Ok… it’s not really Lego, but it has to be the ultimate customisable movie camera…

The Red Epic Scarlet.

Now… who do the Falkland Islands belong to?

Let’s look at some comparisons:

Geography

Distance from Britain to Falklands: 8000 miles
Distance from Argentina to Falklands: 300 miles
Closest country to Falklands: Argentina.

History

1833: Britain seizes control of the Falklands by force from the Argentinian governer there.

Am I over simplifying things here?

Even if the full historical perspective gives the opposite story, you still have the following argument:

Geography

Distance from Britain to Falklands: 8000 miles
Distance from Argentina to Falklands: 300 miles

(Pssssst… Don’t mention the oil)

I know that I’m a little prone to ranting about Edexcel and the dumbing of standards in GCSEs and so on. But something that really worries me is the header on their Scheme of Work for Year 10 GCSE Japanese. It’s says “Japanese Language” in Japanese. But it’s only sodding well upside down, isn’t it?

A t-shirt manufacturer, I can just about forgive for getting Kanji upside down, but a booklet intended to help teachers guiding our young and impressionable future citizens? Not really on.

Marketing Exec 1: Guys, we’re going to launch a Teriyaki pizza.
ME2: A what?
ME1: Teriyaki, it’s Japanese isn’t it?
ME2: Sweet! Have you thought about the advertising?
ME1: Yes… we want a nice oriental feel…
ME3: Like sliding paper screens?
ME4: And some nice bamboo sillhouettes?
ME1: Yes, that sort of thing.
ME2: Sweet! And can we draw* a Japanese letter on it too?
ME1: Definitely! Who knows any Japanese?
ME2&4: *tilt heads and suck teeth* swswswswswwwwwww…
ME3: Well Feng Shui is Japanese, isn’t it? And that has Japanese picture letters.
ME4: Oh yeah! *shows laptop with google image search* Look…
ME2: Sweet! I think the one on the right looks best.
ME4: I prefer the one on the left.
ME1: ME3? What about you?
ME3: Left.
ME1: Left it is. Yeah… that looks great!

(*’draw’ is a good verb to use instead of ‘write’ if you really want to wind Japanese people up about their writing)

Result:

“Give your pizza some wind! (cry of last desperate military charge)”

Some great answers! To put you out of your misery, here are the correct ones…

As I have mentioned in the comments on the last post, you can see the shop right here, with Fuakin next door.

The other day, I exclaimed SPORTYSOFT at H, who chuckled because that was supposedly the name of a type of hat as sold by the Toraya Hat Shop in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. We couldn’t for the life of us remember the names of the other types of hats. “BASEBALL CAP”? No. “TOP HAT”? Hmm… maybe, but I don’t think so.

Below, I have pictured the shop’s sign with all four types of hat shown. If you can name the other three types of hat correctly, you will win fame and glory for yourself. Good luck!

Creationists believe that the bible is hard truth, and that the world was created in seven days starting (or finishing?) on 23rd October, 4004BC.

There’s a slight problem with that. Go and look for evidence of contradiction in the bible. You will find website after website of well-researched (read: people who need to get out more) quotes seemingly contradicting each other.

Now consider a poem. A massive poem – the sort of poem that would fill a big thick book. Now have it written by lots of authors. Do you think it might contradict itself in places? Of course it would!

If you look at groups 1 and 5 of the previous post, I think they both need to see the bible (or qoran, or any other religious text) as a meditation rather than a book of facts. Simply reading the bible with a view to seeing what you can learn from it would be preferable to putting in hours of work trying to prove or discredit it.

“And then X spake unto Y saying… ABC, and Y bonked X over the head”.

Oh? I wonder why X said that to Y. And why did Y bonk X over the head? Ah… yes… I remember when I thought about saying ABC to someone, but didn’t. Well, that was a close one, they might have bonked me over the head if I had. Hmm… yes, looking at Y’s point of view in the the story, they would have been justified too. I’d better be extra careful in future if I find myself about to say ABC to someone.

Just a thought.

The next post, coming shortly will be about hats.

It’s one of those mornings, my brain is doing a lot of whirring and a thought (or ten) struck me.

Militant Atheists. What should we call them? They go beyond atheism in, what I think, is an unreasonable way. I shall elaborate.

There are several degrees of religious belief, which are simplified beyond measure below:

1. Militant Religious – Following a faith to the exclusion of local laws and science. This is where your creationists lie, taking the (often contradictory) word of the bible as hard fact.
2. Religious – Following a faith, but being open and accepting of other faiths, science, reason and so on.
3. Agnostic – Take or leave.
4. Atheist – Does not believe in a god, but is tolerant of faith.
5. Militant Atheist – Does not believe in a god, and believes that no-one else should believe in a god. Rejects all forms of religious dogma.

It’s probably far more complicated than this, but for now this will do.

What got me thinking is that people often call group 5 “Darwinists”, but that’s not fair on the members of groups 2-4 who also fully accept that evolution has taken place, and that ’science and reason’ are a valuable asset to the world. Group 5 stands against anyone in groups 1-3, but that’s not fair on groups 2 and 3 who may see religious texts and cultures as a valuable asset to the world. Note also that the word “Muslim” often implies group 1, especially in the tabloid press. That is not fair on the group 2/3 Muslims.

Here’s a bold statement which is followed by explanation.

It is unreasonable for anyone with any level of intelligence to claim that god does not exist.

Have you gone mad? No. Substitute the word ‘money’ for ‘god’ and hopefully you’ll begin to understand where I’m coming from.

Even if you do not believe in a ‘Great Architect of the Universe’, you cannot deny that ‘god’ exists as a moral framework. Sure, he was invented by people, but so was money.

“But”, I hear you say, “money is real. You can touch it and feel it.”

I disagree. There are manifestations of money, coins, notes and so on. But look at any big banking and none of the money exists. There is an ethereal cloud of ‘money’ which is pushed around electronically or on paper. So… money is an invisible concept that makes the lives of people more convenient, giving them a set of rules as to how they can interact with each other, and what they’re worth as a result of their endeavours. Is that not, kind of, how god works? Even if you don’t believe that he ‘actually exists’.

Militant Atheism, just as blind communism attempts to rid the world of money and private posessions, seeks to rid the world of that which feeds spiritual needs. This is pretty dangerous. If you take Darwinism to its extreme, that we came about from cells which happened to duplicate and happened to turn into fish and then happened to walk on the ground etc., then there is no point to being here.

The hope of religion gives us all a point to being here, and even if you don’t believe in a god, I think it would be very foolish to remove that hope. The opposite, taken to extreme, would lead to complete anarchy where, for example, murder is acceptable because the person you’re murdering is only a bunch of cells that came together by chance (or the product thereof).

The militant atheists explain “how” we are here, but not “why”. Even if you don’t think there is a “why”, I believe it is necessary to have one.

I’ll go into the creationists and their view next time! Lucky you!