Confidence in probability

In an incredible stroke of bad luck this week Natalie Morton (aged 14) died shortly after receiving a cervical cancer vaccine; quite rightly the story has been picked up by the press and widely publicised however I can't help thinking that the attention will cause more harm than good. Clearly this is a human tragedy and as a parent myself I feel deeply sad for Natalie's parents and family, as I'm sure anyone would. However we must also remember that cervical cancer is no walk in the park either, so I am torn between wanting to acknowledge the loss and yet afraid that all this publicity will wreck a really promising and successful campaign of immunisation for millions of young women.

This vaccine has already been given successfully to millions of girls all over the world, however it is not without it's critics; in the USA there has been a backlash from Christian groups who have boycotted it because they believe it encourages promiscuity. Several religious groups in the UK have campaigned against it too, however I think our Government made the right choice, mainly because the principal of prejudicing the health of a child because of the religious beliefs of the parent seems morally reprehensible to me.

In terms of safety this is a very safe vaccination, in fact over the course of our own UK programme the number of adverse reactions so far has been 4657 out of 1.4 million doses or 0.33%, that's a probability of 1 chance in every 300 jabs that someone may suffer a mild headache or a sore arm. To put this into perspective the probability of being involved in a car accident in the UK is roughly 0.38% (2007) i.e. slightly higher.

Interestingly it turns out that the likelihood Natalie died as a direct result of this jab is diminishing fast. We learn today that she unfortunately had a serious underlying medical condition anyway; however I fear the damage has already been done.

I do hope the various religious groups don't now jump on the "safety" bandwagon in an attempt to salvage their own agenda's, we shall see.

Herbal folklore and enchantments

I just love those old folklore myths regarding certain plants and the things that "must" be done in order to assure certain human biological functions (like successful reproduction) Much like Horoscopes; the power of authority that they convey still has a mysterious grip on many people to this day. From an historical perspective they give us a magical window into the preoccupations of our ancestors, and we see that those worries have changed very little over the centuries. Things like sex, food, illness, reproduction, death are all well represented, much as they are within the monotheistic religions that eventually took their place. The evolution of the idea that you can explain apparently inexplicable things (like fertility) through the action of undetectable and invisible (and yet uncannily human in character) forces is a clear and unbroken thread running through our past and present mythologies.

Here is an example of what must be done with Mistletoe,

In order to be effective in magical spells, mistletoe must be cut with a single stroke of a gold sickle on the Summer Solstice, the Winter Solstice, or the sixth day after the new moon. Take care not to let the plant touch the earth, lest it be rendered magically impotent. Many people continue to cling to the old belief that cutting down any mistletoe-bearing tree is a most unlucky thing to do. Some individuals who have done so are said to have met with a violent death as a result. Fairies are also said to be repelled by the sight and smell of mistletoe, a belief that unquestionably gave birth to the old custom of placing a sprig of the plant inside a child's cradle. With the protective power of the mistletoe working for them, parents who once feared that their children might be stolen by fairies and replaced with changelings could rest easier at night. In England it was once believed that if a young woman failed to be kissed beneath a sprig of Yuletide mistletoe before her wedding day, she would be forever unable to bear children. Likewise, unable to father children would be the fate of any man who never kissed beneath the yuletide mistletoe while in his bachelorhood.

I suppose modern religions in some ways represent the industrialisation of ancient "craft" superstitions like these; no longer do you need to learn about the magical powers of a hundred different plants and animals but you need only pay your money, close your eyes and let someone else worry about your worldly problems, a supermarket for our anxieties.

Here is the instruction for Willow,

In some parts of England it is still believed that willow wood should never be burned on Bonfire night. To do so invites bad luck. Driving a horse with a stick of willow brings on a stomach ache, while swatting a child or animal with one stunts their growth. Willow trees have long been valued for their natural ability to protect against sorcery and the evil eye and some individuals believe that touching them ensures good luck (touch wood). However, never reveal a secret beneath a willow, otherwise your secrets will be repeated by the wind.

You have been warned!

Lottery cash to the rescue

At long last some funding for Bletchley Park; £500K is good but they will need a lot more to spruce the old place up, the goal is £10M. Stephen Fry is on the case now so let's hope it gets a bit more publicity.

Thanks for all the meme'ories..

Hopefully we can all see what's wrong with this picture?

Yes, that's right, the woman in the photo superficially appears to be normal, but all her normal, rational and human reasoning abilities are being suppressed by an evil and destructive meme; this meme has taken over her brain and needs to be removed before this woman can regain a meaningful and fulfilling position in society. The medicine she requires is "education", and the easiest way to start her therapy would be for her to do a bit of reading on the internet, but cleverly the meme is preventing this...

Suddenly the meme's underlying purpose becomes clear.

Oh, and why pick on computers? everyone who's ever had to change a toner cartridge knows that photo-copying machines are the TRUE work of the devil!

Some advice for Atheists...

Thanks to PZ for finding this little piece, it's from a Christian writer and is titled "Five things that would make atheists seem nicer".

It's interesting because I think it exposes a deeply insecure mind-set. The thing which I see in this tactic is something that crops up a lot in the debate with Christians and other Theists, that is, a willingness to almost immediately drop into Ad-hominem attacks rather than defend their ideas with robust argument. Having used the tactic themselves they then project the logic error onto the opposition and play the "atheists are nasty/shrill/insensitive" card; which is essentially accusing atheists of using Ad-Hom via an Ad-Hom, a circular diversionary tactic.

We can see from just the title of this article that this particular Christian has failed even before he's started by using the word "seem", a nasty implication if ever there was one, anyway, let me respond to his suggestions in more detail.

1. Stop being so smug

There is nothing like starting an argument as a pot by calling the kettle black; Christians claim to have privileged access to the inner workings of the mind of the omnipotent creator of the universe and that unless you hold the same view as them you are eternally damned; pretty modest bunch of ideas no? I also read this as the workings of a mind that thinks it's "in charge" (as it has been in the West for the last 2000 years). If I were to rewrite this in an honest manner I would say it should really read, "Stop rubbing our superstitious noses in the stink-pile of reality, it makes us uncomfortable and we're fed up with being proven wrong".

2. Don't assume every piece of Christian evangelism is directed at you - we want the undecideds, not the decided-uns.

Why would atheists think that evangelism is directed at them? (jeez, I thought we were supposed to be the smug ones!); firstly this Christian is assuming that the dross which passes for "evangelical argument" in his circles is actually coherent; what atheists see is vague hand-waving about paradise and threats of an imaginary hell all sealed with Pascal's wager and teleological wish-thinking; compared to science this doesn't even make it to the first rung of a decent argument. We are all after the "undecideds", which is why this is no different from saying "shut up atheists whilst we get on with proselytising our particular brand of theism".

3. Admit that the debate about God's existence is complex - and that it can, depending on your presuppositions, be quite possible for intelligent and rational people to intelligently believe in an intervening deity who communicates through a book.

The truth of this point is that at its core is a simple concept, a concept that is not in the interests of Christians or any other religious party to expose. A simple question that any child could grasp causes the whole pack of cards to tumble down, i.e. please explain (objectively) the reason we should believe the Christian God over any of the other 20,000 gods that supposedly exist now or have ever existed?

4. Admit that the scientific method - which by its nature relies on induction rather than deduction (starting with a hypothesis and testing it rather than observing facts and forming a hypothesis) - is as open to abuse as any religious belief, and is neither objective nor infallible.

Totally wrong, this is a mischaracterisation of science; I would go so far as to say a lie. Science uses both deductive and inductive logic and it has something that no religion has or has ever had, that is a process of testing claims AGAINST REAL-WORLD OBSERVATIONS. Science is bounded by evidence, and religion has no bounds at all. Again, we see the true concern of the faithful mind in its projection of an internal concern onto a straw-man of science. Any individual can abuse anything of course, but the fact remains that "abuse" or hucksterism is the norm among the ranks of the superstitious, gullibility is often synonymous with faith.

5. Try to deal with the actual notions of God seriously believed in by millions of people rather than inventing straw-men (or spaghetti monsters) to dismiss the concepts of God - and deal with the Bible paying attention to context and the broader Christological narrative rather than quoting obscure Old Testament laws. By all means quote the laws when they are applied incorrectly by "Christians" - but understand how they're meant to work before dealing with the Christians described in point 3.

Which God? Which Christians? Which Laws? Which Book? Which narrative? There are thousands of different interpretations and sects each utterly convinced they are right because religion has no objective process to validate the truth claims of any of them, please explain why Baptists are wrong and Episcopalians right?. The only intellectually honest position is the one that rejects all of them and says "we don't know". The "Teflon" trick of the theologian is that once any particular thing is demolished by force of argument or evidence, they shift the goalposts, "Oh no, that's not our faith you atheists are arguing against" or "Oh no you shouldn't pay attention to the old testament" or "Oh no, that's just allegory, don't take that sentence literally, it's the next sentence that's important".

So, until the Theists come up with a single scrap of evidence that what they believe is true then forgive us atheists for calling it as we see it, apologetic whining is still whining so if it's that obvious then quit with the Ad-Hom's and show us the money!

10 random beliefs

I did this post originally for dmk's "St. Aidan to Abbey Manor" blog, someone over their tagged him to list a set of 10 things you believe, ethical, philosophical or theological. I thought that was an interesting proposition, since we rarely commit these kinds of things to paper (or blog!) and accepted the challenge. Anyway, here are my 10 things; I did find this quite difficult, not so much the capturing things in words part but the deciding what should be in the list, its fun, I encourage you to try it!

1.Basic Human morality is innate; however we must add to and evolve the basics as we learn more about ethics and endeavour to reduce suffering in the world.

2.All human beings share the same set of emotions and feelings, for example love, hope, fear, wonder, awe, transcendence and human solidarity etc. our differences are much less than our similarities.

3.Planet Earth is it; we just get one life, it defies probability that we are even here at all, we are the lucky ones.

4.We make our own purposes in life, it’s up to us to take responsibility, grasp the nettle and make the most of any potential we have.

5.Sexuality, like race and gender are continuums, not binary and driven by genes; we don’t understand all the mechanisms yet but we shouldn’t fear any of them.

6.The fewer reasons there are in the world to divide people the better.

7.Knowledge cannot be gained by tradition, authority or revelation, it requires effort!

8.Our universe is utterly awe inspiring; our most beautiful, most complete and most reliable explanation for it comes from the natural sciences.

9.Reason is our species most valuable ability (by far) and evidence is the ultimate arbiter of the truth of our beliefs.

10.Dave Gilmour rocks and Luc Besson is a genius.

Now over to you!

What if..

The Daily Mail had existed in those days :)

Superstition fights science (again)..

I noticed this little story today from Kenya; it's the usual stuff, ignorant religious folk refusing to take their 5 year old daughter to the doctor, preferring to pray instead. It looks like the girl will be dead soon, hopefully the parents will be punished for their infanticide and the world turns.

I wonder how many Einstein's, Mozart's and Newtons have been lost to humanity because of morons like this.

More banana man logic

In a previous post I described Ray Comfort's plan to distribute 50,000 copies of Darwin's "On the origin of species" with a "special" inserted preface written by Comfort. Well now I have obtained a copy of that preface and can confirm that it is entirely up to the normal intellectual standards of the "banana man". It is very hard to pick any particular part that stands out; it's all pretty asinine, but to illustrate what I mean here is a few paragraphs on DNA (remember Comfort has no scientific qualifications whatsoever, nor any theological ones)

More importantly, this claim of evolutionists makes a huge assumption. What is the scientific basis for assuming that similar DNA means a common ancestor? When you see a biplane and a jet—which share common features of wings, body, tires, engine, controls, etc.—do you assume that one must have evolved from the other naturally, without a maker?

That's illogical. It's more reasonable to conclude that similar design indicates a common, intelligent designer. An architect typically uses the same building materials for numerous buildings, and a car manufacturer commonly uses the same parts in various models. So if we have a common Designer, we would expect to find that a similar "blueprint" was used in many different creatures.

So what Ray is arguing here is that because animals have very similar DNA it doesn't necessarily mean they have common ancestors it could mean that they were created individually but using the same "blueprint".

First we have the usual conflation of man-made things and natural things, i.e. the non-sequitur that because man-made things are designed then natural things have to be we know a posterior that people make jet planes there is overwhelming evidence for it, Comfort ignores the fact that we also have overwhelming evidence that natural processes create natural things.

Anyway let's put aside the glaring logic errors and focus on the evidence. Let's assume that God did indeed create DNA in the same way that a human designer creates a design for an aircraft, the human would certainly design the parts of the aircraft that needed to be there for the correct functioning of it, i.e. wings, wheels, a cabin, seats, engines etc. and certainly some of the same ideas would be carried forwards from previous modes of mass-transport, i.e. the "Blueprint" idea, a good example would be trains. Trains have seats, wheels, engines and cabins etc. but think about it, if you laid out the individual parts of the TGV in one hanger and the Airbus A380 in another how many would be identical and made of the same material? it's likely that they would only number a few dozen, mostly insignificant screws and plastic fixings, i.e. <1%. In the case of DNA the differences between human DNA and chimp DNA are roughly 4%; that is 96% of the components in our DNA are IDENTICAL in every way, same material, same order and same structure.

The only reasonable explanation for this is evolution, if you are an intelligent designer you can design every animal from scratch, like the train and the airbus you don't need to reuse the same design, hence we see utterly unique configurations of utterly unique components in human design. Evolution on the other hand cannot start from scratch it has to adapt existing design in tiny ways to achieve new results, therefore all the legacy exists in every new species, which is exactly what we see in nature.

So how do we know that the entire legacy DNA of all ancestors exists in every modern species, easy, watch what happens when the system goes wrong!

This is a picture shows a snake that has grown a lizard's leg, not just any old stumpy leg but a well defined and perfect lizard leg, complete with toes and claws, now where did that come from if the ancestral lizard DNA wasn't already present in the snake and suppressed with genetic switches during embryonic growth (an act of God?).

Need more evidence? How about the retrovirus DNA that is inside every one of our cells. Back in the mists of time one of our ancestors was infected with a retrovirus, what these little critters do is inject their DNA into a host cell and use the mechanism of the host cell to replicate, occasionally that virus just sits there injected into the normal DNA sequence, benign and functionless, like a typing mistake in a document. Guess what, the exact same retrovirus sequence is present in chimp DNA, in exactly the same place as ours. What Ray has to explain is why his "designer" not only copied the DNA of apes to make the DNA of men but he also copied the errors too?

I could go on.

So, if you are offered one of these books you know what to do; take as many copies as you can, rip out the first 50 pages and punch a hole in them, thread the hole with a string and hang the whole bundle up in the nearest toilet.

Problem, what problem?

This little story really made me chuckle today, apparently a prison in Dorset installed anti-bacterial hand-gel dispensers to stem the spread of swine flu and within hours several of the inmates were intoxicated from drinking it, now the facility has been removed.

Firstly, how desperate must you be to neck the hand gel and secondly I cannot imagine how bad it must taste; according to the BBC there were similar incidents in reception areas of hospitals earlier this year.

Honestly, some people!

Global conspiracy?

Is it just me or does Col. Gaddafi look incredibly similar to "the hood" from Thunderbirds, are those shades intended to hide the give-away bushy eyebrows?

Makes you think doesn't it ....

Did he get the date wrong?

People in Sydney Australia woke up to this apocalyptic scene today:

A blood red sky! very impressive indeed, perhaps I was overly hasty in taking the mickey out of a prophetic rapture enthusiast in an earlier post, maybe he just got the date slightly wrong?

So, warning message from God or a dust storm blown in from the outback, what would be the rational choice?

The only way is UP!

According to a recent survey the number of people with no religion in the USA grew from 8% of the population in 1990 to 15% today (2009), if this survey is accurate then it means non-religious people are the fastest growing segment there.

Here is the press statement from team at Trinity College who ran the survey.

The percentage of Americans claiming no religion, which jumped from 8.2 in 1990 to 14.2 in 2001, has now increased to 15 percent. Given the estimated growth of the American adult population since the last census from 207 million to 228 million, that reflects an additional 4.7 million "Nones." Northern New England has now taken over from the Pacific Northwest as the least religious section of the country, with Vermont, at 34 percent "Nones," leading all other states by a full 9 points.

"Many people thought our 2001 finding was an anomaly," [Ariela] Keysar said. We now know it wasn't. The 'Nones' are the only group to have grown in every state of the Union."

This is good news for the USA and probably the world, I'd feel a lot safer with a rational finger on the trigger than a superstitious one; and I always liked New England, nice ice cream, bit chilly in Winter though.

Tesco "value" religion?

Following on from a recent story about yet another Christian health service worker having their wrists slapped over wearing a piece of jewellery (crucifix) to work, here is an interesting corollary, Daniel Jones, the leader of the "International Church of Jediism" was recently banned from his local Tesco in Bangor (N. Wales) because he insisted on wearing a hooded gown; he has since made an official complaint against what he describes as religious discrimination. Apparently there are 500,000 followers of this particular organisation, putting it (numerically at least) on a par with say the Rastafarians or other minority faiths in this country.

The interest for me in this story is not really the validity or otherwise of his complaint but more as a thought experiment; if you strip away the tradition and authority of Christianity or Islam etc. then there is essentially no difference between these two cases. Both Jediism and Rastafarianism are simply ideas resting in the brains of many people, memes if you will. Ideas like these are powerful and certainly inform the behaviour of the brains they reside in, they can also provide the "user" with inspiration and comfort. In practice though the religious meme just sits there, unlike other kinds of ideas it does not advance, doesn't grow, and cannot improve, it's stuck in a time warp and constrained by an unfalsifiable fictional narrative laid down in the past (in the case of Jediism 1977!). When I compare this with the body of human scientific knowledge, which is also a set of ideas or memes transmitted from one person to another, the contrast is stark. Science is constantly growing, constantly improving and forever changing as parts of it are shown to be wrong or need to incorporate new facts; rational ideas seem to differ from superstitious ones in that they can evolve in this way, providing both utility and inspiration, regardless of the bling involved!

Banana man & noobin

I seem to be talking about Ray Comfort a lot lately; perhaps it's all part of his evil plot to sucker the Atheist community into giving him free publicity and like moths to his stupid flame we can't help but be drawn in. In any case, he is up to more dastardly tricks along with his toy boy buddy Kirk Cameron (some E-list American actor); as a publicity stunt he is handing out 50,000 free "special" editions of Darwin's "On the origin of species", only the thing that's "special" though is that he's created a 50 page pre-face that outlines his loony ideas (as featured in the video link of a couple of posts ago); so we have all the usual stuff, "something can't be created from nothing", "how did the first dog find a mate", "paintings must have a painter", "Darwin was a racist", "Hitler was a Darwinist", "Darwin hated women" and all of that garbage.

I can't help wondering where Ray gets the money to commission 50,000 copies of a book that he then gives away for free; the "first church of stupid" must be a lucrative gig! Anyway it sounds like a good opportunity to grab a copy of the "origin" cut out the first 50 pages and hey presto, win-win. In order to celebrate this act of generosity here is a little tribute video done by an intelligent young woman called Cristina on you-tube, I'd love to see her debate Ray, I can imagine that would be messy.



You may be wondering why I titled this post "Banana man & noobin", well Ray is world famous on the net for another little video he did with Kirk just over a year ago, it's called "The Atheists nightmare" and in it they explain how a banana is proof positive that God exists; yes really! If you need a laugh I thoroughly recommend it.

Still here?

Now that its the 22nd of September we need to take stock of those that were "raptured" during the night; anyone still reading this is presumably a hopeless sinner and now faces 7 years of trials and tribulation (another Labour term?) never mind though there are some advantages; I suggest you pay one of your Christian neighbours a visit on your way to work this morning (traffic should be lighter), if they aren't in then they have clearly been whisked up to heaven, so help yourself to their house, car, that nice flat screen TV you've had your eye on. In other news apparently the Daily Mail has shut down, sales of Barbour jackets have crashed and the Conservative party has evaporated.

Ray of darkness?

Following on from the ejaculations of team stupid in the video link I posted from the 700 club, I thought it would be a good idea to point out the scientific and logical errors that these particular Christians are pushing out as "obvious truth" to their followers.

There were two main arguments made during the interview,

• How did sex evolve, or in Rays simple mind, when the first dog evolved where did the female dog come from?
  
• You can't have a painting without a painter (etc.) and you can't get something from nothing.
  

When we look at the first point we can see the working of a seriously confused (or seriously devious) mind; let's be charitable and assume Ray is just confused, what he hasn't realised is that individuals don't evolve, populations do. Evolution does not work by dogs giving birth to cats or apes to people, that would be a plainly stupid thing to believe; change is much more gradual than this. In the case of sexual reproduction, i.e. having a male and female (notice Ray assumes the Male evolved first) that trait evolved way, way back in the mists of time before there were mammals, reptiles or even fish; hundreds if not thousands of millions of years ago, probably from something like a hermaphrodite worm in the pre-Cambrian, in fact some animals can reproduce this way today so we don't have to invent or imagine anything, some reptiles for example use parthenogenesis sporadically when conditions demand it . For simple animals back in the pre-Cambrian the gender difference would be quite small although even in humans the actual chemical differences between genders is miniscule, mainly switches that turn features on or off. The genetic advantage of sexual reproduction would be great for the first populations of animals to start to take advantage of it, so, by the time fish evolved we already had males and females (as seen in the fossil record) existing in such populations. Fish branched into amphibians and reptiles and all this time sexual reproduction was going on between males and females within those populations; reptiles branched into mammals and so on to the current day.

The second point Ray makes shows a hopelessly simplistic view of nature, he points to human artefacts, i.e. paintings, buildings, cars etc. things which were obviously made by people, he then extends this (obvious) rule of thumb to everything in the universe, this is a complete non-sequitur, we can show this is wrong simply by pointing to one complex thing that is not created by an intelligent designer, for example a snowflake or a rainbow. He then goes on to commit a bifurcation fallacy by assuming that there are only two possibilities, i.e. nothing created something or God created something, this neglects the possibility that the universe has always existed. To use human artefacts as examples is simply disingenuous and Ray unwittingly hoists himself by his own petard and any rational person will ask the question, if something cannot be created from nothing then who created Yahweh?

The simple fact is that we don't know where the universe came from or if it has always existed, there are physicists working on various hypothesis, indeed the LHC in part is helping to answer some of these questions, it is not even clear for example that a vacuum is even stable and matter and energy seems to pop into existence all over the place. Once we have a universe though, the path to get to homo-sapiens are more or less known; the theory of evolution explains how we get from simple forms to more complex forms not where the universe comes from so in this regard Mr Comfort adds a straw man fallacy to his already impressive list of errors.

Quick run out and shag something NOW!

According to the author of this web site the "rapture" is going to happen today!!

This particular piece of Christian nuttiness is a prophecy that the end of the world will be initiated by Jesus coming (floating?) back to the planet to "save" the true believers by whisking them off to paradise with him leaving the rest of us to clean up the mess and get on with things without them; funny though, I can't see any downside for us blasphemers?

*Warning* don't try to read this web site for too long, the insane colour scheme and random use of caps. causes your brain to haemorrhage.

*Note to self* check this site tomorrow.

Want to see something criminal?

Take a look at this Christian TV channel where the host (Pat Robinson) and a guest called Ray Comfort attempts to persuade viewers that his criminal level of ignorance regarding evolution and science is a reason to believe Christianity is true. This man is so incredibly ignorant on these matters that you wonder if it’s really all just a scam, and he’s simply milking the ignorance in his constituency and cashing in by flogging them his books?



So, is this just yet another money generating religious scam or a case of “dumb and dumber”, you decide.

Officially weird

Hold onto your hats!, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux is visiting the UK, so what can her fans look forward to? a whirlwind round of book signings, public readings, a stadium concert perhaps? hold on, hold on, she's been dead for over a hundred years! As always with religious claims, the reality fails to live up to the promise, what is actually visiting the UK are a couple of bones in a shiny box.

It is baffling to me why there is "mounting excitement" among the Catholics of Britain, we are talking about dusty old bones in a box, this is paganism surely? This stuff is coming from a community of people who (in large numbers) protested about Harry Potter because it portrays "MAGIC"!, and yet are beside themselves with excitement that a couple of old bones will rejuvenate their clapped out hips..

Matthew Parris has a nice story about it in the times, his take is that we need stories like this from time to time in order to reaffirm our Atheism, he goes on to say

"For pity’s sake, closet atheists of Britain, come out! Don’t “respect” this credulous folly! Don’t let the madnesses of these faith minorities go by default! Stop our politicians kowtowing to nutters! Cease the embarrassed muttering about being “don’t knows” on religion, and shout it out. We do know! It isn’t true! All that is necessary for the triumph of religion is that disbelievers should do nothing. God speed to this ludicrous casket of bones; they have reminded me of an eternal truth: agnosticism is not enough."

So in conclusion, Catholics stop!, consider what you're doing, chill out, read a good book (something by Philip Pullman perhaps?) or go see a chick flick instead of this nonsense, you know it makes sense.