Chain Letters

Now that I am back online, I am suffering from the mountains of chain emails my “friends” send me, thinking I am actually interested in reading some nonsense about how sending this email to 10 people in 1/10th of a second will make my wish come true.

I have found one which is strangely interesting – but, I suspect, not for the reasons the originator wanted. The “Friend” who sent it to me is some one I have not seen face to face for about 10 years now and (based on the other emails they send me), they have either been born again or think I am. Pretty amazing really.

Anyway, the email, titled “Wow, what a wake up call,” reads: (it is long, so it is after the fold)

Continue reading

Back Online

This is a short note to say I am back online now. Things are still a little hectic so “normal service” is not yet in place, however at least I can use things other than my phone to browse the web – it has shocked me how reliant “we” become on the internet for basic things.

Anyway, thanks to the miracle of Pipex, I have a working net connection (four days, only two of which were “working days,” after I ordered online) and things are certainly brighter now. Well Done Pipex.

Now I am “back” as it were, I will have a look at re-designing the site theme to try and improve on the issues it currently has and take on board the user comments you were kind enough to send. Thank you.

More soon.

The manly code

Another rant about gender values. Click away now if you like. This one’s about manly honour and its miraculously contradictory manifestations.

On the BBC site, there’s a piece about how a judge called a killer a “coward.” Branded him a coward even, how exhilaratingly medieval. Not a mudererer, note, or a killer, or even a manslaughterer , if there’s such a word. A coward. This seems to have been the worst penalty he had to offer.

(Don’t you just love our gradual conceptual return to medieval “community justice”?)

Playing field killer ‘a coward’

A killer responsible for the death of a 16-year-old on playing fields in Kent has been branded a coward by a judge.
Lee Cowie, 19, was sentenced to four years at a young offenders’ institute. He had admitted the manslaughter of Michael Chapman,…At Maidstone Crown Court, Judge Andrew Patience said he was not “man enough” to challenge Michael to a “fair fight”.

Apparently, he attacked the boy from behind. The dishonourable unmanliness seems to have caused more concern to the judge than the actual death. This half suggests that there wouldn’t have even been a crime if there had been a formal duel challenge and seconds.

It is an annoyance to me that the realm of life where women are consistently luckier than men is in the realm of murder. Women can often get away with murder by playing the “Don’t blame me, I’m just a girl” card.

Now it looks as if men might be also able to minimise the time they have to serve for crimes of violence, if they just have the sense to observe the rules of gentlemanly combat.

New TV low

Endemol has excelled even its own proud record of providing “entertainment” in the true tradition of the Roman arena.

It’s about to produce a reality show on Dutch tv where three people who need transplants will compete for the kidney of a dying person.

What can you say? What fun. Life for one winner. Death for 1 person for sure and possible death for the 2 losers. Continue reading

La La land

Poland is worried about the potentially gay content of the Teletubbies.

I kid you not. Well, I might be kidding you, because this has the ring of spuriousness. but I am nevertheless reporting it with a straight face. (In fact, even the BBC seems to withdraw from its attention-grabbing first few paragraphs. But, never let the facts get in the way of a good story. In any case, this is apparently part of a drive against “promotion of homosexuality” to children – that old wierd target – and probably comes with the full blessing of the Polish Catholic Church. Which may have amongst its ranks enough priests who’ve done their bit on that score, if the rest of the world is anything to go on…)

According to the BBC, the spokeswoman for children’s rights in Poland, Ewa Sowinska, doubts Tinky Winky’s heterosexuality.

“I noticed he was carrying a woman’s handbag,” she told a magazine. “At first, I didn’t realise he was a boy.”

Who even realised the Tellytubbies were gendered?

I am particularly taken with the idea that carrying a given luggage item is an indicator of anyone’s sexual orientation, whether they are made of meat or cloth.

Whatever happened to the bird flu panic?

Well, don’t fill your yard with chickens again yet. Our old friend, the bird flu painic is back, albeit in an apparently less virulent form (i.e. An article in Scientific American rather than monster tabloid spreads, but maybe I haven’t spotte dthem.)

According to Scientific American, Welsh school kids have been treated with antivirals after an outbreak of a mild form of bird flu.

Teachers and children at the school, which is close to a farm in Corwen, North Wales, where the H7N2 strain of bird flu was discovered last week, were being treated with antiviral medication as a precaution, the National Public Health Service (NPHS) said in a statement.

A total of 12 people have been identified as suffering from the flu, reporting “symptoms of a flu like illness or conjunctivitis” it said, but stressed no one was seriously ill.

The article says it may spread from person to person but isn’t a killer virus. However,

The presence of an H7 virus in poultry is treated seriously by animal health officials because scientists believe that, when allowed to circulate in poultry populations, a low pathogenic virus can mutate into the highly pathogenic form

White feathers

In a Guardian interview with Jessica Stevenson, the woman from Spaced who’s now in Dr Who,, she compared women today to the women of the suffragette era.

I wondered how women – so enthused, so galvanised, so passionate – could have organised one of the most successful political campaigns in British history. Compare that with now when they are obsessed with scented candles. Not to say that all women are like that but it’s still depressing that politicised, sophisticated women are few and far between. It’s a direct result of rabid consumerism.

One of my main rants against the world is how so many women seem bent on becoming mindless Stepford wives so there’s less than no argument from me there. Continue reading

My bad ..

Sorry. I wrote the Chuck Norris post without realising there was link to a really good rant on Nullifidian’s site.

This leads to the original article on the Institute for Humanist Studies It is really funny. And it has pictures that show the nature of the man better than any words could.

I missed this on Virgin, being offline at the time…

Spotted in The Register was an article on Virgin’s secret/open fair use policy, which came up in the context of Virgin demanding other DSL providers are more “open” about their bandwidth limitations. This piece is well out of date but still worth noting (Note to self: Keep up with the Register)

Virgin is trialling bandwidth throttling in the north west, which it prefers to call traffic management. It would not say when the trial is set to finish, or whether the system would be rolled out nationwide, but said the aim is to rein in very heavy users during peak times. More stable access speeds would then be available to the majority.

The comments on this article is bursting with enraged Virgin customers, one of whom makes pointed use of the “pot calling kettle” metaphor.

One customer contrasts the satisfying service from Telewest (of sainted memory) with the current botchery. No argument from me, I just didn’t realise it was a deliberate policy.

Paying pretty large monthly sums – well more than someone on unemployment Benefit is expected to live for a week on – for a supposedly “Unlimited” service, to find out it is limited is somewhat confusing. Especially given the recent haemorhage (sp?) of cable customers, you’d imagine that there was more empty bandwidth than Virginmedia knew what to do with.

It’s not just Virgin, of course. It’s more or less every service provider that thinks they can get away with it. (So much for the mysterious laws of the market, then. Surely, the company offering the better service should get more customers? Oh, you naive fool.)

I was looking at Tiscali’s “fair use” policy, coincidentally. They tell heavy users that they will be capped, only in the evenings. Hmm, so they will only be choked in the times when people actually use the Internet? So they can use as much bandwidth as they want when they are asleep or in work. …..

Hodgesaaargh at it again

Obviously impressed by how far she has raised her previously minimal public profile by pandering to racism. the barking Margaret Hodge has sounded off again in the Observer.

Enough said.

DNA database

The review for the new Police and Criminal Evidence Act includes a plan to capture the DNA of millions more people, by taking DNA from people accused of the most minor offences, according to the Observer.

Unsurprisingly, this is worrying civil liberties groups. In particular, there is a fear that there will be so many people’s DNA on file that it will seem unfair to miss off the rest of the population, so there will be a strong argument for getting everybody’s.

Of more immediate concern is how much the present system is collecting and how biased in its range.

Liberty claims that, per head of population, the UK has five times as many people on the DNA database as any other country. The government estimates that even if the database is not expanded to include the details of minor offenders, some 4.5 million people will still be on it by 2010.

The expansion of the database is prompting fears that people from ethnic minorities are being stigmatised. According to research by the Liberal Democrats, under the existing system within three years the details of more than half of all black men will be on the DNA database.

Do I really need to even comment on this stuff? It sets off too much knee-jerk 1984 incoherent ranting in me.

5 times as many people’s DNA as any other European country? More than half of all black men on it in 3 years? What a proud national record.

There will apparently be a few month’s public “consultation”. The road-pricing and ID petitions give you a fair idea of how far the government will diverge from whatever path it is set on, even if the whole country rises up and says mildly but assertively, “Hang on a minute. We’re not completely convinced that totalitarian control of every aspect of life is the only way to run a society…..”

Almost Back Online

Well, this is a short one to say I am almost back online now, although the process has been far from easy. It is entertaining that in today’s modern world, having a short spell offline can cause more problems than you can shake a 32gb memory stick at.

It it hard to work out where to start with my ranting over this recent debacle, so I may be disjointed (no change there though). Some recent examples of the “traumas” (which are, admitedly mostly trivial!), have included such things as working out when the rubbish bins will be emptied. My house now has two types of bin (recycling and landfill), with a note saying they will be collected on alternate weeks. Nothing else. No idea which day of the week, or which week is which. Wonderful.

What the note did say was that to find out the day of collection, and which week was landfill and which was recylcing, I was told to “log on to the councils website and enter my address details.” Brilliant, except I didn’t have an internet connection. Continue reading

Too easy a target

Was enticed to visit WorldNetDaily via a post on Richard Dawkins which reproduced their article on teachers who felt they were being forced to promote atheism.

The article turned out to be as silly as you’d expect. Even more hatstand but with more intrinsic comedic value is Chuck Norris’s article on this very topic. (You can get there from the WND homepage by clicking on his big dumb face in the right column.)
Title:

How to outlaw Christianity (Steps 2 & 3)

So even good old z-list action movie stars can see the wisdom in banning religions? Well. that seems a bit extreme to me but I am not gifted with the action hero’s can-do spirit. So, I am prepared to be persuaded, although the Roman empire’s failure to manage this example suggests it may not be the way to go.

No wait, fool. This is a warning of the powerful atheist conspiracy to do just that. Bah. This blog wasn’t even invited. Word must have reached Atheist Conspiracy Central of our weak revisionist tendencies.

Some representative content:

Step 2: Target younger generations with atheism

Atheists are making a concerted effort to win the youth of America and the world. Hundreds of websites and blogs on the Internet seek to convince and convert adolescents, endeavoring to remove any residue of theism from their minds and hearts by packaging atheism as the choice of a new generation. While you think your kids are innocently surfing the Web, secular progressives are intentionally preying on their innocence and naïveté.

What’s preposterous is that atheists are now advertising and soliciting on websites particularly created for teens. The London Telegraph noted that, “Groups including Atheists for Human Rights and Atheist Alliance International – ‘Call 1-866-HERETIC’ – are setting up summer camps and an Internet recruiting campaign.”

YouTube, the most popular video site on the Net for young people, is one of their primary avenues for passing off their secularist propaganda. Another antagonistic and self-proclaimed “blasphemous” site even beckons youth to record their anti-Christian beliefs on it.

Blimey. You think your kids are innocently surfing the web for goatporn or anorexia-promotion sites. You find that they are being suckered into rational philosophy sites. What parent wouldn’t be worried sick?

Thanks for the tip off, Chuck. Chuck Norris! I’m so pleased he has managed to crown his distinguished movie career with a new role as the moral watchdog of the religious right.

My god, the man has pretty well defined z-list acting since the 70s so I had to consult the biog on the IMDB to get the full flavour of his achievements.

Both his parents were half Irish and half Cherokee

Oh come on. Both? Surely the entire current Irish-Cherokee gene pool must consist of him and his bothers. (Wieland and Aaron, since you asked)

His real name is Carlos Ray. This is already a mystery. Why would anyone change the inoffensive Carlos to the ludicrous Chuck? Or Ray to Norris. Norris, ffs. It’s a mere step away from Norbert. Carlos Ray is Charles King in Spanish almost – if you ignore the spelling. He could have chosen that as a nom-de-action-movie if he thought his given name was too Hispanic. (Or Man-who-fights-bad-guys O’Shaughnessy, reflecting his background.) But he went straight for an English-sounding name that seems to have any residual human intelligence sucked out of its very syllables. The human equivalent of the Mazda vehicle called the Bongo Friendee. (Google it if you don’t belive me.)

The only watchable film that he was ever in, to my knowledge, was the one where he fought Bruce Lee in the Colliseum (watchable because of Bruce Lee rather than Mr Norris) This is called Meng long guo jiang, with what I consider excessive pedantry, by IMDB. And he was comically chest-and shoulder-hair-covered in that.

Everything else in the list of his movies brings the old phrase “straight-to-video gem” to mind.

Let’s see the upside here, fellow evil conspirators. If Chuck’s illustrious film career makes him the best-known celeb that the religious right can field to be the star face of a major blog, they really have had to scrape the barrel.

Let’s redouble our efforts to turn the youth to our godless ways.

More Technobabble

The Register reports on Technorati’s problems resulting from its redesign. It knocked itself out of operation (surely not unprecedented for Technorati. I thought it let its imaginary Monster out to ravage it every weekend)

The Register argues that Technorati has more or less given up on indexing blogs and concentrated on images.

So what was always a lousy blog search tool is now little more than a lousy image search tool – this is not going to worry Yahoo! or Google

I hope not. For all my whining about it, Technorati is pretty useful.

Technorati links mystery

Technorati gives this blog a level of authority that could be considered pretty generous,given the unauthoritative nature of most of our posts. However, for the uninitiated, in Technoratispeak, “authority” refers to how popular you blog is, determined by how many other blogs link to it, not by how authoritative your content is (mercifully…).

But, links to us from the Atheist Blogroll that I can actually see on my screen – and that send visitors to us, according to FireStats – haven’t been listed for months.

I’ve tried researching the reasons for this, unsure whether the fault lies with our code (that would hardly be a first), our recent attempts to restyle the site (not an unmitigated success, yet), Technorati or the Atheist blogroll’s code.

I am none the wiser. This appears in Technorati’s explanation for why links may not get picked up.

If the link was in a blogroll, you may want to check to see if the hyperlink to your blog is located in the blog source of the blogroll. Blogroll links that are generated via a tool or script are not seen. The blogroll must reside in the blog home page as well. If the blogroll is in a subsection or directory of the site, it is not seen or picked up

On an experimental basis, I visited the most recent posters (at the top of the blogroll list on the left.)

onegoodmove.org doesn’t actually show the blogroll, nor have a link to Technorati that I could have used to check if it picks up the link from us.

Sans God has us on the Blogroll, on the index page and not below the so-called jump (other Technorati forum reasons for not seeing links) When I looked for blogs that link to Sans God, I see: “Why Dont You Blog? by Admin Istrator · 44 days ago ” Well no. It rather looks to me as if we linked to them today and yesterday and the day before and so on. When the 6 months from 44 days ago is up, we will disappear off their list of linked blogs.

God is pretend has a scrolling blogroll. Maybe that’s why our blog – which shot itself in the listing foot by starting with a letter as close as dammit to the end of the alphabet – doesn’t appear to be linked to from here. But, wait, God is pretend has only 3 inbound links and Whydontyou doesnt appear in the three. Maybe that’s because they are using a script.

We get lots of links from visitors to Gratuitous common sense and I can see us quite clearly on their blogroll, on the index page, not below the jump etc. Ahha. Technorati thinks this has links from whydontyou, but dates them as 35 and 50 days ago…..

I am getting bored with this. You get the picture. The only links that keep getting consistently
updated are from Parabiodox (ffs :-D) and content-scrapers. Any ideas?