'Nother Solent

War on knowledge.

Who says you can't make war on abstract nouns? Here's a depressing story about the campaign of murder and intimidation being carried out by the Taliban in order to close girls' schools.

I often get depressed about Islam's role in the world. It is depressing to think about the fact that the Taliban can still do this, and still want to do this. Or, to take an example from the other side of the globe, it is depressing to think that the man The Australian describes as "nation's Islamic leader", Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, has claimed the Holocaust is a "Zionist lie."

Revelations that the nation's most senior Islamic cleric has been openly preaching extreme messages to his mainstream followers will be a major setback for the Howard Government.

Sheik Hilali is a senior member of the Prime Minister's Muslim advisory board.

However I also remember that the Afghan pupils who continue to seek education and the teachers who continue to educate despite the risks are Muslims. Muslim heroines.

Sporadic Chronicle has a post on piracy. First the view of a nautical trade union:

Yet there is little appetite for arming merchant crews, not least because of the potential legal complications for crew members who might shoot someone in an attack. And [nautical trade union] Numast has expressed fears it would only trigger an "arms race with the pirates".

To which Rob comments:

Of course an arms race would be terrible: you might end up being outgunned in, erm, some way that you aren't at the moment when the pirates are armed and you're completely unarmed.

"Two sides - one war" says the front page headline on today's Times.

Er, isn't that the usual arrangement?

No, I haven't got anything more useful to say. I didn't expect all this.

UPDATE: However Dan Simon does have something more useful to say and did expect all this.

There can be only one.

Incoming mail:

Natalie,

"The delight, the glory of mathematics is that there is only one answer"

Quadratic equations?

JEM

Not so fast, Moriarty. The solution to a quadratic does, it is true, give two permitted values of x. But it is one answer. The one and only answer.

There is no scope for x to find its own path in life.

Education, education, education

blogs.

• Mr Chalk. He is mighty.
  

• The Carnival of Homeschooling. My eye was struck by this post in which the author, a Christian homeschooler, re-posts two questions about homeschooling from a reader that are typical of those she is regularly asked. The point of the post is the comments, obviously. I thought the first few gave the guy asking the questions an unecessarily rough ride: homeschoolers might be sick of these two questions, but there are plenty of people out there to whom they are new thoughts. Later on the commenters seem to relax and give some good answers.
  

• The delight, the glory of mathematics is that there is only one¹ answer. And when you've proved it you've proved it for all possible worlds and evermore. Edspresso's "John Dewey" writes on the attempt on the part of ed school teachers to refashion mathematics into something more "divergent." ²
  

• The link above came via Joanne Jacobs who, I am sure, will find that missing close-italics tab soon. Joanne also highlights a good anecdote about the Governator. Let me rephrase that. This article in the San Francisco Chronicle contains within it the building blocks of a good anecdote about the Governator, but whether by accident or design doesn't bring the pieces together. Joanne Jacobs does that for them.
  
  

¹ It's all explained in Highlander.

² Mathematics II: The Quickening.

Mass murder in India - of the type made bloodily familiar in Madrid and London.

New Delhi TV says at least 146 people have been killed. (UPDATE: this link no longer works. The one below does.)

The NDTV website has this page giving links to major Indian newspapers.

Now that's what I call a responsible job.

According to George Monbiot, writing in the Guardian about nuclear power, bureaucrats making the wrong decision about British energy policy must be held responsible for the consequences ... all the consequences, for as long as the Earth shall abide. He writes:

And how does any system - political or technological - cope with the timescales involved? If, as a result of slow leakage into the groundwater, radioactive materials from a burial site were to kill an average of only one person a year for one million years, those who made the decision to bury them will - through their infinitesimal and unrecorded impacts - be responsible for the deaths of a million people.

The scene: Bureaucrat Heaven, Anno Domini one million...

VOICE OFF SCREEN: Go, go, go!

SECRETARY: Oh, Mr Pye, come quick, someone just broke down the door of our cloud.

Commotion. Smoke grenades. RoomCloud fills with heavily armed S.W.A.T. angels.

MR PYE: What is the meaning of this?

OFFICER (Shoving ID card under Pye's nose) Police raid! J S Pye KCMG, you are under arrest.

MR PYE: W-w-what have I done?

OFFICER: Like you didn't know. Stand away from the desk. Don't move those wings.

MR PYE: You can't do this! This cloud is the property of the Department of Celestial Affairs. I'll have you know that I am on very good terms with Minister Shang-Ti himself.

SECRETARY (helpfully): The Minister gave Mr Pye a medal. One million years devoted service, it said.

OFFICER: The Minister sent me, perp. Says here that you have caused the untimely deaths of one million persons over the period 2006 - 1,002,006 AD.

MR PYE: But - but - I lived a virtuous life. Dam-d-d-darn it, I'm in heaven. You can't take that away from me because of the cumulative consequences of one mistake propagated over a period a hundred times longer than civilisation had existed up till then - (Suddenly remembering he is on home ground) Just you wait a minute! (Turns to computer screen, types frantically) It says here that you have caused the deaths of five trillion people over the the last million years as a result of your life on Earth as a Guardian columnist.

OFFICER MONBIOT: Nice try, perp, but no cigar ...

SECRETARY: I should hope not. Heaven has a strict no-smoking policy.

OFFICER MONBIOT: ... I'll have you know that I got a free pardon for the Guardian stuff.

MR PYE (bewildered): You mean that even after the untold misery caused throughout human and post-human history by the economic and philosophical fallacies you helped propagate, they let you off?

OFFICER MONBIOT: Sheesh, yeah. That was just politics. Honest mistake.

MR PYE: Exactly! My point exactly! Don't you see that my little mistake with the nuclear waste is just the same ...

OFFICER MONBIOT: Nuclear waste? What are you talking about? Museums down on Earth pay good money for that stuff nowadays. No, your rap sheet doesn't mention any nuclear waste. J S Pye, it is my duty to inform you that the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Galactic Plagues all originated from your decision on or about the sixth of February 2006 when caught without a Kleenex to surreptitiously wipe your nose on your sleeve. Now say goodbye to your departmental harp, evildoer. 'Cos you are going down.

Afterthought: If you're wondering why I made Mr Monbiot an angel rather than a mere saint in my little drama, it's because he's a Guardian angel.

After-afterthought: And his police badge says, "LAPD."

A la recherche du Who perdu.

Still busy and I really didn't need to waste my work time reading Dr Who and Tomorrow People nostalgiablogging at Crooked Timber. (Added later: that came out sounding (a) rude and (b) as if I didn't lovingly read all three posts and all the comments despite many more urgent tasks.)

Well, I hid behind the sofa. Years later that sofa got old and was put out on the street upside down prior to being taken away. And I had this profound redemptive flashback experience about the strap of yellow webbing that ran along the base of the sofa and held the cover on. Hello sofa webbing, I haven't seen you since I was eight! I nearly snipped off a bit to save it from death but refrained through decorum. I believe Proust describes something similar, but knowing these French literary chaps he probably meant more than just biscuits. I only mean sofa webbing, though.