Mick Hartley

The New Blasphemy

Kenan Malik has transcribed the talk he gave at the conference on blasphemy last weekend in Conway Hall. It's particularly relevant in the light of recent developments at the LSE, where the Students Union, in their claim that giving offence to Muslims is Islamophobic, and that Islamophobia is a form of racism, have effectively re-introduced a new idea of blasphemy updated for our times. We see a similar re-working in the repeal of the old blasphemy law in favour of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act: the offence is no longer deemed to be against God, or society in general, but against the individual or a particular faith-defined "community": 

In recent decades, faith has, in other words, transformed itself into the religious wing of identity politics.  Religion has, ironically, become secularised, driven less by a search for piety and holiness than for identity and belongingness.  The rise of identity politics has transformed the meaning not just of religion but of blasphemy too. Blasphemy used to be regarded as a sin against God. These days it is felt as a sin against the individual believer, an offence against the self and one’s identity.... This is also why many laws these days that ostensibly protect faith – such as Britain’s Racial and Religious Hatred Act – are framed primarily in terms of protecting the culture and identity of individuals or communities. In today’s world, identity is God, in more ways than one.

The transformation in the meaning of blasphemy has...become a means of protecting beliefs deemed essential not to society as a whole, but to specific communities, and to an individual’s identity and self-esteem. What, however, defines a community? And who defines which beliefs are essential to a community? Or to the identity of individuals within it?  These, too, are matters not of theology, or even of culture, but of power. The struggle to define certain beliefs or thoughts as offensive or blasphemous is a struggle to establish power within a community and to establish one voice as representative or authentic of that community. What is called offence to a community is in reality usually a debate within a community. – but in viewing that debate as a matter of offence or of blasphemy, one side gets instantly silenced.

Take the row over Salman Rushdie’s appearance, or rather non-appearance, at the Jaipur Literature Festival. The Islamists who, with connivance from the state and the festival organizers, successfully prevented Rushdie from appearing, even by video link, no more spoke for the Muslim community than Rushdie himself did. Both represented different strands of opinion within different Muslim communities. And this has been true since the beginnings of the Rushdie affair. Back in the 1980s Rushdie gave voice to a radical, secular sentiment that in then was deeply entrenched within Asian communities. Rushdie’s critics spoke for some of the most conservative strands. Their campaign against The Satanic Verses was not to protect the Muslim communities from unconscionable attack from anti-Muslim bigots but to protect their own privileged position within those communities from political attack from radical critics, to assert their right to be the true voice of Islam by denying legitimacy to such critics. And they succeeded at least in part because secular liberals embraced them as the ‘authentic’ voice of the Muslim community.

It's worth reading in full. 

The other side

Back of the British Museum, Montague Place:

Shrinking Nation

Everywhere, as diet improves, humans are getting taller. Well, almost everywhere:

The average height of a North Korean today appears to be shorter than that of his or her ancestors from the Chosun Dynasty, based on groundbreaking research into Chosun Dynasty average heights.

In the research, published in the latest issue of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Professor Hwang Yong Il and Shin Dong Hun from the Seoul National University Department of Anatomy collected thigh bones from the remains of 116 people (67 male, 49 female) from the Chosun Dynasty period (15th-19th century); they then analyzed their average lengths and extrapolated average heights of 161.1cm for males (±5.6cm) and 148.9cm for females (±4.6cm).

This makes Chosun Dynasty people 12.9cm and 11.6cm shorter than South Korean people of today as surveyed by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy’s Agency for Technology and Standards, 

However, 2010 data from the same Agency for Technology and Standards estimated the average height of all North Koreans at 158cm through 164cm. The 2005 East Asian Statistic Almanac, meanwhile, stated the average North Korean male’s height as 158cm. If the lower figures were correct, it would make the North Korean shorter than his Chosun Dynasty ancestor.

One North Korean defector who entered into South Korea in 2010 said this figure may even be too high, and that North Koreans could be even smaller on average than predicted, pointing out, “I was surprised that my children grew 3cm taller after eating well in China after months of starving in North Korea.”

That North Koreans are shorter than South Koreans is reasonably well-established. This is the first indication I've seen that they're also shorter than their ancestors.

Figure Skating Action

From a gallery at the Telegraph:

[Photo: Sari Gustafsson / Rex Features]

"Ksenia Stolbova and Fedor Klimov of Russia perform during the pairs free skating event at the European Figure Skating Championships 2012 in Sheffield."

[Hat tip: Damian, Facebook]

Homestead, Pennsylvania, 1910

Homestead Steel Works, Carnegie Steel Co., Pittsburgh:

[Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Publishing Company]

Detail from a spectacular panoramic view at Shorpy, made from four 8x10 inch glass negatives. 

Putting the rubbish out

Hermitage Road, N4:

Building statues

After the death of Kim Jong-il, Pyongyang decreed that not only will the corpse be on permanent display, but that the country will see a flowering of statues of the Dear Leader. But guess who's paying: 

North Korean construction costs incurred through the creation of statues of Kim Jong Il and the eternal tower is a burden to the people, multiple internal sources say. 

Daily NK sources from the Hamgyong Province reported on the 27th, “Here now, in this phase, prior to the construction of towers and cooperative farms, propaganda has established the necessity to devote money toward the construction projects.” “Farm workers are selling emergency food in order to devote funds,” he said. 

On the 12th, authorities of the Central Committee of the Politburo released ‘special coverage’ of the construction of statues of Kim Jong Il and the eternal tower. 

It was expected that the construction of idols would create a nationwide construction boom while displaying a dimension of allegiance to Kim Jong Eun.

Stimulating the economy through the construction of statues glorifying the Kim dynasty? I'm not sure it's quite what Keynes had in mind, but it does have a certain symbolic power as a metaphor for The Greatest Socialist Nation, where the only growth industry is the construction of memorials to dead tyrants.

At the same time, concerns that the government would pass the buck to North Korean residents became realized. 

These sources said “We are required to carry materials such as gravel and other necessary materials through a transport company in Saebyol County, yet because of the price of oil, each household must pay 5,000 won each.” “Residents are reported to raise money through the sale of reserve corn”, he said. 

“The state knows the reality of this situation. It knows not to make decisions like this. It is the blood and sweat of the people.” “If you have been instructed to sell food, there is not much to eat” he said. Complaints such as this have begun to emerge. 

The biggest statue, to be put on display at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, will be in bronze. That means copper:

Construction costs for the structures were also incurred by the students. Sources say that “The Children of Allegiance Action Plan” demands that each student be responsible for 600g of copper. 

In Saebyol County, a case originated of copper wire theft by a group of junior high school students. Authorities have conducted inspections and investigations are now underway. 

Well at least someone's showing some enterprise.

Wheler Street, Shoreditch

Well, somebody's having fun:

Did I see one and then go to find the other? Of course I did. I'm not daft.

Last week, Old Street.

Little Albert

A famous psychology study from 1920, the Little Albert experiment was an attempt by behaviourist John Watson to show that fear of previously neutral objects could be instilled in very young children by the methods of classical conditioning, ie associating the object - in this case a white rat - with a frightening stimulus, such as a loud noise. It was all part of Watson's more general efforts to prove his theory that babies are born as blank slates, every aspect of whose behaviour is subsequently learned through the process of conditioning.

Well, it worked, apparently. The poor child, a nine-month-old baby, did indeed develop a fear of the rat, and by extension of other furry animals such as rabbits - and even of Watson himself when he appeared in front of him "wearing a Santa Claus mask with white cotton balls as his beard". Well it had to be the cotton balls, obviously. Why else would the child be frightened?

Though you'd have to say here it's more of a "wtf?" than a scream of terror, and Watson - if that is indeed the great man himself - looks more like Krusty the Clown after a heavy night out.

It's not clear whether Watson tried other masks: a werewolf perhaps, making loud blood-curdling yells as he approached, while the child was jabbed repeatedly with a sharp pin. Or maybe that was the next stage if this one didn't work. It's possible that the child developed a terror of pretty much anything. But Watson was happy enough: he'd proved the point to his satisfaction, and somehow never quite got round to de-sensitising little Albert to remove the conditioned fear.

Albert's identity was uncovered with reasonable certainty in 2010 as one Douglas Merritte, the son of an unmarried wet-nurse named Arvilla Merritte who lived and worked at the campus hospital (Johns Hopkins) where the experiment took place, and received $1 for her baby's participation. And was clearly, as a single mother in a low status job, in no position to turn down a request from such a distinguished man of science.

As if all this wasn't sordid enough, new revelations (via) suggest that poor Albert was far from being a normal child anyway. It was known that he died at the age of six from hydrocephalus. Now it turns out that the hydrocephalus was congenital, and even at the age of a few weeks it was noted that the wee lad had problems. He couldn’t see well, and, according to relatives, never learned to walk or talk. Which clearly should have precluded his participation in any research which claimed to have universal application - never mind the grotesque morality of terrifying a handicapped baby as part of a supposedly scientific experiment.

But maybe that's what John Watson wanted. He must have known the child was abnormal. If Albert was a little nearer the blank slate condition than other babies, well, so much the better. Why risk failure? One of the authors of the latest study, Alan Fridlund, concluded that not only did Watson know of Albert’s condition; he intentionally misrepresented it. 

Psychologists, eh? Why is it that so many of the supposed pioneers in the field turn out on closer inspection to be generally dubious characters, prone to taking shortcuts and manipulating data? - or, in other words, charlatans? At the other end of the psychological spectrum from Watson in terms of theory, Freud was notable for his self-aggrandising and cavalier way with the facts, while here in the UK we had the unedifying spectacle of Sir Cyril Burt, one of the leading pioneers in the field, being accused of fabricating data to support his theories on the inheritance of intelligence. The list could go on...

Someone should do some research on it.

Tough Rats

"Think you're hard, do you? Come on then, you bastards..."

[Photo © Vincent J Musi.]

Rats specially bred for their aggression. Scientists in Novosibirsk, Russia, are comparing them to rats bred for friendliness, to understand the connection between genetics and behaviour.

From PDN. More from photographer Vincent J Musi here.