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..
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
What would Jesus bench press?
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... ;)
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Libyan bellweathers
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.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Alt.Religious.Rants
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Cross about crosses
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.
Monday, August 15, 2011
God found
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Irony r us
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 ;)
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
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%.
Tuesday, August 09, 2011
Anti-social media..
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....
Friday, August 05, 2011
Comfort zones
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?
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?
Wednesday, August 03, 2011
Perception is everything
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.
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.
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
We all know who wears the trousers...
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.
"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, July 29, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Trust me I'm a Bishop..
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
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?
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Home sweet home
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.
Friday, July 15, 2011
British airways
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...
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...
Friday, July 08, 2011
Weekly round up
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.
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Blonds in space
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.
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
Stews of the world
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.
Monday, July 04, 2011
The inappropriate behaviour delusion?
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...
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...
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