I share it because it is beautiful
I share it because it is terrible
Most importantly
I share it because it is unforgettable.

It doesn’t matter that more moderate Muslims are pointing out that the prohibition on representing Mohammed, – which stems from a belief that any representation amounts to idolatry – is supposed to be a rule for Muslims only.  It doesn’t matter that the freedoms we take for granted in the West hard won from a history of bloodshed and conflict against tyranny are being eroded at a fundamental level through a campaign of fear.

Base and violent ancient superstitions should not be allowed to play any part in, or threaten, the modern world in which we live.  There was a time when Europe and the rest of the civilised world cowed in fear to the trinity of Abrahamic religions but that should be long past.

Should Muslims’ like this poking of their beliefs with the stick of free expression?  Probably not – nobody likes that – but the appropriate response lies in communication and dialog; not in arson, murder, and intimidation which has been a stock standard response to date by a militant minority.

I hope that those choosing to add their support to this cause do so in a firm and respectful manner.  The point here is about the right of free people to draw a representation of Mohammed, not to inflame sentiments through gross disrespect.

I submit my sketch in support of the International Draw Mohammed Day.

You drag the bookmarklet to your browser toolbar and then log into Facebook and go to the privacy main menu. Once there, click on the bookmarklet and the tool will have a good look at the way your account is configured. Here’s what it found on mine.

By clicking the links, you are taken to that page with the option to opt out. Facebook, shame on you.

This is nowhere more apparent than in the fight to remove religion from public schools. Whether embroiled in the Creationist-Darwinian fights of America or the teaching of Christian classes here in our schools the issue is the same. Educators believe themselves above their mandate to educate in facts and take it on as some nobel right to feed impressionable children their own brand of religious Koolaid. Religious indoctrinators are able to enter the classroom with impunity to teach our kids whatever they feel like without our consent.

So it came as no surprise to me that the church is whining and crying fowl as soon as a few schools in New South Wales began trialling a viable alternative to scripture class.

At first, given the vehemence with which they are taking up the matter with fundraisers and officials in the government we might be led to believe that these classes are promoting something sinister and of real detriment to the kids and the entire fabric of society. the reality is that no such thing has happened. Children in ten New South Wales state schools have been given an alternative to scripture class in the form of a secular ethics class. These classes have been funded and endorsed by the Federation of Parents and the Citizens’ Association of New South Wales. The curriculum was put together by Professor Phillip Cam from the University of New South Wales and will introduce children to topics like understanding moral dilemmas, fairness, issues of judgement, children’s rights, lying and telling the truth and compassion towards each other and our environment. [Seriously fundies, what the fuck is wrong with that?]

To date, children have had the right to not attend scripture class, however an insidious form of peer rejection is associated with this. Reports of kids being left sitting in hallways unsupervised or made to sit in isolation in empty classrooms or the library mean that most kids during their impressionable developmental years will attend the scripture class to not be the odd one out in their group of peers.

So what happened when a real viable alternative was offered? [it was embraced as a positive step towards teaching kids values and making them better human beings? ... please let that be the answer.] Accounts of attendance are showing that 47% of kids dropped out of scripture class, estimates are that next year 60%+ will be attending the ethics class and the religious community has erupted in very un-Christian like outrage.

The religious leaders are squealing like stuck pigs, crying foul that their pretentious positions of authority have been undermined. A fundraising website to protect ‘special religious education’ has sprung up stating that the objective of the secular classes is not to teach children ethics without the healthy lashings of guilt and bronze age creation myths but to:

‘remove Jesus Christ from the state school system and from the consciousness and hearts of the next generation.’

[must have been in a secret email by Prof Cam ... let's see if we can kill Jesus in schools ... *sigh*]

They go on to say that:

‘if we lose religious education, we risk losing true, fundamental ‘ethics’ that have underpinned Australia’s moral framework for hundreds of years.’

[because history is chock full of examples of the church leading the way in enlightened ethics that underpin society ... yah right!]

The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney Peter Jensen is pressuring the NSW premier, Kristina Jeneally, to allow the Anglican Church to have input into the ethics classes [because a fraternity of kiddy fiddling old men who know a story book off by heart are far better placed than an internationally recognised professor with experience in child education...] – really?, can’t they handle a little competition, surely their religious classes should be able to stand on the merit of its own teachings and attendance figures without having to medal in a secular class [let me repeat that with emphasis ... SECULAR ... ]

A flurry of protest and demonstration drummed up in opposition to the teaching of values and honest to children without the religious guilt and bumf has forced Verity Firth (education minister) to refuse to guarantee the continuation of these classes – perhaps use the link which follows to let Verity know what you think of the fact that she, as a government elected official there to serve the needs of all the people, is pandering to the unelected heads of tax exempt supernatural charities and organisations http://www.verityfirth.com/contact.aspx
[Dear Verity, when we elected you to stand as an educational representative for our children we had no idea you were such a spineless coward...]

We live in a multicultural society here in Australia, a land made up primarily of immigrants from all over the globe in the not too distant past. When Australia’s Federal Constitution was drafted in 1901, section 116 of the Constitution was penned in a way that attempted to mimic the American separation of Church and state:

The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.

A number of political decisions and appointments have subverted this message over the last few decades – in the 1950′s Sir Robert Menzies, Australia’s Prime Minister at the time, took it upon himself to grant state aid to Catholic schools; a decision which has almost class ramifications in the education system to this day. In 2001, John Howard appointed the Anglican Archbishop Peter Hollingworth as governor-general of Australia – a decision which was met with much public criticism that fell on deaf ears. He relinquished the office only later when it came out that he had attempted to cover up several instances of child sexual abuse [a decision that would no doubt have met with the approval of our current pope]. In 2002 a civil suit was lodged against Hollingworth by Rosemary Ann Jarmyn when she identified Hollingworth as the man who raped her during a church youth camp. Jarmyn committed suicide in April 2003 and Hollingworth relinquished the reigns of office during the trial.

I don’t believe I am alone in believing that the church has had too much free reign when it comes to matters of state and state run entities like the public schools. I have a say and a vote in the representatives who run the country so why don’t I have a choice over what it taught to my child? Under no circumstances should religious denominations of any form be allowed to enter schools as they see fit to preach their toxic beliefs to a captive and impressionable audience.

I for one am glad to see a valuable life skill like secular ethics offered as a course in schools where children can learn valuable life skills without fear of hell, eternal damnation or the crazy warped moral values of religion. I hope that in a short time the majority of kids will choose these secular classes over their scriptural counterparts and that their success spreads to every school in the land. I hope that their septic spewings from the pulpit dry up in schools like drought addled vines and the indoctrinators retreat to their unattended Sunday sermons to lick their wounds and contemplate the end of their days of any form of influence or power in our education system.

Enough is enough.

Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

Posted via email from The Thought Menagerie

Internet filter plan may extend further, says Broadband Minister | Herald Sun: “The Government’s internet censorship plan may extend to filter more web activity than first thought, the Broadband Minister said today.

In a post on his department’s blog, Senator Stephen Conroy today said technology that could filter data sent directly between computers would be tested as part of the upcoming live filtering trial.

‘Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial,’ Senator Conroy said.

Peer-to-peer file-sharing technology is the most common way for web users to share video, picture and music files between computers over the internet. “

What does Australia have in common with Iran and China?

More info here.

Robots and humans always seem to end up at odds, whether it’s battling over pieces of NASA’s budget or literally fighting in science fiction stories such as “The Matrix” and “Battlestar Galactica.”

Now a former NASA historian and an American University professor suggest that the future of space exploration could very well depend on a merging of metal and flesh.

Their new book “Robots in Space” (2008, The Johns Hopkins University Press) looks at the competing visions for robotic vs. human space exploration, and concludes that neither will get far beyond the solar system without one another.

SPACE.com — Merging Man and Machine to Reach the Stars

Some of my favourite quotes:

• “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
• “If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run – and often in the short one – the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.”
• “Somewhere in me is a curiosity sensor. I want to know what’s over the next hill. You know, people can live longer without food than without information. Without information, you’d go crazy”

And in his famous 10 word story:

“God said, ‘Cancel Program GENESIS.’ The universe ceased to exist.”

His vision and optimism about the continuance of our species will be sorely missed.

This is the earliest photograph ever taken. Entitled View from the Window at Le Gras, this was taken by Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826 and had an eight hour exposure time.

What about this one?

Taken in 1904 by Edward Steichen this photograph is of Long Island New York and was sold in 2006 for a cool $2.6 million making it the most expensive photograph ever sold.

From the long exposures to the incredible chemical wizardry and patience of the earliest proponents of the art, this website gives you the tiniest taste of what it took to be a photographer back in days before the magic and convenience of our modern cameras.

Source: more here

This story dates back to a novel written in 1954 by Richard Matheson and is the inspiration and the source of three movies to date.  I figured that if the story inspired 3 movies and much of the Zombie genre’ then it should at least be a pretty good listen so I downloaded it last night to my iPod.  This morning, on the train on the way to work, I started listening to it.

The early story sees Neville spending much of his day collecting things essential for his survival, repairing the damage of the terrible creatures which visit him in the night and destroying the slumbering undead which he stumbles upon in his foraging.  In the evening he his haunted by memories of a life he once enjoyed, items around the house make him remember his wife for example, while the noises and taunts of the things stalking outside drive him to the brink of madness not even the medicinal effects of alcohol can blunt.

I am still quite early on in the story but so far I am loving it, it is clever and very well written with much of the horror (and the subsequent effects on Neville’s mind) are hinted at which for me builds in a much more effective way than coarse descriptions of  lewd and graphic horror.  We get a deep sense of the man and his mental downward spiral through his internal monologues which replace conversations with people in standard novels.

I really believe Smith had the capabilities to do justice to this great literary character however the actor is only part of the story; perhaps the director felt that great stories are not enough and I feel he subsequently flubbed it badly.

I will revisit this story when I am done with it but in the interim I’d advise you head on over to Audible.com or Amazon and get yourself a version if this is a genre of story you enjoy; damn good stuff in my opinion.

In the sixth century, Pope Gregory handed down a list of “seven cardinal vices.” Now the Vatican has issued an additional seven “social sins.”

You offend God not only by stealing, taking the Lord’s name in vain or coveting your neighbor’s wife, but also by wrecking the environment, carrying out morally debatable experiments that manipulate DNA or harm embryos,” said [Bishop Gianfranco] Girotti, who is responsible for the body that oversees confessions.

The seven social sins are:

1. “Bioethical” violations such as birth control

2. “Morally dubious” experiments such as stem cell research

3. Drug abuse

4. Polluting the environment

5. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor

6. Excessive wealth

7. Creating poverty

The original deadly sins:

1. Pride

2. Envy

3. Gluttony

4. Lust

5. Anger

6. Greed

7. Sloth

One of the best comments for this posting was by Takuan

AH those crazy kids at the world’s largest real estate operation! How about the child raping huh? Or the targeting of the poor for recruits and the increasing of the ranks of the poor by opposing family planning? All those vatican art treasures gathering dust when they could be sold for food for the hungry. Aboriginal people everywhere still badly wounded from having the native beat out of them. All those nuns,monks and priests with blighted lives from having their natural sexuality crushed in the name of subjugation to church power. Gay people everywhere, murdered by church sanction and still being made to fight for basic human rights. Cultural treasures lost to the bonfires of the church in South America, The Inquisition, the retarding of science, the wilfull delay of medical advances, the overweening hypocrisy , the brutality, the greed, the ignorance……

How dare they show their faces much less preach about “sin”?

Well said!

CaptainCarrot writes “Phil Plait, aka The Bad Astronomer has summarized for his readers the new results released by NASA from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which has been surveying the 3K microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang. Some of the most interesting results: The age of the universe is now known to unprecedented accuracy: 13.73 billion years old, +/- 120 million. Spacetime is flat to within a 2% error margin. And ordinary matter and energy account for only 4.62% of the universe’s total. Plait’s comment on the age result: ‘Some people might say it doesn’t look a day over 6000 years. They’re wrong.‘”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

I wish more kids would get off the inane World of Warcraft and give Dungeons and Dragons a go, D&D version 4 is soon to be released.

According to a post on Troll Lord Games, the company that had published his most recent work, Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons & Dragons, has passed away. In 2003, on the now defunct kcgeek.com, we ran an interview with Gygax. I have republished it over on Gadgets. Tiamat consume you fully, Gary. You brought untold amount of fun and joy into my life. This excerpt tickles me:

Q. As far as you know, what was the basic evolution of polyhedral dice? If they existed prior to the creation of Dungeons & Dragons, what were they used for?

To the best of my knowledge I introduced them to gaming, en masse, with D&D in 1974. I found sets of the five platonic solids for sale in a school supply catalog back in 1972, and of course ordered them, used them in creating the D&D game.

Link to interview with discussion [BBG]

Thomas Hawk sez, “In what I can only view as troubling and a move surely to invite more backlash against photographers, London’s Metropolitan police has launched a new counter-terrorism PR campaign complete with anti-photography propaganda. The campaign is meant to encourage people to turn in ‘odd’ seeming people that they see taking photographs.”

“Thousands of people take photos every day,” reads their advertisement being run in London’s major newspapers. “What if one of them seems odd?”

Link (Thanks, Thomas!)

I found a great tag-line for the week:

Nihil curo de ista tua stulta superstitione.

which translates to:  I’m not interested in your dopey religious cult.

The part of my reptilian brain that still appreciates high school humour enjoyed Estne volumen in toga, an solum tibi libet me videre?

I know a lot of men who, once they got to their 30s, hit a fog after realising youth was behind them and then mistakenly decided their best years were gone just because they were losing their hair and couldn’t dunk a basketball anymore.Part of this is because many Lost Boys have eschewed what is commonly held to be the path to happiness – settling down and having children – because it often appears a false step that’s bought only intermittent solace to harried and divorced friends and family.

Part of it is also because male role models are so thin on the ground – with society as a whole confusing fame, wealth, self-absorption and perpetual youth for the fountainhead of contentment.After thinking and writing about the problem for years, as well as living through it, I reckon that much of the reason is because there is no clear next step for men aside from marriage and kids, however, I think I may have worked out a healthy alternative …Recently I read an essay by American psychiatrist Allan B. Chinnen titled ‘Men’s Mid-Life Initiation into the Deep Masculine’ and it provided some new pieces to the puzzle for me.

Chinnen argues that modern society has been selective in the male mythology it has chosen to embrace, focusing too much on fairy tales and stories presenting “men battling evil enemies, winning a great victory, and then becoming king.”"The dramas reflect the traditional heroic and patriarchal paradigm of masculinity,” and so “society expects young men in real life to be brave, aggressive and victorious, so young men struggle to fit the heroic and patriarchal image,” writes Chinnen.

The Age Blogs: All Men Are Liars

By all means let’s be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.

Richard Dawkins Quotes

A team of researchers at the University of Alberta has discovered a gene that is able to block HIV, and in turn prevent the onset of AIDS.Stephen Barr, a molecular virologist in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, says his team has identified a gene called TRIM22 that can block HIV infection in a cell culture by preventing the assembly of the virus.”When we put this gene in cells, it prevents the assembly of the HIV virus,” said Barr, a postdoctoral fellow. “This means the virus cannot get out of the cells to infect other cells, thereby blocking the spread of the virus.”

Researchers discover gene that blocks HIV

Tags: science, medicine, HIV, research, cutting-edge

Witness the power of the fully operational Microsoft WorldWide Telescope, as Roy Gould and Curtis Wong walks the audience at TED through this stunning software effort. Some experts say that the WorldWide Telescope, which puts together terabytes of information from telescopes all over the world to make a seamless rendition of the entire known Universe, will change the way we—the normal humans—understand the cosmos. After seeing it in action, I agree:

[From Microsoft WorldWide Telescope; Gizmodo]