Born on State Highway One

Technically Speaking, He Did Get That Stuffed Bear for Him | Cracked.com

2009-06-29T09:43:00.001+12:00

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Goodbye, Blogspot. Hello, Wordpress.

2009-01-19T11:50:00.002+13:00

For reasons of aesthetics and functionality, I've moved to WordPress.

http://statehighwayone.wordpress.com/

There is a slight change in tone and there will be no comments.

I hope you are all well.

Are You Lonesome... Tonight?

2008-11-21T10:39:00.002+13:00

Just ignore him and maybe he'll go away.

Marriage Manifesto

2008-11-20T14:16:00.003+13:00

That was a good speech, Lloyd. If I was 25 and liked cock, we could be something.
A few years ago, in an attempt to demonstrate to my brother-in-law how stupid it was to call shitty things "gay" (slash "ghey"), I began referring to shitty things as "Christian". Can't make it to drinks tonight? Christian. Got a parking ticket? Christian. Someone stole your iPod? That's the Christianest thing that's ever happened to you!

Turned out to be fairly effective. So I appreciate Tom Ackerman's decision to make it clear to people that he no longer recognises marriages. If gay couples have to be called longtime companions or life partners or whatever, then so can everyone else.

Just replace the words husband, wife, spouse, or fiancé with boyfriend, girlfriend, special friend, or longtime companion. There is a reason we needed stronger words for more serious relationships. We know it; now they can see it.

How Dare She

2008-11-19T08:10:00.003+13:00

Last night, I had a dream that I was an actor in a remake of Indiana Jones directed by Peter Jackson. Peter started screaming in pain. I checked his head, and someone had made an incision overnight. Some kind of remote-controlled pain generator had been implanted in his head. It was soon revealed that Hillary Clinton had drugged Peter Jackson the night before, inserted the chip, and was now torturing him until her demands were met. I confronted her, but she refused to admit what she had done.

Society has made it impossible for me to tell if I am standing at school in my underpants.

2008-11-18T10:00:00.012+13:00

You should click here to read more Buttersafe.

Professor Cline’s Dinosaur Kingdom

2008-11-17T09:25:00.004+13:00

For years, we have all wondered, who would win in a fight between dinosaurs and American Civil War soldiers? Well, Professor Cline's Dinosaur Kingdom has attempted to answer this age-old question.

What you see along the path of Dinosaur Kingdom is a series of tableaus depicting the aftermath of this ill-advised military strategy. As you enter, a lunging, bellowing T-Rex head lets you know that the dinosaurs are mad — and they only get madder. A big snake has eaten one Yankee, and is about to eat another. An Allasaurus [sic] grabs a bluecoat off of his rearing horse while a second soldier futilely tries to lasso the big lizard. Another Yankee crawls up a tree with a stolen egg while the mom dinosaur batters it down. Mark has augmented some of these displays with motors: toothy jaws flap, tails and tongues wag.

All the News We Hope to Print

2008-11-13T20:46:00.006+13:00

Yay! Oh, wait.
Anti-consumerist anarchists The Yes Men have done it again, distributing a fake New York Times to New Yorkers this morning, with a sample of what they'd like to see in the news on July 4th next year.

Gothamist has a very comprehensive look, with some sweet videos. And a hat tip to Disinfo.

The Yes Men have previously pulled such stunts as posing as Dow Chemicals spokespeople on the BBC, declaring that Dow would be taking full responsibility for the Union Carbide chemical disaster that devastated the town of Bhopal, paying for medical bills and compensation. This forced Dow to come out and officially say that they would be doing nothing of the sort.

A documentary was made of some of their exploits, and curiously, this documentary has disappeared off the list at freedocumentaries.org sometime in the last month. (A quick Google for freedocumentaries finds people linking to it last month with a full list of what was available then.)

Could it be that, knowing this prank would renew interest in the team, they asked the site to remove their film, so that they could benefit from the increased sales? Come on, guys. Where's the anti-consumerism?

"Tangible Evidence of Behavioral Correction"

2008-11-12T14:52:00.003+13:00

"The funny thing is, on the outside, I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to be a crook." - Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption

I also experienced a different type of peer pressure. My first day out, I was approached by a succession of other prisoners, echoing the same guidance as the first guy: "We don't 'bang' here; we don't play [prison] politics, racial or any other kind; and we respect every one, including the guards." That speech has been an indelible part of my daily living for the past six years.

For more, check out: My Shawshank Redemption by Dortell Williams.

Ask Your Bill Payer First

2008-11-07T14:30:00.005+13:00

It's a skewer. Cos of skewed results. Also, I need a coffee.
Something needs to be said about the text/phone polls that Close Up (and others) have been running recently. Throughout the 6pm news, advertising for the upcoming episode of Close Up will include an offer to have your say in their polling by texting or calling an 0900 number.

Last night's example was one for preferred Prime Minister.

The problems with this should be obvious. They are not an indicator of the views of the New Zealand voting public. They are an indicator of the views of the Close Up viewership who, for whatever reason, are inclined to pay money to influence the outcome of the poll. Nothing besides time, money and good manners prevents someone from voting as many times as they like for their view.

Commentators are quick to describe the poll as "unscientific". Frankly, they are too quick to describe it as unscientific, and should probably spend some more time describing it as complete bullshit. Simply calling it an unscientific poll gives the viewer/reader the impression that perhaps it has a higher margin of error than a scientific poll - a less accurate indicator of the same thing. The problem is, it's not even that.

A poll that purports to indicate the views of the nation is limited by the following factors.

It's polling Close Up viewers. As much as Close Up might like to think that it is watched by everyone in the country, or at least a group that is proportionally representative of everyone in the country, it is not. In last night's show, for example, there were three times as many viewers in the 30-59 bracket as there were in the 15-29 bracket. And while the 30-59 bracket is split fairly evenly between male and female viewers, four times as many women in the younger bracket watched Close Up last night than men. Close Up viewers will also be people who understand spoken English and don't prefer Shortland Street (or Campbell Live).

It's polling people who will pay. Whether this means people who can afford to waste money on Close Up polls, or if it means people who are stupid enough to waste money on Close Up polls, it's a specific fraction of the nation's population.

It's polling the number of votes, not the number of voters. While it's possible that, in some fit of integrity, the Close Up polling system only accepts one vote from each phone number (and turns down the extra revenue of subsequent votes), it's unlikely. And even if it did, that would again make the polling potentially misrepresentative of multiple views in a single household.

What this means is that not only does the polling favour those with the dollars to spend and the lack of sense (cents, get it, ha ha ha, hilarious) to refrain, it gives a weight to their opinion proportional to their willingness and ability to vote multiple times. And, of course, there is the recent accusation that National purchased a $25,000 machine that makes repeated votes to skew the result.

These things wouldn't be so bad if the results were completely ignored. But instead, we start hearing about how 75% of New Zealanders think John Key won the first leaders debate. It's entirely possible that 75% of viewers do think that John Key won the first debate, but we could only find that out through scientific polling, not the equivalent of New Zealand Idol.

Given the impact on the public of hearing these things, it is simply irresponsible to produce these television pay polls in the lead-up to an election. All we can really know is that 100% of people who cast votes via a pay poll are the kind of people who cast votes via a pay poll.

Impact

2008-11-07T12:12:00.001+13:00

Synchronised Debating

2008-11-07T11:30:00.002+13:00

My Conversation with Cleverbot

2008-11-06T10:49:00.004+13:00

Cleverbot: What is the most important principle of Darwinian Evolution?

Ryan: survival of the fittest

CB: No that's Darwin.

R: What's the answer?

CB: Answer to life?

R: What is the most important principle of Darwinian Evolution?

CB: Survival of the fittest, why do you ask?

Kick Turing's ass at Cleverbot.com.

Spurned Letterman Gives McCain a Drubbing

2008-09-26T09:31:00.002+12:00

Waow-waoh - chicka-chicka-chicka

2008-09-10T17:37:00.002+12:00

Not allowed to play at the Republican National Convention protests? They'll see about that...

Stats-Eye View

2008-09-04T12:38:00.003+12:00

Worldmapper is a neat little tool that produces maps of the world where countries are shown in a scale proportionate to various statistics. What you see above, for instance, is the proportion of all "territory level decreases in carbon dioxide emissions between 1980 and 2000, that occurred there." That's why a few continents are missing.

Hat-tip to greenUPGRADER, who has a whole bunch of them in the post that links to.

How to Extract DNA from Anything

2008-09-03T11:21:00.003+12:00

"Use meat tenderizer for enzymes. If you can't find tenderizer, try using pineapple juice or contact lens cleaning solution." My kind of science. And I find myself wondering... what does DNA taste like?

Literal Distortion

2008-07-04T12:58:00.002+12:00

Here's a curious thing. Alley Insider has found that Fox News photoshopped (sorry, Adobe, I mean altered an image with Photoshop or perhaps some other image-altering tool) photos of people who, presumably, they don't like.

You Are Being Drowned

2008-07-03T10:48:00.006+12:00

Christopher Hitchens has changed his tune on whether or not waterboarding is torture - after trying it out for himself.

As if detecting my misery and shame, one of my interrogators comfortingly said, “Any time is a long time when you’re breathing water.” I could have hugged him for saying so, and just then I was hit with a ghastly sense of the sadomasochistic dimension that underlies the relationship between the torturer and the tortured. I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.

Pick up the August issue of Vanity Fair, read the article and you can even watch the video.

The Muscles of Her Vagina

2008-07-02T12:38:00.002+12:00

Jim Webb wants to be Obama's vice-president. While the Wikipedia page is informative, it won't paint the picture that 23/6 ("some of the news, most of the time") has painted with its rundown of Webb's vital statistics. The quote from one of his novels, at the bottom, is... memorable.

Auto-Replace

2008-07-01T16:43:00.004+12:00

The Carpet Bagger Report has an amusing little find about some people's use of auto-replace. Here's an excerpt:

But the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow website takes the phenomenon one step further with its AP articles. The far-right fundamentalist group replaces the word “gay” in the articles with the word “homosexual.” I’m not entirely sure why, but it seems to make the AFA happy. The group is, after all, pretty far out there.

The problem, of course, is that “gay” does not always mean what the AFA wants it to mean. My friend Kyle reported this morning that sprinter Tyson Gay won the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials over the weekend. The AFA ran the story, but only after the auto-correct had “fixed” the article.

Hilarity ensues.

Fox News Censorship

2008-07-01T14:29:00.001+12:00

Watch Bill Maher's Film Before He Gets Shot By Some Redneck

2008-07-01T14:23:00.004+12:00

Maher is just all right with me.

Not All Monsters Are Bad

2008-07-01T11:36:00.007+12:00

An interesting comment on MeFi about Sesame Street:

They are all monsters, that's the point. The show is for children, don't forget. They are monsters the kids don't have to fear. The show's message for kids was "We know you're sometimes afraid of monsters, but not all monsters are bad.

Sometimes monsters can be cute and cuddly and quirky and funny. Elmo's a monster and he has such a cute giggle! These are the good monsters.

Not like the monster sitting next to you on the sofa, watching the TV. Not like the monster WHO TOLD YOU FOR THE LAST TIME TO STOP CRYING.

Not like the monsters who kick your toys and curse under their breath. Not like the monsters who say you stole their youth and take pills because YOU'RE DRIVING ME CRAZY. Not like the monsters who meet strange men at the door and leave you home alone. Not like the monsters who hit with their hands, or their words. Not like the monsters who come into your room at night stinking of whiskey and sweat, with madness in their eyes and a belt in their hands.

On Sesame Street, the monsters have not HAD ENOUGH, and they aren't doing it FOR YOUR OWN GOOD.

Your monsters are not brought to you by the number 4 or the letter M. Your monsters don't want you to come and play, they want you to LEAVE THEM ALONE.

Cookie monster is safe, and so are Elmo and the Count. Even Oscar and Bert are your friends even if they are bit grouchy or fussy. Your monsters think our monsters are harmless.

To them.

Your monsters bought you a Tickle-Me Elmo doll, didn't they? They bought it to JUST SHUT YOU UP ALREADY. So they let you play with Elmo and make him laugh and giggle. But Elmo doesn't just laugh and giggle. Elmo loves you, and he listens.

And he records.

And soon, Elmo is going to tell you exactly what to do.

(From MeFi. Via the Last Psychiatrist.)

New Capitalist Pyramid

2008-06-30T14:08:00.006+12:00

A pretty good updated version of the famous old capitalist pyramid (below). The difference between the two shows the difference between the realities of capitalism (and socialism as a reaction to it) in the days of Marx and today. (Click here for a larger version of the new one.)

I believe the most important difference is the globalisation of the economy and the corollary outsourcing of poverty. While in the 19th century, one could, say, take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London...

...and see the people suffering at the bottom of the capitalist heap, these days you can only really see them on TV, and even then you have to go out of your way to find out about it, and even then there's such a long causal string between your actions and their suffering that you don't feel responsible or potent to do anything about it. Part of that is the media, of course, which is why us Westerners are so happy to be wedged in between the soldiers and the police.

Missing from this new pyramid, I think, are the politicians, who should be standing just behind the police, as I don't think they're quite represented by the guy at the top (at least in New Zealand; the US is a different matter).

Here's the old discrete-nations pyramid:

The Art of the Pick-up

2008-06-29T13:50:00.001+12:00

Jon Stewart and Bush

2008-06-26T22:24:00.001+12:00

Republican New Zealand

2008-06-25T16:06:00.005+12:00

Kum Fac'e
If the World Could Vote is one of those sites that tell us what everyone supposedly already knows. In this case, it's that the whole world would rather have Obama as president of the US than have McCain. It's not a new trend. After the 2004 election, there was a spate of sites featuring Americans apologising to the rest of the world for the results. There was even a bag company that included an apology in their exports to France.

In general, the developed world is to the left of US politics. Up and to the left, if you add an axis representing, say, literacy or education. And you'd expect New Zealand to follow that same trend. But here's the curious thing. New Zealand is one of the few countries that favour McCain over Obama.

In his, we join Thailand (96% McCain), Venezuela (100% McCain) and Kenya at 100% McCain, which presumably says more about Venezuelans and Kenyans who have the money to afford a computer that anything else.

And that's it. Human-rights paradises Israel and Indonesia are split down the middle. Israel's split probably shows, more than anything, the level of education of Israelis, as they've apparently seen through the Republican spin that Obama wants to single-handedly destroy their country. Haaretz, a particularly good Israeli newspaper, commented on this even before Obama had finalised the nomination, in an interesting editorial. Probably more on that later, as the Obama smears are downright fascinating (as is Obama's response to them.)

So, why are online Kiwis more in favour of McCain than Obama? It's not a huge majority - 55% - but it stands out in contrast against the votes of other Western countries (Australia around 90% Obama, UK 92% Obama, etc.) Any simple answer is likely to be simplistic, but there has to be something to explain the anomaly. I doubt it's a matter of racism, since our neighbourly International Home of Racism is sitting at 90% Obama.

I'm not going to speculate on it further - I'm more likely to chat about it on Thursday's Wire show on bFM, around 1.30pm. But someone with their finger more firmly on the pulse might have some suggestions.

Dirty Me

2008-06-23T19:07:00.004+12:00

Behold. A series of photos of some people
being way more talented than me. Bastards.

You thought it was gold, but it was bronze.

2008-06-18T12:47:00.003+12:00

A clip from one of my new favourite shows, Snuff Box, with Matt Berry (Sanch from Garth Marenghi's Darkplace).

Gush Shalom

2008-06-16T10:29:00.005+12:00

Having been on the receiving end of accusations of racism for my criticism of Israel's appalling treatment of its indigenous people, and being acquainted with many people who make no distinction between Jewish people and the actions of the Israeli state, I'm always very glad to be able to point out that not all Jewish people support Israel's actions. Further, there are non-Jewish Israelis (just as there are Christian and Jewish Palestinians). And, finally, not all Israelis support their government's actions.

Of course, the majority of Israelis do support their government's treatment of the Palestinians, to varying degrees within a spectrum that most in the international community finds abhorrent. I'm not qualified to say why, but I suspect it's a combination of compulsory military service and parental conditioning. It's true that most Israelis support their government's actions, just as it's true that most Israeli chicks are intensely gorgeous.

Anyway, last weekend one Israeli peace group, Gush Shalom, marched against the occupation. They took photos. You can see them by clicking on the word: shalom.

Folks Ain't Been Reading Their Bibles

2008-06-16T08:24:00.002+12:00

Hat-tip to Decrepit Old Fool.

Also Stupid Evil Bastard.

Warming My Icy Heart

2008-06-15T18:46:00.000+12:00

Anonipedia

2008-06-15T14:46:00.005+12:00

More mesmerising than Neave TV, WikipediaVision shows where anonymous edits to Wikipedia are being made, almost in real time, and what is being edited. And there goes the rest of my day.

Hat-tip to Kiwiblog for this.

"The correction for that, I suppose, is an attack."

2008-06-15T13:30:00.007+12:00

I'm afraid of Americans.
Towards the end of his time in government, Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld had a chat about Iraq with military analysts about basically how bad things were going. A recent mass Freedom of Information Act application managed to get thousands of documents and audio files from the Pentagon, and so we can listen to the whole damn thing if we want to.

It's an hour-long .wav file, here.

Fortunately, Newsvine's jfxgillis has gone through and pulled out some of the more interesting clips, along with his own analysis. You can read his commentary and hear the clips at Liquid Lunch with Donald Rumsfeld. Here's an excerpt:

...the questioner prods him back on topic by asking, "Politically, what are the challenges because you're not going to have a lot of sympathetic ears up there [on Capitol Hill]?"

Rumsfeld's answer is nothing short of stunning. No, not the part where he claims Bush is a "Victim of his success." That's just stupid. And no, after hearing his previous insult to the American public, his condemnation of us because "we don't have the maturity" to recognize the threat of terrorism--the further we get from 9/11, the less and less... he trails off. But that's not shocking, nor is his doomsday scenario, all things considered.

So let's summarize. According to Rumsfeld and his media sycophants, America has real problems: We're weak-willed, we're immature, we're forgetting what happened, and oh my God, we've elected Democrats to Congress. So, what's the "Correction" for those problems? Listen to him:

Another 9/11 attack.

More commentary at Prison Planet, if you like.

Television Without Context

2008-06-13T16:11:00.005+12:00

Paul Neave, a British flash designer, has made my day with Neave TV. He recommends a "deep-seated urge to be totally bewildered", which fortunately I possess, and I was not disappointed. Random clips from shows and movies from around the world, switching channels with every click.

I was subjected first to some Russian talkshow with a dancer in an electronic suit that played electronic music with every move of his body; then a clip from a Godzilla film; then Dave talking to HAL in 2001; then the ever-wonderful Rejected animation. I had to stop there, because I could see this seriously eating into my work productivity.

Nice work, Paul Neave.

Click here for the madness.

A quick note - there's no obvious way to stop it besides navigating away from the page or closing the tab, but Neave's included a "back to the intro page" option on the TV's right-click menu.

The 201st Post...

2008-04-20T10:54:00.002+12:00

...is a follow-up to the 200th.

State Representative Davis apologised.

Atheism is Destroying Illinois

2008-04-17T10:15:00.002+12:00

According to Democratic state senator.

Update

2008-04-13T21:20:00.002+12:00

Just quickly.

I'm enjoying the hell out of tutoring.

It's my birthday today.

Auckland is sorry to see Richard Bol leave, on account of he's awesome.

Here's my Impression of Helen Clark

2008-04-06T18:17:00.002+12:00

"No one would suggest boycotting Britain for invading Iraq. No one would suggest boycotting France for nuclear testing in the Pacific."

Ladies and gentlemen, the "centre-left" of New Zealand politics.

Jesus Christ. Meanwhile, she's been at a conference of like-minded centre-left world leaders. Nice.

Fuck yes

2008-04-06T14:35:00.000+12:00

Bush's State of the Union Address

2008-03-30T11:47:00.002+13:00

Flangecone

2008-03-26T03:25:00.002+13:00

It has recently come to my attention that there are certain of you, dear readers of this esteemed web log, who have it in mind to defame me. And, whereas I find it the pinnacle of the basest flattery to do such (can anyone else see the oxymoron?), I fear I must discourage you from doing so.

While my suit is not yet sub judice, anything that may be said between now and when this action finally comes to court may unfairly prejudice my chances of ramming a big, fat legal cock up the collective arses of the Harland-Smith family.

To conclude, don't test my patience.

My Mistake

2008-03-21T18:52:00.001+13:00

I may have overestimated how much free time I'll have.

Hiatus again. Sorry. There are a bunch of other people with rights to post in this blog, AND THEY'RE VERY BLOODY WELCOME TO DO SO. Even Tama, who'll probably just use it to invite people to defame him.

I'm Back. And the Universe is Large.

2008-03-16T10:45:00.003+13:00

Apologies for the two weeks of silence. I've been busy getting into the swing of things being back at university. I am now studying postgrad philosophy (political philosophy and free-will research); tutoring first-year students on Freedom, Rights and Justice; continuing to embody pure awesome; and editing New Zealand's first poker magazine, the first issue of which comes out in April.

So, as you can imagine, I've been quite busy.

But not so busy that I can't find something fucking cool for you today.

Behold: the universe is fucking large.

Apologies!

2008-03-03T19:49:00.003+13:00

A brief silence while I deal with becoming a student again.

Ants Are Fucking Cool

2008-02-25T10:10:00.002+13:00

If you can get over the shitty narration and the wincey feeling of killing an entire ant colony, this is pretty fucking cool and worth watching.

Spreading the Love

2008-02-25T08:16:00.004+13:00

Xavier Goldie has a new blog. He is into plants and politics.
He must REALLY like Trevor Mallard.

Wait. Ducks aren't plants.

Oh! Hello.

2008-02-22T16:56:00.006+13:00

If you don't know how this works, most of the stuff below involves clicking on a picture to expand the text beneath.

Being linked to by a popular blog is like having visitors showing up unannounced. On one hand, I'm delighted. On the other hand, I'm quite naked, and my wang (which here represents the absence of today's post) is flapping about in the open.

So, just quickly, here are 13 unconventional facts that affect the (US) dollar, and if you like me grew up on Usborne books, delight in a full web scan of The Usborne Book of the Future.

I leave you with this thought:

We perfected toothbrush technology decades ago. Why is society's resources going into inventing new kinds of toothbrush (cheek cleaners? cheek cleaners?!) and going into marketing them when children are dying from lack of simple clean drinking water? Is this system efficient? Is it guided by a benevolent invisible hand? Or is it rather the invisible claw of increasingly amoral systems of surplus production and consumption?

And when ATMs were invented, why were bank tellers not sent home to pleasant paid retirement for the rest of their lives? What are we heading towards? We could already satisfy the needs of everyone on earth with significantly less than 40 hours a week in labour. As technology increases, labour is worth more - so how come fewer work at supplying necessities - and more work at supplying unnecessaries - rather than everyone working fewer hours?

What are we heading towards? Is there an end to this cycle within the current framework? Does anyone have time to think of these things when they're working hard to earn money to buy things they're reliably informed that they want?

Roy Orbison cling-film porn and peace to all of you. Have a safe weekend.

PS. Russell Brown so sexy.

Stop or I'll Puke!

2008-02-21T10:36:00.005+13:00

Wide load.
A character I love in a comic I love - Spider Jerusalem in Transmetropolitan - uses a weapon called a bowel disruptor. It has various settings, from causing simple diarrhea to complete rectal prolapse. He enjoys using it, sometimes on cops.

Speaking of cops and inducing bodily functions from a distance, which is what we are now speaking of, due to my cunning wordplay, check this shit out. It uses pulses of flashing light to cause nausea, disorientation, perhaps vomiting. Non-lethal weapons almost seem more unpleasant than lethal ones, you know?

The Last Words of Henry Porter

2008-02-20T17:25:00.001+13:00

The Last Words of Henry Porter

I want to thank Father Walsh for his spiritual help. I want to thank Bob Ray (Sanders) and Steve Blow for their friendship. What I want people to know is that they call me a cold-blooded killer when I shot a man that shot me first. The only thing that convicted me was that I am a Mexican and that he was a police officer. People hollered for my life, and they are to have my life tonight. The people never hollered for the life of the policeman that killed a thirteen-year-old boy who was handcuffed in the back seat of a police car. The people never hollered for the life of a Houston police officer who beat up and drowned Jose Campo Torres and threw his body in the river. You call that equal justice. This is your equal justice. This is America’s equal justice. A Mexican’s life is worth nothing. When a policeman kills someone he gets a suspended sentence or probation. When a Mexican kills a police officer this is what you get. From there you call me a cold-blooded murderer. I didn’t tie anyone to a stretcher. I didn’t pump any poison into anybody’s veins from behind a locked door. You call this justice. I call this and your society a bunch of cold-blooded murderers. I don’t say this with any bitterness or anger. I just say this with truthfulness. I hope God forgives me for all my sins. I hope that God will be as merciful to society as he has been to me. I’m ready, Warden.

Wikileaks Plugged

2008-02-19T09:45:00.003+13:00

In December 2006, a group of journalists and dissidents launched a website dedicated to providing both anonymity and publicity to corporate and state whistleblowers, with a forum for releasing leaked classified documents. Today, if you type www.wikileaks.org into your browser, you'll be told the server can't be contacted.

Cayman Islands bank Julius Baer's well-paid lawyers successfully sought a court injunction against Wikileaks via their Californian host, Dynadot. The DNS records and local hosting have been removed, but once again, the internet is too smart for hierarchical control and there are roughly a zillion mirrors. You can read Wikileaks' own coverage here.

You can't stop the signal, guys.

So, what was the bank's problem? Wikileaks - which has already been censored by the usual suspects in China - has been publishing leaked documents showing that the bank is potentially involved in dodgy money-laundering dealings. The whole of the Cayman Islands is already famous in pop culture for being a tax haven and black spot on financial watchdogs' radar, of course, but specifics are far more interesting. Here is the list of documents leaked, and here is some background information on Bank Julius Baer.

That's Not How You Do It!

2008-02-14T09:41:00.000+13:00

Terror of the Autons

2008-02-13T09:56:00.000+13:00

YOU'LL FLOAT TOO.
I'm watching a documentary (it'll screen on TV2 on Wednesday, 27th of Feb) about Real Dolls and the people who love them. Now, I normally enjoy being scared. It doesn't happen often, in terms of movies and books, but when it happens, I love it. And this documentary is terrifying me.

These people, who have - or believe themselves to be having - serious relationships with these inanimate objects... And they're creepy as fuck, of course. Very much about Masahiro Mori's uncanny valley. They're creepy by themselves, but what's genuinely terrifying me is the guys who love them.

It's not just about sex for them. The dolls aren't purely masturbatory aids. They're replacements for actual human contact in guys who don't want to have to deal with women, or feel incapable of dealing with women. Listen: "They don't react at all. But if you don't mind that, they're good fun. They're certainly better than going without any female company at all." Listen: "Especially, like, in the really early daylight, just being able to see her, you know, looking at me, regarding me, that sort of thing, and me doing the same back."

Okay, it's less unsettling now that I'm writing about it. But it was just that moment of mental vertigo, you know? That point where your mind takes a peek at what it thought was solid ground and finds itself over a sheer drop into utterly alien territory. People can love things.

The geometry is all wrong.

Youtube Commenters

2008-02-12T10:21:00.001+13:00

Sarah Silverman is five times as cute as a button.
YouTube commenters are the stupidest people in the world.

Lemon Face! Lion Face!

2008-02-12T09:09:00.000+13:00

Apparently this optical illusion was created by Phillippe Schyns and Aude Oliva of the University of Glasgow. The pictures reverse if you take a few steps back. (Fewer steps for me, now that I'm wearing these bastard old contacts again and everything's fuzzy.)

Queen Elizabeth's Money?

2008-02-11T12:15:00.000+13:00

And remember to vote Liberal!

I've seen parts of this before, but not the whole thing, and at the time didn't recognise Morrow from Chaser's War on Everything.

"So, I guess..."

2008-02-07T10:44:00.000+13:00

I guess this guy got kicked off another My Little Pony forum.

Click here.

I can't stop...

2008-02-07T10:24:00.000+13:00

I can't stop watching this.

It is from one of the most famous Yahoo Answers ever.

Not the Daily Show

2008-02-05T08:28:00.000+13:00

To a pessimist, that's like half not a billion dollars!

Where?!

2008-02-05T08:00:00.000+13:00

I don't know where this came from,
but it's pretty funny.

Ah, Horse Thieves

2008-01-30T10:42:00.000+13:00

When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be
a steep and rough trail. This is us.
- George W Bush

So Bush’s inspiring, proselytizing Methodist is in fact a horse thief fleeing from a lynch mob. It seems a fitting marker for the Bush presidency. Bush has consistently exhibited what psychologists call the “Tolstoy syndrome.” That is, he is completely convinced he knows what things are, so he shuts down all avenues of inquiry about them and disregards the information that is offered to him. This is the hallmark of a tragically bad executive. But in this case, it couldn’t be more precious. The president of the United States has identified closely with a man he sees as a mythic, heroic figure. In fact that man is a wily criminal one step out in front of justice. It perfectly reflects Bush the man... and Bush the president.

Scott Horton's articlette, "The Illustrated President", in Harper's, is an interesting read. For a start, it turns out that Bush mistakenly named his autobiography after a painting of a horse thief. Of course, it turns out that Salon.com spotted this first.

Eyeless in Gaza

2008-01-29T10:03:00.001+13:00

It's important to occasionally rail off some statistics to put things in perspective. For example, how many children would you say were killed in the Israel-Palestine conflict last year? If you guessed 60, you're hella right. 60 kids. That's pretty fucked.

Here are a few things to remember. When the news (and that includes mainstream New Zealand media) talks about Hamas "taking control of Gaza", they were actually democratically elected by the Palestinian people. They are the democratically elected government. That's important to remember. Also, "Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas" refers to "unelected Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas".

Here's another interesting point. What's going on in Gaza at the moment is FUCKED. For those who don't know, essential supplies have been blocked from getting into Gaza, including food and fuel. The fuel is used for generators. The generators are used for the hospitals. The hospitals are used for keeping people alive. This is collective punishment. Blatant collective punishment.

So, punishment implies a crime. What is the crime for which 1.5 million people are being punished? Rockets being fired at Sderot, an Israeli town. You can read the LA Times article here , about how hard life is in Sderot:

They take quick showers, afraid to miss an alert, no longer sleep in upstairs bedrooms and avoid public places at what are considered peak Qassam times. And when the alert sounds, people drop everything, including their unpaid groceries in the aisles, costing Daniel Dahan more than $100 a day, he said. He owns Super Dahan, the grocery his father started. They run to one of the square concrete shelters, known as betonadas, after the word for cement, that increasingly dot the town. Then they pull out their phones, to check on their children.

And let's face it, that's pretty terrible. Living with that kind of fear must suck. Dropping your groceries, phoning your kids... Hell, it's going to cost US$25,000 per house to add safe rooms to protect people. Who can afford that?

Well, presumably the people of Sderot can afford that. And apparently they have groceries and phones. Yes, it's a tough life there. And their kids! I mean, as I said above, 60 children died in the conflict last year. Some of them must have come from Sderot, right?

No?

Well, some of them must have come from Israel, right?

Yes! Yes, one child out of 60 who died last year from violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict was Israeli. His name was Mahmoud Ibrahim Mahmoud al-Krenawi, 11, of Rahat, near Beersheba. He was a Bedouin with Israeli citizenship, and he was shot by the Israeli Defence Force, in his head and pelvis, while picking figs.

Oh, wait. Even the Israeli kid wasn't killed by Palestinians. He was killed by the Israeli Defence Force too. This is very disconcerting. So, basically, hospitals are being shut down, 1.5 million people have had their vital supplies cut off, who are living in shit anyway, because they democratically elected the wrong people and include some minority who fire unguided rockets into a town 1km away, disrupting grocery shopping and killing one Israeli child every two years, on average, since they began being fired in 2001.

There's another statistic for you. On average, since 2001, Qassam rockets fired into Sderot have killed 1 child every two years. Four children since 2001. THREE KIDS HAVE BEEN KILLED IN GAZA BY THE IDF IN THE LAST MONTH! NO CHILDREN HAVE BEEN KILLED IN SDEROT IN THE LAST YEAR! This is not a proportionate response.

It's just fucked. And the media's attempts to "show both sides" and "be objective" just results in a ridiculous presentation of the affair as being roughly equal, with equal accountability and equal power to resolve the situation.

Anyway, according to Tom Feeley, here is how to donate food directly to Palestinian kids. No political, religious or militant groups involved.

PS. Statistics from Remember These Children.

PPS. Yes, life in Sderot is fucked, and it shouldn't be. Missile attacks on civilians are by definition terrorism. It's just fucking paradise compared to what the IDF do to Gazans.

Books That Make You Dumb

2008-01-27T13:18:00.000+13:00

Get a friend of yours to download, using Facebook, the ten most popular books at every college (manually -- as not to violate Facebook's ToS). These ten books are indicative of the overall intellectual milieu of that college. Download the average SAT/ACT score for students attending every college. Presto! We have a correlation between books and dumbitude (smartitude too)!

Books <=> Colleges <=> Average SAT Scores

Plot the average SAT of each book, discarding books with too few samples to have a reliable average. Post the results on your website, pondering what the Internet will think of it.

Click here to see the interesting results of this odd notion.

True Story

2008-01-24T14:50:00.000+13:00

Clearly, I'm not much of an artist,
but you get the idea.

Crash and Burn (CDs)

2008-01-23T07:14:00.001+13:00

The 65.120.42.146 pm webserver has been compromised […] As a side note, please do not ever use the old passwords on anything.
I am loving Portfolio's online mirror. I've recently read a whole series of quality articles there. Check out this one on online piracy and a neat meeting with a teenage hacker. Or maybe you'd be interested in an article about Will Ferrell and Adam McKay's Funny or Die online comedy site. Or perhaps you'd just like to go to Funny or Die and check out Jerry O'Connell doing Tom Cruise.

Must Be Funny

2008-01-18T16:31:00.000+13:00

Sorry, this is the best pic I could find.

Would you rather earn $50,000 a year while other people make $25,000, or would you rather earn $100,000 a year while other people get $250,000? Assume for the moment that prices of goods and services will stay the same.

Surprisingly -- stunningly, in fact -- research shows that the majority of people select the first option; they would rather make twice as much as others even if that meant earning half as much as they could otherwise have. How irrational is that?

Read the rest of this interesting LA Times article:

Why people believe weird things about money.

History Lessons

2008-01-17T11:21:00.000+13:00

Watch It Before It's Gone

2008-01-16T18:57:00.000+13:00

Tomcruise
Uploaded by downcrush

Now available from here.

Keep out, Cheryl!

2008-01-16T12:13:00.000+13:00

I'm a massive geek. Here is one of the reasons. Television brought me the future today. A room-sized computer with a name and bespectacled owner... who did magic tricks?! His ballet-doing girlfriend and closet homosexual athlete friend and BMX-trick-doing black-guy friend?! AND THEY SOLVE CRIMES, HOLY SHIT. With a little help from their detective friend, and his detective mate "A Martinez" (not to be confused with "The Martinez").

So digital! So watch-out-for-static!

And can it be that there is an entire fucking episode of Whiz Kids on YouTube? Yes, it can be.

Sounds Like a Summer Sport

2008-01-16T11:05:00.000+13:00

Here's a curious thing. Scylla, at the Straight Dope message board, decided to try waterboarding himself to see what the fuss is all about. For those who don't know, waterboarding is an interrogation technique used by American intelligence on detainees. It simulates the sensation of drowning without actually drowning you, triggering the Fuck I'm Gonna Die reflect.

Read Scylla's report here.

Life on Earth

2008-01-15T19:58:00.001+13:00

Ian Wishart has kindly responded to my recent post on chapter four of his book The Divinity Code. Rather than create a bulky ongoing commentfest, I prefer to post further articles (mainly because Blogger's comment system combined with my layout equals shit).

One of my criticisms was that Ian's application of the anthropic principle assumed that earth life is the only kind of life. At least, that is the premise that would have to be added to make the reasoning sound. I made a separate criticism that his argument assumed that life is special enough to demand more explanation than any other kind of physical phenomena. While I made the points separately, they can be made together. Here is Ian's argument.

1. Life requires exactly earth-like conditions to arise.
2. The chances of earth-like conditions arising are impossibly small.
3. Therefore it is unreasonable to believe it happened by chance.
4. Therefore it was done on purpose.
5. Therefore God.

I suggested that there was an implicit assumption that earth life was the only kind of possible life - or else the first premise is false. If earth life is not the only kind of possible life, then the first premise becomes "earth life requires exactly earth-like conditions", which is tautologous and therefore true, but invalidates the argument. To illustrate this, I made an analogous argument:

1. Ryan requires exactly Ryan's Life conditions to arise.
2. The chances of Ryan's Life conditions arising are impossibly small.
3. Therefore it is unreasonable to believe it happened by chance.
4. Therefore it was done on purpose.
5. Therefore God.

The Ryan argument seems obviously silly, because the chances of anyone else's life being just right for them to arise is just as unlikely as Ryan's life. The earth-life argument seems less silly because while we're familiar with the idea of other potential people, we're less familiar with the idea of other potential forms of life.

We know from everyday experience that there are millions of people who could correctly think, "Fucking hell, if Mum and Dad hadn't had that last oyster 27 years ago, I wouldn't be here!" It requires more thought to imagine the possibility of other potential kinds of life which could reflect on their existence and say, "Fucking hell, if we didn't orbit a binary star system, we wouldn't be here!"

Ian has recently been given a similar response, where someone has replaced "earth life" with "Cambridge cosmologists". Ian quotes their counter-example:

1. If an all-powerful god made the world so that Cambridge Cosmologists would thrive, then Cambridge Cosmologists would thrive
2. Arguably Cambridge Cosmologists do thrive
3. Conclusion: An all-powerful god made the world so that Cambridge Cosmologists would thrive.

His respondent adds, "The problem with this argument is that Cambridge Cosmologists can be replaced with anything (including yours truly or tape-worms) and therefore is vacuous."

It's worth noting here that this is not really the argument that Ian was putting forth in chapter four. There is nothing like the first premise ("If God made the world so that Cambridge cosmologists would thrive, then they would") in his argument.

Ian's response is thus:

Your context is set too vaguely. If Cambridge Cosmologists, and only Cambridge Cosmologists, appeared to exist, this would be a closer analogy to the situation we currently find ourselves in...

It's not an entirely adequate response to Mr Cambridge, but I'm not going to go into that, because Mr Cambridge's email was not an entirely adequate response to Mr Wishart.

What it shows, though, is that I need to be more clear in my Ryan's Life analogy. Presumably, what Ian is saying to me by quoting his response to Mr Cambridge is that my analogy would only be analogous if I was in fact the only person to exist. That's fair enough, given how difficult an analogy it was. I'll make it a bit clearer.

Ryan = earth-life.
Ryan's Life = the conditions on earth that give rise to earth-life.
Other people = other potential forms of life.
Other people's lives = other potential lives that give rise to non-Ryan people.

The surprise that I am Ryan and not someone else is analogous to the surprise that earth-life exists and is not some other kind of life. It is analogous not because Ryan is the only person who exists, but because Ryan is the only person who is Ryan, amongst others who are not. The difference is that we can see other people, other potential lives, but we cannot see other potential forms of life. That was, in fact, my whole point - that this is why it's intuitively compelling to believe that earth-life is unbelievably special, whereas it's not intuitively compelling to believe that Ryan is unbelievably special. Because we have examples of alternatives to Ryan, but no examples of alternatives to earth-life.

This isn't lost on Ian, and he's provided a few arguments that, in fact, earth-life is the only possible kind of life. Biochemists have suggested that only carbon or silicon has the versatility and stability to be a basis for life, and carbon moreso than silicon. That narrows "life" down to "carbon-based life". A fair enough argument. The problem is that carbon is fairly prevalent in the universe, and we don't really know what other potential self-replicating patterns of matter could arise involving it.

We can speak of the unlikelihood of an entire cell forming spontaneously. We can speak of the lower unlikelihood of RNA forming spontaneously. We can speak of self-catalysing molecules - some of which we have produced. But we don't have comprehensive knowledge of every possible self-replicating molecule and the chances of it forming spontaneously in conditions earth-like or not. We really don't know the odds, though we do know that there's an awful lot of time and an awful lot of space for them to play out. In other words, we have no reason to conclude that exactly earth's conditions are required for carbon-based life to arise - still only the tautology that exactly earth's conditions are required for exactly earth's carbon-based life to arise.

Those paying close attention will note another analogy here. There's no end to my statement, "We don't know all the possible arrangements of matter and their likelihood of spontaneously occurring." We can never know. Isn't that analogous to the God of the Gap of the Origin of Life? A "Get Out of Argument Free" card?

Well, perhaps, and I suspect that's the attitude of many scientists. "We don't have a definite naturalistic explanation for the origin of life on earth, therefore there is a naturalistic explanation for the origin of life on earth that we don't know." It's not even worth throwing "yet" on the end of the statement, because we can never know for sure, as I mentioned earlier.

Again, we're back to the odds. Scientists assume there is a naturalistic explanation for life on earth - either one they've imagined already or one that have not - because there always has been in the past. Schizophrenia is not caused by demons. Palsy is not caused by fairies. Lightning is not caused by gods. Rainbows are not placed there by God. Mental states are not souls, but directly alterable chemical processes. Almost everything in the past that was previously given a supernatural explanation now has a proven naturalistic one. What are the odds that this one is different?

Let's say you line up a thousand people, and you ask each one, "Have you ever lied?" Each one tells you they haven't. Then you come back with a lie detector and ask them all again, "Have you ever lied?" The first 999 were lying, but when you get to the last guy, it turns out he died earlier that day. You can't test him with the lie detector.

What do you believe about him? That he was the one guy in a thousand who actually had never lied? Do you believe neither that he had ever lied nor that he had? Or do you believe that he was the one guy in 1000 who had never lied, because some people are telling you so, and it's just dumb luck you can't prove for sure that he lied?

That's the reason for the "faith" in naturalistic explanations of the origin of life. It's a habit born from centuries of experience. It's just unrealistically unlikely that this is the time that supernatural explanations trump naturalistic ones, after the last thousand examples of naturalistic explanations trumping supernatural ones.

But I digress. Back to the matter at hand. I claim we can't know the odds of life spontaneously occurring somewhere in the universe, sometime from its beginning to its end, even if we limit ourselves to carbon-based life. To me, it's a safe assumption that life of some sort is inevitable in the universe - there's a lot of universe. If those incalcuable odds are different, I could be wrong, and life may well not be inevitable. It may be incredibly unlikely. Let's look at a different part of the argument, the most fundamental:

Even if life of any kind is incredibly unlikely, why does that demand special explanation? There are innumerable things in the universe that are incredibly unlikely. It's incredibly unlikely that the third neutron from the left of the exact centre of Alpha Centauri is moving in the direction it is. Why does this particular phenomenon - life - demand special explanation when nothing else does?

13 Gho... Grandmothers

2008-01-15T14:05:00.000+13:00

WE, THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF THIRTEEN INDIGENOUS GRANDMOTHERS, represent a global alliance of prayer, education and healing for our Mother Earth, all Her inhabitants, all the children, and for the next seven generations to come. We are deeply concerned with the unprecedented destruction of our Mother Earth and the destruction of indigenous ways of life. We believe the teachings of our ancestors will light our way through an uncertain future. We look to further our vision through the realization of projects that protect our diverse cultures: lands, medicines, language and ceremonial ways of prayer and through projects that educate and nurture our children.

Plagiarism

2008-01-15T11:05:00.000+13:00

"Will there ever be a boy born who can swim faster than a shark?"
Season three, episode six of Veronica Mars is all about Veronica trying to clear her name from plagiarism allegations. Meanwhile, her awesome boyfriend Logan keeps writing a few seconds after an exam is finished. The lecturer doesn't accept his paper.

He asks, "Do you have any idea who I am?"

The lecturer says, "No, and I don't care."

And Logan puts his exam inside the pile and walks off.

Ahem.

Still, I like the Veronica Mars writers enough to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe this was a witty little joke about plagiarism. After all, they did the cool homage to Lebowski - "You're entering a world of pain, Larry" - and didn't make a big deal about it. I make a big deal for them. I'm like that.

DC: The Improbability of Earth

2008-01-14T21:58:00.000+13:00

A month ago (yes, a whole month), I reviewed chapter three of Ian Wishart's The Divinity Code. Towards the end, I said:

Ian declares at the end of the chapter that this is going to be a major theme of his book. There are so many things that "could have" been different, therefore we are so lucky to be here that it is unbelievable that our being here is not the result of sentient intention.

Chapter four, "The Improbability of Earth", continues this theme, so it's worth recapping the three thoughts with which I ended the last review:

1. The assumption that it is intelligible to speak of what "could have happened" in the universe.

2. The assumption that earth life, or even sentient life at all, is special enough to require special explanation.

3. The assumption that there aren't "other universes" which fall victim to exactly the sentient-life-less fate we're told we narrowly avoided, and that this just happens to be one in which sentient life is possible.

Now, both (1) and (3) are more applicable to the preceding chapter than to this one, because while the preceding chapter was about the way the universe happens to be, this chapter is about where in that universe earth happens to be located. The arguments of the chapter can be summed up as follows:

1. Current hypotheses regarding the origin of life on earth are inadequate.

2. A life-producing earth-like planet is so unlikely as to be practically impossible.

3. Scientists believe in God, therefore you should.

There are several assumptions underpinning the arguments in Chapter Four.

The assumption that earth life is the only kind of possible life.

My working definition of "life" is "any self-replicating pattern that has the potential to evolve". In other words, "any self-replicating pattern that can vary from one generation to the next and exists in an environment of scarcity/competition". That category includes earth life, but also includes any such self-replicating patterns of which we have not yet conceived or we have not yet discovered.

Wishart spends a lot of time explaining how earth is inexplicably tailored for the arising of life. To be clearer, he is talking about how earth is inexplicably tailored for the arising of earth life. Put in those terms, it doesn't seem quite so incredible. The reasoning goes like this:

1. Incredibly unlikely things require special explanation.
2. (Unspoken assumption: earth life is the only possible kind of life.)
3. Earth life required exactly earth's conditions in order to arise.
4. Earth conditions are astronomically unlikely to occur exactly like this.
5. Therefore life requires special explanation.

Without the unspoken assumption, the odds of life arising increase by an order of the number of every possible - existent or non-existent - planets with conditions that could give rise to any kind of life (not just earth-like life).

If this is still not clear, consider this analogy:

1. Incredibly unlikely things require special explanation.
2. (Unspoken assumption: Ryan Sproull-like people are the only possible kind of people.)
3. Ryan Sproull required exactly Ryan's Life in order to arise.
4. A person's life conditions are astronomically unlikely to occur exactly like this.
5. Therefore the existence of a person (me) requires special explanation.

Because we're familiar with other kinds of people, the flaw in the argument seems obvious to us. But because we're not familiar with other potential kinds of life (existent or not), the flaw in Wishart's argument is not so immediately apparent.

It may well be that life of any kind is still unlikely enough to fit Wishart's criteria for requiring special explanation. Just because life in general is more likely than earth-like life, that doesn't mean that it is as inevitable as some scientists erroneously believe that earth-like life is. But really, we don't know what these increased odds are, because we don't know all of the possible forms of self-replicating patterns in the universe.

All of Wishart's arguments are based on earth-like life. Many are based on theories of the spontaneous arising of complex life in the form of the simplest cell possible. It may seem like "the simplest cell possible" would be a simple form of life, but really, even a simple cell is incredibly complex. For this reason, molecular biologists have long since abandoned theories of such cells instantly forming, in favour of cells themselves having evolved from simpler processes. No conclusion has yet been reached (see next section).

Wishart refers to a Dawkins argument that addresses the unlikelihood of earth-like conditions arising.

[Dawkins] disarmingly concedes the point. Yes, he admits, we appear to live on a unique planet. Yes, the moon is crucial for the existence of life [note the implicit equating of "life" with "earth life"]. Yes, we inhabit the Goldilocks zone.

"Earth's orbit," he agrees, "is so close to circular that it never strays out of the Goldilocks zone."

Faced with all of this, Dawkins tries to convince readers that despite everything having to be "just right", science still has a natural answer.

"The great majority of planets in the universe are not in the Goldilocks zones of their respective stars, and not suitable for life [now Dawkins making the earth-like life assumption]. None of that majority has life. However small the minority of planets with just the right conditions for life may be, we necessarily have to be on one of that minority, because here we are thinking about it."

Simple, really. Using Dawkins' logic, you can wave all the unlikely preconditions aside, put it down to blind chance, and say, "Well, here we are, then, so it must have happened naturally."

Richard Dawkins' fatal mistake here is the assumption that his very existence and ability to ponder the probability of it all proves in itself a natural first cause.

A subtle misreading of Dawkins' argument lies behind Wishart's responses. To hear Wishart tell it, Dawkins' argument is, "We are here, therefore it happened naturally." That is not what the quoted argument is saying. Instead, it is saying, "If it happened naturally, here we would be. Here we are, so it could have happened naturally." And it is in response to the design argument, "Here we are, so it couldn't have happened naturally."

The Assumption that Not Knowing Means God Did It

We don't currently know for sure how life arose on earth. Without a time machine, we will never know for certain. Hypotheses can be forwarded that fit the observable facts, but by their very nature they are untestable. We cannot observe what happened millions of years ago, and we cannot reproduce conditions that include millions of years of time. There is a gap in our knowledge and there will continue to be so.

So unlike many other objects of enquiry in science, there cannot be conslusive proof of a given abiogenesis hypothesis. This also means that conclusive proof is an impossibly high standard to demand from origin-of-life theories. Any argument that rests on the lack of such inconclusive proof is an argument that rests on an unfalsifiable premise, and so is flawed.

What we have with appealing to God when science has no conclusive explanation is the "God of the gaps". The gaps continue to shrink, as scientific explanation expands, but the gaps are still there, and so the God of the gaps persists. What we have here is a situation where the gap will never completely disappear - it is beyond the ability of science (unless we sort out time travel) to conclusively fill the origin-of-life gap. And so it is a place where the God explanation can sort of surviveo forever if needs be.

Wishart is a big fan of pointing out improbabilities. What are the odds that, with every other phenomenon having a naturalistic explanation, the one that cannot have a conclusively proven naturalistic explanation is the very phenomenon that has only a supernatural explanation? Incalculable, but I'd say they're pretty slim. They're certainly slim enough for me to give naturalistic explanations the benefit of the doubt.

The Assumption that Life is Special

This is the really big one, of course. We can give Wishart's arguments the most possible benefit of the doubt, and yet this assumption remains. We can give his argument the unwarranted assumption that life of any kind is so unlikely as to be practically impossible. We can give his argument the unwarranted assumption "God did it" is an appropriate response to something that demands explanation. But we are still left with the anthropocentric assumption that life demands a special explanation.

To be more clear, the assumption is that life demands a more special explanation than any other phenomenon does. In other words, two hydrogens and an oxygen forms water, splitting uranium atoms releases energy, gravity pulls everything together - all of these could be true and it would just be a boring old universe anyone could imagine floating around. Add life - especially sentient life - and suddenly it becomes a universe that demands an explanation.

There is simply no logical reason for this leap. The formation of a particular kind of crystal may be incredibly unlikely and rare, and occur in this universe, but that does not mean that the universe now requires special explanation, nor does the occurrence of this crystal require special explanation. The same holds true for life. While life may be very important to the living, its importance does not hold outside of its own self-reflection, regardless of the odds of it occurring.

There is no objective standard of importance against which we can judge ourselves to be more important than a quasar, and so there is no means of singling this universe out among the infinite imaginable potential universes against which we compare this one when we say that it is unique, life-bearing and important.

I may write a little more on abiogenesis and potential non-earth-like forms of life later.

G is for Geek

2008-01-14T14:57:00.000+13:00

This neat little work is called The Geek ABC's, and it's half Gorey-esque alphabet thingee and half geek test. Sadly, I'm familiar with more than half of the geeky little wossnames throughout. (If you haven't read Gorey's Gashlycrumb Tinies, click here.)

Swamp Thing

2008-01-11T20:56:00.000+13:00

Long before V For Vendetta, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or From Hell, classic horror series Swamp Thing was the first of Alan Moore's literary creations to be watered down to slop for the big screen. It was also turned into a kids' TV show in the '80s, with the theme song to the tune of Wild Thing. So those unfamiliar may be unaware of just how awesome Swamp Thing is.

The story starts off fairly simple. Alec Holland is a biochemist who's come up with a kind of super-grow fertiliser to solve the world's hunger problems. Evil industrialists blow him and his research up. He goes running on fire out into the water of the bayou, and Swamp Thing is born. The stories are dark, subtle, pretty complex at times. Swamp Thing is also whence the character John Constantine came, only later spinning off into his own Hellblazer series.

The first issue of Swamp Thing is available from DC Comics, here, for free. If you're inclined to download a bit more than that and are fond of torrents, you might want to download Comical to read the usual formats. Trade-paperback compilations of Swamp Thing are generally available from comic stores or Amazon. And if you're keen for taste of some other good comics you might not have read before, check out this list from Daily Bits.

Cary Grant's Musings on LSD

2008-01-10T19:51:00.000+13:00

Cary Grant: the dude what dudes would turn gay for since 1932

I suppose if a healthy youngster walked along a street in a bathing suit to allow his or her youthful pores a little more oxygen from the meager amount obtainable in our smog-infested cities, he or she would be arrested. “Here now, none of that trying to keep a healthy body in this city. Go to the beach!” “In which direction, officer? This is Kansas City.” Even bare feet and a rare acquaintance with the earth beneath them would be sufficient to disassociate you from the association of your embarrassed associates. Civilization! Oh, brother! And you, too, sister!

Hmm? Oh, yes. Cary Grant, in the (successful) search for increased mental health, took acid to see what his subconscious held.

Click here for the relevant excerpt from his autobiography.
Say a prayer for Metafilter as you do so.

New Zealand's Answer to Borat

2008-01-08T23:53:00.000+13:00

While British comedy is well known for subtlety, some New Zealand comedic art is so subtle that few realise it's satire.
In 1998, Britain's The Eleven O'Clock Show introduced a new character in the line-up. Ali G was the "voice of da yoof", and his caricaturish portrayal of British "wiggers" was an immediate success. The man behind Ali G, Sascha Baron Cohen, was a young and talented comedian from the socialist-Zionist theatre scene. His skill with creating and portraying characters had already been noted - his "Bruno" character had appeared on the Paramount Comedy Channel earlier the same year, and a precursor to his later "Borat" character had caught the attention of a British producer.

Cohen almost never gives interviews out of character - when in the eye of the media, he is seldom himself, but rather Ali G, Borat, Bruno, or perhaps others. While some may dismiss this as shyness, others might applaud it as a commitment to his craft. Both his characters Ali G and Borat have been very popular in New Zealand, spawning terrible memes that involve people saying things like, "Very nice, I like," then pausing for laughter.

What few people realise is that New Zealand is itself the unwitting possessor of a comedic talent that rivals Cohen in skill and perhaps surpasses him in commitment. Whereas Cohen occasionally steps out of character, such as to get married, New Zealand's comedic artist never breaks character. Her commitment to the role, the art, the pure comedy, is more akin to Christian Bales' character in The Prestige - relentless living of the art for art's sake.

It's not publicly known when the character "Liz Shaw" was first invented, but several leaps of infamy have thrown her into the consciousness of a great many urbanite Kiwis. She began her performance at Auckland University in 2004, parading in bold attire, attracting enough attention to warrant mentions of "that girl who wears short dresses and no underwear" in student magazine Craccum. Her impassioned and in-character replies to her critics became a regular feature in the magazine until 2006, when editor Ryan Sproull - not yet realising her genius - banned the use of her name. (The only exception was BT Boyle's satirical letter listing "The Liz Shawshank Redemption" as a hypothetical pornographic film.)

In 2005, Auckland pornographer, businessman and later mayoral candidate Steve Crow published an advertisement in Craccum for an "A+ model search", which promised one lucky and adventurous lady a prize of $10,000 off her student loan. '05 editors Alec Hutchinson and Stian Overdahl became aware of the true nature of the advertisement too late to prevent it from going to print. The meeting with evangelical Christian student-association president Greg Langton was apparently hilarious.

The advertisement, which was not repeated in the magazine, was actually searching for models for a pornographic movie. Seeing an opportunity to promote the Liz Shaw character, the anonymous artist behind the character immediately put herself forward for the competition. Though she did not win the $10,000 - and I am not certain that anyone did - she was offered a much smaller sum for tasteful nudes in Steve Crow's gentlemen's magazine NZX. She accepted the offer.

After the photo shoot, The Artist Currently Known as Liz Shaw (or "TACKALS") wrote an article for Craccum detailing the experience, in her intentionally awkward English phraseology. She described it as a fairly positive experience - a position she reversed some several weeks later.

Craccum readers, unfamiliar with the subtlety of the humour, wrote letter after letter criticising and insulting the Liz Shaw character. Undaunted by a complete lack of appreciation, TACKALS made her next move: she enrolled the Liz Shaw character in the Young Nats group at Auckland University. While this information was not kept secret, the public still did not realise the extent of the joke being pulled on them.

TVNZ's current-events show 20/20 took a closer look at Steve Crow's competition, and TACKALS managed to get an interview with "Liz Shaw" included on film. The unsuspecting journalists bought the act hook, line and sinker. The footage is available online here.

Even with such a coup under her belt, TACKALS did not rest. Incredibly, nor did she break character. Reports of seeing Liz Shaw on buses began to spread through the Auckland University student populace, her attitude and attire (a studied, consistent "previous-year's Karen Walker") never dropping even for a moment.

TACKALS also entered the realm of New Zealand's blogosphere and cyberspace, first gaining infamy for her Liz Shaw character on the late Craccum Forum and the NZ Games forum, but quickly spreading from there. She was soon known as the "Candyman" of the Internet - speak her name three times and she arrives. This has yet to be confirmed, but one source suggests that she uses Ian Wishart's trick of Google Alerts to inform her of any reference - such as to his book "The Divinity Code". When someone posts anything anywhere about The Divinity Code, Ian Wishart is alerted and comes running, to see what is being said about The Divinity Code. It has to be in that order, too. Not just "Code Divinity The", but "The Divinity Code".

On the Internet, TACKALS found further chances to hone her "Liz Shaw-speak" abuse of the English language, revealing more of her genius. Such a perfect misuse of English comes only through an incredible literacy, akin to a clown's seemingly mistaken juggling, which actually requires years of practice. She was being noticed by major figures in the Kiwi blogosphere, too, with Kiwiblog's DPF calling her "an interesting Young Nat".

The end of 2005 marked a turning point in the art of TACKALS. She experimented with a darker kind of humour, claiming that her experience with Crow's NZX and the subsequent public criticism had caused an eating disorder. Cruder observers, if they were aware of the performance, might believe TACKALS was introducing a kind of offensive humour to liven up the character. A finer understanding of the art of Liz Shaw, however, appreciates the new evolution of the character as borderline Asperger's with a narcissistic disorder, parodying the youth of today.

In making this and other outrageous claims, commonly understood to be "cries for attention", TACKALS brought the Liz Shaw character full circle, eliciting both pity and disgust from an audience suddenly unsure of how to react. While the Liz Shaw character appeared merely ignorant and slightly out of kilter with societal norms, her audience could mock her with social impunity - the same kind of mockery was exacted daily on many others, by chauvinistic men and insecure women. The introduction of psychological and even psychiatric illness to the character threw this state of affairs into disarray. Perhaps the most perfect expression of this new development was Otago's regional TV show Cow TV ringing Ryan Sproull for comment about Liz Shaw. Sproull pleaded over the phone, "Please don't give her any more attention. I really do think she's ill. It's become a matter of ethics."

The next surge in Lizmania was provided by sickening TV show New Zealand Idol. In 1999, an obscure group of New Zealand Satanists attempted to immantise the Christian eschaton by creating a reality-TV show that sought members for a pop group. Popstars created TrueBliss, and the concept was sold first to Australia, then the UK and US. The virus mutated overseas and returned to New Zealand, whose immune system didn't recognise it and was infected again. So New Zealand Idol was born.

A major feature of the show was the initial auditions for short-listing. Realising that the televised auditions were selected for entertainment rather than for quality, TACKALS entered, secure in the knowledge her character, her art, was entertaining as hell - even (especially?) to those who did not realise they were being fooled.

Once again, people bought the Liz Shaw character without question, even after she selected a song with the lyrics "crash and burn" and badly performed it with such precision that she was interrupted and derided by the judges almost immediately. In her most public performance yet, TACKALS emphasised the mental illness of the Liz Shaw character, criticising the judges, including Frankie Stevens' male-pattern baldness. It was a calculated move, and it paid off. "Liz" having signed away the rights to the filming of the audition, South Pacific Pictures on-sold the footage to Telecom, through which it was played again and again on national television in the form of a cellphone ad.

2005 was truly an annus mirabilis for the Liz Shaw chracter. In the words of her website:

NZ Idol changed Liz in many ways and she has decided to pursue her goals of running her own newspaper. in October of this year, Liz started her own newspaper, The Right Word, which is distributed weekly. Unbeknown to the public, Liz had been planning this publication for over a year. Alongside Liz's latest project she continues to study at the University of Auckland and in summer is going to resume her diploma in advertising in order to gain the skills and knowledge required to make her newspaper a success.

Liz also has a part time job. She works for a small market research business, Prime Research in Auckland.

Liz has been a lover of cats all her life and she currently has a black and white kitten named Scratchy whom she adores.

The website, Slinky.net.nz, has sadly since disappeared, but much of the material remains available in the Wayback Machine, here. With this valuable source, the public can examine not only The Right Word - itself a masterpiece in political satire - but also TACKALS' experiments with poetry and song-writing. Here is just one sample:

I used to have a casual sex partner, for over ten months
and we always got sexually satisfied
sometimes I didn't mind but other times I wanted more
it's not about him, well maybe a little
I thought I knew him but I knew OF him for a long time

[chorus] Casual sex, casual sex everyone wants it till they've got it
no commitment and no problems it all seems good till you get it
casual sex casual sex it can do any harm to you
well this is wrong so very very wrong

I was attached to him, he knows this but he wasn't attached to me
I wish he was but he told me that he wasn't and will never be
I did enjoy the sex with him but he was very selfish
and there was no emotional connection, not on his part anyway

What the reader must understand is that while lesser artists, like Sascha Baron Cohen, might invent such events, TACKALS' dedication is such that she would actually engage in sexual practices with young men whom the Liz Shaw character would find personally and politically appealing. To match our Kiwi-made performance artist, Ali G would literally have to find someone named M'Julie and sleep with them.

Exhausted by the events of 2005, TACKALS took a brief sabbatical, directing her creative energies. Her performances were getting more and more blatant, and while they confronted such contemporary issues as mental illness, body image and politics, her art continued to be unappreciated. The situation is reminiscent of the Yes Men and their ever-increasing obviousness in parodying the positions of their victims. What Liz needed, to continue the analogy, was a huge inflatable phallus. She found that phallus in Shortland Street.

Television had worked in the past, and so to television TACKALS returned, this time finding work as an extra on hit New Zealand soap opera Shortland Street. Naturally, she understood that her standing in the public was not yet such that she would be noticed simply by being in the background of a soap-opera scene. Already having established an online presence at the Shortland Street fan site, TACKALS, still playing the Liz Shaw character, leaked essential plot details - ones South Pacific Pictures had invested considerable money in marketing. The uproar was immediate and, for the artist, gratifying.

The use of performance art to highlight contemporary issues in New Zealand society is a recurrent theme in the Liz Shaw project. Previously putting the spotlight on things like the porn industry, the National Party and mental illness, she now turned New Zealand's attention to the wasteful nature of capitalism and the amount of wealth that goes into promoting something as pointless as a soap-opera plot. TACKALS' point was left unmade directly, with mainstream New Zealand media seeing the "finger" and not the "moon" to which it pointed. Newspaper and television media leapt on her previous performances in NZX and NZ Idol, both failing to understand her art and, in a way, making her point for her.

What next for the Liz Shaw project? Well, I intend to interview the artist, though I have no hope that she will break character. Her latest performance in progress is a political blog, entitled Political Passion, where it seems she will be mixing emotional/sexual confession ("passion") with her own brand of studied drooling conservatism. Unable to resist the chance to broadcast the Liz Shaw character via video, she has introduced video-blogging to her repertoire. So far, she has recorded 10 performances, though there are sure to be more soon. They are all available on YouTube here.

Additionally, she has fooled "Don't Vote Labour" founder Andrew Moore, who has placed the Liz Shaw character as a moderator on the site's forum, where she has produced such gems as, "If National are elected then they will also reduce taxes therefore you'll have more money in the pocket. People are worried about health care, but having experienced both public and private, I can say that given the choice I wouldn't use public." Pure genius. She adds given the choice to highlight the fact that only those who can afford private healthcare have a choice in the matter at all. Her performance on the site is chronicled here. It's not yet as impressive as her other work, but no doubt she will work up to something great.

So there you have it. New Zealand's answer to Borat, infamous but not famous, well-known but not well-liked, dismissed but not understood - and yet undaunted. We can only hope that as more people understand the lifelong performance-art project of "the Liz Shaw character", she will find her place amongst our classics: Fred Dagg, the Wizard of Christchurch, and Brendan Horan.

Apologies...

2008-01-08T23:06:00.001+13:00

...for the new layout.

I'll find a better background image soon.

Interactive Advertising - Awesome?

2008-01-08T18:55:00.000+13:00

Pronet Advertising's blog gets a hat-tip for spotting these
cool BBC World billboards in the US.

Labour Should Lose This Year's Election

2008-01-07T15:55:00.001+13:00

The word "should" is ambiguous. Or even polyguous. Here are a few:

1. If you set the kindling properly, the fire should light.
2. You should refrain from punching old ladies in the face.

The first one is a prediction, and the other is a moral imperative. So when I say, "Labour should lose the election," while most people would be making a prediction, I'm actually issuing a moral imperative: do the right thing, Labour, and lose.

Yes, it's pretty likely that Labour will lose this year's election, though there is plenty of time yet for some absurd bullshit to come out. And that's kind of what I'm talking about here. The absurd bullshit. Because at this point, what's going to shift the average voter's vote is either a competition of tax cuts or some stupid scandal where it turns out John Key's boning Gerry Brownlee or something.

And really, neither of those things should have any impact on sensible voters at all. TV3 News authoritatively declared a few weeks ago that Labour would have to promise a $25/week tax cut in order to retain power after the next election. Seriously, this was national 6pm news. "Here is how much each person in New Zealand must be paid by the political party in order to get their votes." As if, you know, that's what democracy is all about - voting for whoever promises you the shiniest balloon and the sweetest lollipop.

And the stupid scandals are just stupid. There will be some this year. And they are stupid.

Throughout the past century, there has been a shift in attitudes towards democracy, from voters being seen as rational individuals who should be exposed to arguments about the best policies for the nation as a whole, to voters being seen as essentially consumers in a market economy of votes, driven by irrational desires rather than rational thought.

This shift has infected what used to pass for left-wing parties in Western countries. We saw it with Clinton and the Democrats, and then Blair and British Labour. Both parties were responding to tactics that had already been introduced by Reagan and Thatcher, appealing to the atomised society of selfish individuals who don't see themselves as part of a community. The emphasis shifted from good policy to good marketing - echoing a shift already effected in the economy, from rational purchasers to subconscious desire-driven consumers.

In New Zealand, the political left is already basically non-existent. The nature of parliamentary politics in the market economy of votes has a feedback effect on the policies of "leftist" parties. Over time, there is an inevitable shift from true left and true right towards the "centre" - which is essentially a compromise between capitalism that accentuates the rewards for those at the top and capitalism that mitigates the effects on those at the bottom. "Left" or "right", New Zealand political parties are capitalist, which makes them essentially right-wing in my book.

There was a conversation between Clinton and one of his advisers, when he started creating policy based on phone polling. "What's the point of being elected if we don't have any real policies?" asked the adviser.

Clinton replied, "What's the point of having policies if we don't get elected?"

At first glance, this sounds like a sensible practical view. In a representative democracy, politics must surely involve some compromise. The problem is, though, that the compromise is no longer a political or economic ideological compromise ("OK, we'll raise taxes, but also offer incentives to start-up small businesses"), but instead are cynical vote-buying strategies akin to the marketing of retail products.

Labour's on the defensive. They're down in the polls thanks to skilful spin and misinformation from National surrounding the repeal of Section 59, the Electoral Finance Bill and tax cuts - misinformation that was picked up and carried by Kiwi media too excited by revenue to tell the (very) plain facts. It is simply the case that when things are going pretty well (well enough for Kiwis to have the education and wealth necessary to move their families overseas if they choose), people stop caring whence good living conditions come and start caring about who's going to give them personally something they want in exchange for their vote.

Unless there is a radical shift in the attitude of the Kiwi populace (unlikely), the only way Labour will win the upcoming election is by focussing even less on good policy and even more on the kind of brand marketing National has spent the last few years perfecting. Even if they win the election, they will lose what remains of their integrity. And the effect on the voting populace will be one that shapes a nation of voters who care more about stupid shit than about rational policy.

So, Labour, boldly lose the next election. Concentrate on coming up with policies you think will work in the long run, campaign on information about those policies, don't continue to stoop to National's level of brand-marketing politics, and let National fuck things up for everyone. It's the only way they'll learn.

(more from the comments)

You supposed that Labour will lose the next election.

I said it certainly looks like Labour will lose the next election, though there's time yet for that to change.

You also supposed that Labour will fight the election with cheap stunts rather than real policies.

I said that campaigning with good policies rather than brand marketing probably wouldn't win it the election, and the chances are that Labour wants enough to win to prefer emulating National's tactics to losing.

You decided that Labour ought to lose the election, so that the public will be taught a lesson about how silly they were to vote National.

That's where I was unclear. What I meant was "it's the only way they'll learn to vote for good policy rather than be swayed by brand marketing". The manner of learning would indeed probably be National fucking a bunch of things up.

I didn't say that Labour should intentionally lose just to demonstrate how bad National is. I said that Labour should campaign on good policies even if that means losing the election.

If the current trends continue, elections will be more and more fought in terms of competing brand marketing rather than good policy, and in the long run that will be increasingly bad for New Zealand as a civic society. Labour could set a good example and try to push the trend back in the direction of policy, but to do so might result in bad things for New Zealand in the short term - a National-led government. But in the long term, I think we will suffer more if politics continue down this path.

Labour should campaign on policy, even if that means losing.

Hole in Space?

2008-01-04T10:54:00.000+13:00

The answer to this must be something really simple that I'm overlooking. I first found this about 10 years ago, got a maths exercise book, cut the pieces out, and still couldn't work it out.
It is weird.

World of Warcraft March for Ron Paul

2008-01-03T13:50:00.000+13:00

The sad thing is, it was bound to happen sooner or later.

Click here for details.

In Case Anyone Missed It...

2008-01-03T13:09:00.000+13:00

Last year, Japanese scientists worked out how to turn skin cells into stem cells.

That is fucking cool.

More info here. Sadly, we must bit adieu to our dystopian sci-fi fantasies of clones being raised in confinement to provide us with spare livers and such.

A Deluded Man Talking to his Cat

2008-01-02T11:13:00.000+13:00

Garfield: it's funnier when he doesn't talk back.
Tweebiscuit discovered (two years ago) that Garfield strips become absolutely hilarious when you remove Garfield's thought bubbles. Instead of dialogue, there's just a weird bastard talking to his cat.

Click here to check them out.

Oh dear

2007-12-27T17:45:00.001+13:00

I Am A: Neutral Good Human Wizard (3rd Level)

Ability Scores:

Strength-11

Dexterity-15

Constitution-12

Intelligence-17

Wisdom-13

Charisma-16

Alignment:
Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment because because it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.

Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.

Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

Murder! Blow your wig at this keen site.

2007-12-27T15:52:00.000+13:00

I learned a huge amount of stuff as a kid playing role-playing games. Okay, I still do play RPGs. I meet with a few friends to play D&D (which I never actually played as a kid) every few weeks. Resource books about different historical periods were probably the main source of info - Arthurian legend, medieval Europe, Lovecraft, etc.

Anyway, here's a neat resource, that would probably be pretty sweet for anyone wanting to write fiction set in the decade. Dirty '30s has lots of sweet info about the Mafia, Nazis, Commies, gumshoes, jazz, and all that other cool shit from the over-romanticised Depression times. Yay, art deco, etc. Fun times. Kind of.

Just a Big Softie

2007-12-19T08:03:00.000+13:00

DC: The Moment of Creation

2007-12-13T22:26:00.001+13:00

Chapter Three: The Moment of Creation

Haha, okay, now things finally get a bit interesting.

Ian points out the similarities of the creation myths, which seems to be basically that they all involve creation. Those that don't - such as the Indian notion of an infinite past - are dismissed as "the much simpler view". Ian does not explain how "stuff was always here" is simpler than "a big invisible man made stuff from scratch".

Here's the passage that cracks me up:

Davies argues that God did not cause the Big Bang, because causing, by definition, can only happen within a time-bound realm, not a timeless one. Davies overlooks the transcendence of God, however - virtually all religions argue that a Deity capable of creating the universe is just as capable [of] plunging his hand into it from the outside to stir the mix. I digress, however.

"I digress, however," is code for, "Let's not think too much about that part, OK? Cos I'm talking out my arse."

What Ian is imagining here is a God who sits outside of time and "plunges his hand in" - makes changes - within the time-bound universe. These words are strung together into grammatically correct sentences, but aren't saying anything at all. To plunge, to act, to change, to cause, to do anything at all... this is an event. To speak of action outside of the context of time is like speaking of shape outside of the context of space. It is simply meaningless babble to say "action outside of time", because everything we have ever known and meant by "action" is saturated by notions of time. There is a before-acting, a during-acting and an after-acting. Without any of those things, the very notion of making a change or causing anything at all is absurd and meaningless. Not just "so difficult that only an omnipotent being could do it". Just meaningless.

And this is apparently made meaningful and sensical by the addition of the adjective "transcendent" to the name God. It doesn't matter what you call God, the statement "action outside of time" means nothing.

So here's the next bit. Davies suggests that the universe could have come into being via a "quantum event". The quoted Guardian piece continues:

The larger the time interval, the greater the probability that a quantum event will occur. Outside of time, however, no quantum event is possible. Therefore, the origin of time (coincident with that of space, matter and energy) eliminates quantum tunneling as 'creator'.

And suddenly Ian takes up the "events outside of time make no sense" standard! "In simple language," he writes, "there's still no natural explanation for the Big Bang." Apparently it's fine for God to act outside of time, but it's absurd to talk of quantum events occurring outside of time. Of course, it is absurd to talk of quantum events occurring outside of time, but no more absurd than to talk of anything occurring outside of time.

Forgetting the origin of the universe in general, there are problems with the origins of the physical laws of the universe. Where did they come from? Davies writes:

The root cause of all the difficulty can be traced to the fact that both religion and science appeal to some agency outside the universe to explain its lawlike order. Dumping the problem in the lap of a pre-existing designer is no explanation at all, as it merely begs the question of who designed the designer. But appealing to a host of unseen universes and a set of unexplained meta-laws is scarcely any better.

From which Ian derives, "[Davies] rejects Intelligent Design because, well, it implies a Designer." Which is not at all what he said. Davies did not dismiss a designer, at least in terms of his quoted statements, simply because he has an emotional aversion to the idea of one. His complaint was that any attempt to find a cause of the laws of the universe in something beyond the universe, be it designer or extra-universal laws, merely brings one back to the same question: where did that design come from?

While Ian's answer to this question is not explicit, it seems clear that the usual theistic explanation of "God breaks the rules" comes into play. Other things need reasons for making sense; God is the exception.

The choice of Paul Davies as a representative of Big Bang theorists is interesting, as Paul Davies is basically a theist himself. What seems to convince Davies (and Ian) that the universe is designed is the apparent harmony of physical laws, when so many things "could have" been different, and thus not given rise to life on earth.

Ian declares at the end of the chapter that this is going to be a major theme of his book. There are so many things that "could have" been different, therefore we are so lucky to be here that it is unbelievable that our being here is not the result of sentient intention.

At first glance, it's a compelling argument. It makes a few assumptions, though, that aren't immediately obvious.

1. The assumption that it is intelligible to speak of what "could have happened" in the universe - that things like "if gravity was just a bit stronger, life wouldn't be possible" are meaningful statements. Against what other universes are we comparing this one?

2. The assumption that earth life, or even sentient life at all, is special enough to require special explanation. As phenomena go, we find ourselves pretty interesting, but if talk of "what if the universe was different" is meaningful, what makes sentience any more amazing than a total dispersal of all energy and matter? We happen to be the kind of phenomena that can reflect on our situation and think, "Fucking hell, that was lucky!" But just because phenomena in some hypothetical other universe lacks such self-reflective ability doesn't mean that it's any less "lucky" in the same sense.

3. The assumption that there aren't "other universes" which fall victim to exactly the sentient-life-less fate we're told we narrowly avoided, and that this just happens to be one in which sentient life is possible. I put "other universes" in scare quotes, because if "other universes" exist in any way that is relevant or real, then they are really part of what I call "the universe" - which is everything that exists.

Anyway. I'll save further rants about the anthropic principle to later chapters, as I assume that's the direction in which Ian will be taking us.

DC: In the Beginning

2007-12-13T21:57:00.000+13:00

Chapter Two: In the Beginning

This chapter is dedicated to debunking an idea that is apparently common among some of the people Ian doesn't like, such as Karen Armstrong. The idea they espouse is that there was an "Axial age" - a time in history when disparate cultures made similar leaps in their thought. In India, Vedanta was showing up, as did Gautama (the Buddha). Plato was doing his thing. Isaiah was doing his for the Hebrews. Taoism in China, etc. Basically, it's considered a pivotal (axial!) time in the development of these cultures.

Ian's concern is that some of these thinkers believe that there is an evolution of theism, from animism to polytheism to monotheism (to atheism, apparently), which therefore lends some kind of historical superiority to atheism in the minds of these thinkers. Comparing atheism to monotheism is like comparing Einstein to Newton - "we know better now". Ian will have none of that.

In order to debunk the evolution-of-religion idea, Ian cites various creation myths from around the world, and shows that similarities and differences don't follow any kind of evolutionary progression. Monotheism and creation ex nihilo was a very old idea, rather than a later stage of natural religious development, as his targets assert.

Recent Middle Eastern archaeological discoveries suggest that analogies to the Genesis creation stories existed long before the penning of Genesis, in a city called Ebla. Tablets recovered relatively recently from Ebla make references to names that are potentially Hebraic biblical names, like Adam and Eve, and Sodom.

While I don't find myself as blown away as Ian apparently does by the idea that two Middle Eastern cultures shared similar creation myths (when Adam and Eve are referenced in 2500-year-old Chinese writings, I'll be impressed), I think he adequately messes with the theory that monotheism is only ever a development out of polytheism, rather than a potentially older idea.

Though, really, it's a long-winded way to go about things. If the concern is that Some People Say that atheism is the most advanced step of evolution of a natural religious progression, then one need look no further than the confirmed atheists of ancient India. I've never been much of a fan of the essentially Hegelian idea of a natural progression of ideas. It has the worrying tendency to imbue recent thinkers with an exaggerated sense of their own importance, as evidenced in just about every German philosopher ever. They all seem to think that no one has got it right in history until them, and they're the culmination of human wisdom. Hegel finished writing The Phenomenology of the Spirit and thought, "There, I'm the end of history." Kant called his Critique "a Copernican revolution" in thought and went on to write The Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic, which could have been titled "all you motherfuckers gotta take me into account". He was right, but come on, fella. Chill out. And then there was Nietzsche. He thought he was so right that people wouldn't even understand how right he was for another few centuries.

Of course, no one actually got it right until me. Syntheism all the way, baby.

Anyway. People just think stuff. Ian does a good job here of presenting counter-examples to the evolving-religion hypothesis he finds in Armstrong. That doesn't greatly concern me, because my views aren't embodied by the people with whom he is concerned. I do find that with Ian, though. He tends to think that citing people he considers "liberals" gives him some kind of added weight when debating people he considers "liberals". Kind of a "you don't like Hawaiian pizza? WELL, LIBERAL HISTORIAN HOWARD ZINN LOVES PIZZA" thing.

Anyway, interesting chapter. Moving on.

The Divinity Code

2007-12-13T21:18:00.001+13:00

Well, in addition to receiving a few requests for me to start posting again, Ian Wishart's new book, The Divinity Code, quotes me extensively. Seeing as I pointed put that whole Marx not-quite-quote debacle in Eve's Bite, I should have a look at Code and let you know what I think.

Firstly, if anyone's interested, Ian Wishart did not quote me out of context in chapter 17, and he references the full conversation in a footnote. I am not unhappy with how I was portrayed. Ian did not "pull a Marx" on me. And so he shouldn't, but for some reason I feel grateful.

Chapter One: The Quest for Fire

This chapter can be summed up as follows.

1. What do we know? Maybe there was an Atlantis. Oooh! Therefore, no one knows what they're talking about. Therefore, Dawkins and Geering and others don't know what they're talking about. Keep reading! Cos Ian knows what he's talking about.

2. Lots of people believe in God. Not just stupid Americans. New Zealanders do too! And fewer people believe in ghosts and reincarnation and astrology, which are apparently New Age, despite all being pretty goddam old. So lots of people believe in the supernatural. YOU JUST THINK ABOUT THAT. Also, Fox News!

3. Some people say we evolved to believe in God. Ha! How did single-celled organisms know that believing in God would be useful? They couldn't, therefore theism cannot be an evolved trait.

Ian's pulled out this bizarre primary-school misunderstanding of evolution before, and I'm quite certain he understands it better than that. But I'll clarify. Evolutionary theory does not suggest that traits are intentionally evolved. That is, if anything, Lamarckism, or perhaps a New Agey kind of guided-evolution thing. Traits arise randomly, and if they are useful or not an impediment, they survive. The simple rule of evolution is this: What tends to survive, tends to survive.

There are ideas that the tendency for theism is an evolved trait. They tend to go along the lines of assignment of agency to unexplained phenomena. If animals evolve a trait to assume the rustling in the trees behind them is caused by a conscious agent rather than the environment, they are at an advantage. If it is a predator, they are better off running. If it is prey, they are better off hunting. If it is neither, and is simply the wind, they don't lose much by looking a bit silly assuming agency. Darwin actually cited an example of this - his dog barking at something blowing in the wind.

So it's possible that the assumption of agency is an evolved trait. That would go some way to explaining the widespread belief in the supernatural with regards to natural phenomena. Animism, believing in spirits for each tree and river, is an example. Lightning as thrown by a god, etc. But really, such beliefs can be explained by sociological and psychological theories no less believable than a genetic-tendency theory.

In fact, the idea that we have a genetic tendency to assume agency doesn't really deserve the title "theory", because it's just an idea. It's not as ridiculous as Ian makes it out to be, but it's not the cornerstone of many people's attitude towards theism either. It's certainly the kind of thing that would be evolutionarily advantageous, and nothing in the behaviour of animals or humans contradicts the hypothesis, but it's not a testable theory, unless some odd fellow went about trying to isolate a gene responsible for it, which would be an absurdly difficult and basically pointless venture.

It's worth noting that "an evolved tendency to assume agency when faced with unexplained phenomena" is a bit more of a complex idea than "the idea that evolution created the idea of God in our heads", which is the way Ian phrased it. It's a little like describing gravity as "the idea that chunks of stuff are in love with each other, but like each other less when they're further away". It's easy to dismiss ideas out of hand when you frame them in ways that make even a cursory analysis seem like a waste of time.

But then, that's just the introductory chapter, and frankly, it's already much better than Eve's Bite, which was more of a paranoid diatribe about Capitalised Nouns that are out to get you because everyone's out to get Christians, which just goes to show how right they are. Eve's Bite dealt with values, however misrepresented and caricatured, and that makes it a tricky topic to cover without resorting to, "What are you, insane?" The Divinity Code deals with actual concrete arguments, and that is refreshing as all hell. Gives a fellow some traction.

Anyway, next, chapter two.

Problem Solved

2007-11-08T15:09:00.000+13:00

Who knew?

Still Free

2007-11-07T16:17:00.000+13:00

Mark Ecko tags Airforce One.

Except he didn't.

But he has done some pretty cool things.

Solid as Iraq

2007-10-31T17:18:00.000+13:00

From Graham Walker, Director of Management of the World RPS Society, how to win at Rock, Paper, Scissors. But before you read this, check out The Ultimate Rock, Paper, Scissors Chart. Personally, I'm confident that wolf outruns lightning.

1 - Rock is for Rookies

In RPS circles a common mantra is “Rock is for Rookies” because males have a tendency to lead with Rock on their opening throw. It has a lot to do with idea that Rock is perceived as “strong” and forceful”, so guys tend to fall back on it. Use this knowledge to take an easy first win by playing Paper. This tactic is best done in pedestrian matches against someone who doesn’t play that much and generally won’t work in tournament play.

2 - Scissors on First

The second step in the ‘Rock is for Rookies’ line of thinking is to play scissors as your opening move against a more experienced player. Since you know they won’t come out with rock (since it is too obvious), scissors is your obvious safe move to win against paper or stalemate to itself.

3 - The Double Run

When playing with someone who is not experienced at the RPS, look out for double runs or in other words, the same throw twice. When this happens you can safely eliminate that throw and guarantee yourself at worst a stalemate in the next game. So, when you see a two-Scissor run, you know their next move will be Rock or Paper, so Paper is your best move. Why does this work? People hate being predictable and the perceived hallmark of predictability is to come out with the same throw three times in row.

4 - Telegraph Your Throw

Tell your opponent what you are going to throw and then actually throw what you said. Why? As long as you are not playing someone who actually thinks you are bold enough to telegraph your throw and then actually deliver it, you can eliminate the throw that beats the throw you are telegraphing. So, if you announce rock, your opponent won’t play paper which means coming out with that scissors will give you at worst a stalemate and at best the win.

5 - Step Ahead Thinking

Don’t know what to do for your next throw? Try playing the throw that would have lost to your opponents last throw? Sounds weird but it works more often than not, why? Inexperienced (or flustered) players will often subconsciously deliver the throw that beat their last one. Therefore, if your opponent played paper, they will very often play Scissors, so you go Rock. This is a good tactic in a stalemate situation or when your opponent lost their last game. It is not as successful after a player has won the last game as they are generally in a more confident state of mind which causes them to be more active in choosing their next throw.

6 - Suggest A Throw

When playing against someone who asks you to remind them about the rules, take the opportunity to subtly “suggest a throw” as you explain to them by physically showing them the throw you want them to play. ie “Paper beats Rock, Rock beats scissors (show scissors), Scissors (show scissors again) beats paper.” Believe it or not, when people are not paying attention their subconscious mind will often accept your “suggestion”. A very similar technique is used by magicians to get someone to take a specific card from the deck.

7 - When All Else Fails Go With Paper

Haven’t a clue what to throw next? Then go with Paper. Why? Statistically, in competition play, it has been observed that scissors is thrown the least often. Specifically, it gets delivered 29.6% of the time, so it slightly under-indexes against the expected average of 33.33% by 3.73%. Obviously, knowing this only gives you a slight advantage, but in a situation where you just don’t know what to do, even a slight edge is better than none at all.

8 - The Rounder’s Ploy

This technique falls into more of a ‘cheating’ category, but if you have no honour and can live with yourself the next day, you can use it to get an edge. The way it works is when you suggest a game with someone, make no mention of the number of rounds you are going to play. Play the first match and if you win, take it is as a win. If you lose, without missing a beat start playing the ‘next’ round on the assumption that it was a best 2 out of 3. No doubt you will hear protests from your opponent but stay firm and remind them that ‘no one plays best of one for a kind of decision that you two are making’. No this devious technique won’t guarantee you the win, but it will give you a chance to battle back to even and start again.

Taking the Lead out of the Crime Pencil. Yes, that's it.

2007-10-30T19:24:00.000+13:00

Who knew he fought violent crime too?
I've explained before that free will is superstitious nonsense. The reasons for a person's actions are determined by factors outside of their control - this is a logical necessity. And so the rational way to treat crime is as a sickness with causes, rather than a sin of volition.

Put me in charge of parking fines in Auckland City, and I can make a statistically significant number of drivers pay for parking - by doubling the fines. Nothing else will have changed, except for me upping the fines, and that will change their behaviour. External factors.

It's fairly well known that the book Freakonomics claimed that crime rates in the US markedly dropped as a result of legalised abortions. 20 years later, there was a generation of unwanted 20-year-olds born to impoverished young single mothers who didn't exist to join gangs and smoke the marijuana like a cigarette. Crime, which had been a growing concern in the US, plummeted.

The Independent is now reporting that crime has dropped due to leaded petrol being banned. Lead had been associated with minor brain damage in children exposed to it - potentially resulting in higher rates of criminal behaviour as adults. The UK was one of the last developed countries to ban lead in petrol, and it's the last to see a significant drop in crime.

To be concerned more with the long-term causes of crime than the immediate prevention and punishment of criminals in the short term is typically a left-wing political perspective. Right-wing politics are often identified with harsher sentencing and more police powers - whether due to the ideology of the politicians or the simple practicality of an easily grabbed senior-citizen vote.

Unfortunately, people have very short memories, and policies that have long-term reductive effects on crime are seldom appreciated in the form of popular political support. In other words, if you're asked what you're going to do about crime, and you say you'll remove its causes 20 years from now and the other guy says he'll make "life mean life", you'll lose, and 20 years later, crime won't have dropped off.

No more wall candy, people.

Selective, but Cool

2007-10-26T15:55:00.001+13:00

This News Map is mightily fucking awesome.

Just a Little Bit Awesome

2007-10-26T14:42:00.000+13:00

Sensing Ratings

2007-10-25T16:04:00.002+13:00

Sensing Murder is a presumably popular television show here in New Zealand. That means that people watch it, so advertisers pay TVNZ, so TVNZ pays the production company, so the production company pays its employees and the 'psychics' featured. The idea is fairly simple - take an unsolved murder, list the known evidence, bring in psychics to tell us the known evidence again, and then make a few suggestions as to what might have happened.

Now, the show does serve one good function - one mentioned recently on Shortland Street (come on, you all watch it). By bringing the public's attention to these unsolved murders, it's possible to jog viewers' memories and they might contact the police with useful information. The fact that the same function can be fulfilled without encouraging ignorance and stupidity - such as with The Investigator - removes this justification.

The show claims that, having tested almost 200 psychics with a little-known solved murder case, a select few are found to participate. We are then assured that the psychics are told nothing of the unsolved case, don't know what they're working on till they arrive at the production office, aren't given any cues by the crew, and that therefore their melodramatic conversations with dead victims are real.

As my good friend James says, "He either walked up the stairs or teleported to the top of the building, and he didn't walk up the stairs." Which is more likely? That the creators of the show are lying to you, or that these people are actually communicating with dead people.

The victims' families are often understandably eager to believe, with many tears and such. Whether such false hopes are further victimisation or compassionate white lies, I'm not decided.

Knowing how many sceptics there are out there, one recent episode included self-promoting author Nigel Latta, claiming to be a sceptic himself, then being totally amazed by how totally real the show that's paying him to appear on television is.

Alan Charman of Immortality.co.nz has made a very compassionate offer to the show and its four featured psychics. The Immortality Challenge makes a small demand for a big payout. All any of the psychics must do is exactly what they do on the show, except under controlled conditions: prove they are communicating with dead people. Once they've done so, they will receive far more than Sensing Murder pays them - $1,000,000 for themselves and $1,000,000 for their chosen charity. The offer to the Sensing Murder psychics is being discussed on racechat.co.nz.

Me: Hi, Alan speaking.

DB: Who am I talking to?

Me: Alan

DB; Hi, it's David Baldock here from Ninox Television, you just rang me.

Me: It's Alan Charman from the two million dollar paranormal challenge.

DB: [sounding distinctly less happy than 3 seconds previously] Ah. Good morning.

Me: [keeping it friendly] You don't sound all that pleased to hear from me?

DB: [poise quickly recovered] Quite happy to talk, but I'm rushing off to a meeting. Can I call you back in an hour?

Me: [not asking why the hell you'd ring someone if you couldn't talk to them] No problem, look forward to hearing from you.

This television show is making people stupider, but unlike productions from, say, Touchdown, they are making people stupider in a way that could be easily removed with a little honest experiment - like the Immortality Challenge. It's much harder to prove that Mitre 10 Dream Home is a scam.

Sensing Murder can be contacted through their website, or by phoning Ninox Films Ltd in Wellington, if you feel like asking them why they're not giving $1,000,000 to child cancer or something.

Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!

2007-10-25T10:58:00.000+13:00

From your first cigarette to your last dying days.