Archive for the ‘Thoughts’ Category

I have to say, the general election was rubbish.

I had to queue for 40 minutes to vote. I actually really regret that now, as much as you should participate in democracy, no metric when you think about it would actually have been worth a whole 40 minutes of my precious time given that Hilary Benn was always going to win the seat for Labour once again.

But yes, that footage of everyone queuing outside Trinity Church in Leeds, that was me. Well, that footage wasn’t me, I did it earlier in the day, but much like everyone else I went at first (around 6pm) and saw how long the queue was so I thought I would come back two hours later when the queue had died down only to find it had gotten even longer.

The error in my logic was thinking that most people didn’t live in the city centre and so would be voting at around 6pm as they got the bus home from work, passing through town of course. It was only later I realised how silly this was – obviously if they were bussing it home to somewhere else, they would be in a different constituency.

In my defense though, having looked at the queue I believe most people would have thought the same thing – it was full of shabby looking poor lower-working class people so my instant reaction was that they obviously couldn’t afford to live in the city centre and must just be voting here and then going back to whichever slum they live in. I still think this is probably the case and just the Leeds Central constituency stretches father than I realise.

And then after all that, I stay up all night to watch the election and we don’t even get a real result.

I think the biggest argument for our current electoral system is that if we switched to proportional representation, most election nights would be such a massive anti-climax. I stayed up until about 5:30 because all the interesting results – the Leeds ones for me obviously, Brighton Pier, Barking, Buckingham and Oxford West took absolutely ages to declare.

Indeed the only one I managed to catch while in some state of consciousness was when Oxford West was announced, only to find out that very disappointing Dr Evan Harris had lost his seat. And thus was the death of science and evidence based policy in the House of Commons.

What a massive disappointment all round really.

Back when I originally moved over from Nerd Federation to my own personal blog, one of the major reasons I quoted from getting a “fresh start” with the move to WordPress and a new policy of direct, to the point blogs, was that I just didn’t write much on Nerd Federation anymore because I had got myself into a pattern where I felt I needed to write a lot, and so didn’t, and so never blogged.

Of late I feel I have fallen into this trap once again. I’ve simply been too busy of late to write long, photographed blog posts and so I just haven’t been blogging. But there is a lot going on I would like to talk about and share and so it seems an appropriate time to try and start fresh with new, shorter blog posts – which also has the advantage that anyone reading my blog doesn’t have endlessly long posts to slog their way through.

I really have been busy recently – the last time I can remember having an evening at home relaxing, rather than working, was somewhere near the start of April. Still, everyone thinks they are busy, indeed every year I seem to look back and think “I thought I was so busy a year ago – but it’s nothing compared to now.” Makes me wonder how we will all feel next year when if the model holds, we’ll be even busier than we are now lol.

One of the guys in my office has been doing the Atkins diet for a while now. This caused me to take a look at the research carried out on low-carbohydrate diets to see if there was any basis for the misery he is putting himself through.

Most people including myself just kind of wrote off the diet because the pseudo-scientific explanation behind it didn’t make much sense. However in 2004 the flagship BBC science documentary Horizon broadcast an episode showing it probably does work for reasons differing from those that Dr. Atkins actually claimed.

In fact, looking into the evidence for low-carbohydrate diets, while there is a huge mixed bag of results, the overall consensus seems to be that while more research is needed in the area, such diets are generally safe and are effective in weight loss.

Of course this isn’t to say that everyone should jump on Atkins. Diets are no replacement for basic healthy eating and well all know this. We’re all well aware the way to be healthy is to eat a balanced diet, treat yourself occasionally, hit all the major food groups and avoid eating prepared meals, fast food or generally anything that doesn’t require you to put some effort in preparing yourself, as much as possible. However, if you are going to diet, Atkins at least isn’t any worse than any other diet.

I love Richard Dawkins. But sometimes I think he is a bit too nieve. Take for example the recent goings on on the RD.net Forum. A few weeks ago they announced that the forum was going to be replaced by a new system. A system which was “similar to a forum” but had some differences, most notably threads would be tagged instead of categorised and that all threads would be moderated.

They announced they would be leaving the forum operational for 30 days and then replacing it with the new system. However two days later the forum was locked down with a message from Richard saying the following…

Imagine that you, as a greatly liked and respected person, found yourself overnight subjected to personal vilification on an unprecedented scale, from anonymous commenters on a website. Suppose you found yourself described as an “utter twat” a “suppurating rectum. A suppurating rat’s rectum. A suppurating rat’s rectum inside a dead skunk that’s been shoved up a week-old dead rhino’s twat.” Or suppose that somebody on the same website expressed a “sudden urge to ram a fistful of nails” down your throat. Also to “trip you up and kick you in the guts.” And imagine seeing your face described, again by an anonymous poster, as “a slack jawed turd in the mouth mug if ever I saw one.”

What do you have to do to earn vitriol like that? Eat a baby? Gas a trainload of harmless and defenceless people? Rape an altar boy? Tip an old lady out of her wheel chair and kick her in the teeth before running off with her handbag?

None of the above. What you have to do is write a letter like this…

You can find the entire thread here. Needless the say the letter that was written wasn’t in any way offensive – it was very pleasant and upbeat. But never the less it attracted widespread abuse from forum users. Here is why I think the reaction was nieve though…

Firstly, Richard’s first assumption is wrong. “What do you have to do to earn vitriol like that?” The answer actually is write a letter. Post a YouTube video. Visit /b. Basically anything on the internet attracts that kind of abuse, it saddens me that, that is the case but unfortunately that is how the internet is. Every time I post a YouTube video someone makes a stupid, inane and abusive comment, that’s life unfortunately.

Secondly I think it’s also a mistake to assume these comments are coming from people sympathetic to your cause. I suspect they didn’t. One possibility is they came from religious people just looking for any way to get to him but I suspect such comments actually came from general internet trolls who don’t really care about science, reason, debate or maybe even Dawkins, generally get off on the idea of annoying religious and non-religious people and just wanted to cause trouble. Basically imagine an even younger, more irriguous version of my friend Will.

I also suspect that it may be a nieve thought to think you can control and moderate the internet. I suspect a lot of the user base will be lost because people don’t like moderation because of the pressure it puts you under. However I could be wrong about this, only time will tell. At very least though you can see why this would annoy people.

For those who don’t know I was stuck down ill on Tuesday night. I managed to claw my way back into work today but that was probably a mistake given how I am feeling now.

In any case last night didn’t help. Having not really slept properly since Monday night I finally managed to drift off in the early-ish hours of this morning having gone to bed about 11pm. And by gone to bed I mean tried to sleep, I didn’t actually get out of bed at any point yesterday save to make myself some food.

Anyway, I had finally dozed off when I was awoken at the sound of my UPS beeping like crazy at 3:30am. The power had gone out.

Needing to sort out my computers I reached for my torch, carefully positioned on my bed side table for such occasions. Of course being ill and knowing I needed plenty of fluids I had carefully positioned a glass of orange juice next to my bed.

Of course, it went flying spilling it’s contents over the top of my bedside table as well as the wires and printer sitting below it. And of course I couldn’t see to mop it up because we didn’t have any power so none of the lights were working.

So here I am, cleaning up the mistakes of last night despite the fact I’m physically exhausted and despite the fact I still have loads more to do tonight before I can sleep.

But at least through it all, I know I have you. All of you. Everyone of you, each of you different and each of you amazing in your own special way. I honestly don’t know what I would do without you. Never leave me, Dairy Milk.

I was recently in a discussion about whether violent video games led to violent crime or not.

The main argument from the other side was “well, it’s just obvious isn’t it” and, on a slightly more substance based strand, “kids just think violence such as they experience on a video game is normal and acceptable.”

My argument was that there simply isn’t any evidence for this. I wasn’t going to chase it up or anything but I have work to do that I’m procrastinating from and as I saw a related article in the news just now, I thought I would double check my facts.

A quick consultation of the encyclopedia helpfully points out the bottom line – that Harvard Medical School and the British Medical Journal have both done studies into this topic “have shown no conclusive link between video game usage and violent activity.”

The fact is the evidence shows there isn’t a link between violent video games and kids going out and committing violent crimes.

But I would also goes as far as to say that, if you put some thought into it, it’s actually obvious that there isn’t a link. I think there are two main reasons for this.

The first is that Wikipedia also points out that over the past 20 years violent crime has been consistently in decline whereas sales of video games have been consistently growing. If there was a link we would expect that as more violent video games were sold, violent crime would increase. But it doesn’t. In fact it goes the opposite way. I’m not suggesting that violent video games actually decrease violent crimes but it certainly is evidence against the idea that encourage it.

Secondly, society hasn’t really got any more violent than it used to be.

Video games may be a relative new comer (although of course the ZX81 is actually older than I am) but the idea of violent games certainly isn’t. For years kids have been running around playing cops and robbers, cowboys and indians, playing with toy soliders and toy guns. Indeed my dad has often told me that one of the must have toys of his era was the Johnny 5 Gun, so called because it had five different modes of shooting. The only difference today is that kids run around a virtual world connected by their X Box Live rather than doing it in real life – which is arguably far more real than in a computer game.

Given these two reasons alone, it does not seem intuative that the popularisation of video games including some which are violent, would automatically lead to violent crime – and you would be right, because the evidence backs up that it doesn’t.

So I’m sitting here at work thinking “how late do we have to be here until we order Chinese into the office?” I say thinking, I’ve just said it out loud, then after that we had a conversation about it.

Anyway, the problem is this. We don’t know how long this problem is going to take, it could be solved in the next 30 minutes, it could be we’re here until 10pm. If we solve it at 6pm then it will have been pointless ordering Chinese because we can just go home and have dinner. But if we don’t order it and we’re stuck here till 10pm then we’ll be really hungry. But at what point do you say, right, this is the point I’m going to order Chinese food even though I still don’t know how much longer I will be there.

This problem occurs regularly with pub trips. You wonder if people are going to be there for a while because you don’t want to get there as they are leaving but the longer you leave it the more likely that is of happening. And at the end of the night, when you haven’t gone you say to yourself “if I had gone at the start I would have been there drinking for ages – but now it’s too late because they will be leaving soon.” Indeed this could well be applied to almost any point in the night.

The thing is, I’m sure this is some kind of grand philosophical problem that I am just applying to pub and takeaway activities. Anyone know what it is?

I recently stumbled across the idea of playing Bejeweled again and having brought it up in a conversation with Si a few days later he pointed out it was available for the iPhone too. As a consequence I purchased it and am now highly addicted. Like mega addicted.

It’s almost scary.

I mean, do you remember when that game took over the Enterprise on The Next Generation? In the episode, appropriately named The Game Riker brings back a game from Risa which is so addictive everyone is soon playing it but behind the game there is an evil plot lurking.

It’s easy to dismiss the idea as the science fiction that in that case it indeed is but I am really finding it quite shaking how easy it is to slip into playing Bejeweled all day. Last night I was playing it for hours rather than going to sleep and tonight as I tried to get some work done I was constantly like “I’ll just do this one last level” and say that over and over again at the end of every level.

Forget the Illuminati, the New World Order, the Umbrella or Rossom Corporations. If anyone has the power to bring us to 1984, it’s PopCap Games. Now there is something I wasn’t expecting.

The decade is over and a new one has begun. So once you’re done clearing up from the wreckage of NYE parties and making arbitrary promises about how you are going to change your life, it might be nice to take a quiet moment to reflect on the fun and games we’ve enjoyed during the past year.

As usual the year began with January which was the month I got into Twitter just before it become cool. I also attended York Brights for the first time and launched Leeds Skeptics in the Pub. Meanwhile on the atheist front the bus campaign was in storming through and we officially won the Christmas vote.

The temperature dropped in February but there was plenty of emotional warmth as Perspective launched. We celebrated Darwin’s 200th birthday and Galileo Day with a traditional feast. Meanwhile down in London the AHS held it’s press launch.

It was a quiet month in March though with plenty of drinking of course including a RDF meetup. As part of my AHS work we began planning a society in Huddersfield and saw Durham through their first Reason Week. I also spoke for Humanism at the interfaith panel and launched the Humanist Action Group.

Most of our time in April was taken up by Rationalist Week 2009 whether it be planning, writing talks, gathering equipment or the week itself – and of course, being interviewed by the local press. This was shortly followed by the LAS AGM at which we elected Sophie as president.

Lighter nights resulted in be finally spending some quality time at the park in May as well as having a 4am post-close BBQ. It wasn’t all fun and games though as I set a new personal record with a 44 hour shift.

Summer was finally drawing near by June as Atheist Society celebrated with our End of Year Ball. The AHS held it’s AGM in Warwick and I worked my last day at Open Door Design. Meanwhile in the real world the BNP won two seats in Europe and Michael Jackson died.

Stress levels were running high in July as I battled with letting agents and finally made it in to my new apartment, not to mention swine flu running rampant. I celebrated 5 years of blogging and re-launched this website in preparation for the CWF website integration. Meanwhile Leeds Atheist Society went camping and HAG expanded our activities.

I kicked off the fun in August with a visit down to Swindon to visit Kieran and followed it up with a good warming of my house. We also said goodbye to Michelle and Rich went back in the closet meanwhile I got myself an iPhone and the Chris Worfolk Foundation was incorporated.

The arrivial of September saw the start of a new academic year but also resulted in us having to say goodbye to Felix. Elsewhere Si took another step towards becoming an alcoholic and Derren Brown correctly predicted the lottery numbers.

Change was afoot in the month of October as LAS got into it’s full swing for the 2009/2010 academic year. I celebrated by birthday, myself and Daryl planned the re-launch of Leeds Skeptics in the Pub and the Chris Worfolk Foundation held it’s first official trustee meeting.

Leeds was feeling the aftermath of the EDL protest in November as I filmed a debate for Ummah Channel and in a suprising twist attended a live sporting event in the way of the Four Nations Final. Leeds Skeptics rebooted at it’s new venue while the Chris Worfolk Foundation launched it’s new website, the Perspective leader’s guide and announced humanist communities.

Finally in December we won a huge victory in the form of Killing in the Name beating X-Factor to Christmas number one. I left The D after three years and tried to carry on my life under very testing conditions. Finally the year ended with a good old fashioned Circle party for New Year’s Eve amidst a very drunken weekend for myself and Kieran.

That concludes fun times ’09. Things will be no doubt be just as exciting in 2010 – officially the year of the Chris Worfolk Foundation, which I will be writing about later. And as if that wasn’t enough we even have a new Doctor Who as well! It’s all going on in the next twelve months.

For those of you who read NME you may well have read possibly one of the silliest comments I have read in a long time, and this is from someone who reads the Daily Mail every morning.

Cheryl Cole has launched an attack on Rage Against The Machine for sabotaging the Christmas Number One race. Despite the US band themselves not orchestrating the Facebook campaign to get ‘Killing In The Name’ to the top of the charts ahead of X Factor winner Joe McElderry, Cole said the battle had now reached biblical levels. “It’s David versus Goliath and it’s not fair on Joe. It’s getting out of hand.” She went on to say that the thought of a US band topping the charts at Christmas was just wrong. “If that song, or should I say campaign, by an American group is our Christmas Number One I’ll be gutted for him and our charts” (The Sun).

The obvious first point is that this campaign wasn’t started by Rage, it was started by fans (and someone would phrase that as true music fans for obviously justified reasons). But that isn’t the main point that I want to make.

The reason the comment is so stupid is because the campaign hasn’t sabotaged the race for the Christmas number one, it’s created a race! Until Rage came along there was no race, the only thing this campaign has sabotaged is X Factor’s divine right to have the Christmas number one as it somehow thinks it is entitled to.

And this is what the campaign is about – it shouldn’t just be a fact that X Factor is entitled to take the number one spot every Christmas, we’re tired of it. We want a fair race based on genuine musical talent rather than how much publicity you can spin off the back of an appallingly bad TV show.

As such I cannot imagine what thought process went through her head that concluded “yes, that’s an intelligent thing to say.” Presumably none.

In other news despite the physical single now being out for the past two days it has still failed to catch up with Rage! Saturday will be the real physical sales boost though so Rage needs a big lead and the campaign needs you. You can gift up to two extra purchases to friends and you can also grab some copies for free without a credit card from Nokia Music.