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Monthly searches

some search-engine queries that led to this blog in March:

racism against blacks photo
self portrait poems about laughter
-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-10
ashley cole is a muslim
pictures of peacocks mating
ten different animals that live in the sea
exotic beach bunns

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Nature Other

Atheism again

I said a few posts ago, about my own atheism, “I don’t believe in unicorns either, but I’m not about to go to any meetings about it.” Well, I haven’t been going to any atheist meetings, but I have been reading the comment threads at Pharyngula, which is a pretty good internet equivalent.

My own stance on evolution and religion is hard-line: I think the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, that anyone who doesn’t accept it is just plain wrong, and that standard compromise of evolution being somehow guided by God is just a muddle-headed cop-out. I get as angry as the next atheist at attempts to get creationism/ID taught in biology lessons. And as a social liberal, I don’t have much time for Christian fundamentalism in any circumstance, and I’ve done my fair share of internet Christian-baiting.

And yet, despite my own intellectual intolerance and the fact I share all the biases of the commenters at Pharyngula, I still find the atmosphere there toxic. There’s so much energy being expended on hostility and derision, such a sense of superiority on display. Anyone who rejects evolution – or believes in God, really – must obviously be an idiot or a liar. There’s not even an attempt to empathise with anyone who values faith over reason.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m getting soft. Or maybe I just recognise my own worse qualities in the people there. I should probably say, to be fair, that not everyone there matches the description I’ve just given. Perhaps no-one does, really; but that’s the overall tone of the site. And I should also point out the endless provocation from the anti-evolution people. But still. I’m tempted to say that I think it’s bad strategy, that they’re alienating more people than they’re persuading, but I have no idea. What I do think is that, for want of a less spiritually loaded term, it’s just bad karma.

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Culture

hardbacks vs. paperbacks

John Barlow has this to say about hardbacks:

Personally, I think hardbacks are a disaster for the emerging writer. Who the hell wants their book out at $25 instead of $15? It’s crazy. How many readers regularly plump for new/unknown writers in hardback? It’s an extra ten dollars that you are risking.[…]

My first book came out in the UK in hardback, and just to cap it all they upped the cover price to a fairly steep £15 ($25ish) just before publication. Who on earth was going to pay that for an unknown writer of short fiction? Even friends winced. The book flopped on the Roman scale, and paperbacks were never mentioned.

(via The Reading Experience)

His comments on the economics of the thing seem like good sense to me (not that I’m a publisher or an economist). But also, on a personal level: I hate hardbacks. I can’t be the only one. They’re heavier, they take up more room in your briefcase/handbag/pocket/luggage/bookshelves/bedside table, they have pointy corners, and the dustcovers go missing or get ripped. Offered a choice of paperback and hardback at the same price, I’d take the paperback every time. Having to pay an extra tenner for the hardback just makes me feel ripped off, and I only do it if I’m very very eager to read something. Far more often, I see something that looks good, decide to wait for the paperback, and never get around to buying it. It is, basically, a fucking stupid system, and the sooner publishers make paperback originals standard the better.

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Other

Arsenal

Arsenal looked pretty damn good against Juventus last night. I’d love it if they won the Champion’s League, not just because they’re a British and London team but because it would be a bit more sand kicked in the face of Roman Abramovich.

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Napowrimo

napowrimo

Only four days until napowrimo. The blog-chatter is building and there are 54 threads so far in the PFFA napowrimo forum.

A particular shout-out goes to Reen at st*rnosed mole who came up with the idea three years ago.

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Culture Other

page vs performance

Ros Barber is annoyed by the use of the term ‘performance poet’ in a disparaging way and “can’t see the sense in perpetuating the page/performance divide”. George Szirtes thinks the distinction is useful, and makes a good point about the intimacy and privacy of reading poetry from the page.

One-to-one reading is like reading a letter. Its context is concentration, direct address, detachment, the sense of being alone with experience, language and little else.

I basically agree with Szirtes. I think of poetry as a written medium that should work orally, rather than an oral medium that happens to be recorded in writing. A good poem should have been painstakingly written to get everything the poet wants into the words themselves, and the very idea of ‘performance’, with its implication of adding something to the poem, offends my sense that the words should be everything.

Of course if a poet is going to give readings, they should try to do them as well as possible; but for me, that means a careful, thoughtful reading-aloud of the poem, rather than an attempt to make it into a microdrama. I find poetry readings by actors are often unbearable for that very reason – they tend to use the poem as the script for a performance, rather than effacing themselves and trying to do the best possible job of communicating the poem.