Posts tagged Humour
Douglas inspires
Mar 21st
Often the delete key is my friend. A thousand word post has disappeared. I was going to post a response to someone else’s post, and use this video of Douglas Adams as an example of positive atheism. I’m tired of yet another post from someone who says “I’m an atheist, but you mustn’t talk about atheism or offend the religious because atheists are nasty.”
Then I thought if that’s the case why bother? The people who tend to write such posts don’t have anything interesting or positive to say apart from scowling at other people who do. Religious people can produce great works, like Handel’s Messiah which has a religious message in it somewhere. Then you get books like Dawkins’ Unweaving the Rainbow, that show the sense of wonder you can have in the workings of the universe. Yet I cannot think of anything remotely inspirational written in the heartfelt belief that compromise is by its nature the goal. No one looks at a beautiful landscape, sighs, and says, “It’d be so much better if there was a small industrial estate in the way. Y’know to balance the environmental and economic needs of society.”
So instead I’ll just put up the video that TED More >
Red Letter Day: Danish Alphologists Discover the 27th Letter of the Alphabet
Apr 1st
DENMARK: Alphologists at the University of Billund, Denmark have announced the discovery of the 27th letter of the English Alphabet. The letter, which has yet to be named, was uncovered during library renovations over the Easter Break. Professor Olaf Proil who identified the letter said the discovery was a complete surprise:
“Alphologists think there are plenty of letters waiting to be discovered, but that most of these lie out in the far reaches of the alphabet, far beyond the punctuation marks and the symbols you get on cellphones. What is so surprising is that this letter is near the middle of the alphabet, between Q and R. It is an extremely small letter, which may explain why no-one had noticed it before. We think it may have been hidden behind the tail, or pesce which comes out of the Q.”
The site of the proposed missing letter. © Olaf Proil, Pål Foilor, University of Billund
The find is set to be controversial when it is presented at the International Alphological Union next month. One professor has already dismissed the new letter.
“We get this kind of headline every few years and each time it’s proven to be nonsense. It’s almost certainly a variant More >
A chilling example of the dangers of theorising in the Pub
Feb 14th
I’ve been reminded that I should link to this paper from Spring 2006 today. I’ve no idea what this author had been drinking, but it must have been pretty tasty, because the author clearly drunk a lot of it. Neanderthals explained with the aid of Tom Cruise.
Some people are simply beyond help.
Don’t tweak the geeks
Jan 7th
Clarkson published details of his Barclays account in the Sun newspaper, including his account number and sort code. He even told people how to find out his address.
“All you’ll be able to do with them is put money into my account. Not take it out. Honestly, I’ve never known such a palaver about nothing,” he told readers.
Scroll down the page…
“I opened my bank statement this morning to find out that someone has set up a direct debit which automatically takes £500 from my account,” he said.“The bank cannot find out who did this because of the Data Protection Act and they cannot stop it from happening again.
Mo’ loot, mo’ troubles
Dec 13th
Archaeoporn has an entry illustrating one of the problems with buying illicit antiquities. It turns out that not all criminals are trustworthy people. Take for instance the Seal of Yzbl, it’s a seal of Queen Jezebel as mentioned in the Bible™. At least it is if you don’t look at it too closely. If you do, then all sorts of oddities appear – that’s not a problem it was found at… umm… oh dear.
Archaeoporn also mentions the Guennol Lion, which I haven’t because I know nothing about it. David Gill in contrast knows as much about its find spot as anyone else.
David Gill has also talked about the Bolton Princess recently. If you don’t know this story, Bolton Council had the opportunity to buy a statue of the Amarna Princess, a 3000+ year old statue from Egypt. There was no check on the provenance and the sellers wish to remain anonymous. This is par for the course in antiquities sales so far. Nothing more would have been heard were it not for the fact that the same sellers tried to sell some wall reliefs to the British Museum and some spelling mistakes were spotted. An investigation followed and a search revealed More >
Friday Cat Bloggin
Jun 22nd
Original photo by Eviljohnius.
I’ll be honest I don’t understand Lolcats, but I thought I’d try and get into the spirit of the thing. You’ve probably seen similar around the web, sorry teh web, and now you can make your own, sorry sorry, ur own with a tool from Big Huge Labs.
At a time when much writing was (a) pictorial and (b) carved in stone, it could be argued that the ancient Egyptians were the original cat bloggers.
Creationism comes to Flickr
Jun 9th
After a request by Pappa Cambria, there’s now a Creationism group on Flickr.
Duane Gish card created by Pappa Cambria.
Membership is open to everyone, so you can add your own cards. Sometime before next Darwin Day I plan to write up the rules for Creationism: The Card Game (or CreationismTCG if I get carried away). I’ve got a fairly well fleshed-out idea of how it would work, and it won’t be a Magic rip-off. There’s a nod to Netrunner though.
Briefly the game will be Creationist versus Scientist. The Scientist’s goal will be to gain 30 credibility points, which ends the game. The Creationist’s aim will be to gain as many credibility points as possible before the Scientist wins.
The full match will be two games, with the players playing once as Scientist and once as Creationist with the winner being the player with the highest aggregate credibility. The Scientist player will gain points by publishing papers and books. The Creationist player will gain credibility by getting religion into schools or interfering with the Scientist’s cards.
Now THAT’S a review
May 17th
Photo (cc) Analog Photos.
Phil sent me a link to the Amazon UK page for the new book by Richard Littlejohn. He’s a hack for the Daily Mail, a news organisation that makes Fox News look fair and balanced, so I thought that Phil’s recent trip to Syria had left him with mental trauma. Not so. You’d expect the book to pick up mixed reviews. On the contrary it’s picking up wide acclaim, and masses of five star votes. Here’s a sample of the 5/5 reviews:
No-one else can express such complex right wing views in such a monosyllabic form. To buy only one copy of this book would be a crime.
With this insightful, visionary, and – I am not ashamed to say – celestially inspirational commentary on modern life, Richard Littlejohn has rendered the entire canon of Western literature, philosophy and ethical discourse entirely moot.
Littlejohn’s book is so brilliant that when, as is inevitable in modern Britain, a gay immigrant made an attempt to steal it from my bag it literally burnt his hands and made them dissolve a little bit.
There are those who credit Plato with defining that obscure and fluctuating artefact which has been termed the ‘western mind’. More >
Another petition
Apr 8th
A vote to ostracise Pericles. Photo (CC) Wallyg.
Occasionally there is a petition which does seem like a stroke of genius. This is an example.
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to create the procedure of ostracism as practised under the ancient Greek Athenian democracy.
Now I know what you’re thinking. Ostracism was a peculiarly Athenian idea. It’s all very well suggesting we have a vote and exile the most (un?)popular choice from the UK for ten years, but times have changed. Surely it couldn’t work in practice. Think about the fine detail.
But someone has.
Use any funds generated from TV rights for good causes.
Put the Baron of Weston-super-mare up against Tony Blair and you could fund the NHS for a decade from the fees from the phone-in votes.
Then Why Are There Still Humans?
Feb 12th
Original image by vj_pdx.
I’m busy today, so I don’t have time to put together the Darwin Day post that I’d like to. In the meantime here’s another Creationism card. I’m starting to get an idea of how a game would work, so tentatively there might be more cards up and a working game for the next Darwin Day.
One reason I’m slightly rushed is that I spent time catching up on Origins Revisited, a Radio 4 series looking at the updated evidence for Human evolution. You can listen to all three programmes via the archive.
