybody would be incited by such an act. I tend to have a higher opinion of my fellow country people. I think the vast majority will see the act as quite insulting, as they did burning poppies.

As a result of this case because of the *severity of sentence* I really start to question what's happening to our society as a result of immigration. I hate to think I start to feel that. I'm sure I'm not alone.

"I know people who have done that...none of them expected to get banged up. If there is some sort of disingenuous idea put about that the book burning had little to do with it..I simply don't buy that."

Hmmm.. not knowing the guys criminal history this is a hard one. But I think it is well established that people who get prosecuted for theft can and do go to prison.

"I know Ed argues that it is to do with incitement..but that shows what an incredibly low opinion he must have of people that he thinks that other than a few irrelevant clowns anybody would be incited by such an act."

I don't think you have really understood what Ed is getting at here Effers. his point (as I understand it) is that because people have tagetting a whole group of people due to the actions of a minority (sort of collective punishment) that it would aggravate whatever crime was committed. That the nature of "why" someone commits a crime can in certain circumstances make a crime worse because of the way it's effects can be multiplied in away that come to effect others even a whole community.

I don't disagree with this per se myself. But rather my problem is that I am not sure the kind of things that are being aggravated ought to be "crimes". Burning poppies or holy books is for my unsavoury but not criminal. Similarly having knuickle dragging, out of the trees racsist views and shouting them unless designed to exhort others to commit harm or directed at individuals with the aim of specific harrassment is abhorrant but not criminal.

I do accept though that a cocktail of many of these things can come togetherin a way that makes the incident taken as a whole more than the sum of its parts. ( a little like what SWL was saying about Chaoudaries mob).

FB

FB:
>>I&#39;d like to think I didn&#39;t say it like that, it was a polite entreaty on a private thread on your homepage.

No - you were very helpful - but the links didn&#39;t carry over into my Chrome pages. (I generally open my favourites via a new tab. Bookmarks are more cumbersome)

It&#39;s others who gave the impression that I was somehow expected to know what they could see on their screen and how to fix it.