Forwards and backwards - a review of 2010 and other thoughts

And so I sit here with the christmas lights on the chipboard behind my laptop reflecting off the keys, providing a nice ambience, and during my last few days in Manchester this year I have time to contemplate.

Contemplate what? Anything and everything. There has been so much on my mind as of late I've been walking down streets of melted snow and ice under bare trees completely absorbed in my mind. Today as I walked down a street I've never walked down on my own before, I was thinking about the nature of our existence. This may seem surprisingly philosophical for me, but I just want to get this down somewhere and this seems to be a good place.

It seems like we are constantly taking two steps forwards and two steps back, in every way. I was looking at the BBC News on my phone and I saw that unemployment has risen sharply in the last 3 months and I silently begged for the conservatives to sort it out. A while ago I had a look at the unemployment rate of the last 50 years or so and saw that when Thatcher was in power, unemployment declined hugely but when Brown was our prime minister the level skyrocketed. It's like everything Thatcher did to bring down the level was pointless. Obviously it wasn't, but if you look at the chart that's the initial feeling. There's this feeling of reciprocity, where everything that is done is undone, redone, undone again etc. and the cycle never ends. As I think my mum said, "labour spend spend spend, tory cut cut cut".

The trees lose their leaves with the promise of getting them back in the spring, only to lose them again. Forwards, backwards, forwards, backwards.

Another thing I was thinking about was my university education and where it is ultimately going to lead me. A startling number of graduates I have met struggle to find a job after they graduate and yes, they end up back at their parents' home, which is most likely the last place they want to be after the 3 or more year struggle for independence. Back and forth. In and out.

And finally, our lives. We are born dependant on those around us, we grow up and learn to be independent and take care of ourselves only to be largely dependant again on the community and our loved ones when we get elderly. In a way it makes you think, we spend a lot of our lives striving for independence and to escape, but ultimately what is it worth?

It's worth everything, especially to me. The freedom you experience during the years of living in a new place or making new friends are the best years and worth every moment. You learn so much by meeting new faces, seeing new things, looking at things from a different perspective and learning about the world around you. Moving away from home, away from my secluded corner of the country has taught me so much about the world I live in and the people I share an island with.

More important than anything, since I have moved out I've been able to see my life as if I'm standing away from it, looking from a distance. Sometimes it's incredibly valuable to just look at your life with different eyes, from a different place.

Will I ever return to New Romney? No. Not for anything other than nostalgia. As I say goodbye to the corner of the world that I lived in for 18 years, I may miss it but I will not look back. Life is too fast to look back. You may spend all your time thinking about the past and let the present pass you by.

As 2010 comes to a close, and I get ready to welcome the new year with friends and alcohol, I will be looking to the future with excitement and imagination, for the world is my oyster right now. University is the crossroads, from here I can go in absolutely any direction I want. The control I have over my life makes me content.

So friends, have a very merry christmas and enjoy seeing your family! I'll see you on the other side.

Cute Gay Animals

Today I feel like talking about homosexual tendencies in animals. Just because I think more people should know about them, it's pretty cute.

The penguins in the picture above are the male chinstrap penguins Squawk and Milou of the New York Central Park Zoo, just one example of same-sex courtship among animals. This is hardly the first time we've seen this, there were also the male penguins Roy and Silo who took a strong liking to each other and showed the classic signs of penguin lurrrve whilst also completely dismissing the attention of female penguins. They were also determined to "adopt" a chick as their own, as a lot of same-sex animal couples do.

"At one time, the two seemed so desperate to incubate an egg together that they put a rock in their nest and sat on it, keeping it warm in the folds of their abdomens, said their chief keeper, Rob Gramzay. Finally, he gave them a fertile egg that needed care to hatch. Things went perfectly. Roy and Silo sat on it for the typical 34 days until a chick, Tango, was born. For the next two and a half months they raised Tango, keeping her warm and feeding her food from their beaks until she could go out into the world on her own."

Cute, huh? Of course it doesn't stop with penguins. 8% of male lion and ram sexual interaction is males mounting other males.

45% of male elephants, both African and Asian, will engage in same-sex bonding and mounting. Such encounters are often associated with affectionate interactions, such as kissing, trunk intertwining, and placing trunks in each other's mouths. Male elephants, who often live apart from the general herd, often form "companionships", consisting of an older individual and one or sometimes two younger, attendant males with sexual behaviour being an important part of the social dynamic. Unlike heterosexual relations in elephants which are fleeting, homosexual relations may last for many years. Quite sweet isn't it, how homosexual relationships between elephants last a lot longer than heterosexual ones?

Experts estimate that at least 90% of giraffe sex that happens is male-male sex and 1% is female-female, leaving only about 9% of giraffe sex heterosexual and actually reproductive.

Maybe one day I'll write another blog about the strange sexual habits of giraffes, they're quite disgusting, but that's for another time I think. If we can take any lesson from this, it's that being gay is totally natural. I seriously doubt these animals are actively choosing to rebel against the system and be different.

Debating Intelligent Design

I wasn't sure whether or not to make this blog yet, but it's been playing on my mind all day and if it wasn't this it was going to be about the vikings finding Greenland and then abandoning it in the 15th Century for no apparent reason, but that just seemed too boring. This is what I really want to discuss.

In this blog I just want to discuss my own reasons for not believing in intelligent design and the idea that a loving, benevolent god created us exactly as we are.

One major argument creationists use to defend the creation myth is "complex things like the human eye could not have evolved as perfect as they are now, they work like a machine and therefore can't have evolved".

I'd like to present an analogy to disprove this. Let's say we have a designer of cars. The cars he designs are generally good, they work. You can drive around, there's a windscreen to see through and the engine is very cleverly designed to used fuel to power the car. However the clutch might stick sometimes, that's just a minor flaw, you can take it to the garage and get it fixed, that's how clever he is! He designed something that when it breaks, you can spend lots of money and time fixing it. Not only that, but sometimes his cars break beyond repair before you've even used it, but you are refused another one so you have to use a car which you can barely even drive on the road for the rest of your life. What an intelligent car designer, right?

In this scenario, if this man really designed cars, nobody would buy them because of how faulty they are. Would you describe this man as intelligent? Because I definitely wouldn't.

By comparison, let's look at the human body. It's generally good, you can walk around and there's eyes to see where you're going and you're very cleverly designed to run on food. However your heart might stop sometimes, but that's alright! You can just go to hospital and get it fixed. How clever! Not only that, but sometimes you get cancer or heart disease or leukaemia or a severe mental disability or deafness or blindness or physical deformity before you're even born, but you can't get another one so you have to live with this horrible illness for the rest of your life. Whoever designed this must be really intelligent.

And FYI, the human eye is anything but perfect. Not only are the light-receptive photo cells all facing the wrong direction, there is a big blind spot through which the nerve fibres and blood vessels pass. The only reason we can even see is because of the huge amount of work the brain has to do to restore the image to how it should be, otherwise we'd be seeing upside-down. And that's just the start. Eyes are prone to myopia, astigmatism and retinal detachment. If it wasn't for HUMAN inventions like glasses and laser eye surgery which were all made by SCIENCE, some of us wouldn't be able to see a thing. ( For more information on this, please visit this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7yAEh-PU4M ) Personally my eyes are bad to a factor of -4.5, and to put that into perspective, average reading glasses are about -1.25.

My question to people who believe in intelligent design can be summarised like this. If there was an intelligent designer who made us perfect, why don't my eyes work? Why do they require science to function? Sorry, but to me this seems like science 1 - 0 religion.

Ok, onto the second part. The other most annoying argument that creationists often use is "Well look at the mountains, sunsets, oceans, they're all so beautiful! It must be a gift from God."

This is probably the argument that upsets me the most. You think the world is perfect and beautiful and made by a loving creator who loves each of his "children"? The world itself disproves this ridiculous notion.

First let us quickly consider the thought of beauty. I'm sure we all would agree that sunsets are a very nice sight to see and preferable to other things, like a slug. Not many people watch slugs for their astounding grace, beauty and peacefulness. But it is true that if we had nothing like the slug to compare the sunset with, the concept of beauty to describe that item would not exist.

Beauty is entirely a socially constructed concept, which is incredibly obvious in modern society. Why is a slim woman with lots of makeup and smooth hair more beautiful a larger woman with greasy hair and a droopy face? And don't give me the "everyone is beautiful" crap, a very small number of people would look at the second woman and think about her beauty. There is a certain socially established idea of what beauty is and isn't, and it differs from culture to culture (in certain societies, a fat woman is seen as more beautiful).

So now we've determined that beauty is defined by humans. This is only one reason that beauty is not a reason for God's existence.

But even with that argument aside it's not viable to believe that the wonder of nature was made by the intelligent, loving god of the bible. I think to believe so is to be incredibly incredibly ignorant of the world around you.

According to you, god lovingly allows poverty, famine, plague, birth defects, autism, asperger's syndrome, down syndrome, conjoined twins (parasitic and otherwise), miscarriages, drought, earthquakes, wild fires, floods, tsunamis, greed, hunger, selfishness, murderous intent, depression, suicide, genocide, leprosy, avalanches, sandstorms, lightning which kills, deadly animals everywhere which kill us...

That's not to mention the environment he bestowed upon us. Most of the planet is totally uninhabitable, plus we depend on fossil fuels which will one day run out and we orbit around a star which is one day going to explode. We risk every day random climate change and a meteor strike. He also gave us deadly bacteria which are perfect for living in our bodies (I did see an excellent video about this, will put it here if i find it).

In summary, we live in a hostile environment where everything wants to kill us. If god can do amazing things like save a baby in an earthquake (out of the thousands that he killed) and create the Earth in seven days, making Adam from dirt and Eve from bone, why can he not help us out a bit?

What I can conclude from this is that if there is a divine creator, he is one of three things: cruel, stupid or uncaring of his creation's fate. I think you would agree that none of these accurately describe the god of the bible as most people like to see him. Although, the word 'cruel' can be very nicely given to a god who demands worship based on no reliable evidence or else burn for eternity in the flaming pits of hell.

If there is a god, he hates us. I'd rather not believe something like that, it's completely stupid.

If anyone would like to see some interesting youtube videos relating to the creation/science debate, just hit me up and I'll recommend you some brilliant ones!

Redefining Islamophobia

In this post I just want to present a quick response to the idea of "Islamophobia" and what it has been claimed to stand for. I think it's important that this word is not misused too often, as it can seriously make people look stupid.

Let's go over some of the ways in which people use the word. If somebody is described as an Islamophobe, it is most likely that they have done or said something which is offensive to the Muslim community. It's a word commonly used to describe anyone who has a hatred of Muslims.

So what is the difference between Islamophobia and racism? Surely both harbour an irrational hatred, right? Wrong. Racism is a belief that one race of people is, in one way or another, inferior to another. It's characterised by a prejudice of an entire race, not just a few extremists.

Now let's go over Islamophobia and what the word actually means. The word 'phobia' I'm sure you're all aware of - it means an irrational fear of something. Arachnophobia is an irrational fear of spiders even though they can't hurt you, hippopotamonstrosesquipedaliophobia is a fear of long words, etc etc. So the literal meaning of Islamophobia is an irrational fear of Muslims. Wait, what?

Imagine someone who has an irrational fear of Muslims. He walks down the street, sees someone in a burka and runs off screaming. Ridiculous. However there are people who are scared of Muslims irrationally, terrified of an entire religion based on a few extremists who've blown themselves up. They're afraid to get on a plane in case it gets hijacked and explodes.

On the other hand, an irrational fear of Muslims can be seen as a bit of an oxymoron. Isn't it ok to be afraid of a group of people who preach hatred and kill anyone who converts from Islam, and force women to cover themselves up or else stone them to death? A group of people who are making their way across Europe and to the USA, trying to gain respect whilst at the same time doing crazy things like burning poppies and yelling about British soldiers burning in Hell? How can a fear of these people be irrational?

If you apply racism to this case, you would still be wrong, because it's not a fear of ALL Muslims, it's a fear of a few extremists. HOWEVER, if you apply it to ignorant people who think that every single Muslim in the world is like this, you'd be absolutely right. As long as they didn't think Muslims were inferior to themselves, then you'd be talking about racism.

If you look at society properly you'll see that people like the example above who think that every single Muslim in the country is out to get them you'll see that not many people actually think that way. Most of the people who are branded with the name 'dirty Islamophobe' actually just criticise Islam and disrespect some of the horrible things it influences people to do. That is neither racism nor Islamophobic. It's a rational conclusion that stoning women to death is generally not a nice thing to do. It's not Islamophobic because it's based on rational thought, and it's not racist because it doesn't claim that the entire religion is inferior, as there are a lot of Muslims who do not stone women or crash planes into buildings and the like. In fact the majority of Muslims are alright to live with. A lot of Muslims actually make an effort to integrate into the society they move into, and I'm sure nobody who isn't racist or Islamophobic has a problem with that at all.

If anybody is Islamophobic, it's the entire country as a whole. We are terrified of insulting Muslims in case they blow us up. We bend over backwards to appease them so that they won't get butthurt about what our actual beliefs are. Take this example.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11765420

In a toy farm set, the pig was removed after concerns that it would offend Muslims and Jews. Now, my brother actually had this play set before they removed the pig and I honestly don't understand how it could have offended anyone. If it had come with a shotgun to kill the pig with and a knife to chop it up, then yes it would be offensive. But you can't seriously believe that Muslims and Jews want to deny the existence of pigs altogether? Even Muslim mothers wrote in to say that it was absolutely ridiculous to do. This is just another example of "political correctness gone mad". How terrified do you have to be of Muslims and Jews that you are actually attempting to speak for them and guess what is going to offend them just in case they complain that you're not turning Britain into an Islamic or Jewish society and decide to kill people?

Not only is it cowardly, it's patronising. Do you really think that extremist Muslims are going to target the Early Learning Centre for their next bombing? Honestly.

Another case of this the fact that my sun cream got confiscated from me at the airport last summer. Why? In case there was a bomb in it. We also can't take printer ink onto planes, why? In case there is a bomb in it. This country is terrified of Muslims.

As you can see, Islamophobia is intrinsically embedded into British society, and yet we call rational thinkers and critics of the Muslim faith racist Islamophobe nazi evil bastards? If you want to call them anything, call them freedom fighters. Striving for the freedom of speech which Muslims would prevent us from having, given their way. Have you also noticed that nobody who criticises Christianity is called racist? Why is that? I'm not going to discuss that here, I think this blog post is long enough already. But nobody is scared of Christians, because whilst some of them are completely insane, the most they ever do is protest outside abortion clinics and military funerals. There is no Christianophobia. People are only scared of Muslims and there is a reason for that.

But yes, this blog post is long enough, I could go on for hours on this topic but I just want this post to be about the definition of Islamophobia and how wrongly the label is given to people. Maybe some other day I'll talk about Islam itself but for now I want to seem relatively impartial, don't know if that's worked... please tell me if you have any thoughts on this at all. I like hearing people's opinions!

Trains and Windows

It was a tired morning and the sky yawned as I bought a one-way ticket to Salt lake city and boarded the 805 Amtrak headed north-east.

The train dipped in and out of the empty gorges whose walls were still black from the dynamite blasts that once dug them out of the ground,

and the window collected the broken images outside whose only purpose left in the physical world was to entertain the endless parade of Amtrak voyeurs passing hour after hour through the valley;

a dead sofa, a gasping tyre and a hoodless dodge with no wheels that sat sunken in the red California clay.

Unimpressed, the train marched forward with a pointed tenacity matched only on occasion by a sad artist or an unemployed father of three, who planted themselves firmly on the tracks and surrendered quietly as the train delivered them back to the city of ashes

where we're all from and where we're all eventually going.

Then in an instant, the sun set and the yellow dusted shadows froze grey and dusk swallowed the whole valley without remorse... because of course there's nothing really to swallow, it's just motion.

The motion of a steel train and its wide-eyed passengers who watch the moments collect one by one on their windows

blending seamlessly into an animation, fleeting and fictional.

- Jack Conte, Trains and Windows collection. Just thought I'd share that with you, it's my favourite piece of lyric.

Potter Prayers

I would like to invite you to pray with me.

Our Headmaster in heaven

Hallowed be thy beard.

Your army come,

your will be done,

in Hogwarts as in Godric's Hollow.

Give us today our daily spell.

Forgive us our trespasses

because we really wanted to go to Hogsmeade.

Save us from dementors,

and deliver us from He-Who-Must-Not-be-Named.

For Hogwarts, the magic, and the horcruxes be yours

Now and forever.

Amen.

Please be seated.

I should probably explain why I wrote that. It's not just because my lecture was cancelled and I'm quite bored, but I was having a conversation with another atheist on youtube and we were talking about the notion of the Bible being a fictional text written 6000 years ago, in Dara O'Briain's words, "to get the kids to go to sleep on a long donkey ride to Jerusalem".

So if this is true and a large portion of the world prays to a fictional character in a book, what will it be like in 6000 years time or so? What will happen when idiots from the future dig up Harry Potter? How easy would it be to start a religion?

Very, I say. There is already a university course in Durham about philosophy in the Harry Potter books. Fandom can be likened to religion in some aspects, as I can relate to having been heavily involved in the Death Note fandom for a few years.

J.K. Rowling can be likened to Moses, the scribe of God's will and commandments. The God in question would be Dumbledore, watching us from heaven. If you have read the seventh book, you may remember Harry having an out-of-body experience where he meets Dumbledore on a bench (correct me if I'm wrong). In this way, Harry is akin to Jesus, doing the bidding of his "father" Dumbledore.

We can be sure that Albus Dumbledore was like a father figure to everyone at Hogwarts, who were his "army". He advised people, he instructed people to do his work and he was seen as a loving figure who cares about all of his children.

In this analogy, I'd like to say that Lord Voldemort is Lucifer himself. Once an angel, Tom Riddle (student at Hogwarts under Albus Dumbledore), he rebelled and decided to dabble in dark magic. He was therefore condemned by Dumbledore and cast out. Voldemort then set out to turn people to his side, hence we can bring in Adam and Eve. While I don't know who the very first followers of the Dark Lord were, but we can be sure that with the help of his snake Nagini he convinced people to eat the forbidden fruit, and cast unforgivable spells which Dumbledore had instructed them to not do.

This is where Harry Potter differs from the Bible. Instead of punishing all of the students of Hogwarts for what Tom Riddle convinced people like Wormtail to do, he built up his students into what the Daily Prophet was calling his army of students, ready to ride up. In this scenario we can liken the students at Hogwarts to God's followers.

So you've probably already guessed what all of this makes Harry. Grew up with his aunt and uncle in Little Whinging until he set out into the world and devoted his life to doing what Dumbledore wanted. Dumbledore was no doubt a good father figure for Harry, therefore reinforcing the idea that Dumbledore is the Lord your God. He endured many hardships in his life, being tempted by Lord Voldemort to surrender himself to see his parents again. Harry resists this temptation, much like Jesus does in the Bible when he is in the desert.

In the seventh book, Harry is "killed" by Lord Voldemort. He is "dead" for while, carried around by Hagrid. Suddenly, he rises from the dead and defeats Voldemort with the help of his disciples, the Order of the Phoenix (and Neville).

Not only do the teachings of Harry Potter mirror the Bible, but they also provide a good moral grounding. Love thy neighbour (Harry ends up not hating Draco so much), be the good Samaritan (Chamber of Secrets, Harry saves Ginny whereas Lockhart ignores her suffering) and believe in Dumbledore and you will be saved.

Of course my analogy so far hasn't taken muggles into consideration. However as the Bible says that while we should love our neighbour, it contradicts itself a bit and also says "a fool says in his heart there is no God" and so I can't come to a conclusion on whether or not muggles are non-believers. I'll leave you with that to think about, not leaving out the fact that the Dursley's scorned the idea of magic and are seen in a very negative light in the books.

Well, I think I've wasted enough time now. Might actually write an informative blog soon when I can decide what to write it on. For now, Dumbledore bless your souls.

The Evolution of the Peppered Moth.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to present to you a very recent example of natural selection and evolution in action; the evolution of the peppered moth over the last mere 200 years.

As you should know, all species have natural variation and mutation. Just look at the human species, for example. Everyone is different. Different

eye colours, different face shapes, different bodies e.t.c. The same is true of most of the animal kingdom - you will always get variation. We don't just have normal everyday bipedal "healthy" humans, we have people with mental disorders and physical disorders. We have conjoined twins and people with dwarfism and blind people and deaf people... you get the idea.

So now let's move on to the peppered moth. 200 or so years ago, the peppered moth looked much like this.

As you can see, it's quite light-colou

red. These moths like to hang out on trees, nicely camouflaged against the bark so that birds couldn't see them. There were a few peppered moths which were a bit darker but that was only 0.01% of the population, as they were easily spotted by birds.

However, at the dawn of the industrial revolution in the UK, things began to change. Factories were being built everywhere, polluting the atmosphere with their smoke. The pollution from the smoke started to change the colour of the bark on the surrounding trees, making it darker.

Now, as the trees got darker, obviously the peppered moths started becoming easier for the birds to spot. The peppered moth population dropped dramatically. What we do begin to see, however, is this.

Yes, the lighter moths are easier to see, but there was still that 0.01% of the peppered moth species which was much darker. As a result, these moths actually did a lot better at hiding from the

birds, thus the lighter coloured peppered moths gradually died out and the darker moths continued to reproduce and spread their superior genes.

This is a classic example of "survival of the fittest". The darker moths were more successful so the peppered moth evolved from the light colour into the darker colour. Surprisingly simple, isn't it?

It also illustrates how well organisms can adapt to their surroundings over time. It's not magic, it's not "chance", it's the pure power of nature and if it didn't happen, we wouldn't be here today.

In a later blog I might attempt to apply some of the themes of this blog onto human evolution and our African ancestors. However for now, I'll leave you with this very simple example of natural selection as food for thought. Ta ta for now.

Introduction to this thing, I guess.

Hello, friends.

This is basically a blog where I act like a total nerd and just write down things I've learned which are somewhat interesting and share them with the world (that's you!). I might also ask questions if this ever gets a big enough (intelligent) audience. But for now, the kinds of things I will be blogging about are evolution, natural selection, archaeology, African origins, anthropology and maybe some astrophysics if I get around to learning about it.

I'm just a sucker for an interesting fact or theory.