About ATGW

Civil serpent.

More Photos

Playing with Lightroom a bit more (and a sunny day) has resulted in a new Flash-based photo gallery (Stourhead Gallery – needs flash player). At the moment these are the basic pictures taken earlier today with no editing. It took about 5 minutes to copy the files off the SD-Card, into Lightroom, create the gallery and upload. The first and last stages were the slowest.

Now, I think I should point out that although I like Lightroom (a lot), I have no intention of buying this when the beta runs out. As a free tool it is fantastic. I am not sure I would be willing to pay for this functionality though.

If I was a professional photographer with no IT Skills it may be worth while, but given the ease with which you can create similar sites (flash or otherwise), it strikes me this is a shrinking market. Adobe may have been better giving this away and charging for support.


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Posted in Photos | Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Theistic Readership

Once more Nullifidian has spotted a great example of theistic madness. On the “Dear Alice” post there is an excellent send up of the nonsense a “concerned” reader has sent to a newspaper. This was funny enough, I decided to have a quick look round the internet to see if I could find out the source of the letter and any more details on it.Isn’t the internet grrrrreat.

It seems the letter was sent to the Peninsular Clarion, a newspaper which covers the Kenai Peninsular (The Kenai Peninsula is a large peninsula jutting from the southern coast of Alaska in the United States, Wikipedia). I wont stoop to discussing the perils of inbreeding for remote communities, but suffice it to say the Clarion’s letters pages make entertaining reading. Fortunately, the vast (and I mean vast, the cranks are only a tiny minority of the letters) majority of letters seem to come from sane, reasonable people (whatever their religious beliefs). Not so fortunately (although it does provide me with hours of merriment) there are still a vociferous few who rant nonsense!

Continue reading


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Posted in Philosophy, Society | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Old Photos

To try and change the subject away from Religious crackpots for a little while, I thought I would upload some photos! Here are a selection from and . As you can see these are quite old photos which have been scanned in.

Stonehenge Stonehenge - different angle Houses at Stourhead Church at Stourhead

Ok, in reality, they have been run through Adobe Lightroom which is actually a wonderful bit of software. I downloaded the beta version quite some time ago but never really made any use of it. Today I had a reminder it was going to expire on 28 Feb so I thought I would try it out.

It is not a photo / picture editing package along the lines of Photoshop but it is excellent for photo management and applying quick preset filters to pictures. This one is called “Antique Grayscale” and seems to be a mix of normal greyscale and sepia tones. I quite like the effect 🙂

Where Lightroom really excells is in creating Web Sites for photo galleries. It is amazing how easily this will take a collection of picures and turn them into a functional, usable (valid XHTML!) website. There is only limited control (in the beta version) over the exact style but the look and feel is good enough that most people wont mind. If you are a graphic artist or photographer, and want a quick and easy website, this package really is the best I have seen. Before my trial version runs out, I fully intend to upload some sample sites so you can see the output. At the moment I did two quick sites (one flash gallery and one html gallery) which are now online. Remember, you need ActiveX and flash player to view the flash site in IE.

As a rule of thumb, a site with 28 pictures takes about 30 seconds to select the pictures, a few mins to type in some basic details and then another 30 seconds to build the site. It really is that quick. The longest part is uploading the images!

This is pretty much software that anyone who can actually copy a image to their computer, can use to create photo galleries in seconds.


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Posted in Photos, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Signs of Madness

It seems that no matter how hard I try (or dont try as the case may actually be), I cant avoid the madness that permates the and specifically the . Just to get a bit of perspective, there are millions of websites, millions of blogs written by sane, “normal” people. They just aren’t as much fun…

The serendipitous wonder which has been following my bored searches on Technorati brought me to a blog by one “joannafrancis.” This really was a descent into the world of madness.

The internet has always been a hotbed for “conspiracy” lunatics of all branding, and among the big three Abrahamic religions, Jews often get a rough end of the conspriacy deal (people even try to claim General Relativity is a Jewish conspriacy), so lots of this blog is no real surprise. What is shocking, especially for a blog from what appears to be a devout Catholic(religion of compassion?) is the sheer vitriol and hatred which oozes from pretty much every word on every post.

Just to be open, the reason I think she is a Catholic is she makes the following statement: (read original)

And yet, what Catholics should realize, whether Novus Ordo, SSPX, or sedevacantist, is that these Jews from the SPLC are attacking not only our religion, but all of our ancestors as well.

As an atheist, I find it quite entertaining how much she rants about even the slightest hint of Jewishness in people (for instance, apparently Courtney Love is a Jew, based on an oblique entry in NNDB)

The post which really made me chuckle (on the assumption she reall is alone with these ideas) was made on 10 Nov 06, titled “Israeli Snipers Killing U.S. Troops?” in which she postulates the idea that Mossad or another Israeli organsiation is responsible for killing Americans in Iraq to drag the war out. It is a great post. It has every single one of the crackpot conspiracy nut hall marks in. It could be used as a teaching tool to help spot nutters.

She has some “proof” that the Israelis are involved, for example:

At the very beginning of this video clip, you see a rifle with a video camera attached to it. This weapon is made by the Rafael company, an Israeli arms manufacturer, that also makes IEDs.

So at the very least we know she has no idea at all what an IED actually is. If they were manufactured, they would not be “improvised” would they? Manufactured IEDs are called bombs and mines etc. After some nonsense about rifle mounted cameras being another sign of the Jews, she somes out with:

Mossad is a master at false flag operations, e.g., Oklahoma City, the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, the July 7, 2005 London bombings, the 9-11 attacks in New York, the assassination of the Prime Minister in Beirut, the stoking of Muslim riots in France last year, the bombing of the Hassan al-Askari Mosque in Samarra, Iraq, etc.

Wow. Mossad took out the World Trade Center and the London Underground. Amazing. I bet they even killed Jean Charles Menendes and just blamed it on the Metropolitan Police. I mean, he was a catholic as well wasn’t he?

The post carries on along these lines – even going as far as to say the Mossad Liaison was in charge of US troops at the time of a bombing in Fallujah. The rest of the posts on her site follow this thread. One of the other themes seems to be blaming Jews for American abortions – it all being part of a Jewish plot to kill more and more Americans.

Madness does not do her justice.


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Posted in Philosophy, Society | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Philosophy Tags

Aren’t tags great. Add the combination of technorati’s tag obsession (despite its other wise crazy inconsistencies) with MySpace’s crazy users and their “Religion and Philosophy” category and you can find some wonderful results of a search. One of my favourites is the Philosophy search. It really does produce a wide, wild and wonderful selection of peoples posts. Take this for example, when I did the search a few minutes ago:

Results for Philosophy Tag on Technorati 20 Feb 07While some of the links may seem tame enough, further investigation puts paid to that! It really is funny reading some of the things people seem to believe. The cynic in my partially suspects people are writing this nonsense, not because they believe it, but because they think it is cool or funny or something.

Add this to the volume of creation science videos on YouTube though and I may well be wrong. On a lighter note though, there is one thing which restored my faith in humanity (even in theists as this appears to come from a very Christian blog post – its on MySpace for a start..) (read original)

Joke of the day:

where can you find 50 cent and eminem?

between your sofa cushions

It might just be me having a funny turn today, but I really liked that joke.


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Posted in Philosophy | Tagged , , , ,

Actually…

I was going to try and ramp down my tirades against the nutcases, creationists, theists (etc) who pollute the world with their crazy views of science. However, I rapidly changed my mind 🙂

I am not the worlds biggest fan of , I have never really “got” the draw of looking at grainy video embedded in to a massively contrasting white page for a start, but I have appreciated the few gems people have found and put on their own sites. This got me to spending a bit of my (precious!) spare time looking through YouTube and what I discovered was breathtaking. Some of them (VenomFangX for example) are either pure satire or so insane they NEED to spend time in an institution.

On the positive side, there is an excellent line of videos (“Actually” which inspired the title for this blog. Yes I am THAT lazy today), which magnificently take the Creationists and other assorted anti-Science nutters arguments to pieces. This is a recent example:

It is really good. There are many, many more fallacies in the argument the woman puts forward but this does a good job of hitting the main ones. Her comments about carbon dating are so off the rails you cant help but giggle.

On a more serious note. I am actually shocked and more than a little worried that what appears to be a significant (i.e. not ZERO) number of people in the worlds nuclear superpower hold these ideas. It truly beggars belief that they can make claims like the only reliable dating of fossils goes back 6000 years. Truly nutcases. Not only do they not understand the basics of science, but they complete fail to grasp any idea of the theories they argue against. The sheer weight of creationist videos on YouTube – all of which show less understanding of evolution that a two year old could muster – is mind boggling.

Going back to the video – I just love the bit where the mad-woman says about how science books change, but the bible has never changed. I nearly choked on my drink hearing that.


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Posted in Philosophy, Science, Society | Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Stats cant lie

Five days ago I talked about the odd statistics which were showing up in my BOINC client for Einstein@Home. Sadly in the intervening five days, nothing has become any clearer.

BOINC Client - User Total 19 Feb BOINC Client - User Average 19 Feb

Now, the BOINC client has been running constantly (with the exception of one 9 hour period) for the last five days, yet the increase seems minimal and the average is plummeting like a stone. Looking at the client stats page there are still 82 work units “pending” credit (at around 53.4 credits per unit) so eventually this should change.

Even so, I am still not sure how the two sets of numbers compare to each other. I cant work out how the averages are calculated at all. Any comments welcome.


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Posted in Science | Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Wonders of Photoshop

Statue of Neptune at StourheadFrom the wonders of Photoshop is this slightly enhanced statue at Stourhead. Basically all I have done is a box blur on the background, a slight enhancement of the white levels of the statue and increased saturation and contrast.

Personally, I think it looks quite nice and I look forward to the day when the crazy monotheistic religions are overhauled and we all get back to worshipping the likes of Neptune (or Poseidon if you are feeling particularly classical today).

We should get back to a time when Gods were proper Gods, not the wet blankets we have today. More thunderstorms! Anyway, all joking aside, I would have liked to have shown the original for comparison but in a fit of foolishness, I saved the changed file JPG over the original. Doh.


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Posted in Photos | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Vista Pricing – Shamefull

Although we have mentioned MS Vista in the past on this blog, it was always unlikely that we would upgrade to it in the very near future. A recent check of the technology news helps confirm this.

It seems that Vista has been released in the US with an MRP of $99.95 (Upgrade version of Home Basic). Given the current exchange rates and using Reuters currency converter this works out at £51.23,

For some reason, it has been decided to sell Vista in the UK at £85 + VAT, which works out at about £99.88.

What madness is this! According to Reuters this is the same as US customers paying $194.72. I cant imagine MS would ship many boxes at that rate.

Just goes to show, you can pay nearly a hundred pounds, have to upgrade your hardware and learn a brand new way of working, or you can get linux for free. I think I can honestly say the only way Why Dont You will upgrade to vista will be when we get new computers and it comes pre-loaded with no alternatives.


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Posted in Technology | Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Are All Atheists The Same?

I was browsing through the excellent posts on “The Atheist Jew” website recently and I came across one entitled “Atheism as a theory,” which is very interesting but posts some points I really do not agree with. The crux of them come from the Top 10 Atheist Myths website, so it is there I turn the rest of my attention.

, in my mind, is nothing more (or less) than the absence of any belief in any supernatural entity. You can call the entity Thor, Odin, Bahommet, Azura Madhra, Pluto, Set, Bast, Hermes, God, Allah, Vishnu or whatever. I still dont believe in it.

That pretty much sums up everything have in common. Other than that, they are “normal” people just like a theist. There are Atheists who do bad things, there are Atheists who do good things. There are Atheists who are irrational, just as there are ones who are rational. Atheism is an opinion about one aspect of your interaction with reality and, as such, cant really be used to determine any other aspects.

Ok, so there is “my” take on atheism. On the “Top 10 Myths” site, there are a list of the top ten (oddly enough…) so I will repeat them here:

  • Myth 1 : “Atheists are all the same”
  • Myth 2 : “Atheists have no morals, since they don’t believe in God”
  • Myth 3 : “Atheists believe in evolution, but that doesn’t answer as many questions as creationism”
  • Myth 4 : “Atheists cannot know there is no God, since you cannot prove he doesn’t exist”
  • Myth 5 : “Atheists seek to remove religion from society, and to force all people to be atheists”
  • Myth 6 : “Atheists are so closed-minded, they can’t see that miracles happen every day!”
  • Myth 7 : “Atheists are pushing a negative sentiment, and have a dreary life”
  • Myth 8 : ” If atheists are right, then religious people are wasting their time, but at least they’re happy. No harm in that! If religious people are right, then atheists are going to hell. It seems logical that atheists should become religious just to be safe.”
  • Myth 9 : “There are no such things as atheists” a.k.a. “There are no atheists in foxholes”
  • Myth 10 : “This country was founded by Christians, on Christian values, and should therefore be a Christian country”.

Now, it doesn’t take the most imagination in the world to see how these myths are, in fact, all flawed and Dave Silverman’s website does a good job of dismissing them (myth 10 is obviously very specific for the US so I will ignore it for now).

There is a common thread which runs through all the myths, and it is the theistic assumption that all Atheists think the same. This is the same lack of logical thought which leads people to assume is the “pope” of Atheism. As logical thought goes, it is more than wrong.

Sadly, despite Dave Silverman’s otherwise excellent commentary, he makes the same mistake himself a few times. For example, in response to Myth 2 he writes: (emphasis in original, underlining mine)

Humans have the idea of right and wrong imbedded in them by their own brains, as well as their upbringing and society. Atheists do good, not out of fear of reprisal, but because it’s the right thing to do. We value family, society, culture, and, of course, freedom. Many of us will – and have – defend these values with our lives.

While personally, I do think I value family, society, culture and freedom, I also think it is a stretch of reality to imply all Atheists do. There are atheists who are simply nasty people. Being an atheist does not mean you hold yourself to a higher standard and there is no Holy Book Of Atheism to tell people how to live their lives. Just like theists, atheists are a mixture of people. The main difference (in my opinion) is that Atheists are a LOT less hypocritical.

I may be out of order, but I get the suspicion that Dave Silverman is an ex-Christian/Jewish Atheist, which seems to come through in his comments. For example, in response to myth 8, he writes:

I like getting this question. I sense another list coming :

1) Drug addicts go through life happy, so would theists suggest we all use drugs and stay home? We would be happy, and not hurting anybody, so where’s the harm?
The harm is the same for believers. They go through life happy, but it’s a false, wasteful happiness. Atheists get happiness from family, contribution to society, charity, and truth.

2) Religious people should not be lumped into one category for this question. Remember, religions are also biased against each other (Jews vs. Catholics Vs. Protestants, etc), so no matter what religion the speaker follows, most of the world thinks they’re going to hell (or other punishment), just like atheists. Ask them which religion has the worst punishment, and whether they would convert to that religion on that one factor, just in case they’re right. When they tell you how absurd that question is, remind them that they asked it first.

3) To convert and practice a specific religion just to ingratiate yourself with God and avoid going to hell is pure, self-serving greed, which is one of the seven deadly
sins. Therefore, by their own thinking, even if they are right and I do convert, I’d go to hell anyway, along with everyone else in the flock whose actions are so motivated (possibly including the speaker).

All very much along the Abrahamic religions lines. In reality, this myth is a variation on Pascals Wager and can generally be dismissed in much simpler terms (and was mentioned here previously).

All in all, both sites are interesting and worth visiting, they just have a different view on Atheism to myself – which goes to show, all atheists are different!


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Posted in Philosophy, Society | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Say NO to Church Funding!

A good spot by Nullifdian has pointed out that the Church of England is trying to get Government funding to pay for it’s repairs and renovations.

The Church of England (CofE) is using the popular 10 Downing Street e-petitions web site to try and get the government to get tax payers to pay for repairs to church buildings. I say “piss off, godboy”. [[read original post]]

And to be honest, I couldn’t have said it better myself. The buildings are owned by the cult, the cult is far from poor, so why should repairs be at public expense? My house could do with a bit of a repair, do you think if I ask nicely enough the government will pay for it?

Anyway, if you are a UK citizen, you have three choices: Ignore all this, sign the petition to support the church or sign the counter petition which aims to stop it.

The choice is yours.


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Posted in Society | Tagged , , ,

New WhyDontYou Site

If you haven’t already seen the news on the CompuSkills Web design blog, there is a new “parent” site for Why Dont You under construction.

This site is expected to be ready by July this year, and will be the home to a variety of articles on some of the topics we blog about here. We are aiming to include quite a bit on philosophy and logic, and possibly expose some of the more common fallacies people fall prey to.

You can see the design of the site as it it evolves on the CompuSkills design testbed – if there is anything you would like to see, or something you would like to know about let us know.


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Posted in Technology | Tagged , , ,

More on the Weather

Old Sarum 1 - 25 Nov 06 - ThumbnailA while ago I posted about how “uncommonly warm” the weather was for February. This got me thinking about the recent weather in general, and it seems fairly safe for me to say that despite the one or two days where it was cold enough to snow it has been very warm this winter.

As some more examples, this is a picture taken at Old Sarum on 25 Nov 06. Although you cant see how warm it is, trust me it was warm – and English Heritage sites such as this are not known for their nice climate…

Normally, when you visit an English Heritage site which dates back to the iron age it is like taking a holiday in a fridge. Only windier and colder.

Old Sarum Picture 2 - ThumbnailThis year, it has been very different. The weather has been nice all winter, the skys have been clear and while there has been a fair bit of rain, it has not been anything major. The sun, on the other hand, has been brilliant.

Now I am not going to make the same mistake as last time, so I wont joke about the “joy” of Global Warming, but having such a nice, warm winter has been…. fun…


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Posted in Photos, Science | Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Compuskills Site Redesign

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 🙂


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Posted in Technology | Tagged , , , , , ,

Atheist Humour

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.

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Posted in Uncategorized