Signed up to the Atheist out of the Closet campaign on Freedom From Religion Foundation website. Also starting to listen to their podcast. Like it.
They do very good work in USA making sure church and state separation is maintained. We could do with something like that over here, but our parliament is hard wired for religion. Our head of state is the leader of our church! We have bishops in the House of Lords ffs. When can we get rid of that? Current plans are to have representation from all major religions in the Lords. How stupid. When do you know to stop? How do you choose which religions? How big do they have to be? Remove all religious representation and let them lobby like everyone else (not that I’m keen on lobbying groups).
Summer?
I have noticed that whenever I edit an old post I get tweets sent saying such. Although not really annoying it does mean that minor adjustments get tweeted.
So I have adjusted my automatic Twitter settings so that when I edit old posts they will not be tweeted. Just did an edit of tags (or at least added some) and now have lots of tweets about these. Should have studied the WordTwit settings a little more closely when I installed it. Issue should now be sorted.
Mind you, virtually no-one follows me and pretty much no-one reads this website!
Treasure
Exciting life
How to survive
Son’s computer drawing
Trying to be quiet
It seems that I find it impossible to be quiet when needed. Not an ADHD thing but just a clumsy thing.
My house is quite small (compact) and I am normally cooking while my wife is putting my youngest to bed. So I’ll be washing up and trying to stir food quietly. It just doesn’t end up being that quiet! I unintentionally bang saucepans, drop cans and crash into the furniture. The more I try and be quiet the more noise I seem to make!
The kids sleep fine if there’s a constant noise but struggle with sharp bangs and crashes. This is probably an evolutionary thing (evolution is real, get over it you religious morons), constant rain or rustling is not a danger but sudden noises spell the end so run away.
So I think this phenomenon is the “don’t think of your name in lights” syndrome. When you try not to do things you end up doing them because you are thinking about the things you shouldn’t do. Richard Wiseman mentions this in his book Paranormality. For instance, on the last lap of a GT5 race I am mostly thinking of not crashing but I tend to spin off more in the last lap than at other times!
Trying our best not to do something often ends with us doing that exact thing. Oh, I’m trying to not buy a 3D tv at the moment!
It’s a 4 dickday
Contrary to what regular users of the internet may think a 4 dickday is or comprises I can assure you that this post is not concerned with matters of that kind!
I drive to work and drop my son off at nursery on the way. It is only about 10 miles at most but does take in tiny streets, village roads, country roads, dual carriageway, motorway and town roads. In the 20 or so minutes of travel from home to work I can normally guarantee seeing at least one example of poor driving. Whether it is inconsiderate and dangerous driving by tailgating, no indication, late lane changing or just plain silly behaviour i.e. speeding or cutting in. These incidents sadden me. Knowing that each of these activities increases the chance of accident bothers me. Generally I would put most of these incidents down to people trying to get somewhere too quickly. Although Some people are just stupid and don’t get manners.
Yesterday was a 4 dickday. I saw four examples of poor road craft. Hence 4 people were acting like dicks on the road. I would say that the modal value is probably 1 but the maximum value for a 10 mile journey has been 6.
I don’t claim to be a good driver, see my previous post on Constant Speed, but I think I am careful and cautious. More so since I have children. The important things in life are my family and friends. Being late is just how things go sometimes. I would love to drive my car or any other car to its limits but until I can afford track days at Brands Hatch that is going to have to wait. That is why I play GT5 and end up crashing, no pain there.
Better to arrive late than to never arrive at all.
Children – Post hoc fallacy delirium
I have two children. One is currently two and the other is two months. I love them both to bits and think it is the best thing I have ever done (bloody hard work too). I think that the best I can ask for is that they both end up with happy and fulfilled lives.
Anyway, the way we learn how to deal with children contains the biggest logical fallacy. We expect children to react to what we do and tell them. We hope and expect that when we ask something of that child they do it because of what we have done in the past. We expect that when I child is upset or being difficult whatever we try and works that particular time should work every time. Now that is a big no-no. I have become more and more convinced that children are complete random action generators.
They do not follow the rules of what we expect. They follow rules written in the edges of clouds and butterfly wings. We try something and it works, therefore it should work every time. Wrong. The reasons behind the action are different every time and so the reaction needs to change too. We are just very good at changing our reaction depending on what we see. We like to kid ourselves that we have it sorted and understand the children so well. We don’t. Humans just love the patterns in life and where we spend most energy and time gives us the biggest case for patternicity.
Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc!








