Apatheism?

(originally posted as a comment on Friendly Atheist)

I've been thinking about this "used to be an atheist but now I'm in the bosom of Jesus" types. At a risk of raising the "No True Atheist" flag, I don't think they were atheists.

I think they are Apatheists. It wasn't that they didn't believe in god, but they just didn't care. Maybe paid lip service, or attended church with family pressure, but otherwise it was either too hard or too boring or too much to believe, and so by the definition of their old faith, they label themselves as Atheist.

They accept the label, maybe learn some of the ways Atheists act or think, and try that on: in a way, they treat Atheism as if it was a faith, a religion. They read the books other Atheists tell them about, they go to the sites, they nod in appreciation at the witty comments and condemn the god-bothering trolls... but, still, they start to feel something missing still. It doesn't occur to them that the missing thing is them letting go of faith, but rather they start to feel the missing thing being god. They feel that its great to be out of the moral code of their old religion, and for some that freedom means going the other way, over to drinking to excess or sex sex sex. Because they are free now, free from that church they had been in.

And suddenly because a family member makes them or there's a sign or they burn toast and it looks like Jesus; and we have another Atheist turned Christian doing the lecture route. They couldn't keep to their original faith in the first place, and the new one (which could be the old one, but is more likely a revivalist or evangelistic church) isn't boring, they say the right things, couch answers in easy to understand (and wrong) logic. A(pa)theist becomes Theist again.

Apatheism is not atheism.

New Year's Eve

It would be nice to actually keep a few resolutions for a while, since I often have the same ones -- on the other hand, I often have no resolutions to keep (seems simpler).

For 2009, I'd like to do the following:

• Get Healthy. Not "lose weight", but definitely lose a few (tens of) inches from the belt.
• Write more. Blog more, write more stories, write some articles perhaps.
• Get frugal. I read http://www.thesimpledollar.com/ often, but I'm terrible with money. I make a nice amount, but after mortgage and bills come out there isn't a huge amount left over.
• Have a holiday. Go up to Brisbane for a few days or a week even, with wifey and my kids.
• Play better. I play Magic the Gathering and love it. I'm not very good at it (although I have had my moments), and it would be nice to get better.
• Get known. Articles, discussions, helping out online -- these help you get known, get your name out there. It isn't going to just 'happen', I need to make it happen.
• Love more. Do more things with the wifey and kids, especially wifey, she has to put up with me after all.
• Live better. Do stuff around the home, garden (yerk). Clean out that overfilled granny flat out back and turn it into a workshop and den.
• Get things done. I've had the books for ages, but I drifted away from GTD -- too much effort. I never did the cleanup of things to do at home, so that didn't help either. Make an effort on this in the new year.

Happy New Year.

Internet filter in Australia

The Australian government, in an effort to emulate the liberty and freedom held in such democracies as China and Saudi Arabia, is hell-bent on introducing a country-wide web filter.

That the filter is easily stepped around (proxy servers, anyone) is beside the point: The ALP needs the support of the Christian Fascist, sorry Family First party in the Senate, and this was their thirty pieces of silver. Australia will go from having a less-than-world-class internet access to having .. a less than third-world internet access.

Arguments against the filter are coming from all sides of politics, and even the geeks (such as myself) are up in arms. Do you realise what this will mean to our ping times? Well, probably nothing, but still. It will slow down internet access for everything and it won't prevent the thing it is there for. And... noone knows what is to be on the "list". If the Christian Fascists can get this in place, what is next: "We want sites that educate about contraception on the list. And gun control. And abortion. And feminists. And teh gay. Especially Teh Gay!!! And witches. That new Harry Potter site, ban it!!!"

Arguments for the filter look like this:

Chief executive of child protection group Child Wise, Bernadette McMenamin, said most of the criticisms levelled at the internet filter scheme were founded on misinformation.

"It's disturbing that people are getting hysterical about all the misinformation that is being spread about the internet filter," Ms McMenamin said.

"Instead of hearing hysteria from the minority we need to hear from the Government and exactly what it intends to ban."

Ms McMenamin was equally critical of the past weekend's protests and the DLC's plans for future action.

"Let the 300 people march on Canberra because it looks pathetic," he said. "It looks pathetic and shameful because most of these people are not fully aware of the facts and secondly, those who are aware are, in effect, advocating child pornography."

* People protesting over a badly conceived invasion of privacy and infringement of rights equals a hysterical minority.
* You should never listen to a minority, the government is always right
* People who complain about censorship want child porn. Won't nobody think of the children.

Ms McMenamin, this is a truly poor argument. Casting aspertions that the protestors are a bunch of hysterics is hilarious given who is supporting this abomination. If anyone is not fully aware of the facts, it is you. Every group involved in the coalition (the Digital Liberty Coalition, who staged protests against the filter) has put out statements supporting the protection of children, but all of them have pointed out that this is not the cure. This isn't like pulling out your own eyes to stop you from seeing what might offend you, this is pulling out everyone else's eyes too.

And they wonder why we want a Bill of Rights.

WAR update

Well, I've played through the Heavy Metal event on my alt Individual, which was fun and amazingly fast to complete. I guess they want lots of Empire Tanks. I'll be tanking up once the event finishes. I haven't played a Tank before so this should be interesting.

I'm playing a Rune Priest (my main), Khalid; a Bright Wizard (Telansa) and a White Lion (Individual). All are fun, but I'm not out of T3 on Khalid yet (only level 24). Scenarios are great fun, but I think it is too quick to level on Scenarios alone. If they pop rapidly, and you consistently get a good group, you can get around 10K xp each time -- not including the extra xp you get for the repeatable "go do this scenario" quests. Tie that to the "kill x enemies" quest and you can get 15-20K XP every twenty minutes or so.

Warhammer Age Of Reckoning starts

WAAAAGGH

Warhammer Online starts now, although I was in the closed beta (err.. thanks for not emailing me guys, so I didn't realise until the open beta was almost on), open and the non-collectors edition headstart (yeah, I loved the two day wait as well).

Unfortunately I only got one play session during the open and maybe won't continue on my Dorf Engineer. He's still pretty cool, but apparently some of the guys I know have Destruction characters on the same server. Game looks pretty cool and the open grouping feature is great.

TechEd Sydney 2008

Well... I'm bad. I haven't blogged in six months, which for me isn't that unusual. Given this is a pretty much unread blog, that's not so much of a problem, but the idea is to post regularly... I also use the ellipsis a little too... much. ...

Anywho, I'm here at TechEd 2008, slurping down a load of microsoft. I've had some interesting stuff so far: some good info on Windows 2008 Server Core, and Branch Office DCs, read-only domain controllers that only have the credentials for the users at that site -- great idea. If you lose the DC, you only compromise the local users and you can delete the DC which triggers a "do you want all the users to reset their passwords" function.

I'm also hitting every PowerShell session I can: not happy that I missed out for one instructor led lab though, got there a couple of minutes late and found the room overflowing -- not enough computers to go around. I've done most of my scripting work in vbscript, but powershell encapsulates .net programming (oh noes) and can do some pretty cool stuff.

Windows Server Core is a cut-down server with no pretty gui... only, there is one because you get a command prompt in a window, and can open notepad and regedit on the box. However, even though you can run IIS on the box, .net isn't there and so neither is powershell, which would have been cool. I wonder if you can slipstream .net into a core box, maybe hacking in the binaries and the registry keys?

Anyway, I'll try to keep updating in the future, but I'm pretty slack.

Gary Gygax gone

E. Gary Gygax, creator of D&D, dead at 69.

Nerds worldwide mourn one of their legends. Gary's rules became D&D, AD&D and on.

Some tributes: Order of the Stick
, Penny Arcade, Something Positive, GU Comics
update: xkcd

Yes, I read a lot of gaming webcomics, why do you ask?

When I was young, I collected many role playing games. Strangely, I hardly ever played them, but I did have D&D (Basic and Expert editions), AD&D, Tunnels and Trolls, Traveller, Runequest and others. And Gary started it all off. Okay, Dave Arneson had a huge input into the first edition, but welp.

TSR went on and had ups and downs, and was eventually acquired by Hasbro, who gave the intellectual property to Wizards of the Coast, who soon will put out Fourth Edition D&D.

I want to see a Dragon Special Edition, with a tribute to Gary. Unfortunately, Dragon was cancelled.

Gary, you lived the life many of us would live. Roll high.

And back...

Well... long time no post.

This seems to occur on occasion, I go for a few months without a post. Then I have to do catch up.
Anyway, I've still got the beard, which I'm mostly used to now: I hardly ever look in the mirror and get surprised by it now.

I've stopped playing World of Warcraft, mostly because I'm playing a lot more EVE Online. I'm in a Corporation that is part of the Goonswarm alliance, beating on the Band Of Brothers alliance for the control of the galaxy. Or, more accurately, for them to NOT have control of the galaxy. Then us goons will be off drinking and partying.

I've started work on a novel, and have the outline down already. A first for me, I usually have no idea what I'm writing, get the first couple of chapters down and then choke. Then I forget how it will end and stop writing. I have a few stories like that sitting in my google docs, rotting away.

hopefully I'll update a little quicker next time.

Kitty kard

This card is the top loot for the new WoW card game set (Fires of Azeroth).

I bought a box from my favourite games shop (infinity games, adelaide) and opened Spectral Tiger, which is shiny, pretty, new and selling on ebay for around $US500 !!!

... Looks like I'll be selling it soon :D

Never Mind the Pillock

I've been honoured here with the company of "MICKY", he of the stuck capslock key and a penchant for spamming other people's blogs with nonsense. Apparently I'm not his only victim.

I'm sure blogspot will be interested in this activity. It's one thing to come to another blog and make a post, it's another to spurt random crap in the comments, especially when this said crap has no relationship to the post.

self-conscious blogging

Someone at my work found out about this blog and, being a twit*, comments on it constantly.

Some of the joy of blogging is just getting the post out there; and having someone looking over your shoulder so to speak can be disconcerting to say the least.

I've found Marc Andreessen's blog now, from a link at lifehack.org, and a great post on productivity -- I love the bit on the inbox, as well as the "don't keep a schedule" idea. The best tip for me was the lead to stuff on using procrastination as a tool. Since I'm a world-class procrastinator I'll have to give it a go.

* yeah yeah, you're not a twit.... much :D

Beard...

I've grown a beard. Or, more accurately, I haven't shaved for a while, leaving the hair on my face to become more prevalent.

I quite like it. I haven't grown much facial hair before, except when being lazy for long periods without shaving, but until now it just formed facial mess, rather than a beard. Must be old age doing it.
...

A double-blind experiment is when, for instance, the pill given to a patient may contain the new experimental drug or instead just sugar, and the patient and the doctor giving out the pill don't know which it is. The doctor records that Patient X got the pill in box Y. The results over a large population are assessed. Some people just get better by themselves, and by using a placebo this effect is taken into account. If 15% of those on placebos get better, and 20% of those on the other pill, then it can be assumed that the pills effectiveness is 5% better than a placebo. If 1% on the placebo get better, but 40% on the real dose do, then that pill is a good one. If 2% on the placebo die during the trial of a heart attack, but 10% on the real dose do, that isn't a really good sign.

The doctor doesn't know which pill is which so that the doctor (consciously or not) doesn't influence the results either way.

Any experiment that tests for a result needs a control group (those on placebos, for instance) and results have to be compared to that control group to make sense. Otherwise, you get things like homeopathy or Reiki. Sure, some people are apparently healed, however how much of that is due to the placebo effect? How many would have been healed over time without it? How is it better than NOT doing it, or using something else?

Double-blind methodology made me think of a thought experiment.

You are God. You made everything, the universe, all the people. You want people to be good, and you will assess them after they finish with the first stage of their existence, that of 'mortal life' within the physical universe.
If you tell them what to do, you have directly influenced their behaviour. Are they being good, or doing good things, or treating each other well because you asked or told them to, or would they have been good anyway? If they did good out of fear or to personally gain, are they truly good?
If you don't tell them what to do, when it is time to assess them you can see them as they would have been. Those who have done good did it out of themselves alone. Are they good, then?

...

Due to popular (err.. one person) demand, I've added a pic. Sorry if it hurts :D

And now the next book

Amazingly I just found the sequel to Old Man's War, Ghost Brigades, on a trolley waiting to be shelved at the local Borders, here in Adelaide.

There's one less to shelve now :D

I found Old Man's War to be a very good read. If anything, it was way too short -- that's more my problem than the story, I just read so fast that anything of average size just doesn't last me long enough. If only I could write as fast as I read. I don't remember running into anything that made me step out of the story (although I did guess what "ghost brigade" meant before it came up).

I found the Ghost Brigade part interesting, but superficial: I don't know, maybe I wanted more detail on how they were 'developed' so quickly. This might not make sense if you haven't read the book (or maybe even if you have) but I don't want to ruin anything for the one reader of this blog who came here via the "Next blog at random" button.

If you did, buy the book. It's good. Actually, buy both books.

Old Man's War

Seen in the Wild in Borders, Adelaide, South Australia. There is only one left now.

Oh, and Android's Dream there too...

Not too impressed with the layout here... Sorry, I just can't seem to get these pictures where I want them.
Left a note on John's blog

aqr / hacker

I've been toying with a story idea for some time, where hackers -- those people who through their dedication to knowledge, geekiness, hardware and software -- have become in the future a sort of community, that of "Aqr". These are the people who fix problems but who have difficulty in conversing with the norm. Highly intelligent folk who may not have the best in social skills.

Aqr'i live in closed community groups, with their own laws and society. They are seen as being.. valuable. Sometimes. Aqr formed due to persecution and overreliance -- coming together because they were blamed for system failures, and also to pool skills. The result is a bunch of hardcore geeks that the outside world relies on, but otherwise disdains and treat as abnormal (ie, same as it ever was).

Okay, other than wishful thinking on the part of a geeky guy, this idea nugget was more as background to other stories -- I could have an Aqr in the story, with some background but not the main storyline.

This came to mind when I read this: From FijiTimes via BoingBoing

BUSINESSMAN and information technology specialist Ulaiasi Taoi says he was punched and kicked by eight soldiers while he was kept overnight at the military
camp.
He was arrested and detained over allegations that he was involved in anti-military blogs on the Internet.
Mr Taoi was held in a cell at the Queen Elizabeth Barracks for 24 hours after soldiers escorted him from his office in Toorak about 2pm last Friday.
The military took him over its suspicions that he was behind one of the resistance blog sites that have been very vocal against the takeover. He had earlier had a "heavy" and "very abusive" telephone exchange with Colonel Pita Driti in which he was blamed for instigating the blog sites.

So... blaming an IT guy for bloggers attacking an illegal regime. At the same time, the military are trying to use IT guys to block the sites -- Aqr'i can be on either side of a problem, because they are there for a PROBLEM, not for a CAUSE. It's a failing -- most people, including hackers/coders/geeks, hate spam, for instance, but who do you think wrote the programs that do the spamming?

Waiting for Scalzi

Day 43. We've run out of pancakes. The dog is looking edible. Still waiting for Scalzi to return.

Actually, I don't remember my comment on his site as it dropped into the moderation queue never to be seen again. At least *I* thought it was funny.

Edit: Turns out that, because I was viewing his site through Netvibes, I never saw all the updates he was making to his tour thread. Doh.

On syndromes and disorders

On wikipedia, I wasted some time by looking up some facts, which led to other links (as usual) which led to Attention-Deficit Disorder. Since my attention span is quite often sadly lacking, I followed a link to Adult Attention-Deficit Disorder. Hmm.. I'm certainly not "hyperactive", but inattention, impulsivity, restlessness... sounds familiar to me.

A link elsewhere took me to tics. When I was younger I used to sniff constantly (although, I did have a diverted septum so it could be related to that), I had a 'thing' with my right eye, where it moves up to the top right (well.. that's my top-right. I guess from the outside, it would be me looking to the top left). Apparently sniffing can be a "phonic tic", while the eye thing could be a motor tic. Hmm. That led to Tourette Syndrome which surprised me, as the uncontrolled swearing aspect that it is famous for is really something that only effects about 15% of sufferers. And also, these tics are not truly involuntary, but more "unvoluntary" -- the inflicted gets an overwhelming urge to swear, jerk, move. If concentrated on, it can be supressed, but eventually they have to release it. Interesting, because the sniffing is pretty much gone now, my eye only jerks when I think about it (damn it) and now I swear like a sailor.

Some more links take me to Asperger's. This mild form of autism occurs in people who test with superior intelligence (that rules me out) but some of the markers include not reading the social and emotional message from eyes (I find I often don't look people in the eye, which is a bad thing apparently), being considered rude (that's definitely me!), being "too honest", difficulty in being deceptive (certainly). Inability to recognise boredom in others (no comment :D). I hit most of these targets more or less. Damn, I'm just re-reading these and this is from the page:

15. Coping with criticism - people with AS are compelled to correct mistakes, even
when they are made by someone in a position of authority, such as a teacher. For
this reason, they can be unwittingly offensive.

Oh my... Not only do I do this (correct mistakes constantly) but I get stressed about not pointing out a mistake, and then I stress about how I will be perceived if I do point it out (Should I point out the mistake? They might think I'm being picky. But its a mistake. What if they don't notice? Will they think I'm a smartarse?) which can cause me problems.

On the other hand, I'm way way not totally ignorant of other's feelings.

So. ADD. Tourette's. Asperger's.

Good thing I didn't look up hypochondria.

Can't find a book

Went looking for another 'atheist' book to go with The God Delusion, but surprisingly couldn't find one. Borders Adelaide stocks TGD in the "Science" section, which is where the other major booksellers put theirs. Although I saw a copy of The Atheist Manifesto the other day, no such luck today.

But what else IS there? And where do you put Reality-Based books? I found twelve bookshelves for religion, spiritual and alternative medicine books in Borders, and yet only a couple for science topics. I could get the Satanic bible, books on the Kabalah, books on the medicines THEY don't want me to know about (the all powerful "THEY" who apparently weren't powerful enough to stop the publication of the book...) and yet I didn't find a non-fiction reality based account of the world. Maybe I was looking in the wrong place.

Patrick, Get an Appointment

:)

slight update

Not much to see. Go about your business.

Had my teeth cleaned last week. Exciting stuff that.

I've been reading up on some Atheist sites, seems that you aren't allowed to be an Atheist unless you can not only give post-doctoral dissertions as responses to theist/creationist/Intelligent Design proponents, in multiple subjects at that; but you also need to be a doctor of theology to respond to scripture quotations. Meanwhile, any theist with a hat is allowed to put forward the "God said so" argument and gets an auto-win. Pointing this out, by the way, isn't allowed either.