James Randi

I'm in the process of converting a work mate to rationalism and today discovered he didn't know who James Randi is. Shocking! Anyway to get him started I found this piece on youtube and decided to post it here.

The Bilderberg Group

The Bilderberg Group is an elite, invitation only, annual meeting between world leaders, industrialists and other people of power. Daniel Estulin has been following them around for a few years and Information Clearinghouse has an posted interview with him.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19016.htm

Theres always a temptation to shout "Conspiracy Theory" and ignore the man, however I personally doubt these people get together every year to try and figure how how to make the world a better place for the rest of us.

Top Marks for Effort

I love this one (from the BBC).

A Mexican boy glued his hand to his bed because he did not want to go back to school after the Christmas break.

"The holidays were such fun," Diego Palacios, 10, who lives outside Monterrey, told Reforma newspaper.

His mother Sandra found him watching television with his hand stuck to the bedstead. "I don't know why he did it," she said. "He is a good boy."

Police and paramedics eventually managed to free him unharmed, and he was only a few hours late for school.

Diego had got up early to fetch some industrial-strength glue from the kitchen.

His mother spent two hours trying to free him with nail-polish remover before calling for expert help.

Diego watched cartoons while paramedics dissolved the glue with a spray.

Fair play to the guy, he's showed guts, determination and ingenuity - he deserved the day off at least.

Science Vs Faith flowchart

Johnny K put me on to this flowchart on the basic I would like it, he was right

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=2145736305&size=l

Rabbi David Wolpe Vs Sam Harris

More Sam Harris, always worth listening too.

http://www.ajula.edu/Content/ContentUnit.asp?CID=1766&u=7037&t=0

World Surveillance Map

something to cheer you up over the weekend. I was surprised to see the U.S. the same colour as Russia and China. Direct link.


link from onegoodmove.org

I'm Gonna Live Until I Die

A mate send me this short video of close shaves, it's pretty amazing.

I hate ad’s

I hate ad’s, I do just about everything to avoid them. When an ad break comes on TV I surf, put on the kettle, go to the loo – anything to avoid watching them. But of course I still see them, read them, watch them. I’m bombarded by hundreds of ad’s a day, they are impossible to avoid and that is one of the reasons I hate them. But over the past few years I’ve notice a huge increase in ads that encourage selfishness and I find this really troubling.Advertising is not a passive force – people's actions are affected by it (why else would _anyone_ drink budweiser?), so a constant drumbeat encouraging selfish and petty behaviour is something to be worried about. But are people becoming more selfish? More petty? To be honest I don't know, I think they might be and besides, why glorify selfishness? I think the way advertising is carried out must change. At the very least I think advertisements should not encourage bad behaviour (I feel I would be qualified to define 'bad' in case your wondering ;-).

Off the top of my head here are some of the slogans I’m talking about, I’m not going to link them to products as that would be advertising and besides, more than one product uses each slogan.

"Too Good to Share"

"Just For You"

"It's Mine"

In an ideal world an advert should only be able to clearly define the what the product is and what it does, so for example any advert for bottled water would look something like this -

ProductName : Bottle Water, It will rehydrate you.

A picture of the product could also be shown but not any people, scenery or cute furry animals.

While thinking this post I came across a “controversy” I didn’t know existed – ad-blockers. Apparently people other than vendors and advertisers think they are evil! Don’t believe me? Check this out . I love this quote

“So what about when you install an ad-blocker? That’s bad news, folks, really bad news.”

Now to be fair the author probably thinks its not as bad as say, war or famine, but its pretty darn close by the sounds of it – as far as I was concerned it was all I could do to stop myself running screaming into the hills. This brings me to another thing that annoys me about advertising – the notion that it pays for things - as if sport, the Internet and news papers didn’t exist before advertising. Maybe advertising makes (some) things cheaper (pun intended - it certainly makes them glossier) but this cap-in-hand gratitude we’re supposed to have is infuriating. I know there are always going to be ad’s, I just want them toned down a bit --- ok a lot.

RIP MacDonald Fraser

Sad news today, George MacDonald Fraser author of the Flashman novels has died. I've read about six or seven of the books and have really enjoyed them and certainly recommend them (unless your easily offended). I don't know much about the man himself but I liked his books and so he gets the nod from me.

So this is 2008 then?

This is my first day back at work after 10 straight days off and it is dragging. Those ten days flew by but these lousy 8 1/2 hours have become an eternity - it may have something to do with the early morning followed by the complete lack of alcohol but I'm not sure ... I suppose it could be anything? Its just as well I never got into drugs, after 10 days of eating, drinking, reading and watching tv I just want to do it again. I'll probably be back to normal by tomorrow but right now I'd love to be slouching at home watching Fraiser repeats.

The BEAST 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2007

Via Skeptico I came across The 50 most Loathsome people in America, 2007 and its a very funny and entertaining read. I too am going to quote the Dinesh D'Souza one because I only became aware of the guy last year and I really hate him...

29. Dinesh D'Souza

Charges: Wrote a book blaming 9/11 on -- who else? -- liberals, because if we didn't live in a free society, then fundamentalists wouldn't dislike us so. Even conservative nuts blasted D'Souza's empathy for poor al Qaeda. Lately, he's been engaging prominent atheists in debates, revealing himself to be a pseudointellectual ass, and then declaring victory. D'Souza's master plan for attacking atheism is the ridiculous Pascal's wager: Atheists could be wrong, and then they'd go to hell, but if the religious are wrong, then they suffer no ill effect -- aside from living their lives in delusion, of course. And possibly going to someone else's hell for believing the wrong religion. D'Souza seems to think that if he speaks more loudly and rapidly than his opponent, he is winning, but his arguments are weak and idiotic, and he never even attempts to truly debate the existence of any god, which is the ostensible point of these debates. Instead, he likes to compare body counts -- Stalin and Mao killed more than the religious leaders of their time -- rather than actually debate whether there is a God, or for that matter a Jesus. This, of course, is because there is no case to be made.

Exhibit A: "[Atheists] are God-haters... I don't believe in unicorns, but then I haven't written any books called The End of Unicorns, Unicorns are Not Great, or The Unicorn Delusion." But what if everyone you met did believe in unicorns, and not only that, but worshiped a unicorn, held a book about unicorns to be the divine truth of the universe, invoked unicorns in political contexts, and speechified about how non-believers were indecent people waging a war on morality, which could only be predicated on the unquestioning belief in unicorns? Then, maybe, D'Souza would think about writing that book. But of course, that's not really true, because if that was the world we lived in, then Dinesh D'Souza would believe in unicorns.

Sentence: Spanish inquisition.

What’s Your Consumption Factor?

Interesting article by Jared Diamond in the Times of London about consumption, in particular how much more we, in the west, consume (in resources, energy) than those in the developing world.

What’s Your Consumption Factor?

Some optimists claim that we could support a world with nine billion people. But I haven’t met anyone crazy enough to claim that we could support 72 billion. Yet we often promise developing countries that if they will only adopt good policies — for example, institute honest government and a free-market economy — they, too, will be able to enjoy a first-world lifestyle. This promise is impossible, a cruel hoax: we are having difficulty supporting a first-world lifestyle even now for only one billion people.