Art Nouveau Ho

My good friend, author and singer simonsatori, has posted some intriguing thoughts on atheism, which has given rise to some thoughts on my part.

You should go read his post, first of all, which ends thus:

If god doesn’t exist [...] then I will not just ‘… go and enjoy my life’. I will suddenly live in a meaningless universe. Not only will there be no hope or chance of any higher power guiding or interacting with us but I will have the sure knowledge that there never was and never will be and the infinite universe becomes a smaller and finite one. This is not my definition of enjoyment.

I agree with many of Simon's fundamental points, including that Richard Dawkins is a bit of an arse and that smug evangelical atheists are just as annoying as smug evangelical anything else.

Here's where I differ, though: a universe devoid of deities would not, to me, be meaningless. It would still contain wonders aplenty, and it would still beckon us to search industriously for any theories or systems underlying it all. It would still be expanding, challenging us to understand that. It would still contain the light and radio waves emanating from distant stars, quasars, pulsars and all their relations. It would still contain billions of other planets and their satellites, of which (even within our own solar system) we have sent probes to the surfaces of only two (plus two moons and two asteroids.) It would still contain whales, elephants, great apes and other social animals whose ways of communication and interrelation are largely unknown to us. It would still contain rocks whose crystalline structure the human eye finds elegant, and water droplets whose prismatic refraction the human brain finds beautiful. It would still contain us and our insanely complex biology, about which a hell of a lot still remains to be discovered. It would still contain the silky black cat with white feet currently attempting interspecies communication by arranging herself on my lap and purring. It would still contain the human affection I feel towards the aforementioned black cat, as well as the urges which would prompt other humans to kick her, or kill and eat her. And my desire to punch them in the face.

In short, a definitely-godless universe would still contain all the things previously thought to be evidence for the hand of an omniscient creator, only now they would be evidence that the universe is an amazing, fucking awe-inspiring place. Perhaps, in the absence of gods, we would begin to personify that universe which reveals its secrets so slowly and dangles its veiled areas so tantalisingly before us, daring us to discover it and cheering us on as we do. Within a generation or two, humans might not even miss the concept of God-- or might have redefined it along the foregoing lines.
( Further thoughts below )

Today I have discovered Olga of Kiev: princess, saint and historic badass. She was the grandmother of Saint Vladimir of Kiev, whose statue stands near Holland Park. Both she and Vladimir had extremely non-saintly careers before being canonised.
( Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the pigeons )

Cool random things noticed recently:

A construction worker singing the High Noon theme on the job.

A guy next to me on the Tube reading a trade paperback of Straczynski's run on Thor. Before I got off, I broke the customary Tube silence and told him I liked that run too (though Simonson's really my favourite.) As I stepped off the train I noticed him smiling to himself.

Last night on my way to a concert, the lower deck of the bus was empty, so I started quietly doing a bit of warming up. Since I was about to sing French arias, I warmed up with a simple French song, Belle qui tiens ma vie. After I'd finished, the bus driver called out "You sing beautifully!" "Thanks!" I said, after a surprised pause.

After the concert, I got on the bus back to the station, and it was the same driver. He said "Oh, it's you! With the voice!" When we got to my stop, I gave him the rest of the chocolate eggs I'd brought to share backstage.

I don't know why I'm so ridiculously grateful when someone catches me singing in public and doesn't mock me. London is an abrasive city, and I think acts of kindness are more to be celebrated here than elsewhere.

Oh, and: ( the Book Meme (a day late) )

From a recent Pepysdiary entry:

Nelly and Beck Marshall, falling out the other day, the latter called the other my Lord Buckhurst’s whore. Nell answered then:

“I was but one man’s whore, though I was brought up in a bawdy-house to fill strong waters to the guests; and you are a whore to three or four, though a Presbyter’s praying daughter!”

Of course, this reminds me of the story-- you know the one, right?-- of when Gwyn's carriage was besieged in an Oxford street by a crowd of zealots who thought the passenger was King Charles's French mistress Louise de Kerouaille. The crowd shoved at the coach, rocking it on its springs, yelling imprecations against the "Catholic whore." Gwyn, realising the mistake, drew the curtains aside, put her head out the door and called:

"Be civil, good people, be civil! I am not she. I am the Protestant whore."

And they let her pass. Gwyn and Kerouaille (anglicised to "Carwell") both appear in Rochester's Satire on Charles II, the poem that got him exiled when he accidentally handed a copy to the King:
( Ouch. )
Gwyn is also the subject of one of my favourite portraits in the National Portrait Gallery. Her expression there pretty much defines "come hither."

Nell Gwyn didn't die of the pox. The pox died of Nell Gwyn. Fact.

It's all over the internet today (and by "the internet", I of course mean MetaFilter): the unveiling of a new structural theory on the works of Plato. It's being described in grand terms (not least by the author, who modestly claims his theories will "revolutionise the history of the birth of Western thought". ) What it really does at the moment is open the possibility of interpreting Plato's work, and possibly his creative process, in a new way.
( On rhetoric )
The hypothesised relationship between Plato's rhetoric and the diatonic scale sounds a bit far-fetched, but it's certainly an interesting theory, and I'll be watching to see if it holds up to analysis. If it does, it would be interesting to see if, in any of his works, he employs a symbolic modality.
( In which I attempt to explain what modality is )
So what I'm wondering is: Since so much of Plato's writing is in the form of dialogues between various characters, who tend each to represent a certain idea, viewpoint or philosophy-- might he have assigned to each prominent character a symbolic musical mode? Or each stage of the argument?

Obviously this depends on whether Barker's musical scale theory turns out to have any foundation. (Some preliminary responses can be found in the comments here at Leiter Reports.) But I can see how appealing it would be for a Platonist to associate the ascending scale with the reader's ascension toward wisdom, and the argument's ascension toward resolution.

I do think that the stuff about a "code" is overly sensationalistic; this is more likely to be about structure and interpretation than about arcane hidden messages. Still, it will be interesting to see how it pans out.

Disclaimer:My knowledge of Plato is a lay person's at best; my degree is in English, not Classics. Still, I've read most of his work in translation, and love it. (If you're new to Plato, start with the Symposium. It's basically a dinner party where everyone gets drunk and talks about love.)

Whitby was quiet, but far from boring. Sure, the place was empty and echoing without wyte_phantom, orkamedies and esdi_leanne -- but there was time and space for conversation, wandering at leisure and generally doing weird things in the name of entertainment.

On Friday afternoon, I took my friend Zanni for a walk. Zanni looks something like this: he's a leather commedia mask that I found on my first and only trip to Venice, years ago, with mothninja (whose birthday it is today. Happy birthday, ninja!)

Ever since high school, commedia dell'arte has been a major source of happiness to me. It appeals to everything I like best about theatre. Say you're a travelling commedia player in the 1500s, about to go onstage: You know the character you're playing, you know the plot, you've worked out a few set jokes and physical comedy routines (known as lazzi) with your fellow players... but there's no script. What words you say when you step out onstage are completely down to you. I recommend the ones least likely to make the crowd of peasants out there start throwing rotten root vegetables.
( Commedia, ragazzi )

I've recently joined a local fencing salle. Turns out fencing is just as much fun now as it was when I was sixteen. I'm taking the beginner's course, and it seems to be coming back gradually. This is mostly due to our excellent instructor, Jean-Christophe, and his outrrrrrrageous accent.

Tonight's session mostly involved the the beat attack, which involved Jean-Christophe using the word "beat" a lot with great urgency. In French, la bitte means something not polite at all, so I was grinning filthily beneath my mask. At one point he said it three times in a row, at high volume. I guess it's inevitable that I'll be thinking about cocks every time I make this attack now. But will this make my fencing better, or worse?

This year's birthday is a square.

A square birthday is sort of satisfying. A long-lived person will have nine of them; on the tenth, the Queen sends you a telegram. (US readers: this is perfectly true.) Assuming I don't make it to 121, I have now gone through more than half of my squares.

Cubes are rarer. A person who lives a "normal" lifespan for a developed country can expect to see four cubic birthdays; I've had three of them.

If you're lucky, three of your birthdays will be exponents at the fourth power; if you're even luckier, three will be at the fifth. I did a web search to find out what these are called. This was what I learnt:

In the 16th century Robert Recorde used the terms square, cube, zenzizenzic (fourth power), surfolide (fifth), zenzicube (sixth), second surfolide (seventh) and Zenzizenzizenzic (eighth). Biquadrate has been used to refer to the fourth power as well.

(So who the hell was Robert Recorde? I'm glad you asked.)

On a more frivolous note, this birthday being a multiple of twelve means that this is my year on the Chinese calendar: the year of the Rat. I shall take my hat off to the next of my rodent brethren I see scuttling about.

It's Halloween and I'm not in Whitby, which is sad. (Still, I get to direct an opera instead, which is pretty cool.)

When I was young in the US, people always asked "What are you going to be for Halloween?" Not "What are you going to dress up as," or "what will you wear," but "What are you going to be." And so I grew up loving this day because it meant you could be anything.

I hope you all have a wild, amazing Halloween, wherever and whoever you may be.

"It is terrifying, it is meant to be," said John Taylor, the creator and funder of an extraordinary new clock to be unveiled tomorrow by Stephen Hawking at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge. "Basically I view time as not on your side. He'll eat up every minute of your life, and as soon as one has gone he's salivating for the next."

Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, has a new clock.

The hour approaches. The beast's jaws gape, its tail quivers and then snap! Another minute has been devoured, and the hour strikes with the ominous clonk of a chain dropping into a coffin. The creature blinks twice in satisfaction.

The clock in action, with a short talk by Dr Taylor, on YouTube. Fullscreen it or the clock will eat you.