Mat Bowles

In lieu of propper content, and because I'm a) doing more childcare than normal and b) getting addicted to the damn wii, have some links to posts by others that you should be reading.

Firstly, on the Atheist Bus campaign^[1], three scientist bloggers, Dave Godfrey, Debi Linton and Strangefrontier who says:

Dear Christians on my friendslist, when you feel that atheist campaigners are generalising about your whole faith and railing against you, the real target is folks like Stephen Green. The problem is that he and others like like are so damn loud and have such a constant media presence, they drown out the normal, decent and sane* Christians. No matter what positive PR you throw out there, the attention will be given to some cunt shouting, "God hates fags!"

I especially liked Dave's line If he didn't exist I think the atheists would have to invent him, he's launched a case on which the crux is he has evidence of the existence of God. Well, like Dawkins, if you can give me some proof I'll change my opinion...

Anyway, next topic. Woolworths has shut down. Since he finished his degree, doctorvee has been working for them, in a number of branches, and I heartily recommend his series of posts on the history of the company and the experiences of working there in its dying days. Like him, I loved Woollies as a kid but found them fairly pointless as an adult, they definitely had no clue what they were trying to be as a chain, and Wilkinson's have definitely displaced a lot of their business in Yorkshire. I had no idea that the company had started out as the early equivalent of a pound store, they only dumped their fixed price policy because of rationing during the war.

Sad news however. Number 6 is dead. In an era where his "I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered, I am a free man" speech has increasing relevence, it remains an iconic series and I really hope they don't mess up the reimagined version with Sir Ian as Number Two. RIP Patrick, you were great.

Cool news: Molecular Analysis Confirms Tyrannosaurus Rex's Evolutionary Link To Birds. They didn't die out, they evolved. Next time you eat a chicken dinner, that's one of T-Rex's relatives you're chomping down on ;-)

Want: Trends Are Cyclical: the Asus Eee Keyboard. It a complete fully functioning computer, all inside thin keyboard. How cool is that?

Have to say, I pretty much agree with Tim here, economic protectionism makes us poorer and damages our economy more than it benefits us. Buy British if you want, but if it's not the best deal, buy whatever, the economy benefits from the transaction regardless. ETA: Friday's More or Less is a politics special starring Vince! Yay!

Last up, innerbrat wants to declared this year as the International Year of True History to commemorate both Darwin and Galileo. She's wrong to call it "true" history of course, everyone knows that real history started at about 1600, everything before that is pre-history, but it's a nice idea.

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[1] From which I've taken this icon, I yoinked the LJified version from strangefrontier but it was designed by jonworth_eu_fd who coordinated the intial fundraising campaign before it all got a bit bigger than anyone expected. I'd forgotten how good a blogger he is until I found him on Twitter, Labour party members that can actually write well about politics are worth paying attention to, methinks^[2].

[2] On a similar line, blimpish_fd is back, one of the few Tory bloggers that doesn't make me want to shout at the screen at the idiocy and ignorance.

Today, I are mostly been sleeping. Then I did a lot of digging and wrote a post at Liberal Conspiracy about a certain Brian Coleman, London Assembly member and sexist git.

I first heard about the tedious cock in that post of liadnan's, a long time before I moved up to London, and he's done nothing to impress me since. For quite awhile, my old post about him was top Google result for his name, it's fallen now to seventh. But I think he's more than a cock now, he's an expensive ignorant sexist git who deserves as much opprobrium as possible. So, given I no longer live in London, I don't have AMs or MPs to complain to. So I figure I'd hurt his rep on Google a bit instead.

If you fancy joining in, and have a publicly accessible website that's indexed by search engines, especially Google,

<a href="http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2008/12/14/brian-coleman-am-ignorant-incompetent-sexist-buffoon/" title="Brian Coleman AM: Ignorant incompetent sexist buffoon">Brian Coleman</a>

copying and pasting the below might assist in adding to the amusement—LC already has a good placing in search engines, but so do other sites that mention him. If lots of people link to that post with his name as the anchor, it should float to the top quite nicely...

I think I'm beginning to recover from the exhaustion now. Had a simply marvellous (darling) weekend, involving meeting many people, consuming much alcohol and watching many many many films. On Friday alone I was sat in various cinemas for over 8^1/2 hours. So, for those interested, a summary review of the films I watched, in order of showing.

Day one: Friday 13th

( 12.00: Brain Dead—but not the one I expected )
( 14.15: Vampire Diary—including unexpected friends in the crowd )
( 16.00: Black Christmas—traditional college slasher pic )
( 18.15 An American Werewolf in London—so much better than I was expecting, and I knew it was good. )if like me you've never seen this film?
Go and watch it. Now.( really, just do it )
( 20.15: The Mist )

Aftermath

After that, we went to a local Moroccan restaurant for a meal (hint to the waiter—if you want a decent tip, try to avoid serving the chicken dish to the vegetarian and telling him it's cheese), then onto the Gasworks. I was at this stage utterly exhausted (films tend to tire me anyway, enclosed atmospheres, etc), but it was fun. We eventually rolled home in the early hours.

I'm posting this via the flickr blog this tool from karohemd's picture of yself and snapesbabe in front of pmoodie's poster art, I'll do day two and three later.

• BOFH: Shiny new computer room | The Register
  El Reg shifted the feed BOFH was on (again) and I hadn't noticed. Been in this sort of meeting a few times, in such a discussion, backing up the MD or the tech, the tech wins. Every time. (reg_bofh is new syndication account BTW)
  (tags: BOFH the+register)
• Blah blah blah - Beloved Intertubes,
  Sparkle has a job interview, and could do with the help of People of Faith, so, y'know go help her (it's a good job): I need to do a short presentation (as if it were to the local Church Council) entitled Teenagers: Faith in a Materialistic Age.
  (tags: religion jobs friends)

ETA: the last link doesn't need to be just for those who believe—lack of faith is as relevent I think.

In my post about Darwin Tuesday I said: if you need a bit more explanation, ask a skientist, I recommend Debi the evolutionary morphologist and for damn fine reason.

Debi Linton - On Intelligent Design:

This week, however, I have been asked to give a basic run down of the I.D. milarkey from the point of view of an evolutionary scientist, and who am I to refuse to write about evolution?

( About Science and Religion )

( Evolution is only a Theory )

( Creationism/Intelligent design is also a theory )

( Evolution and abiogenesis )

( And a YouTube vid )

Making the serious point that Evolution fulfills the serious requirements to be defined as a Theory, namely that a) it is predictive and b) it can be disproved. Intelligent Design cannot be defined as a theory because a) it is not predictive and b) it cannot be disproved ^[1]. The post contains some very (very) good explanation about what science is (and is not), and makes the solid point that the scientific method can only work with the world as it is, not as we might like it to be. This post is another prime example of why I love the ease of publication that blogging gives us, anyone can be a pamphleteer, and when someone, anyone, writes good content, that post can be picked up, linked to, and the ideas can spread. And spread. Yes, that is a hint to everyone.

I'm, unusually for me, closing comments on this post; Debi welcomes comments and questions, she promises not to bite (ms_ntropy might object), and it'd be good to keep the discussion in one place. Go read, talk, question, discuss.

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[1] I've read some speculation that some Quantum theorists may, or may not, be working on a method to prove the existence of a higher, guiding power, based around disproving the parallel universes theory. I have no clue or links about that one, but what I read (in comments elsewhere and I've done no research on it) was intriguing to say the least.

Someone's redone scrapdog's comments stats programme into a web interface (as his was initially) and it's doing the rounds so, well, ages since I last did it.

Had to hack around with the code in order to get the table to display right within my narrow layout (especially with the longer OpenID profile links I've got nearer the bottom), but, well, it's cool. I've moved the cut text as well, worth noting that if you also do it be careful where to put the beginning and end cut^[1]. As we can see, despite starting commenting here less than a year ago, a certain person has raced into second after me, and the rest of the top ten are all people I've met in real life, all but one someone I met before we started reading each others journals, and I've met all but three of the top twenty (I'd like to meet the others, and I've been in the same room as one without either of us realising it at least once).
Total comments: 9040 ( Who comments the most on this journal? )

1	matgb		2897
2	snapesbabe		962
3	freddiefraggles		354
4	silentgreeneyes		236
5	innerbrat		169
6	nadriel		166
7	faeriecween		144
8	ginasketch		135
9	paulatpingu		117
10	mapp		113

Generated by LJ Comment Stats.

Interesting, n'est ce pas?

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[1] it needs to go between TRs to start and before the /table to finish

Sir Isaac Newton, draich_goch, Humphrey Bogart, blacktone, Quentin Crisp, Ismail Merchant, Rick Berman, Shane Macgowan, Sol Invictus and Helios.

Those being people picked from the list of birthdays I either like or that have had some impact on the world. Remember, if anyone tries to "remind" you that "the true meaning of Christmas" has something to do with the birth of some kid just over 2000 years ago, remind them that, well, it's got nothing to do with that and true Christians wouldn't celebrate a pagan festival anyway. So eat, drink and be merry, because that's what it's all supposed to be about.

I'm about to turn in, having wrapped all our gifts and decorated the tree, busy day tomorrow—the joys of a 4-year-old. Still, there's more chocolate than she can possibly eat, and we're off to the pub for lunch. G'night all, and Happy Christmas.

YouTube - Money money money: David Abrahams and Labour:
( YouTube video, warning, contains Abba music )
I cannot understand how a party can come into office, say they're going to clean up politics, pass a law demanding transparency in party funding, then perpetually break the damn law they themselves passed. Given all the hoops party administrators are supposed to go through dealing with donations (and yes, the lower end of that admin was something I had to do both while temping in Cowley St and before when on the Exeter exec), it's especially galling to see senior Labour types just ignoring them. Don't these damn fools have training? Or the ability to think? Still, at least one of them has done the decent thing, but again, too early to save flack spreading out—you have to resign after someone calls for it, otherwise they go after someone else. Bloody stupid Westminster games.

now_show recording was great, pub afterwards with innerbrat was also cool, even if the annoying drunk talking VERY LOUDLY was a little too loud for me to hear at times. If you're at all interested in taking the piss out of the whole recent debacle, 6.30pm Friday or noon Saturday, BBC Radio 4—you should know this already but some people seem to have an aversion to the channel that, for some obscure reason, also hosts The Archers; no, I don't like that either. Complete with Vince "power" Cable and any many jokes about missing details, lost CDs and the mysteriously appearing donations. Oh, and assuming it gets broadcast, Mitch does a great little ditty about Emma Clarke the voice of the Tube—because she used to be one of the Now Show cast as well. Gordon seems to have forgotten that the breakdown of any relationship, whether with the electorate or a partner, always ends up in an argument of CDs.

I suspect Robin Ince's monologue will get cut to ribbons. I suspect it'll need to be the amount of it that he fluffed up trying to present it.

A comment at SB's public blog:

The attractiveness of a low waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) is generally due to it being an indicator of health and fertility, but this new research offers a possible additional factor, that low WHR also indicates high cognitive ability. So, yep, the study suggests that curvy girls are likely to be smart and produce smart children, and this increased smartness is possibly what makes the curves attractive to men. It's to do with the difference in upper bopdy fat and lower body fat supplying the particular kind of fatty acid that's essential for brain development.

I now have an excuse to letch after a nice arse--I'm checking out her likely mental capacity as well.

OK, I didn't have this excuse before, and it's never stopped me, but, y'know, skience on my side now. There are a lot of very smart women on my blog reading list, this is good. I'm marrying one of them. This is even better.

Oh, rest of the post and comments is worth a read over as well. I have another, different follow up post planned, but that one requires engaging my brain, which isn't working today, sorry...

How great am I? You don't know? Things to cheer you up on the train home, a notification in your inbox from coffeechica entitled DRUM ROLL:

This suggestion has been planned for implementation. Please watch the lj_releases community for updates.

I knew what post it was before I opened it, but it was nice to be sure. So that's two fixes from one suggestion.

I'm still of the opinion that the concerns about trolls editing comments are missplaced, but those that run LJ abuse disagreed--we've come up with a way to get around the problem. I reserve the right to bitch about them messing up MY idea with poor implementation, but, y'know. I rock!

ETA: Changelog entry detailing how it works:

( Bullet point summary of implementation--paid users only apparently )

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Oh, had a great night out, met nhw in the Melton Mowbray and talked SF geekery and politics with a bunch of people, was rather nice. Time to sleep now methinks.