The enemies of reason

Charlie Brooker in Saturday's Guardian:

"Spirituality" is what cretins have in place of imagination. If you've ever described yourself as "quite spiritual", do civilisation a favour and punch yourself in the throat until you're incapable of speaking aloud ever again. Why should your outmoded codswallop be treated with anything other than the contemptuous mockery it deserves?

Maybe you've put your faith in spiritual claptrap because our random, narrative-free universe terrifies you. But that's no solution. If you want comforting, suck your thumb.

Gotta admit he's got a point there; I fundamentally respect your right to hold whatever belief you wish to hold. I also respect your right to either persuade me I'm wrong and/or that I'm going to burn in hell for being the atheist I am.

What I can't, and won't, do is respect the belief itself. Sky fairies don't exist, there are no gods, we have no immortal souls and there are no fairies at the bottom of the garden (well, except in the only good Torchwood episode, anyway). These delusions do nothing but placate fears or dislike for the world the way it is, they're a paliative. Get out there and do something with your life, make something of yourself--this is all there is, make the best of it.

Advantage of staying up North for a week^[1]? televisionfree me gets to watch the one or two interesting TV shows that multichannel world throws at you per week. Richard Dawkins, 8pm Channel 4, Monday night; The Enemies of Reason. Good good.

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[1] It's an advantage. It's nowhere close to the main advantage, I would in fact put it very low the list of them; spending loads of time with ones new fiancee may be right at the top methinks. Did I mention we got engaged? I did? Ah well, I might repeat it again a few times just for good measure. Time to turn in--g'night all

The Fandom vs Six Apart trainwreck

Briefly, for obvious reasons I've been busy and not following too closely last few days, but on the most recent news I concur win demiurgent (Eric Burns of websnark). I've said a few times here and elsewhere that while the law itself in the US is fairly clear, there are grey areas that will need a test case; where does the boundary lie? One thing I'm sure of, Eric:

Six Apart doesn't want this to be a test case. But I promise you fanfiction communities really don't want this as a test case.

Because while 6A may have broken Californian consumer law (really, not my field), doing this:

They stated that they had received a number of complaints, and that they were contacting Six Apart to try and act as a liason between the unhappy consumers and the company. He did say that he would be contacting me, should Six Apart fail to respond, and that they may need me to provide further information "for legal action against this company by our office on behalf of the consumers".

Almost certainly going to cause more trouble than it solves. Legal spotlight, front and centre, on Lj & 6A. Therefore to include child porn allegations, copyright infringements, etc. The CA AG may not go that way, but it'll get publicity, and other lawyers.

Read the comments of that IJ post; the person who's started it has NO IDEA that this could cause other issues. Houston? We have a problem...

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Lovely lunch now finished, back to work...

Metro Weird amuses again

Fraud charges over quiz that was a load of bull | Metro.co.uk picture caption:

Milk: controversial

end of article:

The proper answer's 20 litres, by the way, even if oxen are only ever males, which they aren't anyway. God, some people are stupid.

Teacher quits after porn star date | Metro.co.uk picture caption:

The frankly disappointing picture that you get if you search for 'porn' in our image archive

metro_weird

I'm still impressed Associated Newspapers senior staff let these guys get away with it...