Tagged: Mark Twain
Taking the Lord’s name in Ireland
On January 1, a new law in Ireland bans publication or uttering of material grossly abusive or insulting to matters held sacred by any religion and thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion. The law carries a 25,000 Euro fine and permits some defenses. The website blasphemy.ie declares it “both silly and dangerous.”
It is silly because medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect people and not ideas. And it is dangerous because it incentives religious outrage, and because Islamic States led by Pakistan are already using the wording of this Irish law to promote new blasphemy laws at UN level.
Athiest Ireland marked the law’s coming into force by publishing 25 blasphemous quotations by such notables as Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Mark Twain, Tom Lehrer, Randy Newman, James Kirkup, Monty Python, Rev Ian Paisley, Conor Cruise O’Brien, Frank Zappa, Salman Rushdie, Bjork, Amanda Donohoe, George Carlin, Paul Woodfull, Jerry Springer the Opera, Tim Minchin, Richard Dawkins, Pope Benedict XVI, Christopher Hitchens, PZ Myers, Ian O’Doherty, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and Dermot Ahern. A sample:
Mark Twain: “[Y]ou notice that when the Lord God of Heaven and Earth, adored Father of Man, goes to war, there is no limit. He is totally without mercy — he, who is called the Fountain of Mercy. He slays, slays, slays! All the men, all the beasts, all the boys, all the babies; also all the women and all the girls, except those that have not been deflowered. He makes no distinction between innocent and guilty… What the insane Father required was blood and misery; he was indifferent as to who furnished it.”
Jesus Christ, speaking of Jews: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.”
Richard Dawkins: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
Salman Rushdie aptly expressed the philosophical danger such laws pose:
The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas – uncertainty, progress, change – into crimes.
The practical danger is that it will fuel fanaticism like the attempted New Year’s Day murder of Danish artist Kurt Westergaard, one of the 12 cartoonists whose 2005 satirical depiction of the Prophet Mohammed sparked riots a year later in which dozens of people died.
Contrarian will live-blog NS Power customer forum
On February 12, 1891, the latest of many interruptions in his household’s supply of coal gas moved Samuel Langhorne Clemens, AKA Mark Twain, to write the Hartford Gas and Electric Company.
“Dear Sirs,” he began. “Some day you will move me almost to the verge of irritation by your chuckle-headed Goddamned fashion of shutting your Goddamned gas off without giving any notice to your Goddamned parishioners. Several times you have come within an ace of smothering half of this household in their beds and blowing up the other half by this idiotic, not to say criminal, custom of yours. And it has happened again today. Haven’t you a telephone? Ys, S L Clemens”
Executives of Nova Scotia Power can be thankful Twain died 99 years ago, and never lived in Nova Scotia. Between Hurricane Juan in 2003 and the Utility and Review Board hearings last month, the utility has suffered more than enough assaults on its reputation without suffering Twain’s caustic tongue.
Reputation matters to most companies. It matters much more if you’re charged with managing a costly transition to climate friendly power production for customers who demand environmental responsibility, but show little appetite for the higher power bills it will require.
This weekend, for the third time in six years, Nova Scotia Power will gather 100 or so of its customers for a Customer Energy Forum, essentially an informed discussion of the energy policy issues facing the company. The idea is to give a representative sample of customers a bit more information about the nuts and bolts of these policy changes, and see how this influences their preferred solutions. You can see a brief account of the results of previous sessions here and here, and you can read the backgrounder booklet NSP produced for forum participants here.
At the company’s invitation, I will observe the event and live blog the session throughout the day Saturday. Coming to grips with climate change poses problems that are technically intricate, politically onerous, and potentially the most difficult our generation will face. I am keen to see how NSP officials and technical experts frame the issues, and how typical customers respond.
Watch for one or two posts Friday evening, and frequent posts throughout the day Saturday.
[Disclosure: NSP will reimburse my expenses and pay me a fee for live-blogging this event. Company officials will not see my posts before they go live. Our agreement requires that my posts "will be fair and factual," words that may prove a little slipperier than power company officials imagine. All in all, I think it's an interesting leap of faith on the company's part, but I expect to take some criticism for entering into a financial arrangement with a story subject. Maybe one or both of us, or you, dear readers, will conclude it was a mistake, but the Internet has changed everything about communications, and on balance, I think it's an experiment worth trying.]
