Money As Debt

It seems like every other day the price of oil goes up and the value of the dollar goes down. Have a look at this video, it explains just what money and inflation actually are.

Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 6

I just found out they are making (have made) season 6 of Curb Your Enthusiasm! This is great news, I love this show.

Rome Playing Movie Reviewer

As a follow on from my post yesterday, today's Times of London carry a new story "Rome Condemns Queen Elizabeth Again" in which a Vatican historian hits out at the new Elizabeth movie as being anti-Catholic. This would be funny it it wasn't so tragic. You'd imagine "spiritual" men would be too busy being "spiritual" to bother commenting on the latest movie/book/whatever but they're not! It seems that these guys think "Spiritual" = "Cosmic Censor" in the never ending battle to ensure "Right Think". I'm reminded of that famous definition of fundamentalism by H. L. Mencken

the terrible, pervasive fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun.

Allow me to mock

The Manchester evening News has this article about a new scratch card game which had to be withdrawn from sale. The point of the game was to firstly scratch away a panel to reveal a temperature and then to scratch away the remaining panels in order to try and get a lower temperature and thereby win a prize. This however proved too much for some who couldn't understand the wintry themed negative numbers,

The 23-year-old, who said she had left school without a maths GCSE, said: "On one of my cards it said I had to find temperatures lower than -8. The numbers I uncovered were -6 and -7 so I thought I had won, and so did the woman in the shop. But when she scanned the card the machine said I hadn't.

"I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher - not lower - than -8 but I'm not having it.

VISIONS OF THE FUTURE

I watched a great new documentary on BBC4 last night called "VISIONS OF THE FUTURE". Last nights first episode was about the steady merging of computers into our lives and the possible effects of the rise of Artificial Intelligence on society and individuals. One of the highlights was the treating of a clinically depressed woman by inserting electrical wires into her brain to help regulate her mood. They showed how her mood could be altered by literally the turning of a dial, fascinating and worrying all at the same time.

Theres two more episodes to come;

2. The Biotech Revolution
3. The Quantum Revolution

Rome Playing Politics

You have to admire the Roman Catholic Church, everything concerns them. From what your doing in your bedroom to international politics to the latest in science and technology they have an opinion on everything. And they're not shy about having the "wrong" opinion either, down on gays, down on women, not understanding abusing children is wrong and then covering it up, everything can be justified because (after all) they are "The Church". If the Pythons had come up with a skit involving a bunch of weird old virgins obsessed with sex, trying to tell everyone what to do it would have been a classic* but unfortunately truth _is_ stranger than fiction and thats exactly what's going on. A.C. Grayling has written about some of the latest goings on, this time in Spain Rome Playing Politics. Its depressingly familiar, why can't they just prerecord this stuff and bugger off into the sunset?

* strike that, its been done.

The Business of Death

Interesting little video about the business of death. Johnny K may be interested in the polution aspects of the video.

A Day with the Homeopaths

I really hate Homeopathy. It neatly wraps up nonsense, stupidity, credulity and then sells it as a valid "medicine" to people who believe water has memory (Man, I wish I thought of it). Anyway a really good rebuttal can be found here, Part 1 and Part 2. Its an account written by one Steve Novella about his participation in a debate about homeopathy. In keeping with the "None so blind as those who will not see" spirit of all things "Woo" I don't think he converted anybody to reason but hopefully a small crack was made in the mental shields one or two of the practitioners present.

beliefs

A friend of mine sent me the link to this comic, thought I'd share.

Quote Of The Day

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart

H. L. Mencken

Think-tank: 'Mark all religious festivals'

This is from todays Independant, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has suggested the UK celebrate all major religious festivals as a way of improving race relations. Good Fcuk! Yes thats the solution to all our problems - more religion. What are these guys thinking? "Yes, we will bring people closer together by high lighting their strongly held, mutually exclusive superstitions". This kind of nonsense really annoys me, I'm still waiting for a think tank to suggest that we ridicule, mock, and patronise religious believe until it slinks back into the world of the personal and private where it belongs along with sexual fetishes and liking "reality" TV.

The End of Mr Y

I picked up this book on a whim because I liked the cover (it reminded me of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell) and because Philip Pullman had a blurb on the back cover praising it and also because I compulsively buy books in exactly the same way an alcoholic buys cheap cider the day before Good Friday.

Its a strange book to describe as it starts off as a mystery surrounding a supposedly cursed book (The End of Mr Y) but then quickly delves into the philosophical world of existence, language, thought, creation, religion, time travel, while at the same time not forgetting the ubiquitous bad guys chasing our heroine and trying to kill her. Its a fun read but its major weakness is in its characterisation, the heroine Ariel Manto is a supposedly emotionally damaged young woman due to her tough and impoverished upbringing but only for the fact she keeps telling you this (with the occasional reference to self harm) you'd never guess. In fact she sounds like a regular person, a regular American person even, certainly not a northern English girl with a degree from the 'Life of Hard Knocks University'. The other characters pretty much suffer from this paper thin portrayal as well which is handy as it enables them to leap plot holes in a single bound and provide the necessary impetus to move the plot forward to a neat, if not surprising conclusion. In short its a good fun read but if you want philosophy and physics I'd look elsewhere.