Communications

June 30 2011August 22 2011

Religion, the mother of all conspiracies

This is going to be a big one, not necessarily long just hitting at the basis of belief. Think I need to explain bit by bit and just so you know I don’t think it’s a modern conspiracy like the New World Order or so called 911-Truthers.

God
So firstly let’s face the reality of existence and admit there is no god, none of any faith. It’s quite clear that after reading around the history of religion and the psychology of belief and add in a little evolutionary theory that Mankind needs to have a supernatural agent. A being that can be blamed for things we don’t understand or to explain random events. There is no god, because if it were to exist outside our physical realm and not affect us then we have no need to understand it, but if god were to exist within and affect our realm then it should be detectable. The effect is not detectable.

Creation
It is nice that everyone enjoys a good story and that as social creatures we tell and re-tell stories, often embellishing them messages to get our particular point of view across. I’m happy to have myths on the origins of the Earth and the universe, it’s fun to tell a riveting tale. In reality we have a creation story based on all the observable evidence and it varies quite a lot from camp fire tales of 2000 years ago. Keep your stories but I prefer to follow the evidence.

Religious Texts
For too long Chinese whispers, mistranslations and blatant forgery written in the holy books of the world have been used to suppress and force people into acting as “they should”. Most of the biblical stories have no evidence for their reality and so most are made up or forged using older texts as a basis for modern manipulation. The arcane rules set down by organised religion that have nothing to do with love and compassion astound me. The puppets of god’s so called power should stand forth and announce to the world the truth about the lies they expound and endorse. The leaders of the faithful should admit the problems and forgeries within the texts and develop a more caring, humanist view of the world.

Organised Religion
Any organisation can, at the roots, be about belief and faith in the greater good. Some companies like to do good, some churches like to do good but what is the bigger picture?Companies are there to make money. Churches are there to maintain a healthy flock and in some cases to make money and create a power base. The problem is that all organisations are about power. The churches are no different. Once you get into hierarchy you gain power and it becomes harder and harder to face reality based on evidence. There is plenty of cognitive dissonance in everyday life but probably more in the churches. There is little chance to influence the direction of a big organisation especially when it’s about keeping the flock oppressed.

The Good of the People
Religion seems to be little about doing things for the good of the people and more about keeping the guilt and fear in people so that they never leave the flock. Churches make people feel guilty about their behaviour and where can they go to feel better and get absolution? Their church.

Doctrine
Are we really living in a time when people believe that the way an animal is slaughtered can please or displease a god? That having a foreskin is against god? That being gay and loving another human being is against god? That missing a prayer gets you sent to hell? That not wearing a condom and then dying of AIDS is the great plan? That god is a certain nationality? That intercessory prayer works? That religious people deserve to be heard in moral debates just because they believe in god? That morals can only come from god? That the Earth is 6000 years old? That religion has its place in government? That Jesus existed? That the exodus happened?

Humanism
The way to be good to people and accept the world for what it is, without god.
Look it up and treasure it.

Science
The best tool we have for understanding our world. We make predications based on observations and then see if we are right. Then adjust our predictions and try again. What better way could there be for learning what is true?

Conspiracy
So, religious leaders lie about god, they lie about morals and they lie about the historical evidence. Yet they still maintain they are correct. That is your conspiracy.

June 30 2011August 22 2011

TV volume settings

This post is based on a tweet. Perhaps this’ll happen more often. I find something pithy to mention and then I’ll expand upon it in a blog post.
My wife was changing the TV volume the other day and making sure she could see the number it was set on (the amp is perpendicular to where we sit, so quite hard to read). I asked whether she was being fussy about what volume the amp was on. No, was the reply, you are the fussy one.
This is correct as I would prefer the TV volume (actually the amp volume) on either a multiple of 2 or 5. Given that for normal TV viewing the ideal volume is somewhere between 20 and 30 this gives plenty of choice: 22,24,25,26,28. The other volume settings are incorrect to use and even if they create the best listening conditions I would find it hard to settle on one of those.
I do not consider this to be weird behaviour, I consider it to be remarkably sensible although I would probably end up with many logical fallacies should I attempt to explain how this obsessiveness can be justified.
A friend will only get out of bed if, when he looks at the alarm clock, it is a multiple of 5 minutes. If not he will stay in bed until the next multiple. Now that’s weird!

June 29 2011August 22 2011

The worst waiting room

I’d like to know if there are worse but the waiting room I am currently sitting in is pretty poor. A row of chairs placed against the wall in what can only be described as a corridor, probably because it is a corridor.
I don’t think there are any magazines or books. The only entertainment is trying to guess why people are here. The noises of muffled chatter, trollies laden with removals going by and clacking over the bumps between tiles along the floor aren’t enough to keep my Internet crazy brain entertained. Just to add to potential humiliation the corridor isn’t off the beaten track either. It’s the route to the three main treatment areas. I’d often walked past these chairs and wondered about what it feels like to sit there. Now I know.
I have to sit up. If I slouch then the people walking along the corridor will have to walk single file, I can’t even cross my legs as my foot would stick out too far and inconvenience a great many people who gave business further along the way.
I’m keeping my head down and typing this to pass the time. Ignoring all that pass. A quick glance along the line of bored patients indicates they have the same tactic as me. There are no posters to wonder about, no collections of leaflets and no flyers for made-up alternative treatments just three tone walls (I kid you not).
I’m going to read a book on the Kindle app. That might pass the time. Could do with a coffee too. Let’s discover the crazy of the Congo with Mister Kurtz!

More adventures!
It turns out I’m pretty tired and reading or playing on the iPhone are out as I’ll fall asleep. I’ve just realised my chair doesn’t even have arms I can rest on. The chairs either side of me have arms and I’m sandwiched starting to feel as though I’ve paid economy. I can’t lean forwards, backwards or take my elbows from my sides.
It looks like the appointment is going to be delayed. All the people before me haven’t been in and I’m losing the will to live.

June 27 2011August 22 2011

Material World 23/06/11

Quentin Cooper discussed health reporting in UK newspapers with Dr William Lee, King’s College London and Roger Highfield, Editor of New Scientist. Material World.
Roger Highfield made the argument that newspapers are for entertainment and that the fact that around 70% of the claims made in their health articles were not backed up with evidence was justifiable. His reasoning was that journalists often have short deadlines and that the readership was able to tell the difference between what was true and what was not. He is quite wrong.
Newspapers are expected to tell the truth and to have evidence to back up what they report. The fact that people fail to trust newspaper science reporting is mostly due to newspapers reporting either poor research or researching poorly. The general public have lost faith in the trust of reporters to report what they know.
If the tabloids are generally read by the not so educated then those newspapers have a lot of responsibility for their readers’ health. People aren’t clever enough to judge the science and evidence for claims made in papers. Half of the population has below average intelligence and probably doesn’t understand the sceptical process of critical thinking about scientific claims. I await the time that a tabloid is sued for causing the death of someone who took their broccoli health plan seriously. The readers of the Daily Mail deserve whatever they get given the excrement they read.
The responsibility for the understanding of health articles relies with those writing the articles, not those who read them.

June 27 2011August 22 2011

How to eat an apple

Apart from using a knife (or not) and cutting up an apple I can think of predominantly two ways of eating an apple. This does matter because one way is correct and the other is not so correct.

Circumferential or the Segment method?

A circumferential eater will take a bite, rotate the sphere using the core as the axis and take another bite. This will result in a curve of apple exposed around the great circle of the apple. Then another line of bite is taken from each end (assuming that the eater has a big enough mouth to bite to the core)
A segmental eater takes bites out of the apple from stalk to opposite pole. This results in a segment being eaten and then the apple being rotated to start the process again.
The problem is exposure of the flesh of the apple to the air to turn brown and this needs to be minimised. In the segment method the area exposed for significant time is constant. For the circumferential method the area exposed increases with time.

Which leads to:

The analysis shows that if your bite radius is greater than 0.140 of the radius of the apple then you should eat in segments. Apart from small mammals the bite radius is going to be more than 14% of the apple radius, unless there is a huge apple variety waiting to be discovered.

This post was necessary because every time I eat an apple my wife tells me I am eating it the wrong way.

June 25 2011August 22 2011

Sky+HD sound

You would think it’s simple.
Sky box has HDMI output. My amplifier has HDMI in with full HD sound and 7.1 decoding. So why does Sky box only output stereo sound through the HDMI cable? I have optical cable connected which does work fine ( DD 5.1 only). The installation tech told me the HDMI does do 5.1, he was wrong although it’s hard to find a definitive answer.
After about an hour of googling I finally found what I hope is the correct answer.

http://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Sky-HD-Picture-Sound/Sky-HD-5-1-via-HDMI/m-p/2183#M300

Why make a piece of kit that doesn’t do what it can? Is it that you can’t send HD sound over satellite signal? Perhaps they only have space for compressed Dolby digital rather than the more pure 48khz CD or better standard.
Sky need a tech page for people who know their stuff to help make decent equipment decisions.
Oh well.

June 24 2011August 22 2011

Flowers

See, it’s nice down South! Another dog walk another lovely view. Probably going to rain in a bit.

June 23 2011February 18 2020

Time Consuming

Just managed to upload the parish website version 2. This was started in about 2004 and then I had a re-imaging in about 2010. There’s quite a but there. I was really proud of it and like the colour scheme. Some pictures are missing and I doubt I’ll find them as I changed computers in that time, whoops.
Link here.
It brings back some wonderful memories and what you can do when you have the time and aren’t running around after two kids.

June 23 2011August 22 2011

Nearly ready for announcement

I think I am nearly ready to inform friends and family and the world about this website. I wonder what sort of response I’ll get but as this is a vanity / personal project I don’t really care. I think I’d like to improve the look and get away from using the default theme, although I have looked at others and I prefer the default theme, then I will add content! I have started to map out the shape and design of the website.
The picture is just a trial. Think my niece took the photo but it looks cool.

June 22 2011August 22 2011