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!

What’s worse?

1. The fact that a primary school has banned pupils from sending valentine’s cards due to the possibility of ‘rejection trauma’.

or

2. The fact that today’s instant media can turn a tiny little incident in a corner of Somerset into a national scandal?

It seems there’s a little row going on over the McDonald’s McItaly burger mainly due to its endorsement from the Italian agriculture minister. The food critics are not particularly happy due to the affront to their national food traditions.

There’s a video here.

You know my thoughts? The whole world should be up in arms. McItaly? McItaly? McItaly. That is a rubbish name for a burger. Seriously. I would not be able to hold my head up with pride and order a chuffing McItaly.

Following on the heels of #1 comes the strangest job advert I think I’ve ever seen. Looks ok(ish) to start with…

[Name Deleted] Photography ltd. is offering full time holiday work. Half term, summer holidays and weekends. We are looking for career minded hard working people to join us&any age can apply&. but we do need you to drive to the venues. You will have to be confident and great with people. The right person will earn around £1000min p/m. We offer all the training you need to be relaxed and confident about the photo sessions. All equipement is supplied. Please have a look at our website and see if this is for you. We look forward to hearing from you and helping you in your new career with [Name Deleted] in 2010.

So you follow the link to the website and reach:

Um… so you can work for them as an assistant for four hours and you only have to pay £75.

Once you’ve done that, you can then work for them during holidays and weekends (which I think is what this job advert is suggesting) for only £495.

Level 3 seems to actually be a job, but might not be.

And yes, if you click “Click Here To Pay” on Level 4, it really will transfer you to PayPal with an invoice of £9,995 before you’ve actually had any contact with the company (Incidentally, I wonder what the PayPal charges are on a sum like that!)

Doesn’t look dodgy at all… no no no!

What do you get if you cross sub-zero temperatures with a burst water main?

Very very very localised snow…

Scene 1…

Scene 2 (90 degrees to the right of Scene 1)…

Fantastic stuff! We passed this on Saturday afternoon and had to turn back to check we’d actually seen what we thought we’d seen!

Time for another rant about Edexcel. Have I ranted about them here before, or just in my head?

Anyway… I’m currently trying to get the Japanese GCSE vocab into a usable state. I’ve found their core vocab lists – in two different formats and with different lists of words – not very useful. But what I’ve found now is the “Japanese Vocabulary Book” which separates words into categories such as “Out & About”, “Locations”, “Directions” and so on. As you can imagine, the overlap between these examples (and many other examples) is massive. I think I’ve seen the word for bread appear about five times so far (Foundation, Out & About, Restaurants, Food & Drink, Lifestyle). Not good for sorting unique, tagged entries.

Anyway… the latest section I reached made me chuckle…

Fashion/celebrities/religion- Foundation

WTF? Must be a misprint in the title. Let’s have a look at an excerpt of the list…

Easter イースター
famous 有名な
fashion りゅう行/ファッション
glove 手ぶくろ
God 神
handbag ハンドバック
hat ぼうし

Ok. Good. I wonder if Edexcel is actually staffed by aliens?