Embarrassing Tweets

Sometimes it's best just to apologise and move on from historic bigotry - unfortunately many religious people still insist on trying to justify it all..

Identity Crisis

Cracked open this little beauty whilst cooking dinner last night, it's made with a mix of English and American hops, slightly schizophrenic but it turned out OK. Looks like an English ale (or bitter) but tastes more like an American IPA, although the addition of Kent Goldings hops has carried a certain "flowery" hint through to the finished beer, unusual in a good way!

Saturday Smirk

I think I'll give this exotic Welsh delicacy a miss...

Film fun

I was out on my daily constitutional walk today and as usual passed by the local cinema - I particularly like the look of "Donwsizing", I hear it's a social commentary on our likely post-Brexit economy and the state of our education system... allegedly

Friday Smirk

Whoever wrote this game IS the devil... 

Men and apes

I was amused to read today that the Indian "Education" Minister (Satyapal Singh) has been demonstrating his ignorance (how ironic) by demanding that Evolution is false because "no one has ever seen a monkey turn into a man". Many (proper) Indian scientists have since dismissed the comments and pointed out the stupidity of such a position, unfortunately though, I suspect the damage has already been done and those people inclined to take the superstitious route through life will be delighted that the Dunning-Kruger effect is alive, well and has been validated by the intellectual laziness of this particular member of the Indian Government.

Of course Evolution doesn't claim that a monkey turned into a man, merely that monkeys and apes share a common ancestor with us, which is entirely different, any how, I suspect most educated people in India are now suspicious that they may have witnessed a man turning into an ape. Singh is apparently a "Chemist" having a degree in that subject from Delhi University (If I were the Indian PM, I'd be asking to see the certificate at this point) I guess that's Chemists for you, they'll say anything to get a reaction.

Making it up

Classic J&M

Modern Queuing

Came across this photo on the inter-webs today; it's the new Amazon retail store in Seattle which has the unique selling point of customers not having to queue-up to pay at a check-out. Unfortunately, as is often the case with new things, the unforeseen consequence of the innovation was that it's popularity meant the queue simply moved outside.

17th Century Wish-List

Here's an interesting insight into the mind of a 17th Century scientist Robert Boyle discoverer of "Boyle's Law" regarding the relationship between the temperature, pressure and volume of gases. It's a "wish-list" of scientific discovery put together by him showing, at least some of, the topics on his mind at the time (mid 1600s). It's amusing now to tick off the items on the list that we've since achieved, as you can see, this is most of them to one degree or another. Bearing in mind that progress is accelerating (especially since the advent of computers) if we made a list now I wonder how many problems would have been solved by science in another 300 years?

• The Prolongation of Life. [On average we all live twice as long today]
• The Recovery of Youth, or at least some of the Marks of it, as new Teeth, new Hair colour’d as in youth. [Plastic surgery, dentures, hair dye, Botox, transplants]
• The Art of Flying. [airplanes!]
• The Art of Continuing long under water, and exercising functions freely there. [scuba-gear]
• The Cure of Wounds at a Distance. [not exactly but we do have, MRI & ultra-sound]
• The Cure of Diseases at a distance or at least by Transplantation. [transplantation]
• The Attaining Gigantick Dimensions. [not quite, but we are all taller]
• The Emulating of Fish without Engines by Custome and Education only. [free-diving?]
• The Acceleration of the Production of things out of Seed. [genetic modification of plants]
• The Transmutation of Metalls. [Not quite, we have done it but it requires nuclear reactors]
• The makeing of Glass Malleable. [Plastic]
• The Transmutation of Species in Mineralls, Animals, and Vegetables. [genetic engineering]
• The Liquid Alkaest and Other dissolving Menstruums. [Universal solvents, almost]
• The making of Parabolicall and Hyperbolicall Glasses. [lenses]
• The making Armor light and extremely hard. [kevlar and aluminium]
• The practicable and certain way of finding Longitudes. [sat-nav]
• The use of Pendulums at Sea and in Journeys, and the Application of it to watches. [digital clocks]
• Potent Druggs to alter or Exalt Imagination, Waking, Memory, and other functions, and appease pain, procure innocent sleep, harmless dreams, etc. [LSD?]
• A Ship to saile with All Winds, and A Ship not to be Sunk. [yes, marine engines and no, not entirely]
• Freedom from Necessity of much Sleeping exemplify’d by the Operations of Tea and what happens in Mad-Men. [sort of, using certain drugs]
• Pleasing Dreams and physicall Exercises exemplify’d by the Egyptian Electuary and by the Fungus mentioned by the French Author. [drugs, again]
• Great Strength and Agility of Body exemplify’d by that of Frantick Epileptick and Hystericall persons. [we have machines that amplify our strength]
• A perpetuall Light. [light bulbs]
• Varnishes perfumable by Rubbing. [odd one, scratch & sniff?]

Monkish

It's Saturday night and I've started making dinner for the family. It's a tradition in this house that the cook is permitted a libation of his or her choice whilst laboring over a hot stove. As you can see I've chosen a glass of my own "Monkish-IPA" an un-holy combination of American hops, lager malts and Belgian yeast giving it a "fruit for days" taste, also a great look. I made this one a while back and I think this is my last 330ml bottle, must make it again.

Devil religion

Amusing new entry over at THEATHEISTPIG.COM (that hammy critic of religion) It always amazes me how people can be so scared of immigration whilst at the same time be sitting in countries whose success was largely built on the concept. I believe that it's generally a positive thing so long as cultures are allowed to change at a velocity that they can cope with. The uncontrolled, high-rate of immigration of recent years is almost certainly the aspect of this that's broken the camel's back among the immigranophobes, and not without some justification. If the politicians had had a better measure of planning, control and fairness back in the 90s then I suspect things would have turned out differently on matters such as Trump and Brexit.

I think there'll always be people who value the exchange of ideas and new information implicit in immigration over the risks (and fear) of importing undesirable things. There will always be people who see this equation the other way around, but the right answer isn't one extreme or the other, nor is it exactly in the middle either, velocity and timing is important.

One of our ladders is missing..

For fun here's a quick photo I took on my constitutional walk today. I thought it would make a good subject for a witty pun but the only relevant film I could think of was "Jacob's Ladder" which has nothing to do with ladders! "The invisible man" perhaps?

Friday Smirk

"Quintillions of tons" is a lot! I always wondered why the Sun was that colour..xkcd

Free speech

I love this interview. It's Jordan Peterson vs. Cathy Newman from Channel 4, it was a car-crash for Newman but that aside, if you want to understand why free-speech must include the right to "offend" then watch the exchange that happens from around 21:35 minutes in.

Essentially Newman confronts Peterson with his well publicized views on a recent Canadian law that makes it mandatory to refer to people using pro-nouns of their choice. Famously, Peterson refuses to accept the concept of legislated speech labeling it identity-politics of the most dangerous kind (and he's right). Newman tries to put Peterson on the spot by asking why he thought that his right to free-speech should trump trans people's right not to be offended. With his response, Peterson rather cleverly turns it around by pointing out that Newman is not in the slightest bit worried about offending him by asking questions and making assertions designed to make him feel uncomfortable, she is effectively exercising her right to free speech in order to learn and to probe the truth of Peterson's claims! Then, he twists the knife by asserting that, this is how it should be! (Gotcha!) Her on-screen realisation that she's been perfectly snookered is toe-curlingly wonderful.

I believe Peterson is right, i.e. mandatory speech is a dangerous and unnecessary step for the Canadians. The Government is essentially legislating what specific words it's citizens have to use, this is distinctly totalitarian in spirit and begs the question what other special interest groups may now spring up and demand their own "special" words? Four legs good, two legs bad, it's basically a free-speech slippery-slope argument.

I like Peterson, he has a common sense, evidence driven approach to things that is refreshing and compelling and he's a very articulate speaker. My main area of disagreement with him is around Christianity and his seeming support for it. I do feel his views on this topic, specifically what "truth" means, are woolly and obscurantist. In my view his reasoning is muddled and leaning heavily toward special-pleading, as exposed in the debate with Sam Harris last year. On the complex behavioural topics around what motivates us and makes us happy, especially men and boys, he is very good (see his YouTube video-lecture series), the breadth and depth of clinical and scientific data he draws upon to back up his claims is impressive.

Atheist puffins

J&M sums up the religious position nicely here. I often wonder how blinkered you have to be to blindly accept the lame excuses that the devout give for wishing to retain controls over our schools and our Governments, it's about worldly-power, it's always been about power and will continue to be so until all communities are like Iceland (and I don't mean freezing-cold and partial to roast puffin!).

Up the workers!

Took my team (from work) into Reading last night for a slap-up meal and a few pints to celebrate the release of the latest version of our product. I was pleasantly surprised to find the beer pictured above on tap in the restaurant we ended up in. It's from Siren Craft Brew and is called "Undercurrent", it's a hoppy pale ale made with barley and oats using American hops (cascade and palisade) it was banging! I could have easily sunk a few of these but had to limit myself to one as I was driving home. PS we went to a new place (opened in December 17) called "Honest Burgers" which is an up-market burger chain, very good it was too. Sensible prices, good food and craft-beer what more could you ask for? Perfect for an informal gathering of the workers!

Transport Blues

Well, here we are again, Blue Monday, allegedly the most depressing day of the year. 

I've had a particularly crappy morning so far, first it's freezing cold with a delightful side-dish of horizontal rain. Secondly, I had to run my kids to school extra early (out before 7 am) which meant I spent over an hour in the car in various tedious traffic jams around Reading. Having finally arrived at my office I now have to walk to the train station and catch the train up to town (London) and attend a couple of meetings with a 3 hour gap in between, finally coming home during peak rush-hour (joy) It was pitch-black when I left the house and it will be pitch-black by the time I get back at around 8 pm tonight, let's hope it isn't still raining. Oh well, I can't really complain too much, after listening to radio 4 this morning I can at least be thankful that I'm not a Rohingya Muslim at the moment, sounds like those people are going through proper hell (and not just transport delays)

Mechanical monopolies

I had a warning light appear on my car the other day, in fact it was the little engine shaped one and so I was none the wiser in terms of what the actual problem was, in fact the car behaved quite normally. Of course most car manufacturers have arranged things so that, for most significant or complex issues, you have to pay for one of their mechanics to plug a computer into a socket and get the computer to tell them what precisely is wrong, it's a great way to scrape another fifty or sixty quid from the punter. Having gone through this business of paying to diagnose (when diagnosis was simply plugging in the right software client) then paying again to fix I really came away with a view that the car manufacturing business is not very customer oriented and seriously needs to be disrupted. 

I began thinking, what would be difficult about having a standard app on a conventional phone that did the same thing, and, what would be complex about having a digital market or exchange where bunch of (proximal) companies could then bid against each other in order to secure the "fix business"? Nothing of course, other than the big monopolistic car firms would lose out on a nice little earner, I bet someone somewhere is working on this.

Saturday smile

Yeah, it feels like this sometimes..

Laughing at death

I'm thinking about death today. A woman I spent the best part of 10 years of my life with from 1988 to 1998 died yesterday, she was only 50 years old which is far too young to die these days. I had completely lost touch with her over the years and our paths and lives went entirely separate ways. She moved to Australia in the late 90s, making it pretty unlikely that we'd ever bump into each other again, and the only sight I had of her was through Facebook and LinkedIn. Although we never actually connected, I did occasionally look at at her page to see how she and her family were getting on, I had no idea she had cancer. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel about this news, sad I suppose, all I could think to post was a cartoon about death, she was a fun-loving person. Anyway, the longer I live the more life seems to pan-out like this, bad people thrive and the good die young.

We just want things to suck less

Many people (including I suspect Tim Farron) claim that you can't get from an “Is” to an “Ought” meaning that it's flawed to suggest what should be or ought to be from merely a description of or derivation from what is (i.e. Nature). The is-ought problem, as articulated by David Hume (see picture above) is at the heart of the fallacy religious people often use to justify what they consider to be sinful, or not. Many theists will claim that moral truth or "values" (i.e. the "ought" part) can only come from their particular deity, whereas life-experience and nature (the "is" part) is subjective and merely derives from the experiences and whims of men.

As is common with many theistic positions, I feel that they have this entirely the wrong way around. I would argue that it's "revealed" truths that are the subjective and arbitrary elements here, since there is no evidence for them nor any Gods, and plenty to suggest that the whole idea of a supernatural realm was invented and evolved by men to serve the desires and materialistic goals of said men. Rather it's Nature, in fact, that's the only consistent element in this debate, as a conscious species, we just don't understand her all yet.

Now clearly, there's some weight to the theistic position, in many scenarios the ethically "right" thing to do is not be the most obvious (intuitively) thing to do. This particularly applies to things like charity and sacrifice, both cornerstones of what many feel to be virtuous and also what religions latch onto very enthusiastically (when it's in their interests) however there are other view-points. Ethical Naturalism (of which I'm a big fan) takes a different stance to this puzzler. It argues that moral truths do exist (as do theists) but that these truths do in fact relate to facts about physical reality. Ethical Naturalists see no barrier in deriving an ought from an is but that, like in science, all ought's are provisional, pending more evidence and understanding, and most can only be asserted with some degree of probability associated with them. As Hume says, "A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence", I believe this is also true for morals.

Here's a set of steps that the Ethical Naturalist would argue constitutes a recipe for how to get to an ought from an is, it's a modified version of a similar piece that I derived from the work of Neuroscientist Sam Harris, I think it's a reasonable summary of the position.

1/ Let’s assume that there are no ought’s or should’s in this universe. There is only what *is*—the totality of actual (and possible) facts.

2/ Among the myriad things that exist are conscious minds (both animal and human), susceptible to a vast range of actual (and possible) experiences.

3/ Unfortunately, many experiences suck. And they don’t just suck as a matter of cultural convention or personal bias—they really and truly suck. (If you doubt this, place your hand in a Japanese-Hornet nest and report back.)

4/ Conscious minds are natural phenomena. Consequently, if we were to learn everything there is to know about physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, economics, etc., we would know everything there is to know about making our little part of the universe suck less.

5/ If we *should* to do anything in this life, we should avoid what really and truly sucks. (If you consider this question-begging, see point #3 above.)

6/ Of course, we can be confused or mistaken about experience. Something can suck temporarily, only to reveal new experiences which don’t suck at all. On these occasions we say, “At first that sucked, but it was worth it in the end!”

7/ We can also be selfish and short-sighted. Many solutions to our problems are zero-sum (i.e. my gain will be your loss). But *better* solutions aren’t. (By what measure of “better”? Simply fewer things suck for everyone.)

8/ So what is morality? What *ought* sentient beings like ourselves do?

9/ We should, understand how the world works as best we can (facts), so that we can avoid what sucks maximally (values).

Clarity of confusion

Interesting debate going on around Tim Farron at the moment. Farron used to be the leader of the Liberal Democrat party here in the UK but resigned last year claiming that the role compromised his position as a "Christian" (he also didn't do well in the general election). During his tenure he was pressured by the media to state clearly his views on gay people, specifically whether or not gay sex was, in his view, a sin. He refused to answer for a while but eventually was embarrassed into saying that he thought it wasn't.

Now it seems that Mr Farron has changed his mind; he regrets saying that and his real view is that gay sex IS a sin after all. For secular people this kind of flip-flopping exposes the truly muddled heart of evangelical Christian thinking. Farron claims (as most Christians do) that all humans are sinners, apparently we're born that way; as the Hitch used to say, the Christian claim is that "we're born sick and commanded to be well". Like many Christians Farron seems to want this both ways, he wants to claim that the general human condition is a sinful one and yet he also wants to call out particular actions (like gay sex) and say that they're somehow especially sinful. Surely if we're all sinners then everything we do, including straight sex, collecting stamps and eating roast chicken is, by definition, sinful? This is a muddled and judgemental position, it's saying that some people warrant a greater burden than others for sin and that the choice of what actions do or do not incur this extra weight is arbitrary and subjective according to what individuals "believe". 

We're left wondering how many different kinds of sin a Christian can believe in at the same time, how they decide which is which and if they feel any compulsion to clarify what these concepts actually mean in the real-world we all inhabit? Until they do, rationalists and secularists aren't going to take them seriously, nor promote them to positions of power.

Original Klingon

I've heard this said about the Koran many times before. All manner of adjectives are used, things like, "poetic", "perfect", "divine" and "beautiful". When it's pointed out to the apologist that most of it is nonsense they retreat into the rather transparent "you need to read it in the original Arabic" as if no one in the world is capable of translating Arabic. I'm always incredulous when people attempt to argue that the creator of the universe is only capable of communicating the most important message to human-kind there has ever been in a single obscure regional dialect, I guess he's not heard of the Rosetta-stone?

I've actually read some of the more well known bits of this holy-book (in English) and I must confess I simply don't get it; looks to me like it's just another assemblage of medieval mythology that's a mishmash of good bit's, incomprehensible bits, wrong bits, right bits and some down-right barbaric bits. Nothing that a 7th century resident of the Middle-East couldn't have plagiarized from pretty much anything that came before it (like the old-testament) or simply invented with a knowledge of how our universe works that was prevalent at that time. Nothing new, different or indeed interesting other than a vague insight into the often insane workings of an ancient culture. I guess it's like Shakespeare, you can't really appreciate it until you've heard it in the original Klingon.

IT Support

I'm sure many people who have a job or background in computing will recognise the challenge that I'm about to discuss. That problem is relatives (especially elderly ones) and friends who fancy themselves as dab-hands at surfing the web and "social-media" getting themselves into all kinds of bother with wi-fi, printers, the inter-webs and, all too frequently, accidentally acquiring all manner of nasty viruses by clicking on things they shouldn't! The problem isn't the fact that they get themselves stuck per-se but that they know you know something about computers.

The thing that many people don't realise is that just because you work in a particular field of computing it doesn't mean that you comprehend every nook and cranny of the every piece of hardware that's ever been made and ever application that's ever been written! Sure, you will probably know a little more than the person with the problem, but you still may be totally in the dark about how to deal with a particular scenario involving combinations of things you've not encountered before. I've faced this problem many times, for example on more than one occasion I can recall visiting my parents for a nice Sunday lunch only to be informed of a printer connectivity issue at the start of the visit and then, after having my roast-potatoes sent up to the "study" on a tray, still been loading new drivers and rebooting wi-fi routers when it's time to go home! It's a bit like expecting a rotary-engine specialist to be able to fix any problem on any vehicle, from getting a stain out of a leather-seat to servicing combine-harvesters.

I have a new strategy these days, honesty! Whenever I'm asked to "fix" a computer problem for a relative or friend I gather as much information as I can from them and if I don't know the precise remedy then I'll say I don't know how to fix that but refer them to an appropriate Google search-result of suggestions! Then I relax back into the conversation or the roast-beef and Yorkshire pudding! I've re-acquired hours and hours of my life with this strategy over the last few years and the problems still seem to get fixed eventually.

Patch magic

Interesting to see the media reaction to the two recently discovered flaws in Intel, AMD and ARM based processors. For most people with personal computers it's highly unlikely that these vulnerabilities could or would be exploited, they've been there since 1995 in some cases so it's much more likely that any criminals scrambling resources to take advantage before fixes are widespread will focus those efforts on targets where the payoff is significant (i.e. financial institutions) However, it's wise to install the updates when they arrive, some hackers rely on the lethargy of users.

For most people outside the industry, serious design issues like this seem outrageous, even criminally negligent in extreme cases but for those of us inside, we're more surprised they aren't a much more regular occurrence. The complexity of modern machines, networks, applications and operating systems and all the intersections therein is such these days that the number of opportunities to overlook a vulnerability in the myriad layers, virtual and physical, is beyond comprehension. However, and, although you may not think it from the media reaction, the infrastructure to deal with and patch issues as they are inevitably discovered is pretty impressive these days. Products designed by human brains inside fallible people, will, of course, never be perfect, but if you'd had said to me even as recently as 10 years ago that it would be possible to patch almost every server, personal computer, tablet and even mobile-phone on the planet within days or sometimes hours of a security-flaw being discovered I would have shaken my head and simply laughed. When you think about it that's more or less what we've been able to achieve in what is an amazingly short period of history.

Fire-birds

I've always felt that Australia has one of the most hostile environments for Human beings on the planet, not particularly because of the climate, although that is challenging (particularly for English cricketers) but because of the myriad creatures that are just waiting to sting, bite and claw the unsuspecting visitor to death at the drop of a hat. On the list already are poisonous snakes, spiders, jellyfish and even snails, not to mention trees filled with flammable oil, kicking prehistoric birds and rivers that catch fire, now, they even have predatory birds that commit arson! Apparently some birds of prey in that land down-under have learned to deliberately spread wildfires in order to flush out prey. They cleverly pick up burning twigs and drop them onto unlit areas in order to start fresh fires and flush out even more little critters to snap up for lunch!

Humans have always prided themselves on discovering the utility of fire, that's been clear since Kipling penned the holy scriptures of the Jungle Book for Akela's sake! However, it looks as though we may have been beaten to the punch by Australian kites, hawks and falcons! I guess you can't keep a good raptor down.

Monday Mirth

Not the best start to Monday morning this person ever had..

Hype-cycles

I'll be thinking of this cartoon the next time I hear some sales and marketing bod banging-on about how "AI" is going to take over the world in the next five years (as they do) Nothing like a good technology hype-cycle to get certain people worked up into a froth of false-promises and over-inflated expectations.

Ethical beer

Hurrah it's the weekend, time for a swift half before cooking dinner last night! This one is just ready today so I chilled one down to try it. Named after the English philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell (I'm doing a series of beers named after philosophers, don't ask why..) it's an IPA made exclusively with Simcoe hops. Simcoe is a hop that imparts a dank, earthy and piney aroma/taste to the beer, it drinks much better than it sounds, really well balanced and great mouth-feel to this; enabled me to contemplate my meta-ethical positions nicely before tucking into a spicy "Friday night" curry!

Friday Smirk

My favorite design for the new post-Brexit stamps...

Teamwork

Working in the software development field I can relate to this, it seems to be an everyday occurrence. I think this is something to do with our modern world, dominance hierarchies often don't correspond to skill hierarchies and because most people own an iPhone and a laptop they actually think they "know" about how to design and build software (they don't). Sometimes I find it's best to have a dictatorial (often necessarily unreasonable) approach to getting stuff designed and built. For many technical tasks committees and "fluffy" management teams simply demonstrate the law of multiplicative idiocy far too readily.

State sponsored sectarianism

800 pupil Islamic boys school to open in Blackburn...

Segregate by Gender

Segregate by Race

Segregate by Religion (of parents)

What could possibly go wrong?

Work-life unbalance

For those of us back at work (yawn) this week, this seems to resonate.

Paradise? (fail)

Prominent human rights activist, Shahindha Ismall says that she has received death threats over an alleged "anti-Islamic" tweet, that has also instigated a "criminal" investigation in her homeland of the Maldives. In December the "Ministry of Islamic Affairs" (I wonder if that's like the "Ministry of Magic"?) issued a statement urging Maldivians to refrain from "nonsensical talk that advocates for any faith other than Islam". Human rights groups have previously criticised the country's government for using new laws and criminal prosecution to silence, among others, human rights defenders and civil society groups - clearly this country (or at least it's leaders) have no wish to participate in democratic modernity. 

It always surprises me that so many Westerners with supposedly "liberal" values are quite happy to fund the economies of these kinds of places, places where gay people, Women and non-Muslims are so openly harassed, persecuted and even attacked and killed for essentially nothing more than "thought-crime". Geographical and Geological paradise it may be, but the Maldives government seems to endorse a theocratic human rights regime straight from the middle-ages, I definitely won't be visiting any-time soon.

It's those others..

Excellent new J&M (as usual) - I often find it amusing how most religious people react so incredulously when you point out that, from the Atheistic perspective, their religion is just as "wrong" in exactly the same ways as all other religions that they would also claim to be wrong. It's the same underlying problem that causes them to fail to see why Pascal's wager is fallacious.

Post party

Well, here we are at the beginning of the sunny uplands of 2018! We finally made it to bed around 2:30 am having enjoyed a most memorable party, even managing a little "boogie" into the bargain. I wonder how we'll look back on 2017, personally I remember it like it was only yesterday but then again I'm superficial like that.