…here's a whosit

I received the MS Society’s sponsorship pack for the Gong Ride, yesterday. Instead of having to chase them up, like I did last year, it was delivered fairly promptly this time.

So… people who want to deal in cash, or who are in the neighbourhood, can now give me money knowing I’m officially a fundraiser for the MS Society and in particular for the Gong Ride. Otherwise, you could also use the widget on the sidebar and just do it all online. It’s easy and you know it’s a good cause. Every donation about $2 is tax-deductable, as well.

I woke up this morning with a cramp in my right calf. I’d had a mountain-climbing dream – not unusual, considering I’d watch the Tour climb the Tourmalet last night.

It was my usual route, more or less. I’m on the far north coast; somehow, after leaving home, I’m riding past features like Herklott’s corner and then through terrain like the red dirt hills around Rosebank, with the cuttings along the road side.

I end up in what’s obviously an analogue of the road to Minyon Falls, but this road winds along a river up to hot springs. There’s a lookout and camping area most of the way up with walking/mountain-biking trails down to the river bed. If you’re adventurous, you can bush-bash your way up to ski slopes on the very top. The road itself ends on a plateau, again with hiking trails up to the top and the ski slopes.

Somehow there’s a back route – via roads heading north and around nearer to Murwillumbah – that end up at the slopes themselves and I’ve dreamed about taking Danya that route. On the way there is an impressive mountain climb that you can bypass or add into the route if you feel fit enough.

It’s an impressive array of details for me, and interesting that I’ve cycled the same terrain in several dreams over a few years, I guess. I’ve never bothered to try and capture the details before, but it’s always familiar territory I’m cycling; I’m going back to the same region each time.

There’s obvious analogues to real territory; Minyon Falls and Rosebank, as I said, but the plateau and the snowfields feel like the walk up to the snow lichen, and I can see the Smith Creek climb in the mountain climb, as well as the tunnel road in its winding nature. There’s also elements of Thredbo and the road to Charlotte’s Pass in there, and the closed in canyon of the Wanganui gorge, but I don’t know about the hot springs.

I suppose I need to start stretching before I go to bed Maybe I also need to go on another cycling holiday.

Scientology is a stupid litigious organisation cult. The organisation has a business model whereby they gull the less fortunate and easily fooled members of society into parting with large amounts of money over the course of their lives. Not that real religions are less predatory in nature (ie. the catholic church), but Scientology is pushing the boundaries in how much stupid there can be and how malicious that stupidity can be. I wonder how long before we get a black hole of stupidity

Case in point – a councillor in Wales is facing a disciplinary hearing after the Cult complained about the following twitter message (because it violates their freedom of religion!!!):

“I didn’t know the Scientologists had a church on Tottenham Court Road.
Just hurried past in case the stupid rubs off.”

PZ Myers reports that there is a backlash – as if no-one expected that – where people are using the tag #stupidscientology. The stupid cult never learns.

No-one claims that any medical procedure is 100% foolproof. No-one claims that any one medicine can produce side-effects and adverse
reactions. Lately, a well-used diabetes drug has been found to cause heart problems, with the problem exacerbated by the drug company’s shady dealings. Of course there’s room for oversight, and the conspiracy nuts, like stopped clocks, can be right occasionally.

Now, however, the AVN scumbags have been smacked around the head. Highlighting issues about adverse reactions and acting in a watchdog capacity  is one thing, but harassing the parent of a dead baby and claiming that vaccination is inherently false is another and to be rightly condemned. It’s thanks to such idiots that measles and whooping cough are making a comeback.

and Team Rose is back in business. I received a priority entry email for team captains and past participants – Danya, I hope you saw one as well – here’s the details on the web, about the event. I have no illusions about being a major fund-raiser, but I’ve set a team target of $600 and a personal target of $500. That’s slightly more than I’ve raised before, I think (one Big Ride might have been near that amount), but not out of the realms of possibility.

The event is on Sunday the 7th of November, and the overall goal is $4 million, with $3.2 million raised last year. For those who can’t join in the fun on the road, I’m hoping that you can spare some money to support research into curing Multiple Sclerosis.

I know it’s months away, but that doesn’t mean you can’t donate now I’ve ordered a receipt book for those who wish to pay in person and in cash, or you can do it on-line on either of the following websites:

Team Rose

Eric Rose

Thanks in advance for riding or donating.

Check out this! How much more evil can you get than the actions of oil companies in Nigeria? I guess that a few darkies in a foreign land don’t matter much to most people, or Shell and Exxon would be sued out of existence by now. Calculations suggest that 1.5 million tons of oil has been spilled in the Nigerian delta over the last 50 years – 50 times what was spilled in the Alaskan Exxon Valdez disaster.

The article states that more oil is spilled each year in the delta than has so far been leaked from Horizon, which is measured in the millions of gallons, not tons. While one is a volume measurement,and the other is a weight measurement, you can roughly say that there are about 350 gallons of oil per ton.

Conroy – are you listening?

Once you decide that certain information is off-limits, you end up having to block it in every domain, and always be vigilant – just like the Chinese government. As people on Foursquare started checking into Tian’anmen Square (by the way, guess what anniversary just passed with no media interest that I saw), and mentioning that on twitter, the Government noticed – Foursquare was blocked throughout the country.

Or – you could remember that this is a democracy, where political speech and ordinary citizens shouldn’t end up on a black list. Cut down on illegal stuff like child-porn and leave legal RC material alone.

Chris came into work at lunch after checking the letterbox, all happy and brandishing a pamphlet entitled “Challenging Religion”, subtitled “big fraud or big solution”, obviously thinking that it was some skeptical/aethist conference along the lines of the one in Melbourne. His face fell moments later when he had a look at the list of speakers – two, thereof; Lyle Southwell (a theologian and Christian commentator) and Barend Nieuwstraten (another Christian commentator). There is a free gift, on registration! A KJV (King James version?) bible, yours “free to keep”, “supplied for your use”. It’s almost a bait and switch – maybe a Christian-specific version since it’s executed so poorly.

Update: Talking it over with Bobbie, this morning, we’ve come to the conclusion that they must be some offshoot of Hillsong – too crazy for the crazy evangelical people. The big conspiracy that is being unmasked here must be the Catholic Church – evil masquerading as Christianity, and preventing “real” Christians from spreading peace and joy in the world

Lyle Southwell has a bunch of videos on BeyondPatmos, a Christian video site, with titles like “Signs of the Times” and “The Prophetic Code” and, oddly, “The Code that Hounted Hitler”. How do you get hounted? Is that when ghosts start hunting you instead of haunting you? Obviously Lyle isn’t going to be challenging the Christian religion anytime soon, since he makes money from it.

Nieuwstraten has apparently given talks around the city on “The most unfair trial ever”, and “Minor prophets of the bible”, and “Predictions of the Hebrew Prophets”. No chance he’s likely to contradict anything biblical either, so let’s have a look at the conference agenda…

Day 1, session 1: Does A Supernatural Exist?

In this presentation, we examine a prophecy over two and a half thousand years old in an attempt to answer the question: Does the supernatural exist? Raising a further question: What being knows the future with such accuracy and why?

Thanks Lyle. Question for you… is any of this about challenging religion?  The brochure accompanies the blurb with a picture of Hitler, by the way, as well as a Babylonian (Assyrian?) statue. Oh goodie – some prechristian wrote all about the death camps in clear and unambigious detail – NOT!

Day 1, session 2: Intelligent Design or Accidental Intelligence. What are we asked, or told, to believe?

This is presented by Barend, who obviously is the one pretending to be a scientist. The screed is entirely fatuous, begging the question it pretends to ask, and recycles the old exploded canard that evolution is equivalent to chance. “Compelling questions”, my arse. I love the conspiracy theory touch, though.

Day 2, session 1: The Greatest Book of Physical Life – DNA.

Again Barend morphs into a pseudo-scientist. If they were taking this seriously, they would have a real scientist to talk about DNA. However, this is not really about science at all:

The conflict between good and evil, negative and positive, strong and weak, is older than the world itself. Do we find, in this conflict, the origin of our existence? [...] Are the answers found in the newly revealed information contained in our DNA?

What The Fuck??? Apparently this is a “powerful and insightful” talk. Yep, the farce is strong here. Once again, there’s the presupposition that Christian morality is correct; that the fall of man can somehow be validated by DNA. Let’s all point and laugh at the retards.

Day 2, session 2: Why doesn’t God do something? – subtitled “If God is good, who so much pain?”

Hey, Lyle! If you were really about challenging religion, you would not start by presupposing the existence of god.

The existence of bad things is a perpetual thorn in the Christian paw, and they need to keep digging at the topic. I seem to recall that PZ mentioned something in the Creationist Museum that was an attempt to explain poisonous snakes et al. (since they couldn’t have existed in Eden) and, from I recall, there are all sorts of convoluted arguments that come down to saying that it’s all like punishing a child who’s been bad – it hurts but it’s for our own good; if we didn’t play up, we wouldn’t get a smack.

Day 3, session 1: 6 days or 6 billion years.

Oh fuck, they’re young earth creationists, too This session is about how to rationalise Genesis with science. It’s all acompanied with a picture of Darwin and a chimpanzee and a photo of the Genesis heading from the bible, and the text ends with the words “Do you really trust the accounts of your origins?” Hey Barend! Not if the account is you saying that Genesis is true, you fuckwit.

Day 3, session 2: Secret scrolls reveal the religion of the ancients

Here, Lyle tries to reconcile the bible with scriptures it doesn’t contain, and again harps on about trying to explain away evil and violence. He ends up with more prophecy crap working towards end-of-days rubbish. Way to challenge religion there, buddy.

Day 4, session 1 and 2: The Global Agenda (parts 1 and 2)

This is a millenarist rant in two parts about a global conspiracy to prevent world peace. Lyle’s starting point is another two thousand year old prophecy. which obviously explains in unambigious clarity “the driving force behind the globalisation of our world”. We get images of a forehead stamped with 666 and fingers holding a CPU, as well as various satanic images. It’s all very spooky Apparently we’re in for a “shocking revelation”. Don’t worry guys, I know that you’re idiots. It’s no shock.

Day 5, session 1: Blowing the cover on theist evolution

This is Barend making sure that all Christians toe the line. No accomodation with the enemy, now. God isn’t some figure who set events in motion and then disappeared from the stage. Evolution isn’t true, even as a mechanism God used to carry out his plan.

Day 5, session 2: Global Warming… Fact or Myth?

No suprise on which side Barend comes down, I’m sure (God is punishing us for turning from him in these immoral times), but the screed is a strange incoherent rant:

In recent years we have been concurrently threatened by major global crisis (sic) fueled by political breakdowns, international terrorism, financial and, most particularly, environmental meltdown.

What does the bulk of that have to do with “the facts associated with Global warming”? Their capitalisation, by the way – but global is lower case again, just a couple of sentences later. This session is more end-of-days stuff, by the look of it, and is again “compelling and insightful”

By the way, this is all sponsored by Fountain Marrickville (an offshoot of these guys?), “Sydney city’s newest Christian fellowship”. Yep – they’re really challenging religion; challenging it not to be a laughing stock.

Seriously!

Bad words never hurt anyone, and you don’t make reality go away by closing your eyes and ears (and other people’s mouths). Everybody fucks and shits and women have cunts.

Interestingly, on The Daily Show last night, they replayed part of C-SPAN coverage from the Goldman Sachs interrogatories. “shitty” was bleeped out, but “crappy” and “crap” wasn’t.  Oddly inconsistent, that.

The herald is reporting that the Sydney Anglican Diocese is worried that ethics classes are decimating scripture class (aka special religious education, or SRE) attendence. Wow, I thought.. there’s only 1 in 10 students stilll attending of those who were in class prior to the trials. It turns out that they’ve lost 30 to 47% and perhaps up to 60% in places, according to the report in the Herald, and from the Diocese’s own press release. It turns out that the Anglicans are not only against people being taught ethics, but they can’t count either (or are they being unethical and alarmist in their reporting?)

It appears that the church is worried that the ethics class isn’t religious in nature. I thought that was the point; ethics underpins religion, not overlays on it; you can have ethics without religion, but not the other way around (unless you’re catholic, of course).

Hey,  Pell. I’m good without god – any god, let alone yours. Get over it.

It appears that England has someone to challenge Stephen Conroy for technology idiot of the year, if not for longer . It’d be common sense for the “Minister for Digital Britain” to know what common networking and technology terms meant, but obviously common sense is something that politicians lack. The sad thing is that the Digital Economy Bill is a fait accompli, from what I understand

After some procrastination and indecision about how bad the problem was, I decided that I needed to get my eyes checked; I had more of what I thought might be eye-strain based headaches, and I’d noticed medium distance blurriness that was getting more and more annoying.

On Monday, I went to a local optometrist who put me though a set of test of different lenses – it turns out that I’m shortsighted and my right eye is weaker than my left. The irony is that Bobbie was riding me to get a check since she kept seeing me read in poor light conditions, but I don’t have a real issue at close vision tasks. The prescription details are:

Wikipedia is a good place to see what all that means, but the basics are:

• A spherical correction corrects refractive error of the eye with a single convergent or divergent refractive power in all meridians.

• A cylindrical correction corrects astigmatic refractive error of the eye by adding or subtracting power cylindrically in a meridian specified by the prescribed axis.

• The Axis indicates the angle in degrees of one of two major meridians the prescribed cylindrical power is in. Which major meridian is referenced is indicated by the cylindrical correction being in plus or minus notation. The axis is measured on an imaginary semicircle with a horizontal baseline that starts with zero degrees in the 3 o’clock (or east) direction, and increases to 180 degrees in a counter-clockwise direction.

I picked up the glasses today. There’s some adjustment required to how they change what I expect to see, but they’re comfortable and I’ve noticed that they even help in reading a bit, since they compensate for the different focal lengths of each eye. I don’t know if I’m going to be wearing them constantly, and I still have my expensive new cycling sunglasses that I’ll wear on the bike, but I think I’ve now joined the four-eyes club

Oh, and the good news? They’re covered by my health insurance. I knew I didn’t pay all those premiums for nothing

Conroy fails to convince us, yet again.

Not that online polls mean much, but I think that there’s something interesting to be gleaned when 95% or more of respondents regularly vote against the government’s scheme. One point which someone tried to raise in the Radio National debate was that, if the filter will work so well, why not publish the list? If we can’t get to these sites since the filter is 100% effective, we can’t be in danger from the content at these sites which is so very scarring. Sure the URL is an address and not a book title, but won’t the government’s scheme block all roads to that address? I think that there’s some cognitive dissonance in Conroy’s position

Something else that wasn’t followed up on was a question on why the government killed the Liberal scheme for downloadable client-side filters. Conroy stated, accurately, that the scheme cost a heap of money and that very few people actually downloaded the software. What he wasn’t pressed on was the conclusions that can be drawn from that ie. that almost no-one wanted to filter their internet connection. Where, therefore, is the mandate for filtering at the ISP?

Conroy is playing dog-whistle politics, where the whistle is being wielded by a minority of christian and conservative moral fundamentalists who would like to see all “immoral” content removed from view. They will be pissed off when the scheme (if it gets into operation) doesn’t prevent non-illegal soft-core porn from being seen on Youtube or searched for via Google etc. and the government will face their displeasure for not taking us all back to a mythical time of conservative purity. Unfortunately for Conroy’s future as a minister he’s implicitly allowing people (who want to believe) to think that the scheme will do that.

Meanwhile, the displeasure of all those who don’t like censorship and don’t like money being wasted on technically stupid ideas when it could be spent on law enforcement is palpable.

I just bought Gil Scott Heron’s new album I’m New Here, and I’m loving it.  It wasn’t until a few years ago that I picked up Ghetto Style at a remainder bin, mainly since I knew the phrase “the revolution will not be televised” (the Kleptones rework it as the revolution will be digitized), and vaguely knew that he was someone important in American black music.

Whereas his earlier music  is very political and speaks on wider social issues, the new one is intensely personal; I guess he’s got a lot to reflect on with his chequered career, especially since 2001, and one of the tracks is aptly titled “New York Is Killing Me”. He also talks about his childhood in a broken home.

The CD comes with a message from Gil (colours in the original):

There is a proper procedure for taking advantage of any investment. Music for example. Buying a CD is an investment. To get the maximum you must

Listen to it for the first time under optimal conditions.

Not in your car or in a portable player through a headset
Take it home
Get rid of all distractions (even her or him)
Turn off your cell phone
Turn off anything that rings or beeps or rattles or whistles
Make yourself comfortable
Play your CD
Listen all the way through
Think about what you got
Think about who would appreciate this investment
Decide if there is someone you would share this with
Turn it on again
Enjoy yourself

I agree.  This is a piece of whole cloth in the way that Dark Side of the Moon is and is best enjoyed as a whole. Kudos to Pink Floyd by the way, in ripping EMI a new one a couple of times, especially for the un-bundling issue.

I just received a reply email to the nasty-gram that I sent last night to the complaints address at the Ambulance Service:

Mr Rose

On behalf of the Amblulance Service of New South Wales, please accept our apologies for the inconvenience caused to you. Your email has been forwarded to our Accounts Department for their attention and actioning.

Kind regards

Sion Tagaloa

Professional Standards and Conduct Unit

Ambulance Service of New South Wales

I’m not sure what will come out of it, but I hope that they fix whatever’s broken in their systems and procedures. By the way, still no sign that the insurance company has processed the claim, but I was told yesterday that it will take about 24 hours to get through the system so I’m not panicking yet.

Remember my little ambulance trip? About three weeks ago, I received a final payment notice and invoice from the Ambos; apparently my account was overdue and I didn’t even know I owed them money, having forgotten all about the incident. If I recall correctly, the same thing happened back in 2006 when I had to get transport to Gundagai.

Of course, I immediately checked with my health fund and found that emergency ambulance travel was covered (I wish I’d had cover back in 2006). I faxed them off the paperwork the next day and thought that it was all dealt with. Today, I checked my insurance claims and found no mention of this one, so I rang them up and arranged to fax it directly to the guy who answered the phone.

This afternoon, I got home to find a letter from a collection company saying that I had to pay in 7 days “to avoid further action”. I can’t recall correctly (the final notice is in the office), but I’m fairly sure that the payment date from the Ambos was mid-March. WTF? Anyway, I rang the collection people and they put a 6 week hold on the account. Now I just need to chase up the insurance people.

So… a big air-kiss to the ambulance team and a big raspberry to NSW Ambulance accounting and management. You guys suck, big time.

Update: I checked the dates this morning; the “reminder notice” – the only notice received – was dated 15th Feb and received on the 17th or thereabouts. It stated that payment was due on the 9th of February, which makes me wrong  in the third paragraph. Bobbie also mentioned that she didn’t receive a initial bill, only a reminder notice stating that she was overdue with her payment, when she had her fall almost a year ago.

I think that this behaviour borders on fraud, if it’s a general practice of their accounts and management team.

New bicycle pannier

Originally uploaded by wamblicious

I was up in Katoomba in January, partly to look at the panniers from Summit Gear; they called me on Friday saying that they had some in stock.

Originally I had planned on just looking, and then making a special order with modifications. However, the guy I talked to on the phone and in person on Saturday was the one who is apparently the primary craftsman – they’re all handmade. I had one of my old rear panniers with me, and we talked about how panniers wear, and what can go wrong, and the design decisions behind their products as opposed to those of my Wilderness Equipment set. After being walked through the details of how the SG gear was made and why, I decided that they was great as-is.

I’ve added some notes to the photo, but the basic points of difference are that these new ones have a lateral stabalizing strap that prevents the pannier bouncing off the rack, and the main tensioning strap is entirely outside the pannier, as opposed to the WE ones, where the pannier has to be opened to tighten the strap. This means that the SG panniers don’t run the risk of getting water inside on a wet day as you’re packing gear on to the bike. They also have a big fold-in top section of the body that can provide extra water protection, and the stitching is all doubled and done from inside to provide more secure attachment of the rear compartment.

One thing I hadn’t realised, when talking to the salesman in January is that the strap across the top isn’t for fastening luggage. Summit have made the deliberate decision not to provide any luggage straps similar to those on the WE panniers, for the very reason I have discovered – regardless of the convenience: upwards tension on the  flap ends up causing it to not have as good a seal after some time, as the elastic  gives. My current ones have the tendency to allow water in during torrential rain, meaning that an inner liner is essential. Not that I’d travel without one anyway, but it’s annoying to pull out dripping bags of clothes, books, whatever, and have to mop out the collected water from the bottom of the pannier. I’ll have to rig up some occie strap arrangement from the rack itself for gear I normally strapped to the top of the racks.

Another cute/nice extra is a long vertical sleeve on the right hand pannier (obviously meant for Australian roads), which can hold a flag pole for one of those little red triangle warning flags if you’re so inclined. It also can hold several replacement spokes, which is better than strapping them to the frame or putting them in the main pannier space.

Oh – and as you can see they’re not black with yellow flourescent panels, but a much more visible red with white… For some reason, they look slightly smaller when on the bike, although they’re almost identical in size when sitting next to the old ones. I’ll have to see how they go with a full load to convince myself that they’re the same size, I guess.

I bought my copy today, with reward money from Gleebooks. Now I just need to find a big Australian flag to wear as a cape and a fake tattoo that says “love it or leave it” to wear as I watch. Oh – and a case of VB.

Having seen the last of the big Xmas movies I was wanting to see, I decided it was time to vote in the anual viewers’ choice poll. Here’s the list of films I’ve seen this year; there’s 30 of them. Funny, I thought I’d seen more, but there were a few weeks off at the start of the year, a few more off in march and a few in Peter was out of the city and I was catching up on DVDs.

• 500 DAYS OF SUMMER
• AN EDUCATION
• AVATAR
• BEAUTIFUL KATE
• BOYS ARE BACK, THE
• BRIGHT STAR
• CEDAR BOYS
• CHANGELING
• CORALINE
• DISTRICT 9
• GOOD
• GRAN TORINO
• I LOVE YOU MAN
• IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS, THE
• MAO’S LAST DANCER
• MARY AND MAX
• MILK
• PONYO
• READER, THE
• REVOLUTIONARY ROAD
• SAMSON AND DELILAH
• STAR TREK
• STATE OF PLAY
• SUNSHINE CLEANING
• UP
• UP IN THE AIR
• WATCHMEN
• WHAT JUST HAPPENED?
• WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE
• YOUNG VICTORIA, THE

Choosing 5 was hard. 4 came fairly easily: Imaginarium, Samson and Delilah, The Time Traveller’s Wife and Where The Wild Things Are. The next one could have been Revolutionary Road, Bright Star, Coraline, District 9, Avatar, Watchman, Up or Beautiful Kate. Pruning stuff from the opposite end was easier, and I wish the poll had two buckets in its short list, one for films that are probably yes and one for films that are probably no. Star Trek is definitely no, as is I Love You Man. An Education and 500 Days are harder to discard, as is Good, The Reader or Up.

Finally, I decided on Bright Star. Abbie Cornish puts in a wonderful performance, and Jane Campion’s direction was solid, as was the cinematography. I almost hate to reward her after she took part in that vomit-inducing ad for Hoyts, but Jane has talent

I’ve got a soft spot for Neil Gaiman’s writing, but have little mind to reward 3D films. It was good, but it works better as a book. Watchmen was a possible probably because it was so faithful to the graphic novel; once again, I’d be selling people on the latter, not the movie.

Avatar – special effects were wonderful but the story was pedestrian. District 9 shits all over it in every sense but the graphics – mainly because James Cameron could afford to throw buckets of money at Avatar. Up was a better animated movie than Avatar for me.

Top 10? Add the following in order to the top 5: Up, Beautiful Kate, Revolutionary Road, Watchmen, District 9.

Now that I’ve exposed my lack of taste, you can all excoriate me

Sometimes you see an article that just sums up how you feel. Now I want to get out on the road again and ride somewhere. Instead, I’ve got 8 hours behind a desk