Adrian on Religious Views

So I was walking to the store to get my lunch and a thought popped up. I condensed this thought and would like to share it with you here. For the past couple of months I have turned by mind towards religious books because I felt that to have an opinion on it I should really know what IT is, i.e. know what the books are "teaching us". However, I'm not strictly comfortable with the internet as a medium for the discussion of such materials and so I'm hesitant about this but I wanted to put this up for discussion.

"How can whatever happens to us in the after-life be so important in the here-and-now as to make the here-and-now completely and utterly irrelevant?"

Assume religion A and religion B. They both rely on a "corpus" of teachings which some might call "the word of god", others might call it a "moral codex" and maybe it could just be called "reasonable guidelines for the survival of a population", whereby of course reasonability is subjective and pertains only to those teachings regardless of overlap between religion A and B. In fact, religion A and religion B will always be different regardless of how much overlap there might be and thereby a follower from religion A who eats rice on a Sunday because his/her teachings order it thus will still be a heathen and unbeliever even if religion B also preaches the eating of rice on a Sunday simply because he is a follower of religion A, and not B. (note that the eating of rice is simply a place holder for any ordained activity).

Now it appears to me that, no matter how peace and love preaching and adhering a religion might be there always seem to be reasons for the lawful, even necessary, annihilation of "the heathen" (or the wavering follower for that matter).

Assume then the following scenario. I'm a follower of religion A and you're a follower of religion B. We both managed to offend each other and our religion teaches us both that in order to save ourselves (and the well being of our society) the other needs to be wiped off the face of this earth, and that despite the fact that we operated completely faithfully to our religious teachings. So now I kill you, you kill me, order in accordance with our religious teachings is satisfied (accepting and ignoring the slight temporal and technical difficulty of simultaneous annihilation; who cares?!), and we're both dead.

This we had to do, for our religion demanded it, and following our religious teaching is, after all, what brought us here in the first place, is it not. So all is well then. Except, that we're both dead. Which leads me back to my initial question.

"How can whatever happens to us in the after-life be so important in the here-and-now as to make the here-and-now completely and utterly irrelevant?"

It's not a question I necessarily need an answer to. I'm not sure I am entitled to ask anyone that question at all, except for myself. But I think it's an interesting question to put out there and one everyone should ask themselves no matter the outcome.

The day that Thatcher died

Margaret Thatcher: 1925 - 2013

I didn't write anything yesterday about the passing of the arguably very important political figure of the post-war 20th century (I'm sure there's people who'll be willing to put this in more precise words for me). The only thing I noted yesterday was that one of the first links to appear on facebook carried as a thumbnail the picture of two kids staring at the skull of a Tyrannosaurus-Rex in a museum.

I didn't comment on her passing because I didn't think it was right for me to say anything. Somebody died. It's a human tragedy whenever it happens. Let the mourners mourn their death. not only that, but I was born in 1979, in a different country. What I know of Margaret Thatcher I know in passing from media snippets and conversations with friends. It makes for a very incomplete knowledge and to be honest I've stopped listening to it because there's only so many times you can change your opinion about something before you realise that there's a lot of "shit slinging" going on either side of the fence. At some point I'll have to make a point of finding out just exactly what she did and didn't do. 

But anyway, I thought yesterday's events were noteworthy after all. They were noteworthy because of the series of events everyone easily had access to from the comfort of their own home. They happened, as many things do nowadays, on Facebook (Sorry, Margaret, you're no exception!). So here's a loose timeline of what transpired yesterday and the thoughts I have about it now. Note that items 2 to 4 are in no particular order.

1. The first media items appear telling us of the death of one of the "greats" of our time. The wildfire starts spreading.
2. The gouvernment issues a statement "officially" mourning her passing and lauding her (political) lifetime achievements. 'The nation must be upset, for we have truly lost someone great'.
3. Facebook statuses by those who supported and admired her started appearing
4. Facebook statuses by those who hated her started appearing
5. People started arguing '/enter the shit storm'
6. People started arguing over the appropriateness of arguing about somebody's life immediately after their passing
7. The media caught up with this and jumped on the band wagon

Here's what I find interesting:
If you follow the official media coverage She will appear to the uninformed outsider like the single greatest and best thing this country has seen since the invention of sliced bread, and that regardless of some of her flaws that she might have had!
If you look on Facebook there are a lot of people who don't like her. Yes, there are supporters but there are a lot of people screaming bloody murder, so surely she must have done something wrong in order to warrant such loathing?!

The media tell us how wrong it is to "throw the first stone" after someone's died and that we should show more piety and let the mourners mourn.
What I would like to know is when are we going to be allowed to criticise someone after their death? I mean, call me cynical, but I expect a BBC documentary obituary full of praise, but surely a critical view of someone's achievements and deeds would be more useful?

I mean if "officialdom" is just going to trumpet the "let the mourners mourn" and "oh how we lost a great person" until it slowly fizzles out this has a lot of similarities with the mass shootings in the US and the way "nobody's allowed to talk about gun laws out of respect for the mourners".

Adrian on Jaffa Cakes

I'm of the firm belief that to be truly worthy of the Yard of Jaffa you cannot simply hold it, but brandish it. Brandish it like it's your weapon of choice when the Zombie Apocalypse comes. For the Yard of Jaffa is glorious and deserves to be treated thus.

I mean, I might not live very long, but a "personalised, damast steel enforced, ergonomic Yard of Jaffa an integrate soft touch coated, carbon fibre handle" has got to be the best weapon - Full Stop!

Systems

Fuckin' right I'm pissed off!

I went to the bank this morning because they'd "updated" my online banking security with a nifty number generator gadget (I'm all for nifty number generator gadgets) without actually sending me said gadget. Fine, I get one in the store and get to activate it...
Now WHY THE FUCK does a security system enhanced with a number generator which "could" on prompt spit out any combination of numbers even in response to other number combinations (it has a num-pad, DUH!) - WHY THE FUCK does this system still need MEMORABLE QUESTIONS????

OH yeah and then why not make one of those questions NECESSARILY about something FAVOURITE because everyone has a FAVOURITE car/dish/music artist/plant/animal/colour??!! NO THEY FUCKIN' DON'T!!!!

NOT EVERYBODY DOES FAVOURITISM!!!! And if I like Amy MacDonald just as much as I like the Stones I'm not gonna be able to remember which one I chose!!!

I HATE FUCKIN' INEFFICIENT SYSTEMS!!!!
Am I bitter on the second day back from holidays? FUCKIN' RIGHT I AM!!!

And because this isn't just about banks, here's another thing I encountered when I went into WHSmith.
I bought a new Diary and while I was waiting for them to process my card payment their machine spits out TWO extra receipts, which I am then honoured to take away with me, telling me about an amazing £5 off (my next purchase over £15 in two weeks time; when I will have forgotten about this voucher (and let's be honest who goes and buys stuff for £15 in WHS)) and a whooping 20% off children's stationery/books/back to school items because 'Hey' I might want to buy them; NO I FUCKIN' DON'T! HOW DARE YOU PRESUME I DO!!! 

Adrian on Government

Government as we know it is dysfunctional. That’s the baseline, and I’m sorry if that upsets you enough to stop reading, but that is, I believe, a fact. Government is dysfunctional because it pretends to be democratic without truly being democratic. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there can be a true democracy anymore. There could be, and for a long time there still was true democracy in one of the cantons in Switzerland where they had a “Landsgemeinde”, something like an AGM for the whole canton where every man and woman would flock to and vote on issues by raising their hand; Democracy. But today’s society doesn’t want that. The people want to vote, yes, but after they’ve voted they wan someone else to get on with it. I don’t agree with that attitude, but it’s basically true.

But I don’t think we necessarily need true democracy to have a functional government. What we do need is something that doesn’t turn into a Dictatorship the moment the elections are over. Let me elaborate: from the moment when one of our glorious parties gets elected and starts their term they rule and that’s it for the next five years. Whatever, No. 10 comes up with will have to be agreed by their peers because they’re in the same party. Oh yeah, there’s the houses of commons and lords respectively. But it seems to me they’re only there so they can adapt the Prime Minister’s Opinion and vote in favour of whatever he churns out.

“The Prime Minister’s been working hard to convince the members of parliament that the underlying policy change regarding tuition fees needs to be voted through”. That’s not how it should work! “Convincing representatives of the population” does not equal “representing the opinion of the population”! I mean, that’s why you have the houses of parliament. It’s representatives telling you what the opinions and views of the population they represent are and that means they can tell you to shove it if a particular policy draft does not express the views of the population. Which isn’t the same as: “this representative has just changed his opinion regarding the rise in tuition fees and therefore, so has the population he stands for”!

What I said to my friend Friday yesterday was that democratic government should be a system of peer review! We further our knowledge, our sciences through this system which, while not making it impossible to publish bad science and wrongful theory, at least has the benefit of being independent, unbiased, and above all critically thorough in that all publications need to undergo this procedure. In fact the only exception to this rule are the cosmetic sciences research studies but only because they wouldn’t make it through peer review.

I think this government is flawed in that it has become overprotective of its system. By system I mean, The country, the government, the economy, in fact everything except the people. This government is of the opinion that the people will benefit if the system is upheld. And so they preach to the masses to increase spending in order to feed the economy on the basis of what? That jobs will be preserved? That people have an income? Yeah, great, how much of a commercial company’s annual income is used up in employee’s wages? It’s a fraction! The rest feeds the corporate game of “eat or be eaten”. No, rather than to preach that we should spend, spend, spend and even take out a loan to spend even more, I think this government should realise that the system will recover ONLY if the people benefit. If I don’t know where my next pay check is coming from or when it’s going to come I’m certainly not in a spending mood, and that should be praised as a healthy attitude to money! Only if I save can I have money later on which I can then spend in order to feed the economy. Why would I want to feed the economy if I haven’t got enough money to feed myself? So why then, doesn’t the government preach a healthier spending attitude to its citizens? Because it benefits in turn if the people are in dept and that it the cruellest form of citizen-state dependency. If you keep the people poor to the extent that they owe money to the country (read: the system) they will produce a continuous cycle of spiralling dept and long term loan repayment and this, so the government thinks, will help the economy. But whether it also helps its citizens is highly doubtful. It’s as if the government seems to think that a richer population will be likely to jump ship and leave the country, thereby stopping their contribution to the national economy. Personally I don’t know why they’d want to do that? Maybe it’s because the government keeps screwing with them!

Adrian on Coffee

The intensity of the first sip of fresh, strong coffee is comparable to walking into a brick wall at high speed and coming out on the other side. What's left behind is the morning tiredness, wearyness and general sluggischness that captivates the human spirit soon after getting up. The brick wall slices all that away and replaces it with a freshness of mind and spirit and even the physical longing for the comfort of the warm bed is replaced by the warm comfort that is coffee.

Ready to wrestle the world, come what may!

Every Program needs a "bugger off" button

Computer and internet technology is a brilliant thing. You can get anything and everything at the click of a button, anywhere you are (as long as you're logged on/connected) at your personal convenience. Well actually that's a lie, that last bit about 'your personal convenience'. It's more like an inconvenience! Oh sure I'm not talking about ll those nice things you can have, communication methods right there, academic information easily and readily available, non-academic information readily available, everything, even fluffy toys that look like the HIV virus are available at the click of the button; everything so convenient. But I'm not talking about that.

What I'm talking about is this: Every now and again we are told that to 'access this' or 'enable that function' or 'listen to this advert' and 'make this connection more secure' we are required to download some program or other. And I'm not even talking about the bogus Downloader-Dialer-Trojan stuff. I'm talking about those readily recognisable genuine programs one seems to need running in the background to make life with a computer oh so smooth. Shockwave flash, Media player, Quicktime (of all things), Direct-effing-X, Adobe Acrobat, you name it.

Fine! you install all these things in the hope that you can get what you want now just to find that all these programs have decided that they now take up a prime spot on your computer; the system tray; and that right from the word go!

I DON'T WANT THEM THERE!!! I HATE THEM!!! THEY CAN BUGGER OFF!!!

What's worse, to stop them doing that I have to open these programs (which I downloaded so I wouldn't have to have anything to do with things), leaf through their 'Preferences' section (of which they may have about seven), come invariably past a "do you wish to register?" entry at which point I fell like punching the program concerned into the stone age for suggesting that I wished to give away all my personal details in order to receive an abundance of e-mails every day (...back to the point), and find and untick(!) the box that says "open into system tray at windows start up". Why on earth would this box be ticked in the first place? If I didn't tick it, then I don't want it to be bloody ticked! I don't want this program to run in the background when it's not needed!It clogs up the process, uses up memory and is good for just about nothing anyway as long as I don't run any applications that depend on it; and even then it takes about, uh..., five seconds longer to start the application without the thing already in the background, big smegging deal!

And that's why I think that all programs need a "bugger off" button that shows up right after installation which deletes and overrides all the default autoplay, standby, tray icon and background settings and generally restricts the program concerned to only run when when it's absolutely necessary.

And now I'm going back to work again, but it needed saying.