The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science has been launched as a charitable foundation based in both the US and UK, with aim of opposing the spread of irrational thought (astrology, faith healing, religion, etc.) at the expense of science. Definitely one to keep an eye on. It’s also worth watching the introductory video for a more detailed explanation.

Dawkins has also written an article entitled Why There Almost Certainly Is No God in which he looks at a number of the most common arguments for the existence of God and explains why they’re not particularly good arguments at all.

The Chamberlain tactic of snuggling up to ‘sensible’ religion, in order to present a united front against (‘intelligent design’) creationists, is fine if your central concern is the battle for evolution. That is a valid central concern, and I salute those who press it, such as Eugenie Scott in Evolution versus Creationism. But if you are concerned with the stupendous scientific question of whether the universe was created by a supernatural intelligence or not, the lines are drawn completely differently. On this larger issue, fundamentalists are united with ‘moderate’ religion on one side, and I find myself on the other.

Wil Shipley has an excellent post up on the emergency in the US, entitled Thank God For George W. Bush:

In eighteen days we have a chance to elect a majority in both the house and senate who will oppose Bush for the next two years, and stop this insanity. I am urging you to do what you can. Even just showing up and watching for voter fraud would help. Take a laptop to your polling place and blog what you see. We’ve had the last two national elections stolen from us, and if we let it happen again we are to blame.

This is the real national emergency. Compare the number of Americans who have died for no reason in Iraq (2,279), by Bush’s order, to the number who died in the 9/11 attacks (2,973). What are we doing? How is this worth it? Why are our priorities so far out of whack?

Why are we giving up our civil liberties, spending trillions on wars, and sacrificing our kids’ lives at Bush’s behest? Every year more Americans die of cancer (190x), AIDS (4x), heart disease (309x), and car accidents (20x) than died in 9/11. What are we so afraid of? Why are we willing to spend trillions to depose a puffed-up dictator on the other side of the world but not a couple million to educate our kids in music and art?

We have let the fear of violence against us turn us into animals. We’re so frightened by those images of jets crashing into skyscrapers that we’ve forgotten that being the victim of a terrorist attack is, in fact, among the least likely of the bad things that can happen to us. We have to stop.

It’s worth reading the whole post.

The yanks have a No-Fly list which is supposed to stop terrorists getting on an aeroplane. Sounds fair enough, right? Well get this, there’s 44,000 names on the list! Including 14 of the 19 terrorists who died on 9/11, the President of Bolivia, Saddam Hussein (like he’ll be flying anywhere) and some Nazi sympathizer who’s been dead for 10 years.

CBS’s 60 Minutes got a copy of the list and checked it out:

The first surprise was the sheer size of it. In paper form it is more than 540 pages long. Before 9/11, the government’s list of suspected terrorists banned from air travel totaled just 16 names; today there are 44,000. And that doesn’t include people the government thinks should be pulled aside for additional security screening. There are another 75,000 people on that list.

And here’s the best bit: because the list gets circulated to airline desks, the CIA refuses to put actual, suspected terrorists on it because it’s not secure enough! What a fucking farce! You couldn’t make this shit up if you tried.

From: CBS’s 60 Minutes

The yanks have signed into law the Military Commissions Act, allowing the CIA to continue to torture people abroad, and also denying ‘enemy combatants’ the right to a fair trial (habeus corpus).

The provisions of Bush’s new torture law mean that Americans have lost the key, constitutional right on which Anglo-American criminal law (and criminal-law procedures in true democracies in general) is founded; that’s the basic right of an individual to know why he or she is being apprehended and detained. Now, technically, as in Stalin’s Soviet Union, Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s China or Pol Pot’s Cambodia, anyone labeled an “enemy combatant” – again, by whom; by Bush? – can be whisked away and never heard from again. That kind of authority, in the hands of corrupt or untruthful politicians, may or may not be an effective tool in some kind of “war on terror,” but it certainly can be a useful tool when it comes to silencing their opponents.

On the plus side, you can now buy these t-shirts: Habeus Corpus: don’t be taken from home without it ;-)

Also, they have updated their space policy document and decided that they pretty much own space.

“The United States will oppose the development of new legal regimes or other restrictions that seek to prohibit or limit U.S. access to or use of space. Proposed arms control agreements or restrictions must not impair the rights of the United States to conduct research, development, testing and operations or other activities in space for U.S. national interests,” it says.

Got organised today and put last week’s plan in action. Ran to the pool, did the swim and attempted running back. Problem was the pool is so bloody salty that I was on the verge of cramping by the time the session finished, so I only got halfway back to work before having to stop for a stretch and walk the rest of the way! Still, running felt OK so might try and do some more of it.

The session was a good one. No messing about and constantly moving. Racked up a pretty comfortable 3000m with a few minutes to spare. Stroke felt good and 1:25 pace is no trouble, though I still tire rapidly once I pick the pace up beyond that.

500 Free
6 * 50 Free on 55 (40)
3 * 100 FS on 1:50 (1:25)
3 * 100 FS on 1:45 (1:25)
3 * 100 FS on 1:40 (1:25)
100 Fast (1:14)
100 Easy
3 * 100 FS on 1:40 (1:27)
3 * 100 FS on 1:45 (1:28)
3 * 100 FS on 1:50 (1:30)
100 Fast (1:25)
100 Easy
Total: 3000m

S: 3.0km – R: 1.5km

Windows really is a POS!

Called over to a mate’s house on the way home from work to help him set up his new PC. Had tried to get him to buy an iMac but he’d already got a HP by the time my calls got through to him. Had to set him up with Unwired as well and figured it couldn’t be too bad. It took FOUR hours! Yes, FOUR!

OS was already installed, so just had to do some basic configuration (time, dat, langauge, etc). Had a quick look around to see that there was loads of junk installed – about 20 shite games and sign-ups for Telstra, Dodo, IPrimus and some other ISP too. Removed all those.

Installed Office 2003.

Installed Office 2003 SP2.

Got Unwired up and running. It’s crap! Despite good signal strength & quality it started off downloading Firefox at 4KB/s! Dumped the connection & tried again: 17KB/s. On a 512/128 plan!

Setup & configured the HP Printer/Scanner/Fax.

Deleted the demo version of Norton Security which came with the machine.

Installed the Trend Micro Security package he’d paid for.

Set up a schedule to check for updates.

Set up a schedule to scan for viruses.

Set up a schedule to scan for spyware.

Set up the firewall.

Thought I was nearly done, but no, I had yet to meet Windows Update. Fired that up, and it told me it needed to update itself. That done, it told me I needed to download 51 critical & highly recommended patches!!! 51! Took an hour to do that.

I came in towards the end and figured I’d set up a limited user for his day to day use. Fast user switching! Great, I’ll do that. Switched out of admin & did some configuration in his user account. Finished that, logged out and back in to Admin to see that Windows Update had refused to install the updates it had spent the last hour downloading!

You know that adage about the watched kettle never boiling? Turns out this Windows PC is the inverse: it will only do stuff if you sit there and watch it. Told it to do it again and thankfully it realised it had already done the downloads, so I left it installing update 13 of 51 and went home.

My conclusion: using Windows is what I imagine it would be like if you were looking after an ageing relative with mild Alzheimer’s; it’s fully functional, but gives the impression of never really being sure of what’s going on, and is liable to drive you insane.

BTW, XP Pro on a 3.0GHz Pentium D: slow! Lots of pregnant pauses if you tried to do two things at once.

Monique got us tickets for the Australia vs Bahrain Asian Cup Qualifier. Australia had already qualified, so there was nothing riding on the game, but since Bresciano, Cahill, Neill & Schwarzer were home from Europe pride was at stake, especially since it’s the first time they’d played in Sydney since the World Cup.

Photos here.

In preparation for the Budgie 100, a 100m Free challenge race amongst a few friends in a couple of weeks, I figured I should get back in a swimming pool and try and get a feel for things again. Not having swum since January means I’m a bit rusty.

Had a look around and decided to join the lunchtime squad sessions at Boy Charlton Pool since they are coached by Mark Newton who knows his stuff and and usually produces a decent workout. The squads I went to last year were a bit useless as the coach knew less than I did and usually churned out almost the same session, week in, week out.

So, I went along for my first session yesterday and it was great. Spending your lunchtime swimming in a heated outdoor pool, in 30C under a blazing sun, is a great way to train. I arrived a bit late as I’d got sidetracked at work, and there was a bit of a problem finding Mark as I was expecting someone walking up and down the bank, not leading the lane. Once that was sorted out it was a pretty easy session.

300 Free
5 * 200 Free on 3:30 (3:10)
100 Free/100 Back Relax
8 * 50 on 1:00 (37)
4 * 100 Free Paddles on 1:40 (1:20)
Total: 2300m

I took it pretty easy, as while I’m reasonably aerobically fit, my arms aren’t used to doing any work at all, so they were the weakest link. Still, swimming in salt water helps as it makes me about 5s/100m faster than a pool.

I’ve signed up for Tuesday & Thursday lunchtimes and I reckon I’ll run to and from the session next week and not bother having a shower until I get back to work.

S: 2300m

A study done by the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, published today in the Lancet, claims that, since the US, Britain and Australia invaded Iraq, approximately 655,000 more civilians have died than would have been the case if there was no invasion. To put this in perspective, that’s over twice as many as Saddam killed in his 25 years in power! So, the answer to the usual conservative pro-war justification “Do you really think the Iraqis would have been better off if we left Saddam in power?” would seem to be a resounding “YES!”.

Download the paper.



Jacqui got free accommodation in Kiama through work, so herself, myself, Anna and Nathan headed down last weekend for a relaxing weekend by the beach. The accommodation was right on a beach, which was great. John & Goz came down for the day on Saturday, so we chilled out on the beach, played some frisbee and went for a swim. The water’s not too cold, which was a bonus, as I normally don’t bother going for a swim until December when the water temperature is usually around 20C or so.

The plan for Sunday was to get breakfast in Gerringong and then head down to Seven Mile Beach for the day, but by the time we had breakfast the weather had changed; the wind had picked up and the temperatures were down quite a bit, so it was no longer a beach day. We opted to head to Minimiurra Falls instead and do the rainforest walk which turned out to be quite interesting, though the falls weren’t as spectacular as I’d hoped!

Here’s my photos.