Fuck Cyclists.

I was stuck behind one of these cycling pricks nearly all the way up Parramatta Road the other week. It was the same thing over and over. Pull up to a red light, and watch Mr. Lycra cycle past all the other cars till he got to the front. The light would turn green and everyone would have to slow to a crawl in order to safely get around the prick, then when we came to the next set of lights, Lycra-Fuck would go right to the front again, causing frustration and homicidal tendencies as he went. Why? Why didn't he just wait behind all the other cars like he should? Why slow everyone down in order to be at the front of the line? Because cyclists hate you.

Now I'm not talking about Olympic cyclists, or mountain bikers, or people who ride along suburban streets for some exercise; I'm talking about the holier-than-thou, pious pricks who cycle in the middle of congested roads, a) because they can and b) because they think that getting rid of a combustion engine is tantamount to saving the world. You know the type. They get onto a major road during peak hour, ride just enough inside the lane that you have to overtake them but just far enough outside so that they can cut onto the footpath when they need to run a red light or get onto the footpath. The type that sneers at people who drive "coz it polluts teh atmosfere and u dont need cars an riding makes u more healthy an i care bout teh earth...thaaaaanks". The type that thinks all the world's pollution problems would be solved by people buying a bike. Pretty much the kind of person who thinks they hold the moral high-ground because they pedal instead of pushing the accelerator. Well guess what, bike boy? Nobody gives a fuck.

Not everyone can ride a bike, nor has the time to spare to get changed into ugly, flurescent, skin tight lycra and spend 3 hours cycling a few kilometres. We have shit to do. What about disabled people? People who need to carry shit? People who need to transport other, less mobile people? People who need to commute friggin' long ways and can't rely on public transport? People who need to get groceries? People who don't necessarily think that arriving to work a sweaty, stinking, spluttering mess is appropriate? I think all these people fit under the lable of 'people with shit to do'. Cyclists don't have anything to do. Except masturbate with self-satisfaction over their idiotic campaign to annoy the shit out of people with cars.

It's just the arrogance that annoys me. They don't pay any road taxes, no registration, no number plates which basically makes them anonymous, they hold up traffic for miles, they break rules left,right and centre, they run red lights, and when they encounter a tiny bit of traffic they either ride through all the cars and sideswipe the wing mirrors or mount the footpath and piss pedestrians off to get where they need to go (home to a big cyclist circle-jerk) and then they have the audacity to argue that they have as much right to use the road as we do?! Remember when that guy plowed into that bunch of cyclists? He should be given a fucking medal. I'd never laughed so hard in my life when I read it. You know why? These self-rightous pricks had decided to all get together in a massive biker-swarm, about 30 of them, and take up an entire lane to themselves...in peak hour traffic! They could have done it at 4 in the morning, or even 8 at night, any time when people who HAD TO GET TO WORK weren't on the road. But noooo. It's their right to cycle, and they'll be damned if they think of anyone else. So there they sat, in an entire lane, cycling along at 30 km/h, holding up the traffic. Then Captain Awesome came along and ruined their shit. I think the guy that pulled over next to the squashed swarm and yelled 'buy a car you tight-arses' should also be commended. Just a few less scrounging fucks to deal with.

The Thing is better than your God.

John Carpenter's The Thing is the greatest movie ever made. It starts off slowly, with a spaceship crashing in Antarctica and some Norwegian guys flying a helicopter after a dog trying to murder it. Boring you say? Well I say "frig off". Then, they land the copter, blow it up, get shot by these American researchers and the dog survives. But it isn't a dog. It's an alien. So then all the Yanks are running about when all of a sudden serious shit starts happening. The dog transforms into a weird octopus/bodybuilder thing, then this Bennings guy gets infected and he gets burnt but Blair goes mad. So they lock him up and he starts to build another spaceship coz he's the Thing like, and while this is going on the other Thing's are ruining peoples shit until Macready decides to go mental. He burns all these fella's blood samples and Palmer goes ape-shit and bites Window's head with his own half-head. Macready kills it but it's too late. Blair is nearly finished building his ship. So then Macready, Nauls and Gary try and kill Blair but he has transformed into some seriously creepy monster/mutant. Macready has finally had enough of this shit, and tells it to fuck itself before throwing dynamite at it and pissing off. He does a summersault just before he kills it because he is Macready and he is just that awesome. He destroys the camp and sits down to drink bourbon, then Childs wanders up coz he got lost in the snow storm. Who can he trust? 'Hell if I know. But even if Childs was the Thing it probably wouldn't want to attack Macready considering Macready just served the Thing a healthy portion of fail. Fuck the Thing.

Survivor is a piece of shit.

Survivor was a pretty good show in the first season. Now it's fucking ridiculous. The trend is usually the same throughout all the current redundant reality shows; the premise starts out as interesting and compelling, then with initial success the rabid commercialization begins. The first season of Big Brother was genuinely entertaining. Of course, it wasn't the height of culture but it was fairly decent. Now look at it. The formula nowadays is to find a few guys with six-packs and big pecs, mix together with a few big-titted blondes sans brains, chuck in some alcohol and presto; television that appeals to shaved chimps, aka, 10-17 year old teenagers. Survivor is the same.

How many places can they friggin' go to? Survivor: Micronesia? A nice, warm, secure jungle? Fuck that. It's not fun anymore. The 'contestants' are all the same generic, boring, cookie-cutter fitness freaks plus the one token black guy. It's pretty fucking gay to call a show Survivor if there is no risk of actual death. I think there are some ways to improve Survivor, and make it really live up to it's name:

1. The contestants must have a criminal record. Murder is preferable, but endless violence might get a bit boring after a while (not likely though). Throw in some smarmy, sleazy, slimy tax frauds and con-men. Make it a real game of wits.
2. No more of this tropical paradise shit. I'm sick of the jungle. I wanna see Survivor: Auschwitz or Survivor: Middle of the Pacific Ocean in one life raft. Maybe even Children's Survivor: Catholic Priest's bedroom. Make the contestants actually struggle to survive.
3. Elimination means just that; lots and lots of killing. Fail a task? Send little Johnny a video message, because it's gonna be the last time the ugly shit hears your voice. Bitch.
4. Cannibals. How many movies and myths are ultra awesome because they involve a group of stupid, ignorant westerners marooned on an island full of blood-thirsty savages?
5. Zombies.

I'd watch this show, and I bet you would too. Reality t.v is only shit now because the network executives don't have the balls to make it reflect actual reality. They need more violence, more death, more destruction and more cameras. After all, that's what people really want to see, right?

If you're a young earth creationist, you're a fucking moron.

If you believe the Earth was created 6,000 - 10,000 years ago, then you are a fucking moron. The belief in a young earth genuinely warrants that response, and in all fairness any argument in which someone defends a young earth should be ended like that there and then. It would be perfectly acceptable in a debate in any forum, whether it be on the street or in the halls of Harvard, to call anyone who advocates young earth creation a fucking simpleton and then to walk off in pure disgust, shaking your head in despair at the supreme idiocy of some members of the human virus. To even bother to try and explain and list all the evidence that proves the true age of the earth would be a total waste of time and effort. Why? Young earth creationists don't want to believe the earth is billions of years old, end of.

It doesn't matter what you do, say or present, people, YEC's will never believe you. Pure and simple. End of discussion. No further conjecture needed. The bottom line. Any piece of evidence conceivable, from radio-metric dating of rock and meteorite material to carbon dating of biological fossils to plain ol' common sense will be sneered at and dismissed, thrown onto the pile of neglected proof that will be burned ASAP at a giant evangelical gathering of the half-wits and borderline retards, all presided over by the grand high mongoloid. They will cheer and drool as libraries worth of scientific texts are cast into the furnace. Their erections will bulge as The Origin of Species is lofted into the abyss. Their eyes will glaze over in sheer lust and limitless awe when the Molotov cocktails are hurled into the laboratories. Finally, a lone biologist will be hoisted up onto a burning cross; the simpleton hordes will spit and hiss, their greatest dream only seconds away from fulfillment. The evolutionary sinner will be set alight by Ken Ham and in that instant, a roar will echo throughout the American South; it has begun! The new age of dogma and superstition will be welcomed with rapturous applause. The dark ages will have returned with a vengeance, and all ye who don't believe in the glory of The Lord will be hunted down and tortured; burned, crucified, disemboweled, sawn asunder, stoned, hacked to death and be made to listen to Kent Hovind's lecture series.

Ok, maybe that won't happen. Possible, kind of probable in Alabama, but not likely. The simple truth is this; YEC's have read in the Bible that the Earth is roughly 6,000-10,000 years old, and to them, that is the fucking end of the matter. They do not hold a competing 'theory'. They are not trying to scientifically debate the existing paradigm like Copernicus and Galileo and Einstein did. They do not have a revolutionary new mathematical proof that will shake the foundations of modern physics. They have a book, written by fuck knows who, that has been changed and modified by councils and governments over the last 2000 years and that is it. It's true, and you're gonna fucking die in horrible pain if you don't believe it.

Young earth creationism is not a competing theory, it is a joke. It's even worse than the flat earth movement. In fact, YEC is so ridiculous, that belief in it should be a prerequisite for determining if someone is legally retarded. If someone tries to plead insanity in court, ask them if they believe in a young earth. If they respond in the affirmative then it's off to Arkham Asylum for a few decades. If someone wants to get into University, or high school for that matter, then belief in a young earth should prevent them from doing so. Want to have a kid? Sorry mate, you believe in a young earth, so it is our moral duty to stop you from polluting the gene pool with your mongoloid loins. Hell, want to buy a car? Bad luck pal, how are we to know that an idiot such as yourself can contemplate the difference between the brake and the accelerator? In fact, the belief in such a mind-numbingly stupid concept should be automatic grounds for forfeiture of life. The cost of a few million bullets or a few thousand gallons of Zyklon-B is minuscule when compared to the survival of reason and intelligence.

I hereby swear to never debate with a young earth creationist EVER. Neither should you. If you ever meet someone who believes in that tripe, politely tell them to eat rat poison, then to wash it down with battery acid, and then to partake in some after-dinner razors. Kick them swiftly in the bollocks, and then go and bash your head against a brick wall wrapped in barbed wire, praying and praying to the invisible man in the sky that he will mercifully render you unconscious, leaving you with no memory of the sphincter-clenchingly woeful idiocy you have just encountered. If by some miracle you still remember the awful encounter, be prepared to choke down a nice, healthy serving of cold, hard lead. An honourable death is preferable to 5 minutes of pointless debate which only serves to confirm in the creationists' mind that they are in possession of a theory that is worthy of serious discussion.

Or maybe just don't go to America.

Dear, oh dear Mr. Ponting.

Well, well, well. Looks like India have won back the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in fitting style. Doesn't feel very nice, does it Mr. Ponting?

To be honest, I had a feeling India would win it back. With Symonds out, Watson under-performing and the lack of a decent spin attack on the Indian wickets (barring Krejza), India had a pretty good chance from the outset. Winning the tosses of course was crucial, as was getting quick, early wickets and then dealing with the middle order batsmen. But I think Dhoni's outstanding late captaincy, his ability to run against the grain and put in unorthodox bowling attacks and his brilliant stands with Bhajji really unnerved the Aussie's. A well deserved victory.

Now why do I take India's side over the Australians? I, after all, live and pretty much grew up in Oz. Firstly, I'm part Indian myself, and munch curry like there's no tomorrow. Secondly, I just don't like the Australian team. Their world wide reputation of being arrogant, smarmy, smug and pretty much against everything cricket stands for is a pretty accurate description of the current Australian team. I think Lee is magnificent and a real decent bloke, same goes for Johnson and it's too early to tell with Krejza, but the rest of them can get fucked. I used to have a bit of respect for Gilchrist, due to him being the only Aussie that would walk, but even he showed his true colours towards the end of his career. And now with the stupid book he is flogging, filling it up with undeserved slurs and attacks on cricketers of the highest caliber, he has finally revealed his true character. Ponting should be ashamed of his conduct, as should Symonds and Hayden. They just don't play in the way that my favourite cricketers play; with character.

It's going to be tricky when India plays England; the country of my heritage versus my country of birth. But for some reason I'm leaning towards India. Why? I like the Indian team! I think they put out entertaining, highly talented players who show enormous potential and great character. Bhajji is a star, Sharma will be the next top notch paceman, Mishra can only get better, Dhoni has shown what it takes to be a great captain and Sehwag is in a class of his own. But aside from that, I think it's Englands attitude that annoys me the most. I really do like to watch England win, and I really do want to support them, but it's difficult to have respect for a team that is so unbelievably inconsistant and who's confidence is shattered whenever they lose a few early wickets. It's depressing to watch the infamous England collapse.

Anyway I'll have to decide that when they play each other. What I'm more interested in now is watching Ricky try and squirm his way out of the media's backlash against his decision to bowl part-timers in order to speed up the over rate. Should be fun!

Theory vs Fact

Note: A lot of what is written here owes a great deal to Stephen Jay Gould. Full credit to one of the most brilliant men in biology and archaeology.

Evolution. It's only a theory. Blah blah blah. Who else is sick and fucking tired of these moronic creationists constantly foaming at the mouth, vomiting forth their sickening and completely wrong call-to-arms that 'Evolution is only a theory'? Do these dolts actually have functioning brains, or are these ignorant, American, fucking fat lumps devoid of even the simplest critical abilities? First, defining a theory.

A theory isn't a glorified guess. It doesn't exist in a hierarchy of truth-value. In science, there does not exist a ladder that starts out with lie, progresses to guess, reaches theory and then ends up at fact. In science, a theory is an argument, or structure of arguments, that seeks to explain and interpret facts. Gravity is a fact. If I drop a ball, barring wind-resistance and so-forth, it will fall to the ground. This is a fact. The theory that explains and interprets this fact is the geometric bending of space-time caused by objects with mass. Without going into what constitutes a viable theory, whether it can be falsified and testable etc etc etc, a theory can never be an absolute truth. But it can be incredibly strong.

The same can be said about Evolution. Evolution is the fact. Organisms change over periods of time, mutating and diversifying in an endless process of restructure. The major theory that explains how this constant diversification occurs and how organisms survive and pass on their genetic material to their offspring is natural selection. Other theories that interpret the fact of evolution include genetic drift, adaptation and gene flow, but the fact stays the same; organisms change and pass those changes onto their offspring.

Perhaps the major irritant of the constant assertion that 'evolution is only a theory' is the implication that a theory is a second-rate fact; a guess, an estimate, something to be sneered at until it reaches the status of fact. A theory is so much more than that. It helps us to understand the world around us, and the universe that we occupy. We have been gathering facts since the dawn of time; bloody neanderthals knew that fire was hot, that the sun rose and set and that there were bright lights in the sky at night. But through scientific progress we now understand those facts so much more clearly. We now understand that the lights aren't glimpses of heaven through holes in the sky, but stars. We understand that the sun doesn't 'rise', but that the Earth turns. And we know that organisms aren't static and un-changing. We understand that over millions (yes, MILLIONS) of years creatures change and mutate.

The basic premise of the creationist stance is that they know they are right. The bible is truth, and it is not the book that must change, but the evidence. Science changes based on the discovery of new facts and formulation of new theories. The books reflect the current evidence, and if that evidence changes then so do the books. Science is ever self-critical and always changing, constantly updating itself and shedding off the layers of failed theories and misunderstood facts. However, creationists will be damned if they ever change. Literally. They have a book that they know is right; they have preachers that know there is a God; they have educators that know evolution doesn't occur. And all the evidence is expendable if it doesn't fit with their personal beliefs. Well, to thinking people, the evidence is never expendable, and it's about time that the school boards in the South of the grand ol' U.S.A begin to purge themselves of the useless sponges that occupy seats which should be filled by people with I.Q's above 100.

Faith vs Irrational Belief

Faith is usually used by religious nuts as the wild-card that wins an argument when all other options are illogical. When the questions become too uncomfortable or impossible to answer logically, faith is thrown in as the get-out-of-jail-free answer. But is it really faith that these people have, or an irrational belief? Are the two identical, or entirely different?

Faith as a concept is used by religious and atheistic types alike. It is very often misunderstood as equated with irrationality. But, like it or not, every single one of us from Richard Dawkins to Pat Robertson uses faith in everyday life. Without faith, life would be impossibly hard to live. Now before you mistake this notion for the justification of a belief in God or Angels or Ghosts or whatever, let me explain. Faith is the belief in something that lacks evidence. When I get into my car in the morning and put my key in the ignition, I believe my engine is going to start. I don't have the hard evidence that my starter motor is working, or my fuel injectors are clean, or my petrol hasn't been siphoned during the night; I believe my engine will start. When I read about the development of new mathematical theories that I couldn't even begin to comprehend, I accept them because I place faith in the intelligence of world-class mathematicians. I suspect the most gifted biologist who is mathematically impared would do the same. We all believe in things that lack evidence as it would be a physical and mental impossibility to verify everything we accept before believing it. I put my faith in scientists; the best and brightest humanity has to offer. However, when believing something that lacks evidence, the potential of discovering and verifying evidence is paramount before accepting it. I could have faith that my car will start, but the potential for me to pop the hood and check every single mechanical part before I believe it will run is always an option. The same applies to mathematical theories I don't understand.

An irrational belief, however, is the belief in something that contradicts the evidence. To use the previous example, if I jumped into my car knowing full well that my engine had been removed by theives, and I still believed that it was going to start and I could drive to Uni then I would be in possession of a thoroughly irrational belief. This is where faith crosses over into irrationality. A belief in God, Angels, an Afterlife, Demons, Witches and a stable democracy in Iraq are irrational beliefs because they contradict, not lack, current evidence. We know that snakes cannot talk. We know that thousands of years ago it would be impossible for the world to flood, and for some bloke to build a boat that saved two of every species from drowning. We know that people cannot come back to life after they have started rotting. We know that people can't live inside a whale for days. And we know that the friggin' Earth is more than 10,000 years old. Yet belief still persists.

I suppose faith is a more friendly term than irrational belief. A presidential candidate couldn't get up before thousands of braindead conservative Christians and proclaim himself to be a man of irrational belief. People like Richard Dawkins, as much as I admire and idolise him, should probably stop referring to religious types as 'faith-heads'. We all have faith (minus the religious connotations). Yet we do not all have irrational beliefs. That is left to those of us who still deny evolution, who still think the Earth is only thousands of years old, who still believe in talking snakes, and who still believe that Jesus was not some Middle-Eastern street magician, but God incarnate who died then popped back up and flew off to be with the real God who was both his Father and himself and a Spirit thing that can be three people in one yet individuals...or something like that.

We are a Christian nation!

Before this rant begins, a little background information is needed in order to justify my subsequent posting and attack on Australian Christianity. Around a week ago, whilst listening to Chris Smith on 2GB, a rather stereotypical Christian caller got on the air and proceeded to launch into a vehement attack on the notion of not reciting the Lord's Prayer before a session of Parliament. With nauseating patronage, Smith agreed over and over, supporting the caller's assertion that banning the Lord's Prayer would be 'stupid' and that 'left-wing loonies' should have better things to complain about. The bullshit alarm went off for around the millionth time this year, hence my decision to finally bite the bullet and get one of these blog things.

Now what the hell is so difficult to understand about secularism? For years we have heard the Right go on about Australia being a 'Christian Nation'. For Christ's sake, can't Aussie Christians get a different catch phrase? I'm not going to bother going into the pretty obvious notion of the separation of church and state, because it should be so well known and understood now that it's pretty frightening that a hell of a lot of people in this country don't, or refuse, to understand it. What I will say is that while we have leaders like Kevin Rudd, who openly endorses Hill$ong as a good thing and has been recorded dancing around at Hill$ong congregations in joy like a priest in a playground, separation of church and state will slowly wither away until all we have left is a lovely Christian theocracy. Callers like the one from Chris Smiths' show, who I will refer to as 'W.', would like nothing better, barring the probable future scenario of deporting all Muslims, Hindu's, Jews, Buddhists and other assorted heathens and brown people to somewhere like Madagascar. To people like this, repetition of the Lord's Prayer in sessions of Parliament is not only desirable, but should be extended to all other government institutions, including schools.

Why is it necessary to ban the Lord's Prayer before Parliament? Firstly, it's totally fucking useless. Our leaders should be figuring out ways to deal with the inevitable recession and the degeneration of New South Wales infrastructure instead of paying lip-service to the invisible man in the sky. Total bullshit. Secondly, it's a fundamental infringement of the secular tradition on which Australian government was founded. If they recite the Lord's Prayer, they have to recite all other religious declarations of faith, which would be even more of a waste of fucking time. The solution? Don't recite any fucking made-up religious bullshit at all, then, Voila! Everyone is happy! Especially me.

The usual boring, repetitive argument against this is that 'yer, but 'straya wuz christian an we r built on christian values and its a tradition'. ...and? There's loads of traditions that we don't perform anymore. Kidnapping Aboriginal children and brainwashing them into 'civilized', Christian beliefs was a huge part of Australian tradition, and look what happened to that. It only happens in the Northern Territory now. The Australian media, until the 1970's, used to deliver news in a refined, received pronunciation British accent. That fell out of use when Australian nationalists deemed everything British, more specifically English, to be bad. Tradition is a ridiculous argument for keeping the custom if the custom itself is unnecessary or detrimental to modern society. Face it, Australia is, and is always going to be, a multicultural melting pot of different religions and beliefs, no matter how much the conservative lunatics deny it. Therefore, get the Lord's Prayer the fuck out of Parliament! It serves absolutely no purpose and its continual use only serves to annoy the fuck out of other religions, and more importantly, rational, clear-thinking atheists.

I know this kind of radical, socialist and completely un-Australian attitude will irk people like W. Blow me. Aren't people sick to death of the stranglehold Christianity still has on this country? Only Christ knows how hellish it would be to be an atheist in somewhere like America or the Philippines. To be fair, Australia has got one of the lowest church attendances in the Western world. This should be comforting, but it friggin isn't. You know why? It makes it all the more annoying that while Christianity is, thankfully, withering away amongst the general populace, it is steadily increasing amongst the politicians. Rudd prances about at Hill$ong like a fuck. Tony Abbott pretty much used to enter Parliament dressed as the fucking pope. Benedict XVI visits Australia and they give him Randwick Racecourse with our tax money! Cardinal George Pell threatens any politician who dares vote for bills that support stem-cell research with ex-communication and they fucking back down! Sick of it all. Fuck Christians, fuck George Pell, and fuck the Pope.