I Know Where You Live

What a Cunt

2010-09-16T12:07:23Z

His Supreme Whatever-the-fuck Ratzinger:

Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny”

The pope is a hairy otter's ballsack.

Oh no not the Status Quo!

2010-09-08T15:09:49Z

I quite like Baroness Greenfield in a general "wow, synaptic pharmacology sounds bloody complex" kind of way, but comments saying that the suggestion that physics doesn't need a god is "Taliban-like" piss me right off.

I mean do we really need to clarify that all Hawking said was that the our understanding of physics is self-contained enough not to require a god to explain the existence of the universe, not "Listen, fuck-knobs, I'm smarter than you and god is a twat who doesn't even shitting exist! Also, Hitler was right."

If we're talking about smug complacency, maybe we should look to someone who has a tendency to leap before they look, and in defence of the state religion say unpleasant things that they perhaps don't mean in response to something that wasn't really a threat at all.

Wot Is Currently Up To

2010-09-07T12:49:49Z

Almost entirely hand-painted in Photoshop. Difficult to say how long it took because it contains re-usable elements.

I've done a great deal more cards, but they're being made on a professional basis, so I can't really show any more.

Natural Selection 2

2010-07-16T13:29:25Z

Greetings Small Humans,

Some of you may know, others may not, that I am currently working on a multiplayer video game, Natural Selection 2. We're just approaching our alpha release, which will be the first public playable version of the game, and will be out on 26 July.

If you enjoy shooting aliens in space, or biting humans in space, and if you enjoy an innovative combination of first-person action and real-time stragegy, then check it out.

Today is Darwin Day!

2010-02-12T15:59:40Z

Yes.

The Carter-Ruck School of Viral Marketing

2009-10-13T15:40:08Z

How to ensure maximum publicity for your new gagging order.

"Marketing experts were stunned today at the success of media law firm Carter-Ruck's high profile 'gagging order' campaign, designed to generate buzz around their client Trafigura's latest toxic waste product."

The Sky Calls To Us. If We Do Not Destroy Ourselves, We Will, One Day, Venture To The Stars.

2009-09-26T00:10:10Z

This is important.

How 20 Popular Websites Didn't Actually Look At Some Point In Their Existence (Maybe)

2009-09-03T17:09:31Z

A conversation at the Telegraph:

"We need more content for our internet web site page!"

"Oh no! Whatever will we do all the real news is already up there!"

"I know!!!!!!!!!!! We'll get someone who knows precisely nothing about the web to post some pathetic excuse for a recycled turd!"

"That's great! Trebles all round!"

Seriously, that is a pathetic effort. I mean, for fuck's sake, some of those sites are obviously missing images, content and style sheets. But no, apparently some lazy shit-for-brains at the Telegraph genuinely thinks that those sites all really looked like that.

I have done art.

2009-08-10T11:34:43Z

Insert Tumbleweed

2009-07-08T09:09:27Z

The EVOLUTION TEST!

This is fucking brilliant. I've not seen such incredibly potent, concentrated stupidity for a while.

Bollocks and Fuck.

2009-06-29T19:13:47Z

Giving up my iPod for a Walkman

There's something about these articles that drive me up the wall. I realise that it's written from a kid's perspective, but it still just plays right into this stupid, patronising bollocks: "Oh you useless little fucks you should see the technology we had to suffer through when we were young! By gum it gave us hepatitis and we were PROUD to have it!"

Oh ho ho those silly youngsters don't know that you used to have to TURN TAPES OVER! They can't handle that in these modern days of Internet Shuffle i-Have-Tunes and portable wireless downloadable web!

It drove me up the wall when I was a kid, and now that people have started doing it with technology that I actually used, it's even more annoying. Playing this game in which "kids today" are automatically pampered (and therefore also required to think less) simply because this technology exists is not only utterly stupid, it also sets up this entirely false system in which all old technology was a terrible hardship. The truth, of course being that it was actually something that made life easier when it was introduced, and has merely been improved upon.

The best quote from the entire article is actually in the comments, and just goes to show what a self-indulgent, techno-shit wank-fest it is:

However they still have a role; I got one from eBay for my partially sighted dad so he can play his audio books.

iPod screens don't have braille, you patronising shit-wits.

Bloody Hell

2009-06-02T15:08:19Z

So, I was briefly toying with the idea of voting for the Green Party, for a few reasons mostly to do with social policy.

Until I read these articles.

So, policies that would wreck British and European science, whilst also opening the door for all kinds of alternative medicine quackery and nonsense?

Perhaps not, then.

Braid

2009-05-18T15:02:24Z

One of the more encouraging things that the relative rise of independent games developers over the last few years has shown is that it is still possible for small teams on a low budget to produce games of startling originality and quality. A particularly good example of these is Braid, a 2D puzzle platform game in which the player controls the protagonist, the philosophical Tim, through a series of lush, beautiful worlds as he searches for the enigmatic Princess.

The key to Braid’s depth and originality is that each of these worlds forms a thought-experiment that asks: “what if the world worked differently?” Each world has a particular mechanic that drives this question: for example, the first mechanic (which persists throughout the game) is that time can be reversed at any point, without penalty. Death is no longer a punishment, rather an opportunity to learn from your mistakes. In another world, time works more like an intricate machine in which if Tim moves to the right, time moves forward, and if he moves to the left it moves backward.

Part of what is so wonderful about Braid is the delight in discovering how each world works, and how that affects your interaction with it. All the puzzles are beautifully crafted, requiring careful lateral thinking. Whilst they may initially seem hard, it’s usually because you haven’t quite got your head around them, and the sheer joy of solving the puzzles, of everything clicking into place, is more than worth the effort. Several times, I found myself whooping with delight as I latched on to the solution. All the puzzles are derived directly from the game mechanic, with no arbitrary impositions on the player. In all but a few cases, there is no penalty for getting the puzzle wrong. Even then, the penalty is still a function of the game mechanic, although it is frustrating to have to re-start a level when in the rest of the game that that is never necessary.

Complementing the game’s clever, original design are gorgeous artwork and dreamlike music. The artwork gives the game a lush, painterly style, and makes excellent use of parallax scrolling and particle effects to imbue the worlds of Braid with rich, deep visuals. The music adds to this to create a wonderful sense of place. The music that plays in Tim’s house (the hub from which each world is accessed) creates a wonderful sense of the comfort of the home and of dreamlike, slightly melancholy contemplation.

This melancholy is woven throughout the story, told in books that can be read before entering each world. This takes the form of real-world metaphors for each reality-bending mechanic. It is an interesting idea which is hampered by prose that does not match the high quality of the rest of Braid and a sense of disconnection from the game itself. Whilst this is good in the sense that players who are just in it for the fantastic gameplay are not burdened by the story, there is still the sense that it could have been woven into the gameplay more fluidly.

There are hints of what this closer connection could be at various moments in Braid; for example, the sudden realisation that being able to control time by moving across the screen means that some things are always out of reach, and some people and interactions will always be left behind, unknown and unexplored. It is in these moments the game suddenly pulls you in, prompting an emotional engagement that drives home the ideas behind it far better than the story. The best of these is the final sequence, which created a strong emotional response of the kind that I would not previously have thought possible in a platform game. I don’t want to spoil it by going into to much detail, but I will say that what I felt was surprisingly engaging, and beautifully explored Tim’s character and his quest in ways that the prose just hadn’t managed. When this happens, it raises the game to new heights. It is a pity that it isn’t more prevalent through out, as it could have smoothed out some of the formality of the game both in terms of the story and its somewhat rigid gameplay structure.

I have a tendency to feel a bit like I’m participating in a cliché when I start banging the “games are art” drum, but with Braid, it’s something that’s hard to ignore. The way it speaks to the human condition, even in something as basic as its puzzle mechanics, demonstrates new ways that art can be experienced. While the medium is in many ways still finding its feet, games like Braid show us the beauty it is capable of conveying.

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This has been taken from the new Rhexis. Development of the site is moving on well, both in terms of what is visible on-site and behind the scenes. If you are interested in contributing anything, be it writing, poetry, art, music or anything else, please e-mail me and we can talk about it.

Fred Became

2009-04-16T17:18:16Z

Fred became
increasingly desperate and frantic,
clutching at gaudy nothings,
building his disillusionment
from each subsequent
dissapointment.

Another day
began, timid and
colourless, breaking
dawn with a meek whisper,
echoing softly into space.

His detachment
began to calcify,
each small wrong,
percieved or real,
contributing to the
glory
of the whole.

The world
moved at a different pace
now,
words and thoughts
crawling from him even as
they tumbled
from others,
barking orders,
   insults,
   remonstrations.

Unable to communicate his confusion,
he retreated
further.

The sun, at its apex
let slip the fact of its indifference by
slouching even further into the clouds,
relinquishing a little more to the darkness
in anticipation of the end.

The lights burned his eyes,
pulsing
flashes of neon
demanding
attention
over
and
over.

Wracked with anger
and impotence
in equal measures, Fred hid.
Trembling
beneath the sheets,
his room his coocoon,
nothing but shafts of light,
painting the bare walls
in surly brilliance,
and the grumbling of cars.

Frustrated, the dusk failed to
gain entry, curtains
holding out against all
ingress until,
jaded, it slipped away.

An hour,
   a day,
   a week,
Fred did not know,
he did not care.

His body, simultaneously
weightless
and weighted,
bewildered and blinking
in the freshness
of the dark.

The light, now fallen,
was reduced to a pallid glow,
sickly neon haloes
aspiring to incandescence,
over the unjust and just.

In a brief second,
never understood,
but always remembered,
he saw it;
the image on his wall.

Some fresh angle,
or perspective,
the seed of something new.
He sat up,
and looked up,
for the first time in a while.

The dawn broke then,
awash with colour.

Under the watch
of a blue sky,
the clouds parted,
and the day broke,
to the sound of a horn.

A Conspicuously Quiet Foghorn

2009-04-06T18:32:34Z

I’ve been noticing an irritating trend lately. It concerns the appearance of a not inconsiderable number of pearl-clutchingly dismissive articles laying into the perceived horrors of the “New Atheism” and why it’s a waste of time/morally wrong/will bring society to collapse/oh god won’t somebody please think of the children.

A good example of this from Madeleine Bunting appeared today: Real debates about faith are drowned by the New Atheists' foghorn voices.

It begins with a rather choice comment, which bemoans the imminent collapse of British Christianity and then speculates:

One can only presume that the New Atheists are organising a fabulous party to celebrate. Richard Dawkins could stump up for the crates of champagne out of his sumptuous royalties from The God Delusion.

I’m getting really fucking sick of this. This article comes at the end of a long line of comment, all of which basically comes together to say that these people are deeply unsettled by the idea that atheists have managed to carve out some space in the public discourse, and actually have a voice these days. This is because the “New Atheists” are horrible brutes who always say mean things, holler at us from the sides of buses, and generally ruin everything by having an opinion and daring to express it.

After reading the article, I found myself imagining Madeleine Bunting as a person who never really goes out much these days, just sits in her living room, playing with finger puppets and howling with indignation when one of them says something nasty about religion.

I am particularly annoyed because it is this kind of straw-man building that is used to argue against a coherent atheist voice. Accusations such as “shrill” and “strident” are thrown around, and the mysterious and sinister cabal of “New Atheists” are said to have “foghorn voices”.

This is a particularly irritating and absurd claim that goes a long way to demonstrating Bunting’s prejudices on the matter. Atheists do not have “foghorn voices”. Religious discussion still dominates in the public discourse, with religious authorities and “community leaders” being consulted on all manner of topics, sometimes regardless of whether or not they are actually qualified to comment. Atheism has a comparatively smaller voice, and yet, whenever an atheist speaks out over something or dares to write a book suggesting that gods might not be real after all, suddenly they’re horrible jerks.

It is a particularly distasteful equivocation because it equates “having a voice that can be heard” with “having an overbearing, dominant voice that serves only to spew bile over the faithful”, the result of which seems to be the implication that atheists should not have this voice because people of apparently extremely delicate sensibilities will be upset.

I have no time for that.

There is almost certainly no god. That is how I feel on the matter. And I will not allow anyone to try to silence me by trying to claim that by saying it in a clear voice that I am indulging in some kind of contemptuous certainty that blasts its opinions shrilly into the night.

I will put up with claims that I am amoral, missing out on true happiness, or lacking in a way of discovering wonder and beauty in the universe, because I know that those claims are wrong. What I will not put up with is an attempt to silence me or others like me by indulging in this straw-man denunciation of the “New Atheists”. They are a spectre, a monster under the bed that has been created to frighten people into believing that atheists are strident bullies, and it ought to be put to rest.

----------

This has been cross-posted to the new Rhexis. Development of the site is moving on well, both in terms of what is visible on-site and behind the scenes. If you are interested in contributing anything, be it writing, poetry, art, music or anything else, please e-mail me and we can talk about it.

Open-mindedness.

2009-04-06T14:58:27Z

An excellent video, to be watched and understood by all. Because, quite frankly, the next time someone accuses me of being closed-minded because I don't believe in Magic Water or that a man in a tasteless suit was able to Traverse The Veil To The Spirit World to have a chat with your granny, but was still unable to guess any more of her name than the letter "B" and convey some vague, simpering platitudes about forgiveness, I may well scream.

frank_snow @ 2009-03-17T15:30:00

2009-03-17T15:30:40Z

SCIENCE AND RELIGION ARE NOT THE SAME THING FUCK I HATE YOU.

Oh, Good on You!

2009-03-13T21:09:16Z

And, so: The Complementary & National Healthcare Council.

What a wonderful idea, you might think! A group set up to regulate and control the Alternative "Medicine" industry!

Except, well, it's not. In fact, I'm not entirely sure what it thinks it's doing. All they seem to exist to do is register quack therapists who subscribe to their code of conduct. Nothing more. They make no comment or restriction on the efficacy or safety of their members' therapies. More than that - their complaints procedure is apparently "not intended to be punitive". So they're entirely toothless, and they're happy to register "therapists" regardless of whether or not they can prove that their treatments actually work.

Of course, this opens the door to plenty of quacks to register their bogus therapies with the CNHC and thus claim to an unsuspecting public that this means that their therapies are both safe and effective.

And I thought it was bad enough that Homeopathy is offered on the NHS.

The Darwinist Bigots and their Evil!

2009-02-25T16:24:56Z

I know it was a little while ago, but I couldn’t help but bring up one of “Peter” Hitchens’* more fatuous recent outpourings. Hidden away at the bottom of an ignorant screed about drugs and other sundry matters, was this little gem of beautifully constructed prose. As follows:

"Can I be the only person sick to the teeth of the BBC’s incessant Darwin Festival? It’s bad enough having this flunked parson and failed doctor (though he was a reasonable taxidermist) on the £10 note. I’m quite prepared to consider the possibility that his theory (welcomed by all kinds of nasty people because it licensed their genocidal projects or freed them from guilt) may conceivably be true. But I do get tired of bossy people ordering me to believe in it. I also get cross when I’m told by Darwinist bigots that if I dare to doubt Darwin, then I must believe in the literal truth of the Bible. I don’t. Like everyone else, I have no idea how the realm of Nature took its present form."

“Peter” apparently only comes out from under his rock to scribble barely coherent nonsense about snow and “gays”, otherwise he would have been aware that this “incessant” Darwin Festival is happening for quite a good reason. It just so happens this year is the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of “On the Origin of Species”. Not only that, but “Peter’s” article was published a mere three days after Darwin Day, a celebration of his work marked by his birthday on February 12. In the context of all of this, some might consider it reasonable that the BBC might wish to mention him now and again (not to mention the likelihood that “Peter” is merely using this as an excuse to please his editors by taking another jab at the BBC, no matter how feeble).

But no, none of this is good enough for “Peter”. No, he can’t be having something as unpatriotic as a “flunked parson and failed doctor” on his beloved £10 note! Of course this is a fairly standard rhetorical tactic for attempting to discredit someone; focus on trivial aspects of their past (the more insignificant the better) whilst ignoring their achievements. In this case, however, the achievement is a little too great to ignore – the theory of evolution by natural selection, one of the most important scientific theories ever. A little too big to sweep under the carpet, perhaps.

And here of course, “Peter” reveals his creationist sympathies. First he brings up the “evolution leads to genocide” canard, a tired and pathetic argument that needs to be put to rest. But oh no! “Peter” is generously offering to “consider the possibility that his theory … may be true”, and yet these horrible Darwinists are ordering, ORDERING him to believe in it!

Except, well… no.

Being taught something at school and being “ordered” to believe it are two different things, and “Peter’s” desperate attempt to frame evolutionary science as some kind of awful oppressor just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. It must be difficult to live in “Peter’s” world, where the Militant Atheist Drug-Taking Multi-Cultural “Gay” Stasi are constantly ordering him to believe in things that he doesn’t understand.

And then we have: “I also get cross when I’m told by Darwinist bigots that if I dare to doubt Darwin, then I must believe in the literal truth of the Bible,” which is just ridiculous. A straw man “Darwinist bigot” insisting on an obviously false dichotomy. There are plenty of things he could believe in other than “Darwin” or “the Bible”, but he seems to have forgotten about that.

And finally, “Peter” insists that just like everyone else he is utterly baffled by the world around him. I am sorry to break it to you, “Peter”, but unfortunately, that is largely just you. As far as the complexity of life on this planet goes, we have a pretty good idea of what’s going on. It’s called evolution, and you obviously don’t understand it in the slightest.

Not good enough. D-. See me after class.

* And that’s another thing! I can’t even refer to him as “Petrus” anymore! Petrus, a perfectly good, solid and above all neutral word, but unfortunately not considered enthusiastic enough by the Pro-“Peter” Militant Nazi Agenda. Now we have to say “Peter”. Which is exactly why I don't, apart from in inverted commas.

Aaaaaaaaaaargh.

2009-02-17T21:33:48Z

Trent Reznor: "I've been thinking for some time now it's time to make NIN disappear for a while."

Can you hear that, you fuckers? Can you hear it?

That is the sound of my HEART BREAKING.

"The problem with Occam's Razor is that you can't actually cut someone with it."

2009-02-16T15:13:43Z

I have an issue with conspiracy theories. The issue is not so much that they exist (that would seem to be an inevitability, especially in the age of the internet), but that I have repeatedly seen otherwise intelligent, rational people become completely drawn into these theories without ever apparently noticing the faulty logic and massive confirmation bias required to sustain such ideas.

I can see the initial attraction that some of these ideas hold. They form a gateway to a world full of mystery and intrigue, where covert Government agents fly the disguised Roswell spacecraft into the twin towers whilst Illuminati Reptilians fuck JFK to death on the set of the faked Moon landings. Or something. While it may seem more exciting to live in a real-world version of Deus Ex, the problem is that there is no significant quantity of reliable evidence that can back these claims up.

Which is not to say that there are no such things as conspiracies. They happen all the time, but the key point to note is that they are all relatively simple as far as the relationship between effort and payoff goes; Guy Fawkes and his companions plotting to blow up the Houses of Parliament, industry executives paying experts to mislead the public about the nature of their product, or even a group of friends planning a surprise birthday party. What is clear in each of these examples is that there is an obvious and simple motivation for engaging in the conspiracy, a clear and not overly complicated solution for achieving an outcome, and a reasonable amount to gain from success.

If you take a popular modern conspiracy theory (9/11 Truth, or faked moon landings for example), you will tend to find that these things are conspicuously absent. Why the US Government would wish to stage a "controlled demolition" of an important landmark and economic centre, killing thousands of citizens in the process, is unclear. Their supposed methods for achieving this, and the various ways in which they are supposed have "covered up"* this attack are convoluted and bewildering. It could reasonably be said that what they gained from all this was a pretext upon which they could invade Iraq, but given that it seems fairly obvious that they were already going to invade anyway, and the flimsiness of the pretext upon which they did eventually invade, it seems a fairly outrageous suggestion that they would go to such confusing lengths to do it, including attacking their own military headquarters in the process (I'd have thought it fairly important to have an intact, functioning military HQ if you're planning military action). Add to all this the constant shifting of goalposts and absurd requirements for the evidence that would convince them that the accepted version of events is closest to the truth - take, for example, the refusal to accept photographs of debris outside the Pentagon as containing aircraft parts, despite, well, obviously containing aircraft parts.

What this all boils down to, is that none of these conspiracy theories are actually proper, functioning theories. A decent theory takes all the available empirical evidence and unifies it into a well thought-out explanation. Whereas your average conspiracy theory will take the issue and tear into it, raising question after question after question that requires explanation. Their version of events then seems to be taken as a de facto answer to these questions, without actually having any evidence to back it up.

Now, I'm not saying that the standard explanation of events should be unquestioningly accepted, but it is important to go where the facts lead you. Having an open mind is a virtue, but it shouldn't be so open that your brain falls out.

* Although it can hardly be considered an effective "cover-up" if a fourteen year-old with a YouTube account and a webcam is able to "expose" it.

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P.S. - I have cross-posted this to The Rhexis. We initially had big plans to re-start it, but as these are on hold for the time being, I would like to propose to all contributors reading this that we start writing there again, as an early, interim way of breathing some life back into it.

Do you find it so hard to explain yourself?

2008-11-03T17:54:11Z

Here's some fucking music yeah yeah.

The Frank Snow Misunderstanding - Never Even.

I think he may have bet beyond the odds on this one.

2008-09-30T15:10:00Z

Creationist offers prize for fossil proof of evolution.

"Adnan Oktar said that he has "issued a call to all evolutionists" that he will give "10 trillion Turkish lira to anyone who produces a single intermediate-form fossil demonstrating evolution" – a sum roughly equal to £4.4trn."

I mean, yes, it was already obvious that Oktar was a bit of a simpleton, but this is frankly hilarious. It's not even just that this is clearly bogus - he's offering the equivalent of 4.4 trillion pounds sterling; money he clearly doesn't have. It's not far off Kent "Complete Shitwit" Hovind's $250,000 offer/publicity stunt to "prove evolution". Any evidence he receives will just be creatively misunderstood, ignored, or he will apply nonsensical restrictions upon it, until it seems to anyone credulous enough that nothing has been demonstrated at all.

Of course, amusingly, his own complete failure to understand the subject matter will lead to his own failure to recognise any evidence presented to him. The fossil record is full of intermediate/transitional form fossils, even in spite of how sparse it is (given how rarely fossils form). But of course, even more spectacularly, with true creationist can't-tell-arse-from-elbows gusto, what he fails to realise is that evolution is an ongoing process. Every single fossil in the record, and every single creature alive today, is a transitional form.

No.

2008-07-28T01:00:29Z

They didn't bleed to protect a flag, and they didn't bleed to protect a "nation".

Most of them didn't bleed for anything. They bled because they had been seriously injured.

This does not mean anything, and it never will. Attempting to force some ridiculous ideal onto individuals who can no longer stand up for themselves does not serve some sort of ultimate ideological purpose. It it cruel, it is manipulative, and it is ultimately meaningless.

The dead are gone; no more. How dare you force them to have a mouth, so that you can speak through it?

Yes.

2008-07-01T01:00:00Z

I fucking love Science.

Here is a link to demonstrate why science is fun.

SCIENCE FOR ALL!