... or have I?
Well, from a "what have I published" perspective, no. I haven't written anything.
The thing is that I actually have written posts.
I don't really know about other people, but I get ideas and start writing them down, and then I find them to be stupid. Other times I start writing on certain issues and find that I can't find enough information, or I just get distracted.
I'll start writing something from an emotional standpoint and then I look for information to double check things and I start to lose those emotions and then I start to wonder why I even bothered writing all that stuff.
I think I need to re-think how I write this blog. I'm thinking that I'll make sure I get at least one post per week on something. The topic shouldn't really matter, I should just write something.
Showing posts with label Rant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rant. Show all posts
Sunday, 2 May 2010
Friday, 26 February 2010
Responding to comments.
Well, I haven't responded to comments in a while (yes, this blog does get comments) so I figured I might as well do one now, since it's only four days until Uni starts and I can't get any sleep at all.
Both are from "truthers" and both come from the post Debunking 9/11.com is a PNAC front.
The first is from some guy called "John". His comment is technically spam, because it's just telling us about Architects and Engineers for 9/11 truth:
To be fair if they were in say, the Vatican then they would be a powerful force because there are more of them then people in the Vatican, but that's irrelevant.
Compare that 1000, with the ~1.5 million people who are fans of this pickle. But I guess that means that the architects are more truthful.
Either way it's just an argument from numbers.
Perhaps there should be a list of architects and engineers who don't think that there should be a new investigation?
The second is from "anonymous". It's very much a disjointed rant which I shall make more disjointed by responding to it thusly:
As far as I'm aware 2+2=5 for sufficiently large values of 2
Perhaps I should pray to the gods of conservation of energy and momentum, I'm sure they'll help me.
So there you have it. I've responded to a couple of comments.
Both are from "truthers" and both come from the post Debunking 9/11.com is a PNAC front.
The first is from some guy called "John". His comment is technically spam, because it's just telling us about Architects and Engineers for 9/11 truth:
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” -- Arthur SchopenhauerYes, clearly being ridiculed means that what you say must be true. Just like saying "the moon is made of purple dinosaurs" or "gold is really blue cheese". Clearly being ridiculed for holding such a view means that what you say is true, it's the first stage of being true. Now all I need is someone to beat the crap out of me for saying one of these stupid comments and I'll be one stage further then the "truth" movement.
"1,000 Architects & Engineers Call for New 9/11 Investigation "Yep. Because in todays world, one thousand people is a huge number, I mean it's only 0.0003288827559417241% (July 2008 - 304,059,724) of the US population, or 0.00001494314817189223% (2008 number - 6,692,030,277) of the population of the world or 0.0046785814541031% of the population of Australia (2008 - 21374000).
More than 1,000 worldwide architects and engineers now support the call for a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. After careful examination of the official explanation, along with the forensic data omitted from official reports, these professionals have concluded that a new independent investigation into these mysterious collapses is needed.
To be fair if they were in say, the Vatican then they would be a powerful force because there are more of them then people in the Vatican, but that's irrelevant.
Compare that 1000, with the ~1.5 million people who are fans of this pickle. But I guess that means that the architects are more truthful.
Either way it's just an argument from numbers.
Perhaps there should be a list of architects and engineers who don't think that there should be a new investigation?
The second is from "anonymous". It's very much a disjointed rant which I shall make more disjointed by responding to it thusly:
There is no need for pseudo-scientific ranting of vectors or Newton's Laws of Motion.Wow, I never knew that I made a pseudo-scientific rant on the laws of motion. If someone can point out where I did, I'd appreciate it.
The JREF forum has debunked Newton countless times.I wonder which Newton this is? Perhaps some clarification is in order.
He also has not taken the million-dollar challenge.Maybe someone should tell him?
It is quite evident that 2+2=5 as shown on the JREF forum(a place to discuss pseudo-skepticism, denial, the obvious in an unfriendly and ridiculing way)This is the link to the debunking of the conservation of momentum...(the link was to a pile of shit by the way)
As far as I'm aware 2+2=5 for sufficiently large values of 2
The towers fell the way they did because energy and momentum are never conserved.Yes... because 9/11 showed the world that thermodynamics doesn't exist.
Newton was a delusional pseudo-scientist who refuses to debate on the forum.Like the "million dollar challenge" quote I suggest someone tells him. If you happen to be in London I hear he hangs out in the Nave of Westminster Abbey. I believe he hangs out with people like Charles Darwin, William Thompson, 1st Lord Kelvin, David Livingstone, Ernest Rutherford and Clement Attlee. Say hi to them from me if you happen to go.
Some kooks and lunatics claim that he is no longer living without providing the link to the source. Without the link, we cannot deny, ignore, and ridicule the evidence presented, which are the three steps in the JREF debunking process.Yes, without those links those fools at the JREF will have to listen to us.
Let us put an end to these nonsensical discussions of the conservation of energy/momentum(both have been debunked, and shown to be religious beliefs) and move on to proving and disproving claims without the use of mathematics.Brilliant, I hate math, I shall give you 0.001% of all my savings for suggesting this... err... how do you figure that out again?
Perhaps I should pray to the gods of conservation of energy and momentum, I'm sure they'll help me.
If any fellow pseudo-skeptics enjoyed this ranting, then please do not open this link… (link removed)Yes, I did enjoy your rant, so I won't open your link. It's probably got something to do with the first comment or something.
So there you have it. I've responded to a couple of comments.
Saturday, 20 February 2010
I'm not happy with Ubisoft (A Rant)
Well, it's official as it's ever going to get with them.
Assassin's Creed II will have Ubisofts fancy new DRM. Now not all DRM is bad, Steam works quite well in terms of DRM, but I don't think this one will.
Why?
Well, it seems that you need an active internet connection for a single player game. It's not single player as in MMORPGs like WoW, but single player as in say, solitare. You don't need an active internet connection to play solitare, neither do you need one for single player games like Tropico 3, Supreme Commander, or even any Steam game with a single player mode.
Now I wasn't happy with Ubisoft to begin with. They were announcing a simultaneous release of the game on PS3, XBox 360 and PC, but they decided to delay it. And what kind of notice did they give PC gamers? Well, a twitter message. That was all the warning that we got.
So, hopefully this "best quality game" will be fucking amazing, or their definition of "better quality game" is one that doesn't try to take advantage of the latest Direct X (opting to use 9 instead, because it's essentially a port of the 360 game, incidentally Assassin's Creed used Direct X 10), and completely retarded DRM.
Clearly they did this because that's what PC gamers want, a reason to pirate the game.
Now, I'm going to state for, the record as it were, that I'm not going to pirate it. I was given a pre-order as a late Christmas present/early birthday present (back when it was slated for a January release) so my copy will be a proper copy so Ubisoft will get their money.
They are essentially punishing honest PC gamers with this DRM. Even some developers agree.
Why don't I like it? Well because I have a crappy connection and there is no offline play.
None whatsoever.
At all.
Right now my connction is probably as fast as a dial up one. I don't know why, the ISP doesn't know why, I suspect that Telstra (who run the exchange, but aren't my ISP) knows why but won't tell anyone, but it's really slow. It also hangs on pages.
Now ACII will have cloud saving, like Modern Warfare 2, except not on Steam. Now both games save locally, so the cloud is only really there as a backup or the off chance you'll go somewhere else to play.
What do I do if the internet is slow with MW2? I go into Steam, click 'File', click 'Go offline' and then wait for it to restart in offline mode. I can now play my game, which I bought legally in a store. Same applies with Empire: Total War.
In fact the only game where this doesn't apply is Audiosurf, and that's because while I can play it offline, I like being able to submit my scores to the server and see how good I am compared to other people. (It's been a while since I last played it, properly working internet or not.)
I suspect that ACII might sell pretty well on PC, but it will also be one of the most downloaded, because people will want to play online, and the pirates will take advantage of this. I think that it will be like Spore. People bought the game, but didn't install the proper copy because of fears of SecuROM. EA still got their money, but they also lost money because of it.
Treating honest gamers like this is only going to end badly. I my opinion Ubisofts decision is just punishing us for not having, or wanting, a console. People are already speculating on their official forum that this is the very plan. Make more people pirates so they can claim "piracy is too bad on PC, we're not making games for them".
But it's not just DRM that's annoying me. Ever since the twitter "announcement" (note: twitter is not a proper way to announce something if you are a company) Ubisoft have been virtually silent on the PC version. No real reason why they delayed the PC version, no reason why they initially promised a simultaneous release several months beforehand, not even release dates. People are still wondering about ambiguous statements regarding the Black edition, apparently Asia doesn't have an official release date yet.
They tell us essentially nothing, and yet they still expect us to buy their product.
I honestly don't think this is a sound business model that they are adopting.
Assassin's Creed II will have Ubisofts fancy new DRM. Now not all DRM is bad, Steam works quite well in terms of DRM, but I don't think this one will.
Why?
Well, it seems that you need an active internet connection for a single player game. It's not single player as in MMORPGs like WoW, but single player as in say, solitare. You don't need an active internet connection to play solitare, neither do you need one for single player games like Tropico 3, Supreme Commander, or even any Steam game with a single player mode.
Now I wasn't happy with Ubisoft to begin with. They were announcing a simultaneous release of the game on PS3, XBox 360 and PC, but they decided to delay it. And what kind of notice did they give PC gamers? Well, a twitter message. That was all the warning that we got.
So, hopefully this "best quality game" will be fucking amazing, or their definition of "better quality game" is one that doesn't try to take advantage of the latest Direct X (opting to use 9 instead, because it's essentially a port of the 360 game, incidentally Assassin's Creed used Direct X 10), and completely retarded DRM.
Clearly they did this because that's what PC gamers want, a reason to pirate the game.
Now, I'm going to state for, the record as it were, that I'm not going to pirate it. I was given a pre-order as a late Christmas present/early birthday present (back when it was slated for a January release) so my copy will be a proper copy so Ubisoft will get their money.
They are essentially punishing honest PC gamers with this DRM. Even some developers agree.
Why don't I like it? Well because I have a crappy connection and there is no offline play.
None whatsoever.
At all.
Right now my connction is probably as fast as a dial up one. I don't know why, the ISP doesn't know why, I suspect that Telstra (who run the exchange, but aren't my ISP) knows why but won't tell anyone, but it's really slow. It also hangs on pages.
Now ACII will have cloud saving, like Modern Warfare 2, except not on Steam. Now both games save locally, so the cloud is only really there as a backup or the off chance you'll go somewhere else to play.
What do I do if the internet is slow with MW2? I go into Steam, click 'File', click 'Go offline' and then wait for it to restart in offline mode. I can now play my game, which I bought legally in a store. Same applies with Empire: Total War.
In fact the only game where this doesn't apply is Audiosurf, and that's because while I can play it offline, I like being able to submit my scores to the server and see how good I am compared to other people. (It's been a while since I last played it, properly working internet or not.)
I suspect that ACII might sell pretty well on PC, but it will also be one of the most downloaded, because people will want to play online, and the pirates will take advantage of this. I think that it will be like Spore. People bought the game, but didn't install the proper copy because of fears of SecuROM. EA still got their money, but they also lost money because of it.
Treating honest gamers like this is only going to end badly. I my opinion Ubisofts decision is just punishing us for not having, or wanting, a console. People are already speculating on their official forum that this is the very plan. Make more people pirates so they can claim "piracy is too bad on PC, we're not making games for them".
But it's not just DRM that's annoying me. Ever since the twitter "announcement" (note: twitter is not a proper way to announce something if you are a company) Ubisoft have been virtually silent on the PC version. No real reason why they delayed the PC version, no reason why they initially promised a simultaneous release several months beforehand, not even release dates. People are still wondering about ambiguous statements regarding the Black edition, apparently Asia doesn't have an official release date yet.
They tell us essentially nothing, and yet they still expect us to buy their product.
I honestly don't think this is a sound business model that they are adopting.
Thursday, 19 February 2009
About Bloody Time
They've finally announced the winner of the bid to build a desalination plant in SA.
(see title)
This is something that should have been done ages ago, I understand some of the issues involved included things like what will happen to the salt and other stuff they remove from the water which I'm assuming will be just dumped back into the gulf instead of using it for something, but we really need to lower our dependence on Murray water.
I'm assuming that our friends further upstream will probably use whatever we won't be using later on to grow rice or whatever water intensive crops that people in places like Deniliquin grow now.
But if I remember correctly when the government started taking tenders there was a big uproar of some sort (it's Adelaide, what do you expect we've become far more conservative now then we were in earlier times) over the standard "environmental issues" beyond "what happens if we dump the concentrated salt in the gulf" cries of "white elephant" (again, everything here is a white elephant. New hospital? White elephant. Stadium that would allow us to, if Australia gets is, host World Cup games? White elephant. I'd assume an elephant enclosure in the zoo would probably be a white elephant as well) and a bunch of people who thought that Mobil, who owned the area that they will be building this plant, would want to come back and would need a refinery again.
The latter is an absolute joke because I'm sure that the oil refineries prefer to ship our oil in from Singapore.
But we need this thing. The countries along the Persian Gulf have desalination plants and I haven't seen their societies crumble or whatever calamity was supposed to befall us, and they are doing quite fine.
But at least we are now one step closer to lowering our dependence on Murray water.
(see title)
This is something that should have been done ages ago, I understand some of the issues involved included things like what will happen to the salt and other stuff they remove from the water which I'm assuming will be just dumped back into the gulf instead of using it for something, but we really need to lower our dependence on Murray water.
I'm assuming that our friends further upstream will probably use whatever we won't be using later on to grow rice or whatever water intensive crops that people in places like Deniliquin grow now.
But if I remember correctly when the government started taking tenders there was a big uproar of some sort (it's Adelaide, what do you expect we've become far more conservative now then we were in earlier times) over the standard "environmental issues" beyond "what happens if we dump the concentrated salt in the gulf" cries of "white elephant" (again, everything here is a white elephant. New hospital? White elephant. Stadium that would allow us to, if Australia gets is, host World Cup games? White elephant. I'd assume an elephant enclosure in the zoo would probably be a white elephant as well) and a bunch of people who thought that Mobil, who owned the area that they will be building this plant, would want to come back and would need a refinery again.
The latter is an absolute joke because I'm sure that the oil refineries prefer to ship our oil in from Singapore.
But we need this thing. The countries along the Persian Gulf have desalination plants and I haven't seen their societies crumble or whatever calamity was supposed to befall us, and they are doing quite fine.
But at least we are now one step closer to lowering our dependence on Murray water.
Thursday, 17 July 2008
Gavin Menzies Books Are Not "History"
Neither are they historical, completely factual, a fair representation of reality, a viable hypothesis regarding the discovery of the New World, etc. etc. etc.
So I don't understand why Dymocks thinks that it is.
Ok, so Angus & Roberston consider him to be a "non-fiction" writer.
I don't like seeing such drivel sharing the same section as other history books.
There is a whole section of criticism just on his 1421 "hypothesis" (gotta love Wikipedia citing sources). And now he claims that China started the Renaissance.
Honestly, from what I understand of his stuff, it's just another form of "the Ancient Egyptians couldn't have built the pyramids".
Dymocks, either create a "pseudohistory" section, or put them into the "fiction" section where they belong. Or maybe into the "New Age" section (Why couldn't the History sction be next to the New Age rather then Spirituality?).
Just as long as I don't have to start guessing the accuracy of the other history books in the section.
So I don't understand why Dymocks thinks that it is.
Ok, so Angus & Roberston consider him to be a "non-fiction" writer.
I don't like seeing such drivel sharing the same section as other history books.
There is a whole section of criticism just on his 1421 "hypothesis" (gotta love Wikipedia citing sources). And now he claims that China started the Renaissance.
Honestly, from what I understand of his stuff, it's just another form of "the Ancient Egyptians couldn't have built the pyramids".
Dymocks, either create a "pseudohistory" section, or put them into the "fiction" section where they belong. Or maybe into the "New Age" section (Why couldn't the History sction be next to the New Age rather then Spirituality?).
Just as long as I don't have to start guessing the accuracy of the other history books in the section.
Thursday, 24 January 2008
Tired of 9/11 Truthers?
It gets annoying arguing with "Truthers". You spend all this time trying to show them where they are wrong and all they do is ignore you, or insult you, or create threads that attack you, or just argue in circles.
Half the time they just get pissed off at you if you look at the evidence, or have looked at the evidence, and haven't come up with their conclusion and the rest of the time they just ignore what you have to say.
All that I can see of the truth movement is that it is just a small bunch of fundamentalists who are either in too deep, can't see where they are wrong, refuse to admit that they are wrong, or are just really really stupid.
Us debunkers spend so much time arguing with these people, mainly because at this point in time we don't want fence-sitters to join the ranks of the stupid. That is all that these "Truthers" are, stupid.
Now I am pretty sure that when I post this thread, I will get a whole lot of posts attacking me and simultaneously presenting these people as the "innocent victim being oppressed by the evil debunker", even though they have their own thread that I am basing this on attacking us.
They live in a world of lies, hypocrisy, and giving their money to people (who in their right mind needs to buy a pack of 10 LCFC DVDs? You only need one and it's just under 1/10th the price of the 10 pack) who are clearly exploiting the stupidity of these people.
Even in that thread linked to above, the debunkers have to defend themselves from a torrent of ad hominem attacks their favourite tactic after their strawmen fail, which they always do.
Truthers are liars, fools, equivocators, clearly paranoid, and prefer stupidity to actually thinking. You can't claim to be "protecting democracy" when you willingly state that if you take over you will kill us for speaking out against you. Nor can you say that if you say that you will subject Bush and Cheney to a rigged trial so you can kill them. That is equivocation, it's the same thing as claiming that there are FEMA death camps but when you take over you will fill death camps with debunkers.
You can't claim that we are suppressing free speech just because we oppose what you say.
That is what free speech is. If I take a position contrary to your own it's because I don't think your position is a viable one. It doesn't mean that I am a government shill, or paid by the US government, or paid by Myspace or News Corporation (who own Myspace). Do you think that these people give a shit about what you think on this issue?
Besides, regardless of what you think most people don't believe what you say. Sure you can point to prisonplanet articles which manage to misinterpret poll results in such a blindingly obvious way that you can tell that the person who wrote the "article" must have an IQ of a plant of some sort (sorry to plants there).
On top of that there is this whole thing on ignoring evidence. Congratulations have to go out to the truth movement here. They have managed to become the Creationists of Conspiracy Theories. "Truthers" have shown themselves to be intellectually dishonest again and again, I can't think of any other CT that uses as much quote mining as the 9/11 CTs. I can't think of any other CT that willingly distorts what witnesses have said or given undue weight on the people who support whatever idea it is that the particular "truther" is trying to argue.
Why don't they go and learn about science and the scientific method. As we know in this thing called "science" we have a bunch of rules and stuff that we follow quite rigidly. One of them is finding conclusions based on the evidence. We don't come up with a conclusion and then cherry pick evidence to support our idea.
Cherry picking, which a certain poster does here willingly and has admitted it is wrong. It doesn't matter what your intent is, however "noble", it is still wrong. But then again truthers seem to enjoy this double standard of complaining loudly if they even suspect us of cherry picking but see no problem in doing it themselves.
The entire "Truth" movement is based on lies and doublethink. The doublethink has been shown above. The lies are pretty much anything that they say apart from the following words: "an", "the", "a", "and", "lies". Most conjunctions lead to lies. Adjectives lead to lies, nouns lead to lies, verbs lead to lies.
At this point the only thing that I can think of coming from a "truther" regarding the truth is that the Myspace editor thing isn't the best. That's it. It's not even part of the bloody argument.
I, like most debunkers, have accepted the fact that these people are too dimwitted to understand what actually happened. I am pretty sure that we would gladly leave these armchair geniuses alone if they would stay on their specifically designed "Truther" only CT site and not venture beyond there, arguing among themselves until they can come up with some coherent theory that they all believe in (specifically the MIHOPpers) before venturing out into the world.
Now to await the barrage of insults from the "truthers"...
What you see above is an OP I created for a Myspace thread. It becomes rather obvious in this rant where I stop addressing the debunkers and start addressing the "truthers". If you want to see what the truthers say to me, click here.
Half the time they just get pissed off at you if you look at the evidence, or have looked at the evidence, and haven't come up with their conclusion and the rest of the time they just ignore what you have to say.
All that I can see of the truth movement is that it is just a small bunch of fundamentalists who are either in too deep, can't see where they are wrong, refuse to admit that they are wrong, or are just really really stupid.
Us debunkers spend so much time arguing with these people, mainly because at this point in time we don't want fence-sitters to join the ranks of the stupid. That is all that these "Truthers" are, stupid.
Now I am pretty sure that when I post this thread, I will get a whole lot of posts attacking me and simultaneously presenting these people as the "innocent victim being oppressed by the evil debunker", even though they have their own thread that I am basing this on attacking us.
They live in a world of lies, hypocrisy, and giving their money to people (who in their right mind needs to buy a pack of 10 LCFC DVDs? You only need one and it's just under 1/10th the price of the 10 pack) who are clearly exploiting the stupidity of these people.
Even in that thread linked to above, the debunkers have to defend themselves from a torrent of ad hominem attacks their favourite tactic after their strawmen fail, which they always do.
Truthers are liars, fools, equivocators, clearly paranoid, and prefer stupidity to actually thinking. You can't claim to be "protecting democracy" when you willingly state that if you take over you will kill us for speaking out against you. Nor can you say that if you say that you will subject Bush and Cheney to a rigged trial so you can kill them. That is equivocation, it's the same thing as claiming that there are FEMA death camps but when you take over you will fill death camps with debunkers.
You can't claim that we are suppressing free speech just because we oppose what you say.
That is what free speech is. If I take a position contrary to your own it's because I don't think your position is a viable one. It doesn't mean that I am a government shill, or paid by the US government, or paid by Myspace or News Corporation (who own Myspace). Do you think that these people give a shit about what you think on this issue?
Besides, regardless of what you think most people don't believe what you say. Sure you can point to prisonplanet articles which manage to misinterpret poll results in such a blindingly obvious way that you can tell that the person who wrote the "article" must have an IQ of a plant of some sort (sorry to plants there).
On top of that there is this whole thing on ignoring evidence. Congratulations have to go out to the truth movement here. They have managed to become the Creationists of Conspiracy Theories. "Truthers" have shown themselves to be intellectually dishonest again and again, I can't think of any other CT that uses as much quote mining as the 9/11 CTs. I can't think of any other CT that willingly distorts what witnesses have said or given undue weight on the people who support whatever idea it is that the particular "truther" is trying to argue.
Why don't they go and learn about science and the scientific method. As we know in this thing called "science" we have a bunch of rules and stuff that we follow quite rigidly. One of them is finding conclusions based on the evidence. We don't come up with a conclusion and then cherry pick evidence to support our idea.
Cherry picking, which a certain poster does here willingly and has admitted it is wrong. It doesn't matter what your intent is, however "noble", it is still wrong. But then again truthers seem to enjoy this double standard of complaining loudly if they even suspect us of cherry picking but see no problem in doing it themselves.
The entire "Truth" movement is based on lies and doublethink. The doublethink has been shown above. The lies are pretty much anything that they say apart from the following words: "an", "the", "a", "and", "lies". Most conjunctions lead to lies. Adjectives lead to lies, nouns lead to lies, verbs lead to lies.
At this point the only thing that I can think of coming from a "truther" regarding the truth is that the Myspace editor thing isn't the best. That's it. It's not even part of the bloody argument.
I, like most debunkers, have accepted the fact that these people are too dimwitted to understand what actually happened. I am pretty sure that we would gladly leave these armchair geniuses alone if they would stay on their specifically designed "Truther" only CT site and not venture beyond there, arguing among themselves until they can come up with some coherent theory that they all believe in (specifically the MIHOPpers) before venturing out into the world.
Now to await the barrage of insults from the "truthers"...
What you see above is an OP I created for a Myspace thread. It becomes rather obvious in this rant where I stop addressing the debunkers and start addressing the "truthers". If you want to see what the truthers say to me, click here.
Monday, 14 January 2008
Unsettled
Recently there have been letters sent to the editor concerning the supposed "creation-evolution" debate.
What unsettles me is that I might know who one of the letter writers is. He might be the English teacher at my former school.
What unsettles me is that if this is the case he might try and get Creationism taught in the science classes. I am confident that there would be no way that could happen because there are plenty of teachers there that understand science, but if it fails I do worry a bit about what my sister will learn and how that will affect her future.
But this brings me to another point.
Why is it that people seem to like arguing something that they don't understand?
In today's paper there are a few letters in support of creationism and about the same against.
Now those for creationism don't seem to understand what evolution is.
Don't tell me that it is "only a theory" or "a hypothesis", it is neither your definition of "theory" or a hypothesis. That means that you don't understand evolution, or even the basic fundamentals of science.
That one argument occurs everywhere that this stupid "debate" occurs. The scientific definition of "theory" is not the same as your definition of "theory". In a rather simple explanation a scientific theory is one that explains why something acts the way it does, and this is supported by continuous experimentation. It, like science, is also very fluid. If something comes along that causes a problem with the theory, changes can be made to accommodate them or the theory is thrown out altogether and a new one will be found that can explain everything.
Try and tell me that it is rigid and you don't know anything about science.
Don't tell me that evolution says that information cannot be lost. Of course it can, what would deleterious mutations be if not a loss of information?
The problem in the above paragraph is that in terms of gaining information you have a rather ambiguous term. If such a mutation would happen in a non-coding region which is of no importance at all wouldn't that mean that information would be increasing as there is less random nonsense? What about a deleterious mutation in a coding region? Wouldn't that result in a decrease in information because now you get more random nonsense and less information?
Once again I have fallen into the trap that I was trying not to get into. Here I have implied that "information" refers to the sections of DNA that actually "do" something.
But the better question is how does this mean that a god (or gods) did it?
It doesn't.
Finally I don't want to hear people talk about how scientists that support the idea that a deity (or deities) created the universe means that they are creationists. It doesn't work that way in real life. People don't believe the same things that you believe. And many of these scientists don't see that a deity had to have done things the way you say. If that is the case then I guess you should see that you have a big monument like a ziggurat or something that you can sit atop because by telling us what God (because I have never come across a creationist who wasn't a monotheist) must have done must mean that you are God because to truly know if God exists requires you to basically be God.
If that is the case then congratulations, you have just managed to destroy your religion.
Sometimes I wonder if it isn't easier to just belittle these people until they go away.
What unsettles me is that I might know who one of the letter writers is. He might be the English teacher at my former school.
What unsettles me is that if this is the case he might try and get Creationism taught in the science classes. I am confident that there would be no way that could happen because there are plenty of teachers there that understand science, but if it fails I do worry a bit about what my sister will learn and how that will affect her future.
But this brings me to another point.
Why is it that people seem to like arguing something that they don't understand?
In today's paper there are a few letters in support of creationism and about the same against.
Now those for creationism don't seem to understand what evolution is.
Don't tell me that it is "only a theory" or "a hypothesis", it is neither your definition of "theory" or a hypothesis. That means that you don't understand evolution, or even the basic fundamentals of science.
That one argument occurs everywhere that this stupid "debate" occurs. The scientific definition of "theory" is not the same as your definition of "theory". In a rather simple explanation a scientific theory is one that explains why something acts the way it does, and this is supported by continuous experimentation. It, like science, is also very fluid. If something comes along that causes a problem with the theory, changes can be made to accommodate them or the theory is thrown out altogether and a new one will be found that can explain everything.
Try and tell me that it is rigid and you don't know anything about science.
Don't tell me that evolution says that information cannot be lost. Of course it can, what would deleterious mutations be if not a loss of information?
The problem in the above paragraph is that in terms of gaining information you have a rather ambiguous term. If such a mutation would happen in a non-coding region which is of no importance at all wouldn't that mean that information would be increasing as there is less random nonsense? What about a deleterious mutation in a coding region? Wouldn't that result in a decrease in information because now you get more random nonsense and less information?
Once again I have fallen into the trap that I was trying not to get into. Here I have implied that "information" refers to the sections of DNA that actually "do" something.
But the better question is how does this mean that a god (or gods) did it?
It doesn't.
Finally I don't want to hear people talk about how scientists that support the idea that a deity (or deities) created the universe means that they are creationists. It doesn't work that way in real life. People don't believe the same things that you believe. And many of these scientists don't see that a deity had to have done things the way you say. If that is the case then I guess you should see that you have a big monument like a ziggurat or something that you can sit atop because by telling us what God (because I have never come across a creationist who wasn't a monotheist) must have done must mean that you are God because to truly know if God exists requires you to basically be God.
If that is the case then congratulations, you have just managed to destroy your religion.
Sometimes I wonder if it isn't easier to just belittle these people until they go away.
Sunday, 6 January 2008
Explain This to Me
Stuff about your elections are coming over here at times, and I have a few questions about you, probably very screwy, electoral system.
Firstly, why is it that the US Presidential Election is portrayed as something important in my country?
I know that you might not really be able to answer that one, but you can speculate as much as I will for this one.
If I watch the news, I would preferably like to see (in this order):
Since we only get 10 minutes of news over here and 20 minutes of sport in half an hour I don't really want to spend my time learning about the Iowa Primaries when I could be finding out about how the Australian Task Force is doing in the Solomons, or our troops in Afghanistan.
Why claim that you are supposedly "electing the leader of the free world"?
If it truly is an election of the "leader of the free world" (which as far as I know has never been a job) why can't I vote? Why should I have to live under the supposed "leader of the free world" when I have been disenfranchised in favour of some stupid redneck who only votes Republican because his family has done so since the Republican Party even existed?
Surely if you are claiming to be electing the bloke who apparently has more power in my country then my own elected representatives then why can't I vote for the guy I want?
How much news time was spent on coverage for the Australian elections?
From what I could gather probably none. How many of you know who our PM is? If you don't have to sit through news of my country's elections then why should I have to sit through yours?
Finally what the hell is a Ron Paul? I go onto various fora and basically everyone has in their sig line "I love you Ron Paul" or "Vote for Ron Paul" or "Ron Paul means freedom". Why should I even care about him? What will he bring me, the foreigner? Will I be able to vote in the election of the "Leader of the Free World"? Will he give me money? I think the only positive thing that I can gather from him is that he probably has the largest base of people who are too young to vote which is completely pointless if you want to be elected this year.
Firstly, why is it that the US Presidential Election is portrayed as something important in my country?
I know that you might not really be able to answer that one, but you can speculate as much as I will for this one.
If I watch the news, I would preferably like to see (in this order):
- Important local news
- Australian news
- News from neighbouring countries
- News from the rest of the world (unless I'm watching the SBS World News obviously)
Since we only get 10 minutes of news over here and 20 minutes of sport in half an hour I don't really want to spend my time learning about the Iowa Primaries when I could be finding out about how the Australian Task Force is doing in the Solomons, or our troops in Afghanistan.
Why claim that you are supposedly "electing the leader of the free world"?
If it truly is an election of the "leader of the free world" (which as far as I know has never been a job) why can't I vote? Why should I have to live under the supposed "leader of the free world" when I have been disenfranchised in favour of some stupid redneck who only votes Republican because his family has done so since the Republican Party even existed?
Surely if you are claiming to be electing the bloke who apparently has more power in my country then my own elected representatives then why can't I vote for the guy I want?
How much news time was spent on coverage for the Australian elections?
From what I could gather probably none. How many of you know who our PM is? If you don't have to sit through news of my country's elections then why should I have to sit through yours?
Finally what the hell is a Ron Paul? I go onto various fora and basically everyone has in their sig line "I love you Ron Paul" or "Vote for Ron Paul" or "Ron Paul means freedom". Why should I even care about him? What will he bring me, the foreigner? Will I be able to vote in the election of the "Leader of the Free World"? Will he give me money? I think the only positive thing that I can gather from him is that he probably has the largest base of people who are too young to vote which is completely pointless if you want to be elected this year.
Wednesday, 21 November 2007
Why I Argue
I spend some of my time on the net arguing with CT's and Creationists. I do like a good argument though, but I think that I have come across the same revelation that pretty much all skeptics come across (actually I figured this out a while ago, but I want to write about it now).
We argue and debunk not to convert the person making the claim, but to prevent other people from falling into stupid beliefs.
We are the ones who present the counter arguments to stupid claims.
We are the ones who are labelled by those that we oppose.
I think that deep down we all know that for many of these people we can never defeat them in an argument, but we certainly can show others that they are the thieves, liars and charlatans that they truly are.
We argue and debunk not to convert the person making the claim, but to prevent other people from falling into stupid beliefs.
We are the ones who present the counter arguments to stupid claims.
We are the ones who are labelled by those that we oppose.
- We are government shills to CTs that involve any government
- We are soulless Atheists to the creationists
- We have "closed minds" for alternative theories and medicine.
- We are generally attacked when we present the "other" view, or disprove theirs.
I think that deep down we all know that for many of these people we can never defeat them in an argument, but we certainly can show others that they are the thieves, liars and charlatans that they truly are.
Monday, 1 October 2007
I Hate Telestra
As we all know a few days ago the protests in Burma took a drastic turn when the Burmese army opened fire on the protesters.
When that happened I was trying to get on here so I could write about it.
But no, Telstra in their infinite wisdom decided to make it so I couldn't go on.
Their internet sucks.
If you are on one of their plans, you might as well go to someone else because for the same price that you pay at Telstra you can get a higher download limit from pretty much anyone else.
I have trouble getting onto secure pages with this ISP and all the computers that we support do not download that much stuff.
When they claim to slow us down to dial up speeds you find that when you use dial up it is a hell of a lot faster.
Maybe they should pay Sol Trujilo less money. He doesn't deserve it because he is doing a really shit job running Telstra.
I honestly don't know how I managed to get on here today.
When that happened I was trying to get on here so I could write about it.
But no, Telstra in their infinite wisdom decided to make it so I couldn't go on.
Their internet sucks.
If you are on one of their plans, you might as well go to someone else because for the same price that you pay at Telstra you can get a higher download limit from pretty much anyone else.
I have trouble getting onto secure pages with this ISP and all the computers that we support do not download that much stuff.
When they claim to slow us down to dial up speeds you find that when you use dial up it is a hell of a lot faster.
Maybe they should pay Sol Trujilo less money. He doesn't deserve it because he is doing a really shit job running Telstra.
I honestly don't know how I managed to get on here today.
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