Is there a dog?

...hasn't it?

I have been a wee bit busy lately, not really much time to do anything significant on here, just throwing the odd comment around. I have also been spending less and less time using Windows, because (a) it's crap and (b) I just got a new laptop, which I have now installed Ubuntu on, and it is a beautiful thing. A few teething problems aside (the sort of thing you always get with Linux, finding the right drivers mostly, plus a couple of 64-bit complications), I find it to be much quicker and far less system/resource-greedy than the ugly hog OS Vista which is now a thing of the past. If anyone wants the disc they can have it (don't tell Bill though ), although I wouldn't use it for anything but an undersized frisbee now.

As a result though, I am considering (although I haven't completely made up my mind yet) migrating this blog somewhere a little less Microsoft-oriented. To my shame I have left my foray into wordpress untouched for months now - I don't know why I thought I could update two blogs when I hardly have the time for one. However, I think I'll leave things as they are for now, as I am feeling sleepy...

Well, I am so glad this day is over. One of those I would rather forget, not that it was especially memorable. Then again, those sort of days tend to stick out in your memory...

First of all, I had to spend most of the day (nigh on all of it) coding a macro in Excel. Mostly, I don't mind that sort of work, as it often poses a challenge, keeps the brain active, and VBA is mostly fairly easy to work with - well documented and reasonably straightforward to debug. Excel, on the other hand, is a delicate little flower which really doesn't cope well with any more than about 10,000 rows of data for any operation more complex than copy and paste. Which can be a problem when you try and import 35,000 rows of data and perform another 50 calculations on them. As I found out...

So, as I was waiting for my macro to run to the next breakpoint, hoping (while touching wood) that I had broken the steps down to sufficiently small increments so that Excel wouldn't crash, again, I was reminded of an "urban legend" that did the rounds a few years ago - it's always the way, I honestly can't remember where I saw it, but it's true

- apparently when Windows was in its infancy, the infamous "blue screen of death" (i.e. your OS has just died) was accompanied by an error message, in haiku form:

Just then, Excel crashed. Sometimes, the bear gets you.

People are often uncomfortable with the idea of introspection - we use dismissive terms like "navel-gazing" and talk about people having their "heads in the clouds". I think possibly people who talk like that are scared of what they might face, when they face up to themselves...

Quote

Learning to Fly...

 

 

 

I'm learning to fly....

 

 

 

 

 

Aiming for the horizon...

 

...

 

I spread my wings...

 

...

 

I'm taking a leap of faith...

 

 

 

And lunging towards the unknown.

 

 

 

 

But the winds have shifted.

The horizons I aim for have taken on new forms.

The experience I seek is within me.

 

 

I want to fly inward.

I want to fly into the black hole that is my mind and explore...

 

 

I want to fly and swirl

 

Into depths unknown...

 

Into depths be thrown...

 

And by my depth be throned...

 

 

I want to be owned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I find this hard to credit... after all the soul-searching after Columbine, and then Virginia Tech, ABC comes up with a solution: WE NEED MORE GUNS...

Of course! That's brilliant!  Why didn't someone think of this earlier?

I have been really disappointed over the last few months at the disinformation and reactionary fervour surrounding the so-called "anti-smacking bill". That more or less came to a head the other day when I happened to be walking through Parliament grounds while the Destiny church was protesting against NZ Traditional Family Values in Jeopardy.

I personally find it just a little disturbing that so many parents feel so strongly that they wish to hit their children. Of course, the marginally more palatable (but equally disturbing) possibility is that after the constant misrepresentation of the bill by sleazy point-scoring politicos, demagogues like Brian Tamaki may have actually managed to convince people that the bill is about taking away the rights of parents to discipline their children.

Wake up, people! The bill that Sue Bradford is passing is long overdue. Parents' rights are not under threat here. What is happening is that the right of any child not to be abused (while the parent hides behind the currently legal defense of "reasonable force") is being championed. What is happening is we're saying it is no longer ok for kids to be beaten with power cords and cricket bats. We're saying we've had enough of kids being subjected to levels of violence that would be called assault when inflicted on an adult, and the perpetrators of these crimes getting away with it.

I've lost count of how many times have people said in relation to the bill, "I was smacked as a child and it never did me any harm." Here's where the problem really lies - there is a fundamental disconnection between the people who are all too ready to protest any bill that outlaws smacking because they "don't see the harm in it", and the abusive cowards the bill is aimed at criminalising. The horrific violence done to our young people is jokingly referred to as a short, sharp smack. Meanwhile, the children whose welfare is at the heart of this debate have been put to one side. Politicians and media commentators who play on this discrepancy to their advantage are at best confused about the intent of the bill, and at worst are cynically uncaring. Shame on them.

The first edition of the Humanist Symposium blog carnival has now been posted at Daylight Atheism.

I would encourage everyone reading this to get over there and take a look - there are some brilliant essays there, promoting humanism as a positive lifestyle and an answer to those who believe that people living life without religion are somehow 'missing out'. My own post of a couple of weeks ago, Why be good? is included there, which I find quite humbling considering the quality of thought and argument that can be found in the posts making up the carnival. I won't single out any as I think you should go there and take a look for yourself, and I must admit, I'm still working my way through them all! Suffice it to say, I think I will find a lot of inspiration there for future ramblings.

I couldn't resist this, as most people I tell what I'm doing want to know what an actuary actually does...so here's a definition, and a few pointers...

An actuary is a person, who passes as an expert on the basis of a prolific ability to produce an infinite variety of incomprehensive figures calculated with micrometric precision from the vaguest of assumptions based on debatable evidence from inconclusive data derived by persons of questionable reliability for the sole purpose of confusing an already hopelessly befuddled group of persons who never read the statistics anyway!

In response to "How much is two plus two?", a marketing VP will say "22"; an accountant will say "4.00"; a mathematician will say "I can demonstrate it equals 4 with the following proof ... "; an actuary will ask "What do you want it to equal?"

Question: How many actuaries does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: a) How many did it take last year? b) How many do you want it to take? c) None, after credibility weighting, we have indications that the bulb is still lit. d) None, the insurance department is not allowing any modifications to the bulb at this time. e) Have any of our competitors changed bulbs yet? f) None, they prefer to leave us in the dark. g) Five: one to screw it in, and four more to estimate the length of its life before being screwed in. h) The same number that it took last year, adjusted for trending. i) Two- The Senior Actuary presents the proposal to Managment and the Junior actuary does the work. j) One- But he/she has to do battle first with Sales and Marketing over the issue. k) One- But first, it takes ten years to pass the exams.

List of actuarial pick-up lines:
7. Of course I won't tell anyone. I'm like the exponential distribution, I have the memoryless property.
6. Is that an official SOA calculator in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me? Please note that only an official calculator, bearing the seal of the Society of Actuaries, will be accepted as an answer.
5. So, what exam are you sitting for? Hey, what a coincidence, I'm on that exam committee. I've seen the questions they're gonna ask this time. You should see them, it's gonna be a real killer ...
4. My love for you is endless, like a perpetuity.
3. Since the first time I saw you, my interest in you has compounded continuously.
2. I love the way your hairline emulates the p.d.f. of the Gamma distribution.
1. If you put 5 red, 4 yellow, and 3 green balls in an urn, what's the probability of you coming home with me tonight?

And, my personal favourite:

What does an actuary's wife do when she has insomnia? She rolls over and says, "Tell me again, darling. Just what is it you do for a living?"

-Source: ACTUARIAL JOKES

Not so long ago I had a discussion with someone who was discontented with the state of their life - in fact they were very angry about it. Their anger was all directed at the perceived source of all the trouble and wrongness in their life - in a word, God.

The reason God was blamed was that this person's Christian beliefs were at the heart of their behaviour. They followed the Golden Rule (the do unto others thing), as well as all of the Ten Commandments, and yet, their life was in tatters. People mistreated them, took advantage of their good nature, they had bad luck with their investments, they had developed a stress-related disorder and their relationships were disintegrating. Now, this unfortunate person argued, I know that God has set aside a reward for me in Heaven. I know that suffering brings virtue. I know that I cannot expect life to fall into place for me. But why does it have to be so hard? What would happen if I were to renounce my beliefs and all the moral imperatives that go with them? I could act exactly as I wanted then, and maybe my life would be easier and better.

My first impulse (which I'm glad I resisted) would have been to state "God doesn't exist. It is completely irrational to place blame on something which doesn't exist, so I suggest you start looking elsewhere for the reason you are unhappy with your life." The reason I hesitated to say this was because the problem this person was facing was bigger than simply a consequence of their beliefs. This is a problem which everyone faces, whatever their belief system is and regardless of whether it happens to contain a deity. Simply put, it is this: If I am good, what do I get out of it?

When we are young, we are told to be nice to others, to be polite, to refrain from violence, to share our toys, to help those who need our help, to tell the truth. In other words, to be 'good'. When we are not 'good', we face a consequence which hopefully teaches us to be 'good'. When we are 'good', we are praised, which hopefully reinforces our behaviour. Of course, whether or not that works as a young child, as our powers of reasoning develop we need to be shown a rational path to realising for ourselves that it is right to behave in a certain way. We need to reach a stage in our moral development which allows us to make decisions about often complex situations without reference to a parental figure for guidance.

What exactly constitutes the right way to behave can vary somewhat, depending on our cultural setting. In some places personal property is less important than sharing with the community. In one culture a casual smile between a boy and girl publicly imbues their relationship with an inappropriate level of intimacy, whereas the same smile could simply be a polite gesture elsewhere. However, certain things remain true regardless of where you are. An act which brings harm to someone is wrong, in general. To act, therefore, in a way which minimises harm (not always an easy thing to judge) is right. To act for the good of others is right. It is right in a way which is fundamental to the fabric of all society.

This is a principle embodied by the words of Jesus Christ: "Love thy neighbour as thyself". (Its polar opposite has often been seen in the motto of Aleister Crowley, "Do what thou wilt is the whole of the law." Funnily enough though, Crowley intended 'what thou wilt' to be something quite different to the self-interest it has often been misinterpreted as.) The Confucian virtue expressed in the Doctrine of the Mean advocates harmony and benevolence. The Buddhist Pancasila has its followers renounce killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying and intoxication. The Hindu concept of Dharma guides each individual along a path of right living at each stage of their lives.

For each of these, there is a different reason to obey their particular instruction - often enlightenment, Heaven or communion with God as a reward for right behaviour, or perhaps Hell or a similar consequence for malfeasance. In the same way as the child behaves rightly to win reward or to escape punishment, the follower of religious doctrine is motivated to receive a return on their investment of good behaviour. This has the advantage of allowing the person who does not want to think about why it is right to behave this way to still live a good life.

If you were to think about it, though, why would you want to act in an ethical way, if not to receive some sort of reward? The fact is that if everyone in the world consistently behaved ethically, the world would be a better place to live. We would treat each other respectfully and peacefully, and my friend would have no reason to complain about being treated badly. There is no need for the promise of Heaven or Hell after death when we can play a part in creating either here and now.

Of all the people I lost touch with when I stopped updating this blog, perhaps the one I felt worst about was Lili. If you were reading last year, you'll know I was a huge fan of her writing, and she was also a good friend.

Sadly her blog is no longer on Windows spaces, but Google is a wonderful thing...I hope she doesn't mind me posting the link here ... Lili now has a photo-blog Picture-Writer and her photography can also be seen at Flickr, together with some of her writing. Well worth a visit!

What do you get when you combine a multinational company, Jesus and Italian cinema? Apparently not a PR opportunity...Jesus drinking Coca-Cola? Not this Easter

One of the more bizarre moments surrounding Easter, a holiday that has more than its share of bizarre moments...what I found funny was that Coca-Cola thought that "the use of its brand was unacceptable and could get (sic) the company a bad image". So Santa is OK, but not Jesus?

I wonder if Pepsi has been watching? Opportunity knocks, people...