Intelligent Design? No intelligence found.

I was having a wander through the welsh news (Granny Dragon was Welsh so I take a bit of an interest) and I see the Tories are frantically trying to spin the comments of one of their more rabid Christian candidates that being a fan of musical theatre is a sin.

He is, of course, absolutely right. Homosexuality is a sin in the eyes of God. If you read the bible and truly believe that this collection of middle eastern rants and fairy tales is the true and inerrant word of the big beardy bloke in the sky then that is the only conclusion you can come to. Oh and you had better ditch the cheeseburgers and bacon sandwiches, stone your children to death if they are disrespectful and isolate your wife from you when she's having her period as he doesn't like that stuff either.

Alternatively you could actually use the couple of kilos of grey matter in your head, think for yourself and join the rest of us in the twenty first century. We have this neat thing which is called "The Scientific Method" which explains things.

Ah I see you've heard of this and you've come up with this thing called "Intelligent Design"... yes you've heard of the scientific method but you haven't really understood it have you. {Patronising sorrow mode = ON}Ah my son, you are in error.

In case you've been living under a rock the past few years "Intelligent Design" is the latest way the fundy Xtians have come up with of selling creationism, basically "God made everything" and usually by stating that there is no way that something so clever as, say, the eye, could have arisen by chance so there must be some "Intelligence" driving it - and that intelligence is of course our middle-eastern sky god. Of course as soon as you put God into the equation there is no way you can ever disprove this theory so it basically falls at the first hurdle of science but I'll indulge you for a while...

OK so let's take a look at the eye. Yes it's a pretty useful thing, lets me see my 'pooter so I can type this and stereoscopic vision makes it really easy to correctly target you for being breathed on. But it isn't the best design in the world is it, it performs quite poorly in low-light conditions compared to the eyes of other species like cats and it has a fundamental design flaw in it - the fovea or "blind spot" which is necessitated by a bigger fundamental design flaw in that light has to pass through the nerves connected to the light sensing cells before it gets to those cells. Oh and there's that common colour blindness fault as well which makes about 6% of the units defective. Now I design things for a living, computer systems as it happens, and if I built something that basically worked but had major design faults and actually returned erroneous data 6% of the time I would lose my job! Now these faults don't exist in some species like the squid where the nerves are the right way round so there's no blind spot. So, unless god happens to be Cthulu, how come the squid has got a "better" eye than we, made in his own image, have?

And if you happen to look around you'll find all sorts of light sensing organs, from simple surface rows of cells that can merely sense the presence of light to basic motion sensing organs with low resolution, insect compound eyes to the relative sophistication of mammalian and avian vision systems (and squid of course). There has been plenty of opportunity for natural processes to evolve the various forms of eye we come across. But of course you believe that the world was farted out of god's arse 6000 years ago, all those fossils were planted there as a test of faith, god mucks about with the laws of physics every time someone performs a carbon dating test and the Grand Canyon was created after one particularly wet weekend.

Now it's scary enough that you believe this shit but now you want to teach it to our kids? Now I would normally be in favour of introducing private money into the education system but not when it allows rich but stupid people to force this utter bollocks on children. We need to be able to teach kids to properly think first, give them a thorough grounding in the application of the scientific method and how to construct a logical argument (and how to spot logical fallacies and tricks) before letting them loose on bollocks like ID.

Trust me people, we have to be on our guard, especially if the Boy Dave gets in next time as he's going to be pushing for a lot more "faith based" service provision. You would not want a school to be pushing lies like "heroin - it won't kill you" to your kids would you? I'd posit that teaching your kids "intelligent design" is just, if not more, harmful.

Oh and I see that there is a "Welsh Christian Party" standing for election too. Their primary aim seems to be removing the "devilish" red dragon from the flag.

Listen matey, you muck about with y ddraig goch me and all my fire-breathing friend will be be taking a short, hot trip to your chapels.

There's lovely.

Horses on Whizz

Now recently I traded in this...


For this



(They have still to get around to managing to genetically engineer a functioning pegasus so it's either one of the other at the moment)

Like all horses they are prone to picking up intestinal parasites so I have to put strange chemicals in her food every few months to make the nasty bugs go away. Only today I read that the latest way of getting off your face of a saturday night is to drop a bunch of animal wormers, specifically ones containing piperazine.

First off all I had a lovely vision of clubbers shoving a big syringe into the back of their mouths and pulling lots of horsey grimaces whilst depressing the plunger and then being rewarded with a carrot.

Then I started worrying... am I giving my mare this stuff and, as soon as my back is turned, she's over the fence and throwing some shapes to radical beats with the horses in the field next door?

Would explain why she seems to be permanently asleep during the day...





PS: Got my first flame ... well guttering candle really. Take a look at the comment in the "Moral Compass" post below.

Dragon Murdering Bastard

So today is the saints day of that dragon murdering bastard George who also happens to be patron saint of England.

Crap saint anyaway and he is a bit, you know, foreign what with being Turkish and all which is why, despite the usual parade of idiots who think the Daily Mail letters column is the acme of debating forums, the English don't get all worked up about April 23rd the same way the Irish do about Paddy. But then St P's day is more about the four day bender than wearing a silly green leprechaun hat (not that most Irishmen of my acquaintance need much of an excuse for the consumption of alcohol and a rousing chorus of "The Black Velvet Band")

If we're having a holiday anyway can we have one in July when the weather is better; how about we adopt Thomas More (June 22) - at least he was English



Anyway if that bastard George comes round my lair I will stomp him into little Knight McNuggets and then breathe on him.

Then stomp him some more. Just to be sure.

Bastard.

An error in your moral compass has occurred, please reset

I see over on Yahoo (I get my news from all the best places) that our wierdybeardy druid archbishop has stuck his oar into the muddy waters of the "debate" (read "vicious backstabbing slanging match") on homosexuality¹ and said that many of his co-religionists are misreading the bible. Yeah like that doesn't ever happen.

It reminds me of a time years ago when I had this Christian friend I used to talk religion with. I'd say something like "Hey, you believe this bible thing so how come you eat cheeseburgers when the bible says you shouldn't?" he would get this sort of fatherly "I love my son but he's making a mess of trying to ride a bike so I'll help him" expression of kindly sorrow and say "ah, you are in error..." and proceed to go through a bunch of tortuous logic that you could drive a coach and four through to try and show that while the bible might actually say in black and white that eating meat and milk together was not allowed that the bible actually says it is. However this chain of shoddy logic which explained why it was no longer necessary to stone disobedient children to death although the bible clearly says you should somehow didn't work where botty sex was concerned.

Anyway back to Archbish Rowan. Now I took a look at the relevant bit of bible verse that is being spoken about here (Romans 1:27 in case you want a look yourself) and it does seem pretty clear that botty sex is a bad thing in Paul's mind. However interestingly enough if you read around this verse what Mr Road to Damascus seems to be saying is that "Because people, who should have known better, worshipped the creation rather than the creator God made them all 'Good With Colours'". So it's God's fault that there are gays because he made them that way. Can't see I follow the logic as I've come across some very heterosexual Pagans in my time but we'll let that pass for now.

Either way I'm struggling here to see Rowan William's point that this passage is all about not being a smug, self righteous prick but apparently that's all in chapter 2

Certainly starts in a promising way...

"Therefore you are without excuse, whoever you are, when you judge someone else. For on whatever grounds you judge another, you condemn yourself,"

And then it all goes downhill...

"because you who judge practice the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment is in accordance with truth against those who practice such things. And do you think, whoever you are, when you judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself, that you will escape God’s judgment?"

Seems clear to me what is being said is "If you rant and rave about gays but are really indulging in a spot of sausage up the bum activity yourself my Invisible Friend will know and beat you up." rather than the whole thing being about not to condemn people. Basically it's saying "Don't be a hypocrite" which is fine but it certainly is our Paul saying that being gay is bad, so bad in fact that if you don't worship him, god will make you lust after other men's willies.

However I am probably (kindly smile) "in error" once more.

It would be nice if the Xtians could make their minds up on this once and for all but I suspect that this one will run and run.

In the meantime I'll continue to put my willy wherever I like so long as it's welcome.

Goatwatch

Virginia university mass murder, pound worth two dollars and still the "Sudanese man marries goat" remains in the top five.

And now I read that three of the top ten books sold in the UK at the moment are something called "Misery Lit" which appear just to be "waaaahhh! I was abused as a child, my life sucks like a convict at the gas chamber door¹, waaahhhh". Now call me odd if you like but I really cannot see why anyone of sound mind would actually want to read something like this; I can see why someone would want to write a book about it as some sort of catharsis (hey, I like to moan on this blog - makes me feel better and hopefully some of it is a bit funny) but who on earth would want to actually read page after page of someone describing how daddy used to come to their room every night and to keep what went on as "our secret"... hells teeth just typing that made me feel uncomfortable!

I'd like to think that it's mainly people who have less than optimal lives reading this stuff: "well I may never ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in my hair but at least my life wasn't the complete shit casserole hers was so that makes me feel a bit better."

However I rather suspect that, as Gary Feehily points out:

these books are popular because they flatter readers' sense of moral outrage while also secretly titillating.

i.e. the same reason that goat story is up there in the top 3 read news articles.




¹ Hat tip to my fellow grumpy mythological friend 2 Gryphon for that one.

Do I laugh or cry

Throughout the day (until someone went postal in the US) the most popular stories on the BBC news website have been one about a man having to marry a goat after being caught in flagrante, one about exploding lavatories in Japan and hovering around in third place either Richard Gere kissing somebody and all of India getting upset¹ or a study that says we prefer chocolate to sex.

I believe a lot can be inferred about the heath of the nation from that.


¹ Good job that there were no hamsters present or else they really would have something to get upset about!

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Bawling Fest

So we are watching the BBC's talent contest / extended 12 week advertisement for Andrew Lloyd Webber's theatre production in my house. The reason we're watching this is that Mrs Dracunculus fancies that Barrowman chap - it certainly isn't for the "talent" on show. And what is it with the crying; I mean Jesus lads, I know you're after a job in musical theatre which isn't, let's face it, the most macho profession in the world but is it really necessary to turn on the waterworks every three seconds? Oh and look I can press the red button to get the song lyrics up - hang on these guys are singing such standard tunes if you don't know the words already you do not deserve your ears and isn't the point to listen to them singing and vote for your favourite rather than turning the experience into Saturday night karaoke?

Low point was hearing Graham "Can I possibly get any gayer?" Norton announcing that the next contestant was going to do "Walking In Memphis" - ooh I like that song, can play it and everything (see - dragon of many talents here - full octave span on each paw, and I have a pretty decent baritone voice too) so I looked forward to it only to be bitterly dissapointed because they first took out all the difficult bits and he still made it sound as dirge-like as "Rock of Ages"¹; I had to go outside and breathe on some small children just to feel better.

There are two highlights though. The first of these is that I get to recalibrate my uglyometer every time Lloyd-Webber appears on screen; blimey now I'm no oil painting but there is someone who fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. The second is the schadenfreude when you see some bright young things' dreams of stardom suffering a head-on collision with an 18 wheel truck full of reality. Last Saturday's was particularly pleasant as the god-botherer who all but said "I went to church and it was prophesied that I would get the part of Joseph" tripped over his bible and ended up face down in the merde. So much for the christian vote then son.

One last thing: "I close my eyes, draw back the curtain...". Is it just me or would it have been better to arse about with the drapery whist you could still, you know, see what you were doing?




¹ Speaking of which 10/10 to Russell Davies for last Saturday's episode of Dr Who, "Gridlock", which was freaking awesome - all those people (and cats) stuck in an eternal traffic jam singing hymns; absolute fucking genius!

I and I and me 'erb

Police raid "Rastafarian Temple" and discover cannabis.

What were they expecting to find? Tea and cup-cakes?

I love the comment about "Hopefully the council will act quickly to find somewhere else for Rastafarians to worship". Look you dope addled arse, pull the dreads out of your ears and listen as this is coming only once. If you want a church fund it yourself, it is not the job of the taxpayers of Lambeth to fund places of worship and certainly not to stoners like you.

And take that stupid wooly hat off as well.

Warning! The Internet may contain humans.

Hello everybody (all three of you). Had a few weeks off going up and down mountains and getting things ready for the new four legged arrival to the dragon's lair. Incidentally I love the horse world - horsey shops are the only places I know where you can buy a load of leather stuff, whips and baby-oil and no-one bats an eyelid.

Apparently blogs are naughty and need warnings. Mine is over there on the right, has been since day one and so far has been pretty accurate (even down to the unclothed cetecians).

Tell you what why not put a big warning in every browser that pops up a message. I suggest the following text.

"Warning - You are going to connect to the internet which is full of people doing people things. If you click here you agree not to be a whiny git if you see something or someone says something you don't like. You further agree to give publicity seeking whore Kathy Sierra a good shoeing should you come across her."

That should do the trick.