Secularist stars at the NSS conference

As I mentioned earlier, I went to London today for the National Secular Society's conference.  I'll probably write more about it another day, but here's a little comment about each of the speakers.  I should say that the event was attended by nearly 800 people from a range of backgrounds - including at least one gentleman wearing a clerical collar.

Professor Ted Cantle - business-like and well informed.  Being English and male might lead some to wonder how he is qualified to comment about people who are in neither category but I found him convincing.  Multiculturalism is to be replaced by 'interculturalism'. 

Nia Griffith (Member of Parliament), neither English nor male - was an entertaining and informative speaker.  Her best anecdote (of many) was about the Human Embryology and Fertilsation Act.  Constituents were worried that "there'll be centaurs running in the streets".  [Its odd that they will not be cantering or galloping.]

Pragna Patel was more successful than I expected at involving those of us who were not 'Southall Black Sisters'.  [I suppose I'm a little wary of positive discrimination or something - but being white, English and male, I hope you might make allowances for that . . . please?]  Speaking of minority groups who seek favours from the state she said "They use the language of human rights but actually seek to suppress it."  This was echoed by most of the following speakers.  Excellent points throughout the speech and good answers to questions.

Nick Cohen's brilliant speech was one of the highlights of the day.  He acknowledged that journalists and broadcasters were afraid to admit that self-censorship exists.  All like to pose as dissidents in a dictatorship, challenging establishments, transgressing boundaries, but they can't acknowledge that certain topics are just off limits.  He added that 200 years ago you would know that the finest minds in the world also had supernatural beliefs as a broad explanation of the world. Now that is no longer possible.  As soon as you reach some level of knowledge you will know that the greatest minds in the world do not hold supernatural beliefs now.  Religion is no longer able to be involved in high culture.  This makes people defensive and wary of learning.  Religion now knows itself to be intellectually on the back foot.

Maryam Namazie was next but I'll come back to her later.

Peter Tatchell delivered a fine speech as usual.  He emphasised that the enemy was organised faith itself, not necessarily the faithful people.  The clerics are the main threat and it is time we said so.  Afterwards someone commented that he had foundered a little when questioned about the ordinary faithful essentially lending support to the religious leaders, and about funding for improvements to human rights.  I think that was a reasonable assessment.

Richard Dawkins came last - I can listen to him any time.  He was advertised as the keynote speaker for very obvious reasons.  The first half of his talk was excellent, with comments on dealing with potentially violent people "I fear you because you are mad but don't confuse fear with respect."  Actually telling people that they are "behaving like a spoilt brat having a temper tantrum" might not be the best advice.  He spent some time on American politics, obviously with the impending election in mind.  Christian scriptures are genuinely ancient. The Book of Mormon is not ancient but ludicrously anachronistic [and he explained why, in some detail, and with great wit]. Many of the core beliefs are measurably more preposterous than claims of Christianity.  At least it is arguable that Jesus existed. All of that was delivered with his usual verbal dexterity.  The less I say about the second half of the speech, his confusing satire about Tony Blair, the better, but Richard is not a stand-up comedian by profession.

Now back to the real star of the show.  It is clear why Dawkins was the keynote speaker, but the only one of the day to get a standing ovation, along with the longest applause, was Maryam Namazie.  Her speech was exactly what you would expect from her, and on the basis of the four times that I have heard her, she delivers it to the same high standard every time she speaks.  She combines a passion for justice with a deep understanding and knowledge of the subject.  It will be hard to do justice to her but in a few days I will write more about what she said.

Aside from that - it was a great day out and I met a lot of very interesting people who had travelled much further than I had to attend.  Hello to anyone among them who is reading this.  I expect all my readers to try to attend next year if geographically feasible.  Thanks to Terry Sanderson and crew for organising it all at a very reasonable price and reaching out to so many people.

Small note: published hurriedly on the day of the event.  Please forgive the larger number of typos than usual.

Update!  Most of the talks have now appeared on the Pod Delusion Extra site - although at the time of writing (2012-09-30) the best one is still awaiting permission.  Hopefully we can all hear the words of Maryam Namazie soon.

Identity crisis on Google+

Who am I - really?  That is a question that must be in the mind of a lot of people who have been considering using the new 'Google+' but are being put off by stories of account suspensions.  If you haven't heard the stories, try this link, Google+ and pseudonymity: An open letter to Google, for one of the more prominent stories of the week.  It details how a (quite well-known) online personality has had her account suspended by Google because GrrlScientist is apparently not her real name.  Even though it is a pseudonym that she has used for many years, it is deemed unacceptable by Google.

Google+ is clearly aiming to be a direct competitor to Facebook, and let's face it, Facebook needs one!  How often does FB 'helpfully' change features that we have started to think we understand.  FB doesn't have a great reputation when it comes to privacy either.  The default option seems to be to tell everyone everything.  Well I exaggerate a little, but I was amazed when I started using FB (just this year) that I had to spend so much time locking down information that I didn't want to be known to everyone in the world.  (And I was already cautious about what information I had added to it!)

There is a raft of reasons why people use pseudonyms on-line.  I can only give my own reasons here.  I masquerade here on Blogspot as Plasma Engineer, use the same name on RD.net, plasma.engineer on gmail, and use @plasma_engineer on twitter.  I use another name for a work-related technical web site that I have been running for some years.  I even have a completely anonymous-looking hotmail account to use on sites that I suspect will send me a load of spam.  However I still use the name that my parents have given me on Facebook.  A few of you know all of these names, but I trust that other readers are not offended that I keep these identities separate.  I am not upset if I don't know your personal details, but I always feel honoured if you reveal them to me.  It is not just a matter of trust, it is just that we all have degrees of friendship in our real lives, and the same happens in the online communities that we frequent.

As a professional person, I believe that it is important that my personal opinions are separated from my professional opinions.  I don't kid myself that I am so important that it really matters on the grand scheme of things, but I have a role which requires me to act with authority sometimes.  I don't want my personal views on other topics to affect that role.

Having a pseudonym online means that I can exercise my right to free speech with a little more freedom than I would under my own name.  It is not that I feel concerned from a legal perspective.  After all, Google knows perfectly well who Plasma Engineer really is and the authorities could track me down in an instant, although I do not have an I-phone!  Even if I hadn't associated Plasma's e-mail account with my personal account they could easily enough spot that I typically log in from the same few IP addresses and MAC addresses and associate them.  Before you complain that Google would not do such a thing, remember the saga of the 'accidental' logging of wireless network SSIDs, IP addresses and other information while they were conducting the photographic survey of UK for Google maps.

Let's face it.  Google knows everything about us, like it or not.  It is part of the cost of an online presence.  I like to think of it as a responsibility check in some ways.  I'm not completely comfortable that Google knows so much but it does and its too late to change that.

Identity fraud is another area of concern for all of us.  We are constantly warned about it and still we hear stories about how identities and cash are stolen from the wary and the unwary alike.

On top of that, to be perfectly honest I'm literally scared of some factions.  I tend to speak out about things that concern me and some of those things are a matter of life and death to their proponents.  Indeed the life and death matters are the ones that I feel we should all know more about - if we have no warning we can't take any action to prevent things happening.  As an recovering christian, I tend to attack Christianity's inconsistencies sometimes.  There are probably fundamentalist christians who would wish me harm.  I also point out the dangers of creeping Islam, and I am certain that there are fundamentalist muslims who would actually wish me dead, and I have had thinly-veiled threats via Twitter - generally from ignorant idiots who seem to have no notion of rationality, truth or human rights.

So, is Google right to implement a rule about the use of real names on Google+.  I really don't know.  I can see why they want to avoid online fraud from accounts based on their servers. My G+ account actually is in my real name.  So is my Facebook account, and the Something Surprising Facebook

One thing I would have liked from Google was a warning when I set up my G+ account.  If they had made it perfectly clear that our accounts had to be in our real legal names rather than with a pseudonym then I would have felt that they had good reason to close some that were not - whether we like it or not.  Just saying to those who have lost their entire Google 'lives' (however temporarily) that it is against the terms of service (TOS) of the Google account is rather lame.  I have re-read the TOS again and find it hard to work out which clause they are invoking anyway.

The reason I think this is lame is a matter of consistency.   Google's fantastic and free blogging service does not seem to apply the same rules - not yet at least!

Of all the blogs that I follow - not many, but surely a representative number - I think only 10% are published under legally recognisable names.  My main concern about Google is that this identity crisis might get extended to Blogspot.  I have put a lot of effort into this blog this year, and loved doing it.  I now have a reasonable following of intelligent readers too.  Will Something Surprising get closed summarily because I would not answer to the name Plasma Engineer in the street, even though I really am an engineer (of sorts) who works with plasma?  If so, Google will save a LOT of server space as most of our blogs will vanish overnight without warning.

I would find that sad.

(Time for a backup I think!)

Later edition:
Reading further, I think the aim of Google's campaign against pseudonyms is to avoid the launch of a lot of 'corporate accounts' for every company, band and blog.  This link is to an article that Google+ Witnesses Traffic Growth Decline.  Funnily enough it neglects to emphasise that subscription is still by invitation only.

Tweet on time - with klout

Have you discovered the power of Twitter?  You might notice that I tweet about all my blog posts and sometimes retweet other people's ideas.  You might have found this post or indeed this blog via Twitter.

Since the aim of my posts is always to bring you something surprising (and hopefully I sometimes succeed) it is not enough for me to mention something that you could hardly have failed to notice. So I will mention some other things about Twitter that might not have encountered.

At my place of work - a place that I sometimes feel quite proud of - Twitter is banned.  That seems quite reasonable.  We wouldn't want everyone tweeting all the time.  They have work to do.  However, a few of my colleagues working in public relations do use Twitter officially, and since they follow many of the people who follow them, they have expressed surprise that I sometimes tweet during the day.  My esteemed friend and loyal follower, Derby Skeptic, asked almost the opposite question.  "Are you on the web all the time?"  Neither had reckoned with a nice little web tool that I have been using, as recommended by The Honest Blogger.  I ignore her implication that the rest of us might be less honest and appreciate her advice. :)

Hootsuite (www.hootsuite.com) is a nice free package that allows you to schedule your tweets.  I have been using it for a few weeks and noticed that it brings in readers from all over the world.  But it is more than just a scheduler.  It allows you to run more than one Twitter account at a time (which I don't, but I might).  It also allows you to see (on one screen) tweets coming in from people you follow, your @mentions, your sent tweets and your direct messages or whatever you like.  You see each of them in a column which updates as often as you tell it to update.

You might not realise that you have something called 'Klout'.  With www.klout.com you can get an indication of your ability to influence social networks.  Hootsuite shows the klout of your contacts and can tell you your own score too.  I hear that only one person has a klout of 100 (but I am not young enough to remember his name).  There are others in the 90s, including Lady Gaga.

OK - my klout has only reached 43 but seems to be rising slowly.  I think a good target would be to keep my klout higher than my age.

Small note: I can also schedule these posts to go out while I am at work.  I make a point not to blog from work.  Then I can be as controversial as I wish without embarrassing anyone else.