I dont know if you have had the chance to read the Compuskills Web Design Blog recently, but as mentioned there we have been working on a fairly large overhaul on the Compuskills site. Most of the work has been to convert the previous pages into a database served CMS, with only minor cosmetic changes.
Everything has gone well, the new site should be live tonight and we can get back to the business of ranting and raving here again 🙂
In a timely tribute to the Wire Series 4, which is supposed to be shown on an obscure satellite channel from tonight – although I can’t find it – Britain has decided to model itself on Baltimore’s East side. Teenagers shooting or stabbing each other has become a staple item of every day’s news. Today, the police announced a new task force after three teenagers in South London have been shot within a few weeks.
There have been too many reports about the the horror of British childhood recently to ignore them all.
Britain was bottom of a UNICEF league table of European children’s well being. The Netherlands came top. Anyone who has been in the Netherlands and the UK will probably agree to the truth of this. Walk round most English housing estates and you’ll see enough semi-feral children to make you fear for the future.
There could be an infinite number of blogposts about the reasons for the difference, although my favoured one is that adults in the top-ranked countries often actually treat their kids with respect and talk to them and spend time with them…
The BBC quotes Paul Vangeert, a Dutch psychology professor:
Much of this, he says, comes from the relationship that Dutch parents have with their children. And, from the fact that less pressure is put on them at school.,,,,One of the strong points of the Dutch family, he says, is that it is very open and communicative. Relations are generally good between parents and children and they can talk about almost anything.
This analysis seems like pure common sense to me but it fits very badly with the current child-rearing fashions. There are any number of TV programmes (SuperNanny, etc) to tell us that acting towards our offspring as if we are paid dogtrainers will work wonders.
Just in case you doubt the truth of the survey result, there is a story so repellent and sadly all too imaginable that it makes you start thinking there must be a missing link species living in the UK. In case you ever wondered about the home lives of the type of people who go to watch cage-fighting shows or illegal dog-fighting, here they are. And these are females. This is a story to make you reach for the culling apparatus.
Four Devon women goaded a boy and girl toddler to fight and filmed the result. (That’s only a link to the BBC story, not the film.) Some quotes:
The boy, aged two, is seen crying after being punched in the face by the three-year-old girl and is told by one of the four women in the room “not to be a wimp or a faggot” and to hit her back.
The court heard that when interviewed by police, one of the women said: “I didn’t see any harm in toughening them up. I done the same with my own children.”
(The kids are now in care. Which doesn’t really inspire much confidence that they’ll end up any better off, the care system being well known for turning out stable and balanced human beings… )
The whole thing makes you wonder about how many more of these gangrenous morons there are. Well, listen to this, from the police Detective Sergeant :
“Locally this is something that is new to us, but we are aware that similar incidents have occurred elsewhere in the country and it is something people need to be aware of.”
PS. If you don’t know the UK, Devon is almost as far from inner-city squalor as you can get. It’s mainly rural and one of the most popular holiday destinations for the few English people who still take holidays in England.
Thanks to the very funny (and it gets funnier with each reading) LiberalsMustDie.com blog, I came across this excellent video.
It really is worth watching.
Comedy Blog, YouTube, Humour, Religion, Creationism,Society, Atheism
Well, the latest entry to the ThisHasToBeSatire department is a blog post on a charmingly named website called “Liberals Must Die.” While I found this site by chance on Technorati (good old tags, oddly this was the result of an Intelligent Design tag search)
The post in question (Global Warming Proven False) has a picture of a snow storm and the following text:
I think this about sums it up.
The hearing on ‘WARMING OF THE PLANET’ had to be cancelled because of an ice storm.
And yet these Global Warming idiots don’t get it!
Global warming is just a lie!
I must admit that (possibly as a result of too long spent reading the blogs of the truly insane) it took some time for me to decide this site was satirical. The main clues I (eventually) picked up on were the link to the Drudge report (above) and some of the other posts. After reading the ones which at least looked overtly legitimate, I found more (eg. the Muslim Terrerists (sic) category) which I think are solid evidence the site is purely humour. Some examples:
Some say Obama is not a terrorist, and yet he has still not denied it!!Do you know he was raised in Hawaii??? That is practically a foreign country; half way to China, the original Pearl Harbor bombers! (read original)
and
This is so kick ass. When all is said and done, GWB could go down in history has being the President who waged the most wars of all time!! I say this… ran wants nukes, well lets give them an up close demonstration.How about a 50 Mega Ton Bomb right in the capital!! As the great Jerry Falwell said “Blow them away in the name of GOD!” (read original)
I had originally thought this was some ultra-right wing madman but on second reading, and assuming the humourous intent, it actually becomes funny. The real killer is the “Top Ten Lessons from 24” – it is hilarious.
It looks like common sense has returned. Looking at the Register today:
The battle for the hearts and minds of American school children took another turn this week. The infamous Kansas school board that voted to banish Darwin from the science curriculum has welcomed him back with open arms, spurning instead the language of intelligent design.
The school board has voted, 6-4, to remove the language of intelligent design from the curriculum: science teachers will no longer have to say that the central ideas of evolution are controversial in scientific circles.
The explanation of the “nature of science” has also been reworded. It is now described as the pursuit of rational explanations for things that happen in the Universe. . . . (read full article)
About time really.
Tags: Creationism, Evolution, ID, Intelligent Design, Kansas, Education, Science, Philosophy, religion, darwin
(Stolen Borrowed from somewhere onthe ARRSE wiki)
IRAQ: It’s Sunni and it’s Shi’ite.
There aren’t many new postings from the atheist blogroll on a Wednesday.
This is because, when Dawkins made the world, he laboured mightily for x billion years and three days. Then, on the Wednesday, he said,
“I’ll put my feet up and have a nice cup of tea and read some old blog posts”
“And lo, from this day forth, any atheist who blogs on a Wednesday wilt be turned into a pillar of salt”
I am far from an expert on these subjects, but it covers something which has been intriguing me over the last few days. The Einstein@HOME program is described as follows:
Einstein@Home is a program that uses your computer’s idle time to search for spinning neutron stars (also called pulsars) using data from the LIGO and GEO gravitational wave detectors. Einstein@Home is a World Year of Physics 2005 project supported by the American Physical Society (APS)and by a number of international organizations.
(A bit like Seti@Home but that seems to have lost some popularity of late)
Now this is a nice bit of software which runs from something called the BOINC manager, where you can get to view your current work unit, see stats, visit the forums etc.
The question I have, is about the “user statistics” it shows. As you can see in the screen shots, there is choice of “user total” or “user average” and to me, the two don’t seem to match up. I am led to believe the average is “recent average” rather than a simple (total / days) type. But even so, it seems odd – especially as I have had the software running almost constantly for little or no return in the way of work units.
Any feedback or commentary welcome. Given the steady climb shown by the total figures, the mountain-like averages seem somewhat… odd.
Obviously not. (Surely by definition alone).
Anyway, I was rooting around Technorati Tags for Christianity, and I came across a blog post titled “The Sovereignty of God and Prayer” and obviously took to it like a bull to a red rag. It is short and pretty much what you would expect from a blog taglined “Christian Resources for Young Women” (makes you want to vomit already, doesn’t it). Why do the more devout of the religious fools believers have to be so sexist?
The best bit is the first sentence: (emphasis mine)
So we believe God is sovereign and he predestines and elects those whom He will save.
Kind of makes everything else pointless. At the end there is a link to a post which “answers this” from the Ministry of John Piper (cant let the young Christian Ladies try to work things out themselves now, can we?). Sadly, this post is a complete, unadulterated non-answer.
It is long and rambling. It is full of references to irrelevant sections of the bible and it has the stormy writing style so loved by theists.
This is how it is summarised:
In other words, just as God will see to it that His Word is proclaimed as a means to saving the elect, so He will see to it that all those prayers are prayed which He has promised to respond to. I think Paul’s words in Romans 15:18 would apply equally well to his preaching and his praying ministry: “I will not presume to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me, resulting in the obedience of the Gentiles.” Even our prayers are a gift from the one who “works in us that which is pleasing in his sight” (Hebrews 13:21). Oh, how grateful we should be that He has chosen us to be employed in this high service! How eager we should be to spend much time in prayer!
Says it all really.
It isn’t just Islam which has “believers” so morally bankrupt they are willing to perform all manner of heinous crimes as long as their particular imaginary friend tells them to. Thanks to excellent Blog Of The Gods, I came across a wonderful little snippet of crazy Christianity.
In response to this question:
If your god revealed to you in a set of flawless communications you could not dispute that you should kill every child you see under the age of 2, would you?
VoxDay (who calls himself “the Christian Libertarian commentator from WorldNetDaily”) responds: (original)
…The answer is yes, and how would you possibly take issue with that position regardless of whether you believe in my god or don’t believe in any god?
Wow. What a nice guy. Part of me thinks he is just saying things like this (I am cynical today) to create a “hardman” impression, as he is safe in the knowledge he will never, ever, be tested on this. Unless he does actually have some kind of psychological episode it is guaranteed he will never get this commandment (that said, the episode may not be far off).
It is no stretch of the imagination to work out that “VoxDay” is far from a deep thinker, but he continues his line of “reasoning” as follows:
And as we are informed in Revelation, He will wipe out many peoples through the acts of (presumably) His angels. Jefferson [person who posed the question] can complain that this makes God unworthy of worship all he likes, but that’s as irrelevant as complaining that Stalin wasn’t properly elected according to the Soviet Constitution. Although in this case it isn’t might makes right, it is a much simpler case of might = right. Obey or perish.
Blimey. My God is bigger than your God so do as I say. (I think this is an argument Atheists could win though, we can test who is harder me or God. I punch you then God punches you. Which hurt the most?)
You do not need a degree in Theology to work out that this is nonsense. Even as an Atheist I am aware that this is not the doctrine of Jesus and is even a bad interpretation of the Old Testament.
Showing the depth of his intellectual fortitude, VoxDay continues:
Now, I admit that if I was wrong and my god did not exist but another one did, one of his worshippers could likely provide a rational reason for why I it would be immoral to embark upon a toddler-slaying rampage. Of course, that would depend on the moral code of that other deity. And then, a Christian could certainly call into question the legitimacy of my divine orders; I’m quite sure that every Christian of my acquaintance would, in fact, do so.
Nevertheless, this is remarkably dangerous ground, not for Christians, but rather for anyone who is pro-science. If you are going to debate the legitimacy of a belief system based on the potential danger it presents, secular scientists are vastly more vulnerable than Christians.
It is almost funny. If this was intended as humour, good work VoxDay. If he is serious…. well….
As an aside, this has also been picked up by Pharyngula (who wisely comments they call Atheists Amoral) and in the comments floating around there have been some excellent ones:
I would turn it around and ask them, “if believing in God meant an eternity in hell, would you still believe?” (original)
There is also this one, which seems interesting in light of a previous debate about Children being born sinful or innocent:
You don’t have to believe you have been commanded from God to justify killing the young and unborn. Most born-again Christians believe that babies, unborn children, and the very young go to heaven if they die. (A few argue that you cannot know, but when pressed most Christians would have to say they can’t imagine any other fate for children too young to make moral choices). (original)
It seems the Doctrine of Original Sin (and being born sinful) is something still unresolved in Christianity. Oh well, they have only had the inviolate word of God for 2000 years to sort something out… 🙂
From the wonders of Pharyngula I came across this video clip, which is apparently a guy (P Funk) walking downtown being accosted by a couple of fundamentalist Christians. The guy makes some reasonable arguments, and lots of websites have him as “winning the fight” as it were – but you could argue either way.
The Fundies come up with the normal (stupid) arguments and the guy rebutts them pretty well. One which he fumbles (in my opinion of course) is in the last minute or so. The nutter says that once science claimed there were 9 planets in the Universe and look how many there are now. I think the guy lets the nut off pretty lightly but no one is perfect. 🙂
The main thing I find odd about this, is who took the footage? The camera work seems to be from one of the fundies – and if so, why? And why post it to YouTube? If the camera work was done by a friend of “P Funk,” why didn’t he help out and why isn’t there more footage of the nutters?
Anyway, take a look and you decide if it is real.
Philosophy, Christian, Nutcase, Religion, Fundamentalist, Atheist, Atheism, YouTube, Video, DV
A strangely quiet day on the blog front today – despite the constant level of theist, quack, nutcase posts floating around the blog sphere, I have been too busy (work and distance learning) to dedicate the required amount of time to it.
As always, a nice list of links is a good way to keep the posts going 🙂 so here are some more:
Hopefully, more interesting posts will follow soon.
Tags: WhyDontYou, Links, Raves, Blogroll, Links
Nice analogy on a Guardian Technology page in an article by Andrew Brown last Thursday. The topic was anti-virus firms holding the public to ransom with Mafia style tactics.
The warnings that bubble up almost daily from your system tray could all be reduced to one marketing message: “Nice computer you’ve got here. It would be a shame if anything were to happen to it”
However, I don’t completely agree. It’s not as if the big three firms to which he refers are threatening to spread malware if you don’t instal them. Anti-virus firms may rely for sales on the fact that the Internet is seething with malware. It’s certainly true that it’s in their interest to talk up threats and keep everyone in a state of fear. All the same, they don’t distribute malware and I don’t believe they can get much advantage from nagging us into constantly updating.
Andrew Brown is basically saying that av software isn’t necessary because you can keep out intruders with a firewall. I’m not convinced that just having a firewall is always the answer.
He’s saying “Don’t use Internet Explorer” or “Outlook Express,” only use free or legit software, don’t go to shady sites. It’s all good advice but it’s not infallible.
Above all, he’s an industry professional, obviously well-regarded enough to be a Guardian columnist. He knows what he’s doing. I don’t suppose any kids or less-expert friends and relatives ever use his computer. Most (non-Albanian) people have less idea of what’s going on in their PCs than they have of Albanian grammar. Andrew Brown might be able to tell whether an obscure system process needs to connect to location xx.xx.xx.xx but the rest of us don’t. And we certainly couldn’t tell if a worm had spoofed a legitimate process. (I suspect he might have trouble doing that.) We don’t know if registry entries are genuine, given the zillions of redundant just-in-case entries that come with Windows. Most of us don’t even know how to open the Windows registry and would finish off our PCs permenently if we tried to edit it.
Even with Linux, in its new user friendly versions, even an expert user has to take most of its actions on trust. And Firefox is no longer hole-free is it? (In fact, unlike IE, Firefox will handily store your passwords in a human readable format.) Are malware distributors never going to abuse people’s trust by adding code to open-source freeware? Almost any piece of software has weaknesses and the world seems full of evil geniuses who can find them a lot faster than they can be detected.
I prefer to have a stab at eliminating malware myself and at detecting it by looking at the packets my PC sends, just as a half-interesting challenge and because I hate to feel powerless in relation to using my PC. I’m not much better at it than the average toddler is at ballet dancing. When malware defeats me, I’m more than glad there are products that can do better than I can at stopping it.
Good article, very nice metaphor. Can’t agree 100% though.
Tags: technology, malware, firewall, antivirus.
Fortunately I am not a daily mail reader so I was spared the latest fallacy riddled diatribe by Alistair McGrath (who has been mentioned here in the past). Even more fortunately the excellent Nullifidian Blog did endure the nonsense and wrote about it highlighting the (numerous) logical fallacies McGrath is employing.
Dawkins, McGrath and the Daily Mail
I would never go as far as suggesting reading the Daily Mail, but it may well be worth getting in touch (via email or whatever) to let them know what you think of the article.
Extra ironic comedy points are awarded to some of the comments currently on the newspaper’s site. The bog-standard appeals to false authority are very prevalent:
Dawkins’ view of the universe is very 3 dimentional. Surely a great mind rules nothing in and nothing out without proof. Einstein was fully aware of that argument. – Martin Hazelgrove, Bristol, UK
Yeah, and what exactly did Uncle Albert know about evolutionary biology or theology? Just because he was a fantastically gifted physicist doesn’t mean he has any greater authority on this topic than the next person. Might as well have said “My granny was fully aware of that argument” for all the value it provides.
The Cornish Catholic Church is on hand to present a variation on the appeal to fear, appeal to ridicule and the appeal from personal incredulity:
I’m all for removing our delusions and the ‘agnostics’ and ‘atheists’ have plenty. The big question is ultimate, adequate explanation of what we see around us. That has to be. Then to relate our lives to this explanation of explanations. Without this relationship we remain unfulilled and live with more and more delusions.– Father Bryan Storey, Tintagel Catholic Church, Cornwall
If you haven’t already done so – buy the book (The God Delusion…).