The Google Maps for Europe have come up, and they’re really something. Want to see the Eiffel Tower? Here you go.

That’s quite the resolution. I think I can count the people in the queue. Any closer and they’d have to get release forms from everyone.

So, what are you now?

What do you mean, what am I? I’m me.

No, I mean, your beliefs. You’re a…

Oh, what box do I fit into. Come on, -isms are inherently limited. I also hate saying, “Oh, I’m a whatever“, as if that’s all there is to me. I wish we could just get rid of all the simplified boxes and accept our complexity.

Oh, so you’re an iconoclast.

Please.

No, really. Are you an atheist?

Well, for me, the case for God’s existence became less and less compelling the more I understood about critical thinking. So you could say I’m an atheist. But I also don’t believe in UFOs and fairies, and I wouldn’t go around describing myself as a non-UFO-fairy believer.

You’re a skeptic, then.

Skeptical, yes. But see, these labels are all reactions against something. I’d like to describe myself in positive terms.

Sounds like you need a new -ism, then.

What’s the rush?

Well, a vacuum is hard to sustain. You’ll need something to adhere to, unless you want to be some kind of contrarian for your whole life. What looks good?

I find myself settling on two major ideas: science and people.

Science is a way of finding out what’s really happening. You can use scientific principles to separate fact from fantasy, and build good theories about what’s going on.

People. I used to live according to a religion because a) I thought it would help me to be happy, and b) I thought it would make God happy, which, if I got to live in Heaven, would make me happy. And if there was a conflict between the two, go for b), make God happy.

For the most part, I was not unhappy in my religion until the gap between my beliefs and reality became too great (see ‘Science’, above). Having now learned a little bit about critical thinking, and with the case for God’s existence looking increasingly teetery and man-made, I have abandoned b) trying to make God happy. Instead, I’ll go with trying to make people happy (including myself) — after all, the case for the existence of other people is pretty strong. So an idea or philosophy is good if it’s good for people. Being happy and healthy is good. Helping my sons grow to be good men is good. Beating yourself up for not making God happy: not good.

I guess if you put those two values together, you get scientific humanism, which is probably what I’d identify most closely with at this stage.

Julia Sweeney is a scientific humanist, you know.

Oh, that’s good. I didn’t realise you were still here.

Was it National Abstinence Day, and no one told me?

Of course, for me, every day is Abstinence Day, so nothing new there. But I was pleased to find the page from the rather antsy folks at the Abstinence Clearinghouse. There you’ll find all the materials you need to hook up with people… and not have sex with any of them.

Here’s the news from today’s front page:

01.18.06 First Lady Laura Bush Endorses Abstinence

Well, she would, wouldn’t she?

And be sure to check out “Faces of Abstinence.” No, it’s not what you’re thinking. It’s people’s profiles. My favourite:

Darren L. Washington, Gary, IN
Secondary Virgin for 7 years

See, the Secondary Virgin is the one they bring out in case the Primary Virgin is injured.

If you can get your entry up there, I will somehow get you laid.

I’m working on mine.

I was on a crowded bus this morning, and I became aware of different sounds. There were four:

• On my right, someone’s iPod playing a jazz tune. Muted trumpet.
• On my left, a man next to me was reading a book in Arabic, possibly the Koran. He was murmuring slightly while reading.
• Two students were talking quietly in front of me, laughing.
• Behind me, the sound of the bus’s engine.

Conversation, music, religion, machines. I listened to the mix of sounds all around me, and it sounded like the world.

How many words are there in English?

Just around a million.

Did you know that by November 2006 there will be one million words in the English language?

That is the estimation from Paul Payack, the President of Global Language Monitor, a non-profit group that documents, analyses and tracks trends in language the world over.

Oh, too late, Paul. Oxford has already clocked a billion words.

A massive language research database responsible for bringing words such as “podcast” and “celebutante” to the pages of the Oxford dictionaries has officially hit a total of 1 billion words, researchers said Wednesday.

I’ll see your billion and raise you a brazilian.

Oh, but wait. It appears those aren’t separate word types. They’re just tokens. In other words, they’ve assembled a corpus of a billion words, but most words are repeated.

Determining how many words there are in English isn’t so hard from a compiling standpoint. It’s easy to write a Perl script to plow (or plough) through a corpus and count individual word types. No, the problem is defining what a word is. ‘Cat’ and ‘cats’ are two words, but one lexeme, so dictionaries list them under the same heading. What about polysemous words? The mouse on my computer and the mouse my cat runs from are two separate things; should they be one word or two? What about multi-word expressions: is ‘ice cream’ one word or two? Does it matter if I spell it with a hyphen? Any one of these decisions will change the count and complicate the task. So when someone reports ‘English has X words’, they really ought to clarify what definition of ‘word’ they used.

The reason I’m bringing this up is that I know someone’s going to come to me and say, “Did you know that there are a billion words in English?”

And then I’ll say, “UK billion, or American billion?”

I’m teaching a new Extension course called “English: The World’s Language”. Our first class was last night, and I quite enjoyed it.

We discussed the current national anthem flap over in the USA. Seems someone’s translated it into Spanish, and it has the usual folk feeling belligerent.

Several Republican senators are steamed at the notion of a new Spanish version of “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Republican Sens. Lamar Alexander, Majority Leader Bill Frist, both from Tennessee, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, and Pat Roberts of Kansas submitted a nonbinding resolution on the Senate floor last week that said the national anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance “should be recited or sung in English.”

How dare they sing our national anthem in the language of a foreign country! They should only sing it in English… which is the language of a foreign country.

The reason, they say, is that what binds Americans together is not race, ancestry or origin, but a common language — English.

It’s true that language is a unifying force. If blood is thicker than water, then language is thicker than blood. The UK and Australia are close partners with the US not just because of mutual business interests, but also because of the common language. ‘Speakng someone’s language’ is a frequent metaphor for mutual understanding. But just as language can be a unifying force, so can tolerance and respect, which you never see from the Party of Division.

And they argue that immigrants wanting to become citizens must renounce allegiance to their former country and swear allegiance to the laws and Constitution of the United States, and they must make that oath in English.

Lamar Alexander’s actual words:

“I worry, Mr. President, that translating our national anthem will actually have the effect of dividing us. It adds to the celebration of multiculturalism in our society which has eroded our understanding of our common American culture.”

Aah, there it is. The old bogeyman Multiculturalism. They dress up their detestable sentiments in the language of unity and togetherness, but the real message is always: We are one nation: ours, not yours. And leave your language at the razor-wire fence.

This reaction doesn’t surprise me. What does surprise me is that people aren’t better at recognising their own fear and managing it. The fear I’m talking about is the fear of one’s language vanishing. Think about it for a minute — it would be terrible. Not having anyone who understands Shakespeare? Not being able to communicate with anyone (especially because you haven’t actually taken the effort to learn another language)? It would be like having your way of thinking erased. But is that likely to happen to English? Not really — English is the number two language in the world, in terms of native speakers and learners. It’s other languages that are being threatened by English. But try telling that to the poor English-speaking xenophobe. He’s too busy fighting an eternal trumped-up war against imaginary and ever-changing foes.

Wars are about control. In a physical war, you try to control the resources; land, oil, water. In a culture war, you try to control the standard — whose standard will prevail? So consider this conflict a pre-emptive strike. We have to protect English from Spanish, just like we had to protect America from Iraq. They might do something to threaten us, you see.

Since it’s Bush Week around here, let’s talk about The Decider. With Donald ‘Abu’ Rumsfeld under fire, Bush has stepped in to remind everyone that he’s the one with all the power around here.

“I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I’m the decider, and I decide what is best. And what’s best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense.”

‘Hearing the voices’ is a trifle worrying, but were you heartened to hear that he reads the front page? Maybe if he read more of the paper, he’d be a Better Decider.

The word ‘decider’ isn’t new; it even has an established computational meaning. In the linguistic ham-hands of Bush, the word takes on a dangerously petulant, yet still mockable tone.

But this usage has legs. The Daily Show has picked it up, and it may cross into other domains as well. For example, the New York Times asks: Are you the decider in your relationship?

[W]hile spouses are often quick to say they jointly consider where to vacation, how many children to have, what car to buy and where to live, each is often quick to lay claim to some, if not all, of the domestic terrain.
…
But dubbing oneself “the decider” is often much less about the end product — a new stove, a vacation, a cabinet member — than it is about expressing power.

Very similar to the Seinfeldian notion of having ‘hand‘ in the relationship.

I often run into the trap of giving power to people who want it, especially if they’re good at using it. On those occasions when I’ve had to be the Decider, and it’s something I’m interested in, I’ve done it well. I can do Decider. Decider is good for me.

So I shall be watching with (some) interest when the American Dialect Society picks its Word of the Year. I bet ‘decider’ is an early favourite.

The debate on guns is over, at least in the USA. The anti-gun side has lost. Even prominent lefties like Kos are pro-gun. And there are an awful lot of guns and guns enthusiasts out there. That’s just the kind of place America is.

It’s a curiosity, then, to see the issue from over here in Australia. Obviously, Australia’s a different place. It’s more British than American, and if you’re a moderate, you’re a lefty-moderate, not a righty-moderate like in the USA. There are parallels, though: the feisty independence, the rurality of much of the country. But here, handguns are tightly controlled, gun groups are not terribly effective, violent crime is pretty low, and most people don’t see the need for any of this to change. There’s a particular aversion to ‘going down the American path’, partly because of TV carnage and news coverage, and partly from the historical resentment of Americanism that bubbles just below the collective Australian psyche.

Most curiously of all, the conservative Prime Minister John Howard is staunchly anti-gun. Here are some comments from today:

“We did a lot more in 2002 and 2003 with handguns, but we really must resolve as a nation never to go down the American path.

“There are many things about America that I admire, but I do not admire their gun culture.”

How’s about that? In lots of other ways, Howard’s the Bush-in-training: he’s used immigrants to divide voters, he’s big into privatisation, he’s tried to gut higher education, and on Iraq he was one of Bush’s biggest enablers. So this issue has always been an unusual departure to my view.

Maybe Howard’s like Bush the Elder. Like Howard, I couldn’t stand him, thought he was wrong, and knew he’d done some real damage to the country. But now that we’ve seen Junior in action, I’d have to admit that he was a man of some character who was able to maneuver around some tricky problems.

I guess comparing anyone to Bush the Younger isn’t really helpful. No one’s going to suffer from that comparison. Even Nixon starts to look good.

Mr Bush is working his way down the thirties (currently at 32% approval) on his way to the twenties. It’s hard work — hard work! — but he’ll get to 25 by August, peg by peg.

That’s a CNN poll, too, so it doesn’t trend as low as, say, Zogby or Pew.

But Mr Bush is taking time out to discuss Iraq, and maybe some things that he could have done better.

“I also want to let you know that before you commit troops that you must do everything that you can to solve the problem diplomatically,” he commented. “And I can look you in the eye and tell you I feel I tried to solve the problem diplomatically to the max

His elocution is improving, but I thought his day-glo accents and jelly shoes were a bit much.

and would have committed troops both in Afghanistan and Iraq, knowing what I know today.”

Actually, I meant to say: he explained why he would do everything the same all over again.

Oh, and did you know he also believes in God?

Bush also explained, in unusually stark terms, how his belief in God influences his foreign policy. “I base a lot of my foreign policy decisions on some things that I think are true,” he said. “One, I believe there’s an Almighty.”

Yes, an almighty… stench of hypocrisy coming from the direction of the White House.

Once again, Bush shows his ability to ignore facts and embrace comforting ideology. Way back before I understood about evolution, I knew that it posed a serious threat to my religious understanding. And I’m ashamed to say that at the time, I decided to ignore the facts and stick to the fiction. My education would have to wait until the day I decided it was more important to go with facts than preconceptions. A day, incidentally, that signalled the end of my religious faith. But I still do see this pattern play out in religious believers I talk to. Somehow when a belief is very very important, we marshall all our cognitive faculties to protect it from attack, whether it be that God exists, that we’re good people, or that we’re bringing freeance and peeance to the world.

“And, secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody’s soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live, to be free.”

Do you think he knows that this is an ex post facto attempt to explain Iraq, or that he doesn’t know?

What a disaster. Folks, you don’t want a leader who has a religious ideology. You want an agnostic pragmatist. Someone who’s going to say, “Let’s have a look at the various solutions to this problem. What’s been tried? What effect did it have? And let’s be careful — no Supreme Being is going to pull our fat out of the fire if we screw it up.”

A religious ideologue would say, “I’m coming at the problem with this viewpoint, which I firmly believe to be true. I’m going to implement it, and I’m going to assume that because my princples are true and my heart is good, the plan will work.” And then if it doesn’t work, don’t change the plan. That would imply that the cherished ideology is wrong. Just have faith.

Religious ideologies are disastrous from a public policy point of view, be they Taliban or Christian Coalition. If you want to see the logical consequences of faith-based living and leaderhsip, you need look no further than George W. Bush.