Monday, February 26, 2007

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

Non-Sequitur http://www.gocomics.com/nonsequitur/2007/02/25/
Hat tip to Bad Astronomy.
--  From: 	The Eternal Gaijin 	Lost Somewhere in Wandsworth, London  	"Words Cannot Describe What I Am About To Tell You."

Winding down from work I've been off for a couple of days then on for a couple, then off for a couple more

The last of our decorating is now finished and I'm doing the touch ups. Next on the list is to sort out the unaccompanied air freight.
Last night however wasn't a complete something on my list night. I hooked a train out ot Ashford, Kent and caught up with friend JDF, who I hadn't seen since our trip to the UK in February two years ago. It was good to sit down, joke, and generally catch up on things from jobs to mutual friends still in Japan. And of course fatherhood. About 11 months back friend JDF joined the ranks of the breeders (hooray, a legally recognized marriage in Washington. No wait. He's been married for 8 years or so. Never mind, he'd have been annulled years ago) Anyway, he and his wife made a Mini-me.
Things are going well with him, despite the sleepless nights and stuff like that. I do like that fact that with his new job he uses expressions like 'on an op' as if it didn't sound like some serious-ass 'Gitmo shit. Things have changed since the good ol' days teaching English (or whatever language they speak in the UK) in Tokyo and Kawasaki.
A couple of days ago I caught up with friend KP as well. He's a fair bit different to me. Wheeler-dealer, connected throughout The City, business-oriented and pretty well off.
Me? Opposite all of that and you'll see what I mean.
The problem of meeting a friend in a pub: it's really hard to recount what you talked about. Indeed, outside of a few swirling images, snippets of conversation and a generally warm fuzzy feeling there is little to pass on.
Beer. Not just for breakfast any more.

Stop! It's Hovind time. Doo do do doo.

Dispatches from The Culture Wars has a post with some great YouTube links to everyone's favourite PhD in Flintstone Paleontology, 'Dr' Kent Hovind.
So for our Hovind-a-palooza.
Dispatches: http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/02/youtube_gems_kent_hovind.php
Carl Sagan vs Kent Hovind on the Speed of Light


Someone went through Hovind's age of the earth bullshit


My favourite Ali G. bit ever:


Somehow, Matt at Pooflingers managed to sit through all of Hovind's bovine backside extrusions and come up with the Hovind Files. I really don't know how the fuck he did it. Surely there should be an Order of Canada or US Medal of Freedom or something else for doing it. Clearly the bravest man on the web.

WWGWBD

A link from Boing Boing: And that's how the world got to be here.
Just one of those True-cause-it's-funny things.
--  From: 	The Eternal Gaijin 	Lost Somewhere in Wandsworth, London  	"Words Cannot Describe What I Am About To Tell You."

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Catholic/Anglican Reconciliation

Last week I was walking along somewhere in town when I saw an interesting headline on The Times front page.
Churches back plan to unite under Pope
Which got me to thinking about Carol Pope. But I thought that High School Confidential wasn't a big enough hit in Canterbury to really warrant this kind of sea change.
And of course it couldn't really mean uniting the Catholic Churches under the Pope because, well, I'll just say 'Duh..'
So I bought the paper. (a radical step in a city where approaching the station means getting a small Malaysian rain forest's worth of free newspapers. Most of the main papers have a 'Lite' version they chuck at you on the way in and out of the Tube.)
And it turns out that some guess I had about the headline was right.
Anglican and Catholic bishops have agreed to a plan in 42 pages that would re-unite the Anglican Communion (which is the least 'reformed' of all the Protestant denominations coming out of the Reformation) with the Catholic Church under the Pope.
And what you may ask is behind this. Let's see what the article has to say:

The Statement, leaked to The Times is being considered by the Vatican, where Catholic bishops are preparing a formal response.
It comes as the archbishops who lead the 38 provinces of the Anglican Communion meet in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in an attempt to avoid schism over gay ordination and other liberal doctrines that have taken hold in parts of the Western Church.
[snip]
Were this week's discussions to lead to a split between liberals and conservatives, many of the former objections in Rome to a reunion with Anglican conservatives would disappear. Many of those Anglicans who object most strongly to gay ordination of women priests.


Okay, so that's really about it isn't it. Part of the final decision that would bring and end to the split that Henry VIII started would be the gays. The gays...Woo, there coming to get you. It rubs off on you, you know.
I have to admit that the page 15 editorial on the issue called 'Bitter Fudge' made me smirk.


Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Doonesbury nails it again.

Sunni vs Shia vs Hightower
<http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/index.html?uc_full_date=20070218>

--
From:
The Eternal Gaijin
Lost Somewhere in Wandsworth, London

"Words Cannot Describe What I Am About To Tell You."

Once again, mixed feelings

HT to Dispatches from the Culture War Link
<http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches>

Ernst Zundel has been sentenced to 5 years in jail in Germany for
Holocaust Denial. Link to Dispatches Post
<http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/02/holocaust_denier_gets_5_years.php>
Again, I'm left with mixed feelings. I won't miss him. I wasn't upset
when he got the boot out of Canada; I don't really support these sorts
of laws.
To paraphrase the once funny Dennis Miller: Is it fair to have these
people screaming this hateful bile anywhere they like? Sure, because
when you can hear them, you know where the fuck they are.

--
From:
The Eternal Gaijin
Lost Somewhere in Wandsworth, London

"Words Cannot Describe What I Am About To Tell You."

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

All About My Pets

A little link love to Justin and his blog.

Also Sprach Zarathrustra

Okay, now this is kinda strange...Article Link
Over at the World Net Daily there's a great headline:

Research: God did speak world into existence

Okay, so there's a science student in Kentucky who says that he can
scientifically prove that god spoke the world into existence.
To quote:

"If God spoke everything into existence as the Genesis record proposes, then we should be able to scientifically prove that the construction of everything in the universe begins with a) the Holy Spirit (magnetic field); b) Light (an electric field); and c) that Light can be created by a sonic influence or sound," Samuel J. Hunt writes on his website.
Now the first thing that I don't understand is that the Holy Spirit is a magnetic field. Does that mean that the little kitten saying "Hang in There!" holding my hydro bill to the fridge is imbued of the Holy Spirit?

"There are several documented and currently taught laboratory experiments that accurately portray the events in Genesis in sequential order, the most important being that of sonoluminescence," he wrote.
That, he described to WND, is the circumstance in which sending a sonic signal into bubbles in a fluid causes the bubbles to collapse and they release photons, or create light.

Sonoluminescence?!? Okay a little Googling tells me that it's real and even has a Wikipedia entry. Who knew that? Okay now this actually brings about a couple of problems then...
1) Fiat Lux means Let There be Ultraviolet for About 35 Picoseconds.
2) Theologically, this is God:

Fluid Mechanics

The dynamics of the motion of the bubble is characterized to a first approximation by the Rayleigh-Plesset equation

R\ddot{R}+\frac{3}{2}\dot{R}^{2}=\frac{1}{\rho}\left(p_g-P_0-P(t)-4\eta\frac{\dot{R}}{R}-
\frac{2\gamma}{R}\right).

This is an approximate equation that is derived from the compressible Navier-Stokes equations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navier-Stokes_equations), and describes the motion of
the radius of the bubble /R/ as a function of time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time)/t/. Here, η is the viscosity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viscosity), /p/ the pressure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure), and γ the surface tension (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_tension). This equation, though approximate, has been shown to give good estimates on the motion of the bubble under the acoustically (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustics) driven pressure collapse of the bubble.

Things that make you go Hmmm. Indeed.
So what do this student's teachers think?

"My professors think my application of accepted laws and theories may bend the rules a bit, but the ideas are thought-provoking and progressive," he said.

[snip]

"Some of my teachers are like, 'That's complete hogwash,'" he said, "while others say, 'That's pretty interesting.'"

Somehow, I think I know where some of the teachers are going with this.
So why does he want to do this?

His goal is to bring a unity to the Christian community, "just like the founders of our nation expected and wanted from the Constitution."

The documentation of his processes, Hunt believes, could end debate.

"People want to know the truth, to have something to stand on that's not
trickery and deceit," he said. "This gives people something real to
touch, hang on to."

Hmmm. Only if I could buy a book or something to find out a bit more.

The outline, available at scienceprovescreation.com, already has sold more than 1,700 copies.

Oh, yeah. There's a book for sale.

So if you can prove it mathematically, is it actually God?

--
From:
The Eternal Gaijin
Lost Somewhere in Wandsworth, London

"Words Cannot Describe What I Am About To Tell You."

Monday, February 12, 2007

I knew it. Everyone knew it. Dogs know it.

27 million days a year in the UK are missed due to booze. I know this is
anecdotal evidence but I sure as hell thought it would be a bit higher
than that. I mean just judging by the trains every Monday.
Link: The Sun <http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007060590,00.html>

--
From:
The Eternal Gaijin
Lost Somewhere in Wandsworth, London

"Words Cannot Describe What I Am About To Tell You."

Hey Boing Boing found it too.

Link to Boing Boing's article on the Washington state ballot initiative
requiring married couples to have children.

--
From:
The Eternal Gaijin
Lost Somewhere in Wandsworth, London

"Words Cannot Describe What I Am About To Tell You."

Psychic Musem

From Fark (http://www.fark.com)
How do you top this headline?
Psychic Museum Closes Due to Unforseen Circumstances
Link to The Register

--
From:
The Eternal Gaijin
Lost Somewhere in Wandsworth, London

"Words Cannot Describe What I Am About To Tell You."

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Wash. initiative would require married couples to have kids

I found this somewhere along the lines. I can't remember how or when now. It was a
couple of days ago and I was drunk a lot.
It was really interesting that someone would finally come along and take
all those whackadoodles at their word. I've been saying that there are
two things that would be the logical extension of the marriage debate:
1) if marriage is about bringing a man and a woman together to have
children for the glory of God (I can't remember who I heard say that
little tidbit) then that would bar my wife and I, seniors, the
infertile, the impotent and so on. 2) If gay marriage devalues marriage
then divorce does a much better job of doing that so divorce has got to go.

So the text and commentary:

An initiative filed by proponents of same-sex marriage would require heterosexual couples to have kids within three years or else have their marriage annulled. Initiative 957 was filed by the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance. That group was formed last summer after the state Supreme Court upheld Washington's ban on same-sex marriage. Under the initiative, marriage would be limited to men and women who are able to have children. Couples would be required to prove they can have children in order to get a marriage license, and if they did not have children
within three years, their marriage would be subject to annulment.

An interesting idea. It really does follow the logic of the Theocratic Conservatives in the States and spilling over into Canada. It smacks of a wholesale buy-in of the logic of mariage. But it's a logic that the Theo-cons themselves don't see. They would never step in to ban divorce
-- too big an infringement on their god given rights...or somesuch.

All other marriages would be defined as "unrecognized" and people in those marriages would be ineligible to receive any marriage benefits.

"For many years, social conservatives have claimed that marriage exists solely for the purpose of procreation ... The time has come for these conservatives to be dosed with their own medicine," said WA-DOMA organizer Gregory Gadow in a printed statement. "If same-sex couples should be barred from marriage because they can not have children together, it follows that all couples who cannot or will not have children together should equally be barred from marriage."

Supporters must gather more than 224,000 valid signatures by July 6 to put the initiative on the November ballot.

Opponents say the measure is another attack on traditional marriage, but supporters say the move is needed to have a discussion on the high court ruling.


The thing I like here at the end is that this is also an attack on traditional marriage. By going along with what people say you can also attack them. Now that's some sneaky, shifty gay agenda...

--
From:
The Eternal Gaijin
Lost Somewhere in Wandsworth, London

"Words Cannot Describe What I Am About To Tell You."

Saturday, February 10, 2007

The God FAQ

Here are the final comments available from the God FAQ
<http://www.400monkeys.com/God/>.

--
From:
The Eternal Gaijin
Lost Somewhere in Wandsworth, London

"Words Cannot Describe What I Am About To Tell You."

So I'm over at Bad Astronomy

I read Bad Astronomy <http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog>
occasionally. Phil Plait is one of the rock stars of the Skeptic world.
He's like...okay I don't really have a handle on the music scene
anymore. He's not going to get mobbed at TAM to the same level as the
Mythbusters, but he'll have a crowd around him. Friend DEG recently was
at TAM; I was painting the living room getting the flat ready to rent.
He played poker with Plait; I read the BABlog.
Anyway, my minor gakkari aside, Plait in this post links to a YouTube
Clip from the Al Murray show featuring Buzz Aldrin.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/BadAstronomyBlog/~3/88195512/
Do check it out. It's got its funny moments.
And if the HTML is correct in this bit, I'll have a link to Aldrin
punching that aho in the chin. Look up the word 'aho' at Jim Breen's
online dictionary <http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/%7Ejwb/wwwjdic.html>.
Use the second definition. You'll agree.



Oh and there's Plait on the Penn Jillette show here
<http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Er/BadAstronomyBlog/%7E3/87552352/>.

--
From:
The Eternal Gaijin
Lost Somewhere in Wandsworth, London

"Words Cannot Describe What I Am About To Tell You."

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

London Video

In the absence of any particular nonsense about Scientology and after having spent the weekend doing DIY, I'm just going to post this.



You know, that seemed longer when I recorded it...
Oh well.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Still pining for my wife, but showing signs of life

Ken's getting a bit more animated. Mostly so he can get himself trouble. Or on my nerves. It's darker than it looked on the camera, but I'll post it anyway. I don't know if my youTube account has a space limit. I'll find out eventually.

So the countdown is on. I leave the UK on the 2nd of March and arrive in Japan on 10 Mar. Just to complete the circle of life that's 13 years to the day after I first arrived in Japan. So I will have the exact same visa day as I did for the first 9 years I spent there.
How do you like that?
While there I'm hoping to post a few videos a week to give an idea of what's up in the Okamoto area and Osaka in general. Stay tuned.