So there was the big ‘hoo-haa’ the last couple of weeks over the ‘There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life’ buses in the UK put on by British Humanist Association. Well in all likelihood we’ll be seeing something similar in Vancouver. Two humanist groups are trying to get different non/anti religious messages on public transportation.

There’s already been a religious response to the UK campaign here and I’m sure the more humanist propaganda goes up more religious propaganda will follow. And where exactly will this get us?! What is the bloody point?! What effect is there of seeing these kind of signs? Either you self-congratulatorily smirk with having been on the right side of things, or you get really, really annoyed. One thing they will certainly not do is convince anyone of the opposing view of anything other than they ought to get a stress ball and take a different route to work.

The Humanist Association of Canada wants to send the message that “there is a real and viable alternative to religion”. Who doesn’t know this? Will anyone be surprised to find out that it’s possible to live a happy life not believing in God?

How do you distinguish between messages that are informational and edify and ones that are simply polemical propaganda? I guess it’s a fine line sometimes. But with these campaigns I think it’s pretty clear and I hope they all just go away.

Post popped up on my RSS feed that linked to Flint Journal article noting some scientists that are saying that the globe isn’t warming;

“The earth’s temperature peaked in 1998. It’s been falling ever since; it dropped dramatically in 2007 and got worse in 2008, when temperatures touched 1980 levels.”

and may in fact be cooling…a lot;

“Based on core samples from Russia’s Vostok Station in Antarctica, we now know earth’s atmosphere and temperature for the last 420,000 years. This evidence suggests that the 12,000 years of warmth we call the Holocene period is over.
Apparently, we’re headed into an ice age of about 100,000 years — give or take. ”

Now I’m confused.

Either way I’ve always been skeptical of any claims to the reasons behind global climate change or even what the global climate change actually is as there is at least enough evidence to show that smart people don’t really understand what’s going on yet. There does seem to be credible differences of opinion. Of course there is the popular opinion but I don’t just believe everything I see on TV. I think there’s good reason to remain open minded about these things and to stay …cool. I just wish people didn’t treat these things as fact when I know full well what they base it on. Sure treat it as something likely, probable, a good explanation for observation…but not fact.

PETA’s idea to rebrand fish as ’sea kittens’ to influence peoples perception of fish has had me chuckling all day. Of course I’m saddened by the lack of reason and logic involved in the campaign but beyond the silliness of the idea itself, just the thought that there were some very passionate, enthusiastic people sitting around having very serious meetings about this cracks me up. Inspired me to doodle…

Reminds me of another doodle I did a few years back.

I bought a 1TB external drive to push all my photo’s on to as they had taken up almost all of one of the 180GB partitions on a drive. Once the partition was cleaned off onto it I put Windows 7 Ultimate beta, which I’d struggled to get my hands on back on Fri/Sat when I thought there was only going to be 2.5million product keys given out which is no longer the case.

I’m in love. The installation was beautiful. You don’t have very much to do and there really isn’t anything that might confuse the neophyte or scare you as it does it’s thing. After working with it for a few hours installing a few programs, watching some video and TV, fixing a driver issue, etc, I can say that I’m as excited about Windows 7 as I was when I first heard about it. It’s living up to it’s hype. I’m not sure how it’s like Apple at all (as I’ve heard some say) and although it’s definitely part of the evolution for which Vista was a precursor It’s definitely an improvement enough in most every area that there’s no disapointment or let-down in it. I may even appreciate Vista a bit more…no scratch that. I just want to hurry up and have a real Windows 7 system.

I love the new taskbar, the peek, the aero UI, where things are and navigational layout, the troubleshooting and helps and auto fix attempts are all valiant, new media center and player,…it’s all good so far. The one beta bug I had concerning an audio driver was resolved fairly easily.

If this is the harbinger of things to come for Windows the future is looking bright at this point.

I think a great little post by Melinda at Stand to Reason noting a couple of sillier common criticisms of Christianity based on ignorance of the tradition and beliefs.