Why Dont You Blog?

Wow, breaking news brought to us by the BBC reveals that Cleopatra was, wait for it, of african descent! It seems that the in-depth research of the 1963 blockbuster Cleopatra was wrong and the queen of Egypt was not actually a white caucasian but was native to Eqgypt. Amazing claims like this needs some fantastic research. Fortunately the headline news on the BBC rewards us:

Cleopatra, the last Egyptian Pharaoh, renowned for her beauty, was part African, says a BBC team which believes it has found her sister’s tomb.

Wow. Knock me down with a feather. It gets better:

But remains of the queen’s sister Princess Arsinoe, found in Ephesus, Turkey, indicate that her mother had an “African” skeleton.
Experts have described the results as “a real sensation.”

Amazing. An African skeleton… How could Liz Taylor have got it so wrong only 45 years ago. Do we need to re-cast and re-film an entire generation of epic movies? Next you will be telling me Jesus wasn’t a tall, blue eyed, blonde haired Caucasian.

Actually, I cant keep it up. This is mind numbingly insane.

First off: Who is actually surprised that Egypt is in Africa? Seriously, anyone? This is a news item that basically says “Egyptian Queen is part African.” Is it really that quiet a news day? (no). This is the Online BBC news that ignored seven hours of riots and petrol bombs in Lurgan, Northern Ireland (despite coverage being in the newspapers). This is the online BBC news that is regularly a day behind unfolding events. It is obviously wasting too much time writing copy for the department of the BLOODY OBVIOUS.

Secondly: No one is disputing Cleopatra’s lineage coming from Alexander’s generals and being predominantly Greek. However, the idea that this remained purely Greek (Macedonian?) after the first generation is simply batshit insane. Yes there was a huge amount of inbreeding, and most royal marriages were with Greek nobles, but over 250 years without allowing locals into the bloodline is unlikely. That would have been news worthy.

Thirdly: In my limited archaological knowledge, WTF does “african bones” mean? Is this 19th century casual racism where its thought that the darkies have a different genetic makeup to us “white people?”  What on Earth is there about the bones that make them “african” rather than Egyptian or Greek? Seriously, WTF!

There has been some reluctance of late for this blog to attack the blinding madness that the BBC is pushing out, mainly because it puts us in the same camp as the Daily Wail, but this is a step too far.

The BBC has seriously lost any sense of what is, or isnt, news. This is thinly veiled advertising for a BBC program of dubious merit. Shame on the BBC and I want them to refund what ever portion of my licence fee went towards this drivel.

It is certainly true that if you don’t have a vote, you don’t count in a democratic society.

One of the (many) demonised groups in the UK now seems to be the “youth” – of which the middle aged, middle classes seem to be inordinately frightened. Coincidentally, this is also an age group in which most are unable to vote, and most of those who do, don’t seem to bother. As a result, it seems, they have become fair game for any crackpot ideas. Oddly, they are also a group politicians seem to constantly appeal to (obviously knowing they wont be arsed to vote…). Isn’t the world strange.

Two recent mad ideas spring to mind. First from the Guardian:

Road safety: Impose total alcohol ban for teenage drivers, says chief medical officer
A zero drink-driving limit should be imposed on all drivers under 20, the chief medical officer recommended yesterday, saying that such a ban would save lives.

This hits two of our current “fears.” First it panders to the idea that the UK is in the grip of a “Booze Culture” and secondly it cries that some new restriction will “save lives.” Nicely it wraps all this up by targeting a silent group of society, so the fall out would be minimal (and it was).

For me, despite being neither “yoof” or a novice driver so immune to any resultant laws, this is insane. I completely, 100% fail to see any logic. I am reasonably sure that any young driver mature and grown up enough to go out and stick to the 1 pint limit is also likely to be mature and capable enough to drive sensibly. The problem, and it isn’t just young drivers, is being over the limit.

Some figures are bandied about:

Justifying his call for zero alcohol for 17 to 20-year-olds, Donaldson said they were six times more likely to have a car crash if they had been drinking. A young person who had been drinking was 2.5 times more likely to have a crash than an older person who had been drinking. “I’m aware it is a controversial recommendation, but I believe it would save lives,” he said.

Now, so far I have been unable to clarify this, but I am reasonably certain that the problem is young people are more likely to be over the legal drink driving limit – I seem to recall the alcohol level is not recorded by the police if the person is under the legal limit.

Basically, this is saying young people over the limit have more accidents than old people over the limit, so lets lower the limit for young people.

Madness. But it is the madness that comes from some one with a fantastic knowledge of one subject area (medicine) being given implied authority in another area (crime reduction, driver safety etc).

The next bit really annoyed me. From the Times a few days ago:

Curfew tames feral yobs of Cornwall
An experiment to bring peace to a yob-plagued town by imposing nocturnal curfews on its teenagers had a promising start this weekend when the streets of Redruth in Cornwall were free of the usual intimidating gaggles of youths.
Under the experimental curfew, named Operation Goodnight, parents in the most troubled part of the town have agreed with police that they will keep children under 16 indoors after 9pm, and that under10s will not be allowed out after 8pm.

What a wonderful culture we live in. When you read things like this it really makes you despair for what the adults of 2020 will be like.

I have two big issues with this. First off – why are we sending kids so many mixed signals? We (as a society) say they should be more involved in the community, say they should spend less time on their playstations and more time outdoors, say they should spend more time interacting with others. Simultaneously we say they cant go out, cant hang round together and everything they do means a paedophile will get them.

Secondly, the sheer unadulterated nonsense behind this.

1. It is a voluntary scheme. So if you are a NAUGHTYKID™©® all you need to do is ignore it. All the good, well behaved kids will stay at home. Hang on, isn’t that the wrong way round?
2. It is being done with the approval of the parents and targets the children in the most troubled part of the town. What? It actually says “a Sunday Times poll showed that nine out of 10 parents backed restrictions on their own children going out after dark.”

Right, let me get this straight. The parents of these “feral” children want restrictions on when the children go out. They have enough control over the children to stop them going out but wont do this simply because their children are little s***s, they demand that the police tell them to do this.

Nope, still cant get my head around it.

Why in the name of Zeus dont the bloody parents control their children? Why do they have to agree with police to follow this “trial” curfew (which will, no doubt, report a positive outcome and then spread to other areas – just like the criminal nonsense that is congestion charging)?

Our children are fine. They are the same mix of evil little turds and fantastic kind angels they were 30 years ago, 60 years ago, 90 years ago and even 900 years ago.

The bloody feral parents are the problem…. but then, they can vote…

First off, Parabiodox has responded to my “Do Christians Have a Sense of Humour” post and it seems the answer is “yes, just a bad one .” When I asked “Do Christians have a sense of humour? … or was he just all cut up over the death of Jerry Fallwell…“” the response was:

No. It means I can go back to watching Teletubbies again with a clear conscience.

Can’t say fairer than that, can I?

On a more serious note, following up on the sad story of the crazy “honour” killing, there is a post on anthropology.net which examines some of the issues from an anthropological view point (Heather, Take note). For the stronger viewer, the video footage is available from that site, although I have not watched it my self and can not comment. As an aside, if you had asked me a few years ago I would have been stunned to even think of considering Anthropology (or any social science) as a science, but I am learning to change my ways.

[tags]Yazidi, Murder, Death, Kill, Religious Intolerance, Christianity, Humour, Evil, Barbaric, Parabiodox, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Insane, Cruel, Anthropology[/tags]

Following two posts on Nullifidian’s blog (here and here), and a bit on BBC News 24 this morning, I couldn’t help but start to feel sorry for John Sweeney. In a nutshell, this guy is a BBC reporter who has been looking into the ridiculous cult which calls itself the Church of Scientology. From Nullifidian’s site:

John Sweeney investigates the Church of Scientology, endorsed by some major Hollywood celebrities, but which continues to face the criticism that it is less of a religion and more of a cult. Some former members claim the Church uses a mind control technique to put opponents at a psychological disadvantage. During the course of his investigation, Sweeney is shouted at, spied on, visited in his hotel at midnight and chased around the streets of LA by strangers in hire cars.

Sadly, Sweeney is far from a “good” investigative journalist. I suspect he planned to use this Scientology thing to get a “big break” into the real world of hardcore investigators. When faced with fairly obvious methods, Sweeney falls for them and hands the Scientologist Cultists a few (albeit minor) PR victories. In typical Cult fashion, the Scientologists have pounced on any apparent weakness shown by Sweeney and a video clip of him loosing it (after goading it should be added) has been getting lots of hits on YouTube.

Well, from the department of the ineducable idiocy, I have found a blog which I don’t for one second think is a legit creationist / theist blog. I refuse to accept that anyone can be as stupid as this person, yet still be able to breathe unaided. Seriously. Still, it has given me a chance to rant about a few topics which have been annoying me lately.

The blog in question is called “Atheist Stooges” and, from that name alone, you just know it is going to be full of juicy idiocy. In this instance, the idiocy is so bizare I can only assume (hope?) that this is a wind up. Can people honestly hold to ideas like this and still function in society?

The blog has an article called “Enter the excavation” which really does hit a new nadir of nonsense. The basic crux of what is a long, wordy and badly written, post is that because you can not pin down a point in time which some human invented Atheism it must be sent by demons. What wonderful logic. There are so many fallacies in the post it would take months to unravel them all. This tends to happen when you take a false premise and try to make conclusions based on it though.

The opening paragraph sets the tone:

Do you know that if you make an endeavor to find out when and by whom atheism was authored you will not be able to find such information from any source? Not even the most “educated” atheists – particularly those associated with the most elite universities throughout the world can truthfully inform you when and by whom atheism originated. They can enlighten you as to who were its main perpetuators in different cultures; but they cannot identify its founder and when it actually originated.

The things I do for you….

Intrigued by the concept of Gog in the last post, I had to google gog. I found a truly scary websmite. Contender Ministries’ “the Coming War of Gog and Magog” basically sees the world in terms of two camps – Israel and the West vs the Muslim world.

(And guess which side He is supposed to be on? No prizes, sorry. Though someone offered the Contender websmite a million dollars if they could actually prove that the Sodom and Gomorrah bit in the Bible meant homosexuality. They scathed the email writer.)

Spurred by a post here that mentioned that some Pat Robertson followers have the date of the Rapture pinned down to a very specific 13 Sept 2007, I thought it best to do a bit of emergency last minute research on the Internet.

Rapture? Some of you will immediately think of a 70s or 80s (?) record by Blondie or the name of a current band. Get with the programme. It means Armageddon, the Apocalypse, and lots of other really Bad Things..

OK, I’ve already confused you haven’t I – human extinction and rapture? Not easy to see an upside, is it? Don’t fret, there are loads of websites that can only see the end of humanity on earth as a Very Good Thing.

I’m following Google here, which is a broad measure of the top ranking sites on a given topic. Number One with a bullet is Rapture ready.com (I just can’t bring myself to post a link)

I had planned to not write many blog posts today but, as always, there are more crackpots out there than you realise.

Thanks to the wonders of myspace, I found this delightful person writing a blog: (as always, emphasis is mine, spelling is verbatim)

Are you ever sick of turning on the tv and seeing rappers or the news that a black person has killed another black person? I sure know that I am. I just want to get one thing clear in no way am I a raccists, I am just very proud to be white, and I have ever right to be.

I am so sick of going down to the corner shop and seeing the people working there, they are all immagrants and what makes its even worse is that I grew up going to that shop, my fathers friend used to own it.

I love my race and I really dislike things that destroy it like gays and jews. These are only my views on the matter but in my opinion the jews promote race mixing and the gays stop reproduction of the race. How can my race continue if we are mixed with other race’s as in a black man married to a white woman, if they have a child it will not be part of the white race. Do you see my point and why I am angry please feel free to object to my views I really am doing this to see some opposing views on the matter. thats all from me. Bye

A shorter one now, and probably less links…

I have noticed, reading through the blogs by scientists that there seems to be a strange trend when Evolution (or anything with “anti-religious”, yet scientific, sentiment) is discussed. Now, we all know that creationists / ID proponents / fundamentalists are more than willing to resort to technology to meet their subversive aims. The sheer weight of “I love God” blogs on MySpace means they are probably not all 15 year olds like they claim.

However, there is a trend for IDer participation on blogs (sadly not on this one…). They start off with an innocuous post, claiming to be an enthusiastic amateur. This post will normally put some odd spin on the topic but ask why the legitimate question / debate is not being entered into. This obviously ignores the fact science is not resolved by democracy. Some example terminology is: “This seems (on the face of it, to me, an amateur) like a legitimate question, but if it’s not, why not?” (I am not saying the person who made this particular comment is an IDer or anything, it is an example!)

Generally people will respond, trying to explain the scientific method or the like and then things go haywire with the creationist often demanding to know why evolution is a “theory” not a “law” if it is so well supported by evidence. At least at this point the crackpot nature become obvious.

The thing which still eludes me, is why go through the farce at the early stages? It happens on USENET all the time: a crank posts something asking an apparently innocent question, then when people innocently reply, the crank goes postal on them.

Is it valid (morally, scientifically?) to assume all creationists are somewhat insane to begin with?

It has been a while since I rounded on the Religious crackpottery which so often serves as a benchmark for humour on this site. I will seek to make amends today.

During the recent hiatus, I have been neglecting Pharyngula which is a shame as this is a wonderful source of entertaining madness. Today, I have tried to catch up but the sheer weight of posts is likely to defeat me.

One I can not pass up is titled “Kent Hovind: 10 Years” and is basically about the ultracrackpot Kent Hovind and his tax evasion. In itself that would be a poor example of religious-crackpot-humour and certainly not worthy of blogging. But there is this, from “Shelley The Republican,” certainly is: (this is the extract quoted on Pharyngula, I have added emphasis)

We conservatives have grown accustomed to liberal activist judges perverting justice for their own evil ends. Last year Judge Jones betrayed us all when he passed his verdict in the Dover school-book case. Shortly afterwards, our dear friend Kent was convicted of tax evasion.

U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers will sentence the Hovinds at 9 a.m for the alleged crime of tax evasion. They claim that he and his lovely wife Jo owe the state almost one million dollars in unpaid taxes. A quick review of the case show that the federal court unfairly denied Hovind’s sensible and truthful defence: Kent owes no tax because everything he “owns” is really property of God. This is a fact that we would all do well to remember!

So please dear friends, join me in prayer this morning. Let us pray to Jesus that Kent and Jo will be allowed to continue their important ministry and continue teaching young scientists about the many flaws in Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Those are the two sentences which “entertain” me the most.

First off, Kent should not have to pay tax because everything he owns is the property of God. Amazing. This really is mind boggling. Now, few if any people like paying taxes, but claiming you shouldn’t because everything you own belongs to God is madness.

Now there seems to be some debate as to the Shelly The Republican being legit or parody, but that doesn’t really matter. The real humour value is that Hovind tried to use the line as a defence!

Better still, parody or not, people will have tried to pray for Hovind to get off or get a light sentence. Strangely the nutter was given 10 years, followed by three years probation, must pay IRS $640,000 and pay $7,078 costs. Brilliant.

Just shows what prayer will get you.

According to the Pensacola News Journal, Hovind really did show his true colours at the end: (emphasis mine)

“If it’s just money the IRS wants, there are thousands of people out there who will help pay the money they want so I can go back out there and preach,” Hovind said.

He is saying that if the court lets him go, he will fleece his “followers” and get them to pay the tax bill. I think he really does not get the whole concept. He is far from poor, but still wants others to foot his bills.

If the Christian God does actually exist, Hovind is going to hell.

The previous post  didn’t mention – possibly because of the Guardian article’s  unreadability – that the writer claimed that Dawkins’ utimate objective was to exterminate believers.

This was just slipped in to the text in about the third paragraph. Granted that reading further made you want to gnaw your own toes off in preference, few readers will have got much further. 

Other minor absurdities included the claim that believers were treated like soft drug users – OK if they keep it to private consumption but not when they act as dealers, i.e., try to spread their message – and that wise atheists pretend to be Christians by attending church to get their children into a Church of England school.

First of all, in everyday social life, the mass of people might indeed treat devout Christians more favourably if they keep their beliefs to themselves than if they start preaching. (This is why the local C of E vicar gets more public respect than doorstepping mormons.) However, in most of the world, practising religion is not criminalised, whether a matter of personal belief or public proseletising. No matter how publicly you preach, the police in England will studiously ignore you. Hence the drug law analogy is nonsense, put in just to make religious belief seem edgily hip maybe.

On the point of atheists pretending to be Christians to get their kids into a decent local school, funded by the taxpayer but free to teach nonsense to kids- don’t even get me started on this one. (Too late, it’ll have to be another blog.) The wierd thing is that he thinks this hypocrisy is a good thing. Kids seeing their parents observing a religion they don’t believe is supposed to set a good example of morality in action, then?

Obviously the Guardian is keen to get in on the Dawkins bandwagon (Check Pharyngula – any post which mentions Dawkins gets five or six times as many responses as one which doesn’t). Sadly, the Guardian, being a newspaper is far from well placed to comment on science or scientists commentary. You would think that, being literary minded journalists, they would be able to comment on philosophical matter but it appears this is not the case.

On Saturday, the Guardian published a comment article by Tobias Jones, titled: “Secular fundamentalists are the new totalitarians” with a tag line which reads:

Militant secularists like Richard Dawkins are taking their revenge on us believers for refusing to stay in the closet

Amazing. I thought for a few minutes that I had slept for months and it was actually 1 April. Madness is apparently a too polite word for it. Intrinsically it highlights what seems to me to be the main flaw in the current religious-anti-Atheist arguments, Dawkins is not a High Priest of Atheism! There is a constant string of nonsense where religious proponents try to undermine the valid debating points made by Dawkins (and PZ Myers, Sam Harris et al) by attacking the nature and behaviour of what they see as the religious leader of the opposition.

Add to this that tag line which implies the faithful have spent millennia being quiet and hiding their beliefs. Wow. What universe does Mr Jones inhabit?
Are all these people insane? (I think the answer to that question is pretty self evident).

Side note: The guardian certainly achieved their aims with the anti-Dawkins comment. As you may imagine it generated a massive volume of response comments. Fortunately most were of the mind that Mr Jones is inherently insane.

Well, it has been a considerable time since I tried to leave a “Reader comment” on the Blasphemy Challenge article and nothing has shown up. I am not sure if this is because my comment is from out side the US, met some spam checker comments or what ever. I hope it is not because my comment was critical of some of the content of the article and I am sure that WSLS would not prevent such comments on that basis alone. Basically, I am asking anyone who gets the chance to read the article and, if you have anything to say, please comment on it and see if they show up. Thanks for your help.

Well, there seems to be a continuing trend for my blogs now, innocently I click on a Technorati tag search and see what happens. When the results surprise me, I end up blogging about them. I wonder when it will cease to surprise me.

Anyway, the most recent one is the Technorati Philosophy blogs. Now this is busy. When I looked at it just now there were over 370,000 blog posts with the tag and the last 30 days have added around 1500 a day.

Obviously this means a lot to someone…

Strangely, most of the ones Technorati took me to today were much more biased towards “religion” than philosophy per se, but I assume most people have the two concepts closely linked. (It is not a requirement though).

Also a massive proportion of the blog posts seem to be the musings of religious-”spiritual” people in their late teens. Again, this panders to a few stereotypes and is a shame, as Philosophy is really a legitimate, serious subject with ramifications across lots of subject areas. An example of the slightly off the rails religious approach and an example of the late teen approach (Ok, she is 20 but my point remains) are available! It is worth noting that both sites have “Religion and Philosophy” as a single category.

Throwing a contrast, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science presents a very different perspective and is well worth visiting for the free content if nothing else. It is not “easy reading” of the manner of the previous two, but if you are interested in science, it is certainly worth working through.

Now, after the “sane” examples we are left with the rest of the bunch. This is always an entertaining stage of blog surfing. The word Philosophy seems to drag them out of the woodwork – I may try “Religion” when I have more spare time….

This is a priceless one. In a post titled “Saddam Hussein & Feast of Sacrifice (Muslim Holiday)” (this alone should highlight the potential crank content) we get such gems as:

Dont be fooled by Western Propaganda and Middle Eastern “Statesmen” that kiss the United States Ass!! Saddam Hussein is Christ Manifest. In The Bible It Tells You That Christ Will Return As A King of Terror. The Reason Why I Say This Is Because I Am Saddam Hussein!! Saddam Hussein is Zeus!! Saddam Hussein is Me!!

Blimey. Is this meant to be satirical? After a bit more ranting and incoherent babble, the post finishes with this:

Shiites and Sunnis Dont Believe In Allah, Kurds Dont Believe In Allah; Dont Believe In God That Is Why They Got Their Asses Tortured By Saddam Hussein. Why Is It That The Devil Wants To Divide Heaven, Be A False Provider Of Freedom. Human Beings Dont Need A Petty Constitution To Tell Them That They Are Free…..That Is Why God Created The Sun.

Now, I suppose the randomness of this page served a purpose as it encouraged me to read through more of his site and look at the MySpace profile he has – mainly to see if he was actually insane. Sadly reading the profile has not convinced me this is a nut case, so I can only assume the page is there as a joke. The brunt of the profile seems like a normal person (although choice of books is: “Bible, Quran, Tao Te Ching, Confucious, Ayn Rand, Karl Marx, Immanuel Kant, Nietzsche, Plato, Aristotle, William Shakespear,Saving Socrates, Call of the Wild, Political Thrillers & Military Thrillers, Romantic Novels, Steven King, Michael Chrichton, Science Fictions, Biographies” which is certainly unusual for a 25 year old male). He also has a picture of GW Bush (Captioned “The Devil without Make Up) and the words “I WANT TO MAKE THE WORLD FALSELY BELIEVE THAT DEMOCRACY IS GREATER THAN GOD’S PROVIDENCE” attached (as if this is Bush’s motive). A similar picture of Adolph Hitler is labled “I WANT TO MAKE THE WORLD FALSELY BELIEVE THAT NAZISM IS GREATER THAN GOD’S PROVIDENCE” so you can only assume some link between Democracy and Nazism, which is certainly a different philosophical point of view…

Just goes to show, no matter how much Technorati annoys me and how bad its set up is and how much it polarises the blogosphere – there remains the facility for it to provide hours of meaningless, pointless but still interesting distraction.