Nerdiah's Crack-smoking Ideas

You can't argue with logic like that

2011-11-07T20:11:00.000-08:00

After Harold Camping's second try at a date for the apocalypse (21 October) came and went without a fuss, I was a little less depressed to see the Camping followers' mailing list completely fail to rethink their position. Truly it was as though the first nonpocalypse never happened, the response was so similar. People first held out to the very last minute of the date anywhere on the globe, then they scrambled through the scriptures to revise the date and extend it somehow, and then finally some* accepted that it was wrong, but put blame on themselves and praised their god anyway.

It's revolting to see thinking human beings so eager and willing to kiss the hand that beats them.

Though there was one glimmer of hope (names censored below to protect the stupid):

A---, after THREE failed prophesies including very specific dates, anything Harold suffers in the press he richly deserves. You can't wish this away, or crunch more numbers to make this go away. He stuck his neck way out and has allowed his enemies to take him out. You can say "shallow and shoddy" all you want, but the only thing PROVEN to be shallow and shoddy is the timeline and it's "guaranteed" dates.

E--- N---

And the reply? A one-line email from D--- C---:

All part of God's perfect plan E---.

---
*"Some", because a good portion of the mailing list seems to have gone private to discuss how the end date might actually be the end of the year.

And here we have a perfect demonstration of how the whole "Jesus is coming back in this generation" thing has been going now for 2000 years.

EU bans children from blowing up Christmas balloons!!! (Or does it? The anatomy of a media beat-up)

2011-10-14T15:14:00.000-07:00

A Facebook friend recently posted a link to this article from The Daily Telegraph:

Children to be banned from blowing up balloons, under EU safety rules

Children are to be banned from taking part in traditional Christmas games, from blowing up balloons to blowing on party whistles, because of new EU safety rules that have just entered into force.

My first impression on reading the Facebook preview (headline and lede) was that someone was trying very hard to incite some rage about this story. It's as though someone at the Daily Tele was playing conservative-outrage bingo: "EU" "ban" "Christmas" "children" ... after a few sentences of being bombarded with such words, I can imagine their 64% Conservative readership being so beside themselves with indignation that they simply won't have enough neurons spare on the rest of the article.

If "an official" quoted by The Daily Telegraph is to be believed, the EU Nanny State has decided that although small children have been blowing up balloons for generations, they won't be anymore and they will be safer for it. Whether or not those same children will be permitted, perhaps at Christmas time, to look at pictures of children blowing up balloons is still uncertain.

This is clearly a ridiculous policy, right? The EU is off it's rocker! And that is the impression you will get from much of the article, quoting a sociologist concerned that these bans will hamper children's fun and learning, a committee member noting the absurdity of telling families how to blow up balloons, all reinforcing the headline that balloons are about to be banned.

The story has also spread like wildfire throughout the Interwebs, being repeated, mocked, and derided by everyone who reads it:

wtf!!! Children to be banned from blowing up balloons
I wonder when cutlery will be banned? We can all use those plastic spoon-forks like in prison.
"Outrage of the week"
"You know what I think is dangerous? Letting pencilnecks like these EU officials anywhere near regulatory power."
"should children be arrested for blowing up balloons?"

etc.

It all seems legit, and legitimate to ridicule, except in the few paragraphs where the actual EU policy is referred to. For example:

Official guidance notes: "For latex balloons there must be a warning that children under eight years must be supervised and broken balloons should be discarded."

So what is the real story?

Already, even in the article's own content, we have a contradiction. You can't put labels on banned items, can you? If the official guidance notes that children must be supervised with their balloons, then how can they be banned from using balloons? Unless the EU is suggesting that parents supervise a banned activity? Oh I'm sure it's possible, bureaucracy being so absurd and all!

If the particulars of EU balloon labelling policy are your thing, you can download the Toy Safety Directive Explanatory Guidance Document here. The short of it is that children are not about to be banned from playing with balloons - how do you enforce a rule like that anyway? - all that's happened is that balloons will now have labels telling parents that deflated balloons are a choking hazard, and strongly advising them to supervise their kids while playing with them.

There isn't even going to be a temporary ban on balloons (thanks, Facebook Friend, for that creative bit of reinterpretation you came up with in a desperate attempt to avoid admitting that you got fooled). Page 75, Article 9.2.1, not only specifies a two year transitional period to conform, it specifically permits toys conforming only to the old Directive that are already in the market, or even any that entered during the 2 year transition, to continue to be sold.

Balloons will not be banned. But don't take my word for it, take the Daily Telegraph's word for it, when they completely failed to report on any mass shortages of balloons or crying children having their balloons ripped from their hands by over-zealous EU officials back in July this year.

Yeah, that's right. July this year. Despite the Daily Telegraph's claim that the policy "just entered into force", this story is actually 3 months old. The Directive was written in 2009, and the transitional period ended 20 July 2011.

---

We all say we know that the media lies and that you shouldn't believe everything that you read in newspapers. Still, it's a bit of a shock to see something as blatant as this, a story devoid of any story-worthy content apart from the bits that were made-up.

The interesting thing about this story is not the minutiae of EU balloon labelling policy, but why the hell it was written at all. So the Daily Tele hates the EU, so it has to meet its outrage-quota for each issue, but surely there are other, more interesting, more legitimately infuriating things going on in the world that they can get their readers worked-up about?

I don't know, perhaps it is as simple as a bit of EU-bashing. The Paul Nuttall MP they quoted is a member of the eurosceptical UK Independence Party. He also had the best and funniest quote, which either means he's a naturally charming and quick-witted fellow, or he wrote the press release. But even then, surely the EU is doing something wrong, somewhere, that's more interesting than this? Wasn't there something happening in the Greek economy?

My gut reaction, whenever I see a beat-up, is to follow the money. But even in this case it doesn't make a lot of sense. What would it cost to print a label on a packet of balloons, maybe 0.001c? This is clearly not about labels and balloons.

The best I can come up with in that line of thinking is that the target is not the labelling policy but the other aspects of the Toy Safety Directive. The bulk of it seems to deal with chemicals in toys and the paints used on them. Unlike the balloon policy (heh), the chemical regulations part of the Directive hasn't come into force yet. The manufacturers still have an additional 2 years to deal with that transition, and it will be a lot more cost and hassle than putting labels on packets of balloons.

Yet while that particular theory confirms all of my ideological narratives, it seems too tenuous a link to make to this article. I can't see anything in it quoting, say, a company that makes toys, or even a corporate-sponsored think-tank. Perhaps it is just EU-basing after all?

Quotes from The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

2011-10-05T01:54:00.000-07:00

Hamish Hamilton, London, 1965

p. 21: ... to understand is above all to unify. The mind's deepest desire, even in its most elaborate operations, parallels man's unconscious feelings in the face of his universe: it is an insistence upon familiarity, an appetite for clarity. Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to the human, stamping it with his seal. ... If man realized that the universe like him can love and suffer, he would be reconciled. If thought discovered in the shimmering mirrors of phenomena eternal relations capable of summing them up and summing themselves up in a single principle, then would be seen an intellectual joy of which the myth of the blessed would be but a ridiculous imitation. That nostalgia for unity, that appetite for the absolute illustrates the essential impulse of the human drama. But the fact of nostalgia's existence does not imply that it is to be immediately satisfied.

p. 36: If [Kierkegaard] substitutes for his cry of revolt a frantic adherence, at once hie is led to blind himself to the absurd which hitherto enlightened him and to deify the only certainty he henceforth possesses, the irrational.

p. 46: My reasoning wants to be faithful to the evidence that aroused it. That evidence is the absurd. It is that divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints, my nostalgia for unity*, this fragmented universe and the contradiction that binds them together.

(*See also, The Master and His Emissary, by that theologian chappy)

p. 45-6: And these two certainties - my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle - I also know that I cannot reconcile them.

p. 58: All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly. It is ready to pay up. In other words, there may be responsible persons but there are no guilty ones, in its opinion.

p. 75: At this level the absurd gives them a royal power. It is true that those prices are without a kingdom. But they have this advantage over others: they know that all royalties are illusory. They know, that is their whole nobility, and it is useless to speak in relation to them of hidden misfortune or the ashes of disillusion. Being deprived of hope is not despairing. The flames of earth are surely worth celestial perfumes. Neither I nor anyone can judge them. They are not striving to be better, they are attempting to be consistent.

p. 79: The idea of an art detached from its creator is not only outmoded; it is false. In opposition to the artist, it is pointed out that no philosopher ever created several systems. But that is true insofar, indeed, as no artist ever expressed more than one thing under different aspects.

p. 81: If the world were clear, art would not exist.

p. 88 footnote: Man simply invented God in order not to kill himself. That is the summary of universal history down to this moment.

Harold Camping's flock, notes for later

2011-05-23T23:36:00.000-07:00

I've joined the two yahoo groups that Harold Camping's group use. I did so soon after the rapture didn't come to pass. It has been ... interesting. Funny, of course, bewildering at times, but sad as well. Mostly saddening actually.

I joined in the hopes of watching how they react to the failure of their prediction, maybe in the hopes of gaining some special insight into human nature ... or how we humans think ... something along those lines. I think I need a while to kind of digest what I've been reading. I can definitely see patterns, and their behaviour has confirmed an article I read (that of course I can't find right now) about how doomsday groups respond to failed predictions. I'm impressed that it was predictable, it suggests that there's something to be learnt here. Maybe.

The most interesting thing to me so far has been that they have a very powerful culture against arguing and questioning. They even have these coded phrases for it - "scoffers and mockers" is one - that I've seen at least once used as a powerful weapon against those who break these implicit rules.

I also think that Harold Camping himself was not a fraud, in that, I think he definitely believed his own bullshit. They all testify to what a nice and sincere man he is. I think nonbelievers usually assume that these leaders are all about the money (or the chicks), but that isn't the case here, and I wonder if it really is the case generally.

Also, I need to do something about this - http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Alert---Homeopathy-Under-Attack-in-Australia.html?soid=1101927195136&aid=DNEodVsObg0

And I thought you had to be stoned to see this kind of thing

2011-03-10T13:47:00.000-08:00

Apparently the suicidal can see the paradox-gates too:

We open the successive doors in Bluebeard’s castle because “they are there,” because each leads to the next by a logic of intensification which is that of the mind’s own awareness of being. To leave one door closed would be not only cowardice but a betrayal—radical, self-mutilating—of the inquisitive, probing, forward-tensed stance of our species. We are hunters after reality, wherever it may lead. The risk, the disasters incurred are flagrant. But so is, or has been until very recently, the axiomatic assumption and a priori of our civilization, which holds that man and truth are companions, that their roads lie forward and are dialectically cognate....We cannot turn back. We cannot choose the dreams of unknowing. We shall, I expect, open the last door in the castle even if it leads, perhaps because it leads, onto realities which are beyond the reach of human comprehension and control. We shall do so with that desolate clairvoyance, so marvelously rendered in Bartók’s music, because opening doors is the tragic merit of our identity.[5]

Ken Ham's in Brisbane!

2010-12-04T12:41:00.000-08:00

Oooh, I just found out that Ken Ham will be speaking at some church south of Brisbane tonight. Sadly I'm not going to be able to make it, as I'll probably be getting drunk with my fellow stall-holders to celebrate the end of the Fair Trade market, but I'm sorely tempted...

Ken Ham on Facebook!

2010-12-04T12:05:00.000-08:00

Ken Ham has a fan page on Facebook. It's comedy gold. For example, some of the comments under a photo from the dolphin show at Seaworld, where in the caption Ham bitches about the presenter mentioning the age of the dolphin genus line or whatever:

Seth-Julie Byrd: I'm trying to teach my two year old whenever he hears "millions of years ago" he should say, "No, that's a lie." However, I think I've thoroughly confused him. He was watching a cartoon the other day and it said something like "there are millions of fish in the ocean" and he shouted at the TV, "No! That's a lie!"

Richard Folker: If the dolphins really went back 10 million years, they ought to have evolved enough to be keeping humans in cages instead of the other way around.

(Richard's probably being intentionally hilarious, but with Poe's Law, one can never be too sure...)

John Sherman: You take your family on vacation to Sea World for a day of fun ..... only to find yourself trapped in a House of Horror. Your head spins as you read the sign "Dolphins go back 10 million years. Today's show takes us back 2 mil years & the Christmas carols turn out to be Santa is coming to town & Rudolph.

Weird shit that I got taught at King's Christian College

2010-11-07T02:30:00.001-08:00

Kind of following on from the previous post, I feel the need to cleanse myself a few bizarre things I was told at that damned school.

"Homosexuals are evil people, you can see it in their eyes"

By a male music and religion class teacher.

Is it just me or are about 99% of the raging homophobes closet cases?

It occurred to me recently, if you deny that homosexuality is innate, if you assert that it's merely a "lifestyle choice", then you're basically admitting that you personally could choose to do that, if you really wanted to. And doesn't that then imply... well, that you're at least bi?

"There are very few facts in science"

By a science teacher. Technically, yes, however just saying it like that without any qualifications or explanations of how it's the ONLY fucking method we have for even coming CLOSE to understanding empirical reality, especially in the context of a discussion of Creationism, is just bullshit.

In the context of a discussion of the possibility of life on other planets (and all it's attendant implications for special creation) - "Scientists are yet to find a planet outside of our solar system"

Same science teacher. Needless to say, we've found plenty since those words could have been considered technically correct, though obviously a dangerously flimsy premise for his argument.

And hey, do you reckon this man has had a re-assessment of their beliefs once the first few hundred exoplanets were confirmed? Not fucking likely!

Complete inability to state that slavery is immoral

I'm cheating a little - I got this treasure as an adult from an ex-teacher of mine (who still works at the school though). Calvinists: the Good Germans of Christendom.

During a class discussion of evolution in Grade 7, soon after I arrived, which was basically the teacher and the whole class vs ... me, a kid piped-up with "well, if we evolved from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys?" and the teacher said NOTHING (bloody didn't get a chance to answer her either with all the other kids piling on)

I get that you're all creationists, but I don't think you're doing yourselves any favours by letting the kids go around believing that really stupid arguments are valid.

Actually, I'm wrong; all the arguments for creationism are stupid. So I guess you're fucked then. Carry on.

"Dungeons and dragons is Satanic"

Actually this is just kind of hilarious. Of all the evil things to fear and warn the children about in this world, you choose to focus on the pass-time of a bunch of pizza-munching, coke-guzzling nerdlings? Fundies, get a fucking grip. With all due respect to my fellow nerds, of course, the worst D and D will do to you is ensure you'll stay a virgin into your mid-twenties, which you'd think would be something the Christian nutcases would support?

Speaking of virginity - "the first time you have sex (and tear the hymen) you are forming a blood covenant with someone"

You'd probably need to be familiar with a bit of fundie-theology to get this one, but the short of it is that having sex is basically the most serious contract and promise you could form with someone. It's the kind of covenant God makes. It's irrevocable, has deep spiritual dimensions, and it's a serious sin to break it.

It's also bullshit. You'll be sad when you break up with your first love, you'll (hopefully) never forget them, but you'll get over it. It'll hurt, but you won't be broken, second-hand or damaged goods forever just because of it, and there will be no great spiritual blasphemy when you eventually do find the right person and have sex with them instead.

And fuck you for telling the overwhelming majority of girls who won't be saving themselves for marriage that it does.

During religion class, we watched a video on back-masking, which our Pastor presented as legit

Pareidolia, you idiots, read a fucking science book. That you can hear evil messages in a bunch of garbled nonsense says more about you and your own head-space than it does about the bands.

Creationism, in year 12 Biology class

'nuff said

"Radiometric dating makes many assumptions..."

Not as many as Young Earth Creationism! And not quite so many ad hoc ones, either.

I know that there are more, but they're not coming to mind at the moment and it's time for bed. Hey, maybe I'll make a series of it! Next time the rage hits me...

Didn't make the cut

2010-11-07T02:25:00.000-08:00

I'm slowly finding a space between volunteering my brutally honest opinion on every damned thing and keeping the business blog semi-professional. It seems to be all in choosing my topics - and remembering that ultimately, the blog is about [censored cause here], and not just any random cause that's pushing my buttons at that moment.

I got tagged for one of these meme things, 4 x 4 things about you. One of the questions was "four things you wish you had done but hadn't". I wrote the stuff below, but then realised it probably wasn't suitable for a business blog, but I feel pretty damned strongly about it, so I'll put it here as my safe outlet to the world.

---

I wish I hadn't gone to King's Christian College: this may seem like a crazy thing to wish - that you had never gone to a private school - but I often wonder where I could have been now if I had not been sent to this one.

My parents weren't very rich - my father came from Denmark as a penniless immigrant - but they worked their arses off, and by the time I was entering grade 6, my father had saved up enough to send me to a private school. I had already skipped one grade and I was just about to skip grade 6 as well, and so just before he died he spent what was a huge amount of money for us to send me to a private school, to King's.

My father didn't live long enough to realise the mistake he had made - King's is not a normal Christian private school, it is a fundamentalist indoctrination centre. I have since learnt from my partner - who went to a private Catholic school - that what I experienced was not normal. I loved the teachers there and they were good people who helped me through difficult personal times, but this school came within inches of destroying the scientist that I was meant to grow up to become. I wish that I had had the sense to get myself out of there, though I don't see how I could have at that age before it became too late.

I was a dinosaur geek as a child, and when I arrived I had a sound understanding of evolution and could recite the names of dinosaurs and describe their major characteristics as all little dinosaur geeks can, but instead of building on this, King's instead taught me Creationism and forced me to make the false choice between God & morality and science. I remember going into the library to try to find some good reading, and every single book in there was about Creationism and how evolution is wrong. Up to that point, though the particular details changed, I had always loved science and known that I wanted to be some kind of scientist, but by the end of high school at King's I hoped only to be an engineer.

In retrospect, I can plainly see that they gave me an abysmal science education that did nothing to prepare me for my future career. I remember so many little ways they misinformed me and undermined science itself, my love of science died the death of a thousand cuts. But love always finds a way, right? I found the love of science again during Honours of my engineering degree. So despite my wish that the school had not received a damned cent of my father's money, or that I had somehow figured out what was happening before it was too late, I guess it all turned out alright in the end.

I just can't do it

2010-10-23T12:24:00.000-07:00

I just can't do it. I just can't keep my opinion to myself, no matter how hard I try.

So I just linked up a post on my Other Business Serious Blog to a little blog-ring of posts. Basically trying to get more traffic, and trying to raise the profile of [censored cause here]. I prepared this little post several days in advance, and I got up early this morning so I could be the first one on the blog-roll. I was hoping to be picked as one of the featured posts - ooh featured! - just think of the 10 extra hits I'll get! So I add my post ... and then I decide to read what the blog-roll author had just written as their own contribution.

Fucking hell.

(Details below subtly changed to ~~protect the innocent~~ try to keep aspects of my life private)

The author has gone on a rant against Breast Cancer Awareness day. Well - even that I could excuse, as they had some pretty good points about how it all gets marketed - until point #7, where they start crapping on about how scientists are covering up the evidence about natural cures and are only interested in "man-made" ones.

Could I walk away? Could I just close the tab and go check Facebook or something and forget about? Ha.

I scroll down to the comments section and bang out a reply similar to this one:

I am a research scientist. Considering #7, even after setting aside the fact that you just implied that I and every other scientist is the kind of psychopath who'd cover-up life-saving research, don't you find it surprising that a scientist would keep quiet about cure that would make them - overnight - the most famous person on Earth? Even Lilly couldn't pay enough hush-money for that.

But we scientists always look to the evidence, so can you name for me a good eg of a natural substance that was inadequately researched and dismissed unfairly?

Because I just did a journal search on Vitamin D and cancer, and found literally *hundreds* of journal papers testing and research the effect of that natural cancer preventative. This is just one eg, and it concluded with: "Improving calcium and vitamin D nutritional status substantially reduces all-cancer risk in postmenopausal women."

The blog-ring was called "Soapbox Saturday", so presumably someone who is fond of getting on their soapbox is accustomed to being heckled by the crowd and told to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up, right? Right? Well I guess we'll see.

Is it just me, or is the xkcd guy right about everything? We should elect him Prime Minister of the world or something.

Wherein I provide a calm and rational argument for why I think that Internet Explorer is not a very good piece of software

2010-10-03T23:52:00.000-07:00

Why the fuck is it padding my tables like that?

Why the doesn't onchange do a fucking thing until you click on some other random place on the page?

oh my FUCKING GOD IE IS A PIECE OF FUCKING SHIT!

The End.

I can't actually not be myself, no matter how hard I try

2010-09-15T10:27:00.001-07:00

Oh hello again neglected blog, where I actually get to write what I am thinking rather than some watered down version of what I think would appeal to the widest possible audience within my niche market...

I've had a "professional" blog attached to my small business running for only a few months and I've already managed to piss someone off. Granted, truly, it was my own stupid fault. Basically I wrote what I was thinking without the explanation necessary for people who don't actually live inside my head like I do, and I came off like a ... well, probably like a psychopath.

Here's the context: someone wrote a whimsical kind of post musing about how they like to believe that all miscarried babies wait for their mummies up in heaven where they get reunited in the afterlife. They don't actually believe this though, judging by what they wrote, they were just musing on how it's what they like to hope happens.

So I wrote... gee, now I'm looking at it I can really see why everyone flipped out... so I wrote

Well, considering that spontaneous abortion often occurs due to chromosomal abnormalities and other serious issues with the fetus, I can't really say I share that hope...

Yeah.

For my one reader - you know me well enough to know how I meant that, and probably my partner though I think he doesn't read this. Everyone else thinks I'm a psycho.

For what it's worth, this truly seems to me the most comforting - and truthful - position that one can take. If a fetus dies in utero, it's probably because it had something very wrong with it. As much as one may truly wish and desire a baby, given a conscious choice I think every loving parent would choose death for their own child over a life of misery and pain. These are not lives that are meant to be lived, not here, not anywhere. The most dignifying thing that I can think of for such a being is that it goes back to the quiet void from whence it sprung, that it not wait in some heaven in mangled form, or as some magically-made-whole doppledanger who is not its true self anyway. This really seems to be one of those instances where the indifferent universe is coincidentally on our side.

But of course I didn't write any of those other thoughts, I just wrote what I wrote and assumed that whoever read it would be able to infer the rest (and truly no one reads the comments, it's all just blog-whoring anyway, at least, no one reads them until I fuck up on one, at which point suddenly everyone is interested in reading them).

It kind of goes to a deeper issue though - I really can't not be myself, and my self, my true self, is not very socially acceptable. Probably even with the explanation the comment would have not been welcomed - at best ignored. I don't fit in this society very well. I think like a scientist even when I'm not doing science, I kind of enjoy a good debate, I like to talk about "big" topics, and I'm usually bewildered by other people's aesthetic judgements (so obviously I should get into children's fashion).

But of course I've got this blog attached to the business that I'm using for making friends and archiving stuff I learn about [topic goes here], and I really need to remember that the business blog is not an appropriate place to be me, which is rather difficult since I am me. I think I need a set of rules, like: don't make any comment on a sensitive topic, never write about your personal beliefs, etc.

I have a post lined up for it in which I take a not-to-subtle dig at a certain slightly alternative yet paradoxically judgemental and dogmatic website, but I think I need to tame it down. Which pisses me off, because someone really needs to put that bitch in her place. She fucked with my head in ways that I can't even begin to describe here, at a moment when I was most vulnerable - but no one will, except maybe some random nobody on a spam-ridden blog, and she'll continue on her self-righteous little "natural parenting" jaunt (speaking of which, just what the fuck is an "unnatural" parent anyway?).

And I think therein lies some of the strange antagonism towards the mummy bloggers that I've been courting of late. No one there is being real, and I can feel it. Well, a few are a bit real, bit most aren't. Most of them have some goddamned Etsy shop to pimp or an ego to stroke and so they're doing what they need to do to get the hits and keep the traffic flowing. And shit, here I am playing the same game. Or rather, trying to play the same game, and failing spectacularly at it.

Maybe I should stick to science.

How to defeat the anti-vaccine crowd

2010-05-31T20:57:00.000-07:00

Happy Jihad inspired me to make some alterations to a cartoon supporting the Health Freedom Movement.

Gosh I'm a bitch

2010-05-28T18:26:00.001-07:00

Seriously, do I need to paint a moustache on my profile here?

2010-05-28T18:21:00.001-07:00

Stuff that makes me sad

2010-05-05T20:59:00.000-07:00

From the comments to a recent Andrew Bolt post about expected job cuts at CSIRO:

Can’t see a dry eye -- Angry (Reply) Thu 06 May 10 (11:24am)

"I agree - nothing better than knowing our unemployment queues are being swelled by these white coat losers. Let them take their pro-green agenda to the poverty line where they can hang out with other academic slackers eating mung beans." -- Tracey Conlan reply to Angry Thu 06 May 10 (11:48am)

"Great news. Paying the salaries of scientists who contribute nothing expect a pro-green psuedo science agenda is clearly a waste of money. The CSIRO has been infiltrated by ideologists with no scientific integrity whatsoever. This is a win win situation for Australia. And yes - we all know its getting colder ! Though I’m sure the scientists are manipulating the data as we speak to show tempreture increase. How do these frauds sleep at night ?" -- Tracey Conlan (Reply) Thu 06 May 10 (11:28am)

"Well these ‘scientists’ at least proved that AGW is a scam. Now they can go and get proper jobs." -- Terry of Sydney (Reply) Thu 06 May 10 (11:31am)

"my favourite part of the article; "The CSIRO depends partly on government funding and partly on private sources. It is common for jobs to be moved around, following the money trail."" -- Chuck (Reply) Thu 06 May 10 (11:44am)

"Hopefully a new generation of research scientists will realise that they should base their careers on scientific issues rather than political ones." -- MAGB of Climate heretic (Reply) Thu 06 May 10 (12:04pm)

"Quick, we need a couple of alarmist studies to justify our continued existence! STAT!" -- hayesy (Reply) Thu 06 May 10 (12:06pm)

The article says nothing about climate change, by the way, that was Andrew's own little creative interpolation.

In other news, I had a mental-blank while trying to test my Ridder's Method for finding the Jacobian of my model webs, and I forgot how to find the derivative of a fraction function. It made me feel very dumb.

American Atheists don't let me down

2010-05-04T21:04:00.001-07:00

Following on from this post here, I received a reply to my email to American Atheists. I've added links to some of the items she refers to:

odesílatel Kathleen Johnson
komu Nerdiah
datum 3. května 2010 7:44
předmět Re: Texas Textbook Massacre Rally page deceptively worded

Hello and thanks for writing!

If you go all the way to the bottom of the page at the link that's on the American Atheists website, you will see the section that pertains to the social studies curriculum. These are proposed changes to textbooks and not to any Texas Administrative Code. The revisions they have put in are misleading and subtle because that's how the school board set it up.

We posted a link directly to that site because that's the "official" spot that the Texas Board of Education set up specifically for public comment and because we wanted to direct folks to the original source of info rather than anyone else's news articles.

As a matter of fact, there is so much that is wrong with the new curriculum that we had to extract a set of talking points for use at the rally. To do that required weeding through 120 pages of stuff that was prepare in a deliberately misleading manner. Here's a selection of what we found:

1. Removed Thomas Jefferson from a World History standard about Enlightenment thinkers who have influenced political revolutions around the world, replacing him with John Calvin, Thomas Aquinas, and William Blackstone. [See Page 16, Item 20C]

2. Rejected a proposed requirement that students learn why the nation's founders banned government from promoting one religion over others. (this is not in the curriculum but was something that happened at one of the board's meetings)

3. Changed standards to suggest that the anti-communism "witch hunts" led by Joseph McCarthy were justified. [See Page 4, Item 8B]

4. Altered standards to present American-style capitalism in a superior light with no balancing critique. The word "capitalism" was replaced by "free enterprise system" throughout the curriculum. [For example Page 7, Item 17E, Page 9 Item 27, Item 28, and others]

5. Added a section on the alleged "Conservative Resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s", overstating the historical significance of this movement. [See Page 5, Item 10E]

6. Changed date references from BCE (Before Common Era) to BC (Before Christ). [See Page 10, S113.42 b2]

Anyway, there are so many other things we could have extracted but we needed to cut the meat down to something easily reliable.

Sincerely,

Kathleen Johnson

I am very disturbed by the additional examples she has given me. On one hand, Texas is Texas and I don't really expect much better of them, but this isn't so much an attack on Texas as it is on science and little scientists-to-be. And I'm about anything, I'm about please-thinking of the children.

I wrote back, hoping I can convince her to make that damn website a little clearer.

Hi Kathleen,

Thanks for your reply. I was able to find all of the changes you mentioned with the extra info, and I am very disturbed by them.

Your point about wanting to link to the "official" site is a very good one. However, it still allows the Texas Board to hide the info. Is there any chance that you could add some info to the Rally website (http://www.atheists.org/events/Texas_Rally) to make it easier to find the key ideologically-driven curriculum changes?

For example, you could add a small ref and link to the text. The lines:

"... downplaying or eliminating mention of Enlightenment thinkers including Thomas Jefferson, more emphasis on religious themes and figures (theocrats like John Calvin!) and even attacks on Darwinian evolution ..."

could become:

"... downplaying or eliminating mention of Enlightenment thinkers including Thomas Jefferson, more emphasis on religious themes and figures - theocrats like John Calvin! (p. 16) - and even attacks on Darwinian evolution (p. xx)."

(the "p. 16" and "p. xx" above are hyperlinks to the relevant pdf - not sure if your email does html mail or not).

The final link could remain to the official site, to the full table of changes.

Alternatively, just a link to the talking points somewhere on the page would be good. The additional examples you gave me from the talking-points were very motivating. There should at least be a link to them somewhere, for people who arrive on the Rally website from somewhere else.

I realise it's probably annoying to have some random person from the Internet tell you how to write your website, however given what I've read and what you've told me, I now feel very strongly about this issue. But I didn't before, and that's the point. I would hate to see someone skim over this because they couldn't find the relevant info easily.

Good luck with the campaign,
Nerdiah

Godwin's Law be damned

2010-05-02T16:32:00.000-07:00

Click to make bigger.

How not to cite your sources

2010-05-01T16:19:00.000-07:00

Update here.

---

I was looking at the American Atheists' info page for their upcoming "Texas Textbook Massacre" Rally (here, and reproduced at the end of this post), and I noticed something odd about it. So I wrote them an email.

odesílatel: Nerdiah
komu: kjohnson@atheists.org, jzamecki@atheists.org
datum: 2. května 2010 9:18
předmět: Texas Textbook Massacre Rally page deceptively worded

I was looking at the website for the "Texas Textbook Massacre" Rally (here), and I found the wording used very misleading.

The first paragraph -- beginning "A religious-right faction dominating the Texas Board of Education is trying to distort the content of public school textbooks ..." -- is all about some pretty outrageous changes proposed for public school textbooks. The paragraph is followed by a link that says "Read the Proposed Revisions Here". One would assume that a link to proposed revisions following a paragraph discussing proposed revisions to textbooks would be a link to those proposed revisions of the textbooks. But if you download the actual pdfs (something most people won't do), you see it isn't about revisions to the textbooks at all. All it is is a bunch of boring revisions to the Texas Administrative Code. Most of them involve changes to acronyms, minor changes in wording, etc.

Is there something specific in those pages that relates to textbook revision? If so, you'd be better off highlighting the relevant passages rather than just assuming people will sift through pages and pages of pdfs looking for it.

Is there anything in the Texas Administrative Code revisions specifically about replacing historical Enlightenment figures with theological figures, as mentioned in the paragraph? If not, then surely there's a better source to cite - the recent NYT article springs to mind - for people who would like to learn more about that issue.

Cheers,
Nerdiah

When I see my current climate change discussion-buddy referencing unrelated crap in a similar way, part of me suspects that she's being intentionally dishonest. And then the other part of me remembers that she's a twit who can't even read the axis of a figure, and I have to concede it might have been an honest mistake. I don't want to think that about Atheist organisations. I expect better from them, especially considering the natural relationship between being an atheist and being anal-retentive.

Here's the block of text that I was referring to, as it appeared at writing:

JOIN US ON THE STEPS OF THE TEXAS CAPITOL IN AUSTIN
Sunday, May 16, 2010 ~ 11:00 AM

Speak out against proposed radical changes to public school textbooks by the State Board of Education!

A religious-right faction dominating the Texas Board of Education is trying to distort the content of public school textbooks. This revisionist history includes downplaying or eliminating mention of Enlightenment thinkers including Thomas Jefferson, more emphasis on religious themes and figures (theocrats like John Calvin!), and even attacks on Darwinian evolution. These religious extremists wish to turn our public schools into pulpits for sectarian preaching and an authoritarian social and cultural agenda.
Read the Proposed Revisions here

I really hope they fix this.

By their low-hanging fruit you will know them

2010-04-20T03:21:00.000-07:00

An explanation for those who don't speak fluent Christianese:

The reference to orphans-

James 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

... and many others.

"I can recognise good fruit" -

Matt 7:15 "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

"and truly you are of your father" (uncapitalised "f") -

John 8:42 Jesus said to them ... 43 Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. 44 You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do.

I guess he knows his Bible as well as most Hillsong types.

Ooga-booga

2010-04-19T03:27:00.001-07:00

One of a handful who actually get the joke. His Facebook profile has a fluff friend on it. It's a panda. Its name is Cunt.

Rightly so

2010-04-19T03:25:00.001-07:00

Lean not on your own understanding

2009-09-24T03:31:00.000-07:00

JAAL reject my thank you note to Jesus!

2009-09-22T22:43:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it.

Yesterday, I submitted the following thank you note to Jesus to the Jesus, All About Life campaign:

Last night I received this reply:

desílatel approvals@allaboutlife.com.au
komu Nerdiah
datum 22. září 2009 13:05
předmět Thankyou submission declined.

Sorry, but your Thank You made us a little uncomfortable, so we couldn’t put it up.

But why don’t you have another go?

Allaboutlife.com.au

Uncomfortable? Uncomfortable??? But why?!

I sent them this reply:

odesílatel Nerdiah
komu approvals@allaboutlife.com.au
datum 22. září 2009 22:07
předmět Re: Thankyou submission declined.

Dear Approvals

Thank you for your email, however I must confess that I am a little disappointed at the rejection of my submission. The parasitic louse depicted in my thank you - Cymothoa exigua - is an exquisitely designed creation of God. This creature, like all of God's creatures, is perfectly made for the role that Almighty God created it for, and (I believe) a fitting tribute to his wisdom and ingenuity.

Cymothoa exigua first enters through the gills of the fish as a wee louse, whereupon it proceeds to attach itself to the base of the fishes tongue, using special appendages that God gave it for that very purpose. It extracts blood from the tongue, and as the parasite grows, the fish's tongue atrophies. However the fish is no worse for wear! For this very parasite then serves to replace the tongue with its own body (like Christ, who gave His body for us) so that the fish may use the parasite - attached to the stub of it's atrophied tongue - in place of its original tongue, and continue to live as normal. One might even say, the fish's tongue is "born again".

Now I understand that from our fallible human perspective, one might be tempted to view such of one of God's creatures as unsuitable a tribute to our loving and wise Creator, and dare I say it, even, perhaps, a little horrifying? But I ask, who are you to question the ways of God? Did He not create the parasitic louse? And isn't it written that not even a sparrow falls without the Lord noticing (Matt 10:29-31)? I put it to you that not even a single Spotted Rose
Snapper's tongue atrophies without God's will being fulfilled.

Almighty God created the parasitic louse and infused it with His creative spirit, no less than the more aesthetically pleasing creatures, like little puppies and pretty flowers, that typically
adorn the more "traditional" tributes to God. But I thought your campaign was all about a fresh approach to Jesus - seeing Him in the ordinary and everyday places. I see tributes regarding our
gratefulness for a nice day, a new pair of crocs. I think that our parasitic louse has a rightful place on your site, as yet another mundane thing that points to our Lord. That way we can truly be joyful always, praise Him without ceasing, and be thankful in every circumstance, knowing that it is God's will (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18) that fish sometimes have their tongues replaced by parasitic isopods.

Therefore, I kindly ask that you reconsider my submission.

Kind Regards,
Nerdiah Nerdypants (Ph.D. Ecology)

PS: I also understand that some of these submissions will also be integrated into large-scale advertisements on buses and such-like - don't you think that Cymothoa exigua would be the perfect subject to get people thinking and talking about God? The image certainly is attention-grabbing, and nothing would please me more than to see C. exigua as the next Ambassador for Christ.

Though the story does have a happy ending. The tribute site jesusallaboutlife.com (not .com.au) has accepted my submission :-)

Credit where credit is due

2009-09-22T03:12:00.000-07:00

I read on the friendly atheist blog that there's currently an Australian ad campaign on called "Jesus, All About Life". On their website you can submit your own little thank you note to Jesus about whatever you like, and people have sent Him thanks for everything from the existence of love to the tastiness of hot chips.

Well, I just couldn't resist, could I? Here's my submission:

Do you think they'll like it?

The picture is of a tongue-eating parasite isopod attached to what remains some hapless fish's tongue. You can read more about this beastie here.

MusiCrawler

2009-09-10T04:41:00.000-07:00

I've created an online program that allows you to listen to bands and browse the band friend-network from MySpace without suffering through said bands' ideas about what constitutes a good website layout. It's not ready to release yet, but hopefully I'll have the major bugs out by the end of the week and then I can send it to friends to do further testing.

It was my excuse to learn Python. And CherryPy, and CSS, and threading, and all the other shit it ended up requiring :-)

Sadly I couldn't put it on the Google Apps Engine because GAE doesn't permit threading (like at all). I get that you don't want someone to create ten thousand threads and send Google Apps down in a flaming heap, but seriously people, couldn't you just put an upper limit on how many threads a user is permitted to invoke? Like, 20?

They also append a referrer tag to all urlfetch commands identifying the source as GAE, but MySpace blocks all requests from GAE. In other words, whenever I went to read a MySpace page, Google would politely say

"Hello, my name is Google Apps, wanna play?"

and MySpace would be all like

"Fuck off! I getting wealthy and fat off all of these bands that already have a label, I don't need to promote independent struggling bands and play with the likes of _you_".

Of course, it wasn't anything an anonymiser couldn't fix, and to be honest, I'm mostly sad that I couldn't exercise that ability and force it to give me the page.

"Hi, my name's MusiCrawler! If you don't share your toys I'll take them from you by force.... Okay, you asked for it (**yoink**) Welcome to teh Interwebs!"

I wonder how many people I can get defriended by?

2009-07-16T07:59:00.001-07:00

I created a Facebook quiz. It's pretty childish. I'm rather proud of it. I'm hoping that none of my actual friends on Facebook get offended by it. As to the rest of them; fuck 'em.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

What do your Facebook friends think of your quiz results?

So, you're fond of taking Facebook quizzes and posting the results for all of your friends to see, but what you do your Facebook friends _really_ think of your quiz results? Take this quiz to find out.

Possible Outcomes:

No one cares! No one gives a fuck which Disney Princess you are in bed or what your inner X-Men character says your ideal career would be. Stop spamming people's update-pages with your shitty quiz results.

They think you're full of shit. Everyone knows that you lied to make your quiz result come out the way you want. These things are never complicated enough for the relationship between questions and options to be obscured, so it's not that hard to cheat. We might believe you're a bit geeky/sexy/smart/hip if you didn't keep insisting that you're the bastard love-child of Scarlett Johansson and Alan Cox, so give it a rest. Your friends are seriously starting to wonder if you might be overcompensating a bit.

They now know exactly where your insecurities lie. Which quizzes you choose to take says much more about you than the false answers you give to get the result that you want. Your umpteenth quiz announcing what a great lover you are will do nothing to convince your ex-lovers on Facebook that you are anything but a limpid corpse in bed, and you'll never be unique and interesting no matter how many personality-revealing astrology, numerology, alphabetology-type quizes you take. So rethink your next pink, sparkly "Which cocktail are you?"quiz; the result "Sex on the beach" is not a result to be proud of.

That you're gullible. So... you've taken the Horoscope quiz, the Chinese Horoscope quiz, the quiz that ascertains your soul-mate's initials from your birth date, the one that determines what will happen to you this week by the number of soft-consonants in your name, and the one that picks your lucky numbers based on your favourite breakfast cereal. Either you have a really unique sense of humour or you don't know the first fucking thing about logic and the scientific method. Chances are the latter. Two words for you, friend: "Forer effect". Google it. Oh, and that amazing coincidence that once happened to you that proved once and for all that everything happens for a reason? It was just a fucking coincidence. The universe isn't arranging itself to suit your ends - don't be so fucking vain.

ENDSPOILER ENDSPOILER ENDSPOILER

I enjoyed that :-D

Meaning to get more of this

2009-07-15T02:19:00.001-07:00

Click for blog soundtrack

My pledge to my fellow mothers-in-arms

2009-06-28T00:49:00.001-07:00

Dear random internet mothers,

I hereby pledge that if I ever feel the need to write a Facebook status update or blog post or any other electronic communication that is less than 100% positive about what it is like to be a mother, I will not then go and delete that post later.

I have done so before and I'm sorry that I did. I won't ever do it again.

Because if you haven't slept for 3 months, your tits are sore, your tummy's scarred, and fuck these hormones, why do I feel so sad??; then the least I could do for you is put a big fucking leather boot in the face of that bullshit lie out there that motherhood is unskilled work and anyone who has difficulty with it is a loo-hoo-ooser.

Ladies, it's not a fucking competition.

And maybe the reason that I felt like that is because people like me were censoring themselves just to defend themselves from feeling the way that I did. It's a vicious fucking circle, don't you know, and it cuts us apart and leaves us all feeling stranded and alone.

And if You, you will know who you are, ever read this; there's nothing wrong with admitting that you are up at 1 am listening to the baby grumble. Why'd you delete it? We've all been there. Maybe, if you'd just left it up there, you might have made a connection, got some support, and let someone _else_ know that they're not alone.

Looks like someone wants a kick in the face

Every time we lie or we cover up our difficulties, we perpetuate the myth and we do someone somewhere some damage, and ultimately it all comes back to us. I'm not going to do it to myself, or to the others, any more.

Crazy person makes sense

2009-05-15T04:19:00.000-07:00

reddit is discussing the writings and postings of one GirlFromIpanema. They have a website, of course, and oh deary me if their schizophrenic ravings aren't starting to make a strange kind of sense.

Some choice quotes:

"Irony is a woodstapled carpenter."

"The greater that your difficulty is, at pronouncing the word "nuclear" though you have the precious ability to speak otherwise, the greater the distance that should be protected, between you and triggering critical mass."

"so also petitioning Congress is available to you. Word of mouth. Or hand. Or toes, if an amputee."

From another website of hers:

if a police employee asks, "Is this you" while pointing to a plastic driver certification of ability, the only correct answer is, "That's plastic, Neighbor; I'm standing right here (wave once, like a child waving from a schoolbus, don't waive), and I'd say the same under oath -- you were checking to see if I'd lie, right?")

Unfortunately these people never are just harmlessly crazy with short bursts of unearthly brilliance before their mind switches tracks again:

I would've been dead permanently but somebody probably saw Mel Gibson's account of bad Friday and took pity -- yet even now a void restraining order from a scared, intimidated court reporter peer of twelve years from a small-town feeling church, is squeezed from her after I merely knocked on her door needing her witness of other witnesses she named the night prior at jumpstarting the car I was operating...

LGF UK and Reddit team up against National Organization for Marriage

2009-05-14T11:10:00.000-07:00

The bogus DMCA notice that took down my parody of the National Organization for Marriage's "Gathering Storm" ad was also sent to many other YouTube users. Included in NOM's DMCA-bombing campaign was one little ad by "RedditPSA", a parody cleverly showing how ridiculous the notion of protecting our freedoms by opposing gay-marriage is by comparing it to opposing inter-racial marriage.

Unfortunately for NOM, that little ad happened to be a recipient of an award from The Lesbian and Gay Foundation, UK. When I told LGF UK what had happened, they weren't so pleased, and decided to make some noise about it.

You can find their press release and a petition here.

Incidentally, you can still find the offending ad on YouTube, along with not one but four copies of NationforBigots DMCA'd parody (e.g. here).

National Organization for Marriage found this ad so threatening, they filed a bogus DMCA notice against it

You can't stop the signal.

2009-05-07T03:10:00.000-07:00

NOM sent me a DMCA take down notice through YouTube

2009-05-05T02:51:00.000-07:00

YouTube just sent me the following email:

This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by National Organization for Marriage claiming that this material is infringing:

Parody of National Organization for Marriage - Gathering Storm: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t9wgfmPJHo.

I recall a while ago seeing another YouTube user complain that their parody was taken down for the same reason (though sadly I can't find that user any more). It seems to me that NOM has decided to use the DMCA to scare people into taking down parody ads critical of the NOM "Gathering Storm" ad, even if those videos clearly fall within fair use.

Don't NOM realise that there are consequences for sending out frivolous take down notices? Under Section 512(f) of the DMCA, if you send out a take down notice when clearly something is not copyright infringement, you are liable for legal costs and compensation. Though I expect that they are banking on the fact that no one is going to try to fight back against a massive organisation like theirs backed by the money and power of the mormon church and the religious right wing.

This is doubly hilarious considering their current little fight with Perez Hilton.

I am currently contemplating firing back with a counter notice. Someone's got to do it, right? I just wish I could get into contact with some gay rights organisation for a bit of support.

I've put a script of the removed video below, including stills of the video itself. The transformative text parts are in red.

---------------

Script: Parody of National Organization for Marriage - Gathering Storm

There's a storm gathering.

The clouds are dark. And the winds are strong.

And I am afraid.

Some who advocate for non-Christian marriage have taken the issue far beyond non-Christian couples

They want to bring the issue into _my life.

My freedom, will be taken away.

I'm a California doctor who must prescribe the pill to any woman, even if she's unmarried

My church group have lost tax-exemption on our wedding hall because we can't rent it out to non-virgin couples.

I'm a Mass parent helplessly watching public schools teach my son, that people who've been divorced are okay

But some who advocate for same secular marriage have not been content with same secular couples living as they wish.

Those advocates want to change the way I live.

I will have no choice.

The storm, is, coming.

But we have hope. A rainbow coalition of people of every creed and colour are coming together in _love to protect marriage. Visit nation for marriage dot org. Join us.

---------------

A list of other users whose videos have been taken down, as I find them:

NationforBigots
julyfirst1970 (account suspended after 19,049 views)
RedditPSA (holy crap! they even managed to silence reddit? And after 41,980)
Can't find the user, but the link was http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5HQ2fOUYws and it was called "NOM Remix".

NOM Nom nom nom-nom.

2009-04-11T21:56:00.000-07:00

Quite possibly the greatest word ever

2009-03-28T04:48:00.000-07:00

I love Pharyngula.

... Once again, the ID camp shows themselves to be less a research group than a gaggle of stumblebum clowns, with ...

Main Entry: stum·ble·bum
Pronunciation: \ˈstəm-bəl-ˌbəm\
Function: noun
Date:1932
: a clumsy or inept person ; especially : an inept boxer

A mother's thoughts

2009-03-22T04:45:00.000-07:00

Salon has a fabulous section on their website called Mothers Who Think. How refreshing! It's a worthy addition to their regulars "Law-abiding Blacks" and "Muslims who Don't Go Around Blowing Shit Up". It's a niche market, but I'm glad to see publishers like Salon are willing to take a financial risk and support minority readers with high-quality, snappy-written opinion-articles.

The good news and the bad news

2009-03-19T01:05:00.001-07:00

It's been said before, but it bears repeating: Durian is the fruit of Satan.

All Hail Durian, Dark Lord of the Fruits.

The bad news is that YouTube, once the great bastion of free speech with such gems as "Two girls, one cup" (DONT GOOGLE THAT) and most of FailBlog's more gruesome videos of Fail, has taken down my reply to Ray Comfort. For obscenity, I think- they're not replying to me. The good news is that my stupid little movie got 20,000 views before YouTube shut it down, and almost unanimously positive comments. That's a lotta happy people out there, which makes me all warm and fuzzy. Hopefully some of them clicked through to kiva.org as well.

The bad news is that YouTube is _the_ site for video, but the good news is that FunnyorDie has a NSFW tag that means that my video and others like it are more likely to be tolerated.

Is it possible, once the connectivity of a site like YouTube is high, for people to still shift their preferences in response to that kind of thing? Will it happen?

The bad news is that the only Christian who has engaged in a dialogue about this seems unable to comprehend the main thrust (*ahem*) of the argument. The good news is that a bunch of random kids on a gaming site have surprised me with their common sense and liberal attitudes.

Hilariously, the single racist comment on the thread belongs to a Christian (bottom of this page here).

Date Posted: 3/18 8:54pm Subject: If homosexuality is a sin, why did "God" make it so that buttsex naturally feels good in males?
----------------
To tempt us you piece of ****? Ever think about that one? Of course not you simple minded fool.

Worship God or burn in hell you good for nothing ****ing peasant.

Probably black too.
----------------

And no one bothered responding to them. That's a peek into the future right there :-)

To hell with YouTube

2009-03-17T12:46:00.001-07:00

Further proof that God created us - watch more funny videos

Okay I went and made it

2009-03-16T01:58:00.000-07:00

Ray Comfort's video:

My response:

It is my first youtube video!

Youtube reply to Ray Comfort's banana video.

2009-03-11T06:57:00.000-07:00

Alas, I don't have the mad youtube skillz to create this, but I'm sure some clever young person somewhere will be able to put it together. All it needs is a male voice and some anatomical drawings. Oh, and some exposure.

First, here is the original Ray Comfort video if you haven't seen it before.

And now, the script for my response.

----------------

Behold, the atheist's nightmare!

Now if you study a well-made male's anus, you'll find adjacent to anterior side of the interior wall a small organ called a prostate gland. If you get your penis ready to insert into the anus, you'll find the head of the penis rubs exactly against this spot. You'll find the maker of the anus -- Almighty God -- has made the anus with an erogenous zone. The penis and the anus are perfectly made, one for the other.

It has outward indicators of inward contents: hairless, too early; spotted, too icky; firm and toned, just right.

Now if you stimulate the the anus, you'll find -- as with the vagina, which has erogenous zones inside, so God has placed an erogenous zone inside. And when you stimulate this zone, the contents won't squirt in your face. You'll find the exterior, which is made of fat and muscle, is curved and lovely. Notice how gracefully it fits into a human lap. Notice how it has a hole for ease of entry. It's just the right shape for the human penis. It's soft, easy to grasp the sides of, and it's even curved slightly upwards to make the whole process so much easier.

Seriously, Kirk, the whole of Creation testifies to the genius of God's creative---

----------------

Oh wow.

2009-02-23T05:06:00.000-08:00

I'm just going to repost this here in its entirety.

The evolution of the egg: A fairytale for grown-ups?
By Ray Comfort

My wife and I have a chicken coop at home. I like chickens, and even gave the ladies their own names. There's Fingerlinkin', Roast, and Crispy, just to name a few. I put their names on the wall of the coop to remind them that they are to lay eggs for our family. It seems to be working.

So which came first, the chicken or the egg? For those who believe the Bible, it was the chicken, and the first egg came some time later. However, it's not so simple among the Genesis-less generation. Did the first chicken come from the first egg, or was it the chicken that first laid the first egg? Long ago, even Aristotle (384-322 BC) spoke of the egg dilemma. He philosophized: "For there could not have been a first egg to give a beginning to birds, or there should have been a first bird which gave a beginning to eggs; for a bird comes from an egg."

Let's get into a little philosophical talk ourselves. Let's say evolution was responsible for the beginning, and let's say the egg was the first to evolve (before the chicken). Why did it do that? Why would there be nothing, and over millions of years, nothing became simple organisms, then these organisms became an egg? I can understand that a fish evolved legs and lungs over millions of years--because he (and his necessary female help mate) wanted to breathe, and to walk on dry land. But why would a thoughtless egg appear first and then want to become a chicken? How and why did it evolve with a yolk, a white, and a shell shaped like . . . like and egg?

If the egg was shaped with a rounded point at each end for ease-of-laying (a square egg would be painful), how did evolution know to make it that shape if there were never any chickens in the first place to know that an egg is made to be laid? Another small dilemma. How did the first egg get fertilized to become the first chicken? What or who fertilized it, and why did he fertilize it and sit on it until it hatched? How did the fertilizing creature evolve and have the ability to fertilize an egg that he found. How did he get the seed into the egg to fertilize it? And why did the (rooster) evolve as a bird? Unless he was an egg first, and if so, we have the above questions to deal with, because his egg would also need to be fertilized. Who did the fertilizing?

Evolution certainly is a fairytale for grown-ups.

Distributed by www.ChristianWorldviewNetwork.com

I learn something new every day

2009-02-23T04:27:00.000-08:00

I was reading a post on Bitch, Ph.D. called A different kind of rape when I came across what I at first took to be a joke (emph. mine):

... So many interesting-looking people, old and young, butch and femme, queer and straight, trans and cisgender.

You know, like trans- and cis- isomers. "Damn," and I thought, "and I thought I was nerdy. I'd never think to make a chemistry joke in a context like that."

Turns out "cis-", meaning "on the same side", can be used to form "cisgendered", as in having the same gender identity as is expected by society. Here's the wikipedia entry explaining its origins on usenet in the 90's.

Stickers from the internets

2009-01-20T00:21:00.001-08:00

I made some stickers. I think they could find applications in RL.

My idea for a porn

2009-01-19T23:13:00.000-08:00

I was watching the PBS Nova documentary Ape Genius (Ape Genius on Google Video) and suddenly I had a brainwave. I realised that the behaviour and social structure of the Bonobo (Pan paniscus) provides an elegant solution to the most serious artistic problem facing the largest narrative genre we have today: namely the pornographic film.

Now, I should probably admit that I've never actually watched a porn before. But, having seen enough pop-cultural references to them, I feel sufficiently confident in my ability to come up with a great porn idea. Or at least, to address that one of the most pressing problems facing porn today, which I understand to be reconciling a great quantity and variety of sexual encounters with a marginally believable plot line.

According to the latest research, the only taboo in Bonobo society is the pairing of a mother with her son. Instantly we have the pretext for all manner of sexual encounters to suit most tastes. However, watching Bonobos have sex is probably only interesting to a limited audience (and strikes me as vaguely exploitative, even if they are bound to be doing it of their own free will), so here's where the fictionalised element comes in, the genius of the idea, if you will:-

Imagine an alternative universe, one in which the primitive ancestors of Homo sapiens had a social structure less like that of the common chimp and more like that of their left-bank cousins. A short narration can be used to introduce this concept at the start of the film, with a view not only to setting up the pretext of the film but also educating the viewer about the remarkable story of our later evolutionary history.

Actually, the educational opportunity here is not to be scoffed at - for most people are familiar with the physiological evolution of living organisms, but how many have considered its interplay with social and cultural evolution as well? Cultural evolution, memetics, behavioural psychology, is all cutting edge science.

Anyway, so we introduce the pretext of the film, and then we may cut to a sweeping scene of this imagined alternate society - and here the artistic director has free license to imagine all kinds of alternative fashions, architectures, technologies etc - but ordinary human actors may be used. I might even permit them to be attractive by mainstream contemporary standards, as a concession to the commercial stakeholders in the film.

My goodness, the possibilities here are truly endless. For example, would we like to include a male-on-male fantasy scene with hints of power-play? A boss giving his underling a blow-job? In a normal porn, such a scene would be hollow and contrived, but in the Bonobo porn, this is not only possible but almost mandatory, for male Bonobos will reconcile after a conflict by having sex. How many possible plot-lines could this be worked into, from simple romantic triangle to a cerebral political intrigue? The only limit is your imagination.

There is almost too much possibility here, and I imagine that for all but a select few viewers with the broadest of tastes, not all scenes will be to their preference. Consequently I propose that instead of using cheesy 70s music to accompany all sex scenes, a voice-over will be introduced to explain the relevance of what we are viewing from a anthropological and evolutionary perspective. That way a viewer need not fast-forward through the "boring" bits, but can instead turn their attention to the narration.

When a new female Bonobo (usually an adolescent) is trying to join a group she will seek out an older female in the group and try to befriend her by grooming her or inviting sexual contact. This behaviour elicits acceptance by the older/higher ranking female, and therefore the lower-ranking females in the group will accept the new member as well.

I also understand that the title of a porn should be a clever parody of an existing mainstream movie. The title for my porn practically writes itself: Planet of the Bonobos.

Do you think David Attenborough would be interested in doing the narration?

Let's see how long this lasts

2009-01-13T00:27:00.001-08:00