Terug Naar Je Maker!

Creationism, Dutch politics
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banner of Terug Naar Je Maker

You may have noticed that this is Charles Darwin’s 200th birth year. So did the local creationists here in the Netherlands, especially one Kees van Helden. Kees is a professional Christian, who had been in the news before for protesting against supposedly blasphemous advertisements put out by Dixons in 2007 and who has his own lobby organisation, Bijbel en Onderwijs (Bible and Education), mainly known for agitating against Harry Potter, “the modern face of witchcraft”. This Kees van Helden thought it would be a neat idea to use the Darwin anniversary celebrations by publishing his own anti-Darwin leaflet and delivering it to each household in the Netherlands. Saving souls through direct mailing, so to speak.

Fair enough. Now for the brilliant bit.

Several Dutch bloggers were annoyed enough by this to start a counter offensive: “terug naar je maker” (back to your maker). If you dislike getting creationist propaganda through your letter box, send it back. They set up a website and included nice, polite example letters to make your viewpoint clear. So far, so ordinary.

But then some bright spark downloaded the leaflet from Kees’ own website, then produced an annotated version explaining just what’s wrong with it… It’s a brilliant way of turning creationist propaganda into just another tool to explain evolution, a very teachable moment.

The same person also found out who’s really behind it, as the people who produced the leaflet used an old template identifying the organisation they worked for: the Schreeuw om Leven (Scream for Life) anti-abortion foundation set up by Bert Dorenbos, the ex-director
of the Evangelistische Omroep (Evangelical Broadcaster). And where do we know the EO from? Exactly, from censoring the evolution bits out of David Attenborough wildlife documentaries…

More on hunting

This 'N That
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Palau’s comment on last week’s hunting post is too good not to quote in full*:

Revoke the Enclosure Acts! See, there’s your trouble, right there, the rich dispossessing the poor. It always is.

I think part of the motivation for the current leftish rethink on hunting is coming from miserabilists like me who’ve been predicting an eventual return to subsistence living as the whole economic system collapses.

The prospect of bankrupt nations falling like dominoes plus worldwide unemployment and depression does set one remembering all those WWII recipes and Ray Mears survival tips.

One of the little headgames I play when I’m bored or can’t sleep is ‘what would you do if…’ say, there were no supermarkets? If Russia cuts off the gas? We get flooded by rising sea levels?

I’ve even caught myself musing on the utility of a crossbow vs a shotgun while listening to the news and idly wondering how much protein there might be in the wood pigeon in the garden that I’ve been feeding. I’ve got a nice recipe for rook pie too…

But on the whole I blame the hunting rethink on posh trendies [like] Hugh Fearnley-bloody-Whittingstall.

Poor pigeon…

* Beside, makes for an easy post…

Murray Leinster honoured in Virginia

science fiction
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June 27 2009 will be Will F. Jenkins Day in Virginia:

WHEREAS, as Murray Leinster, he was one of the founders of American science fiction with his story “The Runaway Skyscraper,” which was published on February 22, 1919, in Argosy magazine; and he was one of the few pioneers of the genre who continued to publish regularly when the nature of science fiction changed after World War II; and

WHEREAS, “First Contact,” written by Murray Leinster in 1945, is one of the most anthologized stories in the history of science fiction, and “A Logic Named Joe,” written in 1946 by Will F. Jenkins, was the first science fiction story to envision a computer network similar to the Internet; and

WHEREAS, Murray Leinster won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette for “Exploration Team” in 1956; was the guest of honor at the 21st Worldcon in 1963; and was awarded a Retro Hugo Award posthumously in 1996 for Best Novelette for “First Contact,” which was the first science fiction story to present the dramatic scenario of the first meeting between earthlings and aliens; and

[…]

RESOLVED by the House of Delegates, the Senate concurring, That the General Assembly designate June 27, 2009, as Will F. Jenkins Day in Virginia in recognition of the author’s creative genius and his numerous literary achievements; and, be it

RESOLVED FURTHER, That the Clerk of the House of Delegates post the designation of this day on the General Assembly’s website.

As will be clear from the above, Will F. Jenkins was equally well known, if not more so as Murray Leinster. He was writing science fiction before there was a genre called that and kept on writing well into the 1960ties. Much of his writing seems to be out of print these days, but the 1978 Del Rey edition of The Best of Murray Leinster should be easily found secondhand. It contains most of the stories name checked in this resolution.

Found via James Nicoll.

Silencing academic criticism of Zionism

Manufacturing Consent
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Joel Kovel is a well known American politician and academic, who made the mistake in 2007 to write a book (mildly) critical of zionism. For this he has had to suffer through accusations of anti-semitism and now his employer, Bard College, has fired him:

This document argues that this termination of service is prejudicial and motivated neither by intellectual nor pedagogic considerations, but by political values, principally stemming from differences between myself and the Bard administration on the issue of Zionism. There is of course much more to my years at Bard than this, including another controversial subject, my work on ecosocialism (/The Enemy of Nature/). However, the evidence shows a pattern of conflict over Zionism only too reminiscent of innumerable instances in this country in which critics of Israel have been made to pay, often with their careers, for speaking out. In this instance the process culminated in a deeply flawed
evaluation process which was used to justify my termination from the faculty.

Meanwhile John Yoo is still at Berkeley…

Louis Proyect has more information.

Quoted without comment

books and books review, Decentists and other ex-lefties
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How Ian McEwan validates his novels before publication:

Fans of McEwan’s novels will be interested to learn that before he finishes any book he has it read by three friends – Amis firmly not being one of them. “I don’t want a novelist reading my work, thank you very much!” McEwan says.

The three are the Oxford historian and Guardian columnist Timothy Garton Ash, the poet Craig Raine, and the philosopher Galen Strawson. Garton Ash persuaded him to drop the “An” from the title of his novel An Atonement. Raine berates him whenever he slips into cliche, as he once did with the phrase “flickering log fire” – they now have a running joke of marking f.l.f. in the margins of each other’s work.

The spirit of constructive criticism is not always happy. When they met to discuss The Comfort of Strangers, Raine told McEwan: “Listen, love. It’s complete crap, and you should put it in a drawer and forget it.” McEwan refused to speak to him for almost two years.

McEwan is of course the author of Saturday, recently reviewed here.