Tag: penguin

Posted on

28000

Stansted Airport, 24 April 2016.

POTUS departed for Germany. I feel quite privileged to be in a position where I was able to be there and see everything.

28000
28000

It was interesting. The airport was quiet for about the hour that I was there. No flights in or out, I wonder if that played havoc with the airlines’ schedules? The photos taken here are from the closest I could get without being shot by the snipers on top of the buildings or the Met Police Helicopter constantly circling around above us.

Stansted Map
Stansted Map

This map has three numbers drawn on it. Number 1 was the position of the C-17 parked, I didn’t see that move. Number 2 is where Air Force One was parked and number 3 was the closest I could get. Fortunately I was reasonably aware of the layout of the old side of the airport.

It was quite exciting knowing I had seen the President but in all honesty all we saw were figures go up the stairs. It was also pretty damn cold and we had hail/snow at one point! I believe Stansted was chosen because it is the go-to airport for hostages and hijacking along with having plenty of space to put important planes.

I will note that events from the film London Has Fallen did not occur.

Posted on

Eye In The Sky

Took a trip to Strood to watch Eye In The Sky. You should know by now that I will have rated this film on IMDB and that there is a certain system and method involved which I explained here.

So, this is a film dealing with a hypothetical capture of fighters by the UK on Al Shabaab members in Kenya. Now, I have no idea about the types of technology used in this film. I don’t know how good camera zooms are on drone planes. I don’t know how good calculating collateral damage is and I don’t know how good communications are. The facial recognition bit seemed most unlikely to me, but then I’m not an expert.

This is a Reaper drone, the type used in the film. From looking at the photos on Wikipedia the film seems to have reconstructed the control room quite well along with the weapons and camera capabilities of the Reaper.

Initially this film is about the capture of some of the most wanted list of Al Shabaab. But the situation changes when the naughty people move suddenly from one house where the Kenyan army are waiting to another in an Al Shabaab controlled area of town. This changes the plans considerably. Also, once the beetle bug gets inside the house there is a clear justification for a Hellfire strike.

This film follows the discussions between the UK Army, USA Air Force and politicians as the UK contemplates essentially assassinating five people including two UK subjects and a USA citizen.

Oh, yeah British people. You aren’t citizens. You are SUBJECTS. You are subservient to the Queen. God Save the Queen, fuck you.

The problem with the air strike is caused by a 10 year old girl selling bread just outside the wall of the target house and so she will likely die if the hellfires are released. I won’t give away the end, I’ll just say this. This film is worth watching. All actors are good. I didn’t like the US pilot and observer and I’d like to point out that not all men and women in the forces are that good looking.

At this point I wanted to write something like RIP Alan Rickman, but that implies that he is resting or his soul is elsewhere. That’s bullshit. So, perhaps I should say he’s dead. He was good.

Posted on

God Module – Electrowerkz

Took my sister to see God Module at Electrowerkz near The Angel in London. There were three bands playing and they were all actually pretty good unlike last time. Unusually the room on the ground floor was used as the venue, I’ve been in here before but have only experienced the first floor performance room for gigs. The sound was good and the room was just the right size. There were the usual freaks and geeks floating around all evening.

First band on were Die Kur. They had a very heavy metal sound with some synth stuff. Most enjoyable. My one concern was that the songs seemed a little too start-stop and a little short. Other than that they were very enjoyable.

Die Kur
Die Kur

Second band on the bill were DKAG. It was three blokes with Apple Macs on stage “playing” stuff. It was interesting as my sister spent a while asking “what is going on”, she’s quite a metal/rock fan really. After a while she was dancing and enjoyed it. It turns out I had seen this band before, I though I recognised them and actually searched on this site to see if I had seen them. It turned out I saw them with Combichrist a few years ago.

DKAG
DKAG

Finally God Module came on. I’d spent about a month listening to their stuff a lot and although I like it and it’s my sort of stuff a lot of the songs seemed similar. The sound and structure of the music was pretty much the same for every song. Also, the singer had a distortion effect on his voice.

One of the things about the ground floor room is that there isn’t a backstage. The bands had to walk through the audience to get to the stage which leant a kind of common touch to the evening. All the band members were milling around in the bar area after the gig, they were very approachable. Not that I did. I like to think I don’t fawn and hero worship, but I think I probably do to a certain extent.

God Module
God Module

God Module did what they do very well. The singer is possibly the largest man I have ever seen in a band and he didn’t really move around that much [too much inertia]. But they played a few songs I kinda recognised and the crowd loved them. It was ok for me.

Electrowerkz has gone somewhat upmarket as the gent’s loos had this in them by the sink:

Roses at Electrowerkz
Roses

I’m looking forward to my next gig, which I hope to get out to soon. I must get looking for stuff to see and listen to. My sister liked the evening but preferred the metal sound of the first band. Maybe she’ll convert in time!

Posted on

Listening

The internet and the companies on it are a good thing. I can know whatever I want within seconds. The world wide web is a force for great good. But, much like our social circles we tend to only look at things that confirm our own beliefs and reinforce everything we already think. It’s like newspapers and television channels. If you are liberal in your thoughts it’s reasonable to assume you would read The Guardian or Independent. If you are right wing then you might read The Times or Telegraph. If you are just plain crazy then you might read the Daily Fucking Mail.

Now, most of my friends share the same thoughts about society as I do. Some don’t and it’s always great fun to have conversations and discussions and arguments with them. It would be impossible in life to only spend your time with people who agree with you. You need to learn to accept what people think, even if they are clearly wrong.

I was almost going to turn this communication into a discussion about logical fallacies. You can Google that phrase and see what you find. It’s important to understand logical fallacies and how to spot them. I’m quite good at spotting some but I still don’t really understand the Straw Man argument and I keep reading about it and listening to people explain it.

So, this communication is about listening to opposing views. I have done this on twitter and follow some people who I would really rather not. I try to read what they say and do my best to understand them. I force myself to try and understand from their point of view. It’s a bit like reading the Daily Fucking Mail which I do occasionally to see what poisonous shit they are saying now.

So, one of the first people I started to follow to listen and see what they say was Deepak Chopra. He is often ridiculed on podcasts that I listen to. Here are a few of his tweets so you can see what sort of thing this knobhead says.

Now, I haven’t even read the article. It’s enough to annoy me that he claims consciousness isn’t in the body. Where the fuck else is it going to be?

What does this mean? They are words, but none that make sense.

When I see stuff like this and people retweeting this it pisses me off loads. How can people like this bullshit. I don’t understand. One of my issues is that I find it hard to see why people believe this bullshit. To me it is quite obvious how and why things work. We have explanations for all this stuff. We are finding out more and more as time goes on. We understand. We don’t need this waffle to help us cope with this one life we have. Now, I start to understand why people I listen to make fun of this man. Perhaps I’m jealous? Perhaps I think those who find peace in this shit must have contentment and happiness that I do not. this is a force for making people happy and calm. But then, it’s not really is it? People with faith and belief still hurt and have shit happen to them. They are still sad when people close to them die, they aren’t joyous because the soul lives on. Believers still feel pain but also have a veneer of lies to clutch on to, to comfort them.

I often think of this:

So, onto another tweeter I follow. Perhaps that should be twit. I am not sure. I try to be polite but sometimes I just give up and think these people are fucking arseholes. Ken Ham has spent millions creating an Ark in Kentucky. Let’s see what he has to say:

Sure, the biblical worldview values all human life, unless you are gay, transgender, divorce, have an abortion, don’t believe, are foreign, wear mixed fabrics, have sex before marriage, have an affair and so on. Fuck You Ken for saying this. I also don’t understand his first sentence. What the actual fuck? Evolution leads to euthanasia? How? This man just doesn’t understand evolution, which is rather sad. This man believes the bible is the literal truth. My problem with this is how can someone clearly intelligent [he has raised funds for his Ark and runs several organisations] believe that stuff?

Sure, God’s word is the best evidence. But we don’t have god’s word. We have words written by men, in a book, almost two thousand years ago. This book says it is true, therefore it is true. Awesome logic.

An ark! Noah’s ark. In Kentucky. Purporting to be the truth. Nothing to mock there.

I have to admit, I don’t understand “sin”. It seems to be breaking the rules from a book. It’s worse than breaking the law, I think. I’m not sure. Perhaps “sin” is what old celibate men decide it is. That sounds about right.

The number of times I have read this and tried to understand what it means! Arrrrrgh.

I’ll leave it there. Time to move on to another person I follow on twitter. Pastor Alex Rivas describes himself as “Son of God. Researcher. Leader. Prophet. A human being.” I don’t see much human being in the things he says:

I’m pretty sure bible says nothing about gay marriage, abortion or marijuana. If you can find the verse then please let me know. Obviously if you use the bible to support your ideas then you should surely follow all it’s principles. Leviticus 19:19 says:

You shall keep my statutes. You shall not let your cattle breed with a different kind. You shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed, nor shall you wear a garment of cloth made of two kinds of material.

Here’s another:

There’s NO evidence from the time of Jesus that he existed. NONE. Let alone that he was resurrected. NOT one thing. NADA. ZILCH. NOTHING. All we have are mistranslations of stories written about forty years after whatever happened. Yet we are to believe that these writings exactly reproduce the things that Yeshua said. I don’t understand how people who are so invested in the words of the bible haven’t taken the time and opportunity to look into the history of the bible. To understand from where the stories come. To read up about how this book they hold so dear came to be written.

Actually I do understand why these people haven’t looked into the history of their beloved book. It’s because they know it will destroy their faith. It will bring their world view crumbling down. It’s therefore best to ignore that. We don’t want to feel that the time and resources invested have been wasted.

Dana Ullman MPH CCH:

Homoeopathic meds have plenty of molecules, just none of the “active” ingredient that they claim.

That’s good. Homoeopathy is nothing. Seriously, it’s nothing. Anyway, Dana Ullman has MPH and CCH after his name. What does that mean? Right, MPH is Master of Public Health [not a medical degree] and CCH may be a homoeopathic post graduate degree thing. I’m not sure. Do you know how I introduce bullshit medicine in the school where I work? I explain what homoeopathy [and I spell it correctly] and I give pupils an understanding of the claims Homoeopaths make about how it works. I use official homoeopathy websites to describe the rules of homoeopathy. I don’t even get halfway through the rules before the pupils see it for what it is: bollocks.

If I want to create an air of authority then perhaps I should end everything I write with Ian Parish PGCE BEng (Hons) ACGI. Perhaps the world would like that and find my writings more impressive. I could, legitimately, sign off Plt Off Parish RAFVR(T). But I don’t.

I still follow these people. I still read their shit. I try to understand the world view they come from but I will admit that I struggle. I still find it incredibly weird that intelligent people believe these kids of things.

So, instead of wasting time on what these crazy people think. Here’s what science did today:

You see? Do you see what fantastic stuff we can do when we put our energies and minds to it. Science is fantastic.

As an aside, I love the fact that the Space-X barges are named after ships from Iain M Banks books.

Posted on

Allegiant

I went to Rochester Cineworld cinema to see Allegiant. This is the third in the Divergent series. I reviewed Divergent and Insurgent before. It looks like there’s going to be another of these films, I can’t wait [sarcasm]. I rated this film on IMDB and, as ever, you should read this communication about my rating system.

So, the inhabitants of Chicago get to go beyond the wall, except they don’t because the new leader, 4’s mum or something like that, doesn’t want them to. Do you know what? It’s not worth explaining the plot. It wasn’t worth it. Kids escape one city to be moved to one with exactly the same problems. It’s the same film again. Like my review for Insurgent this future world is a bit shit. It’s not thought through. It doesn’t work.

My issues with this film are numerous. Tris is genetically PURE. What the actual fuck does that mean? Is this a film that is meant to fit in with a Trump world view? If only PURE people can get up to the upper levels at O’Hare then why is everyone else allowed up there too? I think I missed something.

The people at O’Hare and Providence have awesome technology but there isn’t anywhere that has the industrial base to produce that. Where is this stuff made? How does this economy work?

Red rain. Red rain in the badlands or whatever they are called. But there’s a magic forcefield around Chicago to stop this rain from falling on them or even them noticing it when they are up in the towers looking over the badlands.

It’s not actually that far from Chicago to O’Hare airport. I know there is a force field thing protecting Chicago from seeing the airport but they never noticed all the flying things?

chicago

If the population of O’Hare is made from children stolen from tribes living in the badlands then the badlands can’t actually be that bad? If there are adults reproducing healthy children then it seems the outside is OK. Also, what do these people eat?

I need to stop. The film “looked” nice. Other than that is was poor.

Posted on

10 Cloverfield Lane

I went to see 10 Cloverfield Lane last night at the Cineworld cinema in Ashford. New cinema for me, about half an hour away, but will probably stick with Rochester in future. The screen auditorium was pretty small although busy for the showing. As usual I rated this film on IMDB but please see my ratings guide.

This film was quite good. Not sure I’d bother watching it again, hence the six. I actually jumped at the initial crash which was just embarrassing.

SPOILER ALERT –  do not read beyond.

Initially this seems to be a thriller about the main man potentially being wrong, the world hadn’t ended and he was just a fuck-head. The woman turning up halfway through disperses with the theme that it wasn’t the end of the world. After that point the film had to end somehow with this “end of world” theme.

It would have been nice for the film to play up the abduction more. I’m not sure it added enough “creep” to the main man, but then again, maybe it was just right. I think I would like to have known definitively.

Killing the young man was a cool point in the film. It showed the crazy just enough. And from there we jump to the last ten minutes. As far as I could see there was a lot of running and panic by the girl when there was no need to. I know it kept the cinematic theme but she wasn’t being threatened by anything at the time and so her panic was stupid. I liked the ending, it had to be either aliens or CHEMICAL WARFARE [cue Slayer song].

My main gripe with this film was that it would take more than an aerosol can to break a frozen brittle padlock. Just sayin’.

Posted on

Disaster Area 11 March 2016

Disaster Area opened the MGS Rock Evening last night.

Set List:
Learn To Fly
I Hate Myself For Loving You

Disaster Area is:

  • Miss Alloy
  • Mr Gymer
  • Miss Mason
  • Mr Martin
  • Mr Parish
  • Mr Taylor
Disaster Area
Disaster Area

To see more about us head over to Faceshit. As explained before I don’t do Faceshit.

20160312_173343000_iOS

Posted on

XM655

Wellesbourne Airfield in Warwickshire. Home to a flying school, a Saturday market and an AVRO VULCAN: XM655.

This Vulcan is the most complete of all the Vulcans remaining. Although XH558 was the last airworthy Vulcan they had to remove stuff from it to get the airworthiness certificate. Hence, XM655 is more complete and still does high speed taxi runs.

I wrote about XH558 here when I saw her perform for the last time over Coventry airport.

I think the most amusing thing about XM655 is that when it was bought from the RAF it landed at Wellesbourne, but the runway isn’t long enough for it to take off again. That does seem a touch short sighted.

If you get the chance on a Saturday to visit you most definitely should. For a donation the members of the preservation society will give you a tour of the cockpit and tell you wonderful stories about the Vulcan and her history. Did you know that all the money went into the airframe and so the navigation equipment was pretty much the same as the Lancaster? For long flights the crew had a sextant.

Vulcan cockpit
Vulcan cockpit XM655

With a crew of five, but only two ejector seats there were “design” issues  I guess. The three crew facing backwards had to jump out through the entrance door in the floor. That was probably an issue when flying low!

So, the Vulcan is a beautiful plane. It’s very loud and imposing. I am curious as to how good it was compared to other planes of its generation. We Brits love to imagine that our stuff is the best. I just wonder how much that is true.

Vulcan Rear
Vulcan Rear

This beast is graceful and wonderful. I am glad she never was used for her intended mission.

Posted on

Bad Traffic

Not sure this counts as the worst traffic ever, but it does look pretty bad.

badtraffic

I think there must be a site out there with historic traffic data. Will search.

Posted on

Summer Choices

Met with Smith last night and we chatted about which music festival to attend this year. You may have read about M’era Luna from last year. It was a very good time but this year there’s more choice!

Our preferred choice was to head to Munich for the Dark Festival, but this has been cancelled which is a shame. There were a lot of good bands that we would have liked to see there.

So now there are two choices. M’era Luna at Hildesheim again or Amphi Festival in Cologne. Here’s the line up for M’era Luna:

meraluna1

Of the bands in the above list I would really like to see VNV Nation, Eisbrecher, Combichrist, Hocico and Suicide Commando. But there are more:

meraluna2

This list has a few tasty treats: [:SITD:], Noisuf-X and Centhron. So, M’era Luna has a good selection, worth travelling the 500 miles for!

Next up we have the selection from Amphi Festival.

amphi1

The list of bands to definitely see at Amphi is: Aesthetic Perfection, Covenant, Faderhead, Frontline Assembly, Mono Inc, Suicide Commando, Unzucht and [X-RX].

It’s a tough choice. The current preference is M’era Luna. Wait and see.

Posted on

Hmmm. Snoring Cure?

So, stumbled across a snoring cure. You can see the website here. Now, I’m gonna call bullshit on this right now, but that would seem rather unfair to the company so let’s look a little closer at what they claim.

I have screen clipped their website and I will discuss each section. The main page looks like this:

Snoring1

This says that you wear the ring on your little finger and that it is a snoring treatment that is guaranteed to work. Apparently it’s also been clinically tested! They have made a very specific claim here that wearing this ring on your little finger will make you stop snoring. What else do they have to say?

Snoring5

This explains how it works. Or rather it doesn’t. All it says is that there are Acu-activators on the ring. A quick google shows that this isn’t a real term and isn’t used anywhere apart from the stop snoring website.

Snoring9

It’s not looking too good for this product and we’ve not even really started. I think they may be trying to imply that the things on the ring activate acupuncture points? This is irrelevant as acupuncture is clearly bullshit.

Next bit from the www.goodnightsnoring.com website:

Testimonials amount to nothing. The plural of anecdote is NOT data. I don’t care. 3500 years of history can’t be wrong can it? Of course it can. We now use medicine with evidence not rubbish about Chi and acupuncture points. Also, being mentioned in the Daily Fail is not necessarily a good thing. In fact if a medical “cure” is mentioned in the Mail or Express you can pretty much assume it’s bullshit.

Now, the website covers this with the following page:

Snoring7They claim that a good clinical trial was performed and the results were almost a miracle. This is good because if there is good evidence then I would be prepared to change my mind. The goodnightsnoring.com website doesn’t have a link to the clinical trial. I want to be able to read it and then change my mind. It seems that these are extraordinary claims and so it would be prudent to examine the evidence.

I searched PubMed. There was nothing about the Snoring Ring as being sold here. So I tried searching Google Scholar. Nothing again, just a paper about breast cancer. This was troublesome, my two main sources for scientific papers were showing nada. I decided to look using plain old Google. I searched for “snoring ring clinical trial”.

search1

From these results I wasn’t interested in the Snoring Ring website, there’s nothing on there. I also couldn’t care for a news article in the Daily Fail [they don’t know how to report science]. The other links were mostly places that sell the product and so have probably just got the blurb from a product information release. What interested me originally was the ASA link.

In 2012 a complaint was made to the ASA about the evidence for the claims that the Snoring Ring company were making. The complaint was upheld and the company were told not to make claims about the snoring ring. The so called medical trial was completed after this ruling by the ASA!

Also in the search results was a link to ANTISNOR, a company who produce anti snoring rings. Now, this company mentioned on this page a French company who had done the clinical trials.

In 2012, a French scientific research organisation, Proclaim (www.proclaim.fr), studied the effect of AntiSnor Acupressure Ring . . . .

The Proclaim website doesn’t exist. Even though ANTISNOR link to it. Oh dear, the trail has gone cold.

There are a number of RED FLAGS on the original website. The mention of the following aspects all cause concern. They don’t mean it doesn’t work, they just mean we should be sceptical until we have seen the evidence.

  • Money back guarentees
  • Testimonials
  • No links to the evidence
  • Publicity from the Daily Mail
  • Anecdotes
  • Non invasive and side effect free
  • Appeal to antiquity on the acupressure part of the site
  • No email address to ask for a copy of the clinical trial

So far, I’ve had some people say they think this work and no actual medical trials even though one is claimed. Back to Google.

Another link from Google heads towards Princeton Consumer Research. It appears that this company will undertake clinical trials for you and then allow you to use the results in your publicity. Here’s a Princeton Brochure with their claims. After finding this I found a company called Aspen Clinical Research. They had a pdf linked here and also Aspen-Clinical-Anti-Snoring-Ring-Media-Coverage1 from my site. This PDF essentially claims that the publicity they managed to produce for the Anti Snoring ring was brilliant. They seem to be more of a PR firm than a clinical trial firm. This makes me very wary.

Aspen Clinical Research even went so far as to persuade the press that there was a National Stop Snoring Week in 2014. This is depressing reading.

stopsnoringweek

I hadn’t realised there would be companies that are willing to be paid to undertake some form of research to legitimise PR claims and also produce media puff.

Both Aspen Clinical Research and Princeton Consumer Research do not seem concerned with legitimate medical trials, rather they concentrate on PR friendly trials to produce media results. Neither of the websites were searchable from their homepages. Also, both companies seem to be offering to pay participants. This can’t be a good thing, it would bias the results. All I want is a copy of the clinical trial for the Anti Snoring Ring and I can’t find it. What I have found are companies who provide easy results for PR.

It seems to me that these companies offer to do science the wrong way around and therefore they don’t offer science. It looks like the cycle goes:

  • You have a product and want to make specific claims
  • You will be banned from advertising if you can’t substantiate these claims
  • You PAY one of these companies to do a trial for you so you can then substantiate your claim
  • You then advertise claiming scientific proof.

The correct cycle should be:

  • Scientific research indicates that a specific product could work
  • The product is developed
  • A trial is designed and the details published before being conducted
  • The product is tested rigorously
  • The product is deemed to work, the product can be advertised with specific claims
  • The product is deemed not to work, the product can’t be advertised

I feel utterly depressed at the state of media manipulation and that there are companies that do this as their raison d’etre. Everything we see and hear is manipulated to sell products. I started this communication as a simple investigation into the evidence for a product as they claim. What I found was a collection of companies willing to provide you the evidence you want so you can claim what you want for your product that (probably) does nothing.

Anyway, I can’t get to the evidence for the Snoring Ring. I haven’t found the paper with details of the trial and so I am going to complain to the ASA about their website claims. Watch this space.

Posted on

Burn It

So, the xmas break, which requires food and alcohol, along with a significant drop in exercise has resulted in what I would call a considerable gain of mass. I have written about mass loss before and I wrote more here also. To lose mass you have to burn more energy than you consume. It’s that simple [and no, you don’t have a gland problem!]. Not a lot else to it, it’s the psychology of it all that will fuck you over. I like eating and I comfort eat. It’s the self discipline that hurts. I know that when I am a healthy mass and exercise I can maintain that mass and still have blow-outs now and then.

So, before I get to my numbers, here are some facts about fat and exercise.

  • One pound of fat is roughly 3500 kcalories.
  • 10 metres walked or ran is roughly one kcalorie burnt.
  • Daily intake for a man should roughly be 2500 kcalories.

So, my ideal mass would be <80Kg. However, I’ve not been that for a long time and I would be happy with <82.5Kg which comes in at 13 stone in old money. I am currently hovering around +90Kg. This upsets me greatly, but it is my own fault. Now is the time for action. Let’s just assume I want to lose 10Kg just to make the numbers easy. It’s worth knowing how long this will take and what effort I will face. I think many people are unrealistic about mass loss.

Some maths:

10Kg is approximately 22 pounds of fat to be lost.

22 pounds of fat is roughly 77 000 kcalories extra that needs to be burnt.

If I reduce my daily intake by 500 kcalories then this would take 22 weeks, as I would lose one pound per week. This is nearly half a year, which is a depressing amount of time to be on a restricted calorie diet.

If I maintain 2500 kcalories per day and run to burn the excess I will need to run 770 kilometres. Given that my average run is probably around 10km this means 77 runs. If I manage to run twice a week, on average, then this is over 35 weeks which is again an intolerable amount of time.

What I need to do is reduce my calorific intake while at the same time exercising to produce the desired results in a shorter (but sensible) length of time. I aim to be a healthy mass again by the end of March. This gives me three months or twelve weeks. I need to lose around 2 pounds per week. I can do it. I am determined to do it as some of the health issues that I have mentioned previously are back.

My progress isn’t going to be public. I am not going to start tweeting about this all the time. I probably won’t even mention it if I do or do not get down to the target mass.

Posted on

I Don’t Understand

BBC NewsI am fully aware that I am going to come across as an asshole in this piece but this sort of thing really annoys me. This is a special allowance given to a group of people who “sincerely believe” that they must fast during a particular time of the year. Now, it’s not just Islam that is catered for. Christianity gets Easter breaks for schools moved around every year just because they “sincerely believe” that something special happened two thousand years ago not on that date.

Here’s my thought process.

Clearly god does not exist. If god did exist then how come all the books written for him by messengers are different and contain different messages. This is not my only argument against god but it is clearly a human invention. Show me your proof and I promise I will believe, I’m happy to wait.

As god does not exist all religions are bullshit. They are just codified ways of treating each other (or hating women, foreigners, gays, the disabled etc if you have really read them).

Therefore all “sincerely held beliefs” are bullshit. No state should tolerate them being used as excuses for special treatment.

Now that seems extreme but in reality it means everyone gets treated the same. The same rules apply to one and all. I utterly fail to understand how you can tell what a “sincerely held belief” is. How do you know someone has that? If I want every Wednesday off work because the Church of the Flying Spaghetti monster deems that necessary everyone would laugh at me.

That’s not a real religion.

They would say.

How the fuck can you tell?

Would be my response.

It’s a bit like Donald Trump claiming he’ll stop all muslims entering the USA. How the fuck can you tell who is a muslim? Do you ask them? How do you know they aren’t lying. What do you have to do to be a true muslim? How can you prove you are a true jew? How do you tell someone that you are a devoted christian? This is the “no true scotsman” fallacy. You can’t tell this stuff.

Let’s stop asking for changes for groups of people because of “special pleading” or “sincerely held beliefs”. I don’t like the idea that once one group gets special treatment then all the others should get it too. Let’s just treat everyone the same and call this treatment out for what it truly is: bullshit.

Posted on

iPhone Lock Screen

If you read my communications regularly then you will be aware that I spend some of my time in the Midlands. Mostly the West Midlands but I’m not sure where the divide is.

Way back in May I went with Sally to the Stockton Locks on the Grand Union Canal. Here’s a Wikipedia page about it all. The locks are quite impressive and the pub near them, The Blue Lias, was very nice too.

I also have been to Hatton Locks, which are part of the Grand Union Canal. These are even more impressive. There was a pub nearby but we didn’t go in as we were heading home from Packwood House and it was raining and cold.

I have been very impressed with the industrial history of the Midlands and as much as I knew that existed it is nice to see it in person and appreciate it more.

Anyway, I decided to change the lock screen on my iPhone to a picture of locks. I initially had this picture of Stockton Locks.

DSC_4397
Stockton Locks

However I now have this picture of Hatton Locks as my lock screen.

Hatton Locks
Hatton Locks

I will tell you that every time I look at this screen I chuckle. My lock screen is a series of locks.

Posted on

The Lincolnshire Coast

Over a weekend in the summer Sally and I travelled to the North Sea coast and Lincolnshire. We drove from Rugby, towards Leicester and then followed the A46 to Lincoln and the coast. We had booked to spend a night on a campsite near Mablethorpe. The campsite was called Grange Leisure Park and was predominantly a caravan park but with good camping facilities. We didn’t use my tent [see this communication for a picture of that], we used Sally’s. It’s a pretty good summer tent although not quite as nuclear proof as my gorgeous Vango!

The Beast, Tent and Sal's Head

We arrived, set up base camp and then headed to Mablethorpe to experience the Great British seaside. Oh, wow, it didn’t disappoint. It was a classic seaside town. There was plenty of shops selling tat. Plenty of punters on holiday and a few crazy golf courses. One of the purposes of this trip was to start a crazy golf championship between Sally and me. Our aim was to play as many of these courses as possible along the coast in the two days we had planned to be there.

Within Mablethorpe we found the following courses: Pirate Hill, a win to Sally. Pirate not on the hill, a win to Ian. Dinosaur Park, a win to Sally.

So after that we spent some money in an arcade. It was fascinating. It was a huge place where you can win tickets for playing the machines. We won about 50 tickets quite quickly but then realised you need well over 1000 tickets to claim a prize. We just gave our tickets to someone at a ticket counting machine. We also played some of the “tipping point” games because they are quite fun, whereas the TV show is utter shite. So, at this point Sally was winning the golf competition and we looked around for somewhere to eat dinner. I found the Kings Head a few miles away and we travelled there for food. It was quite a “local” pub but was also friendly and welcoming. The food was delicious and very impressive, it was nice to be treated well and have the chef actually speak to us about what to eat.

opening image

The Lincolnshire coast is a rather amazing place if you like caravans, static or otherwise. We spent some time looking at the caravans for sale at the camp site and I was also amazed at the number of re-sale places along our journeys.

On the second day we packed up camp and headed along the coast road after having breakfast and another round of golf at Queen’s Park in Mablethorpe. Sally won this round. I was 3-1 down in the series. Breakfast was good though!

We drove towards Anderby Creek, a place that Sally had visited as a child. I’d not been there as far as I know. The only Lincolnshire coast place I’d been to was RAF Donna Nook in the 1980s. I think I wrote about it here. Anderby Creek was a small place with chalets and caravans. We spent time on the beach flying the kites and then had morning tea in the restaurant near the Cloud Bar. By the way, a cloud bar isn’t a bar. It’s a platform from where you can look at the clouds [because you can’t do that from ground level!].

Cloud Bar, Anderby Creek

Here’s us flying kites. I managed to mess up my control cables and so had to order more from Amazon. It turns out there’s a kite specialist shop in Hinkley which is close-ish to Rugby.

After Anderby we headed to Chapel St Leonards. The beach here was quite nice and there was another arcade we visited. But this trip was about the crazy golf and so we managed to find a course just outside Chapel on the road south to Skegness. The course was based on a theme of elephants and I managed to win this one. It was now 4-2 to Sally.

It was now time to head to Ingoldmells. This is a part of Skegness to the north of the town. There was a theme park where entry was free and you just have to pay for the rides. There were some awesome ice cream shops and the whole place was manically busy. There were also plenty of caravans. Check out the aerial view of the town and spot just how many caravans are packed into the area.

We had a wander around and ate some food at a fish and chip shop. I have to say I found the whole experience rather surreal. It was a very odd place. We found two crazy golf places. We played an indoor course which was reasonable fun. I won that. Then we found a Pirate course that was suspended above the beach. I also won that. The scores on the doors were 4-5 to me. I felt quite pleased at this although Sally wasn’t happy about it.

The journey home took a while. We skirted Skegness and headed home via Boston and Grantham as there were awful roadworks on the way to the coast near Newark. We also went through Melton Mowbray. I did my best to avoid heading to Coningsby, Cranwell, Waddington and the air museum near Newark. One day I will do a tour of the RAF bases of Lincolnshire.

I loved this short break. It was really good fun.

Posted on

Steve Jobs

So, took a trip, with Sally, to see the film Steve Jobs at the Cineworld cinema in Rugby [or rather on the outskirts of Rugby].

As ever, I have rated this film on IMDb, but you need to see this communication for an explanation of how the numbers work.

Before I start on the film I would just like to mention some ‘ealth and safety gone mad. There was a popcorn making dude working two popcorn machines in an alcove behind the concessions stand. I kid you not he was wearing one of these:

face-maskNow, I’m not sure what the issue is, as the popping cookers are closed while the popping process is in play but this made me giggle, quite a bit!

So, the film. You can read about it and the synopsis and where it all takes place. My opinion of Apple has always been one of suspicion and, although I am an iPhone whore, I am perfectly aware that Apple always steal other ideas and make them that little bit better. I don’t think they really do for originality. They do great design.

As a film this was very well made. I liked the shooting and the actors. I liked knowing a bit more about the history and seeing the characters over time. I did NOT like Steve Jobs. I had already read about him being an arse and this film [I know it’s fiction] largely represented him as an arse. Do I think he was a clever man? Yes. Do I like Apple products? Yes. Do I have to like him or think he was great? No.

This film is well worth seeing. I enjoyed it. Even though Jobs was an arse.

Privacy Policy Proudly powered by WordPress