Naws

Secular progress

2012-02-10T15:49:00.002Z

I was very pleased to read today that Bideford (Devon) council has lost a case bought by an atheist councillor (Clive Bone) and the National Secular Society. The argument was over the policy of that council to start council meetings with a prayer (to the Christian God), being an atheist and being pro-separation of church and state Mr Bone questioned the councils powers to enforce such a practice, claiming that it was discriminatory in nature and an inappropriate ritual. I can see his point, why some Christians feel it necessary to stamp their superstitions and rituals over everything regardless that there are many who don't share those beliefs is arrogant, divisive and somewhat sinister frankly, much like compulsory prayers in schools. In a statement Mr Bone said,

"Religious freedom is an absolute right and so is freedom from religion an absolute right, in my view."

It's fairly predictable to read the religious responses to this decision, bleating about "religious freedom" is the most common complaint, of course to some "religious freedom" means the freedom to impose your dogma on everyone else whether they want it or not. Then we have the apologists who harp on about "why can't everyone just get along", which translated means "why don't those pesky atheists just shut up and stop causing a fuss", I suspect that's exactly what most majorities think when they are accused of unreasonable behaviour by any minority that aren't content to do nothing.

More worryingly, the Bishop of Exeter is saying that he'll be encouraging councils to hold prayers in their meetings, in other words encouraging them to break the law then? Some people just don't have an ethical bone in their bodies, next they'll be moaning about not being allowed to burn witches in council meetings, after all that's part of the Christian "tradition" too isn't it?

Clowning around

2012-02-08T18:36:00.000Z

I noticed that the debate about female bishops in the Anglican church has resurfaced recently. I must say it all seems very alien to me, why any organisation (particularly one aligned to a supposedly modern state) would want to exclude 50% of this planets' talent base from it's leadership ranks is baffling, I can't help but wonder why a few differences in a persons DNA would make such a difference, imagine if those DNA bases coded for skin colour or hat size instead of sex, what a furore there would be.

Anyway it's not an organisation that I wish to belong to and not just because it discriminates against Women, as Groucho Marx once said "I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member". I believe in freedom of expression and free speech so any private club should be free to choose it's own rules under the law but in this case it seems that an exception has been made by our society along fault lines of tradition, revelation and authority, never good reasons to do anything.

One thing that struck me more than the comedy of this debate was the picture that the independent newspaper chose to use for their story on it, a strident, disrespectful Atheist caption writers dream, "where does religion fit in modern society" would get the ball rolling or maybe "The hat’s nice, but he could use a bit more greasepaint." :)

The religion of peace

2012-02-07T19:34:00.000Z

I'm seriously glad I don't live in Indonesia it seems to be becoming more of an intolerant and fundamentalist state by the year. Recently an atheist, Alexander Aan, made a defiant declaration of his personal viewpoint on Facebook saying simply that "God doesn't exist" For his troubles he's now staring down the barrel of a jail sentence for blasphemy (a victimless crime) Some Muslim groups in his homeland are even calling for him to be beheaded as apparently jail isn't good enough for non-believers. Of course many would say that these are the voices of extremists but we hear this kind of thing so often I find this point of view increasingly hard to swallow.

Indonesian law only recognises six religions (Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Catholicism, Protestantism and Confucianism) and bad mouthing any of them is a chargeable offence punishable with a maximum of 5 years in prison. Have you ever heard anything so mind crushingly backwards? Well, maybe creationism, LED watches and the x-factor.. in any case it's with sadness that I strike another beautiful country with pernicious cultural values off my bucket list.

Joke du jour

2012-02-01T10:52:00.002Z

Coming back from yet another recent EU summit in Rome, various European leaders were forced to take the train due to a strike by Swiss ATC controllers; sitting together in the same compartment, travelling through the Swiss Alps, were Sarkozy, Cameron, Merkel and the young and very attractive female Irish foreign minister.

The train goes into a dark tunnel and a few seconds later there is the sound of a loud slap. When the train emerges from the tunnel, Sarkozy has a bright red, hand print on his cheek. No one speaks, everyone is extremely shocked and embarrassed.

Angela Merkel thinks: Sarkozy, not able to help himself, must have groped the Irish girl in the dark, and she slapped his cheek.

The Irish girl thinks: Sarkozy, not able to help himself, must have tried to grope me in the dark, but missed and fondled Merkel and she slapped his cheek.

Sarkozy thinks: Why me? That perfidious Cameron must have groped the Irish girl in the dark knowing that I'd get the blame for it and she slapped me... the English bastard.

And Cameron thinks: I can't wait for another tunnel, so I can smack that little French shit again.

Busy week

2012-01-30T12:04:00.009Z

I can't believe it's a week since my last post!

It's been a really busy week for me lots of stuff happening at work, we're expanding, hiring people and setting up a bigger office (knocking a hole in the wall through to the empty offices next door and expanding sideways!) all good stuff but enormously time consuming. There's been a lot of stuff happening in the news to talk about though, every day I've seen something that I felt the urge to scribble about but never quite got around to it, what with work, kids, short days and cold nights this time of year always seems to rush by the quickest.

I noticed that the unholy row over the Jesus & Mo. cartoons has intensified and spread to more universities, the student (Robbie Yellon) running the atheist society at UCL who originally sparked the protests has resigned, it's not entirely clear why but I suspect he got a little more than he bargained for by invoking the wrath of the superstitious in this way. Apparently, due to the screechy whining of a few Muslims, the special (untouchable) status of certain religions is being affirmed by the authorities at UCL, I wonder what's next, a ban on satirical criticism of the Government or the Royal family, what about the English cricket team?

In a linked story Rhys Morgan (above) the teenager blogger and Crohn’s disease sufferer, famous in sceptical circles for taking on a large medical clinic in the USA who peddle "alternative" non-evidence based "cures" for cancer sufferers and charge a lot to do it. After heavyweight threats and legal posturing from the USA Rhys came out on top of his argument with the Burszynski clinic wining much praise and admiration from fellow rationalists around the world. In a show of solidarity with the Atheist students at UCL he also posted the Jesus and Mo cartoon on his (personal) blog only to be formally warned by the head of year at his sixth form college in Cardiff, he now faces potential expulsion unless he removes the cartoon, let that sink in for a second, in Britain in 2012 satire has now overtaken threat of violence as an act for which people can be bullied and excluded from our supposedly secular institutions. I can't help thinking that our ancestors, many of whom gave their lives fighting for principals of free-speech and liberty from tyrannical ideologies (like Islam) would turn in their graves at such a display of spinelessness.

I came across another example of someone wanting to remove the argument from the debate last week. The philosopher Alain de Botton has a new book out called "Religion for Atheists" and has a TED video discussing the ideas in it. He's a good speaker but I can't agree with his conclusions, as far as I can see he's advocating that Atheists should just ignore religious people, stop arguing with them and get on with the business of stealing everything that's (supposedly) good about religion, things like ritual, art, music, morality etc. He calls this "polite difference", but in my view ignoring people and refusing to engage with their ideas albeit in opposition is the opposite of this, but then again I'm far to honest to get into politics. Of course politeness might work if religious people adhered by the same laissez faire principals, but they demonstrably can't, they are compelled to proselytise, interfere and dictate, so the argument is fatally flawed from the get go. In any case I don't see what's so good about religion that I'd want to emulate it; if church attendance statistics are anything to go by then most people these days don't care much for such ritual (at least the ones in Europe who have a free choice), the vast majority of modern music is not religious, the vast majority of art is not religiously inspired any more and as for morality, religions of any hue are demonstrably unnecessary to live a fulfilled, moral and meaningful life. I must conclude that whilst de Botton may of had a point for Atheists living prior to the 19th century, for those of us living in the 21st he appears to be hopelessly out of touch.

Tignanello

2012-01-23T11:57:00.000Z

Had a fellow wine geek over for lunch yesterday so I opened something good. The wine I chose was a red from Italy (Tuscany) called Tignanello, made by a producer called Antinori. The vintage was a stellar one for that region (1997) and now with 15 years on the clock I thought it was about time to see how it's getting on. Opened about an hour before lunch and decanted the wine was served with roast beef and all the trimmings.

It performed really well, bright and deep ruby in colour and just starting to brown at the edges, great nose of ripe Morello cherries and vanilla with more meaty background tones (olives?), longish and memorable finish. Surprisingly it tasted pretty young, certainly drinking well now but the acidity was such that I get the impression it could wear at least another 15 years and improve all the way. I bought this wine many years ago and at the time could only afford a couple of bottles, it has a good name and has increased in price since then however there is undoubtedly much better value to be had elsewhere these days. South Africa and New Zealand may give more bang for the buck today but if you're looking for that original "Super Tuscan" experience then Tignanello is hard to beat.

This'll put colour in your cheeks

2012-01-19T19:16:00.002Z

I love this; check out some of the other pictures, colour makes them so much more real.

Now there's an interesting computer science problem to work on, i.e. automating this painstaking process.

Thick atheists

2012-01-19T17:27:00.002Z

Here's an interesting role reversal story, an atheist in South Africa complained to the advertising standards authority in that country about a Church advert (see above) - he complained that the billboard offended him as he didn't believe he was an accident and the image implies that Atheists are stupid.

My own view is that this particular Atheist is probably stupid! This advert does a brilliant job of illustrating just how ignorant these particular believers are, not only do they clearly misunderstand the facts of evolution they don't understand Atheists either. Ultimately if you believe in freedom of thought and speech then anyone should be free to express their opinion as long as it does not physically threaten others and/or overstep the boundaries of accepted decency.

The main religious dogma's are inherently insulting, they make claims that cannot possibly be substantiated and arrogantly assert that everyone else must therefore be wrong, often under threat of mental or physical harm. Even in moderately secular western countries members of religions frequently use a combination of personal abuse, bogus accusations of racism and threats of violence both veiled and explicit to put down any criticism however well founded. However, I firmly believe that the only effective counter to this is education, education, education, millions of people simply do not question their beliefs, are not aware of the alternatives and do not understand the arguments, if Atheists and secularists can draw attention to these gaps through books, blogs, media debate, science, humour, cartoons or any other peaceful means then there may be hope for us yet.

Rick rolls

2012-01-19T15:28:00.001Z

Yay, another creationist bites the dust he believes he was created from in the republican US presidential candidate race; Rick Perry quits or should I say intelligently resigns.

When the lights go out

2012-01-19T09:30:00.002Z

It would appear that the protests by various internet A lister's yesterday (like Wikipedia) over the proposed SOPA and PIPA legislation in the USA has had at least some of the desired effect. 8 of the main backers of the bills have withdrawn their support included a couple of sponsoring senators. This is really good news for those of us who value freedom of speech, this legislation was poorly conceived, badly worded and utterly out of touch with the way people use the internet for business and pleasure in this modern age, it would be like putting the onus of responsibility for every reckless driver and vehicle accident onto Ford, General motors and BMW etc.

For those in power I have a humble recommendation regarding how to deal with privacy laws and media legislation, it goes like this, take a look at what Rupert Murdoch rabidly supports and do exactly the opposite, you won't go far wrong sticking to this simple rule.

In other news I've been watching the excellent BBC mini-series about star-gazing over the last few nights, Dara O Briain and Prof. Brian Cox do an excellent presentation job (for a comic and a physicist!) especially when you consider the number of props they have to use and the number of cut-away segments to far flung locations the program has, it all flows pretty well keeping the engagement level high. Not only did they discover a new exo-planet via crowd-sourcing the analysis of a bunch of observation data (an amazing outcome!) but they also got the small town of Dunster in Somerset to switch off all it's lights to get a better view of the sky. The effect was interesting, not just from the point of view of the darkness but also the interest it generated in science among the population there, something that perhaps other communities could consider doing to enliven school science projects everywhere!

Parasites united

2012-01-17T09:31:00.003Z

It's amusing to see Rupert Murdoch complaining about Google in the news recently. Apparently he tweeted a couple of remarks along the lines that Google are pirates because they index sites that stream films and music for free and also that they are somehow trying to mitigate this by pouring millions into lobbying politicians. You can read the tweets here and here.

Its amusing because either Murdoch is incredibly ignorant or incredibly conceited or both? Is it really possible that someone of his standing and influence doesn't realise the internet and Google are not synonymous? Of course most normal people know that Google simply indexes other peoples sites, and understand that it would be complete nonsense to expect them to also be responsible for every dubious activity on the public internet or even vet such activities. Much in the same way, Murdoch's companies are not responsible for the activities of people who advertise in his newspapers, it would be trivial to find a small ad somewhere that promoted something dubious (or even a few big ones!).

If you believe (as I do) that Murdoch knows full well what Google does, and is attacking it because it's a threat to an establishment of which he owns a significant stake then it would seem obvious that this is simply the age old battle between old technology (media) and new technology (software), the disrupter and the disrupted, of course in reality there is a place for both, but transitions of power like this are always painful for the former. Following recent revelations regarding phone tapping by his companies as well as a well established history of benefiting financially from the efforts and misfortunes of others it seems incredible that Murdoch would be so conceited as to accuse another of profiting from parasitism, whatever happened to honour among vampires?

Americans and Brits

2012-01-16T17:04:00.001Z

Everyone knows that there are some really obvious cultural differences between the USA and the UK, tea breaks and coffee breaks, thanksgiving, green-backs, irony and I dare not even mention fannies. However these differences pale to insignificance when compared to how the two peoples view the relationship between politics and religion.

Here in the UK secularists have been running a campaign recently against creationism being taught as science in schools, particularly schools that are funded or part-funded from the public purse, that campaign has been successful and the Government agrees, taking an eminently sensible and secular position. Michael Gove, the education secretary said,

"We will not accept any academy or free school proposal which plans to teach creationism in the science curriculum or as an alternative to accepted scientific theories," the spokesman said, adding that "all free school proposals will be subject to due diligence checks by the department's specialist team".

Hopefully this will mean that huckster creationists are further marginalised and will be confined to peddle their ridiculous lies somewhere other than science classes, ideally somewhere other than schools! In America however they take a different tac, creationists run for President.

Jesus and Mo update

2012-01-11T21:50:00.000Z

Following the heat (but little light) generated at the UCL union this week over the Jesus and Mo cartoon used to promote an atheist meeting on a Facebook page, the producers of the cartoon have responded (see above), and an apt response it is too.

C U ICT

2012-01-11T10:49:00.000Z

It's with great delight I read today that ICT, the subject intended to educate children about information technology, is to be scrapped. The government announced that it is to be replaced by a proper computer science course, one that actually teaches something intellectually challenging and central, i.e. programming (shock horror!).

As some of my scientist friends remind me (often) computer science isn't really "science", particularly if you limit your definition of science to mean only activities that study nature. I think it's reasonable to say that computer science, like mathematics and engineering is applied science in this sense, although some of the work done on language processing is border line IMO. Anyway, regardless of the definition the challenge that businesses in the UK have is a chronic shortage of good quality school leavers and graduates who understand how to make computers do things outside of the narrow scope of existing applications like Microsoft Excel; ICT today is a bit like studying English literature without ever writing a story of your own, i.e. fine if everyone aspires to become book critics but pretty useless for generating the next J.K. Rowling.

Computers are unique and special tools, whereas most other tools enhance our physical capabilities, for example, telescopes allow us to see further than eyes, cranes lift weights our muscles cannot etc. computers extend our most valuable biological asset, the human brain. Just like brains, it's the plasticity of computers and their ability to solve many different problems through different programming that gives them their power, but this power can only be leveraged to solve previously unsolved problems if you actually understand how to program. Let's hope that these changes address this important issue and open up such possibilities to all children should they wish to take them.

UCL, shame on you!

2012-01-10T21:48:00.002Z

Here's a little story that caught my eye today. It's about an atheist group at UCL (University College London) who created a Facebook page to publicise a social event at a pub. Now then, where do you think they could they lay their hands on a suitable image that conveys the image of a pub and the notion of outspoken atheism all in one neat package?

That well known comic strip Jesus and Mo of course! (see above) One of my favourite cartoon strips, which I often feature here and like any good satirical cartoon, always right on the money when it comes to poking fun at religious hypocrisies, injustices and inconsistencies. The powers that be at the UCL union (ironically the first secular University in this country) asked for the image to be removed because, yes you guessed it, it might offend Muslims (why they thought it wouldn't offend Christians baffles me?)

So what I say, who among us has the divine right not to be offended? I am offended by the images on the web site of the UCL Islamic society showing children being indoctrinated and Women being oppressed, images which aren't part of an obviously absurdist and satirical comic but actually REAL! If you feel, as I do, that free-speech trumps spurious religious sensibilities and that the right to free expression should include the right to criticise religion then sign this petition. If you believe that just because something offends you that you should be able to impose your parochial and unjustified beliefs on everyone else by banning it then start a cartoon strip mocking freedom, liberty and enlightenment of your own, however don't be surprised if some of us take the piss.

Red flags

2012-01-09T17:26:00.000Z

Copied from the excellent sci-ence.org site, click for higher resolution.

Wine but no spirits..

2012-01-09T11:55:00.000Z

Noticed this (above) the other day, I haven't tried the wine but I wonder if they are aiming at atheists i.e. the "A" logo is remarkably similar to the red "A" atheist symbol as used on T-shirts everywhere (see below)

I've got religion!

2012-01-05T15:39:00.003Z

Now here's a religion I could sign up to. The Swedish government has reluctantly accepted that Kopimism who's central tenet is "file sharing", should be officially recognised as a religion. Of course there will be lot's of spokespeople for established religions who will go on telly and ridicule the idea, claiming it's "not a proper religion". But then a lot of religious people sneer at things not of their exact or preferred denominations, which mostly consists of other religions of course, but what such people cannot seem to see is how they all appear to have the same apparent purpose and look equally flimsy to those of us with none. Anyway, with CTRL-C and CTRL-V as sacred symbols I can't see how followers can really go wrong, no doubt the ancient protocols of BitTorrent must be chanted daily and war waged against those heathen FTP'ers... where do I sign?

Nothing isn't stable

2012-01-04T22:46:00.000Z

Krauss finds something in nothing from ASU News on Vimeo.

I like Lawrence Krauss, I think he's a dedicated educator and a good one, not just because he's smart but because he's funny, human and most importantly acutely skeptical. He's got a new book out at the moment called "A Universe from Nothing" it talks about how something as substantial as a universe could emerge from something we would consider to be "nothing", yes I said "nothing", counter intuitive isn't it but it's an idea that has very, very strong physical evidence. This little video is focused on selling his book so it's short and punchy but if you want more detail on the topics mentioned check out the original talk that spawned the idea for the project in the first place here.

Like most things in nature reality as revealed by scientific enquiry is much weirder than our parochial intuition suggests, in fact our intuitions on most things are usually wrong as they are in this example. So, next time you find yourself thinking about the origins of our Universe and the question "why is there something rather than nothing" comes up you can suggest the (real) answer, as it turns out is that it's because nothing is highly unstable.

Bachmann turned over and drives

2012-01-04T17:57:00.001Z

It looks like Michele Bachmann, US Republican presidential candidate has quit her campaign. This is good news for secular and liberal people the world over, Bachmann was an anti-science, pro-Christian evangelist barbie-doll of the right wing a member of the notoriously unreasonable "tea-party". She believes things like earthquakes and hurricanes are messages from (her) God and that evolution never happened. Amazingly she calls herself a politician in touch with the needs of the people and yet holds anti-vaxer, climate change denial and anti-gay views an almost perfect right wing fundamentalist loony CV, good riddance to her, just the guy with the magic underpants, the womanising bigot, a piece of arse froth, a creationist cowboy and the really old bloke to go now.

Holiday wines

2011-12-28T15:54:00.001Z

For a change here's a post about wine, not that we drink much these days, work and kids kind of curtailed this hobby several years ago but once a year the Christmas holiday (+lack of early mornings) present a great opportunity to crack open a few bottles and remember why appreciating wine is such an ethereal, diverse and social pastime.

On Christmas day I opened something from the Southern Rhone, red, rich, warm and flavoursome, a bit like the climate there. It was a 2007 Coudoulet de Beaucastel, the less famous sibling of the world renown Château de Beaucastel but about a quarter of the price (£10-15). Unfortunately the wine was corked, not too badly but the tell tail odours of green vegetables and cardboard were obvious. Some people reckon that if you stuff a plastic bag into the wine for a few minutes that this removes the taint (not sure about the Chemistry of this?) I tried it and it did seem to make a difference, it made the wine drinkable but not as nice as a good bottle would have been.

Boxing day we had a treat over at my parents house, a 1999 Sassicaia from Italy, this is a famous wine often referred to as a "Super Tuscan" belongs to a group of wines made from atypical grape varieties in Tuscany, where usually wines are made from the Sangiovese grape. Super Tuscan wines tend to use grapes more common to Bordeaux in France like Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, they caused a stir when they first appeared in the 70s but are part of the landscape now, often commanding very high prices. This example was really fine, inky red, smelling of tobacco, vanilla and dark fruits it took a while to come round but was a delight to drink with lunch, a memorable wine at it's peak.

Last night I opened a bottle (2002 Domain Courbis, La Sabarotte) from the Northern Rhone (France) and a small region called Cornas; grapes have been grown here since Roman times and it's the spiritual home of the Syrah grape (red), the same grape that found it's way to the new world (Australia) where it's known as Shiraz. The expression of Syrah in the Rhone is very different from the ozzy versions, more subtle, often more complex and perhaps less "obvious", lighter fruits, raspberries & redcurrants and a fabulous liquorice finish very enjoyable with a midnight supper of cheese and crackers.

Tonight I'm thinking we might switch to white since a traditional turkey curry is on the menu something flavoursome from South Africa or New Zealand perhaps, more to follow.

Christmas day!

2011-12-25T20:16:00.001Z

So here we are, Christmas day, the high point of our calorie calendars. As I write this my sprouts and tatters are still digesting, my guests have just left and a pleasant quiet has descended over the house, ahhh...

Of course these days it's not just food and material things we should concern ourselves with, I read that the Archbishop of Canterbury reminded everyone (although I'm not sure who asked for his opinion?) that our society could be in trouble "bonds have been broken, trust abused and lost." ; what with rioters in the Summer and financial greed in the City we're probably all doomed, as we usually are unless we believe some Bronze age mythology or other. Of course a bit of social tribulation is always good for the Church, it means that clergy get to state the bleeding obvious and make it sound like wisdom, is his inference that he *should* be trusted?. Of course, the Catholic church has blown the "trust" scam, and bent politicians trump bent financiers any day of the week. Williams chose not to mention these two other groups who have abused trust and screwed people over in recent times, but then how can we trust Bishops not to have their own political agendas, scepticism sounds like a pretty sensible course to me.

Well, how was your Christmas day? I must say mine was quite hectic but everything worked out OK, the lunch wasn't burnt, the presents well received and everyone is still talking to each other, a success by any measure.

Friday joke

2011-12-23T11:52:00.000Z

For Christmas a dad buys a lie detector robot that slaps people when they lie and decides to test it at dinner.

"Son, where were you today?"
The son says "at school Dad."
Robot slaps the son!
"Ok, I watched a DVD at my friends house!" the son says.
"What DVD?" asks the father.
"Toy story." Robot slaps the son again!
"Ok, it was a porno" cries the son.
"What!? When I was your age I didn't know what porn was" says the dad.
Robot slaps the dad!
Mum laughs: "Ha Ha Ha! He's certainly your son."
Robot slaps the mum!

Awkward Silence.........

Dear leader

2011-12-23T09:43:00.001Z

I couldn't let the "passing" of Kim Jung Il pass without commenting on how personality cults mirror religious infatuations in so many ways that even the most sceptical observer cannot but draw parallels.

Now that the old codger is dead there have been many strange natural phenomenon noticed in North Korea, apparently a strange "glow" was seen around a particularly revered mountain and the ice on a famous lake cracked (wow cracking ice, who'd have thought it!) I can imagine it's only a matter of time before someone sees him ascending into the sky on a white horse or wondering around the streets of Pyongyang in a white robe. Whilst he was alive he managed to maintain a web of mythology around himself that seemed hard for any outsiders to penetrate, to the extent that he was reported to have supernatural powers that enabled him to control the weather, whilst his birth (in a secret log cabin) was accompanied by a double rainbow. No virgins involved in this instance, although he was rumoured never to defecate which is equally biologically unlikely, although he was by all accounts certainly full of it.

Somewhat predictably he seemed to have a very needy personality, I guess being brought up in the environment he was with the role models he had this isn't exactly a surprise; having injured himself once falling off a horse he became so paranoid about becoming addicted to pain killers that he forced several of his aides to take them as well so that he wouldn't become addicted alone. On a more amusing note the vainglorious official titles he gave himself were just a hoot, "Glorious General who descended from heaven" and "Dear leader who is a perfect incarnation of the appearance that a leader should have" are just two examples from over 50. How could he possibly fail to impress with handles like that, although signing into his email must have taken a while.

Of course all this could be lies and rumour spread by the CIA, he might really have been a nice bloke who wore a cardigan and smoked a pipe, although judging by the media coverage coming out of that country that would seem a stretch. Still, the end of his era has arrived, all we can hope is that the good people of North Korea find their own voices in the coming months and years, I'm sure they have lots to say.

Watch it before its banned..

2011-12-22T22:41:00.003Z

Tim Minchin doing what he does best, singing silly (but serious) songs that poke fun at religion adding a little rational balance to a largely superstitious world. Apparently the brass at ITV are jumping up and down trying desperately to suppress this, even more reason to spread it around then!!

Symbolic of the season

2011-12-22T11:41:00.000Z

Its ironic that one of the pagan icons of this season is also parasitic.

RIP Hitch

2011-12-16T09:09:00.000Z

Christopher Hitchens reached his exit junction on the highway of life yesterday, with infuriating inevitability cancer finally extinguished his conciousness and in his own words he "had to leave the party". He died aged 62 in hospital in Texas, hopefully comfortably but far to early for his time. I will feel sad today, even though I never knew him I will miss him. I always found his articles and books superbly written and coherent, as a speaker he could be inspirational and even if I didn't agree on every detail or understand every subtlety I always found him intelligent, funny and provocative, never boring, never wishy washy.

Hitch was a man who contributed a brick or two to my own crumbling edifice of self, donated via his thoughts and through his words and until my own turn-off arrives, I'll always be grateful for that.

Cardinal Sin

2011-12-15T12:15:00.000Z

This image caught my eye today, it's a sculpture called "Cardinal Sin" by that almost mythical urban/street artist Banksy; it depicts some kind of Catholic clergyman with his face sawn off and replaced by bathroom tiles which gives the impression of one of those pixelated images of suspected criminals that you see on the news.

The message of the work is a response to the ongoing child abuse scandal within the Catholic church, a topic which should never be far from the news, Christmas or not. I've no idea what side of the religion debate Banksy bats for but I reckon he isn't a big fan of them, in a comment made when the statue was presented he said,

"The statue? I guess you could call it a Christmas present. At this time of year it's easy to forget the true meaning of Christianity - the lies, the corruption, the abuse."

Yo ho ho..

Cosmic irony?

2011-12-12T21:30:00.001Z

It was my birthday back in October and my family, knowing what a sucker for a good scientific/factual read I am decided that a good present would be a subscription to the National Geographic magazine, a completely splendid idea it was too, and I was thrilled and grateful to receive it.

The first of my subscription plopped onto our doormat a week or so ago, I opened it with great anticipation only to discover that the leading "front cover" story, in my first edition was titled "The King James Bible". Cosmic irony? Actually it was an article about the making of the 1611 book, it's origins and some of its history. Quite interesting as it turned out, a work of undeniable beauty in its use of the English language, typography and phraseology but used throughout much of it's life to terrify the weak and still revered today in places where a sense of continuity with the past seems important, a legacy of ambivalence you could say.

Now you see it...

2011-12-12T11:37:00.000Z

Interesting news from the LHC this week, it seems like there may have been a "glimpse" of the Higgs boson, aka "the God particle" in the popular press. The team there is saying that there isn't enough data yet to be sure but it looks promising, more experiments are scheduled to be run in the new year which will help to confirm the results thus far.

If confirmed this would be a breathtaking discovery, it means the universe is simple at it's heart and the fact that we can actually understand it is a great testament to the method and to the scientific giants of the past upon whose broad shoulders we all stand.

Healthy supplements

2011-12-09T10:28:00.001Z

The Christmas issue of the New Statesman will be guest edited by Richard Dawkins this year. He's assembled an impressive list of contributors from the corridors of science, business, literature, political commentary and medicine, people like Bill Gates, Alan Ryan, Philip Pullman, Tim Minchin and Christopher Hitchens. Hopefully there will also be room in the 100 page special issue for contributions from gnu atheist regulars like Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett too.

Let's hope that there's lots of stuff about Nazi's, atheists eating babies and burning vicars at the stake and compulsory genetic modification of post modernists, all of which any spiritual person knows Dawkins supports; the last thing we want is to read something that challenges what we believe or (perish the thought) learn something new about our world.

Stuff people believe

2011-12-08T14:37:00.002Z

If you must to have faith, then have faith in evidence and reason.

Steady as she goes

2011-12-07T16:25:00.002Z

Interesting result in the latest survey into British social attitudes, it found that 50% of the respondents identified with the "no religion" category.

In addition to the overall groupings it also found that only 14% of people regularly (weekly) attend a religious service. It's all evidence that helps when debating with screechy religious types (like here and here) who feign offence at any suggestion of reducing state funded religious privilege or that the laws of the land should apply to them as well, and who bleat out the line that "Britain is a Christian country", well, not so much it would seem.

In-group, out-group, same old, same old..

2011-12-06T10:02:00.001Z

Here is an interesting study done by the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, it looked at trust between people of different stripes over the course of six studies using 350 adults and 470 students. The investigation concluded that religious people distrust Atheists more than people of other (competing) religions and the only group they distrusted more was rapists.

This bears out something I think atheists have realised for a long time, i.e. that religion is mostly about group solidarity and very little to do with common sense. I would go as far to suggest that it's very sad reflection on the morality of some people that they more readily adhere to abstract groupings based on flimsy and variable imaginings and ancient literature, whereas they completely disregard the more obvious and real collective, i.e. basic human solidarity here and now!

The other side effect of this in-group/out-group phenomenon as indicated by this study is that religious people actually believe those of us who are more likely to cheat, steal or harm can be better identified by virtue of their opinions of a couple of specific Bronze age myths. Anyone with half a brain of course knows this is complete bunk, good people do good things and bad people do bad things and every fibre of our experience should tell us that's what we really see happening around us.

Wrong sort of people..

2011-12-04T11:24:00.000Z

There is some kind of strange cosmic symmetry going on here..

Driven to distraction

2011-12-03T17:24:00.001Z

I couldn't help notice this loony tunes story on the BBC news wire today, it's from the superstitious heart of Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia. Some cleric is warning that letting Women drive will be the end of virginity, in a report produced on the subject there are graphic warnings that letting women drive would increase prostitution, pornography, homosexuality and divorce. Now he may have a point about the divorce thing, especially when it comes to asking directions, but how lesbianism and driving are linked is baffling (must be something about leather seats?)

There are many Women in that country who are willing to openly flout rules on driving and other more substantive equality issues, hopefully totally bonkers responses by the religious leaders like this will help to crystallise their naked misogyny and bronze age thinking, causing more people there to move away from that religion or at least reform it.

Eminently quotable

2011-11-30T21:34:00.001Z

I notice on Google today that it's Mark Twain's 176th birthday; coincidentally I'm reading his autobiography at the moment and interesting it is too. Twain is famous for books like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn but also his satirical quotes, many poking fun at religion, I don't know if he was an Atheist but one of my favourites is "Faith is believing what you know ain't so", from what I have read so far he was certainly a free thinker.

Here are a few more quotes that caught my eye.

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
All generalizations are false, including this one.
But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination.
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.
I cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except toward the things which were sacred to other people.
The history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.
The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what there is of it.
Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion--several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbour as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven....The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.
Religion consists in a set of things which the average man thinks he believes, and wishes he was certain.
So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel: "Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbour's religion is." Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code.

Educational bits and bytes

2011-11-30T10:34:00.002Z

I read with pleasure today that the Government seems to be finally waking up to the realisation that you can't actually operate a modern country inhabited only by people who studied politics, classics or media studies. You need a few people that can create stuff! The skills shortage in this country for talented computer scientists and programmers is chronic. I run my own software business and I'm looking for people all the time, I might realistically see 2 or 3 really good CV's per year and whilst the rest aren't necessarily bad they often need a lot of investment before becoming fully productive and even then, most aren't tuned into what you need to be an "innovator".

Education in information technology these days seems to be limited to something called "ICT" which to me looks confined to learning how to operate computer software (mostly MS Office) that other people create rather than learning to create it for yourself. For those not au fait with all this stuff the closest analogy I can think of is that it's like teaching English by instructing children in reading but not writing. Of course no one would seriously create their own word processing software on a whim just because they need to compose an email, just as it's true that not everyone is a William Shakespeare, but I believe the real challenge for us is not so much an operational one, it's about innovation.

Software is at the heart of most things these days, most of it invisible and unseen, but over the last 20 years it has gradually crept in unnoticed. Everyday items like cars, washing machines, phones, TV's all contains tons of it and more and more we live big parts of our private and working lives in the virtual world of the internet using tools like email, business systems, social networking applications and consuming music, books, films etc.. If we lose the skills required to author original software then we lose the ability to fully compete in the market for most new products and services because most things have software in them! Sure, we can "outsource" but since software is so fundamental to most things (it's not like a paint-job) then over time we simply become a workforce of managers and accountants shuffling foreign resources around in applications written by Indians and Bulgarians. I have a couple of concerns with this approach, firstly it's no fun! where is the job satisfaction? and secondly what happens when the people who control the means of production decide that they'd prefer to manage themselves or want to take a bigger slice of the action, what leverage will we have?

I think it's a great idea that we teach kids how to write software, not just software of course, we need to teach them to build models, write stories, paint pictures and tinker with engines, this is the essence of innovation, not just in the field of computer science but in every field! Whilst consumption can be very satisfying, I for one certainly don't want to just "consume" and whilst obviously innovation and invention isn't for everyone, unless we allow kids to try it they'll never know.

Pictures painting words

2011-11-29T12:00:00.000Z

I like this, it sums up what I think most of us "new atheists" (for want of a better label) feel about why we talk about religion in our society, it's first and foremost a reaction to what we see and what we're fed up with.

Think about the trees

2011-11-25T22:05:00.000Z

I read with utter dismay today that the Prime Minister is planning to send a King James Bible to every school in the country, complete with a foreword by Michael Gove, the Education Minister. According to Mr Gove the King James Bible was the most important book written in the English language. “It‘s a thing of beauty, and it‘s also an incredibly important historical artefact. It has helped shape and define the English language and is one of the keystones of our shared culture" Gove says.

Firstly the key word here is "was", secondly I do believe that in years gone by this "Bronze age middle eastern culture" was mostly rammed down the throats of people at the point of something lethal or under threat of torture or death, "beauty" in this case most certainly only applies to the syntax. I would be the first to acknowledge that this book is absolutely part of our shared English heritage but no more so than Chaucer, Shakespeare, Locke, Bacon, Bronte, Dickens, Orwell, Pratchett and Adams et al, the list is very large, you could say we are fortunate to have an embarrassment of renowned works to choose from here in England. It seems strange to me that this particular book was chosen above all that could have been selected. I'm surprised because it strikes me that schools these days (or at least the ones I visit) are awash with Bibles, put there by people so obviously eager to exploit the malleability of young children and these books are cherry picked and "interpreted" ruthlessly by those with investments in them. This couldn't possibly be a Tory scam to scrape up a few extra votes from "middle England" could it? Lets hope that Mr Gove proves me wrong by spending a few (more) quid of our money on something of broader relevance to a modern, multicultural and general education, a few text books perhaps.

Stuff people believe

2011-11-22T09:15:00.001Z

For more see here

Getting the message

2011-11-21T16:56:00.000Z

I'm liking this story on the BBC today accusing the Mail on Sunday of hacking people's mobile phone messaging systems. I have a personal axe to grind regarding the corrupt nepotism that passes for journalism at that particular news paper group. As we have seen with the Dowler case it's shocking that ordinary people as well as film stars can suffer extreme levels of distress and expense purely to further line the pockets of newspaper companies. My only concern is that Hugh Grant probably isn't the best material witness in the world, after all the revelations about his "colourful" lifestyle choices I suspect that a lot of people will view his testimony with some scepticism.

Hopefully our ~~gutter~~ "free" press will now consume itself in a feeding frenzy of disclosure about what they really get up to, I'm not holding my breath though.

One for geeks

2011-11-16T22:49:00.000Z

Here's a little something for the geeks in the audience, anyone that's had to serve penance for unspeakable abominations committed in another life by developing software to run in lots of different browsers will know what I'm on about.

On the lash (well it is Friday!)

2011-11-11T15:14:00.000Z

A couple of stories caught my attention today some of our Muslim cousins have been causing a stir again over some cartoons published in a French magazine. The cartoon (see below) apparently shows Mohammed saying "100 lashes if you don’t die laughing" although how you can tell its actually him is a mystery to me, its a cartoon after all not a caricature. Predictably the usual "you aren't allowed to criticise religion" brigade have been ranting about the inappropriateness of the drawing but also predictably have been less vocal about the retaliatory fire bombing of the offices of the publication. If you ever wondered why certain religions spread more widely than others then look no further, it's got nothing to do with the veracity of the mythology of course, but everything to do with the last man standing.

In the interests of balance, I also read that the Islamic government in Iran are planning to give actual lashes to two football players because one of them pinched the other's butt in a goal celebration which happened to be caught on national TV (see below). In Iran this apparently is a crime against chastity, clearly they completely missed the crime of impeding the goal keeper perpetrated by the blue number 5, a much more serious crime around these parts.

Coldplay leaves me a bit chilly..

2011-11-09T09:32:00.001Z

I bought the latest Coldplay CD (Mylo Xyloto) the other day, no doubt it will sell a gazillion copies and to be honest it's not bad but what's my overriding feeling after a dozen or so listens?

PREDICTABLE!

The songs seem to follow a consistent pattern,

1. quiet intro
2. twiddly bit sound effect (mandolin, digital sample etc.)
3. verse featuring religious reference (probably adds gravitas for some, sounds lame to me)
4. re-peat, re-peat, re-peat a catchy word
5. la la la wo wo wo (full orchestra sing-along bit)
6. goto 3, 3 times
7. fade

Don't get me wrong it's a good pop music and I guess if it ain't broke don't fix it, but maybe a little experimentation might lead to something a little more compelling, a collaboration with Metallica perhaps?

Confusion among clergy

2011-11-07T10:42:00.000Z

Here's one of those caption competition games that you see at the end of quiz shows, in this example the caption is, "Catholic clergy remain confused about proper condom usage" - well, I thought it was funny...

Birds eye view

2011-11-02T18:14:00.000Z

Now here's a cool video, its about a paraglider hitting two vultures in flight over the Himalayas (watch closely at around 0.32) Paragliding is a sport which I used to do lots BCE (before children era), it's great when everything goes OK (which is most of the time) but I think an incident like this would certainly put me off for a bit!

Thank goodness for reserve parachutes!

(No vultures or pilots were harmed during the making of this film, only shaken up a significantly!)

Them's fighting words

2011-11-02T09:16:00.004Z

On October the 18th 2011 at a Republican Presidential debate in Las Vegas, USA Newt Gingrich let his kimono slip open ever so slightly for everyone to see the ugly reality lurking beneath. He directly attacked the integrity and honesty 50 or 60 million Americans simply because they don't believe in ancient myths, here's what he said,

“Does faith matter? Absolutely,” Gingrich said. “How can you have judgment if you have no faith? How can I trust you with power if you don’t pray?” He continued, “the notion that you are endowed by your creator sets a certain boundary of what we mean by America.”

Gingrich also said that Americans should value religion first, above morality and knowledge; I can't think of a more vile and totalitarian philosophy. Being kind about it, this is delusional nonsense, being rational though, this is pure evil and coming from a man with less than ideal moral attributes. For example he has been married 3 times, is a serial womaniser and has had documented affairs whilst his wife at the time lay seriously ill. He has the dubious honour of being the only speaker of the House who has been disciplined for ethics violations and unsurprisingly makes a living by scamming people into handing over money for "fake" entrepreneur awards. (see video below)

It sounds to me like American secularists have a fight on their hands.

Damned if you do...

2011-10-31T15:41:00.000Z

I see in the news today that the Dean of St. Paul's is to resign his position after the row over the last couple of weeks about the removal (or otherwise) of protesters outside the Cathedral. I'm not really qualified to talk about the politics of employees of that particular organisation or the individuals concerned, but it did strike me as an interesting situation with respect to the idea that Britain is a secular country (or not). Clearly the Church, or at least some members of it are in a position where their ethics may well be at odds with their organisation's legal standing; essentially the Church needs to decide whether it's inside or outside the establishment.

Of course any religion in a properly secular and tolerant country would not have this problem; the members of that organisation would be free to support any legal position and truly follow their conscience, to me the Church of England in this case seems to be suffering from a case of wanting their cake and eating it. Their political privilege and proximity to power is clearly intoxicating (and useful) for them but by accepting the "King's shilling", members shouldn't really feel surprised when their independence is compromised.

Friday smirk

2011-10-28T16:24:00.000+01:00

Incisive from xkcd as usual, anyone who has filled in a WEB form will understand this...

More of this please..

2011-10-27T21:45:00.000+01:00

This is Sally Morgan, psychic superstar, TV star and confidante to Princess Diana (apparently!) - at this point you may be wondering why the title of this post asks for more, more psychic'ness? No, I want more of this!

A group of sceptics including Simon Singh and James Randy have challenged Sally to prove her psychic abilities beyond doubt in a specially organised test in Liverpool on Halloween. The test was arranged after one particular show Sally did in Dublin last month where audience members apparently heard someone at the back of the stage passing information to her via a radio link (this is an old trick).

I wonder if she will rise to the challenge? as TV magician Derren Brown points out,

"It's a great way of anyone making amazing claims to show that they hold up and are not just a result of trickery or self-deception. The test should be both scientifically rigorous and yet fair to the psychic: it would show, if the psychic is successful, that what he or she does is real"

Somehow I doubt she'll show, but if she does my own psychic powers predict a sudden and unexplained non-appearance of her psychic powers, we shall see.

Smile ... it's not Monday!

2011-10-25T13:51:00.002+01:00

New rapture?

2011-10-21T15:44:00.000+01:00

So, Harold Camping has predicted (again) that today is the day when the Christian faithful will be swept up to join Christ in his eternal dominion, leaving the heathen hordes (that's you, and me) to do battle with Satan and his host, condemned to become food for the crows that will scour a godless and forsaken land?

So, does this mean that God will also take all the fuel, food and ammo? will all those right wing Christians in America demand the right to pack automatic weaponry in Heaven? Seems unlikely so I'm not sure why the forsaken people left behind can't just re-organise society without that particular God and just carry on as normal, shooting the crows (or indeed any Corvidae) that dares to take Alfred Hitchcock too seriously. I suppose that for some of us infidels Camping's prediction will be uncomfortably literal, Col. Gaddaffi for example seems to have timed his demise to fit in with Yahweh's plan quite nicely!

Another one bites the dust

2011-10-20T21:23:00.000+01:00

We hear today that the last dictator (with God on his side) of the 60s has been killed. From the video I watched of his last moments it would appear that it was not a dignified death, that's a shame, it denies all those families who suffered under him a chance for their story to be told in a court of law and to participate in a justice process, however it was an understandable conclusion to 40 years of tyranny. As for the other bloke in this photo, he has God on his side too, I can't help but think it means as just much in his case as it did in Gaddaffi's.

How low can you go?

2011-10-19T14:25:00.000+01:00

So, I read that the Catholic Church is in trouble again for making judgements about people's character and morality without their consent and essentially if they didn't pass then lie to them and steal their new born babies to sell. The latest scandal centres on baby-trafficking by Church, government officials and clinics in Spain over several decades. As many as 300,000 babies may have been the victims of a practise that saw infants taken from “morally or economically deficit” parents and sold to couples deemed more acceptable.

Come on folks, what does it take to reach the point where it's clear to everyone that this is a morally bankrupt and fundamentally flawed organisation that has no privileged position with regard to morality and certainly no special place legally in any society especially the ones where it has a majority following. Seriously, does the Pope have to set up a snipers rifle in St. Peter's square and shoot disabled kids and kittens in the head before some government somewhere takes appropriate and just action against these parasites.

rm -r /usr/dennis/richie

2011-10-14T17:04:00.003+01:00

It is with sadness that I learnt today of the death of one of Computer Sciences iconic figures. Dennis Richie (seen in the photo wearing the stripy sweater) was pivotal in the development of two important elements of the modern computing landscape back in the 70s, the C programming language and the UNIX operating system.

Back in 1980, I remember endlessly studying the famous "white book", Kernighan & Richie's "The C programming language" in my first programming job, learning about curly brackets, null terminated strings, stacks, heaps and pointers (concepts programmers these days typically don't have to worry about!) Published in 1978, that book introduced something that is now part of our lingua-franca the idea of the "hello world" program, copied in pretty much every book and article about programming written ever since. The core of the UNIX operating system, that quintessential hackers paradise, was written in the C language and a lot of the utilities and shell environments also used C-like conventions. Not many people program in C these days it was largely superseded by it's object oriented descendent C++ however the legacy of Richie's work remains strong in millions of servers used by billions of people throughout the world and of course, in the memories of old hacks like me.

Binge thinking..

2011-10-12T11:05:00.001+01:00

Here is Christopher Hitchens at a recent free-thought conference in Texas receiving an award in recognition of his sterling contributions to the various causes of his non-believing "comrades". His acceptance speech is touching because it's obvious from the images that his cancer is advancing and he is dying, well I suppose technically we're all dying, but in his case he's leaving the party before he really should (and before the rest of us want him to!)

As many more serious thinkers than me have already said, we hope the best is yet to come.

Where were you..

2011-10-06T10:02:00.001+01:00

I heard Steve Jobs died this morning, he was an interesting individual, focused and driven; someone who always knew what they wanted and had the intelligence and skill to make it happen; one of the wealthiest men at the head of the wealthiest company of our era. I listened to him live in California once in conversation with some other industry people at a little venue in Palo Alto. When we got an occasional glimpse through the usual opaque layers of corporate happy talk, he did seem to have something about him.

I'm not really into deifying people (as you probably know) and I'm sure Jobs had his share of good and bad attributes just like any other person. I think he was an Atheist (rumoured) so he probably wouldn't appreciate it anyway, however I think it is worth reflecting that tens of millions of people will learn of his death on some device that he significantly helped to create and which has impacted their lives in tangible ways, that's quite an achievement.

Friday chuckle

2011-09-30T12:45:00.000+01:00

Found on b3ta.com

The magic of interaction

2011-09-28T10:06:00.000+01:00

Richard Dawkins has a new book out at the moment, it's called the "Magic of reality" and deals with scientific explanations for some of the "big" questions, like "what are we made of" and "how did we get here". The book is aimed at younger children (ideally I reckon about 10-14) but is actually easy for anyone to read and get something from (I did). The format of the book is consistent throughout, each question has it's own section and each section consists of one or more attempted explanations from mythology followed by the actual scientific explanation. So for example for the question "what is the Sun" we have myths about golden chariots flying across the sky and aboriginal fire gods culminating in the real explanation, i.e. that the Sun is a very hot ball of gas like all other stars of its kind in the universe, it works really well. As well as the book there is a more interactive iPad version which is the full text of the book plus some interactive games, movies and audio content; throughout both there are many colourful cartoon illustrations by Dave McKean.

In the interests of true scientific exploration I thought I would try the iPad application out on my own ~~lab rat~~ 10 year old, we sat and read through some of it in place of a bed time story last night, the reaction was really positive in fact we got into it so much that in no time it was 9pm (way past bed time!) A couple of things really grabbed our attention, firstly the humour, lots of laugh out loud moments, particularly around the fabulous illustrations (the porcupine wrestling with the beaver seemed to tickle a funny bone) and secondly the interactive features, it's one thing explaining about the wavelengths of light in words and pictures, but then to be given a virtual light bench that allows you to play with lenses, slits and prisms right there and then really solidifies the learning experience and helps capture imagination.

All in all a thoroughly recommended little educational app; suitable from about 10 upwards I'd say; some of the words used are what I would call "advanced" and perhaps not sufficiently familiar to children for them to comprehend fully on their own but with an adult assisting it's probably fine for even younger people.

Friday chuckle

2011-09-23T17:04:00.001+01:00

Stolen from xkcd.com and genetically modified for my own nefarious purposes wahhahaha

2000 years in one chart

2011-09-22T13:36:00.001+01:00

The Economist recently published a chart that claims to show "When history was made", their blurb goes on to explain that since people make history then the more people you have then the more history you make, so now that our population is 7 billion we're making more history now than we ever have before, I'm not sure its this simple but I'll run with it. On the chart they're showing economic output and years lived (which are %'s of the total), the scales are a little hazy and for example, they don't explain how they could possibly arrive at a figure for economic output for the 5th century, so it's not data that I would necessarily bank on, but I get the overall point.

So here's an interesting thought, since modern humans have been around for at least a couple of hundred thousand years how come it took us so long to master agriculture on the left hand side of this chart and yet once we invented flying it took us less than 100 years to reach the Moon on the right hand side. The rate of acquisition of knowledge is increasing dramatically; over 20% of the products and services made in the last 2 millennia were made in the last 10 years. Clearly the systems of government and cumulative nature of science have all contributed to this change in pace, for most of this period people were dogged by superstition, ruled by theocratic kings (some still are) and died young, but as we know, over time the old ways have evolved into more enlightened systems allowing some fortunate populations to truly thrive.

It's also clear that those populations left behind at the beginning of the industrial revolution are catching up fast, India, China, South America are all powering up the greasy pole to attain 1st world status, but with another few billion people living at this accelerated pace how long can it last? It's certainly a question that is beyond our ability to compute at the moment. I would like to be an optimist and believe that we'll just figure it out as we have in the past, but with side effects like over population, climate change and shortages of basic resources it would seem like something somewhere has to give.

RIP REM

2011-09-22T11:34:00.000+01:00

I'm a bit too old to properly remember the genesis of REM although I do distinctly remember sitting in my sisters student digs waiting for her to get ready prior to taking her out for dinner (she was glad of some free food as students always are) REM was blasting out of a boom box providing an audible canvas to the cacophony of hair driers and shrieks of pain as various brushes and pointy things probed places they shouldn't have. It was the first time I'd heard the group and it sounded really cool, I bought their then current album (Monster) the next day and I've followed them ever since.

Now they are breaking up, probably wise, quitting while you are ahead or in rock circles whilst you still have good liver function is always a good idea, lets face it they've probably made a fair bob or two. In celebration of the group and their music I think I might download some guitar tab and try to learn one of their tracks, the atheist anthem "losing my religion" seems appropriate, thanks REM!

Let there be light

2011-09-21T14:35:00.001+01:00

Here's something really awesome, the Southern lights as seen from space, kinda reminds me of all those sci-fi movies that featured green forcefields that pop up around the aliens to prevent us shooting at them, and I suppose that's exactly what our Earth's gravitational field and atmosphere is for us.

The light is produced when sub-atomic particles hurtling at us in the Solar wind actually penetrate our magnetic field and collide with molecules of Oxygen and Nitrogen in the upper atmosphere causing them to emit photons. The photons are essentially a release of packets of energy as the molecules (or parts of them) move up and down between different states of excitement.

Just to follow on my train of thought from the previous post, i.e. that some people seem to require mystery or "faith" in order to appreciate the universe. My own feeling is that the fact that we know all this about something as fleeting as an aurora doesn't make this natural phenomenon any less beautiful or luminous, it makes me appreciate it more.

Nail in the coffin of Atheism?

2011-09-21T14:02:00.003+01:00

OK, now I'm worried, could this be the beginning of the end for the new atheists?

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury was in public conversation with famous comedian (and Catholic) Frank Skinner last week and accepted that Atheism is "cool", and his organisation was finding it hard to compete with the "coolness" of science and rational thought. At which point a horrible realisation struck me, can anything that the Archbishop of Canterbury thinks is cool actually be cool?

On a more serious note, it was a good conversation, very telling in many ways, here are my take-away thoughts,

Rowan Williams is decently witty (if it was scripted then I withdraw that complement!)
Frank Skinner seems to have a simplistic view of religion, for example he earnestly used Pascal's wager as a reason that believers needed to convince non-believers.
Williams seemed to have a somewhat strange view of how publicity works, he said that because atheism was cool it meant that atheist books were cool and therefore there was an amplification effect. Whilst this is true, what he didn't acknowledge was that there has to be a catalyst for anything to become popular to begin with; for new atheists that is usually things like 9/11, the Catholic child-rape scandal and creationism/fundamentalism, plus the fact that as we learn more about the universe the religious stories become less and less compelling and therefore disbelieved.
The conversation was basically an affirmation of faith, faith seemed to be the most important thing, whether or not the argument for the basis of it was good or not. This of course goes to the core of the difference between believers and non-believers, lack of evidence defines faith, the flakier the story the more faith you need to believe it so if you admire "faith" then you will naturally seek out the most unlikely things to believe in (or not!)

Social workers

2011-09-21T11:09:00.000+01:00

I see that Google+ has opened it's doors to the great unwashed recently; for those who haven't heard of it Google+ is essentially Google's answer to Facebook, a social networking application aimed at providing social object* sharing capabilities to people.

The conceptual model underpinning Google+ is superior to that of Facebook IMO, its' more obvious what's going on and much easier to use; Google's engineers have clearly incorporated a lot of learning from existing products and their own failed first attempt "Orkut" (although oddly that's still popular in Brasil?). It will be interesting to see if the features of this new offering will be sufficiently better to entice people away from Facebook where millions already have established networks and repositories of content in place. Whatever the software does I suspect it won't get very far unless the boys from Mountain View make it as simple as pie to suck all your Facebook junk into Google+.

*Social objects are things that people want to interact with each other around, for example photographs or film clips etc.

Only science in science classes please.

2011-09-19T16:18:00.002+01:00

I fully support the recent initiative by various secular organisations and leading scientists to go on the offensive regarding various religious groups trying to slip creationism into science classes in our publicly funded schools. For anyone who values education and frankly, honesty, a robust response is clearly needed; the people that advocate the teaching of creationism or intelligent design as science seem determined to use every means at their disposal including deception to meet their anti-science goals.

A campaign to oppose such moves aimed at lobbying the Government now has a web-site and many leading scientists are already signed up. Their positioning statement reads as follows:

"Creationism and ‘intelligent design’ are not scientific theories, but they are portrayed as scientific theories by some religious fundamentalists who attempt to have their views promoted in publicly-funded schools. There should be enforceable statutory guidance that they may not be presented as scientific theories in any publicly-funded school of whatever type.

But this is not enough. An understanding of evolution is central to understanding all aspects of biology. The teaching of evolution should be included at both primary and secondary levels in the National Curriculum and in all schools."

I also agree that evolution should be taught much earlier within the academic careers of children, it is incredible that such a foundational scientific concept, one that pretty much explains the rest of Biology is not even broached until secondary school.

Going, going....

2011-09-16T12:40:00.002+01:00

Here's a scary picture...

It shows the amount of ice present in the Arctic at it's minimum position (i.e. at the height of the Summer melt), which occurred more or less yesterday September 15th. The orange line shows the average position of the ice at exactly the same point between 1979 and 2000, clearly there is a lot less ice now than there was in the past, in fact you can see that the whole UK would fit comfortably into the gaps several times over.

I hope this won't all end in tears, but fear it will.

Software industry legend

2011-09-16T10:37:00.001+01:00

I was up in town yesterday and talking to various people about my company and what we are doing; one of the people I met was a chap called Bernard Liautaud, for those readers not in the software business you can probably stop reading now; but those who are will probably know of Bernard as he is somewhat of a celebrity in our industry. 27 year old Frenchman Liautaud started a company called Business Objects back in the halcyon days of the early 90s when relational databases were first becoming main stream, the tyrannosaurs of Oracle, Sybase, Ingres and Rdb roamed the surface of the planet and Facebook wasn't even a glimmer in 6 year old Mark Zuckerberg's eye.

Business Objects was always going to be one of those disruptive products, it aimed to wrestle the job of creating management reports out of the quagmire of the IT backlog and squarely into the hands of business people, it never fully succeeded in doing that but it was good enough to spawn a multi-billion dollar company and helped to create a brand new software industry segment, one that still thrives today. In addition to technical innovation Business Objects became the first French company to list on the NASDAQ, successfully making the transition to the USA that so many European companies find so difficult. During those years I worked for the main competitor of Business Objects, a Canadian company called Cognos, we were bitter commercial rivals but we all had a deep respect for the company Bernard was building, they kicked our butts on many occasions.

In 2007 software giant SAP acquired Business Objects for $7 Billion, and later IBM acquired Cognos for $5 Billion an era had ended, the raw human energy and individuality of those early years was dissipated into the amorphous mass of the mega-corporations.

Searching for meaning...

2011-09-14T16:24:00.006+01:00

The technology space is littered with big ideas that never made it into the real world, especially ideas involving the internet and what people might want to use it for. Semantic search is one such "big idea" but I can't help thinking that the jury is still out on a) if it's really feasible and b) can it make money.

Semantic search companies aim to provide people with a mechanism to ask "real-world" questions and get sensible answers (ideally correct ones!) This is different from keyword based search (like Google) where words are typed in and the search engine returns a list of WEB pages that contain those words. A good illustration of the difference would be if you typed in the question "is pink married" into Google you'd get a selection of pages back regarding the colour pink, the pop-star pink and the subject of marriage but probably not a straightforward answer to your question. If you typed the same thing into a semantic search engine you (should) get the answer "yes" because the software has "understood" the context (meaning) of your question and has an underlying database of facts from which it can answer the question correctly.

One company that is trying to achieve this is a Cambridge based firm company called "True Knowledge", there are others, for example "wolfram alpha" and the mainstream players, like Google and Microsoft are also experimenting with semantic concepts in their search engines.

Out of interest I typed the following question into the true knowledge engine, "is Richard Dawkins religious", a resounding "yes" was the answer! 100% wrong but I can see how they might think that. Religion is probably a highly frequent term within documents that also mention "Richard Dawkins" but obviously the answer is completely wrong (in any meaningful sense, even though some apologists would like to bend the meaning of these words)

You can see the problem, in order to answer random questions phrased using human language requires so much more than facts, more often than not it requires actual life experience. This is a really vexing computer science problem, i.e. how do we get software to really understand us without us having to learn alien languages that computers can understand. The True Knowledge engine gets the question about pink being married correct (but then that is one of their stock examples), Wolfram Alpha doesn't clearly not recognising the fact that in the context of this particular question pink means the pop-star pink.

The second issue facing companies trying to solve this problem is how can it be monetised? Whilst it's easy to see how someone wanting to win a pub quiz could potentially use such technology what value is it outside of academic interest, or put another way who would pay for it? Google famously solved this problem with advertising and I suppose these new search engine companies could try the same thing, but that would seem difficult to me since there is such a momentum around keyword search; so how about businesses? Let's say I'm a sales person wanting to find out if the company True Knowledge is a suitable prospect for my product or service, that's intelligence I might consider paying for so a typical question would be "how many people work for true knowledge". I tried this in the true knowledge system, it couldn't answer the question, then I tried the same question in Wolfram Alpha and got the answer 3 million (it clearly misunderstood what I meant).

On both fronts of practicality and commercial value there is clearly still much work to be done.

It's a fair cop?

2011-09-13T14:00:00.000+01:00

Human rights lawyers and victims are to file a complaint to the International Court of Justice in the Hague recommending that the Pope be investigated for covering up the large-scale rape and sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests.

Whilst I can sympathise greatly with the desire for justice underpinning this move I can only conclude that it is doomed to failure. The simple fact of the matter is that the Catholic church have 2000 years of experience of putting things "outside" of the realm of worldly investigation, including themselves. It's highly unlikely that the ICC will have jurisdiction over the Vatican since they aren't one of the 117 countries around the world that signed up to the Rome statute (interestingly neither have the USA).

Even if unsuccessful, let's hope this action serves to keep this important topic fresh in people's minds, unlike Catholics I don't believe that crimes against humanity will be punished in the next life, I'd much prefer to see justice in this one.

Selective hearing

2011-09-12T13:29:00.001+01:00

I saw an intensely frustrating program over the weekend (in a slow motion car crash kind of way). It was called "Conspiracy road trip" and featured Irish stand up comic Andrew Maxwell taking five typical young British conspiracy believers on a road trip from New York to Washington in an attempt to debunk their various delusions regarding the 9/11 attacks in New York. In the program each conspiracy theorist presented their own personal account of what they thought happened that day and this was then debunked via the group being taken to meet various experts and eye-witnesses.

Of the 5 people involved in the program only 1 of them actually changed their mind, 2 of them became more entrenched and the others remained more or less on the fence. It was frustrating (for a rationalist like me) because these people were obviously decent people but went to extraordinary lengths in order to retain even the faintest grasp on their pet theories, despite being confronted with overwhelming physical evidence to the contrary. The similarities between the kind of obvious emotional investment needed to do that was so similar to the religious debates I have it was uncanny, lots of futile "seeking meaning" within meaningless "why" questions and blatant confirmation bias for the actual "how" answers easily provided by real life. I wanted to gaffer tape the mouths of these people whilst I read them Carl Sagan's "dragon in my garage" essay, but no doubt they wouldn't have seen themselves in it as I did.

There was one lady in particular, "Charlotte" who came across as an archetypal relativist, a triumph of self-confidence over ignorance and like some obnoxious contestant on "the apprentice" she became more and more entrenched the more reality and evidence pulled her delusions into focus. Her initial theory was that the whole event was stage managed by the US government because no one could fly a plane into a building with such little training, it sounds reasonable, but the program then picked one of the sceptics (who had no flying experience at all) and within an hour of training had her landing a real aircraft. Rather than addressing her error, Charlotte simply moved onto the next theory, claiming that the towers were toppled using "thermite" in a controlled demolition, a chemist then proceeded to demonstrate what thermite does to one inch thick steel beams, surprisingly, bugger all. After a series of similar refutations and several tantrums, Charlotte finished the program accusing all the participants of collusion with the Government, or was it the Illuminati, I forget, anyway, in her mind "feelings" trump reason and evidence, she is not alone in that view, the 9/11 hijackers had exactly the same perspective.

PS. In case you're wondering why I posted a picture of the surface of the Moon it's because a recent NASA probe has sent back some splendid high resolution pictures that show in some detail the detritus left behind by the various NASA Lunar missions, driving a final nail into the coffin of the plethora of Moon landing conspiracy theories out there - or not, if Charlotte is anything to go by.

Dem' bones...

2011-09-08T13:20:00.002+01:00

Spent a lovely weekend down in West Dorset/East Devon visiting some friends and went to the beach at Charmouth, and in a recent mud slide at the foot of a hill called Black Ven the kids and I found this, looks like a huge fossilised bone to me, it was too big to lift and we didn't want to hack at it so just had to leave it there... tantalising!

Pray kid, or else...

2011-09-06T11:38:00.002+01:00

I was listening to a random program on Radio Berkshire this morning about a recent survey of parents regarding compulsory prayer at school, many people probably don't realise that having a daily act of (Christian) worship in school is actually the law in England but the meat of the program was focused on the fact that most schools don't do it. Various arguments were aired for and against, and whether or not this law should be enforced. There's a reasonable summary of the story on the BBC news site.

Parents apparently have the right to withdraw their children if they wish and sixth formers can choose for themselves, however my view is that withdrawal of young children from a majority activity and the obvious stigma that would be associated with this is probably more harmful than just going along with it and simply teaching the child to think for themselves, evaluate the evidence and come to their own conclusions.

What I found encouraging about the program was that the pro-worship side had utterly dismal arguments, easily on a par with Piers Morgan, some of them are repeated in the on-line article, for example The Bishop of Oxford seems to think that forcing people to pray together makes a statement about cohesion, what nonsense, if you look up the word "divisiveness" in the dictionary it says "see religion". The solution seems obvious to me religion (or any similar cultural hobby) should not be a mandatory part of any state school timetable unless it's being taught comparatively to everyone, the law should be changed.

Piers Morgan argues for God, and fails.

2011-09-06T09:30:00.004+01:00

Famous Las Vegas magician and outspoken atheist Penn Jillette has a new book out, it's part autobiography and part a conversation about atheism, from what I've seen so far it looks like a reasonable read. At the moment Penn is doing the rounds of talk shows in the USA promoting this new book and last night I happened to catch him on the Piers Morgan show (see YouTube version here) I haven't been paying attention to Piers Morgan much lately, I had some vague notion that he was popular in the states but nothing more than that. I had no idea that he was such a moron, either that or he plays at being moronic very well indeed.

Take a look at the interview and see how many basic logical fallacies you can spot in his arguments against atheism, I spotted at least half a dozen (argumentum ad populum, non sequitur, straw man etc..). Morgan declared his hand almost immediately, i.e. that he was a believing Catholic and attempted to goad Jillette into a negative reaction by being aggressive, argumentative and talking over Jillette from the outset. Jillette on the other hand handled it really well, he remained calm and polite and simply neutralised Morgan's ridiculous arguments with "logic 101", although it was clear that Morgan didn't understand why his arguments were stupid. I like Jillette a lot more after seeing this, he's cool, as for Piers Morgan all I can say is I'm glad he's working in the USA and I don't have to listen to his idiotic views at home.

Looking back, and looking forward...

2011-09-05T17:44:00.006+01:00

It's a funny time of year for me, on the one hand it's my Son's 10th birthday so we're all very excited about that and on the other hand it's the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. These events are inextricably linked for me, if it weren't for his birth I would have almost certainly been in New York on that fateful day probably staying at the Marriott World Trade Centre (photograph above) or at the Millennium Hilton hotel (The thin black building in the foreground of the photograph below) - chances are I would have been physically OK since my habit was to go to the office on Wall St. early, long before the first plane struck the North Tower, but still, it's a sobering thought.

Of course there are plenty of documentaries and deconstructions going on in the media currently about these events and they are all interesting in their way, but for me they tend to focus far too much on the mechanics of what happened, the horror and the spectacle and not enough on the terrorists themselves and the bigger cultural picture. The best article I've seen on this is by Christopher Hitchens writing for Slate magazine. I agree with most of what he says which is backed up by my own experience; ask 10 people in the pub or office why Al-Qaida attacked America on 9/11 and you'll get 10 different answers, most of them far too complex to be credible and most avoiding what for me is the elephant in the room.

Hitchens sums up this evil organisation nicely by saying it's,

"a particularly odious group (a secretive and homicidal gang: part multinational corporation, part crime family) that was sworn to a medieval cult of death, a racist hatred of Jews, a religious frenzy against Hindus, Christians, Shia Muslims, and "unbelievers," and the restoration of a long-vanished and despotic empire."

What I like about this definition is that it isn't afraid to address that elephant in the room, Islam.

As we all know, correlation doesn't prove causation and so I wouldn't be so naive to blame Muslims for these specific attacks but the article goes on to point out why Islam is absolutely essential and central to the mechanisms that enabled these attacks and why the philosophy underpinning them will not prevail.

The key point for me about Al-Qaida and organisations like it is that, unlike the secular West, they have no mechanism for self criticism and correction, it's essentially a faith based organisation. Whilst Al-Qaida's motivations may be materialistic and/or political the rationalisation for their existence is only possible because of faith, without it you cannot rationalise such actions and goals, with it, anything is possible and you can convince intelligent, degree educated men to fly planes into buildings. Armed with faith it is entirely likely that short lived symbolic victories like 9/11 and 7/7 can be manufactured, but like all faith based philosophies from the Catholic Church, through Stalinism to Al-Qaida they are doomed to eventually implode because they cannot evolve effectively in any kind of time-scale that enables them to compete in an ever accelerating global marketplace of ideas.

Water, water everywhere

2011-08-31T14:02:00.001+01:00

Should homoeopathic remedies be available on the NHS?

Or, in other words are you happy for your tax revenue to fund the public provision of substances that are as close to pure water as pure water and given to people because they *might* be lucky enough to benefit from a placebo affect. Are you also willing to accept the risk that someone with a serious illness may be stupid enough to forego real medicine for water or a sugar pill, and therefore make their condition worse than it otherwise would have been?

Vote here..

What would Jesus bench press?

2011-08-30T15:15:00.002+01:00

Here's an interesting story, gentle Jesus meek and mild is no longer de-rigour in certain backwaters of Christianity, some Kentucky based followers of the gentle shepherd are looking for a much tougher "Chuck Norris, kick-ass" version, artist Stephen Sawyer has even illustrated some examples of him. There are also undertones of this macho desire for butch role models here in the UK, I was surprised to discover that there's such a thing as a "Christian men's magazine" featuring stories with titles like "No more Mr Nice guy!" (unfortunately no naughty page 3 nuns though)

No harm I guess, but you have to wonder what kind of subliminal thinking is at work here; are we non-Christians to think that creating the whole universe wasn't sufficiently impressive for these people and that more "muscle" is needed, do they honestly feel spiritually undernourished by such feats? For me a view of the stars on a clear night or the birth of a child fills me with quite enough awe to be going on with, surely these guys must realise it looks (psychologically) suspect for grown men to feel more secure knowing that their preferred deity is more like "the rock" than Stephen Fry? Anyway, I always thought that old testament style God of smiting and genocide illustrated the very worst of Human kind in their imaginings of what type of entity should fill the holes in our ego's or the gaps in knowledge of our universe.

Since we have practically no evidence for the existence of Jesus at all, certainly nothing independently corroborated, and many gaps and inconsistencies regarding his life story I suppose it's only natural for followers to fill those gaps with whatever they imagine to be heroic figures of the day. If we cherry pick the teachings accredited to the man then even a hardened atheist like me can see some value, but at best all I could conclude would be that I can see reasonable moral rules of thumb in (some of) the stories, but apparently, according to some of my Christian brothers, Jesus loves me, which makes things all a bit awkward... ;)

Libyan bellweathers

2011-08-23T17:27:00.001+01:00

It strikes me that if you want to know what's really going on in Libya then you need to listen to what the regime members are saying and assume the exact opposite is actually what's happening. I can't help thinking that there may be trouble ahead though, wounded animals and mad dictators are at their most dangerous when cornered.

Alt.Religious.Rants

2011-08-19T17:07:00.000+01:00

Passionate "religious" disputes come in all shapes and sizes and don't seem to need to have anything to do with religion. In the software business I come across them all the time, people have vested interests in particular technologies or methods and make all kinds of unsubstantiated claims and irrational attachments regarding the wondrous nature of their particular poster children. It seems to be common behaviour that exists at the intersection of human nature and a self preservation/promotion instinct, highly analogous to peoples cultural and religious beliefs in many ways since these are often arguments that may never be "won" (without AK47's), they hinge on perspective, personality, culture, upbringing, vested interests etc. all of those soft squidgy, subjective things that are often impervious to reality and evidence.

I experienced a classic case in point the other day around the omnipresent feud between PC and Mac fans, a debate with a (non-technical) colleague about the relative merits of these two computing platforms (from a business perspective) came to a head when he reeled off a list of what I assume he felt were knock out mac features in order to shut me up, this is what he said,

"It (i.e. the mac) just works"
"Macs don't get viruses"
"Macs are lighter, thinner and have longer battery life"
"Macs boot up quicker"

Much like when atheists debate with religious people, this chap didn't appreciate that just because a particular position is taken it doesn't mean the holder of that position has no experience of the other side. Quite often people who rely on PC's for business own mac's at home (as I do) and atheists who criticise religion were often raised within a faith system, it's always worth checking before attempting your coups de grace.

Mac's don't "just work", their software can be just as poor as poor software running on a PC, the bug count for office on the mac is just as big, if not bigger than office on the PC. All the main anti-virus vendors have products for the mac, just because people don't bother writing viruses for the mac doesn't mean they can't. My Dell laptop is lighter and thinner than a Macbook and my iMac takes longer to boot up than my PC and anyway this cartoon from xkcd.com sums up the future pointlessness of this debate quite nicely..

The obvious elephant in the room was that owning a Mac makes (some) people feel good, and therein lies their main motivation for buying one, the rest of the pseudo-science is mostly wrong or generalised beyond usefulness. I find the same thing with all religious debates, people really have a problem simply admitting that they can't justify their preference but it just makes them feel good, and that's all.

Cross about crosses

2011-08-17T13:43:00.000+01:00

Atheists are putting Christian’s noses seriously out of joint in New York. American Atheists, a non-profit group are objecting to steel girders arranged in the shape of a cross retrieved from the 9/11 rubble being housed in the new memorial museum, their logic being that since the museum is funded from public money this blatant religious symbol violates the US constitution as it relates to the separation of church and state. I can kind of see their point and we all know how Christian right wingers would react if say a Muslim or Jewish group wanted to place one of their symbols there instead (I’m sure plenty of crescent shaped bits of scrap metal could be dug up!) The stink created by the attempted positioning of an Islamic cultural centre near ground zero was plain for all to see, a positive feast of pots calling kettles rude names.

Christians must accept as a matter of fact and indeed history that people of all faiths and none perished in that attack equally without dignity or memorial, no single group should demand that they have a privileged position, particularly when the memorial is state funded. However, Atheists there should also seriously weigh up the pros and cons of such a move, in any campaign you have to choose your battles carefully and frankly this one will simply look arbitrary and mean spirited, a lose-lose scenario, they should drop it IMO, especially when there are much more worthy targets around. Like, for example, dominionist nutters Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann mixing religion and politics freely, bashing science and unbelievably running for the presidential office.

God found

2011-08-15T22:00:00.001+01:00

Its official, God has been found, he lives in Kenya and dresses like Mr Blobby...

This man is called Jehovah Wanyonyi, and yes, according to him that's the *actual* Jehovah, the one who created the universe, stars, light, planets, people and all of that. JW started his little sect back in the late 50s and you have to hand it to him has been totally consistent since, not changing his story one bit, he is God, he cures all illness and injury, he offers redemption and has 25 wives and 100 children (no doubt that trick with the loaves and the fishes comes in really handy!) The only blot on this otherwise sterling record is the fact that JW had to move rather hastily a few years back after people started noticing that his end of the world prophecies didn't happen and that followers still continued to die of stuff that everyone else did, in fact more perished needlessly because he prevented them going to hospital. JW was run out of town but incredibly pitched up somewhere else 100km away and resumed normal Deistic services to the present day.

There is one delicious twist of irony to this otherwise sad and exploitative story, a local Pastor, Joseph Tanui was asked what he thinks of Wanyonyi, he said,

“He is a liar, lazy and a conman who has taken advantage of the ignorance of our people to exploit them. He knows that he is not God and will never be one, but the poor have no choice other than to turn to whoever promises them miracles and heaven,”

You have to marvel at the self inoculative power of religion.

Irony r us

2011-08-10T15:52:00.001+01:00

In a stroke of sheer ironic genius the Iranian Government has issued a statement advising the British Government to exercise restraint in dealing with rioters and recommending that an independent human rights organisation be allowed to investigate the killing of Mark Duggan.

Just so we don't forget here's how Iran's theocratic and corrupt leaders deal with people protesting on their streets, to be clear not stealing and looting, just expressing their opinion. (Note it's a disturbing video, showing the end of someone's life, don't watch it if you're easily upset)

Its not just the Iranians jumping on the band wagon either, there are other countries that clearly have axes to grind,

The times of India are fretting about the Olympic games in a similar tone as UK papers did over the last Commonwealth games in Delhi, fair enough I suppose; if Seb Coe is convicted of corruption then they may have a good point, until then not so much.

Russian paper Pravda called the riots "divine justice", no more need be said about them.

China had a dig about Internet freedom in a kind of "told you so" way, a question of out of sight out of mind no doubt and a subject already covered on this blog.

I wait poised with satirical ill-intent for what our traditional European antagonists say, you all know who I mean my fellow anglais ;)

Analysis fatigue

2011-08-10T14:14:00.001+01:00

Like most people I was glued to the TV on Monday evening watching buildings burning in London feeling emotions of anger and concern and there was great anticipation last night that we would see similar scenes, but in the end it was an anticlimax. The massively increased police presence on the streets extinguished any idea people may have had for a repeat performance, adding weight to the argument of many that the rioting has mainly been about criminality and opportunism.

It's seems clear to me that the underlying reasons for this kind of behaviour are many and complex, there is no "one size fits all" regardless of what lilly livered lefties or frothing hard-liners are saying today. Several pieces of evidence make me think this, firstly there are a small number of people who may have a genuine grievance against the police, the shooting which happened last week and seemed to provide an ignition spark does have a very odd whiff about it and the sooner it can be properly investigated the better. Then we have evidence from the arrest records, many of the people actually collared were not from London at all, some had full-time jobs and some even degree educated, so much for an alienated and unemployed underclass. We also have to ask why some of the rioters were so young and I even read one report of a couple of kids who phoned their mum to come and pick them up at the end of a particularly busy looting session, she even helped them load the booty into the back of her car! Clearly some people need "acceptable behaviour for members of a social species" training (and no, not from a priest!) How can we make any sense of this, indeed should we expect to make any sense of it?

We've only had one calm night out of the last three (in London) and I'm already tired of the post riot "analysis" of these events in the media, the endless interviews with sociology professors from the peoples republic of Tower Hamlets correspondence university, chairmen of the police sub-committee on inappropriate footwear (retired) and Priests from our lady of perverted morality offering their opinions. I'm sure all these people are well meaning and are certainly entitled to their viewpoint, but attempting to tar so many people with a single brush seems doomed to failure to me. Blaming young people or black people or unemployed people or single parents or ill-educated people or immigrants or Government cuts or left wingers or Twitter simply doesn't cover it. Human beings can be born arseholes or made into arseholes and come from any walk of life, they can wear hoodies and steal trainers or suits & ties and wreck our economy. Crime and antisocial behaviour is a constant throughout history as I'm convinced is the proportion of arseholes in any given population. In big cities like London (where the density of arseholes is obviously higher) imbalances in the stasis are more noticeable but regardless, we need to make sure that any disincentives or punishments dished out are proportionate and followed through regardless of the postcode of the offender.

Solving social problems is notoriously difficult because people and societies are very complicated things, as has been seem many times in the past, social programs like marketing campaigns are usually only 50% effective, unfortunately nobody really knows which 50%.

Anti-social media..

2011-08-09T13:58:00.001+01:00

Many people are talking about the violence and crime in London and elsewhere last night, there's lots of speculation about the causes and the impact of it, I certainly have my views but thought I'd take a different tack. There was a lot of speculation last night that rioters were using "social media" to coordinate their criminal activities, to the extent that some commentators were actually blaming it.

I expect to see that kind of thing from hysterical right wing sources but such criminally simplistic reporting shouldn't be the norm on channels that are supposed to be balanced and researched, like the BBC for example. Blaming crime on the internet is akin to blaming world war one on the telegraph, or world war two on the radio, or the Vietnam war on TV, i.e. dumb! One wonders how insulted the police must feel about this speculation, the implication being that they are too stupid to read and use the same social media channels as the criminals, and indeed actually use them to pre-empt crime. It seems unlikely that monitoring such feeds with smart software that identifies potential risks would be beyond the resources and intelligence of the UK Government and its security services, then again on second thoughts....

Comfort zones

2011-08-05T13:02:00.000+01:00

I read this story on the BBC today about a Dutch cleric who runs a Protestant church in central Holland but is not actually a Christian. When you read his account of how that works he does what a lot of religious people do; in fact most I talk to do this to some extent they redefine the core concepts of religion like "God" to suit their own perception or situation. To the Rev Klaas Hendrikse "God" is just a word that means "Human experience", rather like the Deists of old (e.g. Hume, Paine, Jefferson, Einstein etc,) his is an Einsteinian view of "God", i.e. God is not an entity that exists or impacts on our lives it's just a word that means something beyond our complete comprehension or simply all encompassing like "God is nature" or "God is love"

I have some sympathy for this viewpoint it's useful to have labels for things that places them into some kind of intellectual comfort zone; after all there are plenty of things we don't understand and plenty of things that overwhelm our senses. Life is awesome and terrifying in many ways however looking at it rationally I don't really see that hijacking words so overloaded with meaning from history particularly adds much value, the process explains nothing. The Atheistic viewpoint seems to me to be more honest than the Deistic one, to simply admit, we don't know something rather than redefine words like "God" so that we make sure they're all being used for something seems pointless to me, if God is nature then why not just say "nature" and avoid all the confusion?

Perception is everything

2011-08-03T12:38:00.001+01:00

A strange thing happened to me yesterday, an accidental experiment in perception.

I'm really busy with work at the moment and I was working late last night. When I finally admitted defeat I looked at my watch and it read 10 to midnight, not too bad I thought. When I got upstairs I looked at my digital bedside clock and it read 1:50?. Now, because my wrist watch is unreliable, it keeps stopping, I automatically thought oh crap my watch has stopped again, it's two o'clock in the morning, I'm really tired and I'm only going to get 5 hours of low quality sleep since it's really hot and muggy at the moment! When I awoke at 7am I felt awful, just as I should have felt after a long day and only 5 hours of restless sleep.

As time passed this morning I discovered that it wasn't my watch that was wrong at all, it was the digital clock whose first digit is on the blink, it read 1:50 and it was actually 11:50! giving me a fairly normal 7 hours of sleep. Why did I feel so bad? I went to sleep thinking about how tired I was going to be when I woke up and my brain faithfully delivered on that, Human brains truly are powerful simulation engines, giving us false physical signals that seem totally real and probably chemically are real. This is especially true when we're given external confirmation bias into the bargain.

We all know who wears the trousers...

2011-08-02T20:22:00.001+01:00

In the most recent outbreak of that uniquely crippling mental illness CPS (Christian Persecution Syndrome) we learn of a midwife who refused to wear scrub trousers in an operating theatre claiming that it was against her religion. For those apologists who kid themselves that all those awkward Bible edicts are understood as outdated or allegorical by Christians, check out Deuteronomy 22:5 which Hannah Adewole cites specifically, she's reading it as I'm sure most of us would,

"The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God."

One of the other complaints allegedly made by this Christian lady is that Muslim midwives have special dispensations for this kind of thing (although, it is the Daily Mail so caution is advised when it comes to Muslims).

I must admit that as long as you think belief in Bronze age Palestinian mythology should be offered the same respect as scientific medical best practice then she is correct on two counts, her religious instruction book does indeed mandate what she says it does, and if special allowances are made for Muslims whose holy text is simply a plagiarised version of the same book then we have a totally unfair and nonsensical situation on our hands.

My view is a simple one, there are certain places and situations where a secular approach is the only fair and practical path, certainly religious people have a right to believe whatever they like but they should simply avoid jobs or roles where this is impossible for them.

Friday chuckle

2011-07-29T14:10:00.003+01:00

There we are, problem solved...

Trust me I'm a Bishop..

2011-07-28T21:10:00.000+01:00

Love this little story, televangelist billionaire Bishop Edir Macedo, head of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (a rather ambitious title if ever I heard one!) has instructed his 8 million followers to take a three week "secular media" fast, i.e. don't read the papers, watch TV or do Facebook for 3 weeks, apparently because it's good for their soul. What the good Bishop has neglected to mention in his communication is that this abstinence is likely to neatly correspond to a scandal involving him and his ~~money grabbing cult~~ church, just as his previous two "media fasts" have.

In a statement Macedo says,

"It will be a fast from each and every kind of secular information: TV, internet, newspapers, magazines, radios … from everything that is not Godly"

Also neglecting to remind readers that he personally owns the third biggest television network in Brazil.

It's hard for a rationalist like me to look at this story and not conclude that those 8 million people must be a bunch of feckless imbeciles were it not for the myriad dumb things that humans of all strokes get caught up in. If only we had a general rule of thumb we could follow to avoid being duped, conned and encouraged to be delusional... here's a thought, how about if we avoid believing things that have absolutely no evidence for them being true, ESPECIALLY when they require us to give cash to people that have a vested interest in us believing.

- too complicated?

Home sweet home

2011-07-26T10:43:00.000+01:00

Not many posts lately, been on holiday sans WiFi (a lot of the time) back home now and thinking about where to start, so much going on at the moment. We had a wonderful time in Canada (which is where I've been) on the Western Pacific coast (Vancouver/Vancouver Island) the place was beautiful but the weather not so great, the summer hadn't quite arrived yet but I can't complain too much everything else more than compensated for a bit of drizzle, in fact it was just like a typical English summer!

Back in sunny Berkshire now, the sky seems so much smaller, oh well there's always work to look forward to (sigh...)

PS. the little black bear in the picture was one of natural highlights of the trip, that part of the world has such impressive wildlife.

British airways

2011-07-15T00:01:00.003+01:00

I had the misfortune to travel British airways recently (long haul) and it was painful; the marketing encouraged me to check in on the WEB site, but upon visiting the site it wouldn't allow me to complete the process, claiming that certain passport information was missing (my passport number), then when I tried to enter that information the page just puked putting me into an endless loop (technically the page state was incorrectly set to update mode when I wasn't in update mode, i.e. it thought I was changing existing data when in fact I was entering new data, a corruption of view-state). Now I would be more sympathetic if I weren't a long standing 20+ year member of their executive club (where you pre-register all your passport details), and over the years have probably chalked up more than five hundred long haul flights with that particular airline.

This time I was travelling with my family and the default seat allocation had us all over the cabin, when I tried to change the seating on-line it first told me the cost would be £25 per change (since when did that happen?) and then when I actually tried to change anything it put me back into the endless loop previously mentioned - I gave up with the WEB site, checking in the old fashioned way without incident on the day of travel. On the plane I didn't do much better, my AV system was completely buggered (a technical term), the volume altered itself randomly and the overhead light kept flicking on and off, obviously a short circuit somewhere, the cabin staff could not help having tried to reset the system several times we eventually gave up and switched it all off; I resigned myself to reading a book for 10 hours.

This is all a great shame, a superficial comparison between now and a couple of years ago when I used to do a couple of long haul trips a month would suggest to me that this is a company is in decline; when you start charging for things that don't actually cost you anything that's a big red flag in my book; when your key systems are simply broken another red flag, when you forget about loyal customers who have lots of choices that's the final nail in your coffin; Virgin do it better.

Here's a photo from my apartment balcony, see if you can figure out where I was...

Weekly round up

2011-07-08T17:47:00.000+01:00

Well it's Friday, nearly time to kick back and start shopping! (yawn) it's been an interesting week, the last ever space shuttle launch (see above) and the end of the News of the World newspaper, I'm pretty sure I know which humanity will miss most.

In other news the Dutch parliament has decided that it will outlaw the religious practice of slaughtering animals by cutting their throats and letting them bleed to death without stunning the poor beasts first. In a textbook example of Godwin's law, some Jewish commentators were sufficiently outraged (what's new) to liken the Dutch government to the Nazi's, apparently they should be free to inflict pain and suffering onto hapless creatures because that's what their dusty old books say that the creator of the universe demands, this seems highly unlikely to me since there are other equally certain religions that forbid the consumption of meat acquired by such means because it is cruel; any rational person would simply conclude from this that these apparently arbitrary rules are obviously man made, not God made. I applaud the Dutch move, anything that reduces the special privileges religious sects get to cause suffering just because they demand it is progress in my book; shame our UK government would never have the balls to do it here.

Professor Richard Wiseman launched a new book in the USA this week called Paranormality, its essentially about waving a shitty stick at everything paranormal, ghosts, psychic experiences, superhuman powers and all of that, it presents a scientific view of these topics and guess what there is no evidence for any of them. The funny thing is that after publishing the same book all around the world he was unable to secure a US publisher; it would seem that publishers in the USA feel that the American public don't actually want to be disavowed of their delusions, or even risk such a thing. Wiseman is publishing the book himself, I guess that some people are quite dogmatic about their belief in belief.

Michele Bachmann, the scary right wing Bible thumping presidential candidate who denies evolution has signed a pledge created by the Family Leader a group of Christian conservatives in Iowa USA. The list of 14 bullet points includes such enlightened items as,

- Marriage is only valid between a male and a female
- Homosexuality is a choice
- Homosexuality is a public health risk (on a par with second-hand smoking)
- All forms of pornography should be banned
- Sharia law should be outlawed

This woman is clearly as mad as a box of frogs but no doubt millions will love and vote for her regardless. It must be intensely frustrating for rational Americans to present rational, evidence based arguments against this kind of stuff to people who don't value evidence, I can only hope she has some unpopular liberal skeletons in her closet, fortunately such people usually do.

Blonds in space

2011-07-07T09:11:00.001+01:00

For all those blond people who aren't entirely "natural" fear not, another potential career path opened up to you today with the announcement that scientists have discovered a source of Hydrogen Peroxide in space! Yes it will be possible to travel 400 million light years through space and remain confident that unsightly roots can be avoided. All we need now is to discover an interstellar source of turkey twizzlers and a way to transmit the X-factor faster than the speed of light and humans will have everything they need to explore the outer reaches of the universe.

Stews of the world

2011-07-06T22:16:00.002+01:00

So the News of the World is in a pickle, it seems that every hour fresh accusations are emerging of people employed by News International hacking into the mobile phones of disabled children and sweet old ladies in order to satisfy their depraved desires for money and sex (well maybe not sex but hey, sex sells!). Lynch them I say, no wait better still, deny Rupert Murdoch the opportunity to acquire 40% of the entire media infrastructure of our country, he clearly can't use it responsibly.

The inappropriate behaviour delusion?

2011-07-04T13:36:00.005+01:00

For those interested in such things, Richard Dawkins is stirring up a bit of a shit storm over at Pharyngula (like he needs the traffic..)

It all started after Rebecca Watson of Skepchick posted a little video recounting an "incident" at a recent atheist conference in Dublin. She says that at around 4am after a long session of setting the world to rights at the bar of the hotel she decided to retire to bed, apparently a male conference attendee sharing the lift with her asked if she would like to continue the conversation over coffee in his room. Now, for those of us that have been around on this planet for a while and understand a few things about male-female interaction (especially in hotels) this kind of thing happens a lot with varying degrees of subtlety, ranging from zero through to highly elaborate involving food, drink, helpers and sometimes audio-visual aids. In terms of where this particular effort fits you could say it seems more toward the "hopelessly unsubtle" end of the spectrum, but then I wasn't there and context is king in these things. In her video Watson complains about this behaviour, calling it "creepy", although she doesn't name the person nor did she claim that anything illegal or unsavoury happened, broadly she made a case that the behaviour was "inappropriate". Enter Dawkins, who posted the following comment on the Pharyngula site in the discussion of the aforementioned video:

Dear Muslima,

Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and . . . yawn . . . don't tell me yet again, I know you aren't allowed to drive a car, and you can't leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you'll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with.

Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself Skep"chick", and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn't lay a finger on her, but even so . . .

And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin.

Richard

The sentiment is clear, Dawkins thinks the whole thing is a storm in a teacup especially within the context of some rather nastier physical and mental abuse of women in other cultures and religious systems etc. This comment caused a surge of both criticism and support necessitating new posts being created on the site just to handle the volume of comments, clearly nerves were touched. I can see both sides of it, I understand what Dawkins is trying to say, and in his usual style he is being ultra-precise filling in no gaps, i.e. if the guy was asking for a coffee then we assume that's all he wanted. I suspect most people wouldn't be like that; they would take a more "organic" view and slant their comments one way or another, at least read between the gaps according to their preconceived views, i.e. if the guy is asking a women for coffee at 4am in a hotel lift then he's really asking for sex. There is also something about the fact that the elevator is a confined space from which it's hard to escape, I suppose so but for me that says more about the insecurities of the woman than the insensitivities of the man, maybe I'm missing something there.

If I knew how to do one of those on-line poll widgets then this would be a good one, i.e. "Is it OK for a man to ask a women he doesn't know back to his room for coffee in a hotel elevator or not?" As always with matters pertaining to sexuality, I suspect the answer is "it depends" but then there are plenty of people commenting, male and female, that feel the answer is more clear cut.

My own approach is more basic, just don't talk to strangers in trains, planes or lifts, and if possible don't even make eye contact with them, life is so much simpler that way...

iPope

2011-06-30T17:33:00.001+01:00

I see that the Pope recently posted his first Tweet; the BBC ran a story about it although from the look of him didn't seem entirely comfortable with the iPad used to do it, luckily someone had run up something with a big blue button in the middle of the screen which he just had to press.

Two thoughts about this. First, does this mean that Yahweh sanctions Apple products? I always suspected that he would but then you know how controversial and dogmatic the whole Apple-Microsoft-Google-Linux thing gets, even I wouldn't dare go there! Second, I wonder what the comedy version of the Pope's first tweet would be, "Dwkns is sooo gay, ROFL" ?

Booming boatmen

2011-06-30T10:03:00.001+01:00

Nice little science story on the BBC today, apparently the loudest animal (for its size) on the planet is the humble water boatman. This little critter sits at the bottom of ponds and rubs it's penis against its abdomen making a noise that measures 99 decibels, equivalent to listening to a full orchestra from the front row, although clearly a lot wetter and with less impressive arrangement.

As usual in nature such overt displays are to do with reproduction and attracting a mate, although in this case selection has driven the adaptation to an extreme level. So next time you are passing a pond and hear one of these bugs (you can hear a sample of it on the BBC page) you can amaze and impress your friends by pointing out what a clever dick the little water boatman is.

The beautiful question, re-visited

2011-06-29T17:55:00.004+01:00

Last week I looked at the question "should evolution be taught in schools" which was asked of Miss USA contenders, the answers were surprising and overwhelmingly missed the point of science education. Here is another way of explaining the problem with those answers using humour (bordering on ridicule) - see if you think it communicates the problem better.

PS. I like the way that they capture the different responses from the different state representatives in the same "style" as the original answers (including the sensible ones)

Hands off our angels!

2011-06-28T12:26:00.001+01:00

Here is the inimitable Pat Robinson explaining where the word "sodomy" comes from, according to him it used to be a place in the Middle East (Sodom) where homosexuality was "embraced". Even visiting angels were sexually harassed by hordes of gays, although why beautiful men wearing skimpy dresses and feathers would be targets of such shocking behaviour remains lost in the sands of time. Then, after some dubious sexual bartering, Yahweh nuked the whole area killing everyone except one family minus the mother who God transformed into sodium chloride sculpture (well, ice is no good in the heat obviously) - the meaning of this story is clear to Pat, don't try to bum angels or God will nuke you!

So, all straightforward so far, but what I don't get about Pat's God is why he keeps on making stuff a certain way and then destroying it again for being that way, sounds like a complete incompetent to me? Anyway, Pat goes on to explain that no society has ever embraced homosexuality and survived; This almost sounds like a fact but I guess it hinges on what he means by "society", "embrace" and "survive", in fact what the hell does he mean? Never mind, the USA is obviously on the wrong slippery slope when it comes to tolerating gay people, the angels should be arriving any day now and then the fun will start, you just wait* and see!

*Oh and while you're waiting send all your money to Pat, mansions and private jets don't pay for themselves you know!