Back to the Primordial Soup and Loving It!

There was a young Muslim called Ali,
Who had six Muslim friends, all called Ali.
The group made a pact,
And decided to act,
And blew themselves up in Thames Valley.

Right, a none too controversial start today. No stereotypes or sweeping assumptions of people being made whatsoever. Good, then we can be getting back to normal.

I hate Big Brother. So much so that I always watch the first program to find out what kind of freaks they have in this time, and then promptly hate myself for doing so. But this time around, I rather like it becuase, perhaps unintentionally, they've managed something rather clever.

Just to fill in some background before I explain further, Celebrity Big Brother has been drawn into a racism row because a group of thick, pig-ignorant, talentless munting 'women' have taken a dislike to a beautiful, intelligent, talented Indian actress. And of course racism is the first assumption in our modern politically correct world rather than, ooh let me think, bitchy jealousy.

Anyway, back to the point. Big Brother exists to poke fun at, and make spectacles of, the most stupid parts of society. It is not, as some overpaid, highly-misguided psychologists may claim, an important social experiment. Typically this consists of getting idiots to make idiots of themselves; not a massive challenge. However, this time round, it has managed to poke fun at the idiocy of society as a whole, in fact the whole world! We have UK and Indian diplomats talking of a "worsening diplomatic crisis" over ignorant comments made by people who don't matter on a show that nobody is watching. That Big Brother has managed to cause this much fuss by getting a fat, ugly chav, the stupidest footballer's girlfriend in the world, a dismally failed, manufactured popstar, and the chav's horrendous mother to not like someone much better than them in all respects just shows how stupid the world has become. The biggest irony is that there's no racism in it anyway, ignorance of culture maybe, but not real racism. They're just being mean. We all have to put up with that at some stage in our lives.

The very idea, or at least the modern day interpretation, of racism is racist. I can call a Welshman a sheep-rapist, a Scotsman a tight-fisted Scottish twat, a Frenchman a cheese-eating arms-in-the-air surrender monkey, a German a war-mongering sausage-fiend, and an American an American cunt (a disturbingly popular term in modern day supposedly tolerant British society) and no-one bats an eyelid. However, I can't call an Egyptian a canal-stealing camel-jockey, an Iranian an anti-semitic rag-head, a Nigerian a work-shy slave-descendent, or a Palestinian a terrorist without being banged in irons and called "the worst racist since Hitler" by the Guardian newspaper. My point isn't particularly that we should say these things to people, they're neither nice nor necessary; my point is where do you draw the line? If I can insult a Spaniard but not a Morroccan, isn't that in itself, racist?

Now of course, we have the typical response of effigy-burning as protestors in India take to the streets. Why the fuck do they bother? Don't they have better things to do, like work, or blogging. And why is effigy burning an instant reponse to everything these days. Your religion's being mocked; burn an effigy. An actress you're a fan of is bullied on TV; burn an effigy. What I want to know is, why does no-one look out for the little guy just trying to may their way in life causing minimum fuss and trying to make some small contribution? I don't remember Harvard or Oxbridge coming out and burning effigies of well known idiots when I was bullied for being good at maths at school.

Everything's geared towards protecting the stupid from themselves: "this freshly made coffee may be hot", "nut allergy sufferers should not eat these peanuts", and "going out in the rain may make you wet". We're eliminating natural selection in society and, as such, in danger of eliminating society itself. Useless people are outbreeding the capable; a situation which, if continued, will spell the downfall of civilization far before a bit of Carbon Dioxide will do a damn thing. It's a nice little trick of evolution to prevent a single species becoming over-dominant:

- A species becomes so dominant/widespread/civilised that survival of the fittest is no longer a driving pressure.
- Either the weakest are still so above other species, they have few natural dangers, or there are just so damn many of them that they all breed with minimal competition, or they become so nice and civilised that the strong feel a moral obligation to protect the weak.
- Whatever happens, the pressures that would eliminate the weakest from the gene pool are removed and forward evolution stops. It only takes a small change (political correctness, compensation culture, and the welfare state are excellent examples from everyday experience) to tip the balance of survival towards the weaker members of the population and to push evolution into reverse.

It's a subtle bugger that evolution. But this is a good thing, we wouldn't want to keep evolving. If watching sci-fi has taught me anything it's that highly evolved species are always really fucking boring. They walk around all serene, spirtual, and arrogant. And they've always got huge foreheads! My forehead is big enough already thank you very much; damn receeding hairline. I'll stick to laughing at Jade Goody being an ignorant thug, at people passing out through excitement at Robbie Williams' concerts, and at those who manage to injure themselves with a pillow.

I like the status quo (please note that I said THE status quo, not Status Quo).

Gods and Gays.

Today is a momentous day. 100's of years of strife, hatred, persecution, and murder are coming to an end. The three major old world religions are being reconciled. That's right, after 1500 years of Christians, Jews, and Muslims killing each other in any and every way they could think of, from swords and catapults, through fire and torture, to gas chambers and blowing themselves to pieces, the devout have finally found a mutual figure of hatred they can focus all their murderous energies on. The love thy fellow man brigade and the respecters of all beliefs have stopped killing people who believe a slightly different version of a fairytale and instead have found someone else they can all villify together.

Pufters.

Yes Christians, Jews, and Muslims are gathering outside the House of Lords to protest against new legislation banning "discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities and services on the basis of sexuality". They claim this legislation "could replace discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation with discrimination on religious grounds" [Ade Omooba, rally organiser] as it would require them "to actively condone and promote sexual practices which the Bible teaches are wrong" [Barrister Thomas Cordrey, of the Lawyers' Christian Fellowship]. Cordrey described it as "a fundamental matter of freedom of conscience". Now I'm not sure how his conscience makes the decision that the Bible's teaching of (homosexuals = evil) is somehow more conscienable than it's teaching of love thy fellow man, but evidently it has, as has the conscience of a great many believers.

But let's take this to it's logical extreme (always a bad move with religion). The protesters argument is based on being required to do things against their religion's ancient text teachings by law. In this case it's e.g. civil partnership ceremonies must be allowed in churches, or renting guest house double rooms to gay couples. But it doesn't have to be just this example. All religions, whether directly or by implication, say all other religions are wrong; hence the requirement of not witholding goods and services on religious discrimination grounds (the very right they're hiding behind now) also requires them to do something which goes against their moral teachings. Atheists and agnostics also cannot be given or sold anything by the faithful; let's face it, we're even worse than the followers of others religions; so I don't want any more silly little badges of Christ or copies of "How Islam Respects Women" thank you very much.

So to some up, if the believers were really serious about this, no Christian or Jew could ever buy saffron again. And woe betide and Musim with a penchant for bagels (although there probably aren't too many of those).

But this argument is, of course, faceatious. Religion will always find something to fight against because, as humanity's understanding of the world grows, more and more of the tenements of religion crumble; geocentric universe, heresy, creationalism, and now homosexuality. Perhaps we can turn this unusual coming together of minds to our advantage. There are plenty of places where religious tensions are causing the usual turmoil; Iraq being a prime example. Perhaps if we ship a cargo ship's worth of rectal cowboys out there, Bush's crusading Christian warriors and bin Laden's swords of Islam would focus on them for a bit whilst the country attempts to actually rebuild.

Now, it may have come as a shock to some that, after paragraphs of defending gays in the face of religious onslaught, I suddenly come out with the not exactly complementary term, rectal cowboys. Well the reason for this is that bum bandits people piss me off too; specifically the ones who push it (not literally, so far) in your face all the time. Why the hell do we need so many gay pride marches? What have they got to be so damn proud about? Sticking your willy up another man's one-way shit tube does not seem to me to be something most people would stand on a float in a parade in the middle of a large capital city and shout about. Indeed, if you did in any context other than a gay pride event, you'd probably be arrested for gross public indecency. They have so much damn pride, we should be able to use any terms to descride them we like;

ass masters
pillow chewers
lovers of the brown-stained pole

Now lesbians; something that, in principle should be wonderful. But I hate them too. Why? Because they never live up to the promise of my teenage years watching dubious videos from dubious shops. There's always a feminine-ish one, i.e. could just about pass for a woman but you wouldn't cross a crowded bar to introduce yourself kind of level, and a big brutish one who looks like a Russian drill sergeant. Presumably the big one spends most evenings poking a dildo into the other one; makes you wonder why the little one didn't just go out with a fat sweaty bloke in the first place; would've saved the price of a plastic cock.

But I jest, of course. Homosexuality is a natural thing. You get gay pigs, rather demolishing the argument that it's a lifestyle choice. But my being an ugly geek is also a natural thing; I'm just waiting for the legislation that makes it illegal for hot women to withold sex on this basis :-)

Still waiting..........

I'll get back to you.

Seasons greetings

I hate the aftermath of Christmas. The pavements are full of dog shit from all the new dogs kids got for Christmas and don't know how to look after. I've gone from slightly overweight to moderately overweight, hence have to make the same "go to the gym twice a week" New Year resolution I make every year. And I feel guilty because the presents I gave out are shittier than the ones I received; and there's always someone you weren't expecting to giving you a present when you haven't got them anything.

But it's not just the aftermath, it's the 3 months of build-up; 3 months of trees and tinsel in John Lewis; 3 months of "I Wish it Could be Christmas Every Day" pumping out of Woolworths; 3 months of TV adverts for perfume; 3 months of cheap shitty lights in the town centre. By the time Christmas actually comes round, I fucking hate the whole business. And why the fuck do the carols keep going until New Year?!? Surely if there's one thing Boxing Day is good for, it's recovering from Christmas with the luxury of the first day since August without "Jingle Bells" playing somewhere near your alcohol saturated head.

Before you accuse me of being Scrooge, note that I'm not the only one who hates Christmas; there're plenty of examples of people not entering into the compulsory goodwill (this is a prevous Christmas rant of mine I never put on this site; saves me writing a new one ;-)):

"Some town councils have banned Christmas decorations in public areas for fear of offending other religions; mistletoe is to be removed from office Christmas parties to prevent sexual harassment; lights and tree decorations have been deemed unsafe in case they fall on someone’s head, and school-children cannot wear tinsel to their school parties in case they strangle themselves. Crackers are to be withheld for fear of bits from them hitting someone in the eye, and Santas in grottos cannot pick up the children without proper training as they risk back injuries. And of course, these days, the middle-class are all allergic to everything, from wrapping paper, sellotape and ribbons, to Christmas pudding, cranberry sauce and grandma, so they’ve all gone too.

"On top of this, we have the usual array of crappy Christmas goings on; round robin letters; you know, the type where some boring bastard you met once 5 years ago in a pub writes a 6-page letter telling you about every bruised knee and parking fine he’s had in the past 12 months before boasting about his kids university places and the new 4x4 he’s having a great time running over poorer children with, wanker!. Then we have diabolical telly, and carol singers so miserable they make Victor Meldrew look like Santa.

"Speaking of carol singers, new legislation is around the corner that will vastly change the musical scene this year. ‘Birthday of a King’ has gone for fear of offending non-Christians, likewise ‘O Come, all Ye Faithful’, ‘Silent Night, Holy Night’, and ‘The Most Wonderful Day of the Year’. Following a surge of festive-themed ‘adult’ entertainment entering the market in the last couple of months, ‘Sleigh Ride’, ‘I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’, and ‘Ding Dong! Merrily on High’ have had to be removed from carol services. One leading bishop said “It was becoming impossible, whenever one of these carols was sung, all the male members of the congregation had their hymn-books decidedly lower than is practical for reading and singing up to God”. ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ suffered here too.

"‘We Three Kings of Orient Are’ is to be renamed ‘We Three Ordinary Men are from the Orient’ as part of a government drive on literacy, and following complaints from republicans. ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ has been criticised for drawing attention to physical differences of others, ‘White Christmas’ is to be changed to be ‘All Ethnicities Christmas’, and ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’ has also been stopped after a successful legal challenge by the people of Bethlehem, Albany County, New York, claiming it was damaging their tourist industry by presenting the image of an unexciting backwater town. But we do still have Band Aid (for the God-knows-whatth year in a row!), which, despite complaints from several Muslim groups that they didn’t feel it necessary for them “to know it was Christmas time at all”, has been retained because of its charity links. And fortunately you can now write a living will stating you are not to be resuscitated if you try to take your own life after too much Bob-bloody-Geldof."

Right, that's Christmas well and truly destroyed, back to some new material. You may have seen adverts/public information videos from the Home Office on Tv recently featuring 'decent' people being blase about their new phone/home security etc. to a 'non-decent' looking person; the films then end with a patronising voice saying something like "don't advertise your car/phone/house/etc. to theives". Now, the problem I have with these films is not the patronising level they're pitched at, nor the fact that they've now spilled over into talking (in stupid, celebrity-impersonation voices) parking meters in Sheffield telling you to not leave anything on show in your parked car (although these machines are supremely fucking annoying; we're talking Jade Goody levels here). No, the problem I have is the ridiculously screwed up political correctness that has decided the racial make-up of the adverts. The victims are all ethnic minorities; the perpetrators are all white. This is just fucking bullshit! A massively disproportionate amount of petty (if you can call mugging, burglary, theft from cars petty) crime is commited by young black and asian men; I don't want to hear any shit about more-deprived backgrounds or single-parents, this is a simple statement of fact and it should have been dealt with in these adverts. The racial perspective shown in the Home Office adverts with misleading and, in itself, highly racist. But, as we see repeatedly, politicians don't like letting facts cloud issues they can spin.

Another example, the teaching of Intelligent Design is to be allowed in schools, an education minister said the other day. For anyone who doesn't know, Intelligent Design is the rebranded name for the defunct theory of Creationalism. For now this 'theory' (we'll come onto the inverted commas point in a second) of the origins of life is to be confined to religious studies, rather than science as the potty religious-lobby were pushing for; but I suspect it will creep over. For starters, to call intelligent design a 'theory' is intensely misleading. If I'm feeling generous, it is a hypothesis. Evolution is a theory; consider:

1) Evolution is a possible (read: probable) explanation of the origins of life. It makes logical sense, can be explained through understood processes, and fits with all the observable evidence; there isn't any proper evidence (religious texts are not evidence) against the theory. But it is still a theory as there is no such thing as scientific fact.

2) Intelligent Design is an idea, based on the word of ancient books of unknown origin and authorship, and a complete misunderstanding of complexity theory, that fits with absolutely none of the available evidence. The only 'evidence' (besides the texts) the intelligent designers can come up with is "the structure of the DNA molecule is too complex to have occured naturally". This is a fundamental mistake. Modern complexity theory has shown that incredibly complex behaviours can emerge from extremely simple initial systems given small random initial perturbations. The Creationalists don't understand (and have probably never heard of) complexity theory and hence have no right to be dictating what we teach our children as to the origins of life. To put it in statisticians words: Intelligent Deisgn is an hypothesis with a miniscule 99% confidence region which does not encompass the observables, but they wouldn't understand that either. Hence a more accurate description would be superstitious bullshit.

We mustn't allow religion to regain any of the power over society that our ancestors worked so hard to wrestle from it. This way another Dark Age lies. But it's worse than the Intelligent Design story may suggest. It is now looking extremely likely that vital Stem Cell-based research will be stopped due to religious groups pressurising the government. They claim it's unethical and immoral, but refuse to answer why suspending research that may alleviate suffering and save lives isn't also immoral and unethical. Again, they've no knowledge about the science behind the issue. The irony is that they're also being so arrogant as to assume they know what God thinks is immoral. Perhaps God wants us to do this research to help ourselves. If not, why do we have the ideas and the capability to do so? Presumably he gave them to us.

This irony in their thinking was well illustrated by a cartoon I saw recently. A man falls overboard at sea, a jet ski comes past and offers to take him to safety, he says "No thanks, my God will save me". A lifeboat and a helicopter both pass, again offering aid; both of whom he tells "No thanks, my God will save me". When the drowned man meets St Peter (Paul? How should I know, I went to a religious junior schoool ;-)) at the pearly gates he says "Why did God not save me?", to which the saint replies "He sent a jet ski, a lifeboat, and a helicopter; what else was he supposed to do?".

But it's not just science they want to supress. It's anything that criticises their beliefs, be it cartoons, operas, or Monthy Python's Life of Brian. There was a fascinating program on the making of the film and the struggle with Mary Whitehouse and her band of loonies to get it released. The irony here was that the barmy army didn't watch it; they decided what was in it and called for a ban anyway. The way they always do. Religious groups are full of people who need to be told what to think. The film didn't even mock Christ as they claimed, it was all about organised religon. The Pythons tried to claim that their reason for not really targetting the life of Christ was that "He's really not funny". Only John Cleese stood up to this and made the (entirely valid) point, that actually the life of Christ is ripe for comedy. He put forward the case of Joseph finding out Mary was pregnent, Mary explaining to him what had happened, him falling (erm, believing, sorry) it, then telling all his mates down the tavern that it's ok, his wife hasn't been knocking about with the neighbour, she got knocked up by God. Comedy gold in the hands of a better writer than me.

Incidentally, wasn't Mary about 14 at the time of conception? So God is a paedophile? Explains a lot about the lifestyles of modern-day priests and bishops, I suppose. Speaking of which, the funniest story of the festive season has to be the Bishop of Southwark being found drunk in the back of a BMW he'd broken into, throwing childrens's toys about and saying "I'm the Bishop of Southwark, it's what I do"! Priceless!!

So, what can we conclude? By the way, for the religiously hard-of-thinking, a conclusion is a suggested explanation based on the observed facts that fits the measured data. Religion has given us:

1) Scientific censorship on anything they decide God wouldn't like.
2) Artisitic censorship on anything they don't like.
3) Lots of kiddy fiddlers.
4) Dog shit all over the pavement in January.

Sounds like a bad thing to me, I won't be converting.