Quick Santa Claus rant.

A few ideas I'd like to express.

Christmas is coming. Y'know, that tradition which seems like a pagan tradition which was originally a Roman and/or Catholic tradition which coincided with a pagan tradition. That thing. Yeah. I just had a thought. But first, I have to make something clear.

If you're young enough to believe in Father Christmas / Santa Claus, you shouldn't be on the internet. So, to make sure that you don't accidentally see something you don't want to, I'm going to put some filler material in.

If you're going to make an Amiga MOD player, I have a few optimisation suggestions.

Firstly, pad your samples appropriately. If the sample length is 1 16-bit word, then you pad with 0s, otherwise you pad with the loop data. If you have a loop (that is, the sample length is NOT 1 16-bit word), then you duplicate the loop after the sample data. Once you've done that, add about 2500 bytes (1250 16-bit words) of padding.

Secondly, use a few 2D tables. Scream Tracker 3 uses one for translating waveforms through channel volumes. This would be rather impractical for 16-bit samples, but we aren't using 16-bit for .mod, are we? No, of course not. So we'll just use a 65*256 table (or *64 if we don't mind making a quick check to see if the volume is set to 64). Another idea I wrote down really only applies if you're mixing 8-or-so-channel MODs down to 4 channels on an Amiga, and that is to do a volume * volume table. 65*64 would be your best bet, while comparing if the two channel volumes are the same, unless you don't mind having a 65*128 table. You could also have another 65*64/65*128 table for selecting the actual volume.

Alternatively, if you're using an Amiga, you could do the 14-bit trick (set 0+1 to 64 and 2+3 to 1, then 2+3 hold the lower 6 bits while 0+1 hold the upper 8 bits) using two 65*256 tables. You could also do another 256*64 table for remapping the top and a 256 1D table for remapping the bottom when it gets around to adding stuff together. If you're working with 8-channel mods, you shouldn't have to clip for the bottom; however, the top will probably still need it.

Thirdly, you could use another table to clip your output volumes or something like that - this is probably most appropriate for non-Amiga MOD players. In a lot of cases, this is unnecessary, but if you're doing some reasonably advanced mixing, then this is probably the way to go.

And so on and so on.

I use the first two tricks in my J2ME MOD player. In doing so, I discovered that Blackberry phones suck at handling audio state signals. Oh well, at least it actually plays.

Blah.

E=mc^2.

(Actually, it's delta E = delta m . c^2.)

Still reading this? OK, here we go.

Christmas as we know it is pretty much... mess. A mess with the "Christ" label which the retailers can't seem to remove so they just skirt around the issue and basically say in their minds, "well it's just a name which doesn't actually mean anything". Their hearts? "La de da da I'm not listening (*tongue*)". However, what I've realised is that the retailers aren't the only issue.

Meet Mr Bribery. Mr Consumerism. Mr Claus.

The problem with naturalists is that they have to find some way to teach morals to their children. Santa Claus is one way of doing so. Hey, let's chop down a tree. Hey, let's decorate it. Hey, let's tell the kids that if they're good, they get gifts from Santa. No wait, make it that if they don't behave, then they won't get gifts from Santa.

So, uh, let's make that Mr Blackmail.

And everything's fine and dandy, and you're out there lying, and then eventually--

Midnight strikes. The kids are awake. Pretending to be asleep.

They hear you get out of bed and put the gifts in the lounge.

Game over. Your 10-or-so years of playing games with your children just to teach them at least to behave has, like Santa stuck in a burning fireplace, gone up in smoke.

Here's hoping that the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny have remained... Oh wait, those aren't behaviour bribes. Unless, of course, those have had a domino effect and now they don't believe a damn thing that teaches them at least good behaviour.

And, uh, yeah, we're about to go out to dinner soon. So, here's a couple of things you might be able to ponder: the Santa Claus effect on society, and how to make a really fast MOD player. Yeah.

2009 in the year of our Lord

It appears that the BC/AD (Before Christ / Anno Domini (In The Year Of Our Lord)) dating convention appears to be offensive to some, so they've decided to use the CE/BCE (Common Era / Before Common Era) dating system. The problem? It sucks.

This Conservapedia article best explains it. For those of you who won't touch Conservapedia with a barge pole, I'll reproduce the text here, because I can.

The term "Common Era" (CE) is an attempt to erase the historical basis for the primary calendar dating system in the Western world. "Common Era" has no real meaning, and even the origin of this term is unclear. The 1972 Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary has no entry for "Common Era." A later edition (11th) defines it as the Christian Era.

The established calendar dating system is based on the approximate birthday of Jesus, and no one disputes that. But this birth did not begin a "common" era, or any immediate change in history. The 1997 Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary gives a date of 1889 for the origin of the term "Common Era," but there is no indication of who began using it then, and why. Some claim it is a substitute for an occasional reference to the "Vulgar Era," with "vulgar" being Latin for "common" but acquiring a derogatory English meaning over time.

Then there's a snippet which is a citation of this page, (C) Ohr Somayach International:

Viviane Prager wrote:

Dear Rabbi:

I would like to know why we say "before the Common Era" and "Common Era" (BCE and CE). I mean, why do we call it "common?" Some Jews object to it on grounds that the "C" in CE could be misconstrued as standing for "Christ." I would very much appreciate if you could help me answer their objections. Thanks for your wonderful work.

Dear Viviane Prager,

When I was a school boy I thought that CE stood for "The Common Error."

Now, 25 years and a number of common errors later, I assume that Common Era simply means "the date commonly accepted and used." But the truth is that I don't know, so I asked your question to a professor of European history. He didn't know either.

As far as I can see, CE doesn't reference anything. It is meaningless. I view this as a half-hearted attempt to shun God from society, and it's not really working. Why don't they just set another reference point, for example, Charles Darwin's birthday, or, more appropriately, his publication of the Origin of Species?

How did people date in BC? They dated from the year their king came into power, and named the king. You see this all the time in the Bible. In essence, Jesus is the last and current king, and that is why we have AD. The BC just makes it easier to reference earlier dates.

So, two things that I have to say.

Firstly, as far as I'm concerned, CE stands for "Can't Explain". BCE stands for "Before we Couldn't Explain". Because the CE/BCE rubbish is just to remove the meaning of our dating system. This is absolutely pathetic.

And secondly, I intend on making AD more blatant, and say "in the year of our Lord".

Let's face it. CE is meaningless. Vanity of vanities.

Copyright & Consumerism

OK, if you saw that ranty bit about Linux and the announcement of binning my music collection in my last post (which is incredibly long, incomplete, and doesn't really conclude anything), you'll probably understand that I've taken a lot of steps to rid myself of consumerism. This was my recent conviction after watching a video on YouTube one night. The thought of "yeah, yeah, I suppose I could, uhh... DO YOU SERIOUSLY WANT ME TO BIN MY MUSIC‽‽‽" I prayed about it.

The next day was when I binned a bunch of toys and found some stuff I'd lost in the process (e.g. the serial cable for my currently broken palmtop, and the power adaptor for it, which also works on my piano keyboard - the original adaptor for that is yet to be found), and the day after that, I actually threw most of my collection into a rubbish bag, and the rest into a box (along with a lot of books - mostly fiction - and several stuffed toys).

Out of those in the box, I took back four today. These were Christian artists, of which the CDs were given to me. It helps to balance out all the mostly secular stuff (yes, I am referring to the free, mostly instrumental stuff). It would be nice to get some free stuff out there which could bring hope to others or something without people having to get stuck into the consumerist culture or something. I know that there are "Christian" artists out there who are actually spreading rather contradictory messages.

Some user on YouTube was singing one of these songs to himself as it came out, the one about "A couple dents in my Fender, a couple rips in my jeans", and a few days later, his jeans ripped.

Lyrics quoted off a blog, which I think is the official one:

‘Cause I got a couple dents in my fender
Got a couple rips in my jeans
Try to fit the pieces together
But perfection is my enemy
On my own I'm so clumsy
But on Your shoulders I can see
I'm free to be me

"But perfection is my enemy"... perfection is supposed to be our target. Didn't Jesus say at the end of Matthew 5, in the context of loving your enemies, "you must be perfect - just as your Father in Heaven is perfect"? That should give you an idea.

OK, back to the point of copyright and consumerism. The recording industry makes out that downloading music illegally is what they don't want you to do. Perhaps that is what they truly believe, and that it's something rather demonic which is driving the whole system. Whatever it is, there is an agenda. They want to see an end to "illegal downloading"... eventually. Once they get you hooked on consumerism, they'll want to see you play it by their rules. The answer here is not "piracy", but a change of attitude.

What is copyright for? The first copyright act, known as the Statute of Anne, had a 14 year term (and a 21 year term for those works already in print). This was about allowing authors to retain rights over their own work instead of having them ripped from them by the printing companies. Now it appears to have been turned around the other way as the music industry and the like force the authors into contracts instead, and hold tight to the copyrights they have authority by from their artists by contract.

This is the same deal with a quantity of software, although nowadays it appears to be changing, and I think most software that aren't games are free these days.

I repeat: most software that aren't games are free these days.

Why would one "need" Windows, anyway? To play the latest games. Which are all first person shooters these days, anyway. And yet a subset of the same type of people are going to knock me for believing a "violent, nasty book", as to which I have two things to say:

1. Why do you play games which involve killing everyone and then attempt to attack the Bible for the same thing? Aren't you a hypocrite for doing this?*
2. Since when were you God‽ We have authorities on earth who are able to use force against other people. They're called the Police.
   

* Yeah, well, they're monsters! And really bad people! Whereas the horrible Israelites are being sent by the most awful god ever against the ever so innocent Palestinians who have done absolutely nothing wrong!

TVTropes.org has a trope entitled "Rated M For Money". The title alone sums up most of the trash you get today. And yet people are sucked into paying for this trash.

I am not encouraging "piracy" here. I am encouraging something much more damaging to the industries but also much more legit. I'm encouraging you to be free from this sort of garbage they feed you.

The same applies to movies, really. The "Rated M For Money" principle also applies here, and everyone's killing one another with most of your action films. Horror films are guaranteed to have at least one specific type of blasphemy moment. I'm sorry, but that's what happens. Thrillers are the horror equivalent of action films. This leaves comedy and drama to taint. Some drama can be quite active and lively. Nevertheless, these can also be tainted. Hey, let's portray homosexuals as completely innocent and pure, and all those horrible Christians as nasty mean horrible bleeps. That's an example of tainted drama. Then there's comedy, which only need two words to explain the idea: South Park.

(I should also mention romance. Romance could teach rather bad things about sex. Also, all pornos are wrong by definition even if there any truths in them.)

I'm not saying all films are bad. I'm not even saying that all of the films in any of those categories are bad, but many, many are. Nevertheless, we have short films... and some very long short films, if it is necessary to make a new category. These usually express an idea that we could learn from. Of course, these can still be tainted, too, but they usually don't suffer from consumerism.

If there appears to be a whole bunch of hype about some film, album, book, game, software, sports game, fish tank, or anything else, and the hype is everywhere, it's got some A-list actor in it or it's written by a great author or it's by a world-class publisher or something like that, theoretically you could get involved. Or, alternatively, you could do what I do: don't. You don't need it. Eventually, you won't even care about it. That's usually the guideline.

I'm going to have to assemble a checklist, aren't I?

See how many of these you encounter.

• Is it something with a beginning and an end? (With games / TV shows, it's often preferable to not have an end when the next item is applied)
  
• Do I have to pay something each year/quarter/month/week/day/millisecond just to keep my subscription going?
• Is it actually achieving something, other than making me "feel good"?
• Does it receive much media attention?
• Do you hear it on the radio?
• Is it marked as copyright by a particular distributor as opposed to the author / band / group which is labelled whereever?
  
• Films: Is it an action, horror, thriller, or porn film?
  
• Software: Is it a game?
• Music: Is it about sex, violence, drugs, or "I got what you don't" (e.g. the "I'm so two-thousand-and-eight, you're so two-thousand-and-late" trash track I've heard where someone's showing off plasma screens... I heard it for the first time half way through this year, 2009)?
• Books: Is it fiction, and not "illustrative fiction"? Same could also apply to films, too.
  
• TV shows: Do I find an impulse to watch this one particular show every day/week/whatever at that specific time?
• Toys: Is it of a particular film / game / book / whatever character?
• Fish tanks: Does it... Well, I don't know.
• Does it have a huge franchise revolving around it or is part of one of these franchises?

This should give you just an idea of what is most definitely "consumerist".

I'm going to finish this off with a request. Please, whatever you do, do not use any of the Microsoft Office formats. At the very least, do not send me anything in those formats. Note the "not"s there. I'm not saying "don't use Microsoft Office"; I can say that another time. I'm also not going against you sending me RTF files or anything, despite it originally being a Microsoft format; at least it's human-readable. Ideally, if you can, use PDF - Microsoft supplied a horribly broken "Save as ODF" option in one of their latest patches of MS Office which doesn't even follow the standard properly, so I advise that you use the Sun plugin instead, or alternatively use something like OpenOffice.org, like I do - it's free, and more free than just "freeware".

So, uh, have some links to some pages on the Free Software Foundation website:

• Campaign for the OpenDocument format
• Put an end to Word attachments

And finally, I am not saying "don't support the artists". I'm saying don't buy into the culture. If there's an artist you would truly like to support, try buying it straight off them, bypassing the distributors if possible.

Ignorance: missing the bigger picture

'Lo there, I have something to say. Quite a lot, really. It seems that many people think they know everything. Well, let me correct you: you know everything that you know... at the time. Perhaps there's lost memories, but in that case, technically you don't know ("Argh! I knew it!", "I used to know that...", "I don't know where I put it / where it is..." and so on - I think we can agree on that).

A case for me is music. I don't know everything about it; in fact, I don't listen to the radio on a regular basis, and I haven't for at the very least a year now, because I hate ads. Even Life FM's "2 minute promise" is still torture... and you never know when that King's Cars ad is going to pop up (hint: it has a jingle, and I thought it was Cage Cars originally), or that particular one about farming where there's lots of pauses and it's trying to teach you something. They usually fit about 4 ads in the gap. One time I actually counted on More FM or something like that, and I counted at least 7 ads in the gap.

So that explains why I don't listen to the radio very often at all these days. The side-effect of that is that I'm unaware of a lot of music; in fact, I completely missed Nelly Furtardo's "Do It", which was stolen by Timbaland from a Commodore 64 remix of an Amiga MOD track made in 2000 by a Finn. I support the demoscene in preference to the music industry, and I have a message to those of you in the industry: I binned my CD music collection recently.

So what music do I listen to? Free stuff. Most of the tracks were written with a 1 hour deadline; this stuff, for instance, and here's a link to the current archive (WARNING: some track names / content may be highly inappropriate - you can weed them out by deleting the tracks in question). I have a few tracks in there (my nickname is "GreaseMonkey", although some may be using my laptop handle, "gm|lap").

Note: as of writing, the archive appears to be down. ToastyX appears to be offline so I can't poke him right now. If you want to listen to some of my music, there's my modarchive profile.

Now, here's some ignorance in action. Context: xiagan at the current time has an issue with his hand, and he needs to see a specialist as the generalists can't seem to work it out. So, I thought I'd try having some fun, and then...

from what i gather, doctors can't solve == TIME FOR DIVINE INTERVENTION :D :D :D
<@daidalos> ~~
<@daidalos> What doctors cannot solve they will be able to in the future.

...the yawn material comes out. This is a very general statement. It's also rather disconcerting, as for a lot of the people in question (cancer, anybody?), by the time the answer is found, they'd be dead. It's a bit excessive to say that about a hand, though. The best thing to do is to just keep plodding along and not get too wound up about it, taking a little bit of care at a time. I say this knowing that horrors such as gangrene and nervous system issues are possible, but it's best not to be worried about it. After all, a huge rock from outer space could crash into our house and kill everyone, but it's not what's important.

It almost seems that ignorance is necessary in some situations. But there's a difference between ignorance and unknowledge, as I don't actually know whether or when a rock will crash into our house (God forbid, of course; I'm just expressing an idea), and some ignorance is due to ignoring your unknowledge. There is also a difference between ignorance and suspension. Suspension is when you put something on hold, usually because you're focusing on something else.

I am aware that the RFID chip could be "the mark of the beast", but I look back at the bigger picture, and am aware of several different theories as to what it is, some which are considerably less "blatant". If you just jump out and say "a load of [blank] and lies", then that's not suspension. I believe it's willful ignorance (*tongue* I'M NOT LISTENING TO YOU!!!) because it's related to some topic which you have instilled into you as something which is really really bad and they're out to get you and stuff.

On that note, if the UPC/EAN-13 barcode system is the mark of the beast, it's not due to the allegation that each divisor is a 6; the only one which can be a 6 is the one at the end, as the pattern for 6 is 1,1,1,4, and not just 1,1,1. Nevertheless, it's still a possibility; consumerism is rampant in first-world countries. Hence my announcement to the music industry.

Most consumerist "industries" depend on ignorance and unknowledge to stay alive and kicking. The software industry, for instance. Let me burst that bubble for you, dear/sir: I. RUN. LINUX. (Technically it's GNU/Linux; it's just easier to refer to it as Linux, as any other Linux-based software which doesn't use GNU is either very rare or called something else, e.g. Maemo 5. But yeah, Linux is the name of the "kernel", and GNU is the name of the "userland".) It's like free, except... Oh wait, it is free, and you can learn from it and even change it if you want, too; the source code is available. Here, have a screenshot:



It even has solitaire. What more could you want‽* Unfortunately I suck at Klondike solitaire, so I only managed to get 3 cards out. Also, that track has been looping for 20 minutes now; I should stop it... done.

*Of course, you'd also want to spend time with friends and/or family. That's something I should probably do more often. Except for me, it's not always people I know. Which actually makes it quite fun... but make sure you know how to tell whether someone is trying to do something dodgy or screw you over. TIP: if you can't do that, you shouldn't be surfing the internet.

Nevertheless, socialisation is one of the reasons I go to university. And church, for that matter; however, that is not the main reason (NO it's NOT "because your parents do it", that is merely why I got there in the first place; I go there to be inspired and primarily to keep my faith going).

But you can see that it's not Windows (it's running on my laptop which is not a macbook), yet it still looks quite usable. Down the bottom you can see a couple of terminal windows. You most likely won't need to use these; I just find them quite useful. Up the top, there's 3 menus, and then 3 icons (Firefox, a terminal, and VLC respectively). After the gap, you can see the X-Chat and Pidgin icons. Pidgin is the IM client I use, and currently it's connected to MSN, AIM, and GTalk. There's a networking icon which shows the wireless strength, an icon for setting my display settings, and a charge meter (I have the battery taken out as it's starting to get screwy and I don't want to continue to overcharge it).

I also have 5 different graphs running: CPU time, memory usage (the lightest green is also available; it's just disk cache), network usage, swap space usage (that's what you use if/when you run out of memory), and system load (it's related to CPU usage). After the graphs, there's the virtual desktop selector/indicator. I use these all the time (although I usually use the Ctrl-Alt-(arrow) shortcuts) - this is why I can't use Windows anymore for anything serious. Then there's some icon which gives indicators of stuff. And then of course, we have the time... and the date! Finally, there's another menu with all of the shutdown things and stuff.

Of course, this is just one particular distribution, or distro, called Ubuntu. There are many others, and I am using only one of many window managers, this one being called GNOME.

This is where it goes outside the realms of unknowledge, and you really have two choices: ignorance or suspension (sometimes both happen). Sometimes neglect happens due to rather long suspension. Here's something else you should be aware of: Windows isn't free. When it comes with your computer, you pay for it with the computer. Same deal with MS Office. There goes that excuse. I should probably cover this in further detail in a blog about consumerism and stuff like that.

I am fully aware that I rant a lot, although sometimes I forget and then I reach a point where I just realise that I've started dribbling on, and then get a little apologetic. It's nice when you say that and you find out that they're actually interested. Now, this is where I need to focus and actually get a message out there.

In case you haven't noticed, I have held origins theories in suspension (actually more specifically the theory of evolution, but I generally don't try to dive too deep into the whole mess). Why? They are a distraction from my goal. For those of you who say that there's absolutely no evidence for God, you're looking in the wrong place. I'm not sure if there's a modern "best example", but testomonies like this are where the proof comes. And comments like this are ignorance in action:

This isn't proof, I'm afraid. This is a story about your mother with no evidence. There are many other possible reasons why that tattoo appeared to disappear.
'GOD IS REAL' is not evidence.

The subtitle of this blog post is "missing the bigger picture", and that's what you just did, VALENTINEBEAMS.

Or how about this one?

Proof?
Nope!
Try again.

My answerphone can do better than that, deathfortea.

It's not the "science" that leads to the proof. The Great Commission wasn't to find (or fabricate, as the case may sadly be - some "Christians" are actually hypocrites) evidence for God's existance, because then it would be like a MacGuffin (warning: link goes to tvtropes; don't get carried away!). Did Jesus walk around telling people, "I am telling you this scientific proof"? No! He performed miracles and drove out demons! Proof of God does not come from mere study, it comes from action!

I am identifying the truth so that you may understand. Please don't be put off if you have never seen a miracle happen to you or anyone around you, or any messages (I tend to get the latter, mostly from "co-incidences" such as finding Hebrews 13:17 on a whiteboard in the place I was sleeping in the day we climbed a mountain with the trig number 1317). Not all miracles are "KA-BOOM!" miracles; in fact, most aren't. Some can take an awfully long time. I read somewhere that, in order to drive out demons, you have to be more persistent than they are.

Somehow I have to tie this in with ignorance but I haven't got a clue.

Hehe, only joking.

What I see is a double attack where one cloaks the other operation. Currently there's a user on YouTube who is suffering from demon contamination. So, we've got a battle between God and demons. And then the naturalists walk onto the scene and say that neither exist.

What you might see is two mental disorders: multiple-personality disorder, and "OH NOES A CHRISTIAN HURRRRR MUST BE IRRARATIONAL" disorder or, as you might apply, "thing I don't like which I can insert a snarky comment about" disorder (or "disease", or "virus", or anything else demeaning), and you think that it's only natural (and you think that's nothing to do with you).

After watching this demon-contaminated girl being abused to attempt to attack someone, I now realise that you can get much, much more irrational than a naturalist. I have never encountered such disgusting filth in my life, something which acts like a lowly coward who's grabbing as tightly as they can to the little they have left.

There are at least two ways of ignoring with at least slight knowledge of the big picture; I call them "cutting up the picture" and "picture of a picture".

• Cutting up the picture: where you have the big picture and you attempt to separate the relationship, perhaps cutting something out of it. Although you usually don't end up using the big picture or really looking into it. deathfortea says something like this, and it is incredibly irrational. (Naturalists can be irrational, too!) In effect, what is being said is
  
• Picture of a picture: where you fabricate stuff to devalue it, even fabricating that something is there. VALENTINEBEAMS says something like this. But this user also forgot about the big picture. The story is the evidence we are given. "There's no evidence" is a complete fallacy. On top of that, you are not going to convince the woman in question.
  

You might end up suspending this idea, but please don't just outright ignore it. What I'm about to express may sound incredibly absurd.

Suppose that the theory of evolution is a conspiracy run by demons.

I'm serious. Suppose that's the case. Suppose that scientists are being shown all this fabricated evidence. Suppose that demons are tinkering with the results. This might sound completely bogus to you, but I'm pretty sure there's more than enough demons to pull it off. Which totally sucks.

I am not asking you to believe this. I am asking you to ponder. It would be ignorant to just say that this is 100% true and that anything contrary to it is false, no exceptions; it's not scriptural (but not antiscriptural, either), and when we get to these sorts of topics, generally, what is scriptural is the way to go.

Now, ignorance is a huge topic, and I could go on. I believe that there is a lot more that can be said. If you have any questions or anything to explore, please prod me and I'll try to get something blogged up to continue this. Right now, it's a good time to get some sleep. Good night and God bless.

My sincere apologies.

Oh dear. It looks like I got involved in that mess again. Uhh... Unfortunately, I don't seem to have a way of doing truetype text in the usual editor, so I'm going to have to go into the "Edit HTML" thing, because not everyone uses Microsoft fonts. It's true!

So yeah, have a kitten.

  ^   ^
 (_O*O_)
(Y) @ (Y)  *
 (_)(_)\__/

Richard Dawkins or Ray Comfort?

Who would "win" in a debate? Some of you are going to lunge for one and some for another.

OK, so I post some quote in my status message. I found it on someone's YouTube profile and I thought it was quite inspirational.

When the atheist claims that the Christian is enslaved, it is like a land animal telling a bird it's enslaved to the sky.

That had been sitting there for a few days, and then my naturalist friend quotes this:

Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

I immediately recognised this as a Richard Dawkins quote, even though I haven't seen the original quote myself, I know that he quite frequently associates God with fairies, probably because fairies sound pathetic.

So, I put this in my status message, after it:

A beautiful garden usually has a gardener to keep it beautiful.

Also, I should queue "Cows keep a farmers' paddocks mowed so they don't turn into swamps - grass doesn't cut itself".

But anyways, compare the second and third quotes: the Richard Dawkins quote (apologies to the author if I misattributed this) and the counter-quote I whipped up. The counter-quote is the sort of thing Ray Comfort would say about this. His primary argument is that a painting must have a painter, a design must have a designer, a creation must have a creator. So, if we have a beautiful garden, there must be something to keep it beautiful. And that thing is usually a gardener.

Of course, fairies could also do the job, but that's usually not what happens.

I have a rough idea of what happens when you don't do the gardening. Now, I could almost credit Philos. Dawkins for being a scientist, and I would do that in favour of crediting him as being a gardener. Someone should give him a pot-plant and slip in a wandering willie or something like that. Hint: simply watering the plant is not going to deal with the weed.

Now, in a "beautiful garden", usually, the trees are trimmed so they don't become a huge mess. Grass is frequently mowed or scythed or something like that. Another good "challenge" suggestion would be to give Philos. Dawkins a passionfruit vine. We had one and it miraculously survived about 5 years. We trellissed it correctly, and we got a lot of passionfruit. After about a year or something like that, it was like a huge shrub. Looking from the kitchen window revealed that it was full of blowflies.

I'm going to let you decide who won this debate between Richard Dawkins and David Quinn, but I think we can agree that Richard Dawkins has been quite cowardly and/or arrogant in this debate (the "Yes it is / No it isn't" tossing which happens later on suggests playground techniques which really achieve nothing).

I'll quote this part [ (C) RTE Radio, 2006 ]. The context of this is that Philos. Dawkins claimed that naturalists can have free will, and David Quinn mentioned how Dawkins quoted something that William Provine said about there being no free will, and that "many of [his] colleagues" believed the same thing.

Tubridy: Okay. Richard Dawkins, rebut to that as you wish.

Dawkins: I’m not interested in free will what I am interested in is the ridiculous suggestion that if science can’t say where the origin of matter comes from theology can. The origin of matter… the origin of the whole universe, is a very, very difficult question. It’s one that scientists are working on. It’s one that they hope eventually to solve. Just as before Darwin, biology was a mystery. Darwin solved that. Now cosmology is a mystery. The origin of the universe is a mystery; it’s a mystery to everyone. Physicists are working on it. They have theories. But if science can’t answer that question then as sure as hell theology can’t either. [ emphasis mine ]

Quinn: If I can come in there, it is a perfectly reasonable proposition to ask yourself where does matter come from? And it is perfectly reasonable as well to posit the answer, God created matter. Many reasonable people believe this and by the way… I mean look it is quite a different category to say look we will study matter and we will ask how

Dawkins: But if science can’t answer that question, then it’s sure as hell theology can’t either. [ emphasis mine ]

Tubridy: Richard, if ...

Quinn: Sorry — if I can come in there — It’s a perfectly reasonable proposition to ask oneself where does matter come from. And it’s perfectly reasonable as well to posit the answer God created matter. Many reasonable people believe this.

Dawkins: It’s not reasonable.

Quinn: It’s quite a different category to say “Look, we will study matter and we will ask how matter organizes itself into particular forms,” and come up with the answer “evolution.” It is quite another question to ask “Where does matter come from to begin with?” And if you like you must go outside of matter to answer that question. And then you’re into philosophical categories.

Dawkins: How could it possibly be another category and be allowed to say God did it since you can’t explain where God came from?

Quinn: Because you must have an uncaused cause for anything at all to exist. Now, I see in your book you come up with an argument against this that I frankly find to be bogus. You come up with the idea of a mathematical infinite regress but this does not apply to the argument of uncaused causes and unmoved movers because we are not talking about maths we’re talking about existence and existentially nothing exists unless you have an uncaused cause. And that uncaused cause and that unmoved mover is, by definition, God.

[ my emphasis was pointing out the irony of the overuse of idioms which the person would be embarassed to admit they actually said that. ]

After this, Dawkins rebuts this by the presumption that Christianity is inferior to naturalism in terms of philosophy and therefore cannot win against it. It turns to custard there and he starts acting like a little kid. I would like to get an audio recording of this debate, as Dawkins has what I would like to call "a cursed pen", which makes him sound absolutely horrible when his words are written down (although I have heard him speak and sound arrogant, too, so it's not particularly unfair).

Dawkins: You just defined God as that! You just defined a problematic existence. That’s no solution to the problem. You just evaded it.

Hypocrisy, anyone? Someone said in one of his asking-questions things, "What if you're wrong?" and he turned it back on the person asking the question. (If I ever go to one of those things, I'd just love to ask questions completely irrelevant to his fight.) P.S. The applause was far from deserved, because he didn't answer the question.

Now, back to the title point. I haven't really said anything about Ray Comfort here. While his banana analogy "has been 'debunked'" (super scare quotes here to save the day!), as a wild banana is different from the banana we know about (wild bananas have lots of hard seeds, whereas our bananas are infertile and grafted from one of several original banana trees), he still has the apple analogy. The thing is, these apples are still fertile, and so the idea behind it remains.

He did apologise for his mistake, though, and I can't remember the theory he follows for the banana nowadays.

I have two books by Ray Comfort: "God Doesn't Believe In Atheists" and "Hollywood Be Thy Name". Note that the blurbs on the back are a tad misleading. The former does a lot of biblical referencing, whilist the latter has a lot of material which isn't actually about the film industry. This is one thing Ray and I have in common, despite never having met: we rant.

I don't know a lot about Ray Comfort's debating style. I know that he had a debate with the chairman of American Atheists, Ron Barrier. As the story goes, Ray offered a debate with Ron, who turned him down, then AA members called Ray a chicken, where he explained that Ron was the one who chickened out, so the AA members pressured him and he finally accepted it, even flying Ray there. After the debate, they hugged each other.

So, let's actually have a look... Who would win in a debate, Richard Dawkins or Ray Comfort? Philos. Dawkins seems to be afraid of Ray; after all, bribing Dawkins, first with $10k, then $20k, doesn't seem to do it for him ($20k would get you a lot of propoganda to put on more busses, y'know - after all, busses can't think for themselves, so why would they care?).

Seeing as I'm pretty much out of steam, I'll have to conclude something. It really depends on the audience. With the RD.N community, it doesn't matter who's doing the debate; if Dawkins were to debate God himself, Dawkins' followers would still claim a victory for naturalism. However, given a fair representation of the general population, I believe that, no matter who wins, Dawkins will be arrogant about it, and pretend to win.

What sucks about YouTube

It's one thing to say that something sucks, but it's another thing to actually explain why. I will be focused on discussing what exactly is wrong with YouTube.

OK, the thumbs-up / thumbs-down / rating in a video which has anything to do with religion is misleading, as most people who register for YouTube and spend a lot of time looking at videos about religion are hardline naturalists and a lot are really closed-minded. Why naturalists? Usually they have nothing better to do.

(I prefer to use the term "naturalist", as "atheist" is a very direct term. Think of it this way: "You are very welcome to join the 'I Hate White People' group. We're a very peaceful group and we love one another." I use the term "naturalist" because it refers to people who believe that we came to be entirely due to "natural" causes.)

Now, there's a user named jezuzfreek777. Like him or not, he's a legitimate user. Now there's jezusfreek666x. This guy is almost a doppleganger.

How can I report him?

Well, I have two options.

1. I could flag his videos. But it's not specific enough. Fortunately, I can give "bullying" as a reason.
2. I could report image violations on his profile.

Oh that's just brilliant. I could almost shove this post on my earlier blog - y'know, the one with all the F-bombs and that. Yeah.

So, I've tried #1, and flagged the "Pornography is good" video as "bullying". Click the button, and... great! I...

In order to help us understand your bullying complaint better, we'll need additional details. Please refer to our Safety Center for more information and the form to submit.

Looking at that, there's no form. But there is one instance of "form" on its own (not included in the word "information"):

YouTube doesn't allow videos with nudity, graphic violence or hate. If you come across a video like this, click the link on the video to flag it as Inappropriate and submit the form on the next page to report it to YouTube.

But there's no next page. I look on the video and find no "next page", either. Perhaps clicking "close" would do something?

... not at all.

Does anyone remember ChristianU2uber? He was roughly 12 years old and made a video about how homosexuality is wrong. It doesn't matter how spoonfed or how wrong he is, YOU ABSOLUTELY DO NOT DO WHAT HAPPENED NEXT. Yes, all-caps, bold, direct language.

One doppelganger would be worse than a single comment saying "HOMO"; nevertheless, both are wrong. He actually responded several times and got all fired up... there was a video where he yells "I AM NOT A HOMO", giving himself a red face in the process. But the number of doppelgangers? I'd estimate about 5. The number of comments saying "HOMO"? Far too many for me to count. Estimation? 10,000.

And that's not all; this bullying has been immortalised for all time* on Encyclopedia Dramatica, under the title... "Angry Homo Kid". I effectively used to say that Encyclopedia Dramatica is the cesspit of the internet. I stand by my position.

* Unless someone actually toughens up and shuts this website down. You who claim "freedom of speech" are only about defending your own freedom of speech and not the freedom of others'. There's a very good reason why God hates hypocrisy, and I hate it, too.

I'm not trying to portray all naturalists in a bad light here. A lot actually condemned their efforts (whilist in the meantime using their comment space as an excuse to shun God; after all, that's how naturalists seem to do it on the internet).

Now, you might be thinking that I just happen to have an issue with naturalists, and that all is fine and dandy elsewhere, but I happen to be at least slightly aware of "YouTube partners". I don't know all the details about it, but I do know that a lot of videos were pulled from YouTube because Viacom had a copyright claim on at least some part of the video.

Here's my advice. If you want a video pulled off YouTube, look for any copyright infringements. Because that's all they care about. Unless it's a tiny, tiny amount of copyrighted material, they'll do their best to shut it down.

(Although one of my videos has a "Download this song" advertisement as I used a track as background music... I guess that's nicer than "hURR not use copyrighted music delete now"... I might just delete it and replace the soundtrack with some stuff off Modarchive or some other demosceners' tracks and promote those artists, as I'm trying to stop consumerism - I have a .rar archive of about 50 tracks by dizzy, and about the same count for tracks by beek.)

The fact that YouTube appear to be more concerned about upholding copyright rather than upholding human rights is what bothers me. This, I believe, is what's fundamentally wrong with YouTube.

(Just one thing I'd like to add which sprung to mind last night. I've heard that, depending on where you look in your data, if you're looking for "ancestors" by the theory of evolution, we appear to either be closely related to the monkey, the pig, or the chicken. Each of these are used as derogatory terms. Which would you rather be: a monkey, a pig, or a chicken?)