Can we please stop acting like school kids?

I'm getting thoroughly sick and tired of the dumbing-down of debates these days. I was reading an article about a "chatbot" a programmer has created to counter arguments made by people using Twitter to talk about climate change. Basically, the chatbot looks for a few hundred set phrases and then returns a selected set phrase to basically tell the tweeter he or she is an idiot whose arguments are stupid.

Quite apart from the extreme arrogance of this person, who cannot admit the possibility he may be wrong in any respect, what this does is lower the debate to the school yard bully level of: "You don't agree with me, and therefore you are stupid and so are your arguments."

If he was a scientist I would give up altogether, but he's a computer programmer who apparently believes he knows more than any scientist who happens to have a different view to the prevailing theory.

What annoys me even more is the so-called journalist who reduces the profession to the level of mudslinging with the title: "Chatbot Wears Down Proponents of Anti-Science Nonsense" and saying things like: "...it answers twitter users who aren't even aware of their own ignorance."

Is this how low journalism can sink or can it go even lower?

New kid starting school - at 102 years of age!

An amazing Chinese lady, Ma Xiuxian, has always wanted to go to school. She sacrificed her hopes for those of her children, but now at 102, she proudly sits with the five year olds in their first year of school. Good for her! I love these kinds of stories, and well remember the lady who began playing piano when she was 99, and played in her first concert at 100. They're an inspiration.

Here's the story: www.minsterfm.com/news/review.php?article=173312

The power of television

A French documentary has been made, demonstrating the power of television. They set up a fake game show in which contestants were persuaded byt the 'game' host to inflict electric shocks on other people. The producer, Christophe Nick, said that it shows that when a person is alone facing someone who is abusing their power, they become 'completely malleable and obedient', even to the point of torturing other people, who are howling with pain.

The fake show had 69 unwitting contestants, and 81 percent went on to torture other people as part of the pilot game show they thought they were taking part in. Each contestant put questions to 'victims' (played by actors, but this was not known by the contestants), and punished them with electric shocks if they got wrong answers. Only 19% stopped the game before the voltage maximum of 420V was reached.

The timing of the documentary coincides with a nazi war crime trial in Israel. If ordinary people in a TV show with nothing to lose can torture other people until they scream just because a TV game show host tells them to, what would they have been capable of in Nazi Germany?

It says a lot about the power of television. And none of it good

Gunns pulp mill

GetUp has a new campaign to try to stop the pulp mill in Tasmania, which will destroy big sections of the old growth forest, and which will destroy the habitat for several endangered species, including the already severely threatened Tasmanian Devil.

This has to be stopped.

Go to the GetUp website: https://www.getup.org.au/campaign/NoPulpMill&id=961

Or watch this video and do what Bob says:

Richard Dawkins in Australia

I saw Richard Dawkins on Q & A yesterday, which is unusual for me as I don't usually watch TV. I was having a rare 'veg-out' evening. That is, an evening in, where I did nothing at all, but just sat like a zombie watching the lobotomy box.

Well, not such a lobotomy box when Richard D is on. I like him. He's one of the few sane and intelligent people around these days, and it's like a breath of fresh air hearing someone who cares about truth, honesty and evidence. I've read his books The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion, and will get hold of The Greatest Show on Earth. I like the way he writes.

The other people on the show were just there to fill up the seats as far as I was concerned, but I was absolutely staggered by Steve Fielding, who is a Senator, and who believes the Earth is only 10,000 years old. This means that all of geology is wrong, all of paleontology is wrong, large chunks of physics, chemistry, biology, are all wrong. But a book put together almost two thousand years ago by people who thought the Earth was flat and the sky was a dome with pin-pricks in it so you could see the lights of heaven shining through them at night -- oh no, that's not wrong.

Sometimes I find it really hard to believe we are living in the 21st century.

John Trevor Edwards, firefighter

Take a look at this picture of my uncle, John Trevor Edwards.

Like all the other firefighters, both here and around the world, my uncle is what some would call a hero. He would laugh at that, and would say he just does what he was trained to do. He might even say he loves it. But the fact remains that he puts his life on the line to save others, and if he and his fellow firefighters didn't do that, then who would protect us from fire?

According to my dictionary, one of the definitions of hero is "an object of extreme admiration". Well, that makes my uncle John a hero in my book. I'm in awe of what he does, and I would like to thank him and all his mates and fellow firefighters around the world for their selfless service to others.

I take my hat off to you all.

Washington Post violinist experiment

I just heard of a Washington post experiment in which a nondescript-looking man busked in a Washington DC subway station. Almost nobody among the thousands who passed stopped to listen for more than a few seconds. In total  he earned $32 during the 45 minute session, in which he played six Bach pieces. The only ones who took any real notice of the man were young children. When he finished playing, nobody applauded, and nobody even noticed.

Nobody knew, but the man was classical violinist of world renown, Joshua Bell, who only two days before had filled a Boston theatre at $100 a ticket. Nobody knew either that he was playing a genuine 18th century Stradivarius violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

I'm sure he'd get a better deal in Europe and also here, but still the majority would pass him by without noticing or recognizing the beauty and talent. It begs the question: just how much beauty are we missing in the world as we busily drift through it with our eyes and minds closed to it?

Read the full Washington Post article here. Its author won a Pulitzer prize for it.

Mr Bean in Avatar

Well, I haven't seen this film. Perhaps if I'd known Mr Bean was in it, I would have gone.

I've no idea where the picture came from originally. It's doing the round of emails etc., but it's so good I couldn't help myself! Whoever made it is quite brilliant.

k.d. lang has a new fan - hallelujah

I don't usually watch TV but I did see the Olympic opening ceremony at my parents' place, and was totally knocked out by k.d. lang's version of hallelujah. What a voice! What a wonderful, beautiful woman, what emotion and strength and how courageous she is to be true to herself in front of billions of people. I could turn gay for her!

I've seen several versions of this song now, and I love them all, but I think the one at the olympics was best. Second best was the 2006 version in front of Leonard Cohen. See it here if the link above doesn't work. Watch right to the end when she and Leonard Cohen exchange hugs. He's clearly moved. And how could he not be, with such a beautiful song, sung so exquisitely.

Come on Firefox - support HTML5

I much prefer Firefox to IE or any other browser I've tried, but it's getting annoying that Firefox doesn't yet support HTML5. Why? Because I love YouTube, and so many of them are now in HTML5 and I have to go over to that awful Internet Explorer to view them.

So come on Firefox, how about updating so I can view something other than this when I go to YouTube:

Asthma gets worse in swimming pools

I have asthma and I like to swim in the local pool, which unlike my local beach has no great white sharks, or at least none I know of. But is all that chlorine making my asthma worse? Sometimes I think it is and stop going for a while.

I know they have to put chlorine in the water because it kills bacteria, but there are a couple of side-effects. One is the chlorine fumes, and the other is the by-products released when the chlorine reacts with sweat and other unmentionable fluids likely to be in the pool. The question is does this make asthma worse? A recent study by scientists in Belgium, published in Pediatrics, says it does. They studied 847 teenage students swimming in unchlorinated and chlorinated pools, and found allergy sensitive teens using the chlorinated pools (indoor or outdoor) were up to almost 15 times more likely to have asthma and 3.5 times more likely to have hay fever. Those who weren't allergy sensitive weren't affected.

There are other ways of sanitising pools, using copper or silver ion-based sanitiser, and so maybe these should be adopted. Otherwise, people like me are faced with a choice of hazards: the tiny chance of being eaten, or the bigger chance of having worse asthma.

OR:

 (Photos from morguefile.com)

I think I'll still go to the pool, even if my asthma does get worse.

I just went out and saw the stars

From my back garden I can see a billion stars, with the Milky Way directly overhead. Many of what look like stars are really galaxies, themselves containing a billion stars.

The image is from the European Space Agency via Wikipedia.
It is listed as the LH 95 star forming region of the Large Magellanic Cloud.
The image was taken using the Hubble Space Telescope.

The thing is, religious people tell us we're the centre of the Universe and that we're made in the image of the invisible sky god, and this is all for our benefit.

So all these stars are there... what... so we have something pretty to look at at night?

Hmmm.

The death of common sense

Someone sent me a great email this morning about the death of common sense. Apparently it was published as an obituary in the London Times, although I haven't been able to locate the original and I've searched Times Online. I don't know who owns the copyright or whether it's in the public domain, but it's been quoted on blogs all over the Web. It's so good, I just can't help repeating it here myself. It says it all really:

****

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.

He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as:
knowing when to come in out of the rain
why the early bird gets the worm
life isn't always fair
maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (frankly, adults, not children, are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned, but overbearing regulations were set in place.

Reports of a 6-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate and teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children.

It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death by:
his parents, Truth and Trust
his wife, Discretion
his daughter, Responsibility
his son, Reason

He is survived by his 4 stepbrothers:
I Know My Rights
I Want It Now
Someone Else Is To Blame
I'm A Victim

Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.
If you still remember him, pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.

Haiti earthquake

The earthquake in Haiti is appalling, with the death toll in the tens of thousands. It's unimaginable for me, sitting here in my safe little study, even though I live very close to an earthquake fault (there has been no earthquake here since the 1950s). I can't imagine the world crashing around my head like that, or the concept of everyone you know being affected in some way, and almost every family having lost someone. Whole families must have been wiped out. It's the worst disaster since the 2004 tsunami, and equally tragic.

Money doesn't fix people's broken lives, but it can help the survivors with shelter, food and so on. I've found a few places to donate:

American Red Cross
Doctors without Borders
Plan International

If we all help to the extent that we can, it will make a difference.

Global warming continues, but it's raining at last!

People in Europe might be doubting the reality of global warming right now with their big freeze, but it's very real to us. Now, after several days of stinking hot weather over 40 degrees, we finally have a day of 20 degrees and rain (the first this year).

Growing up in England, I never could have imagined that a rainy day would be considered glorious weather, but here in South Australia, it's just great to see some rain, and to be able to open up the house to let the breeze flow through. I'm also looking forward to being able to sleep tonight.

Meanwhile, in England, where I grew up, they seem to be having a repeat of the big freeze of 1963. Since it's happened before, you can't put it down to anthropogenic global warming, but warming increases the water vapour content, and it has to come down somewhere, either as flooding rains or as snow. More on global warming later, but I'll leave that for another day.