Macer Product Review

I bought a Macer 512mb mp3 player/ usb drive and I want to tell anyone who is thinking of it not to!! It's horrible. The actual software and usb function are excellent but the battery bay is useless. No matter how charged/new your battery is, the device has trouble starting and turns itself off because of "low battery." Also the radio it came with is just junk. Save your money and buy the Samsung.

The pope shows his ignorance

Wow!! Even after years of listening to what pope's have said this one still strikes me as particularly ignorant! Of course there is the usual everything in our society is evil and bad. But when he says, "There is a move to reinvent man kind, to modify the very grammar of life, as planned and willed by god. But to take god's place without being god, is insane arrogance a risky and dangerous venture," I am reminded of the saying, "it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt!" So basically those children born with chronic or severe birth defects are god's plan!?! He/she/it likes to watch young babies and children have a short and painful life! We are insanely arrogant for bringing health and life to these children!?! People really shouldn't speak about stuff they don't understand!

It was also funny to hear the head of the RC church make a reference to socialism, something they are proud of constantly fighting. But mostly I always get very agitated when people say something about things being better in the past!! This strikes me as the most idiotic uninformed statement possible. Obviously not everything has completely improved but we are MUCH better off than we once were. Even the poorest places in Africa are since we now communicate with then and send aid instead of letting them die (thanks to god's will) unheard of. If easter is a time of rebirth for the christians maybe they should try a new and less moronic tune.

Genetic testing makes a mockery of reverse racism

I have long been annoyed at reverse racism (called affirmative action) and it will soon be abolished as untenable! Thanks to recreational DNA testing one can find out (with some error) one's ethnic background. This means if you are a few percent Black or Indian you can check off those special financial aid and affirmative action boxes! This will be good bye to bad rubbish! Hopefully all references to ethnicity will be deleted from laws and we can move on from this nonsense.

Back to there roots

This is a funny (meant to be serious) film about turning Muslim in Texas. It's pretty funny. It also reminds me that Americans where founded by puritans and so it is in some ways no surprise that they will trade in religions for a stricter, more ridiculous faith. It was funny to see one religious person dismayed about another's conversion. It really highlights how religion is mostly habit. Of course it would be interesting to do the same film but for atheists!

god in your brain (gaining traction)

Here is a great summary of Dr Persinger's work. I like the idea that this region of the brain is an antenna for god. Especially since it can be manipulated so easily! I can just see how sermons will soon have head sets so they can help you experience god every time! The fact that this doesn't make people wary that hearing god is a shame, means people don't understand the basic science of the article!! But then what would you expect from those people.

Evolution, prayer and other stuff in the news

Firstly we have what is shaping out to be bad publicity for the Canadian gov. A well know prof was apparently denied a grant due to him not justifying how evolution was a valid theory in a study (ironically) to compare the social effects of the rise in intelligent design propaganda. This may be just a misunderstanding of the decision and he can have the decision appealed, but it would be egregious if it was true. On the other hand even if it was not true to hopefully quick reaction in Canada will signal that we (unlike the US) won't tolerate moronic religious arguments as science.

In another story on evolution another "missing link":Scientific American: Newfound Fossil Is Transitional between Fish and Landlubbers. This isn't surprising but tit it great that the quality of the fossils and fact that there were multiple one's is also nice. It should help those in the US fight ID (remember Bush is still president).

This story touched me since it's from my home town. Apparently the Laval city council had a non-denominational prayer before its meetings. After a complaint to the human right board they were told to stop, that was in 2004! They are going back to court and it's all thanks to one atheist teacher complained. So a seal of approval to Danielle Payette!! The idea that a payer to a god shouldn't offended anyone shows how these blokes think everyone is a theist! What about atheists and polytheist!

Lastly there is this story about finding the gospel according to Judas. I'm interested in seeing how this will play out. Religious idiot questioning other religious idiots. Some sticking to their four gospels others influenced by mystery shows starting to consider gnosticism. The fracturing will be great! The pope will also be an interesting one to watch. What will he say? Blind refusal or actual tell catholics to reconsider church teachings!?! Seems unlikely for an infallible one, but it will make great entertainment (for me anyway).

Abortion, Iraq and binary thinking

I've gotten annoyed with the whole "civil war" issue in Iraq. Not what's happening there but how people talk about it. It seems be part of a bigger problem that religious people have: Tendency to understand things in binary, Good/evil, war/peace, dead/alive etc. Obviously most things don't come in binary and understanding this would make intelligent discussion on certain issues possible. For instance it is clear there is some form of sectarian violence and it is position dependent. Acknowledging this would let them address the positions that are a problem and not try and cast the situation as either 75% of Iraqis are trying to kill each other or everything is fine!
This argument also follows over to the abortion issue. Once you stop thinking of things in dead/alive binary mode you can come to a logical conclusion. When a fetus is growing it is an extension of the host organism because it is completely dependent on it. It is a self-organizing tumor similar, logically, to an organ. The difference is eventually it will develop its own capabilities and become an independent organism. The road from extension to organism is a continuous one and so there is only an alive organism once it can be safely separated. Otherwise it is only an incomplete organism like a hand is to a human.

Why did I say religious people are the one's who have this problem? Well some non-religious people have it too but it's usually a remnant from their religious days. The reason is that religion teaches one to think in binary. You are either devout or a heretic, there's no middle ground in the teachings. Once you have a god you have a "perfect" solution and "good" way for everything and so things can be binary. Get ride of the god and perfect and good become subjective and so you can critically evaluate things. This is why morality is a religious phenomenon, it subjective to the subscribed religion. Ethics on the other hand is much more difficult since it doesn't have a "perfect" anything so a "just war" or "right thing to do" become debatable. Maybe we can decrease the overall misery of humanity if we think about things ethically and not morally (in binary).