I am appalled at the joy our leaders are expressing at the death of Osama bin Laden. There should have been a fair trial and proper court process with life imprisonment (as with our legal system). The death penalty, whether by trial or sniper fire, is something all should oppose, even for the most vile, lest we stoop to their level.

Nathan Lee – Surry Hills

But I guess no amount of writing letters will change that he’s now a martyr and any chance at proper justice (versus revenge) is lost forever.
Not that this whole thing couldn’t have been avoided by Bush simply accepting the offer by the Taliban to turn over bin Laden back in October 2001.

Oh, and it is almost exactly 8 years to the day from the point at which Bush declared “Mission Accomplished”.

Wonder if Trump and the Tea Party Birther nutcases will refuse to believe Osama is dead without the full birth certificate?

UPDATE:
A reply in the next day’s letters may have “jumped the gun” a bit:

I’m not sure if Nathan Lee (Letters, May 3) is kidding, with his insistence that ”There should have been a fair trial and proper court process” of Osama bin Laden. Assuming he is serious, it’s just embarrassing to see how little stomach people seem to have. Does Mr Lee realise that bin Laden would have been firing an automatic weapon at the time he was shot? Perhaps the US soldiers should have read him his rights instead? As far as I’m concerned, a bullet to the head was too kind, and I feel sorry for the fish now feasting on him.

Daniel Lewis Rushcutters Bay

Effective justice depends more on reasoning brains than gut feeling of rage. He was not only unarmed but unless he was naked he was to be shot. Sure doesn’t sound like there was much of a window for him to come out of it alive to be put on trial huh?

This follows on from something I remember from my time in HK whereby duck eggs in China were doctored with a carcinogenic dye.

I’ve mentioned fake food/medicine/supplements from China in my past blog: China may well solve global warming.. Kinda including:

• baby food that looked and smelled ok, but had zero nutritional content. Result: 50 to 60 dead kids who starved to death while the poor parents tried in vain to feed them with milk powder that was pretty much sawdust. (See http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/10/health/main616432.shtml )
• Use of a carcinogenic red dye (called sudan red) in duck eggs because the redder the yolk, the more they can sell ‘em for (see http://french.hanban.edu.cn/english/health/189567.htm ) and also in sauce (http://www.china.org.cn/english/health/209080.htm)
• Fake medical supplies (see http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-01/08/content_10625425.htm and  http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/jul/05/china.internationalnews1 )

Food that’s “Made in China” is pretty scary
It really is a worry to be considering sending any food production toward China. The pollution in China is already ridiculous and getting worse. I wouldn’t trust anything coming out of there to not have lots of heavy metals and carcinogenic crap stuffed in it.

Chinese Oysters: Top quality ingredients!

I’ve already given up trying to get smoked oysters (a guilty scoff-a-whole-tin pleasure of mine) because the only ones in the shops now come from China and I don’t fancy eating the “filters of the sea” from one of the most polluted places on Earth.

I won’t spoil it for you, but just watch as she not only demonstrates that the guy’s just plain wrong about the content of the show but also the inconsistency within the guy’s religion. Of all the problems in Pakistan that twit decides to complain about he picks an actress appearing on a TV show as a huge sin.

Islam has bigger issues than an Actress going on TV

But hey, these types pop up all over the world (including Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali from Australia), divinely inspired by the Qu’ran’s unenlightened views on women unfortunately.

It really speaks volumes when I posted this up on facebook a little while back that someone made the comment that “You do realise she’d be killed within a month right….”. I certainly hope not and hope that she inspires the wider community to examine and question the filthy moral lessons people like this cleric put out there.

Ceiling cat approves of the non scripture option.

But now we have the hope of a more structured approach to learning (something other than taking the vent off the air-con ducting): the NSW trial of an “ethics course” alternative to scripture. Or as I like to refer to it “the long overdue first death nail in the coffin of religious indoctrination in public schools”.

What happens currently in Scripture

Well, I’ve outlined a some of my thoughts in an earlier post: Letter to Dept. of Education about Scripture. But basically scripture is an unfiltered vomiting of religious garbage in government funded, supposedly secular schools. While mostly offering a Christian denomination (picked by the head master/mistress), some offer a choice to parents.

The people presenting this have somewhere between zero and some training, not usually qualified teachers or even particularly well read people (beyond their own book of religion). I guess the lord is guiding them through their poorly controlled, poorly planned and poorly executed classes.

Parents have to write a letter if they want to avoid inflicting it on their children and the only non religious option (in our government secular schools I remind you) is to have kids sitting around doing nothing (I believe they are now at least supervised.. so no stress testing the tensile strength of aircon ducting attachments these days).

In the actual classes (which, if you’re Jewish and go to one particular school I heard about from teachers:kids have to paydonate sufficient amounts to be allowed in.. scumbags!) children are made to:

• say prayers or go through rituals of the religion,
• state they believe in God/Jesus etc and
• presented teachings of the religion as absolute fact
• fed all manner of information while the teachers hover around and try to keep order (because this routine is exactly the same as the previous session kids are bored shitless).

Kids naturally see the gaping holes in what’s been said and are only given childish answers in response. Teachers are unable to assure children that there’s no basis for the beliefs and it’s all reliant on having faith despite no evidence.

The results so far..

Best case scenario they just switch off, worst: they go home with the belief that someone is constantly watching them and has a long list of things they’re quite likely to be tortured in fire for all eternity. BUT they’re assured there’s a way out of that: just ask Jesus for forgiveness and believe in him.

Note: Kids at young ages still believe the Easter bunny is real, so when a grown up makes arguments from authority in a place of learning, they tend to believe them.

A little something I hacked up from a wallpaper from Sydney Anglicans. Jesus deserved bunny ears and the atheists deserved backup.

Hell, I almost went away thinking that if I just had enough faith I could walk on water (like the idiotic story we were told).

Other kids go away worried they’re going to hell if they don’t get baptised with magic water or punished for merely thinking something heretical.

Do kids get an ethical basis for dealing with strange situations? No, absolute morals (what little they teach) are always going to fall over in the grey areas. In amongst the good stuff (which is found outside the religions from earlier philosophers) there are damaging concepts and absurdities that contradict everything the kids are taught outside that hour or two.

I’ll concede something to the current approach: it does teach some kids a very important lesson: that religion is boring as hell, its followers often a little weird and that religion doesn’t make much sense.

So what happened on the 20th of April 2010?

A secular (despite the religious sounding name) mob from the St James Ethics Centre (and Federation of Parents and Citizens Associations of NSW) have developed an actual curriculum (unlike the “show up with a bible and wing it” that seems the norm) for discussing ethics and it had its first run through in front of kids.

This article gives an idea of the way the class would have operated:

Associate Professor Philip Cam, of the University of NSW, developed the curriculum and conducted the training workshop. Cam is an expert in philosophical and ethical inquiry for children, and recently co-authored guidelines on incorporating ethical behaviour for the draft national curriculum.

The two-day workshop was run in classroom mode, replicating the methods to be used when it is introduced to classrooms this week. Volunteers were seated in a circle and needed to have possession of the speaker’s ball before commenting. ”No put-downs” was also part of the rules.

Cam stressed that it was not the role of the volunteer ”teacher” to ethically instruct the children, but rather explore ethical ideas and facilitate a discussion among members of the class. Good listening, an awareness of when to intervene, and a light touch would be necessary.

He warned against buying into the discussion, as that could change the dynamic in the room and students would be listening for the ”right” answer.

”It is about dealing with kids making reasoned judgements, the business of thought. And learning to be reasonable with people you disagree with, not attacking them, and providing reasons as to why you disagree,” Cam says.

Now unlike this snooty moral high ground ethics course I don’t have a “no put down” rule on my blog (and I can hold my own balls when I want to talk on it). Perhaps that’s because instead of doing this ethics course I was twiddling my thumbs in the library.

I’ll happily call (and rationally defend calling it) what the churches have offered largely a useless pile of shit. It was when I went through school and teachers I’ve talked to think it is the same today.

Compare their offering which is person turns up, reads some fairy-tales which are presented as fact. If ethics even comes up (which is a bit if with all the time taken talking fairy-tales and praying to sky-gods): Kids are not encouraged to develop their own ethics if they step outside the drone’s interpretation of what their book says.

Gods views: Strangely indistinguishable from your own.

It’s certainly not a case of religious instructor indoctrinator avoiding buying into the discussion or avoiding changing the dynamic of the room: that’s exactly why they’re there to imprint young minds before they learn to question things too hard.

Why the churches are shit scared of this Ethics course

Churches love scripture in public schools, it gives them a very young, largely gullible audience on which to peddle their wares and slow their flock’s decline (if the census reports are anything to go by religion is dying). Without it they immediately lose access to imprint the idea that god exists from 2/3rds of the population and I suspect they realise that means a massive increase in the “no religion” group.

Given their revenue stream (e.g. necessary to keep the pope in gold bling, bullet proof cars and castles) often depends on poor saps believing that God wants them to give up X percent of their income to these paedophile harbouring rich beyond belief scumbags (ok, I’m picking on the catholic church here): they’re worried they won’t make quite as much tax free money to further promote their religion. Plus it’s pretty cost effective going after kids in schools.

If kids actually discuss ethics in a matter of fact way amongst their piers they’ll learn a bunch of things hopefully:

• ethics and morals are created by people (even kids!)
• there are many different ways of justifying different behaviours (equality, self interest etc)
• exploring ideas yourself is much more satisfying than hearing religious books regurgitated
• the act of considering all of the above gives you a framework to handle new situations

These lessons make it quite tough for religious indoctrination. A healthy scepticism in kids? Worst nightmare for religious “teachers”.

Realising this the religious leaders are lobbying hard behind the scenes because if they lose this they’ll lose the “by default” crowd and be left with the same lot they already have for sunday school. People will also get to see that the world will not implode: in fact perhaps less people will be seeking the comfort that religion often gives in a world torn apart by religion. Just imagine! If kids have a well developed sense of morality on which to test run their decisions against: perhaps crime/anti-social behaviour etc might fall.

Religious leaders want right to censor/restrict the course

What really gets me mad about recent articles is that these religious leaders demand rights to censor/vet the secular ethics course. I don’t recall the Catholic church allowing Muslims to dictate what they teach kids. Or perhaps a bit on Xenu from our friendly scientologists would go well with the zombie Jesus story?

Uniting the causes..

Where’s my say as a secularist/humanist/atheist in their dealings?

For a start I’d rewrite some bits in the interests of harmony (and if you’re going to tell a crazy story, at least put some time travel in it!):

Lost and Heros did it to make things a bit more crazy.

Back on track: So basically they want to keep their stranglehold over access to children and want to remove the choice. One particular knob end (Fred Nile.. that’s not a put down for him really if you have been following his trail of fail over the years.. homophobic, sexist, racist etc voids his right to be described politely) type reckons he was given assurances the course would only be offered to those who have already opted out! Why would one set of kids get the offer and not another?

Fred Nile: WTF! How about we only let religious stuff be taught to those enrolled in sunday school? Or those who can recite the bible from memory perhaps (to prove they are actually Christian already)

Fred Nile and other religious leaders involved in this “not in MY school’s religious time” whinge: what you’re advocating there raises some ethical questions. Or perhaps you need to ask the St James ethical centre what “ethics” means?

Firstly you’ve brokered some sort of back room deal to suit your own completely out of whack morals to the exclusion of others and then you aren’t in any way giving concession to non Christians.  Secondly where’s the fairness in your model: you provide one viewpoint, so do the other religions therefore it’s natural that you can expect a secular one. To be honest your version of ethics hasn’t worked out too well in the past and present so perhaps you should keep your gob shut.

What is next (in the ethics course)

Here’s the list of topics for the course. Notice no need for fairy-tales and prayers (although perhaps the ethics of lying to children like that might come up):

• Getting started
• Fairness
• Lying
• Ethical principles
• Graffiti
• The use and abuse of animals
• Interfering with nature
• Virtues and vices
• Children’s rights
• The good life

I like to think I base my ethical framework on fairness (the good old “fair go” policy). It seems to me to be an important part of empathising if you can put yourself in other shoes and consider whether you’d like it. This idea has been around far before any of the bunch in scripture scrawled it down. It’s an intuitive concept. I’m glad it’s topic number two, because consideration of it is important across any situation. Sure they might get that from the bible (in amongst the praying, outsourcing to scape goat, loving enemies, praising men willing to sacrifice their children etc) but it certainly isn’t necessary to read the bible to get this. Any number of philosophers or earlier now dead religions had this message. There’s also a cost associated to almost any action, which is something worth considering.

There’s a section on lying, I guess if religious leaders want their material in there it can go under there as a case study in lying. Could also do the topical “religious scandal of the day” where kids discuss whatever the latest stupid Muslim Cleric or Idiot Christian pope has said and to what degree of poor ethical base it comes from.

I’d be interested in knowing where “the good life” discussions would go with a group of kids and the children’s rights would also be interesting. The Church leaders complaining about this course obviously don’t understand that with freedom of religion (essential for them to stay employed) there’s also freedom FROM religion. “No religion” is an equally supported stance under our constitution.

Really, the whole thing is damned interesting I really wish this programme had kicked off a hundred years ago. Never mind, that’s what late night discussions at the pub or BBQ are for I guess, but this is one thing that kids starting early would be great for society.

* Well, we sent a guy called Arron up into the vent as he was most keen. I believe someone blabbed later which cemented the non scripture group as agents of the devil and untrustworthy. Although I do recall something about our off the street local churchie scripture teacher being later embroiled in some sort of child abuse accusation (something which I actually was pretty upset hearing that the accusation was floating around as he seemed like a nice man, albeit spouting rubbish.. anyhow.. Note: I have no idea what happened, could have been baseless or just a rumour or the guy could be in jail now, I dunno..) Yes, we in the unsupervised non scripture group were the untrustworthy ones of course because we were bored and locked in a tiny room with nothing to do.

The letter: Re: Scripture should not be taught in Government schools.

To Whom it may concern,
As it has been a concern of mine for a long time now: I’d like to ask is there any reason why we are still allowing religious people into public schools for the purposes of promoting their religion? I would have thought this would have ceased a long time ago.

It must NOT be opt-out requiring permission from parents, it must be a special opt in with strict syllabus if it is allowed at all. Having it opt out (with no material/alternative instruction) makes it seem like the parent is skipping an important aspect of their education to let their kid run around doing nothing.

The Education Act

From the Education Act, Section 30 – “Secular instruction”
“In government schools, the education is to consist of strictly non-sectarian and secular instruction. The words secular instruction are to be taken to include general religious education as distinct from dogmatic or polemical theology.”

I’m not sure at what point this got missed when Christian scripture in public schools was deemed to be the default choice and a secular education required parents to object in writing. I would think parents can assume that there will be no default religious element whatsoever (or else they would have sent them to a religious school surely?). In the several schools I’ve got knowledge of it is expected that parents either fill in a form and in some cases provide written and/or face to face justification for their reasons for not wanting religious indoctrination.

Referring to Section 32 of the act:
“Children attending a religious education class are to be separated from other children at the school while the class is held.”
The language of this implies that they will be a minority, not the default choice with the “non scripture” group left to fend for themselves as it is currently. Currently the process is that those “opting out” are separated grudgingly from the religious class.

Content of Religious instruction

Assuming nothing substantial has changed in the religious types since I was growing up: it was nothing more than Christian indoctrination. A bit of investigation (discussion a teacher friend and several parents of infants/primary school age children) and the recent media attention reveals it has not changed. In particular parents are regularly upset at some of the messages (e.g. “You’ll go to hell for not believing in Jesus” or “I’m not baptised and I’m worried I’m going to hell”) they come home with. It appears that these concerns are not raised to the department level and are referred to the church bodies (sounds just like how allegations of child abuse are handled in the Catholic church), thus hiding the many instances of inappropriate messages delivered by (unqualified to teach) religious people.

There is also a school where Jewish religious people are demanding “donations” from children or else the kids are not allowed to return (several parents expressed concern over this.. with little action to immediately terminate any arrangement with those religious groups). This effectively turns our secular schools into a fund raising activity as well as an indoctrination opportunity.

Anti-discrimination policies violated by religious teachings

It appears to me to be a violation of the department’s policies to be allowing some of the teachings of religions which contain anti-gay, anti-other religions, anti-non believer content with a clear message that they will be tortured for eternity just for being themselves or thinking differently from a 1500, 2000 or 3000 year old set of stories.

One can find ample evidence that the reason we have to have a policy on homophobia is thanks to religious prejudices. Imagine the position of a child who is gay (or who has gay parents) sitting in on a lesson on what biblical sin is, or a child who does not believe in God and told that (contrary to our justice system) their punishment will be torture and hell fire. Or just any child presented with the Orwellian notion that they are under constant surveillance and constant evaluation of thoughts for “thought crime”.
That’s to say nothing of the incest, mass murder, slavery, genocide and other barbaric concepts contained within the bible making it unsuitable study material to be presented to young impressionable children as if it were fact or a source of good morals.

Church is the appropriate venue

It’s fairly obvious that if parents wish their children to be indoctrinated as Christians then they have an obvious avenue: Church. As Muslims: the Mosque. As Jews: the Synagogue. That scripture is opt-out (an option which only became available part way through my experiences) rather than opt-in (with no teaching time filling the gap) is particularly worrying. Parents are faced with having their children sitting idle or else in the company of people filling their heads with Christian mythology presented as facts. I can’t imagine other religions getting as easy a ride either (the recent outrage over Scientology in schools and certainly I haven’t heard of Islamic/Hindi content in scripture provided alongside Christianity in every school). I certainly haven’t heard of any attempts to introduce a humanist or ancient Greek philosophical moral lessons.

Of little educational value

When I was a child and subjected to the local “Churchies” attempting to convert us, there was no attempt whatsoever to take an impartial stand, consider other religions or provide reasonable answers to childishly simple questions. It was also never varied: always a Christian viewpoint presented as fact. It was merely an opportunity to force the kids to go through the motions of Christianity (making kids say prayers, recite verses etc).

Given the completely unsubstantiated claims made (that even I as a young child could see) it seems somewhat at odds with our secular, rational, fact based based curriculum.

The classes presented absurdities (“If only you had enough faith you could walk on water” which as a child I actually took as something plausible for a while) through to the most abhorrent immoral lessons imaginable (“A father prepared to slaughter his son for god was a noble thing”). They were there to make stone age arguments from authority and to instil a guilt at the “thought crime” of doubting the patently unbelievable stories presented as fact in a government school.

The strong message was that God absolutely exists, doubting that is a sin, accepting Jesus is the only way to heaven and that eternal torture awaits those who have heard of Christianity and rejected it. This is a very damaging concept to be polluting the minds of children with and unlike other material in the syllabus: absolutely no evidence to back it up. Might as well teach alchemy rather than chemistry, astrology rather than astronomy.

Qualifications of religious people to teach children

From the reports of the real teachers the educational abilities of the scripture “teachers” are often rather poor. Classroom behaviour is not maintained at any sort of acceptable level with the teachers having to step in to keep the peace (perhaps because the students realise the ridiculousness of the material presented).

There’s also absolutely no reason for religion to be taught by unqualified religious types (who as recent news stories have shown have a rather bad track record with respect to child molestation) rather than as a general topic on religion (not taught from the viewpoint of one within the religion). If a broad topic on religion is to be taught in school it MUST be from outside the religion and by those qualified to teach children. To allow anything else is pure religious indoctrination, not education. That teachers are currently unable to voice any opinion on religion even to console distressed students (“no, actually you aren’t evil because you don’t believe in Jesus”, “you shouldn’t worry about being constantly watched 24/7″ or perhaps later on “the pope is wrong on condoms and that position has increased the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa”) and the scripture “teachers” can say whatever they like.

Replace scripture with real education

I would urge you to immediately discontinue the teaching of scripture in all schools, to be replaced with a subject with a broad curriculum and taught by real teachers. A secular based course in philosophy and moral discussion would be far more beneficial to developing an awareness of right and wrong. This could be a part of the civics and citizenship subject to be introduced in coming years.

regards,
Nathan Lee

High priest of the Atheists? More like word warrior..

The picture at top starts with a dig at Richard Dawkins:

Richard Dawkins – High Priest of the Atheists, and one of only two people to ever appear on the ABC’s “Q & A” who were more smug than host Tony Jones

I actually felt embarrassed that Richard was plonked amongst the group he was. Some slippery worms of politicians who had the most childish elusive answers and comebacks.
Sounds like Anthony’s just pissed that on his side of the religious the Jewish representative on the show that night was pretty vague and the Christian representative(s) downright embarrassing. Fielding certainly couldn’t give a straight answer as to whether he thought the world was less than 10,000 years old.

Family Guy on Creationists vs retarded intelligence.

But back to Anthony’s rant (I appreciate a good rant, especially when it’s in disagreement):

When people point out Nazis, Soviets, etc, then people like Richard Dawkins say that those atheists didn’t commit their atrocities in the name of atheism.

Dawkins is right in that atheism  “an absence of belief” does not provide any justification for atrocities. It’s like saying not believing in the Easter bunny would give me the arguments to justify me killing those that do believe in Easter Bunnies or justification for jumping off a building. Any justification for that has to come from somewhere else (either self made reasons or in the teachings of a political/religious viewpoint). I would also argue that without a belief in an afterlife: atheism provides a disincentive to lay down your life or jump into violence lest someone snuff out the one and only provable life we have.

God might tell you though
Not believing in a god doesn’t imply you have to kill those that do. Nor does it demand you force others to not believe (or kill if they refuse).
Let me think whether I could find justification for that sort of thing somewhere? Hmm…

Another swing and a miss for Biblical morality

Belief in another god might however provide reasons/justification if that god has supposedly told you in some book (or via some prophet) that non-believers need to die. There’s no book, list of sins, directives, moral suggestions or any such thing involved in simply “not believing in the fairy tales”.

Combining Atheism with Ideology to justify

There could be an atheistic viewpoint that the damage to society caused by religion was worth killing believers, but that would be justification found in utilitarian (greater good) philosophy, not atheism/not believing in itself.

The magic card from magic skygod religious book. Justify anything you want!

History lesson for Anthony
Anthony is also quite ignorant (or glossing over the realities) of history by the sounds of it (like most religious types who spend far too long reading bibles/torahs/qur’ans rather than anything useful).

Put it down, pick up another book, any book will do!

Atheism most definitely wasn’t the driving theology/philosophy of the Nazis, it was very much a Christian inspired thing if we want to get down to it.

Hitler the Christian

Hitler thought he was the chosen leader and was not an Atheist. The ever wise Vatican didn’t think he was an atheist either when it gave support back in the 1930s (oh, don’t worry, they realised that god’s first contact on earth wasn’t so faultless later.. but hey, it helped get rid of a bunch of their long despised Jewish followers).

From http://www.nobeliefs.com/speeches.htm we get an idea of Hitler’s religious views:

“My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice…. And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people…. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited.”
-Adolf Hitler, in his speech in Munich on 12 April 1922

Yep, ever the rampant Atheist there in old Adolf.. That’s how I identify myself as an atheist: by spouting on like a bible thumper about how much of a Christian I am. Although I guess maybe he was Atheist in private and a huge hypocrite like Mother Theresa (who did not buy the theology she was peddling to the poor and desperate).

The “Hitler was an atheist” and “nazis were atheists” is a Christian cop out because he was not only a very publicly declared Christian, but he used Christian theology to strengthen his own ideology (nothing adds that bit of marketing “wow!” like throwing God’s name around a bit). He also got approval from the church while he was doing his evil romp around the world. I’d go further and point out that god bears a lot of similarities with Hitler (authoritarian, genocidal dictator) except that Hitler only got to torture people up to the point when they die; God gets to extend that to “all eternity” if you fall on his wrong side.

Stalin and Mao the Atheist-ideologist butchers
Stalin/Mao however were more what you’d call atheists. But the justification for doing what they did was most definitely from something else (the old “Stalin had a moustache too (and Hitler too!!), was that to blame for killing people?” argument).

Socialism/communism which in effect created a living deity out of its heads of state (ask Chinese about the miracles and reverence toward Mao.. or go see their tombs) or an unquestioning belief in some prime directives a la “commandments of the party” type stuff.
Stalin and Mao viewed religion as weakening the authority of their regime and by the self serving rules of their regimes: it was just another threat. Just like higher education and the middle classes were a threat. Religions that have a head of the religion (e.g. exiled Tibetan leader, Catholic pope) are banned in their original form in China to this day. You can keep the religion if you ditch the leader nonsense is the Chinese view.

Killing off the “elite” under Mao had absolutely nothing to do with religious beliefs or not, it was just eliminating a threat to the communist movement. Just like clamping down on democracy protests and political activists is regarded as necessary under China’s current system: because it is a threat.

Piles of atoms
Anthony then strays into the topic of whether or not human beings are worthless if we don’t have a god watching over us at all times:

A genuine atheist ought to agree that there is neither anything sacred about a human being, nor any other living thing.  Thus, a living thing is simply a complex arrangement of a bunch of atoms or chemicals, as is a tennis ball, a tin of paint, or a laptop computer.

and:

“what is their justification for having a morality and a purpose?”  Why does a bunch of atoms (regardless of complexity) require a code of ethics and morality?

Define “sacred” as it is a bit of a bullshit word when used like this. If sacred means “belongs to god” then it’s meaningless, if sacred just means important: lots of things are important to lots of creatures without any idea of what god is. Food is important to everything from single celled organisms up to elephants. Is food sacred? Or are only things that can pick up a bible and switch off their proof centre of their brains?

I am not the centre of the universe

You are not a unique snowflake.

An atheist tends not to believe that the world was created specifically around the needs of themselves. They don’t believe that our sole purpose to hang around praising god until that god decides at some point to wipe out all life (again supposedly!) based on some rather poorly thought out morals that bear striking unenlightened resemblance to the rules men lived by in the barbaric time in which they were written.

Yes, we are just a complex arrangement of a bunch of atoms (but driven by some absolutely amazing biological processes). The insides of us are common amongst other animals (there’s no magic fairydust/god wound clock mechanism/soul keeping us going compared to them). Perhaps the author hasn’t poked their nose out of the bible long enough to hear an old saying “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.
Anthony: I’ll by your car for the sum of the raw components if you truly believe that anything is only worth what the smallest individual bits and the concept of value adding escapes you.

You might as well ask: why does a bunch of copper atoms need electricity passed through it? The answer is: it doesn’t, but if the bunch of atoms happens to be part of a light-bulb: then it can produce light/heat if it has it. Humans don’t need morals/laws so long as they’re happy with complete anarchy. Fortunately we’ve realised over time that we can achieve more if we have some laws (and collective agreement to stick to those laws) that stop people murdering you for food/sex/shelter. So the collective realisation of humanity is that with a bit of structure and some broad agreement to get along – the sum total of humanity can burn so much brighter than an anarchistic mess of individuals clawing over each other for basic needs.

So of course we’re more complicated than our atoms! Of course with a highly sophisticated brain we’ve developed the ability to reason (well, sometimes), so it’s part and parcel of being able to discuss, debate etc. that we would have communication and discussion of behaviour (aka “morals”). Or simply the lessons might be learned that if you often fight, steal, kill, rape etc: then your chances of survival are reduced simply through the process of “common sense karma” (e.g. piss enough people off: one will put you down permanently).

I really don’t know where to begin with how wrong the idea that conscious animals like humans would not use their brains to think without some belief in a god.

People have a brain, occasionally they use it.

One might ask the author as a believer, why, if your fate is so decided and you’re living at the whim of a universal dictator: you worry about doing anything at all if your life is so heavily influenced by a god.

Flip the switch you fool!

“Finally, I suspect that so-called atheists deep down aren’t really atheists at all.  Like most of us, I suspect they are agnostics.  They just lie at the atheistic end of the agnostic spectrum.  Likewise, deep down most God believers lie at the theistic end of that same spectrum.”

Atheist just means some variety of “without belief” not absolute denial (as religious people are used to). So it isn’t “in denial of god when faced with evidence”.
You can generally assume that Atheists = agnostic as the vast majority would be most welcome for evidence of a god. The religious have been dodging giving any proof for so many thousand years. Agnostic is a subset of Atheist. Difference with believers is that all that’s probably needed is some sort of evidence to sway an atheist/agnostic to accept that new piece of information; for the religious no amount of proof is required for any of their beliefs, they simply point at a cloud and say “see! God exists!”.

Can we vote God out?

I’d describe myself as Anti-theist. That is, I’m more than willing to accept some definitive proof (not walls leaking oil or cancer patients getting better after chemotherapy), but upon that realisation: I’m as opposed to supernatural authoritarian dictatorships as I am to Earthly authoritarian unquestionable dictatorships. It amazes me how people can want to fight for the right to vote, but accept that in the big picture (and with the notion of eternal torture if you disagree) they’re more than happy to have god in the picture. If we are to believe the religious texts: a consistently evil genocidal (more than genocidal, as all life was supposedly snuffed out by a global flood), murdering, eternal torturing (if we buy that there’s a Hell) sadistic being.

God's slaughterfest far outstrips the Devil. So who is the bad guy again?

If being god is put to a vote every few years and everyone has an opportunity: I might come around from my anti-theist position. But as there’s no even half way plausible proof as yet: I don’t have to worry really. I guess given the schizophrenic nature of the biblical god (old god = wrathful, new god: divided amongst father/son/holy spirit = schizophrenic) perhaps there already IS a voting, because without complete change of personality there’s no way to consolidate the stories of god.

So my dislike of the idea of a universal dictator doesn’t give me any justification for any earthly action, it’s just a particular position of thought. My experiences/views on speaking my mind or participating in debate might motivate me to talk about it (but not my being an atheist). My inability to just let illogical/irrational statements go unchecked might result in me speaking up (just like my view of fairness and views against violence might prompt me to break up a fight, as I did a few weeks back).

Fairness as a secular source for morality

As I am (I hope!) a decent human being and adhere to principles of fairness: I lack any drive to enforce my view on others via the sword or suicide vest (nor will I be likely to find any without the word of god and promises of supernatural rewards). So without need for reading the bible: we inherently know what is horrible/distasteful because it violates the concept of fairness.

Golden Rule in religion. Pity it generally conflicts with what the religion says.

If we wouldn’t want to put ourself in the other person’s shoes then we’ve got an answer as to how we judge morals.

Golden rule for Atheists.

We certainly don’t get them from biblical times (thankfully!), although the golden rule pops up in lots of religious texts in amongst the fluff and silly stuff.

Better off Ted: a step closer to "blobby" the meat blob.

In the article “Tuck into some soggy pork, straight from the lab” scientists have made the first draft of meat in a vat. We’ll take a leaf from Better off ted and nickname the lab grown meat “Blobby”. Blobby is a step closer to reality:

They have not tasted the product, but it is believed the artificial meat could be on sale within five years.

Mark Post, a professor of physiology at Eindhoven University, said: ”What we have at the moment is rather like wasted muscle tissue. We need to find ways of improving it by training it and stretching it, but we will get there.

”This product will be good for the environment and will reduce animal suffering. If it feels and tastes like meat, people will buy it.”

I mean people buy (and allegedly eat) the amusing named meat substitutes like: fake bacon (“facon”?)..

Mmmn.. Real bacony goodness it ain't!

fake tuna (“tuno” I kid you not)..

Just say no. Tuno is not tuna.

fake sausages (affectionately known as “fagsnags”?) and even tofu turkey (tofurky).

Tofu made to look like Turkey. Apparently one of the most horrible creations ever according to a vego friend.

But some are still not satisfied:

However, the Vegetarian Society said: ”How could you guarantee you were eating artificial flesh rather than flesh from an animal that had been slaughtered?”

Jesus some people are morons.

How do you know your organic carrot wasn’t used to stab a cute little bunny rabbit through the eye? Or your tofu used to smother kittens before it was stuck in the plastic wrapper? Or the organic tofu wasn’t created from soy beans grown on clear felled, slashed and burnt rainforest?
That’s right, you don’t magically know. But perhaps it is labelled as made in a lab vs “real” so you can tell and you have to trust that the standards are in place to ensure stuff isn’t mislabelled just like everything else. Just like Halal/Kosher are marked so that we know which meat came from cruelly-slaughtered-via-slit-throat-to-appease-barbaric-religious-beliefs animals vs non halal/kosher ones put down as quickly and painlessly as possible (don’t get me started on this concept!).

More likely people will largely ignore the ethical qualities would want to have non-grown in the lab stuff and there’ll be a push to give consumers the information about whether it was from a cow/pig/chook or from a lab. So perhaps for a while there there’ll be people buying burgers that have lab grown stuff snuck in there (thus an “all beef patty with extra ethics”) but isn’t it better regardless that SOME of the content not be from slaughtered animals? Let’s say you could cut down the actual slaughter count for McDonalds to half current numbers? Isn’t that a good thing?

And that old crackpot Prince Charles:

The breakthrough will concern the anti-GM lobby. Prince Charles, a fierce opponent of genetically modified food, said last week that people were creating problems by ”treating food as an easy commodity rather than a precious gift from nature”.

Believes in some good stuff, but a load of garbage (homoeopathy for instance). Take any statement with a spoonful of highly diluted tincture of crap.

I suppose he’d know about easy commodities, being the leftover of the inbred concept of royalty who are born and instantly gifted with a taxpayer funded (previously serf served) life of.. well.. royalty.
Yes, food is an easy commodity: that’s part of the way we’ve come to drag ourselves out of constantly foraging/hunting/preparing food enough to support pale, white collar professions that revolve around arranging bytes on computers into ever more complicated ways.

Anyhow, there are a number of advantages I think of separating out the “meat” from the rest of the cow. Parasitic infections (e.g. ticks/lice/worms), unintended contamination (e.g. cow drinks glowing green nuclear waste but doesn’t get super-cow powers or perhaps gets treated/dipped with something nasty) could be kept under control better when the stuff is just raw inputs into a big conveyor belt in a lab type set-up.

Chemicals/nutrients in.. Meat out. Just without the having to kill something in between.

Anyhow if this grown in a lab version means we can dispense with piling as many animals in stinking cages their whole, short, miserable lives: then I’m all for it.

Left vs Right mindset on lots and lots of issues.

Though I’m a sucker for information visualisation I should disclose. Data and concepts such as this can (and should) be interesting.

As an aside, here’s a TED talk showing some pretty funky visualisation:

I posted that up earlier as one of my “ten wow must see TED videos“.

This weekend we had sky-writing (more on that another time), showing that the church funds scammeddonated for this purpose are certainly not helping anyone in need.* Wonder how many people could have been fed, watered, clothed or vaccinated? The dollars involved in sky-writing make my contributions to (genuine and secular) charities e.g. Oxfam, Fred Hollows foundation etc (By all means go donate too!) look trivial. I wonder if instead of spending money fixing people’s eyes Fred Hollows would prefer the dollars collected to go to writing up “Fred Hollows = vision” in sky writing.

I’d wonder why God can’t just settle this once and for all without the need for hiring planes to do what an almighty all powerful being could do with the snap of the fingers. Pull that burning bush out of storage and wave it around the sky if nothing else.

Jesus couldn't just do this himself? Or at least turn the wind down a bit, because it was gone in a matter of minutes.

*Unless your need was to have the sky drawn on for the briefest of moments before the wind blew it away.

The goal of the campaign was to encourage discussion on a mythical figure that has most certainly been discussed ad nauseam for, oh, about two thousand years or so with no conclusive results and no evidence forthcoming to back up the wild supernatural claims. Certainly no need for millions of dollars to be spent on the hope of converting some “cynical Sydney-siders”.

Jesus isn’t about life

I’d have to question whether the campaign knows anything about Jesus. Saying Jesus was all about life is kinda silly when the whole Jesus concept is “God creates son to be sacrificed so that said god will be able to forgive mankind for various accumulated sins”.

The Jesus mythology is pretty clear that the whole point is blood sacrifice (e.g. DEATH): without the end of crucifixion there is no life-death-rebirth type mythology. Sure you can gloss over this and claim that he died for humanity to live, but it’s some pretty spectacular doublespeak to get to “all about life” from “all about death”.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the symbol of Christianity a tortured guy nailed to a cross?

Jesus: all about death. Nailed it!

Doesn’t look like much of a life eh?

Childish (and child targetting) posters making ridiculous claims

Check out some of the posters here (warning 3.2 meg PDF): here.

Let’s look at the claimed creation of a giant chair.

Chairs made by Jesus?

The poster thanks Jesus for it. Hmm.. Funny, because I found this little picture that shows a bunch of PEOPLE making this.

The real creators of the giant chairs

Funny, I don’t see Jesus in there or maybe he’s running the crane.

The real creator is Giancarlo Neri and the piece is called “The Writer”. Of the things claimed as inspiration I didn’t read anything about Jesus either (see here for a PDF archive of a tonne of articles on the work). There’s no mention of the word Jesus and one reference to “my god it’s vast”.
From an article on it:

Neri calls the design a “monument to the loneliness of writing” but says he hopes people in London will make of it what they will.

No dedication to Jesus there. But I guess the Bible Society made an ad of it to promote their religion without any basis. *shrug*

Another “bizarre” one mentioned in a newspaper article thanks jesus for hot chips: have these people never been into the local fish and chips shop? It sure as shit isn’t Jesus accumulating oil burns over the deep fry vats.

Then there’s one claiming Jesus created parrots (I’m a little fuzzy, but I don’t remember any mention of Jesus being around until long after genesis).

Poor evolution gets screwed again. This time outside the USA for a change.

So can just anyone claim natural processes as their own without a shred of scientific basis? I’d like to claim rights to the natural process of cow digestion so that I can claim royalties every time the churches put out future religious bullshit. Since my taxes are subsidising this sort of rubbish, it’s only fair I get my cut.

Then there’s the one I really think crosses (boom-tish) a line  (or two) that shouldn’t be in a public place directed at children. The R.I.P. cartoon one. Here it is:

Some disclaimers missing from this. Oh, and evidence.

Clearly aimed at children (or those of a childish mind I guess) and I think a pretty clear violation of the relevant advertising/marketing code for Children.

Firstly: there’s absolutely zero proof that there’s an afterlife. None. Zip. Zero. If this was a medical product making claims about care it’d need disclaimers and hard evidence.

Secondly: Substitute anyone’s name in there and it would have equal proof. If Christianity can claim it with no proof, why not (other) corporations?

Ronald McDonald looking after the dead. Just as much proof and just as misleading.

Muslims could run an identical ad thanking Allah or Mohammed for looking after their dead mother. Scientology could thank Xenu or thetan alien spirits whatever it is they believe in.

But perhaps more accurate would be the following (which falls within the findings of effectiveness of prayer studies e.g. like this one showing prayer not only doesn’t aid recovery, actually made recovery statistics worse):

Proof that praying really doesn't work that well.

Or perhaps if they’re going to claim parrots and other man made or biological things as the realm of things to thank Jesus for:

Also fair to say huh? Thanks Jesus for cancer, AIDS, pig flu, poor eyesight, birth defects etc.

Of course I’m forgetting the golden rules of this “God” concept which is:

• responsible for all good, even if you did it yourself
• testing your faith or a deserved punishment if bad stuff happens

Anyhow, I lodged a complaint with the advertising standards bureau because I think these ads breach a number of the standards on advertising for children. We’ll see how that goes. If making any and all unfounded claims to promote the Jesus corporation is fine with them then what’s to stop other businesses from doing so (assuming Religion doesn’t magically deserve an exemption to the rules about deceptive advertising and misleading children targeted information).

If you’re going to productise Jesus then just like other product advertisement you can’t make unfounded claims. Keep it nicely contained in that little book of fairy-tales and it isn’t as much of an issue.

Other links:

• Jesus about life (parody site as the idiots forgot to register the .com)
• The official site is here

Rekha : An inspiring little girl from India (image ABCNews.go.com)

In the past she had been working with her family to keep food on the table before a UNICEF sponsored program gave her an opportunity to get an education:

Like her father, she helped to support her family by rolling a type of cigarette called beedi. Then two years ago, a government non-profit program plucked her from a life of child labour to enrol her in special school.

Along with learning the standard classes, Rekha and dozens of other former child labourers were also taught leadership skills. The school, part of a UNICEF program, was free of charge so that families would not remove children from the program due to cost.

Nothing wrong with kids working a bit to help the family, learn some skills, earn some money, work ethics etc but getting stuck into harsh factory conditions (assuming that’s the case here) isn’t really teaching the kids anything other than misery and leaving them with no choices.

When I was little I got stuffed into spiderweb filled crawl spaces on weekends to lay electrical cable and hammer in cable clips (and the odd fingernail) onto electrical cables or digging trenches to earn my pocket money. Difference is that that was one day (perhaps rarely two days) a week rather than 12+ hours a day/7 days a week and I went to school monday to friday. That and as a spoilt westerner: my childhood version of “tough work” is nothing compared to what the kids in India or africa put up with.. As I’m sure my Father occasionally pointed out.

In Rekha’s case the work she was doing has been blasted for both the working conditions and the toxic nature of the substance they’re handling. A CNN article describes the problem:

Handling burley tobacco leaves without gloves, in unwashed clothes and rarely bathing, these children can absorb the same amount of nicotine in one day of harvesting that they would from smoking 50 cigarettes.

So a necessary part of any childhood, education is the key to avoid falling into an endless cycle of poverty or unhealthy work (including forcing the next generation and the next into child labour as well). This is because with education comes a much wider range of possible futures, as was the case with little  Rekha:

It was from these leadership classes that Rekha gained the strength to defy her family, her village and change her future. And with this decision, she inspired a chain reaction among her friends and throughout her village.

Good on her, I hope she inspires many others to refuse to be “promised”, bought, traded or sold. Back in India’s history books an old skinny guy named Ghandi had a pretty massive impact through quiet refusal to do things, so it’s not like her actions are without precedence.

I think the days of people treated as bargaining chips or livestock should fade into dim memories, documented and discarded from acceptable practice. Perhaps Rekha’s given the world a bit of a much needed nudge in that direction.

Well, that’s not completely accurate, but it is roughly along the lines of “The Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy” in which the dilemma for vegetarians is solved by genetically engineering a creature who wants to be eaten or else feels pain.

In this NewScientist article: “Pain free animals could take suffering out of farming” there’s some discussion of how various findings could be used to lessen the discomfort of farmed animals. So not quite “animals that want to be eaten”, but animals that don’t so much care about pain.

I think the better solution is to step back from the ultra-packed in “factory farming” that seems to be the norm in the USA and parts of Europe and let the poor animals roam around a bit. I grew up in a rural area and I’d have to say any animals I came across appeared to have a pretty good existence:

• nice big open paddocks for the cows or long sheds for the chickens
• farmers keeping away predators and providing healthcare (sounds better than the deal most US citizens have currently)

With modern slaughtering techniques there’s an attempt to minimise the pain/discomfort at the end of the animal’s life, well, except for the barbaric Jewish and Muslim “halal” and “kosher” slaughter.
(Start religious rant)Those religious slaughter techniques are nearly as barbaric today as they were thousands of years back. Still not sure why animals have to continue to have their throats cut and bleed to death slowly today when they could just get the bolt gun to the head (as per the more humane “normal” slaughtering technique). All because some people think that their superstition needs extra suffering to appease some sky god.
(end rant)

I guess the ultimate would be growing meat in a vat though. I mean if it doesn’t have a brain or nervous system then it probably can’t really be in a state of pain as per any reasonable definition. Or perhaps we could reduce the number of farm animals via some sort of human recycling a la the movie “Soylent Green”.

Soylent green.. is PEOPLE!

After all if we’re going to say it’s ok to eat other animals, we should at least be fair about things right?

Before I talk about the contents, which are in part to do with the need for ethics in global financial terms, let’s just look at some pictures of the pope. First up signing this papal sheet:

The pope demonstrating modest attire

Let’s count the less than humble items:

• gold pen
• gold ring
• gold glasses
• gold crucifix (two if you count his minder there)

I mean if I had a higher resolution pic of the ring I’d bet it’s this one:

Close up of the ring? Would not surprise me!

Maybe the previous pope was less gold obsessed:

Previous Pope's example: a throne of gold

Nope.. Thar be a lot o’ gold on a chair for someone humbled in the presence of God.

Now tell me, for a man talking about charity and social ethics and preaching about the charitable nature of Jesus: why all the bling? Even if (and I highly doubt it given the vast vast amounts of cash the Catholic church has) the gold is fake or just painted on – does it really set a good example to surround yourself by gold when preaching against greed?

Is it ethical for a religious leader, living off the charity of followers, preaching about social responsibility to be signing a call to arms for charity with a mont blanc pen (let’s say it is an entry level one that only costs 3-400 bucks eh?) that if sold could immunise a whole villiage and provide education for little kiddies.

How much is that gold cross worth?

I mean come on pope: practice at least a little of what you preach eh?

As for the content of his little essay: all I can say is an awful lot of talk about truth and charity for an organisation based completely around lies and wasting people’s charitable donations on gold ornaments, red carpets and palaces.

Disclosure requirements

I think this idea raises some important questions about the need for journalistic standards among bloggers. Disclosure of payment for mentions/reviews etc is very important from an ethical standpoint and to avoid destroying reader confidence in the blogger.

I remember being approached a few years back to promote an enterprise software product by the marketing firm (“we have a small budget to spend on marketing, so we’re looking at blogging to promote our product”). I politely refused because I knew nothing about it and would be polluting the things I wanted to talk about with ad postings indistinguishable from the normal content. Something akin to a technique I’ve noticed on sporting and radio broadcasts where the hosts of the program segue headlong into pimping a product.

So if someone was going to go down the path of pay per post: they’d better clearly disclose that that’s what they’re doing.  Otherwise they’re burning credibility for dollars.

The spam equivalence

People don’t want to be tricked into receiving ad content for the same reason they dislike spam. Spam is advertising trying to sneak into your brain via donning the clothing of meaningful content in your inbox for those people too silly to get a gmail address. One could argue that all advertising is this really, but the majority of advertising is forced to play by the rules: ads on tv are generally fairly easy to separate from shows, ads in magazines are forced to be different enough from content (e.g. the pretend article ones have a notice along the top) and web ads are generally any element on the page that’s macromedia flash animations of monkeys or anything poker related.

Polluting the social networking sphere is most definitely on the minds of advertisers. When the pollution is done through content creators themselves (rather than banner ads) they know very well that it becomes harder to tune out. So to be fair to readers/viewers the best idea would be to ensure that a blurring of the normal and advertising content does not occur.

The TV show in question: review

Now onto “Lie to me” the TV show. Disclaimer: I didn’t receive payment for this blog although I’d very much like to.

It’s produced by Fox to round out their offerings with a fictional show about lies. This is to go nicely with that prick Bill O’Reilly’s show (which if you haven’t seen it is pretty much non stop lies and bullshit insane bullying but thankfully occasionally cops a spanking).

I think it’s an interesting show, good set of actors and original spin on the “detective” genre. Unlike other attempts at “incredibly insightful detective” series this one doesn’t stoop immediately to “complete and utter bullshit” like say ones involving psychic powers, number crunching, talking to ghosts etc etc and appears based on something real from law enforcement.

The story is based around a lead guy (Tim Roth as Dr Cal Lightman) who is a world famous facial and body expressions/microexpression reading ninja who naturally trained deep in the jungles of Indonesia/deserts of Morocco before some sort of colossal cock up resulting in his fall from grace at a government agency (allowing him to start a very expensive consultancy firm doing more of the readings that presumably lead to the big mess in the first place). These microexpressions are involuntary movements of various muscles in the face or other body language. Think a cheese lite version of David coruso (sans sunglasses) meets House with a tiny dash of Californication (the ever so mature father daughter relationship).

Some things they do well in the series so far:

• They pour scorn on lie detectors which appear useless
• they emphasise the notion that different people have different types of cues to pick up on for lies
• they show off some technology to do voice stress analysis (from my experience: insurance companies are starting to integrate this into their call centres)
• they’ve obviously spent a lot of time getting the actors to work on their expressions
• Not too much “Pan right and pull back. Stop. Enhance 34 to 46″ video gimmickry (bonus points for anyone who knows where that is from?)

On the idea of microexpressions, try a test here to see how you go: http://www.cio.com/article/facial-expressions-test. There’s something similar that pops up in the series in the first or second episode. There’s a healthy spattering of footage of politicians and celebrities lying (according to the microexpressions anyhow). I’ve watched a documentary on these microexpressions in the past (again picking on politicians: in particular Bill Clinton) and it seemed consistant with what I remember of that.

Anyhow, it’s a series I’ll watch more of and I didn’t get paid to say anything good about it. Although if anyone wants to send me money now that I’ve plugged the show, by all means.