Applause For Australia

Well done Australia!

My recent research on the teaching of ID (Intelligent Design) in schools, indicates that supporters of the dumb-ass doctrine are getting a good old ass-kicking down under! Their Minister For Education has said that he would allow it to be taught in religious education classes only and would not support any attempt to teach it as science, since it is not science. In addition, under no circumstances would he agree to let it supplant the teaching of evolution.

What a pity that American and British politicians are unable to see this kind of simple sense.

P.S. Hope this makes up a little for losing The Ashes...

Feng Fooey

After a public outcry, Nanjing university in China has withdrawn a proposal that a Feng Shui course be available in its syllabus. It seems that sensible Chinese people recognise nonsense when they see it, even when it originates in their own country.

Nice one!

My State of Mind

In a comment about my "Bright Is Right " post, an anonymous reader accuses me of closed-mindedness like that of the religites I'm insulting; this is in response.

There is a huge difference between my position and that of godites. I can't prove there is no god, but if convincing evidence became available in support of one, I would accept that, reverse my stance, and retract all my anti-god writings. I am therefore open, not closed-minded. Believers by contrast, accept God in spite of the extreme unlikelihood of his existence and are simply not prepared to listen to rational argument, they are therefore, closed-minded.

I long ago discovered that godites cannot be reasoned with rationally because their beliefs were not obtained rationally, the vast majority were brainwashed into believing when they were children; when their minds were naturally, open to suggestion. I may be wrong about gods, I admit that remote possibility, but when was the last time you heard a believer say their belief may be ill-founded, I suspect the answer, is never.

I suppose that my tone indicates a degree of anger and this may upset some people, well, that's tough! I am angry because of the danger religion presents and the fact that many religites are the most arrogant people I've ever met, some of them actually think they can make me a believer if I just accept their word for it! I take that as an insult - who wouldn't?

Because of the accessibility to instant worldwide communication, religion is perhaps more dangerous today than it has ever been and could possibly result in the death of us all if some religious fanatic got his/her hands on the nuclear trigger. As Sagan said, we are literally made of stardust, we are the Universe trying to understand itself; how tragically ironic and stupid would it be to annihilate ourselves over a fairy tale?

So, you are wrong Anonymous and I take this opportunity to acquaint, or perhaps remind you, of the the great quotation by NASA engineer James Oberg, who said:

"I like to keep an open mind, but not so open my brains fall out!"

To conclude on a positive note, I'm reminded of the show business maxim that there is no such thing as bad publicity, any comment, good or bad is better than none, so I thank you for reading!

Feng Shui Shit

This is a computer motherboard designed under Feng Shui principles, go here http://www.bbspot.com/News/2004/07/feng_shui_motherboard.html for a hilarious send-up of this in-vogue nonsense.

Bright Is Right

Some time ago, two educators named Mynga Futrell and Paul Geisert started an organization named "The Brights", their stated aims and views were in accordance with my own so I became a member. Basically a secular entity, the main tenet is that members are persons who have a worldview free from the encumbrance of a deity or deities. For a fuller explanation of the organization's goals and possibly to become a Bright yourself, visit the website http://www.the-Brights.net, you'll discover that many Brights are well-known personalities.

The name "Bright" is used as a noun and the idea was that it should become memetic like the word "gay" has become for homosexuals. Unfortunately and understandably however, religious persons chose to ignore the noun usage and decided that Brights were setting themselves up as an elite group, the implication being that non-Brights should be named "The Dims" perhaps. Well, many leading Brights denied this and emphasized that it was merely an appropriate name, of course, no matter what, with such a name, some people will always cry "elitism".

Originally, I felt "bright" was not a good name choice and offered fuel to detractors but now I think it's OK and if people don't like it, well... fuck 'em. As far as I'm aware, no large scale properly conducted study has been done to see if non-believers are, in general, more intelligent than believers; I'd be prepared to bet that if such a study were carried out, non-believers would win hands-down.

So tough luck Godites, if your shepherd tells you that atheists and their ilk think they're "brighter" than you, stop bleating, he's probably correct. They are!

A.C.E.

A.C.E. they call it, another American import that’s gained some ground in the UK thanks to the assistance of Blair’s religion-tainted, poorly thought through policies. If you’re a religious nutter wishing to poison the minds of defenceless children, (with the blessing of their god-befuddled parents of course) then all you need is £2 million and the British government will give you more money so you can set up a school where you can decide what the kids will be taught.

Accelerated Christian Education, is just another pathetic attempt by Creationists to subvert reason, evidence and the fact of evolution and replace it with nonsense, silly ideas and fairy tales. There was a saying popular some years ago that went: “Give me a child till the age of seven and I will give you the man” there is much truth in that unless you send your child to an A.C.E. school where the much more appropriate slogan would be: ”Give me a child as young as possible and I will give you the non-critical, non-thinking, easily-fooled, easily-controlled obedient dolt”.


All this child abuse is being perpetrated under the banner of diversification and inclusion, all very fine if you don’t realise that diversity is only good if wisdom drives it. A.C.E. is an excellent example of stupid diversity and even dafter inclusion! The obvious political agenda of being diverse and inclusive (vote winning) is taking precedence over the education and future of our children, and cannot be allowed to continue.

Richard Dawkins has oft-times said that just because there may be two opposing ideas does not mean that they should be given equal weight, one of them may be simply wrong; that is the case here. A huge body of observable evidence that underpins all of biology and medicine supports the theory of evolution, no educated person denies this. The creation myth is just an idea that has no observable evidence at all supporting it, and is therefore not even a worthy alternative to evolution and should not be given anything like equal consideration.

I propose the following idea that the government - in order to avoid a derisory public response - would have to back.

The raising of £2 million would be easy for the number of us atheists in the UK without being a burden on any individual (I would certainly donate), we could elect the appropriate leader and start our own school also named A.C.E. (Accurately Conducted Education) We would of course, teach the kids evolution and the creation myth and let them make up their own minds, Evolution would naturally take longer to teach than Creationism, but at least the pupils could have a good laugh before moving on to serious study.

In conclusion readers, I don’t really like the name “Accurately Conducted Education”, if you can think of a better one, feel free to comment.

Clamouring For Cricket

I have long been a cricket fan and played it as a young man. This summer we have seen probably the best test match series ever and has left much of the public clamouring for more cricket, of course, this is generally great for the game but a niggling thought keeps coming to mind. The game has changed, it’s faster, more exciting and without doubt, more entertaining and unfortunately, more commercial.

Professional cricketers do, of course, deserve to make a good living; I just hope that salaries don’t rise to the obscene levels we see in football. Apart from being a much more tactical and interesting game, there’s a major difference between cricket and football; there is still some sport in cricket, it’s not all about money, football is largely money and tribalism. Sadly though, the first small signs of loutish behaviour are becoming visible, again, we must make sure it does not increase to football levels. On a positive note, I think cricket will never reach the level of popularity that football has and so will be less susceptible to infiltration by the wrong kind of “fan”.

I found the singing of “Jerusalem” and the excessive English patriotism to be mildly puke-making. This is the sort of thing we must guard against, patriotism is generally never a good thing in the long run; it undermines sportsmanship and encourages those of limited intellect, to be violent.

Football would be much improved if it’s customers behaved more like cricket supporters, can you imagine a group of soccer fans going to a match dressed perhaps as babies, complete with nappies (diapers) and dummy teats (pacifiers). Somehow, I can’t see that, the average football fan doesn’t seem to have that kind of personal assuredness. Since the prime reason for a football club’s existence is to make money, I’m surprised the owners are crap businessmen (maybe that’s why takeovers are happening), they aim their product (the game) at only a third of the population; women and children are largely not catered for! You’d think they would want to capture as many customers as possible but fail to provide the atmosphere (and safety) at a football match to make it attractive to families. They would do well to emulate the Americans in this respect; they are much better at managing the business of sports than the British.

This post is supposed to be about cricket, I’d better conclude with it! The plan to make cricket on TV payview will, I hope, be scotched. I am really annoyed that one of the few things worth watching on televison is not remaining free-to-air. I realise that commercial television has to aim it’s programming at the masses in order to be attractive to advertisers and cricket is, as yet, not followed by the masses. However, the BBC is paid handsomely to provide us with programming a cut above the (largely) crap produced by commercial TV and had the cricket rights in the past, why can’t they have it again!

So come on BBC (yes I’m on your case again) stop behaving like a dumb-ass commercial company, forget all that New Age, sensationalist nonsense that you seem to be in love with. GET THE CRICKET BACK ON!!!

BBC Sinks To New Low

Yes, they've done it again. This one was perhaps the worst and most pathetically bad example ever made by any TV company - including American ones that have to worry about ratings. I refer to the recent screening of "Science And The Seance" that the BBC saw fit to waste my - and probably your - money on. They mentioned a few scientists who had been fooled by the flummery more than a hundred years ago, but nary a word indicating that science has advanced enormously since then and not a single syllable from a modern scientist! Instead, all we got was the same old crap from the charlatans who were pandered to by the pathetic presenter who didn't ask a single probing question during the entire program.

I've tried complaining a few times but the BBC don't want to listen to reason, they seem obsessed with sensationalism as if they needed ratings. Part of their remit is to educate, but they fail miserably on that score, indeed, they seem bent on making sure that the public is "dumbed down" as much as possible, the message is simple: "don't think, just believe the crap we feed you and you'll feel better"

I hope my readers will agree with my position but I know that most won't, so for that majority here are some of my thoughts that may help you see sense, hate me, or maybe just go away.

• Nobody talks to dead people, not a single proven instance in the history of humanity, I predict there never will be.
• Not the merest shred of evidence for spirits or ghosts or any similar nonsense, never was, never will be.
• There is no "other side" this is the only "side" there is, this life is not a rehearsal, you get one shot - you're having it so make the most of it.
• Religion, Spiritualism, and other sundry bullshit may provide consolation for some and that may be good, but in no way does it mean that any of it is true.
• Probably a majority believe in some form of afterlife fallacy but again, it means, and proves nothing, only a few hundred years ago everyone thought the world was flat...

Incidentally, during one my harangues with the BBC, I made a proposal for what I thought might be an entertaining program. I would offer myself as a guinea pig in an experiment, they had to find the most scary haunted building possible and I would spend the night there while it was all recorded using night-vision equipment. All I asked for was a bed, a book to read before sleep (as is my custom) and a modest financial reward for my time. Viewers would be held spellbound watching me read and then listening intently, as I snored and farted my way contentedly through the night. Sadly, the BBC showed no interest.

The Darwin Centre

The Natural History Museum in London has some great multimedia presentations on it's site. Particularly good are two videos featuring Jonathon Miller, Richard Dawkins and Norman McLeod, they take the format of a discussion with audience participation and are well worth watching!






When you get to the site, use the search field or click the "list all videos" link.