Feel his presents..

I wonder what Donald Trump will get for Christmas? I wonder if it'll be all that "control" that we got back from Europe in the Summer? We weren't using it much anyway..

If you want to feel the chill wind of of dubious right-wing politics fusing with unfalsifiable religious dogma take a look at Steve Bannon (the soon-to-be White House chief strategist and UKIP fan-boy) talking about what he thinks are "problems" in this world, and (reading between the lines), non-Christians, secularists and atheists would seem to be on his "list".

Stupid is as stupid does

Wanna see something dumb? Take a look at this baptism in Eastern Europe. I have to ask, are these people really trying to pass their genes on or not, perhaps it's a concerted effort to win a Darwin award? In any case, it looks shocking.

Of course many will say this is a part of their "religion" and so it's off limits to criticize it. Sorry but if this is a condition of their religion then I think their religion is stupid. Others might say it's highly "symbolic", if that's what it is then just pretend, like they do here in the CofE (a little sprinkle on the forehead will do just fine!) 

In reality we all to often know the story here, religions make their adherents do stupid things, things that normal (sane) people simply wouldn't do (probably wouldn't even think of) You only have to watch the news tonight (most nights actually) to see yet another story about an otherwise normal lad doing something insane in the name of his religion. Rasheed Benyahia, an engineering apprentice from Birmingham left his family to join ISIS in Syria, he was killed in 2015 but his Mother kept it a secret for over a year. She has finally opened up about her experiences and is trying to gather some momentum around an awareness campaign aimed at preventing others having to endure the same fate. The ironic thing about this particular case is that the family isn't originally from an Islamic country, the mother converted in her youth and indoctrinated her Son (as is the religious way), I wonder if she feels that was still a good idea now or not?

Dank

Don't normally drink on a school night but tonight I've got the house to myself and need something to quaff with a re-run of the excellent "Planet Earth II" episode from Sunday. I made this one (in the picture above) "this is just a simulation" a few weeks ago and today being "world philosophy day" I thought it was doubly appropriate. When I made this beer I dumped a ton of Simcoe hops into it, Simcoe gives the beer a really nice fruity/piney/resinous/dank flavour. I think "dank" is a new word in the world of tastes, you hear it mostly in America; years ago it used to be a negative word, meaning (to me at least) damp, dark and cold but these days when applied to beer, specifically IPA style beer, it seems to mean "funky" or "pungent" but in a good way. That's what I love about the English language, it's so flexible, the only language where phrases like "slim chance" and "fat chance" can mean exactly the same thing!

Fragile

Nice little xkcd cartoon today; I often feel like this, not because I have a computer science degree particularly but because I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time "fixing" other people's IT problems (especially parents and kids!) Most of the time issues quickly descend into a flaming pit of despair as one problem demands some download or other, that then needs another and so on, like dominoes crashing down. Often, hours later (long after the owner of the particular device has got bored and wandered off) I finally sort it all out and get back to my own business. I find Apple gear is by far the worst culprit, most things are "proprietary" and impenetrable; all it takes is one little thing to go wrong during an install or upgrade and the whole thing falls apart. Pretty soon you are up to your ears in consoles, navigating antiquated Unix folder systems, and desperately trying to remember the syntax of "grep" commands that should have been forgotten in the 80s, if only people knew how fragile it all was.

Is it cuz I'z black?

Some love it some hate it, black beer, or stout as it's known is famously one of those Marmite kind of things. I decided to brew up some for Christmas and here it is boiling away, looks like a pint of Guinness already! This one is going to be rich and flavorsome (hopefully!), it has all manner of roasted barley and oats in it and a grab-handful of American hops, plus a smidgen of honey, brown sugar and lactose for sweetness and body. The downside is that it won't be ready for 6 weeks. 

Demands the patience of a Monk this brewing lark. :(

Crying..

New J&M; Don't laugh though, this is the new US biology curriculum now that the anti-science brigade is in charge..

Liberal moods..

Many US liberals seem to be in "melt-down" over Trump at the moment. It's broadly the same mood that prevails among liberals in the UK over Brexit, it's something that has a real potential to divide communities, families and even groups of friends. Unfortunately its seems that many people aren't used to "debate" as a means of helping to settle differences of opinion and find common ground, this is a problem, because evidence based debate and conversation is the ONLY way of settling disputes satisfactorily; it appears to be a lost art.

I see this intransigent mood on many of the social media platforms, even between close friends. Rather than engage with the words (or simply ignore them if they're not interested) many just throw up the barricades and attempt to shut down conversations with personal attacks and unfriending ultimatums, at best this is a childish reaction but at worst a destructive and unhealthy way to proceed that can only end acrimoniously.

To me, to you...

Seriously? these two look like naughty schoolboys who have just found the key to the tuck-shop.

2016 A Scientific horror story

The (black, pun intended) comedy continues with the potential appointment of Ben Carson (he's on a short list of two) by Trump to the position of "Secretary of Education". To clarify, despite being a famous surgeon, Carson is a religious nut-job who believes that evolution is "satanic" and that the big bang theory is a "fairy tale", see for yourself below.

It just goes to show that humans are capable of incredible feats of cognitive dissonance, Carson made his fortune from a platform that rests upon facts that he doesn't actually believe are true. It looks like science and reason are entering at least a four year winter in the USA, which is a shame because, unlike the mythical creatures Carson believes in, our pursuit of knowledge via the scientific method is the only thing that's going to help us in our real future struggles against the extinction-class events in our species near horizon. Things like climate-change, antibiotic resistance, nuclear proliferation, over-population and all that those things imply for large swathes of human population.

Friday Smirk

NASA have discovered the coldest place in the Universe..

Cash for the rich

So having said I'd like to see more demographic data about the US election, I almost immediately stumbled across some. 

People that voted Trump,

53% of White Women,

78% of Conservative Women

81% of white evangelical Christians

Source: NBC Exit poll

I also saw tonight that Trump has put a crack-pot climate-change denier in charge of his environmental policy team. Myron Ebell is someone who is at odds with over 99% of scientists internationally and thinks that climate change is "a liberal conspiracy", the undoing of all the hard work done trying to reduce carbon emissions over the last 10 years is likely to start in January. The Americans that voted for Trump will likely relish the thought of spending all that cash they would have spent helping to save our ecosystems on even bigger gas burning penis substitutes, and of course, more guns to kill each other with. The joke of course is that they'll never see a penny of it, it's already been spent by the Koch brothers.

Thanks Evangelical Christians, looks like our descendants will find out that your bullshit is a lie a lot quicker now.

Over-fly zone

Interesting county by county analysis of the US election result; it's basically showing that almost everyone who voted Democrat (i.e. the blue dots) lives in a major city (i.e. that has a university) and all the bits that business people tend to fly-over in order to get stuff done in the United States, voted for Trump. I would love to see an analysis by some other societal attributes, i.e. religious or non-religious, median income etc. I bet there's a correlation between church attendance and voting Trump (also due to his choice of a creationist, born-again VP), which is ironic if you think about it. Trump is the most obviously Atheistic president there has ever been.

First against the wall

I wonder what the Hitch would have had to say about recent events. Shame he's not around to comment and offer up the occasional (intellectual) "Hitchslap". Although, right or wrong, I suspect that Hitch would have been the kind of person that the Brexit and Trump mobs would have placed "first against the wall". I find it amazing that so many people have ended up voting against their interests; how Women and ethnic minorities in the USA could have voted for someone like Trump beggars belief. Many people are saying that these two political upsets were precipitated by a general desire by the oppressed underclasses to "stick it to the man" and to hell with the consequences. I suppose this may have a grain of truth to it but I'm not entirely convinced. The more I listen to people who hold these positions the more I think the real problem is a lack of critical thinking ability, or perhaps the lack of an ability to weigh evidence or even an understanding of what actual evidence for something is. Couple this with a general (media-stoked) distaste for "the expert" and encouragement of "the unconsidered life" then you have a dramatically volatile mix, a landscape full of people ripe for exploitation and incapable of seeing beyond their own short-term emotional gratification. 

This societal Balkanisation that seems to be ever more in-vogue these days is a very worrying trend, I sense it happening everywhere, at the national level in the sentiments behind Brexit down to seemingly local matters such as faith schools wanting to discriminate against "the other" (and the Government supporting them!) Paste this blatant narcissism onto a cultural backdrop which informs our children that to acquire the most important job in the world you don't need to be qualified in any way, you just need to have a successful reality TV show, hate women, hate foreigners and lie, lie, lie for all you are worth, with sufficient confidence and what could possibly go wrong?

To soon for Godwin?

I wouldn't want to invoke Godwin's law too soon, but, it's spooky that tonight is the exact 78th anniversary of Kristallnacht, jus sayin..

It's going dark again..

I never much liked Clinton if I'm honest, but compared to Trump I would have been OK with her taking the helm for 4 years (no more), at the very least it would have inspired women and girls to aim higher. But, boy, do I feel bad for her today, she has spent more or less her entire life, certainly her entire career, in public service of one kind or another and probably felt like it was all leading to this monumental climax, only to get beaten by a thieving, lying, cheating, scum-bag of an orange game-show host. She's probably had better days, let's hope the rest of the world doesn't end up feeling like Hillary does today.

3 Amigos

Experimented with some different beer styles last night, had some friends round to celebrate failed terrorist attacks. On offer were three home made concoctions, made specifically for the event, that showcased three very different types of ale.

From left to right, first was a stout (Guinness-like) that I've had aging in bottles for a couple of months, it was black and viscous like engine oil, creamy, smooth and malty with a fluffy tan coloured head and spruced up a bit via the addition of some flavorsome American hops (UK stouts tend not to have much in the way of hop additions). Next (middle) was an American style wheat beer, light and airy almost lager like with a fluffy head and good carbonation, good, but my least favourite. Last was a New England style IPA (India Pale Ale), brewed with Vermont yeast and a ton of fruity hops. This last beer was perhaps the least common of the three, made in an unusual way with lots of flaked oats and flaked wheat (to make it hazy with a really creamy white head) and by adding fresh hops during active fermentation (normally done after fermentation has completed) The result is a really fruity flavour, peaches, orange, grapefruit and a nice bubble-gum background with hardly any bitterness at all; an interesting and fairly new way to do IPA's also enhanced by the addition of some golden syrup and treacle at the start of the boil.

The verdict was generally good, no one spat anything out (always a good sign) and of the three styles the stout won the day (probably the most familiar). The wheat beer went down well with the lager drinkers and my East Coast IPA was generally greeted with an "interesting" response which is kind of what I would expect since it's a very distinct (in your face) type of beer. All in all a successful evening, all the brews were around the 5% mark and by the end there were none left! People went home with a warming Autumnal "glow" about them..

We have assumed control...

It's somewhat ironic that one of the main pillars of the Brexit campaign was the notion that we (UK) would regain control of our own legal system and law-making ability. It looks like we've done exactly that today, and the result of this clarification of our UK law is that the Government cannot trigger article 50 of the Lisbon treaty (in order to expedite exit from the EU) solely on it's own; consultation with Parliament will be required, i.e. the precise terms and process of Brexit will need to be agreed by our elected representatives before this current Government can agree or do anything with our European partners. This is great news; and hopefully will allow time for the country to understand the epic economic and cultural mistake that this decision represents and engineer a softer more sensible position within Europe for all of us.

Respect?

Jesus and Mo. nails it again. I would hope that in this country, where free-speech is a hard-won pillar of our culture, everyone (including religious people) should feel free to mock ideas that they believe deserve to be mocked. Far too many people have become sheep, they follow the PC brigade for fear of standing out of the crowd! Show some back-bone and stand up for what you believe, but be prepared to be mocked if your ideas don't cut the mustard and also be prepared to change your mind if it turns out you are demonstrably wrong; what could possibly go wrong?

Blasphemy... again

I see that British Gymnastics is cracking on with implementing Islamic blasphemy rules in the UK, regardless of our existing freedom of speech laws that render their recent decision to punish Louis Smith for mocking Islam risible. Smith (Olympic medallist) has been suspended for a silly phone video that shows him laughing at one of his (drunk) mates making fun with an ornamental rug in a hotel lobby that looked like an Islamic prayer mat. I posted about this a while ago when it first hit the news and honestly feel that whether you agree with the decision or not, this is pure censorship and cultural capitulation born out of fear of violence; Winston Churchill will be turning in his grave; if you believe in ghosts, as apparently many do, read on...

One wonders what comes next; are we to be told that we're not allowed to point and laugh at superstition? Only today on radio 4 I listened to a serious, deferential interview with a Muslim "spiritual healer". In the 15 minute program Ishaq from Rotherham said that she "absolutely" believed in Jinn (supernatural creatures akin to ghosts), as do most Muslims, because they are mentioned so much in the Koran. Death-Eaters are mentioned a lot in the Harry Potter books too, I offer this only as a comparison. Yesterday on the same channel we had an interview with Canon Paul Greenwell who carries out "home blessings" for people who have seen ghosts or spirits (one wonders how they can tell the difference?) 

This is a slippery slope argument, religious people expect, and get access to express their cranky ideas (like ghosts and spirits) on mainstream media outlets like radio 4 all the time ("thought for the day" for instance); these ideas make a mockery of many of the rational ideas held by secular, non-religious people; this is a plain fact. No one is attempting to silence anyone, but what happened to the right of detractors to retort and point out what they sincerely believe to be the flaws and dangers in such view points, in whatever tone of voice seems most appropriate to them? All Religions contain ideas that beg to be mocked, they always have, the Christian magic book even warns it's followers to expect it, so, in a free society what's the justification for punishing those who do so?

Obvious mistakes

Sometimes you see a set of circumstances evolve that you just know will end in tears, invariably these things involve the same set of attributes. First you have some kind of minority, then some dubious cultural or societal reason for treating the minority differently, pretty soon you have two societies and two sets of rules and someone always loses out. I fear this is already happening in our society right now around the concept of Sharia councils. Many Muslims (claim) to want to have Islamic arbitration for domestic and other family oriented disputes, independent from the normal UK justice system. Whilst this may seem a very "progressive" and politically correct thing to allow, recent investigations into such councils are uncovering a large number of complaints. Particularly Women seem to be protesting in large numbers that the councils (run by men) discriminate against them. This is particularly problematic when Women are trying to escape abusive relationships.

Personally I find the concept of "Islamic justice" as alien and illogical as "Islamic Chemistry". As the photograph above shows, I believe that true justice is blind. Faith, ethnicity, wealth or cultural background should have no bearing on when and how justice is sought or received. Clearly, no justice system is perfect, but if useful measures of any system are attributes like fairness, proportionality, balance and accessibility then I can confidently assert that the UK justice system scores much higher than any "Islamic" kangaroo-court; based as it has to be on a subjective and unfalsifiable set of irrational premises. Basing a legal or Governmental system on any single religion or sect is a flawed (long-debunked) idea, how can something as complex as justice in the 21st century be something that's exclusively "interpreted" by so called "scholars" who've only read one (ancient) book and have no more skill or experience in law, sociology or any relevant discipline than a 12 year old child?

It's time we knocked these so called councils on the head, they're clearly harmful to many people (especially vulnerable Women) now and can only serve to provide a useful purchase point for those seeking to divide our society even further in the future.