The Jolly Bloger

The New Site

2009-05-08T19:46:00.001-07:00

The Thing

2009-04-04T01:18:00.000-07:00

Ok, here's the thing.

I wanna move this. I want a new space, probably on Wordpress, or on my own domain using Wordpress software.

The thing is, I kinda want a new name, but I love my friggin' logo so much that I want to restrict the name to something with the initials 'JB'. I'm thinking, but nothing terribly satisfying has come to mind.

I'm not dead.

Pirate Wednesday - Google Earth

2009-02-11T10:52:00.000-08:00

Sqeeeee!!!

Unbelievably exciting pirate related news! A man claims to have discovered sunken treasure using Google Earth!

Mr. Smith was noodling around on Google Earth one day, randomly examining parts of the Aransas Pass in Texas. Suddenly, his eyes darted to a shoeprint-shaped outline near Barketine Creek.

His suspicions and, presumably, his vast knowledge of history, were sufficiently aroused for him to believe that what he had found was the wreckage of a Spanish barquentine (think large boat with three or more masts) that supposedly met its final resting place south of Refugio, Texas, in 1822.

The treasure, if this is indeed what he found, is estimated to be worth about $3 billion. There are also some legal complications regarding who has the rights to the wreck.

This comes on the heels of an awesome update to Google Earth that expands the service to the oceans. I happened to see the latest iteration of Google Earth last night, after kinda losing interest months ago, and it has really come a long way. It's spectacular. I suspect this is the first of many novel discoveries to be made from the comfort of someone's home, just surfing satellite images.

Living in the future rules.

Stephen Hawking

2009-02-11T09:54:00.000-08:00

The first real, adult science book I ever read was A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, when I was eight or nine years old. I didn't understand much of it then, and now, having read it at least five more times, there are still parts that go over my head. That book was a pretty huge influence on me though.

Hawking's reverence and appreciation for the natural world, past scientists, and the process of science itself comes through so strongly in his writing, it's hard not to be inspired. Not to mention the personal struggles he has had to overcome to continue his career.

I'm not sure if I would be the same person I am today without A Brief History of Time. I would probably have encountered Feynman at some point, and that would have done the trick just as well, but Hawking was really the start of a process that would shape much of who I am as a person.

Stephen Hawking still does public lectures every once in a while, and I just read that he'll be going to Caltech next month. I'm way up in Vancouver, and I was just in Pasadena last fall, but I think I may try to go and see him. I know I'll never forgive myself if I don't get another chance.

Getting sick of this

2009-02-11T09:32:00.000-08:00

If we don't stand up and fight for world wide free speech, we will lose it everywhere.

The editor and publisher of a newspaper in India have been arrested on charges of "hurting the religious feelings of Muslims."

Mr Kumar has said he has already issued a public apology for reproducing the article.
"I admit it was an editorial misjudgement but it was never intentional," Mr Kumar told the BBC in an interview.

Yet another person bends over forwards to apologize for stating their opinion. This has to stop. It was the same thing in that case where a British teacher in Sudan named a teddy bear Muhammad and was arrested, then went out of her way to apologize. Ridiculous. If we don't stand up and fight for world wide free speech, we will lose it everywhere.

Dear Ted Haggard,

2009-01-30T11:12:00.000-08:00

Fuck you.

Hold on. Allow me to back up just a bit.

Ted, you have spent your life building and maintaining boxes. All kinds of boxes, but particularly in regards to sexuality. You have a "Normal" box, and a "Faggot" box. You have built a career putting people into these boxes. If someone didn't quite fit neatly into one box or the other, you'd cram and shove them in.

Then, you'd nail the boxes shut and lock them up with chains. If anyone ever tried to pry open their box just a little bit you would shame them, taunt them, and threaten them with all kinds of horrible things. When everyone was packed uncomfortably in your boxes, you were happy to kick the "Faggot" box into a lake of fire - quite literally in your mind. You did all this in the name of Jesus, and the name of love.

All the while, you were living a secret, double life. You were paying a man to bring you drugs and have sex with you. The next day, you'd return to your boxes. You would have been perfectly content to continue the double life forever wouldn't you? But the man you paid for sex didn't let that happen - he exposed you. I bet you were mad at first, but it wasn't long before you told the world how liberating it was to have all your secrets out in the open. Lucky you.

Now, Ted, you've been on Oprah, and you told her you don't think that you fit nicely into one of your own boxes. You have a complicated sexuality that can't be defined simply.

Well guess what Ted: Everyone has a complicated sexuality that can't be defined simply. No one fits nicely into one of your boxes. All of this time you've been ruining lives by forcing simple definitions on complicated people, in the name of loving them, and all it took to change your mind was having your lies exposed, your hypocrisy made public, and your reputation and fortune threatened.

So fuck you, Ted. Fuck you with a white-hot metal rod. Fuck you so hard you beg for the lake of fire.

Sincerely,

The Jolly Bloger

George Bush - God

2009-01-28T00:53:00.001-08:00

Don't read any politics into this, its just really cool.

GW Bush Vs John Lennon: GOD - Click here for more free videos

Redefining Death

2009-01-14T11:45:00.000-08:00

"We try to think of organisms as engaging in a work of self-preservation. To be living is to be engaged in that work. To die is to cease to be engaged,"

I love bioethics. I think it's the most intellectually compelling field in science. The problem is this: It is unethical to remove organs from patients who are considered "alive". Alive used to mean a stopped heart, but with modern technology, it's possible to keep a heart beating in a clearly dead body. So now "alive" means the brain is functioning. But it appears as though some brain functions carry on in what we would also call dead bodies from a humanistic moral perspective.

So, do we severely cut back on organ transplants, resulting in many more deaths, because of a technical definition of "alive," or compromise medical ethics by removing organs from "living" people, or do we sit our asses down and think like we've never thought before to find a satisfying philosophical way to fulfil our moral requirement, while still managing to maximize the lives saved by organ transplantation? What do you think the bioethicists did?

Probablemente Dios no existe.

2009-01-09T01:59:00.000-08:00

(via RD)

The atheist bus ad campaign is spreading. Faster that I would have thought, and in unlikely directions. Wonderful!

Don't you just love how that sounds in spanish?

"Probablemente... Dios no existe."

The Double Standard

2009-01-09T00:26:00.000-08:00

Ok, Madoff is a jerk, but this guy kinda makes me smile. Is that bad?

When I saw the headline Catholics targeted by NY man in $17M Ponzi scheme I said "I thought the Pope lived in Italy... and I'm pretty sure its waaay more than $17 million."

Seriously though, isn't religion all just one big financial scam, among other things? Surely Catholicism is (though technically, a Ponzi scheme implies at least some people are paid back). So the question becomes: to what does the title of this post refer?

Lacking a good theory, an awful one may be the best

2009-01-08T13:16:00.001-08:00

A strange thing happened at a wind farm in the UK. One of their turbines got severely damaged. Assuming it was hit by an object (which, from the damage, looks likely), the object must have been approximately the size and weight of a cow. It is currently unknown what specifically may have hit the turbine.

Therefore, it was an alien spacecraft. A very small, cow-sized one. Drunk driving too, I imagine. Bats can avoid those motherfuckers. Bats rule, but I gotta think interstellar travelers could trump even a bat's navigation systems with their UFO (Ungulate Flying Object).

Update:

I figured it out! It was one of these! An undiscovered population of extant pterosaur living in England is way more likely than clumsy visitors from planet Moron.

Happy New Year

2009-01-05T10:54:00.000-08:00

2009 is going quite well for the Jolly Bloger so far. Wanna know what my resolutions are?

As always, I'd like to blog more. I'm much busier at work than I used to be, and some of my hobbies have suffered. However, I still waste too much time on unproductive activities. I'll try to make more time for writing, and also for reading books. I just finished this one, and started this one.

I also want to get outdoors much more often. I'll be using this book for motivation - I'll try to work my way through the entire thing eventually. If anyone in the Vancouver area is looking for a hiking partner and doesn't mind talking to a crazy person, let me know.

I'm going to continue to consciously shed my collection of silly childish biases that I have accumulated throughout my life. I have plenty that I won't go into right now, and it's time to let go. Part of this, however, is a ridiculous bias against new technology. I was against cell phones for far too long, totally against blogging for even longer, and it seems that every time I hear of a new trend I automatically take the stance that it's a pointless fad. RSS, torrents, podcasts... I held out on these for ages for no reason, and now I can't live without them.

No longer: I'm on Twitter!

I signed up this morning, and so far it seems alright! I haven't quite got the hang of it yet, but I'm following a few people, including Penn Jillette, from whom I have already learned more about the next season of Bullshit than I could find on Wikipedia. So that's a plus.

The thing is, I'm using my real name on Twitter. I'd like to share it here, but this blog is more or less anonymous. Although... that has created some difficulties for me in the past. Let's do this shall we?

[removed]

Ah, ok. That feels better. I don't particularly love the idea of family members or potential employers Googling my name and having all this insanity come to the top, so I'm still going to post as the Jolly Bloger. I just won't be going to any lengths to hide my identity anymore, i.e. when posting comments on other sites.

So, that took a weird turn. Happy New Year everyone!

Why Don't We Know More? - Shane Killian

2008-12-27T18:21:00.001-08:00

Musings on Milgram

2008-12-19T12:58:00.000-08:00

I was just reading about the replication of the Milgram experiments, which show that people are surprisingly obedient to authority. The majority of subjects will deliver painful shocks to others when a researcher instructs them to do so. This of course has broad implications in any situation involving authority figures, particularly in regards to all the torture controversy of late - who is really responsible?

A couple of thoughts came to mind.

I would love to see a follow-up, similar to my suggestion for acupuncture research, to study whether the obedience to authority is any weaker for subjects who know about the Milgram experiments. I'm not so naive to think that I'm fundamentally more benevolent or resistant to authority than average, but I would like to think that in the same situation, knowing about the Milgram experiments would help me overcome the effect. My guess is that it would, in the same way that knowing about common logical fallacies, susceptibility to illusions and false pattern recognition, etc. help me avoid falling for pseudoscience and hoaxes.

This got me thinking about psychological studies in general. In the interest of proper blinding, test subjects are almost always mislead regarding the true nature of the experiment (and filled in afterwards, of course). Milgram told test subjects they were testing shock aversion in a learning experiment.

If you know this is standard practice, and you suspect that you're actually participating in a different test than the one overtly described, won't that alter your behaviour? You'd be on your guard, suspicious of everything. Like a suspect being interrogated, you won't be fooled by the big mirror on the wall. To what extent does that invalidate the experiment? How do you filter that out? As scientific literacy increases in society (fingers crossed) will this become a major problem for psychological and behavioural research? How might they overcome or work around the problem?

One of these stupid things

2008-12-17T16:46:00.000-08:00

(via Oot and Aboot)

To make up for the dearth in posts here recently, I've done this crap!

(Bold is what I've done, my notes in red)

Are You a Hardcore Atheist?

1. Participated in the Blasphemy Challenge.
2. Met at least one of the “Four Horsemen” (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett,Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris) in person.
3. Created an atheist blog.
4. Used the Flying Spaghetti Monster in a religious debate with someone.
5. Gotten offended when someone called you an agnostic.
6. Been unable to watch Growing Pains reruns because of Kirk Cameron.
7. Own more Bibles than most Christians you know.
8. Have at least one Bible with your personal annotations regarding contradictions, disturbing parts, etc.
9. Have come out as an atheist to your family.
10. Attended a campus or off-campus atheist gathering.
11. Are a member of an organized atheist/Humanist/etc. organization.
12. Had a Humanist wedding ceremony.
13. Donated money to an atheist organization.
14. Have a bookshelf dedicated solely to Richard Dawkins.
15. Lost the friendship of someone you know because of your non-theism.
16. Tried to argue or have a discussion with someone who stopped you on the street to proselytize.
17. Had to hide your atheist beliefs on a first date because you didn’t want to scare him/her away.
18. Own a stockpile of atheist paraphernalia (bumper stickers, buttons, shirts, etc).
19. Attended a protest that involved religion.
20. Attended an atheist conference.
21. Subscribe to Pat Condell’s YouTube channel.
22. Started an atheist group in your area or school.
23. Successfully “de-converted” someone to atheism.
24. Have already made plans to donate your body to science after you die. Better, I donate it while I'm alive.
25. Told someone you’re an atheist only because you wanted to see the person’s reaction.
26. Had to think twice before screaming “Oh God!” during sex. Or you said something else in its place.
27. Lost a job because of your atheism.
28. Formed a bond with someone specifically because of your mutual atheism (meeting this person at a local gathering or conference doesn’t count).
29. Have crossed “In God We Trust” off of — or put a pro-church-state-separation stamp on — dollar bills. Doesn't count - I'm Canadian. UPDATE: I found an American single and completed this one.
30. Refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Or any oath to God or country.
31. Said “Gesundheit!” (or nothing at all) after someone sneezed because you didn’t want to say “Bless you!”
32. Have ever chosen not to clasp your hands together out of fear someone might think you’re praying.
33. Have turned on Christian TV because you needed something entertaining to watch.
34. Are a 2nd or 3rd (or more) generation atheist.
35. Have “atheism” listed on your Facebook or dating profile — and not a euphemistic variant. I have a dysphemism, in order to be more offensive. I'm counting this one.
36. Attended an atheist’s funeral (i.e. a non-religious service).
37. Subscribe to an freethought magazine (e.g. Free Inquiry, Skeptic)
38. Have been interviewed by a reporter because of your atheism.
39. Written a letter-to-the-editor about an issue related to your non-belief in God.
40. Gave a friend or acquaintance a New Atheist book as a gift.
41. Wear pro-atheist clothing in public.
42. Have invited Mormons/Jehovah’s Witnesses into your house specifically becauseyou wanted to argue with them.
43. Have been physically threatened (or beaten up) because you didn’t believe in God.
44. Receive Google Alerts on “atheism” (or variants).
45. Received fewer Christmas presents than expected because people assumed you didn’t celebrate it.
46. Visited The Creation Museum or saw Ben Stein’s Expelled just so you could keep tabs on the “enemy.”
47. Refuse to tell anyone what your “sign” is… because it doesn’t matter at all.
48. Are on a mailing list for a Christian organization just so you can see what they’re up to…
49. Have kept your eyes open while you watched others around you pray.
50. Avoid even Unitarian churches because they’re too close to religion for you.

So that's 35 officially, plus one for #35, ~~and one that doesn't count because I don't have God on my money.~~

36/50

31-40: You are the 5th Horseman! Congratulations!

Them Sneaky Catholics

2008-12-09T19:40:00.000-08:00

I'm watching the Richard Dawkins interview with George Coyne right now*. 'Father' Coyne comes across, as many Catholics do, as quite sophisticated and scientific in his treatment of evolution. There's a particularly pernicious kind of dishonesty there though - it's often seen in supposedly liberal Catholics who purport to be rational and scientific.

The argument goes like this:

Certainly evolution by natural selection is the best scientific explanation available for the origin of all the various forms of life on earth, I wouldn't dispute that. What I take issue with is the scientist's presumption that there is nothing more to humanity than chemical reactions. Simply look at the glorious works of art, music, and emotion, blah blah blah, there must be something more. That is all I am proposing, and if you allow, I prefer to call that something 'God'.

Sometimes the full thing is articulated in so many words, and sometimes the latter part of the argument is simply implied, but that's the long and short of it.

There are some subtle but venomous logical fallacies in that. I think the major one is the straw man - assuming that science puts a period after the word 'evolution', in ink, then closes the book. No biologist has ever said that evolution as we currently understand it is absolutely the last word, and we are not accepting any new ideas. They leave it at the first bit: that evolution is the best explanation we have right now. If anyone has any new ideas, we'd love to hear them. Bring us your evidence.

Then there's the argument from ignorance. They say "well I can't see how evolution explains the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, so I believe there must be a greater explanation." Really, that's not so terrible. We all do this every day, none of us is perfectly philosophically scientific about everything, we'd never get anything done if we were. The problem arises when you try to use this argument to convince others, even when someone is offering a perfectly good explanation for exactly how evolution explains art, or whatever.

There's also an equivocation problem, when they say "all I mean by 'God' is the mystery in nature" then turn around and talk about a virgin birth, a ressurection, and mass produced, bite-sized wafers of man-god-flesh. I don't want to get into all that right now.

In the end, this kind of argument boils down to the God of the Gaps. It's not sophisticated, and most certainly not scientific. It is an outright rejection of Occam's Razor and the null hypothesis, the foundational principles of science. There is never an alternative theory presented, it is merely stating "I don't accept this is all there is (which no one ever said), so I'm going to go ahead and believe whatever I want anyways, with no rational basis for doing so."

This type of argument is perhaps more dangerous than that of creationists and Intelligent Design proponents, because it appeals to the fence sitters. It is likely to attract people with enough sanity to see the Ben Steins and Ken Hams are lunatics, but not enough intellectual sophistication (or courage) to carry their reason to its natural conclusion - that we must accept the simplest explanation that accounts for all the observable evidence, and, for now, leave the rest with an open-ended question mark until we figure that out too.

*I paused it during part 1 to write this, so forgive me if Dawkins addresses all of these arguments later in the interview!

EDIT:

Ugh. Ok, I've watched more of the interview now. Turns out Coyne wasn't really making the argument I thought he was at the beginning (although all of the above still applies!). His view on evolution, as far as that goes, appears to be absolutely correct. At the end, when Dawkins backs him into a bit of a corner, he admits that his belief in God is fundamentally irrational. He uses the word superfluous, that is to say, not necessary to explain anything we can observe. Well again, this is an outright rejection of Occam's Razor. It's also a bit of a conversation stopper, because if you are having a rational debate based on logical arguments, and one person's position comes down to "this has nothing to do with logic or rationality" then there's nowhere to go.

Except possibly to say this: if you are admittedly and happily irrational in even one aspect of your belief system**, then why would you choose to restrain yourself to science and reason in all others? I suppose the answer is "that's something else I'm irrational about" and again, it takes you nowhere. Seems to me that a small willing rejection of reason is no different from an abject total rejection of reason.

** Only in regards to facts! In cases of emotion or aesthetics, I think irrationality is perfectly acceptable for reasons I may or may not explain some day.

Australia loses their god damn mind

2008-12-08T12:16:00.000-08:00

An Australian judge has ruled "that an animation depicting well-known cartoon characters engaging in sexual acts is child pornography."

Aparantly there's no distinction between abusing, raping, and hurting real children, and drawing silly pictures of fictional characters with their clothes off. Doesn't that just serve to trivialize cases of real abuse? If the label of "sex offender" can apply to anyone in possession of cartoon nudity, won't that take away from the severity of the label when applied properly to actual criminals?

If you have the same reaction to actual pictures of child abuse as you do to the images below, you have some serious mental problems. Problems that you share with the Australian judicial system.

And I guess you can lock me up for creating these horrific images:

P.S.
I wonder if Australia will use this ruling to ban books like Lolita. The rationale for the conviction was

...that the animated cartoon could "fuel demand for material that does involve the abuse of children,"

In that context, is the distinction between text and image that important?

An Honest Religious Man

2008-12-01T13:56:00.000-08:00

Penn Jillette has a question for religious people:

If your God (however you understand him/her/it to be) communicated to you (in a way that you clearly understand) a command to kill your own child, would you do it?

If the answer is no, he says, you are an atheist. If the answer is yes, stay the fuck away from me and my family.

I like it. I can't really imagine a situation where it wouldn't apply. I suppose there could exist a non-benevolant God, but on what basis could a true believer question its motives or disobey its commands?

Anyways, here is an example of a true believer. This guy is what he says he is, and at least I can respect that. He's clearly insane, profoundly mistaken, and a danger to society, but he's morally consistent and honest. Which is more than can be said for most "religious" people I've met.

P.S.
Jesus, I missed this at first. Read the ridiculously ironic lines from the idiot sherrif's office:

"God must have been with [the victims], 'cause any other time, the severity of this crash, it would have been a fatal."

Then the last line of the article:

A psychiatric evaluation has been ordered for [the] man.

I don't have to point out the irony do I?

And the Coolest Guy award goes to...

2008-11-28T10:09:00.000-08:00

Rick Astley! Seriously.

The guy had some pop fame in the 80s, before my time. Nothing revolutionary. Then in 2006 he is thrust back into relevance by Anonymous (yes, that Anonymous) on the 4chan messageboards, and the Internet at large. Essentially he was turned into a joke.

But he takes it completely in stride, with a big smile on his face. This is from the Thanksgiving Day Parade just recently:

We wouldn't get this from any other guy.

He's in on the joke now, and he's able to laugh at himself, without losing any dignity. I think that's really really cool. Also, I don't think he is a complete joke. He's not a bad musician. That needs to be said. Go Rick.

Pirate Wednesday - WBC Counter Protest

2008-11-26T13:34:00.000-08:00

That's right, Pirate Wednesday. Last one for a while though. I'm sick of talking about the Somalian pirates - they bore me, and that's not what Pirate Wednesday is about. No more pirate stuff for a while, I'll regroup, and maybe return with something more in line with the PW spirit in the future.

But until then, there's some awesome Pastafarian news for my fellow Vancouverites! Fred Fucking Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Cocksucking Motherfucking Church are planning to protest a play in Vancouver about a gay student who was murdered in 1998. You know, "God Hates Fags", that sort of thing. The Pastafarians have arranged a counter-protest to drown out the WBC with parody, and hopefully send them packing, like they did in Arkansas just a little while ago.

I will be going, and anyone in the area should come too! Dress piratey! Facebook event here, if you want to discuss with others.

Not one

2008-11-16T00:23:00.000-08:00

Ovary transplant baby 'a miracle'

Yet another astounding feat of medical acheivement cheapened by the invocation of divine intervention. Although I did chuckle when I read that she's an "acupuncturist and complementary therapist."

George Carlin is fucking in his grave

2008-11-10T20:18:00.000-08:00

Here's Joe Scarborough "dropping the F-bomb," in the parlance of our times.

Hear the commotion and off-camera whispering as soon as he says it? Sounds like a third grade classroom when one of the students says fuck in front of the teacher. And then - stop everything - Joe simply must apologize for using that word. When's the last time you heard an adult say fuck and then go "I am so sorry, I only meant to say the letter, deepest apologies"? It's ridiculous! Even if a grown man says fuck in front of a child, he may go "oops, sorry," and continue on.

Clearly the word doesn't offend Joe himself, or he wouldn't have used it so casually that he didn't even notice he had said it. Is there really anyone who would be so offended hearing the word fuck in real life that they would demand such an apology? Seriously, has anyone ever met such a person?

It's like we're all part of some grand social experiment designed by the FCC to manufacture a conditioned response to innocuous stimuli. Like the apocryphal monkeys beating each other up for simply trying to climb the stairs.

Fuck, people! It's just a word!

P.S.

We all know what these guys are like when the cameras are off.

This is madness!

2008-11-05T14:04:00.000-08:00

This is SPARTA!

Pirate hunting is dangerous business

2008-09-29T11:43:00.000-07:00

A US Navy destroyer was stationed off Somalia yesterday to ensure that Somali pirates did not remove tanks, ammunition and other heavy weapons from a hijacked Ukrainian cargo ship.

And today:

U.S. warships closed in on [the ship], after the captain died of a heart attack. The pirates are demanding a $20 million ransom.

So the ransom demands have dropped, as has the Russian captain. No resolution yet. I can't imagine what it must be like for the hostages. The story of a lifetime.

Emergency Pirate Post

2008-09-26T12:29:00.001-07:00

Holy shit people! I know it's not Wednesday, but there is some pirate news that demands immediate attention.

In a dramatic push for legitimacy, the notorious Somali pirates have seized a cache of weapons. This is big! I think they deserve to be taken seriously now - I hereby induct Somalian pirates into the annals of True Piracy.

But I haven't even gotten to the best part yet. The weapons cache is a shipload of tanks on its way from the Ukraine to Kenya, in order to help fight piracy and terrorism in Africa. Irony! Now the tanks will be held for ransom, which will almost surely be paid, as is the nature of ransom, and those funds will go directly into the pockets of the very pirates and terrorists the tanks were meant to oppose!

Here are a bunch of links. I will be following this story, and I'll keep you updated throughout the week. This may turn out to be an entire week's worth of Wednesdays.

Unrelated bonus: sunken treasure!

Pirate Wednesday - A flurry of activity!

2008-09-24T10:10:00.000-07:00

Yes, it is the return of Pirate Wednesday! There has been a lot of activity in the past week, the Maritime Bureau is abuzz. One incident has made its way to mainstream media today - an American navy tanker under pirate attack! These guys are getting braver, and their tactics are pretty impressive. They've been using "motherships" as a base of operations to avoid having to return to land, and sending out smaller gunboats with boarding parties like the pirates of old. Below is a summary of incidents from the past week.

Recently reported incidents

19.09.2008: 2145 LT: Posn: 10:16.3N - 064:34.3W, 2 nm north of Guanta port, Venezuela.
Five robbers boarded a general cargo ship at anchor. They broke into the forecastle store and stole ship's stores and property. Alarm raised and crew mustered. Robbers escaped with stole items. Duty crew directed search light at the robber's boat, saw the name of the boat and informed port control. Coast guard came on board the vessel to take statements and later searched for the boat. Two hours later, the boat was found with the stolen items. Master went to police station to give statement and now waiting for court hearing in few months to receive the stolen items.

21.09.2008: 0310 UTC: Posn: 02:30.0N - 051:59.5E, 250 nm off Somali coast, Somalia.
Four pirates in three speedboats boarded a bulk carrier underway. They took hostage 19 crewmembers and hijacked the ship. Owners are unable to contact the ship.

20.09.2008: 0030 LT: Posn: 06:41.1S - 039:26.2E, Dar es Salaam anchorage, Tanzania.
16 pirates, in a 15-meter long boat, armed with knives boarded a container ship awaiting pilot. The pirates gained access to the ship via the forecastle deck. They took hostage three duty crew and tied them up. The pirates broke into three containers and stole cargo. D/O sent another crew to check the status of the three duty crewmembers who were not responding. The crew noticed the pirates and informed D/O who raised the alarm. All crew mustered and searched the forecastle. Pirates jumped overboard and escaped with crew personal belongings, ship's stores and property.

20.09.2008: 1700 UTC: Posn: 02:37N - 051:25E, 250 nm Off Somali coast, Somalia.
Three pirates armed with machine guns and RPG in a white coloured fast boat chased and fired upon a tanker underway. Master increased speed, took evasive manoeuvres, sent distress message, raised alarm, crew mustered and activated fire hoses. Pirates aborted the attempted boarding after 30 minutes.

18.09.2008: 0250 UTC: Posn: 02:22.22N - 050:55.26E, 250 nm off Mogadishu, Somalia.
Five armed pirates in a speedboat attacked a bulk carrier underway. They took hostage 25 crewmembers and hijacked the ship.

18.09.2008: 0618 UTC: Posn: 14:13.0N - 049:59.0E, Gulf of Aden.
About eight pirates armed with guns boarded a bulk carrier drifting for engine problems. Pirates took hostage 25crewmembers and hijacked the ship.

18.09.2008: 0630 UTC: Posn: 13:54N - 049:31E, 40 nm se of Al Mukalla, Gulf of Aden.
Two white hull boats with several persons onboard approached aggressively a chemical tanker underway with intend to board. Master raised alarm, increased speed, took evasive manoeuvres and contacted coalition forces. SSAS activated and crew mustered. The boats keep on following and at 0700 UTC, the boats aborted the attempt.

18.09.2008: 0045 UTC: Posn: 06:40S - 039:35E, 18 nm Off Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Six pirates boarded a product tanker drifting. They broke forward store and stole ship's stores. Alarm raised and crew mustered. Pirates jumped overboard and escaped with stolen stores in a waiting small craft.

15.09.2008: 10:47 UTC: Posn: 13:33N – 049:09E, Gulf of Aden.
About 15-armed pirates boarded and hijacked a chemical tanker underway. The vessel enroute to Mumbai, India, was carrying chemical products. 22 crewmembers have been taken hostage. Pirates have sailed the vessel into Somali waters. Further information awaited.

13.09.2008: 0440 UTC: Posn: 13:32.5N - 048:47.5E, Gulf of Aden.
Speed boats chased a chemical tanker underway with intend to board. Master increased speed and took evasive manoeuvres to prevent boarding, altered course southward to rendezvous with a coalition warship. Speedboats approached as close as two cables before aborting the attempt.

03.09.2008: 1436 UTC: Posn: 13:36.9N – 049:12.2E, Gulf of Aden.
Two speedboats with five armed pirates, in each, attempted to board a bulk carrier underway. Master activated SSAS alert, increased speed, altered course and mustered crew. Pirates open fire on the ship. Master informed a coalition war ship who immediately responded and came to assist. On sighting the warship, the pirates moved away. The warship escorted the ship.

Yarr!

2008-09-19T10:18:00.000-07:00

Happy TLAPD.

Five Bucks

2008-09-06T21:39:00.000-07:00

Go ahead and give them five bucks right now. It's just five bucks.

Holy shit I love science!

2008-08-29T10:11:00.000-07:00

If Mythbusters ever goes off the air (God forb... Knock on wo... what does a skeptic say in this situation?) Adam and Jamie should just do a show where they build awesome stuff like this.

The Sex Files

2008-08-29T09:28:00.000-07:00

US actor David Duchovny has entered a rehabilitation clinic for sex addiction, his publicist has confirmed.

I don't really have anything to say, I just wanted to scoop the joke in the title.

Vaccinate your children!

2008-08-27T15:24:00.000-07:00

In our society, virtually everyone has easy access to affordable (often free!) vaccinations against measles, mumps, and rubella. There's really no reason to see these diseases at all. They should have gone the way of smallpox. But they haven't.

There have been thousands of totally preventable cases of these diseases, mostly measles, because of some form of vaccine denial.

Now my own community is being threatened by an outbreak of mumps.

As thousands of children prepare to head back to school, the outbreak, which began in a religious community, has already spread westward into Metro Vancouver — as far as Burnaby.

There have been 116 confirmed cases of mumps and another 74 suspected cases since February, according to the Fraser Health Authority. On average, the region has only 10 cases a year.

Two people from Alberta carried the mumps to a religious community near Agassiz that has a low rate of vaccinations, said Dr. Elizabeth Brodkin of the Fraser Health Authority.
"My understanding is their interpretation of scripture is that to immunize would be to show a lack of faith in God's ability to protect them, and therefore they choose not to do that," said Brodkin.

Should religious people be forced to vaccinate their children against their will? No. I think it is vitally important to maintain individual autonomy when it comes to decisions about health and medical treatment. But should we therefore respect the poor decisions that individuals make regarding their health? No! This community should be ostracized and crucified (haha) in the media and by everyone for their ridiculous, idiotic, and dangerous decisions. The illogical choices made by this backwards community have not only put their own children at risk, but the entire surrounding community of millions of people.

Quiet religious families are not upstanding, though a little odd, members of the community. They are ticking time-bombs, liable to ignite a public health crisis, or worse, at any moment.

Did you know that...?

2008-08-26T21:32:00.000-07:00

Jane Goodall - world's foremost leading authority, no-kidding-around monkey fucking expert Jane Goodall - thinks that bigfoot exists.

People keep getting... smarter!

2008-08-22T09:33:00.000-07:00

The Pew Research Center says that total separation of church and state has become the majority opinion in America.

The chart doesn't go very far back, but the trend seems to be that the further back you go, the more people wanted religion to be involved in politics. Could I find the actual numbers going back decades? Sure, but I'm lazy.

My guess would be that this trend continues into the past. Yes, separation of church and state was carved into the very foundation of the country, but that was by a small minority of well educated leaders, not the general public. Also, at that time, if a church were to involve itself in politics, it would not be the church of the people, but an imposed authority from across the ocean. So separation of church and state in 1776 was as much to protect the people's religion as it was to protect their government.

Now, however, the majority of the general population, with the majority religion on their side, for the first time ever (I'm totally pulling out of my ass), are expressing the very mature and sophisticated position that no one's religion has any place in politics.

Don't ever let anyone tell you that people are getting dumber.

Ice cream man! Ice cream man!

2008-08-15T18:27:00.000-07:00

Why is it always an ice cream man? I don't remember ever seeing a single ice cream woman. Primary school teachers are usually women, which is often justified by saying that women are better with children, or children bond better with women, or men are untrustworthy. Why not the same for ice cream folk?

EDIT:
Woah. Ok, the above thought came to me because an ice cream truck just went by, and brought with it a wave of nostalgia. It just went by a second time, and I friggin' went for it. Yessiree, I'm enjoying a cotton candy bubblegum swirl popcicle right now. Anyways, the ice cream man... was a woman! Go figure.

EEEEE!!! Headline!!!

2008-08-06T13:15:00.000-07:00

Woman riding a donkey fights off lion with machete

Woman riding a donkey fights off lion with machete

Woman riding a donkey fights off lion with machete

ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) -- A Mexican woman said she fought a 500-pound lion with a machete near the resort city of Acapulco and scared him away. Celsa Aleman said she and her 7-year-old niece were riding a donkey Monday along a road when the lion went after the animal's legs.

The 35-year-old woman says she found the courage to fight the lion because she thought it would attack her niece. She hit the animal with a machete until the beast ran away. Aleman and her niece were unharmed.

The state government said in a statement that the lion had escaped from a private zoo owned by a former local congressman.

It said the animal killed two dogs and ate a pig before it was sedated and taken back to the zoo.

I am an Amazing Atheist

2008-08-01T22:02:00.000-07:00

This guy fucking rules. He's always entertaining, always interesting, and nearly always right.

I've been posting a lot of videos lately. I don't know why.

Little Brother

2008-08-01T13:16:00.000-07:00

You may have seen the video of the cop tackling the cyclist with no warning and for no apparent reason.

I've said before, the best way to improve society is to film the cops any chance you get. Thanks largely to the video, the 22 year old asshole cop Patrick Pogan is in trouble, and will have to answer for his (over-re)actions. Turns out he lied in his initial report, saying the cyclist had run into him!

What a cocksucker.

He has had his gun and badge suspended until the investigation is over. Good work citizen journalist! Keep the pigs honest - and there are some great honest ones who deserve thanks and respect. The minority of power hungry fear mongering assholes ruin the reputation of their profession, and actually do harm to their society by fostering a distrust and fear of police.

In reverence of the Dare

2008-08-01T11:27:00.000-07:00

I just read this local story on the CBC.

A couple goes away on vacation, and someone sticks their garden hose through their mail slot, causing a huge amount of damage. The couple, and the community, are shocked and outraged. How could anyone do something so thoughtless?

This is a quote from the victim:

"I guess I just can't believe kids can be that destructive, quite honestly," she said, "unless they were just on a dare."

Oh man! I love that. Childhood rituals get ingrained in us from a young age and some just never leave. Even faced with a Big Adult Problem like a ruined house, thousands of dollars of repairs, and stacks of insurance paperwork, this woman still makes an exception for a dare.

That's so cool, I hope I never mature to the point where I won't feel obligated, as if by some immutable law, to buy a Coke for someone who jinxed me.

D∧(OM)⊕¬IN⇔O⊃E¬S

2008-07-28T10:49:00.000-07:00

Someone made logic gates with dominoes. So friggin' cool!

PZ has gone too far!

2008-07-24T12:00:00.001-07:00

I'm sure anyone reading this is at least somewhat familiar with crackergate.

Kid takes communion wafer out of church.
Catholics freak out.
PZ tells them its a frackin' cracker.
Shit hits the god damn fan.

PZ had asked for people to collect these crackers and send them to him, so he could desecrate them to show they're nothing but a silly symbol. I'm with him so far.

He gets tons of hate mail and whatnot, some of which telling him that instead, he should desecrate the koran. I'm fine with that too.

So today he posts the results. He went over some of the horrifying history of Catholic bigotry and mass murder, then talked about his own protest. He drove a rusty nail through a communion wafer - good - then tore out some pages from the koran and put the nail through those as well - fine - but then...

He did the same to a copy of the God Delusion!

What the fuck PZ? Desecrating Catholic and Muslim symbols is fine, but this is going too far. Have you even read the God Delusion? Don't you understand how important it is? How great a text you have, well, desecrated? I demand an apology for this inexcusable and highly offensive act.

Moreover, you are a hypocrite! Just one month ago you yourself signed my copy of the God Delusion! I have the proof right here:

So how's it going to be, PZ? Are you going to issue a formal apology for this heinous insult to my lack of faith, or do I have to drive down to Morris and kick your ass?

Anyone know a good non-religious memorial poem?

2008-07-23T13:05:00.000-07:00

I go running at a lake near my house. The other day I noticed a laminated sheet of paper attached to a bench along the trail. There was a poem written on it called the Broken Chain (see below). It was obviously posted by someone who had lost their father recently, and it's a nice, inspirational, but very religious poem. I would like to post a reply next to it, consisting of another poem, similar in spirit, but representing a humanist and naturalistic philosophy.

Can anyone help me find such a poem? I certainly don't want to be argumentative or snarky about it, my goal is to show you don't need some silly delusion of being reunited in heaven to show compassion for a dead family member.

Here's the text of the poem:

We little knew that morning that
God was going to call your name.
In life we loved you dearly, dad.
In death we do the same.

It broke our hearts to lose you.
You did not go alone,
for part of us went with you
the day God called you home.

You left us peaceful memories.
Your love is still our guide.
And though we cannot see you,
you are always at our side.

Our family chain is broken
and nothing seems the same,
but as God calls us one by one,
the Chain will link again.

Thanks!

Amanda Peet somehow gets hotter

2008-07-21T10:50:00.000-07:00

Here's another video.

I didn't think Amanda Peet could get any more appealing, but here she is coming down on the correct side of the vaccine/autism thing. So hot. I think the debate should be conclusively decided by a mud wrestling match between Amanda Peet and Jenny McCarthy.

"China is running a military-style sports machine"

2008-07-18T12:03:00.000-07:00

Classic China.

They just don't seem to get it. It's like they're aliens, or perhaps children, who observe normal civilized human behaviour and try to emulate it. Somehow they completely miss the point.

[The] system starts as early as six years old for some promising athletes, who are put in specialised sports schools for full-time training.
...
The system has faced criticism for taking children too young, and putting them through a too-rigorous training regime.

I read an article the other day in Psychology Today about the completely fucked up mental health of the youth in China. It's difficult to blame individuals - the parents were fucked up by Mao and the kids are being fucked by the one child policy, and a number of factors make it next to impossible to get any help when mental problems inevitably arise. It's pretty disgusting, and it's going to get worse before it gets any better.

No tolerance for intolerance

2008-07-16T12:47:00.000-07:00

(via Atheist Media Blog)

This video rules, check out the guy in the second half who takes the head of the school to task. More of this Britain!

Waterboarding

2008-07-09T12:51:00.000-07:00

I'm watching an interview with Christopher Hitchens about his water boarding experience. He's saying it's definitely torture, because it was a really really unpleasant experience.

I have a bit of a problem with that... after all, he DID it. There's no threat of death, its safe, its just scary. The fact that he was willing to do it at all says a lot about the practice.

I'm guessing there are lots of interrogation methods or criminal punishments that Hitchens doesn't at all consider torture, but that he would never in a million years willingly submit to.

I'm not saying its NOT torture, just that I have problems with his logic.

"...Then they came for my spoon, and no one was left to speak up."

2008-07-07T11:53:00.000-07:00

Ack! My go-to reducto ad absurdum has prophetically come to pass.

Anyone caught carrying a knife without a good excuse should expect to go to prison, Tory leader David Cameron says.

A gun ban, I think, is wrong. But I can understand the logic. A gun is in class by itself. It is very dangerous, allows attacks from a distance, and its very difficult to improvise a gun.

A knife, on the other hand, is just a sharp thing. You cannot ban any and all sharp things, its ridiculous, look at airport security. They get so caught up in where to draw the line that they don't allow fingernail clippers. There's no solid line that separates knives from ordinary objects, so a ban is a slippery slope all the way down. A dull rock can inflict as much damage as a knife can, and ironically, long fingernails are more dangerous than fingernail clippers!

The scariest part, to me, is this:

"So we're proposing that anyone convicted of knife crime should expect to go to jail. I don't believe the government's presumption to prosecute is enough. It doesn't send a strong enough signal. We need a presumption to prison."

He urged police to exercise "common sense" by not prosecuting people carrying penknives for angling, or for bringing home kitchen or garden equipment from the shops.

"This is about kitchen knives stuffed down the front of tracksuits," he told The Sun.

When you give police the authority to arrest essentially anyone (because everyone at all times is carrying something as potentially dangerous as a knife) and only ask them to exercise it at their discretion, you have created a police state. The police have absolute power. There's a passive threat hanging over everybody's head: you don't HAVE to commit a crime to be hauled off, all you have to do is get on a cop's bad side.

So if a little old lady is coming home from the shop with a kitchen knife, she will not be arrested. Why not? Only because she is a little old lady.

In England, you are now presumed guilty until proven innocent, and it is only through the benevolence of the police that you remain on the streets. This is the concept of original sin, backed up with the threat of government.

Stephen Hawking Eulogizes Jesse Helms

2008-07-05T12:09:00.000-07:00

Yes, that Stephen Hawking, the astrophysicist. Didn't you know he had a hardcore ghetto gangsta' side?

mp3

And here's Andrew Sullivan's take. Boy, no one liked that guy.

Spoon Bending

2008-07-05T01:08:00.000-07:00

This is a video taken at The Amazing Meeting a few weeks ago; supposedly it was the largest number of spoons bent at the same time, using only the power of the human mind. The guy at the beginning is Richard Wiseman, who is awesome. He has a bunch of videos on his YouTube channel demonstrating concepts from his great book, Quirkology.

Also, this is the first time I have posted a picture of myself!

Also note James Randi, Phil Plait, Banacheck, and Adam Savage in the front row.

Feynman

2008-07-03T16:10:00.000-07:00

A recently released interview from ABC Australia

Yahoo Pipes: SkepTube

2008-07-03T00:58:00.000-07:00

(via SkepTools)

I recently learned about Yahoo Pipes, basically a web tool that lets you customize RSS content.

I've been playing around a bit, and I created a Pipe that combines a bunch of science/skeptical/atheist YouTube channels into one feed.

You can subscribe to it and get the videos from 16 or so sources under one heading in your feed reader. Any sources I missed?

Did I fucking stutter?

2008-07-01T14:39:00.000-07:00

Can I help you?

Yeah, can I get a chicken salad
sandwich and a medium-

White or brown?

Uh, brown. And can I get a medium-

Toasted?

No, but I want a medium-

Donut?

...What?

[points to donuts]
Would you like to get a donut with that?

No, but can I-

Is that all?

[bursts into flames and devours cashier]

That's an actual exchange I had at the Tim Hortons in the food court of Metrotown mall today.

She didn't look deaf, so I guess I must look stupid. Do most people just accept being treated like a moron by any and all sales staff? Have they given up resisting, or does no one even notice it at this point?

It's when we become desensitized to this kind of treatment that we begin accepting the government making our decisions for us. First nanny staff, then nanny state.

The next time I'm interrupted in the middle of my order for an idiotic question about whether I want something that I have not asked for, I'm walking away from the counter. All it will accomplish is prolonging my hunger, but it will be a moral victory.

A hollow, empty, moral victory.

Gun Control

2008-06-30T15:00:00.000-07:00

Reason has an article today talking about the reversal of the DC gun ban. For the most part it tries to refute the claim that gun control makes people safer. They talk about murder rates pre, during, and post gun control, do a little massaging of the statistics, and declare that gun control doesn't work.

I dunno, its a shaky argument, but even if that were the case, I think they're shooting themselves in the foot (haha). If a study were done that showed gun control undeniably made people safer and reduced murder rates, would Reason become pro-gun control? I don't think so.

The real argument is that safety isn't a sufficient condition for prior restraint and restrictions of autonomy. Some things are more important in the long run than personal security.

I wonder what my DC reader(s) think of the gun ban?

EDIT:
Penn agrees with me

From Crackle: Penn Says- Guns and Freedom

Psychics: What's the Harm?

2008-06-30T11:49:00.000-07:00

There is a girl named Victoria who lives in Barrie, Ontario. Victoria has a severe form of autism, and is nonverbal. It can be extremely difficult to raise an autistic child, even at the best of times. I work with autistic people, I know this. Their brains work in a very different way, making meaningful communication next to impossible, even for verbal people. Victoria lives in a completely alien world.

One day Victoria's mother got a phone call from the school. She went for a meeting, where she was told that they had reason to believe Victoria was being sexually abused.

"That's when I got sick to my stomach," [Victoria's mother] said. "I was shocked the whole meeting."

That's one of the most devastating things a parent can hear, particularly a parent of such a vulnerable child. Even if completely untrue, such a claim can have a terrible emotional effect on the whole family. So you'd think the school would be a little bit cautious about tossing around such dire allegations.

Yeah, you'd think.

Turns out the suspicion of abuse was raised by Victoria's educational assistant - you know, the person in charge of protecting and watching over her when her parents cannot - who had visited a psychic who told her that a child with a 'V' name was being abused.

That's it, that's the evidence of abuse the school went on when they called the Children's Aid Society, which is obligated to investigate any possible abuse case, although mercifully they acknowledged that the whole psychic thing is completely ludicrous.

Even though the claims are absolutely baseless, and Victoria was certainly not abused, this kind of thing causes harm. The emotional stress on the family, the level of trust in the educational aids and the school, the waste of resources spent investigating, and the lingering suspicion that the community will have for years to come are all very real harmful side effects.

The next time someone asks "what's the harm" of going to a psychic, tell them about Victoria.

Still Alive

2008-06-25T10:38:00.000-07:00

I'm not dead. I have been on vacation, at The Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas, hosted by the James Randi Educational Foundation.

It. Was. Awesome.

Hopefully I can get some posts about it up this week.

The Truth Matters, Seth

2008-06-14T09:29:00.000-07:00

The always brilliant Seth Godin writes about Authenticity and Reality and Intention, arguing that truth doesn't matter quite so much as our interpretation.

A very skilled cover band is indistinguishable from the original, so it doesn't matter that they're inauthentic.
A comedian who delivers pre-written material is still funny.
A vegetarian who is served trace amounts of chicken broth won't mind, if she doesn't know.
A YouTube video of cell phones popping popcorn doesn't resonate any less because it is a hoax - a staged video of a physically impossible occurrence.

I'll give you the first two. The essence of good music is the patterns of sound. If you can replicate that, the music can be just as enjoyable, in a completely honest way. Same with the comedian, if all you care about is laughing, a funny joke from an actor will do (like George Burns who said, the secret of acting is sincerity, if you can fake that you've got it made).

Perhaps a vegetarian won't care if she eats a little chicken. What if instead of a vegetarian, you serve trace amounts of peanuts to someone with a severe allergy. Now all of a sudden the truth matters, urgently.

The cell phone corn popping video only resonates if we think it's true. The resonant reaction is "oh my god, my cell phone can do that, and I put it next to my head?!" If the video is fake, then the entire experience is instantly negated.

The point is that you must identify the relevant piece of the experience, and preserve the honesty of that. Good marketing is about delivering real experiences to people. Perhaps you manufacture the setting or context, but the relevant piece cannot be faked. A cheerful salesperson might not actually be happy, but the customer doesn't really care about that, they just want to see a smile.

Using false information to scare people into or out of some behaviour, when there is no real threat at all is slimy marketing. Seth is usually above that.

p.s. Seth, it's more than generally assumed the video is fake. This is science, we're pretty damn sure.

Stephen Colbert, Eat Your Heart Out

2008-06-06T19:45:00.000-07:00

"You just put yourself in overdrive and try and not get yourself killed," Shorter said. "It's an amazing amount of adrenaline going through yourself.… You get lots of thoughts going through your mind but you think about, obviously, your family and it's worth living, so fight."

After killing the bear, Shorter picked up his rifle and staggered back to his vehicle.

"I got back in my pickup, grabbed a drink of water, got my thoughts straight. I noticed my shoulder was dislocated. I managed to pop it in myself and thought I'd better go and get some help," Shorter said.

Pirate Wednesday - Review and Summary

2008-06-04T13:07:00.000-07:00

I don't have any pirate news that stands out as requiring its own post, but I do want to keep on top of this PW thing and not let it go too long between them. Here are the pirate related items that I have come across since the last PW.

Freakonomics has a handful of links regarding pirates and economics, including the Invisible Hook by Peter Leeson, piracy as a model for contemporary terrorism, and the economics of piracy.

Add to the list of once-great bastions of classical piracy who now whine about Somalian attacks: the Dutch.

Cheap and easy instructions for turning a simple canoe into a kick-ass pirate style junk.

And the biggest piece of pirate news in a while, "the UN Security Council has unanimously voted to allow countries to send warships into Somalia's territorial waters to tackle pirates." Does this spell the end of the pirate resurgence? Or will it simply drive the pirates to more extreme (i.e. awesome) measures to stay in business? The Jolly Bloger is on the case.

O Camembert

2008-06-04T11:44:00.000-07:00

Hat tip Strange Maps

Catholic Doublethink

2008-06-02T09:02:00.000-07:00

Aisha Taylor, executive director of the Women's Ordination Conference, issued the following statement about the Vatican's decree that ordained Roman Catholic women and the bishops who ordained them incur latae sententiae excommunication, which means excommunication that is immediate and self-imposed.

"The Women's Ordination Conference is outraged by yesterday’s Vatican decree, which reminds Catholic women once again of the animosity they face from the hierarchy, despite being the backbone of most Catholic parishes throughout the world."

Ugh, I just don't understand this stuff! I've talked about the cognitive dissonance inherent to religion before - how you have to hold two mutually exclusive beliefs to avoid hell in some cases.

If these women are catholic, then that means they believe the Vatican is an infallible source of knowledge that comes straight from God. If the Pope says it, then God wills it. It is official church doctrine that women are inferior to men. That's nothing new, but it has recently been reasserted. I'd like to know what right the Women's Ordination Conference thinks they have to argue with the Pope. This is not a religion that allows individual interpretation of the bible, this is a religion with a top-down authority. They don't even like people reading the bible without a priest present to tell them what it means.

I dunno, I don't have a lot to say about it I guess, except that I think they're stupid. If you don't like the way the Catholic church is run, then leave it. If you actually believe all that bullshit you wouldn't dare to question it anyways so you can't be very serious.

Astrology: Worse than Bullshit

2008-05-28T11:06:00.000-07:00

Astrology is wrong. Ok, that needs no qualification at all. Any number of sources can handily debunk the theory itself. But it's not just wrong. I'm making the point that astrology is, essentially, racism.

From the Astronomical Society of the Pacific's Astrology Defense Kit:

6. Shouldn't we condemn astrology as a form of bigotry?

In a civilized society we deplore all systems that judge individuals by sex, skin color, religion, national origin, or other accidents of birth. Yet astrologers boast that they can evaluate people based on another accident of birth - the positions of celestial objects. Isn't refusing to date a Leo or hire a Virgo as bad as refusing to date a Catholic or hire a black person?

There was a birthday today at my office. Cake, flowers, singing - a joyous occasion to be sure. The boss - the frigging top brass - brought up the fact that it is May, and therefore the birthday celebratee is, whatever, a Gemini or something, thus she has this and that quality and is good at X and bad at Y. My eyes had glazed over red at this point and there was too much steam coming out of my ears to pick up any specifics.

We've played this game before: let's imagine that, instead of finding out her birthday, the boss had just learned that this employee was born to Jewish parents and reacted thusly.

Oh, you're a Jew? That's weird, you aren't particularly funny. You must be great with numbers though, huh? Everyone keep a hand on your wallets! Hahaha, just kidding. Seriously though, have you had a nose job? I can hardly tell you're Jewish!

Everyone present would be absolutely agape at that kind of bigoted inappropriateness. Yet when it's in regards to the birthday rather than sex, race, or religion, a good laugh is shared by all.

Errol Morris Appreciation

2008-05-21T14:02:00.001-07:00

I have talked about Errol Morris before, but I can't recommend him enough. Read his blog (more like collection of articles and essays) and watch his movies. He tends to focus on the theme of truth in visual media, and how that relates to perception, deception, and delusion.

The problem is that perception is endlessly colored by fantasy and belief – perception of the present as well as the past. If there is a story that we wish to believe, our perceptual apparatus will usually modify or reinterpret what we see rather than the other way around. We see things that do not exist and fail to see things that are right in front of our eyes. We often remember things incorrectly and our memories change over time.

The brain is not a Reality-Recorder. There is no perfect replica of reality inside our brains. The brain elides, confabulates, conflates, denies, suppresses, evades, confuses and distorts. It has its own agenda and can even work at cross-purposes with our conscious selves. Consciously, we may think that we see all and know all, but our brains may be “blind” to much of what is going on around us.

I think a lot of what he says gets right to the very core of the scientific method, and the importance of critical thinking to discern reality from fantasy.

Pirate Wednesday - Sunken Treasure

2008-05-14T11:32:00.000-07:00

The fourth installment of Indiana Jones is coming out very soon, and I couldn't be more excited. The popularity of this series is a testament to the romantic image of hunting for lost treasure - facing danger to acquire valuable artifacts - the essence of piracy.

While Indy scours the land for golden idols, it is Davy Jones who holds the treasure of the seas. Treasure that may well have once belonged to true pirates, and today this treasure is being found.

This is no mere fantasy, three reports of sunken treasure being discovered and recovered have crossed my desk in the past few weeks, and it makes me giddy as a schoolchild to know the profession of Treasure Hunter is alive and well.

Steve Libert, an underwater explorer from Virginia, believes he has found the remains of:

The Griffon, which was built near Niagara Falls in 1679 and became the first sailing ship on the Great Lakes, was lost in a storm on its maiden voyage and now ranks among North America's most sought-after wrecks.

Libert is in a legal battle with the state of Michigan for rights to explore the wreck. The value of the Griffon is mostly historical (it is described as "one of the Holy Grails of Canadian marine history"), but surely there must be a number of shiny baubles aboard. When it sunk, it was carrying "thousands of furs and other cargo obtained from native traders."

The next one is particularly exciting, due to its age, value, and mystery:

On the other hand, why did the captain have so many coins? Shouldn't they have been traded for the ivory and copper?

"Either he did a very, very good deal. Or he was a pirate," Noli said. "I'm convinced we'll find out what the ship was and who the captain was."

This 500 year old wreck was found off the coast of Africa by the De Beers diamond corporation. It's a little more romantic when these things are discovered by intrepid individuals, but incorporation seems to be the way to go these days. As for the monetary value of this find...

The ship was laden with tons of copper ingots, elephant tusks, gold coins - and cannons to fend off pirates. "You don't turn a skipper loose with a cargo of that value and have no record of it," Noli said.

Finally, a more recent - certainly post-pirate - wreck, but what she lacks in age and intrigue she more than makes up for in sheer wealth.

She was the British government's secret treasure ship, packed with 43 tons of gold and intended for Halifax to pay Canadian and American munitions suppliers at the height of the First World War.

But that was the mission that doomed the SS Laurentic - along with 354 of her British and Canadian crew - when the ocean liner dressed in cannons for the occasion struck a German mine off the Irish coast, slipping to the North Atlantic's depths with her cargo of 3,211 ingots.

Yes, a good year for Canadian maritime history, and for lost riches. As I stated above, there are companies devoted solely to the exploration and recovery of sunken treasure. Odyssey Marine Exploration discovered an absolutely amazing cache of treasure not long ago. Check out their site, they've got some cool stuff. Perhaps I'll do a future PW post about them. Or maybe I'll submit a resume and become rich off pirate booty.

The Stupidity of Dignity

2008-05-12T13:58:00.000-07:00

(hat tip AF and RD)

Steve Pinker embarrasses the Presidents Council on Bioethics with a critique of their idiotic Christ-infused report, titled Human Dignity and Bioethics.

Dignity is skin-deep: it's the sizzle, not the steak; the cover, not the book. What ultimately matters is respect for the person, not the perceptual signals that typically trigger it.

The Invisible Hook or ARRconomics

2008-05-12T11:29:00.000-07:00

Normally I'd wait for a PW, but this is a short one, plus I've got plans for Wednesday (hopefully I find the time).

The Boston Globe published an article yesterday about an upcoming book by Peter Leeson about pirate politics and economics, arguing that "some of the world's earliest democracies flourished aboard pirate ships."

Yes, those stereotypically lawless rum-chuggers turned out to be ardent democrats. The pirates who roamed the seas in the late 17th and early 18th centuries developed a floating civilization that, in terms of political philosophy, was well ahead of its time. The notion of checks and balances, in which each branch of government limits the other's power, emerged in England in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. But by the 1670s, and likely before, pirates were developing democratic charters, establishing balance of power on their ships, and developing a nascent form of worker's compensation: A lost limb entitled one to payment from the booty, more or less depending on whether it was a right arm, a left arm, or a leg.

It's actually related to my very first Pirate Wednesday post, in which I discussed an example of a pirate code of laws. I think I'll have to get that book when it comes out.

Yawn

2008-05-12T09:41:00.000-07:00

It's not even shocking anymore.

Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British solider in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city's Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death.

What shocks me is the overwhelming public opinion that Islam is, for the most part, at its core, to the majority, a religion of peace. Peace is a weird fringe aberration in Islam.

On a related note, I recently read Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I very strongly recommend it.

Disappointed in Snopes

2008-05-01T10:10:00.000-07:00

For those who don't know, Snopes is an urban legend investigation website. Like an internet MythBusters. They're usually really good, but they dropped the ball with this one:

Claim: Drinking bleach will kill the AIDS virus.

Status: False.

Now, the specifics of their explanation are true. Drinking a cup of bleach will not cure one of AIDS, washing one's naughty bits in bleach will not prevent AIDS, etc.

But drink enough bleach, and the AIDS virus will certainly die. It's really a matter of dosage.

Pirate Wednesday - France and Spain

2008-04-30T14:55:00.000-07:00

There have been two fairly major pirate events in the news in the past couple of weeks. First was that French yacht that was abducted by Somalian pirates, and the crew held hostage. A ransom was paid, and the crew released. The pirates were subsequently captured and taken to Paris, then charged with a criminal offense. I assume they still await trial.

Shortly after that, in an eerily similar incident, a Spanish vessel was captured and the crew taken hostage, again near Somalia. They too were paid a ransom and have let the crew go, but have not been captured.

I have said before that I do not consider this new breed of half-assed maritime guerrilla crime to be true piracy, and I maintain that position, though these two recent incidents are a vast improvement over the petty nickel-and-dime theft common to the Somalian pirates.

That being said, I'm disappointed at the pussy reactions of both France and Spain to these attacks. Have they forgotten their own past? Do they deny their legacy of real piracy? I'd like to take a minute to remind the world that these once-great nations have sired a host of pirates over the years that would put the Somalian bilge rats to shame. Perhaps they will be inspired to return to their roots and take back the seas from these pretenders to the salty throne in an epic wave of neo-retro pirate vigilantism.

This is surely an incomplete list, using only this Wikipedia article as a source. Many of the below pirates have their own articles, I recommend you peruse their glorious deeds.

France:

Jean Ango
Eustace the Monk
Jean Fleury
Francois le Clerc
Guillaume la Testu
Jacques de Sores
Captain Archembeau
Jean Bart
Philippe Bequel
Pierre Bot
Jacquotte Delahaye
Anne Dieu-Le-Veut
Michel de Grammont
Jean du Casse
Alexandre Exquemelin
Jean Foccard
Jean Hamilton
Pierre Le Grand
Lessone
Marquis de Maintenon
Daniel Montbars
Francois l'Ollonais
Pierre Le Picard
Chavalier du Plessis
Jean de Pointis
Jacques Tavernier
Moise Vauquelin
Olivier Levasseur
Emanuel Wynn

Spain:

Pedro Menendez de Aviles
Juan Garcia
Pedro de la Plesa
Edwardo Blomar
Bartolome Charpes
Juam Guartem
John Pyne
Mancel Alcantra
Jose Gaspar
Benito de Soto

In which I meet Richard Dawkins

2008-04-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

Richard Dawkins has been in Vancouver this week promoting The God Delusion on the local radio and TV stations. Yesterday he gave a talk at UBC which, unfortunately, I couldn't get a ticket for because they sold out an hour after becoming available.

But I wasn't going to let that stop me! With my copies of The God Delusion and The Selfish Gene in hand, I made the journey to campus on the mere possibility that he may be signing books afterwards.

Vindication! Sadly I have no pictures, but I saw him in the flesh and came away two signatures richer. Totally worth it.

I'll admit I was a little starstruck. I wish I could claim the reason I didn't say anything meaningful to him is that I was at the end of a very long line and he was clearly anxious to leave. That's part of it, but mostly I was just shy.

I had two books with me, so as he was signing the first one I said "do you mind if I ask for two?" He replied "uh... well, go ahead," thinking I wanted to ask him a question, I suppose. I said "uh, no, I mean this other..." and he said "ah, certainly" then I said "thank you very much" and walked away.

It was awkward, but wonderful.

Like a catholic wedding night.

Woah, hot, two chicks!

2008-04-30T09:49:00.000-07:00

"This is not an aggressive act against gay women," Lambrou said. "Let them visit Lesbos and get married and whatever they like. We just want (the group) to remove the word lesbian from their title."

It's actually a reasonable request, I think.

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus

2008-04-29T11:07:00.000-07:00

By Clay Shirky, via Marginal Revolution

Did you ever see that episode of Gilligan's Island where they almost get off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don't? I saw that one. I saw that one a lot when I was growing up. And every half-hour that I watched that was a half an hour I wasn't posting at my blog or editing Wikipedia or contributing to a mailing list. Now I had an ironclad excuse for not doing those things, which is none of those things existed then. I was forced into the channel of media the way it was because it was the only option. Now it's not, and that's the big surprise. However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it's worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.

And this is the other thing about the size of the cognitive surplus we're talking about. It's so large that even a small change could have huge ramifications. Let's say that everything stays 99 percent the same, that people watch 99 percent as much television as they used to, but 1 percent of that is carved out for producing and for sharing. The Internet-connected population watches roughly a trillion hours of TV a year. That's about five times the size of the annual U.S. consumption. One per cent of that is 100 Wikipedia projects per year worth of participation.

The atheist in the foxhole

2008-04-28T13:38:00.001-07:00

Jeremy Hall is an American soldier in Iraq, and he doesn't believe in god. His atheism has been the cause of harassment, to the point that Jeremy has filed a lawsuit against the US Military.

Known as "the atheist guy," Hall has been called immoral, a devil worshipper and - just as severe to some soldiers - gay, none of which, he says, is true.

"I see a name and rank and United States flag on their shoulder. That's what I believe everyone else should see," he said.

The issue came to a head when, according to Hall, a superior officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, threatened to bring charges against him for trying to hold a meeting of atheists in Iraq.

"Religion brings comfort to a lot of people," [Hall] said. "Personally, I don't want it or need it. But I'm not going to get down on anybody else for it."

"I hope this doesn't define me," Hall said of his lawsuit. "It's just about time somebody said something."

About time indeed. Lots of awesome soundbites in there from Hall. It takes a lot of courage and strength of character to stand up to the friggin' US army.

Brief History of Disbelief

2008-04-25T17:13:00.000-07:00

Just a simple recommendation today. Jonathan Miller and the BBC made a documentary a few years ago called "A Brief History of Disbelief" consisting of interviews with six prominent scientists and philosophers regarding their atheism, and investigations by the host into the history of faith and reason. It's really really great. Get it.

I've undertaken this series partly because I want to investigate the antecedents of my own disbelief and to consider the history of what I'm reluctant to call atheism. In fact, I'm rather reluctant to call myself an atheist. But that's not because I'm embarrassed or ashamed of it, or because I fear for my life as I might have done in the olden days when I announced that I was. Nor have I any reason to think that I may be socially disabled in a way I once might have been. No, the reason I'm so reluctant is that atheism itself has acquired almost sectarian connotations and it hardly seems worthwhile to have a name for something that scarcely enters my thoughts at all. For myself, as for many people, it's only in the light of such current controversies with regard to belief that I've found myself explicitly willing to articulate my disbelief.

Colbert, You're On Notice

2008-04-21T23:37:00.000-07:00

I'm currently watching The Colbert Report, and one of the headlines he used at the top of the show, in reference to the pope, was "The Audacity of Pope".

I knew I should have slapped a copywrite on that motherfucker! I had it first Colbert!

Jolly Blog(g)er on the radio!

2008-04-17T11:13:00.000-07:00

I listen to a radio show (via podcast) on the CBC called Search Engine. It's about issues related to the Internet, and net-based fads.

Last week there was a brief discussion of net neutrality, and the host asked people to comment on the site. I did:

Speaking of the charter of rights and freedoms, what is lacking in that document that we need to add specifically for the Internet? Aren't the existing rights enough to cover web users as well?

As for net neutrality, bear in mind that the infrastructure that makes the Internet possible is property that is owned by people who worked hard to build it. Do they not have rights when it comes to their property? No one needs permission to invent the web, but once it's invented, shouldn't the creator have a say in how it's used?

This week, he read some of the comments, and mine slipped in! Cool!

Except that he pronounced it 'Jolly BlogGer' as opposed to 'Bloger (rhymes with Roger)' as everyone knows is correct. It just sounds weird out of context. I still love the wordplay, but maybe enough is enough.

That got me thinking, The Pirate Bay has started a blog hosting service. It would be cool to move my pirate themed blog to their servers. I haven't decided anything, but I'll let you know if a move (and name change) is in the works.

Charles Darwin on-line

2008-04-17T10:08:00.000-07:00

Wow. It's supposed to amount to about 90,000 pages; here is an article about the project. Here are a few indicated highlights.

(N.B. this post was stolen verbatim from Tyler Cowan of Marginal Revolution)

The Audacity of Pope

2008-04-15T09:27:00.000-07:00

So the Pope has come to America for a visit. One of his goals is to "heal sex abuse wounds" of the countless victims of priest rape. The audacity of this man astonishes me. No matter how good his intentions are, he has no right to get further involved in these cases. The catholic church has lost the right to be a source of comfort to the people it has abused.

Think about it, this is an organization that commits a crime, denies the crime, covers it up, protects the criminals, blames the victims, and THEN has the balls to try to "help" the victims sometimes up to forty years later. He probably expects praise for it too. To me, that's basically the same idea as a doctor going around with a tyre iron smashing people's kneecaps, then tenderly putting them in a cast and giving them a bill.

Pope supporters will surely be crowing about all the wonderful things the catholic church has done to heal abuse wounds after this. Sorry, it doesn't count when you apologize for damage that you have caused.

Oh, but it's going to be alright from now on right? Because the Pope "vowed to keep pedophiles out of the priesthood". Sorta like the vow of celibacy the pedophile priests took eh? I call bullshit.

Fuck the popo.

P.S.
More blatant hypopecrisy (via RD)
and Hitchens weighs in.

TED Video - Johnny Lee

2008-04-11T12:49:00.000-07:00

Here's a very cool video showing what one researcher was able to do with Nintendo Wii technology that really goes above and beyond what's currently on the market. More than that, he shows how online communities have helped to spread his ideas far more effectively than traditional channels.

News Blues (yeah it sucks, go fuck yourself)

2008-04-05T22:35:00.000-07:00

I'm not a sports fan. I'm not excited about the big game, I have no opinion of the new kid they've got playing goal, and I don't give a shit if they go all the way this season.

I have plenty of pointless hobbies and interests that others might find interminable, so I abide the sports thing. To each his own, I won't begrudge it.

The thing that irks me is the insistence of major news networks to include sports results in the top news. I subscribe to a whole bunch of news feeds, mostly the "top headlines" or something similar.

I expect top headlines to be things like natural disasters, political scandals, and maniacal killing sprees - I'm receptive to these types of stories when reading top headlines. So when I see "Kansas dismantles North Carolina" I get pretty fucking upset. What the hell is going on south of the border?!

Turns out one college basketball team got more points than another. It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't insist on using those god-awful sports metaphors right in the headline. When I read that Sharks Devoured Kings, my first thought is "holy fuck, does this spell the end of monarchy as we know it?"

Perhaps its my fault for expecting Top Fucking Headlines to be reliable representations of major world events. How would people react to headlines concerning my frivolous interests? "Hundreds Dead in Molten Core" would probably freak out a lot of folks, before they found out it was just a raid gone wrong.

Breaking: Backlash against relaxed PW schedule

2008-04-04T10:00:00.000-07:00

Pirates have boarded a French luxury yacht near Somalia, and taken all 34 crew members as hostages, French officials reported this morning. The attack appears to be in response to a relaxed schedule of "Pirate Wednesday" posts on the popular internet blog The Jolly Bloger [sic].

Once a weekly feature of piracy-related news, biographies, and humerous non-sequitars, Pirate Wednesday has become sporadic and unpredictable, upsetting pirates and internet users the world over.

"Our demands are simple - we want a new PW post each and every week, 150 words minimum, posted before 12:00 PST. We will kill one Frenchman a week for every missed post," the captain of the pirate crew was quoted as saying.

We contacted internet phenom Jolly Bloger for comment in his metro Vancouver office:

"What? Screw off, I said I'm busy with a new job. I'll post more often when things calm down - or maybe not, I dunno, it's my god damn site."

At the mention of a French proposal to require by law a minimum of one PW post per week, the Jolly Bloger began to yell unintelligibly for ten minutes. Something about the rights of the people, free speech, and hippies.

"We just want our favourite website back to normal," the pirate captain told us by satellite phone. When asked what their second favourite website is, he responded "fARRRk.com"

Again, not a damn miracle!

2008-04-03T10:53:00.000-07:00

Have you heard about the pregnant man?

It's a transgendered guy, so he was born a girl and had a sex change, but kept the plumbing. He got artificially knocked up, and is now six months pregnant with a healthy baby. That's really cool, hurrah for medical science right?

Well, not exactly. He went on Oprah (of course) and declared it a miracle.

Praise Jaaayzuusss!

Now, a normal man with man parts becoming pregnant... that would be weird. If it were to happen, there would surely be a logical explanation, but calling it a miracle casually would probably be acceptable. This, clearly, is not the same. Everyone knew he had a uterus, it is thanks only to the skill of the doctors and researchers that this happened, not God.

Psycholexography

2008-03-31T09:43:00.000-07:00

I always read the words Liberian and libertarian as librarian. I wonder what that means? Did Freud have anything to say about that particular kind of slip? Anyone else consistently read one word as another?

Oldest recorded human voice, now on the Internet

2008-03-28T10:18:00.000-07:00

Thomas Edison invented the first real audio recording device, called the phonograph, in 1887. It cut sound waves into a roll of wax. The first thing he recorded was a brief recitation of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" which you can listen to here.

That's amazing. That's Thomas Edison's voice and also the very first real record of a human speaking, and we can all hear it at the click of a button. It gets better though.

In 1857 in France, Edouard-Leon Scott had invented a similar, though less impressive device called the phonautograph that could transcribe sound waves visually onto soot-covered paper, but could not play them back. It was the preliminary research into sound recording that would eventually lead to the phonograph, records, and ultimately the digital music we all love to steal, but by itself it was basically just a novelty.

One of the earlier recordings made on the phonautograph was a woman singing Au Clair de la Lune in 1860. The visual recording that no one ever imagined could possibly be used to reconstruct the sound itself, was given to the patent office in France and forgotten in a file for nearly 150 years.

Just recently, audio historian David Giovannoni took the primitive recording, analyzed it with microscopes and computers, and turned the squiggly scratches set in soot into a digital audio file.

I wish Arthur C. Clarke were alive to see this.

It's really cool that we can hear such an old recording, and even cooler that it was never meant to be heard. It got me thinking though that what's really incredible is how trivial it is for you and me to get it.

Merely 150 years ago the concept of preserving sound waves visually was the height of technology. And now, using methods and devices that came directly out of that technology, we're able to do amazing things with those original recordings and share the results around the entire globe in seconds. And that's cool.

Pirate Wednesday - 826 Valencia

2008-03-19T11:17:00.000-07:00

If I may once again endorse the watching of TED Talks, check out the one by Dave Eggers (also embedded below) who is doing some really cool things to supplement the public school system in San Fransisco, and in which he "asks the TED community to personally, creatively engage with local public schools."

Eggers and his group have a space in San Fran that operates as an after-school tutoring center, publishing house, and pirate supply store.

Yeah.

Check out their website. How cool is that! It started out as a creative way to decorate their workspace, but it has turned into an actual retail business that amazingly makes money to help fund their education work. They have some really cool stuff too, like pirate flags, glass eyes, and designer eyepatches.

Here's the video.

Briefly, in other pirate news:

A Somali official condemns the reported $700,000 ransom payment to pirates to free a Danish-owned boat.

Rickroll

2008-03-14T10:57:00.000-07:00

Two decades ago this week--on March 12, 1988--the corny pop song "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.

What is Rickrolling?

Here's another totally cool, unrelated link.

Atheist defense on Craigslist

2008-03-11T13:41:00.000-07:00

I was perusing the Best of Craigslist page and saw a rather surprising post written in response to some vitriolic Christian rants on CL about atheists. It's called "Anti-atheist Backlash on R&R", and it's right between "i'm a producer dammit, why won't women have sex with me?!" and "Reactions to small dick!". Best of indeed.

It's very well written, so I thought I'd repost it here:

Date: 2008-03-05, 12:11PM PST

I've noticed a recent trend on Rants and Raves where certain Christian posters are attacking atheists while strangely choosing to ignore all other brands of non-Christians. Why is this? Are these armchair disciples more concerned about saving an atheist's soul than that of a Buddhist, Hindu, Jew, or Muslim? Sounds fairly selective to me.

I think I know what's going on here...

These people aren't attacking all non-Christians because they can at least personally identify with somebody else's belief; regardless of whether or not they agree with it. They are allies in the same sense that members of two opposing armies can feel a comradery with one other.

Rather, it is the non-belief of atheists that bothers them. These people have faith so thoroughly engrained in their lives that to see somebody without a trace threatens them. They simply cannot conceive of somebody not believing in a deity of some sort. The idea is completely foreign to them, and therefore menacing. It forces them to evaluate their own beliefs. They become defensive and attack because the things they hold intrinsically and unquestionably sacred are being challenged by the mere philosophical position of another.

Most atheists do not "believe" that god does not exist. Rather, they dismiss it as a possibility due to a complete lack of evidence. Otherwise, they'd have to entertain the possibility of believing in anything and everything... which is the essential problem of agnosticism. Therefore, it does not take faith to be an atheist. If the evidence changes, then most would certainly be reasonable enough to revaluate their positions. Until then, the existence of god is simply a non-issue for them. Some theists have decried this materialistic position, but without much real avail. What possibilities are we losing if we only believe in things that leave evidence behind? Ghosts, leprechauns, fairies and gods... everything in the realm of the superstitious, but nothing else. I can comfortably live with that; just as a Christian can comfortably live with the idea of worshipping Jehovah but not Shiva.

They accuse atheists of leading selfish, corrupt, and immoral lives without fear of consequences. They accuse atheists of lacking moral codes. This is, of course, irrational, fear-mongering nonsense. Today's atheist is not a self-indulgent modern Caligula or a Stalin. Today's atheist is not a socially maladjusted anarchist who lives their lives without fear of retribution. According to a 1997 statistic, only 0.209% of prisoners incarcerated in the United States identify as atheists. Since atheists currently represent roughly 14% of the overall U.S. population, this is a significant indicator of the "morality" of the modern atheist. Today's atheist tends to be a well-educated, productive member of society who more often than not subscribes to the notions of moral relativism and secular humanism... which essentially means that we realize we're all stuck on this big ball together and we must work to set aside our differences and build a better future, because it's all that there is. That doesn't sound at all like the monstrous picture that's recently been smeared here by certain self-proclaimed loving Christians.

These rabid believers clash with atheists knowing perfectly well that they are helpless to alter the ideological perceptions of their perceived foe. Why then, do they choose to partake of this exchange of bad blood? Because they're angry and they're frightened. They're angry because we have the nerve to indirectly challenge their insecurely-held beliefs with our continued existence. They're frightened because they fear that they're losing their foothold on the theocratic monopolization of America (school prayer, Christian-oriented legislature, etc.)... an officially secular country, mind you.

Lashing out, spreading lies and misconceptions, and demonizing the enemy is a natural way to react to opposition; however contrary to the teachings of their professed lord and savior. Any anti-atheist backlash you're witnessing here is simply the result of reactionary mean-spiritedness, and nothing more. The misinformation is a sign of desperation. I suppose they believe what they're saying is true in the same sense that many Muslim fundamentalists believe that America is directly in league with the devil. Feeling "right" about the subjective tends to breed violent paranoia when challenged. Mind the danger in that whatever you choose to believe.

I can't say that some atheists aren't guilty of the same indiscretion, but it's a generalization to categorize all atheists this way just as it's a generalization to categorize all Christians as rabid fundamentalists. I've been careful to avoid doing so here, despite the disrespect shown us by some members of the Christian community.

Personally, I'm a firm believer in live-and-let-live. I believe Christ was too. I don't attack others for their beliefs. I don't even ask that others question their beliefs. Everyone has a right to decide what they hold dear. I don't write slanderous, inaccurate or inflammatory material about adherents of any religion. But I do defend my positions, because I hold them dear. I find it completely abhorrent that those who attack mine do so under the protective woolen guise of love and fellowship. It allows them to appear to hold the upper hand while hitting below the belt. The atheist in America is already a misunderstood and hated underdog, and people tend to ignore the callous disregard they are often shown by these "gentle lambs of God." Were it not for atheists being their current preferred cannon fodder, I'm certain these unyielding fanatics would be baring their claws and coming for you other non-Christians and moderates next. Watch your step.

Responding to technology: Facebook edition

2008-03-11T10:22:00.000-07:00

If you're a big lumbering corporation, organization, or market, there are two ways you can deal with technology that threatens "the way we've always done it".

One: you can adapt, adopt, and embrace the technology. A risky move, but inevitable after a certain point.

Two: you can suppress, exclude, and punish the use of the technology, which requires you to expend a huge amount of effort just to keep doing what used to come naturally.

See Seth for a way, way better treatment.

Microbes keep fallin' on my head

2008-03-10T15:20:00.000-07:00

I'm listening to this NPR Science Friday podcast about the role bacteria play in the formation of ice and snow. It's a really interesting case of those single celled powerhouses, the men behind the curtain of the world, doing yet another unexpected job.

Bit of background: all precipitation (rain and snow) initially forms as ice in the clouds. For ice (or any) crystals to form, there must be a seed - something for the molecules to grab on to. In the case of rain and snow, this is usually said to be simply dust particles floating in the air. Turns out, these dust particles can really only seed ice formation at lower temperatures. So how do we get rain when the clouds are warm?

A research team led by Brent Christner has found that there are air borne bacteria that secrete a protein that mimics the lattice structure of ice, making it ideal for seeding ice crystal formation and promoting more rain than we would otherwise see. Read more here.

That's neat! Tons of questions come to mind: What would the climate look like without these little guys? Would tropical rainforests exist? What is the evolutionary advantage of this effect? Can we use the bacteria or the protein for for something (I'm looking at you, Craig Venter)?

As an aside, this shows yet another case of vain human arrogance when people say we are the only species able to affect the entire climate and atmosphere globally. I don't think we could start or stop the water cycle if we put our minds to it for a hundred years!

It's protein-rich and conveniently packaged. What's not to love?

2008-03-07T10:28:00.001-08:00

Can I ask a stupid question?

What's so bad about spam?

CNet reports that "Google says spam is [a] huge corporate headache," but I have my doubts. I'm a big email user. I have a few different Gmail accounts for various purposes, and I believe that a grand total of three unwanted messages have made it through the default spam filter. Not a single message has been sent to the spam folder in error - I do check. Before Gmail I used Hotmail with their mid-level spam filter and again, it was extremely rare for a spam message to make it to my inbox.

At work we use a terrible webmail system that is almost more trouble than it's worth. The attachment size limit is ridiculously small, at around 3 megabytes, and the total inbox limit is laughable at 20 megabytes. I believe it costs us a lot of money as well. It would have been an inappropriate and outdated system in 1995. Yet for all of its problems, I have received maybe five spam emails.

These are public email addresses, I don't take many precautions to avoid spam, all of my addresses are out in the open in plain text and hyperlinks all over the Internet. All I use is the most basic default spam filters, and spam is so far down my list of concerns I wouldn't bother to flick a switch to magically end it, if such a device existed.

According to Google,

The average "unprotected user" would have received 36,000 spam messages in the year.

and

Stopping spam and other malware is the top priority for the government, legal, manufacturing and, for the most part the tech industry.

Who are these people? Is it at all useful to imagine some hypothetical "unprotected user"? That's like saying the average unvaccinated, unmedicated, Leukopenic person with no skin will get X number of diseases and infections this year. And since when do the priorities of government have any bearing on reality?

I call bullshit on anti-spam hysteria.

Oh, and the horse you rode in on

2008-03-06T10:28:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday someone in Sudan searched Google for "fucking in sudan" and found my post titled "Go Fuck Yourself Sudan". I bet he lost his boner in a hurry.

(click to embiggen)

Pirate Wednesday - Leaked Pastafarian Video

2008-03-05T11:30:00.000-08:00

(via venganza)

Seems like it's either flood or famine with Pirate Wednesday. Since I neglected for so long, this week is a double feature.

Remember that leaked Tom Cruise Scientology video a while ago? Well it appears that someone has stolen a private internal video from the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster now too (see below). Luckily we are a much more laid-back bunch, so there won't be any lawsuits or demands to remove the video from YouTube.

As well as being funny on its own, this is a really good parody of the Scientology video. Ed Adkins captured Tom's crazy intensity really well. Good job Ed!

Ramen

Pirate Wednesday - Vancouver Flashmob

2008-03-05T10:36:00.000-08:00

Why was I not informed of this at the time?

Passengers commuting to and from the North Shore aboard the SeaBus last Friday found themselves surrounded by a horde of pirates who congregated for an ocean-faring party in the middle of Burrard Inlet.

Over 300 people dressed as a variety of pirates stormed the Waterfront terminal in front of chuckling commuters and TransLink employees. The flash mob was organized almost entirely through the social networking site Facebook, which become essential for spontaneous guerilla pillow fights, art installations, and theme parties across the city.

That sounds incredible! They had two live bands, a crowd of pirates singing sailing shanties, and capped it off with a pirate dance party. Bonus points: it totally sounds like that scene from the pilot of Arrested Development where Tobias thinks the yacht party is pirate themed and accidentally joins a group of flamboyantly dressed gay protesters.

Best quote ever from passenger Sky Doherty: “I don’t know what’s going on, but that was the best fucking SeaBus ride of my life.”

Thumbs up to Vancouver public transit staff and users for not making a single complaint, and thumbs up to the Vancouver Public Space Network for having some huge balls. Sometimes this city is pretty cool.

God Bless George Carlin

2008-03-03T10:16:00.000-08:00

(via rd)

Part 1 of 2

Part 2 of 2

I lost the game.

2008-03-03T00:30:00.000-08:00

Fuck, and I was doing so well too. Thanks a lot XKCD.

The needs of the many outweigh the rights of the individual

2008-02-25T14:36:00.000-08:00

I just read an article in my local paper, the Vancouver Sun, that has got to be one of the most unsettling things I've read in weeks. A group of doctors - international but led by a Canadian named Dr. Edward Mills - think that "rich Western countries, including Canada, are demolishing African medical systems and destroying African lives by continuing to lure away their health care workers" and that "the problem is so bad future active recruitment should be considered a crime in international law".

Put simply, these doctors feel that if medical recruiters from Canada or America go to Africa and simply inform doctors there of the opportunities and wages available in the west, without lying or in any way misleading them, then those recruiters are committing a crime.

The rationale is that Africa needs doctors more than we do. On the face of it, that seems to make sense. How dare we take doctors away from those who truly need them. However, the unstated subtext is alarming. There is a blatant disregard and disrespect for the autonomy of the African doctors. The implication is that they should not be allowed to leave their own countries in pursuit of their own prosperity. What about personal choice? Are these doctors damned to remain unwillingly in a poor country simply because they were born there? Does this group of doctors not believe the African doctors have free will, or the mental ability to make difficult choices? That they are helpless at the hands of American recruiters? Would they consider it a crime for a North American born doctor to live and work in the United States or Canada making $200,000 a year rather than toil in poverty to help those most in need?

I wonder if this is just short sighted compassion or, dare I suggest, a sign of latent racism? Perhaps I'm reading a bit much into it, but read these lines from the article and tell me they don't give you a sour taste:

The active poaching of African doctors has caused the ratio of physicians to patients in the area to plummet in recent years, Mills said.
And as more doctors leave, the conditions for those that remain deteriorate, making it more likely they'll take the bait offered by recruiters from wealthy nations.

Does it really help to use such condescending language when talking about Africans? We're poaching and baiting them, like animals? Fuck off. Since when does a legitimate job offer to a qualified professional with no misrepresentation constitute malicious "baiting"?

The article goes on to say that "the authors distinguish between accepting foreign medical staff who seek out opportunities in other countries - which they say is legitimate - and actively recruiting them with advertisements, job fairs and lucrative sign-up packages, which they call a 'violation of the human rights of the people of Africa.'"

Is this not the same as saying "well if they find out about the opportunities on their own we can't stop them, but for god's sake don't tell them!" Also, the general population of any country emphatically does not have the right to be treated by a doctor against that doctor's will. These people have overcome some pretty major boundaries, worked their asses off, gone through medical school, and now they have the skills to help others and become a success, and then some group of high and mighty doctors says those skills do not, in fact, belong to the person who earned them, they belong to the government. And the government will punish whoever dares to direct those skills away from the greater good.

The idea that people have some absolute and enforceable (force is the key) duty to only exert their efforts to the benefit of others, regardless of personal choice, is distinctly un-American and also un-Canadian. Not only that, its logically incoherent. This afternoon I plan to go skiing. It will cost me about $50. That's $50 that could have gone to AIDS research. Am I committing a crime? If I donated that $50 to education in Africa, but not to AIDS research in Africa, am I committing a crime?

The very reason America is able to pay doctors so much, the very reason they don't have terrible public health crises of their own, the very reason we have the ability in North America to waste our money on frivolous things like plastic surgery and ski passes is the inaliable right of the people to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - our right to work for anyone willing to hire us, for as much money as we can weasel into our contracts. Fuck communism, fuck the greater good, fuck enforced poverty and enforced charity, and fuck anti-African racism masquerading as so much hippie feel-goodery.

p.s. After reading over this post, I realized I might have come across as somehow insensitive to the myriad hardships facing millions of African people every day. I am not. I sincerely applaud anyone willing to sacrifice potential wealth and devote their time to solving some of the most difficult problems the world has. However, I have enough respect for Africans as human beings to acknowledge their complete ability to make that decision for themselves, and their right to be as wonderfully greedy and selfish as they wanna be, should they so choose.

Will Work for Asylum

2008-02-22T09:37:00.000-08:00

Can I come and live in America? How about Britain? Please?

Cool!

2008-02-21T10:17:00.001-08:00

This is a video of the spy satellite being blown up over the Pacific last night during a lunar eclipse. Note there is no explosive payload in the missile, that explosion is just from physical impact. How frigging awesome is that? Details here.

Also, how cool is it that the Dept of Defense has a Web2.0 style video library with embed links and a feed?

Well then it's not really free is it?

2008-02-20T13:01:00.000-08:00

U.N.'s Ban says free speech must respect religion

The [UN] Secretary-General [Ban Ki-moon] strongly believes that freedom of expression should be exercised responsibly and in a way that respects all religious beliefs.

Now he never said free speech must respect religion "or else" and it doesn't look like he's proposing any sort of enforcement, so it's not quite as bad as all that. As long as that is just his opinion then we're in no immediate danger, although it is a little scary to hear anyone in a position of power say something so ignorant. There's nothing special or profound about the right to say nice things about people. Free speech is so important precisely because it protects crazy people when they say their crazy (and sometimes not so crazy) things.

Besides, it's a little silly when you think about it right? Does the existence of Pastafarians mean people shouldn't eat spaghetti out of respect? Surely not.

Planetary axial tilt goes haywire, Earth now revolves around Iraq

2008-02-18T09:25:00.000-08:00

Here's an awkward headline that caught my eye:

Al Qaeda sows fear after sunset in Iraq's north

My first reaction was "holy shit! I'd be scared too if the sun started setting in the north!" Of course, the proper phrasing would be

Al Qaeda sows fear in Iraq's north after sunset

The article is about how Al Qaeda militants terrorize Iraqi citizens after nightfall in the country's northern region. Standard fare I suppose.

Grammar matters!

The System Works

2008-02-17T11:40:00.001-08:00

If you asked me how to improve society in three words, my answer would be "film the cops." The kid with the camera in this video did exactly the right thing, and that cop is an asshole.

I could not be more excited

2008-02-14T12:51:00.000-08:00