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Happy April 10th 2009.
As I’m sure you’re ALL aware by now, this weekend is NEW RED DWARF WEEKEND. Friday to Monday, four new episodes of Red Dwarf back on our screens at last.
The first one just aired. And I posted a review on Twitter but no, clearly that’s not enough for *SOME* of you. So I have to post one here as well? Gawd. I just want to get to sleep.
Okay here goes. And for the first time in the history of this blog, I’m making use of the Break feature, as spoilers may abound below.
Evening viewers. Or readers. I’m never sure on when to use which term. Because in order to read, you have to view as well. Why is it that when I blog normally you’re ‘readers’ but when I post a picture you’re still ‘readers’? How do you read a picture? You do not, you view a picture, hence you are ‘viewers’. But why use the term interchangably? You have to view words before you read them, hence I shall refer to you as viewers as a general term. Unless by next blog post I’ve forgotten and go back to the online standard of ‘readers’. Should I start? I should start.
We begin this blog post with views. No, not– Ugh, I knew that first paragraph would confuse you. MY views. Yes, my views. Of course I have them. Admittedly not often, and when I do I don’t voice them, but it’s been a while since I’ve had a good old rant. I’m in one of those ranting moods right now actually. Friday the 13th hasn’t been kind to me. It’s been a very up and down day really, I’ve never been able to get the hang of Friday the 13ths.
I should warn you now that this is liable to be a very wrong and -VERY- inaccurate blog post. It’s posting about things that I don’t claim to understand. With that in mind, it’s time to begin.
Professor Richard Dawkins. Darwin’s Rottweiler according to the media, inventor of the word ‘meme’, and super-ultra-mega-atheist. (This prooves nothing other than the fact that I was able to find him on Wikipedia and that I know what a meme is).
Quoth Mail Online:
Outspoken atheist Professor Richard Dawkins is to warn children of the dangers in believing “anti-scientific” fairytales such as Harry Potter.
Prof Dawkins will write a book aimed at youngsters where he will discuss whether stories like the successful JK Rowling series have a “pernicious” effect on children.
The 67-year-old, who recently resigned from his position at Oxford University, says he intends to look at the effects of “bringing children up to believe in spells and wizards”.
The ‘effects of bringing children up to believe in spells and wizards’. This is just yet another layer of cotton wool to wrap children in, really. I have to say I’m very against the future in the way that children will just be brought up protected against every tiny thing and never learning for themselves or experiencing culture. It’s just another thing for people to constantly be worrying about and casting judgement on. Like “Oh, you let your child read Harry Potter?” and overprotective parents being all up themselves for being perfect while their child is screaming in a padded room safe from all outside influences. Sorry, went off on a strange tangent there.
Dawkins fails to see creativity beyond “This is probably fucking up kids, lets tell people that”. He comes across as being the kind of extremist that wants us all to be governed purely by science, to have no outside influences that change who we are. But it’s the outside influences who MAKE US who we are. Take away anything that could influence us, take away anything that could inspire us, take away anything that could cause us to develop in our own ways and we will just be the same. And encouraging people to do that, I feel would be harmful on creativity. No inspiration, no creativity, we may as a result become more ’scientific’ in our methods but ultimately we will just be robots.
Children learn. They learn from the outside world. They pick up on ethical frameworks, reasoning, logic, how to think for themselves, what inspirations they have. If you show a child what conclusion to arrive at, you do not teach the child to think for themself. It is not until adulthood that we learn what to learn. It is as a child that we learn HOW to learn. Then at university you tell them “YOU’RE WRONG” and teach them how to learn all over again. But that’s in a more academic sense. Have I got sidetracked? I’ve got sidetracked, doh.
Real world example. Santa Claus (Or Father Christmas to us in England). Children are told about Santa Claus. they believe in him. Over the years, they get suspicious. Then they come up with theories as to how he can get all around the world in a night. Then they tweak those theories and learn, for themselves, that they are implausible and eventually probably derive for themselves that he is not real. What Dawkins is trying to do is change that to “Children are told about Santa Claus, then told he’s not real”. No learning process. No deriving for themselves. Spoilers, if you will. Same with Harry Potter. Children read about Harry Potter, some may believe in him, over the years they come up with theories, start to doubt, then realise he’s not real. Self learning and self bettering process. Dawkins version: Children read about Harry Potter then are told he’s not real.
Back to the real world example, the person who no longer believes in Santa Claus will now grow up, and tell their child about it. This, I feel, is at the heart of Dawkin’s problem with the system. He is, in Loup’s words, “occasioning a radical break with cultural tradition. He is saying, no, don’t allow that process to take place, deliver the myth and its debunking all at one stage”. Which I would argue is hardly encouraging children to think or reason for themselves.
Picture totally unrelated.
Ah, man, I feel so much better now. It’s been so long since I’ve had a good rant, I need to get that out of my system more often. Okay, I have more things to talk about.
HAPPY 1234567890!
I should explain for the non-techie readers. Computers store dates by storing a number, which is equal to the number of seconds that has passed since midnight on 1st January 1970. That’s called Epoch time. On today (13th February) at 23:31:30 precisely, Epoch time totalled exactly 1234567890. So, happy 1234567890. I just love saying 1234567890. It makes the keyboard make a nice sound. 123456789012345678901234567890. It’s the most awesome Epoch time number until 2038, when it will equal #7FFFFFFF in hexadecimal, which is the largest value a 32-bit number can hold. Which means in 2038 all computer clocks randomly reset to 1901 as #80000000 (which is the next second) is a negative number. Yay. Like the millenium bug but more real.
Anyway, enough about techie stuff, what’s next to talk abou–Oh. Snake. Well, I guess it’s not enough about techie stuff.
Yes, today was the deadline for the Snake game. Which I finished, with all optional extras included. 115/115 marks, which is pretty good in my experience. About average for me. 17.25% of the entire Java lab module, I am led to believe. The next project we have to work on is a national (sorry, ‘notional’) lottery game. Not sure how that’s going to work. I really should read the assignments ahead of having to do them. But yes, that’s gone well.
My phone is broken. It won’t charge. I’m not sure if getting another charger will fix it, if not.. then I’m screwed. Ugh. I plug the charger in and nothing. Tried with different charger plug sockets. Something must be wrong with the connection between the phone and the charger. Using another charger may fix it if the problem is the connector which is actually notably dented. Otherwise the problem is in the phone and well, it’s out of battery and unchargable. It’s basically a brick. Sigh.
How much are iPhones? Oh.. that much. Ouch.
Finally, today was the day I went to see Dylan Moran. I’m never sure if you pronounce that mor-run or mor-ran. I suspect it’s mor-ran but I use mor-run in speech because nobody knows who you’re talking about for some reason if you say mor-I’m sorry I’ll get back to the point.
I was somewhat underwhelmed. It was still funny hahahaha. His one-liners and comments were certainly chuckleworthy at least. But it all just seemed so scripted. And he seemed to get bored some time after the interval, as he was a lot lower energy in the second half. And he ended poorly, no build up, just one joke the same as the others and right I’m off have a good night.
I’m not saying it was bad by any means, it was a very entertaining evening and I loved it. But parts of his act just seemed.. underwhelming. Particularly most of the second half and the end.
I have blogged for FAR too long, so I’m going to sleep. Night.
So, I was randomly scrolling around tv-links.co.uk today, looking for something to watch, bit bored. And I stumbled upon Black Books. So I watched the first episode.
It is genius. I love Bill Bailey. I’ve seen some of his stand-up stuff and it is so wonderfully hilarious.
I think, in fact, that a 9-hour watching spree of all Black Books episodes is called for.
Anyway, part two of this blog post is about the yay George Bush. Now, this last week, the queen went over to America. No idea why, don’t care. And George Bush was filmed saying that she was there in “17-er..-1976″. This has, naturally, been all over the comedic news programs (I’ve not seen “The Daily Show” or “The Colbert Report” in the last week, but I will assume it’s been on them as well. Certainly been on HIGNFY over here, and breakfast news and whatever).
Now, I think this media coverage is going a little too ridiculously far. Sure, the thought of the queen being there in 1776 is a funny one, but people are directly attacking George Bush for this, and calling him stupid for not knowing when the bicentennial of independance (or whatever) was. And I think this is sad.
It was a slip of the tongue, and it’s obvious to anybody watching it that it’s a slip of the tongue. What I don’t like is these newspapers calling him stupid without giving the viewer the chance to make up their own mind; should the media be forcing opinions onto people? Shouldn’t they just be reporting facts? Bah, it’s another age-old debate, I guess. I have respect for HIGNFY, they showed the video clip, made fun of it like they would any other. They let us decide for ourselves whether he is a completely incompetent buffoon or not.
If I made a typo on this blog, would I be displayed as stupid? Because that’s pretty much what Bush did with that. I’m not defending Bush for anything, here. Obviously he is a completely incompetent buffoon, but attacking him over something this small is just completely ridiculous.
*grumbles*
Okay, back to comedy now.
-Mindez
