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10.02.2009 - 2:16 p.m.

I had a thought the other day, not the kind of thought that kills me, or the kind that leads to wealth and fortune (unfortunately) but just the gentle click of stuff falling into place

I spend a reasonable amount of time at Rationalwiki, and it occurred to me that once you cut through all the political bollocks that inevitably surrounds the religious wacko position like a miasmic fog, it all comes down to scale. Some of us can handle scale, for instance, i know where i am in relation to the wall opposite me, I know where i am on the surface of this planet, i can comprehend the earth in my minds eye on its annual journey aroond Sol, and i can rationally understand (as much as any normal person can) our 200 million year journey as our solar system circles the galactic core.

And then we come to people who for whatever reason (I think it's a mental condition carried/passed on in/through genetic information) who can't think on these scales and lack sufficient imagination to make the intellectual leap to a larger picture. Here are a couple of examples plucked at random from my memory (but all are findable if i really have to):

- The world is only 6000 years old - because i can only understand 4-digit numbers, anything bigger and i start to feel insignificant
- The world is flat - i can visualise a flat surface, i have problems with three dimensions
- If people stick to the underneath of the planet because of gravity, why aren't we in orbit around mountains (this is more or less verbatim) therefore gravity is false and gods love is what holds us on the surface - i can't tell the difference in scale between a mountain (the biggest thing i can see) and a planet (i can't see a whole planet so i'll discount this)
- Every living thing was made by god in an instant - i can't even begin to visualise or understand the endless minutiae of 4 billion years of evolution
- We should all live to ten commandments - the thousands of decisions required to live a free and liberal lifestyle are too confusing, i must reduce this down and then lie about the commandments i break because i'm following my baser animal whims and desires (Ted Haggard, i'm looking directly at you and your ilk)

In every case i've seen, when you corner people like this their only possible reaction is to get louder and more vociferous and possible shouting LA-LA-LA while holding their fingers in their ears, you can try and be as rational and gentle as you like but the fact that they are not equipped to ingest and understand this type of information means they will always return to their starting position once you've gone. If they consider themselves to be a cut-above the normal wacko, they may try and number-wang you with poor reasoning and machine-gun statements, leaving you with a bewildering amount of nonsense to deal with, when you don't know which stupid statement to deal with first they consider your pause a concession of defeat and skip away singing smug songs of smugness about how clever they are.

These are the same people, who in trying to become One with the Universe, only manage to become One with the Immediate Vicinity (sigh).

But in every case you can trace their basic failure of understanding down to scale, i've not tested this to the n-th degree beyond thinking about it for a bit, if you can think of a situation that doesn't follow please feel free to point it out to me, i'm always open to re-evaluation of ideas.

If i had access to an interstellar ark, i'd invite every devout fundie (ok, i'd need two or three, 'cos they ain't gonna share with any other flavour of fundamentalist) to board in search of a better home where they can live their theocratic dreams, these arks would then fly directly into the sun. The amount of space and peace left on Earth with their dispatch would be stunning.

On the news this morning they talked about a new report which says 1 in 15 men are abused at home by their partners and it's a travesty that there's so much gender inequality in how services for domestic violence are available to the public. I'm not going to go down the whole macho route of saying "slap the bitch back", that attitude just doesn't make any friends. But you can look at it from another perspective, 1 in 15 women are psycho and need professional help. It's clear from the number of existing women�s refuges that there's a metric shitload of stupid, inarticulate, alcoholic men out there, but there always have been, and there's likely as many female equivalents (brains are brains, the body they're in is immaterial) so how about spending more money and effort in identifying people with mental deficiencies, that lead to physical and mental abuse (both male and female) and then treating them in a pro-active manner, rather than the reactive stance of dealing with the fall-out of battered people and then moaning about it.

Better still, for the people who don't respond to treatment and rehabilitation go for radical lobotomy and create a slave army of sterilised mindless workers, no doubt they can be put to work somewhere and society as a whole will be better off without them.

At the moment it's fucking hot in southern australia, Malibu hot in fact, possibly hotter than a snakes arse in a wagon rut. While i almost felt something for people who've lost their homes and lives to fire (it later turned out to be wind) i definitely feel for de aminalz who are undoubtedly having it tougher. These pics are probably doing the rounds and show evolution in process, survival of the fitter (not fittest, a common mistake)

The adorable little bugger has learnt that humans carry water, this gives him an advantage over other bears and makes it likely that his/her descendents will also, the fact that he's also able to interact with humans to get what he needs shows resourcefulness borne of desperation, but because of this he may just survive until the rains next come. J and i have decided to fly out there, and once loaded down with camelbacks of water and supplies, we'll wander through the bush giving water and cubed fruit to the wildlife we encounter. At the same time we'll be gunning down people who take advantage of animals seeking interaction through trapping them or running them down in cars as they wait by the roadside for friendly cyclists, what's one more dead animal-hater, think of the good they'll do once buried in the leaf litter, all that food for bugs and bacteria.

The big'ol bakery backing onto our plant has started making hot-cross-buns this week, and the smell has enveloped the industrial estate downwind of the bakery, delicious.


"when i get out of here i'm gonna fuck you up..."

The saying goes "it only takes one glory-hunting fuckwit..."

The fuckwit in this case is Andrew Wakefield who's currently being investigated for fraud. He's singularly responsible for an increase in measles in the UK from 56 cases some time in the past to 1500ish cases now, as well as fuelling every conspiracist nutjob and religious wacko across the world with his half-baked ideas. Sure it got him a lot of air-time when he made his momentous proclamation and he no doubt sold many books, but now it seems he lied, ah the cycle of stupidity continues ad nauseum.

But as this particular genie is out of the bottle it's too late. For anyone considering not immunising their child, please bear this in mind

"take off your tinfoil hat and stop being a cock, you irresponsible fuckwit"

I can't make it any simpler than that.

Loves xxx

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