The Rules

A slightly late bit of humour for Valentines day:

1. The FEMALE always makes the rules.

2. The RULES are subject to change at any time without prior notification.

3. No MALE can possibly know all the RULES.

4. If the FEMALE suspects the MALE knows all the RULES, she must immediately change some or all of them.

5. The FEMALE is never wrong.

6. If the FEMALE is wrong, it is due to a misunderstanding which was a direct result of something the MALE did or said wrong.

7. The MALE must apologize immediately for causing the misunderstandings.

8. The FEMALE may change her mind at any time.

9. The MALE must never change his mind without the express written consent of the FEMALE.

10. The FEMALE has every right to be angry or upset at any time.

These are, in my opinion, so true … there are extended versions out there but I think these 10 rules really sum it up!

Kyuuketsuki (Co-Founder: “Science, Just Science” Campaign)

On The US WGA Writer’s Strike “Deal”

I was glad when the WGA strike was over, even more glad that I thought they had got some measure of what they wanted but if Harlan Ellison (I assume the same as the respected SF author and a significant force behind Babylon 5) is typical of the view the WGA memebers hold they were shafted:

HARLAN ELLISON ON THE WRITERS STRIKE SETTLEMENT

YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION TO RE-POST THIS ANYWHERE:

Creds: got here in 1962, written for just about everybody, won the Writers Guild Award four times for solo work, sat on the WGAw Board twice, worked on negotiating committees, and was out on the picket lines with my NICK COUNTER SLEEPS WITH THE FISHE$$$ sign. You may have heard my name. I am a Union guy, I am a Guild guy, I am loyal. I fuckin’ LOVE the Guild.

And I voted NO on accepting this deal.

My reasons are good, and they are plentiful; Patric Verrone will be saddened by what I am about to say; long-time friends will shake their heads; but this I say without equivocation…

THEY BEAT US LIKE A YELLOW DOG. IT IS A SHIT DEAL. We finally got a timorous generation that has never had to strike, to get their asses out there, and we had to put up with the usual cowardly spineless babbling horse’s asses who kept mumbling “lessgo bac’ta work” over and over, as if it would make them one iota a better writer. But after months on the line, and them finally bouncing that pus-sucking dipthong Nick Counter, we rushed headlong into a shabby, scabrous, underfed shovelfulla shit clutched to the affections of toss-in-the-towel summer soldiers trembling before the Awe of the Alliance.

My Guild did what it did in 1988. It trembled and sold us out. It gave away the EXACT co-terminus expiration date with SAG for some bullshit short-line substitute; it got us no more control of our words; it sneak-abandoned the animator and reality beanfield hands before anyone even forced it on them; it made nice so no one would think we were meanies; it let the Alliance play us like the village idiot. The WGAw folded like a Texaco Road Map from back in the day.

And I am ashamed of this Guild, as I was when Shavelson was the prexy, and we wasted our efforts and lost out on technology that we had to strike for THIS time. 17 days of streaming tv!!!????? Geezus, you bleating wimps, why not just turn over your old granny for gang-rape?

You deserve all the opprobrium you get. While this nutty festschrift of demented pleasure at being allowed to go back to work in the rice paddy is filling your cowardly hearts with joy and relief that the grips and the staff at the Ivy and street sweepers won’t be saying nasty shit behind your back, remember this:

You are their bitches. They outslugged you, outthought you, outmaneuvered you; and in the end you ripped off your pants, painted yer asses blue, and said yes sir, may I have another.

Please excuse my temerity. I’m just a sad old man who has fallen among Quislings, Turncoats, Hacks and Cowards.

I must go now to whoops. My gorge has become buoyant.

Respectfully, Yr. Pal, Harlan Ellison

I suspect my good friend Ben will have more to say about this!

Kyuuketsuki (Co-Founder: “Science, Just Science” Campaign)

Why Darwin Matters!

I just caught site of this on:The Guardian online!

Richard Dawkins introduces a remarkable 34-page celebration of the book that changed the world, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, FREE with tomorrow’s edition of the Guardian

The Guardian, Friday February 8 2008

Charles Darwin had a big idea, arguably the most powerful idea ever. And like all the best ideas it is beguilingly simple. In fact, it is so staggeringly elementary, so blindingly obvious that although others before him tinkered nearby, nobody thought to look for it in the right place.

Darwin had plenty of other good ideas – for example his ingenious and largely correct theory of how coral reefs form – but it is his big idea of natural selection, published in On the Origin of Species, that gave biology its guiding principle, a governing law that helps the rest make sense. Understanding its cold, beautiful logic is a must.

Natural selection’s explanatory power is not just about life on this planet: it is the only theory so far suggested that could, even in principle, explain life on any planet. If life exists elsewhere in the universe – and my tentative bet is that it does – some version of evolution by natural selection will almost certainly turn out to underlie its existence. Darwin’s theory works equally well no matter how strange and alien and weird that extraterrestrial life may be – and my tentative bet is that it will be weird beyond imagining.

Explanation ratio

But what makes natural selection so special? A powerful idea assumes little to explain much. It does lots of explanatory “heavy lifting”, while expending little in the way of assumptions or postulations. It gives you plenty of bangs for your explanatory buck. Its Explanation Ratio – what it explains, divided by what it needs to assume in order to do the explaining – is large.

If any reader knows of an idea that has a larger explanation ratio than Darwin’s, let’s hear it. Darwin’s big idea explains all of life and its consequences, and that means everything that possesses more than minimal complexity. That’s the numerator of the explanation ratio, and it is huge.

Yet the denominator in the explanatory equation is spectacularly small and simple: natural selection, the non-random survival of genes in gene pools (to put it in neo-Darwinian terms rather than Darwin’s own).

You can pare Darwin’s big idea down to a single sentence (again, this is a modern way of putting it, not quite Darwin’s): “Given sufficient time, the non-random survival of hereditary entities (which occasionally miscopy) will generate complexity, diversity, beauty, and an illusion of design so persuasive that it is almost impossible to distinguish from deliberate intelligent design.” I have put “which occasionally miscopy” in brackets because mistakes are inevitable in any copying process. We don’t need to add mutation to our assumptions. Mutational “bucks” are provided free. “Given sufficient time” is not a problem either – except for human minds struggling to take on board the terrifying magnitude of geological time.

[Read More Here]

A free book on evolution written by Dawkins? I think I will be getting my copy of The Guardian tomorrow.

Kyuuketsuki (Co-Founder: “Science, Just Science” Campaign)

PETITION: Afghanistan Execution!

So OK … we invaded Afghanistan ostensibly to remove a fundamentalist regime and for what?

From “The Independent”:

A young man, a student of journalism, is sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading a report from the internet. The sentence is then upheld by the country’s rulers. This is Afghanistan – not in Taliban times but six years after “liberation” and under the democratic rule of the West’s ally Hamid Karzai.

The fate of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh has led to domestic and international protests, and deepening concern about erosion of civil liberties in Afghanistan. He was accused of blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed.

Mr Kambaksh, 23, distributed the tract to fellow students and teachers at Balkh University with the aim, he said, of provoking a debate on the matter. But a complaint was made against him and he was arrested, tried by religious judges without – say his friends and family – being allowed legal representation and sentenced to death.

The Independent is launching a campaign today to secure justice for Mr Kambaksh. The UN, human rights groups, journalists’ organisations and Western diplomats have urged Mr Karzai’s government to intervene and free him. But the Afghan Senate passed a motion yesterday confirming the death sentence.

You can read more here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/sentenced-to-death-afghan-who-dared-to-read-about-womens-rights-775972.html

You can sign the petition here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/article775954.ece

Kyuuketsuki (Co-Founder: “Science, Just Science” Campaign)