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Letter to Chomsky
Hello Professor Chomsky,
Re: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Avram-Noam-Chomsky/13249534929?ref=s
I would like to point your attention to a Facebook page that has been set up "in your honour". I joined this fan page as I have read some of your work and am interested in following any news that the founder of this page thought fit to share.
However, it seems this "fan" of yours also has his own agenda, and I've been trying to point this out in the public "wall" space. For instance, he has posted links to AIDS and global warming denial groups. I would appreciate your opinion, or even better, your participation in this debate.
Thanks very much for your time.
All Things Dull and Ugly
From Unreasonable Faith: Believers stand in awe at the beautiful creatures God made, but they seem to forget the ugly and nasty ones. If God fashioned every creature, he should be worshiped for creating all of them. So perhaps Christians should sing this Monty Python song on Sunday mornings, too:
All things dull and ugly,
All creatures short and squat,
All things rude and nasty,
The Lord God made the lot.
Each little snake that poisons,
Each little wasp that stings,
He made their brutish venom,
He made their horrid wings.
All things sick and cancerous,
All evil great and small,
All things foul and dangerous,
The Lord God made them all.
Each nasty little hornet,
Each beastly little squid,
Who made the spikey urchin,
Who made the sharks, He did.
All things scabbed and ulcerous,
All pox both great and small,
Putrid, foul and gangrenous,
The Lord God made them all.
Gapminder - see world data in new ways
Gapminder - Home: The guy behind this site did a TED talk (one of the top ten) and the software has now been bought by Google and expanded. You can use it online yourself, it's great fun. But his aim is to get more data available from governments and the UN, and also to get people thinking about it in new ways.
Labels: links
Are Big Oil and Big Coal Climate Criminals?
Are Big Oil and Big Coal Climate Criminals? - Dot Earth - Climate Change and Sustainability - New York Times Blog:
This has been recommended to me as one of the best sites on Climate Change issues.
There's even a dedicated Firefox (Greasemonkey) script for blocking climate change deniers in the comments section!
Labels: links
Facebook/blog/Twitter
I've now worked out a much simpler way of getting my blog onto facebook - you can import blog posts directly into your FB notes (just go to the Notes app and there's a link to import blogs). So now I can get rid of the Mirror Blog app, and simply write everything in my blog.
Also, I'm hoping to find a way of setting my status from GTalk - which will also update Twitter. All my status messages from one place!
Labels: site
Quiet here, busy on facebook
With all the reading I'm doing at the moment, I'm spoilt for choice in methods for sharing - I can share directly in Google Reader (which you can see in the right margin), I can write a new blog post, or I can share on facebook. I've decided that the blog should really be for more personal reflections, so all the links I share will go on facebook for now.
As I don't really have anything concrete to say on the blog for now though, it may be a bit quiet! Too many ideas running around the noggin at the moment.
House on Atheism
House on religion. "Rational arguments don't usually work on religious people - otherwise, there would be no religious people." Spot on!
Labels: brights
Waiting or wanting?
I made an interesting typo when setting my facebook status - I wrote "I'm still wainting to hear about my flat". Am I waiting, or wanting?
I've put a holding deposit down on a room in a house-share. It's a one-off opportunity - unlike many buy-to-let properties, this one is homely and in a lovely location. One of the tenants is a friend of the landlord, and he seems to be an interesting and friendly guy. The problem is that he arranged for a foreign student to rent one of the rooms temporarily, but it seems the agency he went through got the student to sign a three-month contract, *without* the authority of the landlord. So now the landlord wants to rent the room to me, but can't get the student out. The agent I'm dealing with can't get hold of the landlord or the landlord's friend, and it may be that they are avoiding his calls because of the situation with the contract.
I went up to London yesterday to meet my agent and see some other properties. The ones I saw simply confirmed that the flat in Winchmore Hill is unique, and worth holding out for. I don't want to have Angel around to stay if I'm living in a dodgy buy-to-let property, with no character, in a run-down area, and with unfriendly house-mates.
But am I hoping for too much? Am I 'wanting' it so much that I'm convincing myself that it will work out in the end? Do I believe it will work out simply because I wish it so? "It is easiest to deceive oneself..."
Best goal EVER
Day out in London
Had a great day out in London today with Shawna and Neil, who are back from brainwashing poor Indians and will shortly be back in Canada. Shawna's hoping to get her "Chatterbox" cafe/debating forum off the ground soon, I can't wait to hear how it goes. I also met her Canadian friend Kaytlyn and her Swedish boyfriend (can't think how to spell his name...?) - I could have *sworn* I'd met both of them before, but when I got back and looked her up on facebook, I couldn't recognise any of her friends. Bizarre deja vu. I'm looking forward to paying them back for buying me dinner :)
God is Imaginary - 50 simple proofs
This site pulls together the most convincing arguments against Christianity. In fact, 50 is way too many, and the fact that it is so long-winded is pretty much guaranteed to put people off going through the whole list. However I'd like to point people directly to the 7th Proof which, although long in itself, is probably the most likely of all these proofs to make Christians stop and think, if they are honestly open-minded.