Cynicism is the last refuge of the idealist

An interesting article on the history of the first text-based adventure game.

Oh yes, the granddaddy of Melboorne House’ The Hobbit

“tell Thorin to pick you up” etc etc etc - hours of simple gamin fun trying to find the right combination of words

Archaeologosists are claiming to have found the long-lost tomb of Odysseus in Homeric Ithaca.

The one drawback has always been that Ithaca is a barren island and has never been shown to have any bronze age archaeology on it.

Recent excavations however have found a tomb which seems to contain royal remains on nearby Paros.

All interesting stuff

From The Times - a survey seems to suggest that religgious belief is bad for the overall health of sociey

It compares the social peformance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution. Many conservative evangelicals in the US consider Darwinism to be a social evil, believing that it inspires atheism and amorality< …>

Many liberal Christians and believers of other faiths hold that religious belief is socially beneficial, believing that it helps to lower rates of violent crime, murder, suicide, sexual promiscuity and abortion. The benefits of religious belief to a society have been described as its “spiritual capital”. But the study claims that the devotion of many in the US may actually contribute to its ills.
“In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”

Now tell me something I don’t know.

To poke my oar in the water: There’s nothing wrong with faith per se, it’s just that montheistic religions are arranged in a pyramidal fashion with God at the top with a tier of priesthood above the commoners telling them what to think.

It seems to me that all forms of priesthood are inherently bigotted, narrowminded and fail to stand up for what makes the religion wonderful in the first place.

And the one thing that most of these intecessionary religions have is that they restrict access to the afterlife, telling people they are damned and going to Hell for whatever reason suits the priesthood

And it doesn’t matter what religion you come from - there is as much potential for vile bigotry in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, even Buddhism.

It’s not the message that’s wrong, it’s the people who claim for themselves the right to declare themselves messengers.

Let me be clear, I have met wonderful people filled with beautiful faith from all branches of reliogious belief and it can be a beautiful thing. It’s just when you get people commanding what can or can’t be taught in schools, whether it is the theory of evolution; sex education or just racial and cultural tolerance you know society is in trouble

Interesting article over ateWeek regarding the Prepcon-3 convention in Geneva where the international community is calling for the US to give up it’s unilateral control of the Internet.

Now is it any surprise at all the the US isn’t paying ball??

Afterall this conference was organised by the UN. Hmm let me see can I remember the last time the US bothered to listen to the UN - let me see any wars going on in the world where the US ignored the will of the UN???

What about the Kyoto protocol on climate change???

Does any seriously expect the US to do anything other than what it always does

Nope, didn’t think so