What can I say? This movie is a prime cut, ladies and gents. A prime cut.

You wanna know the story about this movie? I went to art school. I didn’t even last the first year. Complete waste of my time. It’s cost me at least three grand in loans.

This is what came out of it. A tutor on the course showed us this movie. It blew me away. I dropped out, started reading Nietzsche, and I tracked down the video tape. Beautiful. I’ve watched it so many times I’ve lost count. This has to be my favourite movie.

This movie is just human. You know how it is, ladies and gents. The world pisses you off, and you’re tired of our corrupt politicians and their cowboy swaggering. So you watch Lebowski, and you’ve got a real, moral America. You’ve got an America where people go bowling and try to steal money from rich guys and list their interests as “I bowl. Drive around. The occasional acid flashback.”

You get chucked in to the back of a limosine to see your scary patron, and your only response is “Hey, careful, man, there’s a beverage here!”

All those sixties guys all grew up, bought themselves sensible ties and read marketing books. They hold to all their New Age dippiness but otherwise have their assholes closed right up. We need to live like the Dude, and chill the hell out, man. And say fuck a lot more. Smoke a little pot, lie back, drift off and dream of bowling. That’s the solution, man.

Did this movie help me quit art school? To be honest, Brandt, I can’t really remember. But in retrospect, if it did: thanks, Dude. My life’s only got better since.

If you’ve had your ear to your ground for the last decade, you may have noticed a few rather lamentable trends. The rise of the chirpy, chatty, guitar-strumming trendy vicar Prime Minister, Tony Blair (his attendance and speech at the Brit Awards in February 1996, followed by hanging out with Noel Gallagher at Number Ten – “Cool Britannia”, remember?). The collective emotional circle jerk that the British population engaged in after the death of Diana Windsor (née Spencer). The irrational worship of celebrities combined with a general distrust of anyone seen as a member of the “elite”. The Millennium Dome. The demand, by government, that libraries and archives evaluate their social inclusiveness (another layer of paper work to undertake instead of improving the stock of books in said library). The attack, perpetrated by former Education Minister Charles Clarke, on the study of classics and history – describing their vocational uselessness as being “a bit dodgy” and so on.

Walden takes on the subject of the supposed elite with a bristling indignation. He’s a former Conservative MP and the Minister for Higher Education under the Thatcher government. This book ties all of these threads together through a process of deconstructing the idea. These people form an anti-democratic, anti-elitist elite – a group of people who preach that the public can get whatever it wants, through us.

There are numerous self-contradictions built in to this belief which dominates much of politics, as well as the media and consumer society. Firstly, society has not, and will not, throw away elites forever. Elite football players, elite surgeons and an elite of celebrities – those are all fine (for differing reasons). But an elite of academics or intellectuals? An elite culture? Elitist art? That is heresy!

If one works hard and becomes a footballer, and plays for an elite team (say, in the Premier League), makes a bucketload of money, buys a big house, a nice car and marries a Page 3 model, you’ve hit gold. If one works hard at school, goes to university, spends numerous years making an absolute pittance while one goes through postgraduate training, competes to get a position at a university and gets paid next to nothing for doing so, but becomes an expert in Renaissance art, then one is an insufferable pillock, part of a powerful elite who should be distrusted. Comprehend that? Don’t worry, I don’t quite get it either.

The ‘populist’ described by Walden believes things to be good simply because they are popular, rather than by any other measure of merit. Television is good because people watch it. And if it isn’t popular, it becomes bad – eventually crossing over in to elitist. Access stops having anything to do with it, instead mass opinion. It is my opinion that philosophy, as an academic discipline, contributes more value to furthering the classical aims of the academy than, say, business studies. Am I right? I think so. Perhaps I’m biased – I study philosophy, and am considering a career as an academic philosopher, so I have something of a vested interest. But the merit of the case against can be argued, and if it is convincing, I’ll change my position. The populist argues that I am part of an (overt) elite, and thus my position is indefensible for that reason. The populist then points to the fact that many, many more students do business studies and says “they can’t be wrong”.

For the reasons outlined above, and explored in more detail in this fantastic little book, we have a pretty decent theory to explain why people like the current Shadow Prime Minister, David Cameron, on his constituency website, lists his “extra-curricular” activities as: “playing tennis, riding, country sports and watching television”, as well as noting that he is a “keen cook”. Isn’t it reassuring to know that when the people of Witney go to the polls in the next General Election they can vote for a Conservative politician who enjoys watching television?

The people who benefit from a superb education react in three different ways. They may think they got a superb education because they deserve it and others do not. Reprehensible, but understandable. They may think they got a superb education, and wish that more people (including more disadvantaged people) could have similar chances. This is virtuous, but requires hard work. The third class feel slightly guilty about it, and tell people that education doesn’t really matter. Mr Blair and friends fall in to this latter camp. When faced with the inequality of distribution of quality education, they chose not to attack the inequality of distribution, but to attack quality education. Education, of course, sits at the root of all of the other issues – taste, culture, business and entrepreneurship, and so on. The greedy elitist of the first type is almost more desirable than the cringing third type, but both conveniently ignore the second position.

The condescending grin, the pat-on-the-head. Both of these seem to be the eventual end product of this form of popularism. Though I haven’t got the attribution, there is an author who makes a game of giving deliberately flawed presentations in order to get reactions. By dint of his racial victimhood in the game of identity politics, he can get away with absurdities, mistake after deliberate mistake, and get applauded by the (predominantly white) audience at the end. His response? Anyone who is applauding his trivial errors is doing so uncritically, as a racist.

Every age gets a medicine-bearing misanthrope, and Walden’s book is just the medicine we need for this age. Kierkegaard’s “Christendom” was deserving of his attack. Our politicians, blubbering, reality-disconnected mass marketeers, need a helping of Walden’s medicine. He has diagnosed the problem perfectly, with style and grace.

Read this book, it’ll help you understand the patronising bullshitters that dominate our mass society. What the anti-elitists in charge really hate is excellence. That means excellence in books and letters, excellence in philosophy, excellence in education, excellence in science and excellence in thought. For culture to survive, for Bildung of the next generation, we must defend excellence for everyone rather than cultural sterility enforced by a condescending populist elite.

I certainly love the stuff. Cheese and pineapple for me.

I don’t believe in God. There we go. That didn’t take long, and didn’t need much lubrication. I’ve got it down to something of an art these days. Get it out there, and let the consequences flow. Fortunately, I live in post-Christian Britain and not Bible Belt Arkansas, so there aren’t too many consequences for me.

Keith Miller is a geologist and Kansas State University. He’s involved with a Christian group called the American Scientific Affiliation, and also with the Affiliation of Christian Geologists. He’s an evangelical geologist who believes in evolution, and believes that science is “a Christian vocation, and part of that vocation is using scientific knowledge to deepen our understanding of God and of our calling as Creation’s stewards”. He believes, as I do, that the debate over evolution and creationism (or it’s learned-sounding brother, Intelligent Design) is “often fruitless and divisive”.

The book sets out to “provide a wide-ranigng and authoritative evaluation of evolutionary theory from those with an orthodox Christian perspective”. And it succeeds. I’m not a theologian – in fact, I shudder at the thought – but this is theology that is informed and informative.

For instance, the dismissal of the Intelligent Design Movement (IDM) consists of the citing of Ken Miller’s book refuting many of Behe’s arguments, and then pointing out the theological limitations of Intelligent Design using Howard J. Van Till’s arguments, as well as pointing out some of the more fundamental flaws with such a proposal. These theological differences are often glossed over in the rush to build consensus by the IDM’s “Big Tent” approach, which is based supposedly on theological consensus, but actually appears to be based upon conensual opposition to secular bogeymen (Theistic Evolutionism being such a bogeyman).

The book puts pay to the argument that “all American evangelicals are as sharp as cotton wool”. Keith Miller’s contributions are informed and refer to decent source materials in both his field, other scientific fields, philosophy and theology.

In between the main chapters, there are a number of little interludes, which discuss science and theology in a sermon-like manner. These are neither overbearing nor fanatical. They look outwards and upwards, pointing out the sublime beauty of nature and God. This is a God that even a jaded old atheist like me could worship, because his followers aren’t breathing down my neck or threatening me with eternal flames, but asking us to step in to fellowship. Very poetic!

Sorry, but you’re not getting me that easy. The problem of evil still applies, and I just can’t stand church pews. Richard Dawkins’ publishers, with a recent book of his, must have had great fun choosing to put quotes by bishops on the back of the book. It must have been even more pleasing that they were in fact quite complementary of said book. The Bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway, who wrote a fantastic book on morality a number of years ago, wrote of Dawkins’ efforts: “This is the best book of sermons I have read for years. So please go on preaching to us, Reverend Dawkins, and odn’t mind the things they throw at you. After all, prophets always get stoned”. (I particularly like the double meaning in the last sentence, since on my next trip to Amsterdam, I’m going prophetic class on the Eurostar).

The religious have praised an old-fashioned Darwinian atheist. Now, it’s my turn to reciprocate. This book raises numerous interesting questions, and doesn’t, like many, shy away from exploring their controversial nature. It takes it’s science as seriously as it’s theology, without falling in to the easy traps which the fellow believers of the great faith criticise it for. Miller’s compliation is readable, interesting, and profoundly sensible. And in a world where America’s religious nuts are out there confusing lumps of wood and grilled cheese sandwiches with the presence of both the Lord Almighty and his virginal mother, worshipping at the altar of charismatic nutcases with shiny suits and freephone numbers, where every scrap of secular culture has it’s home-brewed religious equivalent served up in such a way to take away from the profoundly difficult task it is to be a Christian – a task which Kierkegaard described in Fear and Trembling by looking concretely at the story of Abraham.

Miller’s enterprise is positively necessary in a culture rife with scientific and religious illiteracy (according to a survey conducted a while back, 12% of professed American Christians thought that Noah was married to Joan of Arc, and a huge number couldn’t name any of the Gospel writers). The contributions are, as Miller states, “well-informed and thoughtful integrations of science and faith that respect the authority of Scripture and the integrity of the scientific enterprise”. If you buy faith, read this and a decent biology textbook. If you don’t buy faith, read this – it’ll deepen your understanding of the “conflict”.

Religion is on the march again. The government of the United Kingdom recently attempted to pass a law that would outlaw “incitement to religious hatred”, which would chill free speech in return for locking up a handful of extremists (and, of course, make them more extreme). It would have provided no assistance to those who’ve been harrassed by religious extremists for their art – including Gupreet Bhatti (who had to go in to hiding after her play, Behzti, was the target of a violent riot by Sikhists), the producer of the Jerry Springer opera (which has been mired in controversy – the broadcast was loudly protested by Christian extremists, who have been following the show as it’s toured the country) nor would it provide people like Salman Rushdie or the Danish cartoonists any protection from fatwas and violent protests.

This book contains essays by people who, rightly, are against this ludicrous expansion of authoritarianism and infringement of civil liberties and human rights.

At points, it gets a little heavy with Freudian interpretation for what is essentially a political book. The essay on Christian creationism was interesting and eye-opening even for myself (I have been following the craziness of creationists and advocates of Intelligent Design – which is creationism after having the lawyer’s version of the Queer Eye guys wash out all the constutitonal problems – and the essay in this tome reinforced how nuts these folk are). Despite these minor transgressions, this book is an excellent response to the pseudo-liberalism of those who want to sacrifice our essential liberties to a shifting idol of religious “communities”.

Having read a large chunk of T&M, I have to agree with dubnik – it’s far more interesting than I thought.

The whole description of play is very interesting, and T&M is one of the more interesting texts on hermeneutics – Ricoeur is too opaque, and while Gadamer isn’t crystal clear, it’s certainly a lot more penetrable than Ricoeur.

This is a very beautiful album, and takes me back to the many happy hours I had playing FFX2. I especially like the opening track (Wind Crest), track 6 (Zanarkand Ruins) and the fantastic performance of Eternity: Memories of Lightwaves (track 12) by Hiroko Kokubu – this last track sends chills down my spine and makes the hair on the back of my neck stick right up, and it’s a general rule of thumb that only truly superb performances can do that.

Tracks from this album will be spinning on my iPod a lot in the coming months.

This book helps clear up numerous misconceptions of the history of evolutionary science, the development of the thought around it and so on. It’s useful as a reference and to read within itself. I would disagree with onetreehill: Edward Larson’s connection with the Intelligent Design movement seems somewhat childish, and his work on the Scopes Monkey Trial is not that original – Ray Ginger did a sterling job in cataloguing Scopes almost half a century ago.

I would reccomend Bowler’s book unequivocally.

Bemused by bullshit? This book is a fantastic guide and introduction to seeing the world around us rationally and sensibly, rather than being haunted with demons, ghosts, angels and the ability to make ultra-high diluted medicine that works. A fantastic cultural history and practical guide to avoid being lured in to silly thinking.

Check Skepdic.com for the full online dictionary.

It isn’t exactly the same one – it’s rather good though…