I have been quite wary of posting things online due to overlapping circles of friends. A number of cases have emerged where people have been fired for gross misconduct for posting on facebook and the like about how their work sucked that day or that they hate their boss.

With the rise of social media, most people seem to look at it as basically an online version of blethering with mates down the pub or whatever. Does anyone know of any case where telling someone in the pub work sucked today ended in them being sacked? No doubt these were hard to prove, with no screencap of you saying it. I always looked on it as if an employer wants to control what I say outside mon-fri 9-5 they can pay me for those hours where they restrict my right to vent. Due to this I was always pretty strict about adding people from work to various social network sites etc.

The other work issue is what if I post to twitter at 10:30am when I am working. Seeing that tweet might be seen as evidence of skiving, what if I am in the middle of running a suite of unit tests though which is going to take 10minutes? Hard to prove.

With my blog I write a random assortment, food, rants, politics, religion, coding, geeky hobbies.

With facebook I have everything set to privacy-Max and went through the rubbish process of adding people to groups so that where appropriate I can only post to a group subset. I also tend to have purges every couple of months of people who I don’t really know, or my current gripe – organisations who set up accounts instead of pages/groups.

With twitter I have it locked down at private and really only allow people to follow me if I know them. I tend to post a mixture of humour, satire, politics. Twitter doesn’t have any way to only post to lists etc though.

With LinkedIn I set up a profile and use it as professional me online. That is a free for all and anyone I know can be added there. I don’t link it to my blog, twitter, facebook etc though.

With Google Plus, separating circles of friends or acquaintances is much simpler though. I think with that I may use it as a free for all and just add people to lots of circles to separate messages.

How do you separate your private, personal, public and family life in the social media age?

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The RIAA (Recording Industry of America) has had a potted history of cases against individual alleged file sharers. They have sued children, people who don’t own computers and dead people.

Their only courtroom victory was later thrown out. Every time they have won it has been by extortion – threatening people with court if they don’t pay up.

The latest attack on file sharers is taking place in Swedish courts where the 5 people who run the Pirate Bay are on trial. The Pirate Bay site hosts links to torrent files and details of who is sharing files. The important part of this set up is that they don’t actually host any of the files being shared themselves.

They have been threatened before, and generally post abusive messages to the letter writers on their site. They have had their computers siezed and set up quickly in a foreign country. Each of the five is now facing 2 years in jail and up to $180,000 in fines if found guilty.

The case isn’t going so well for the prosecuters, on day 2 of the trial half the charges were thrown out. It looks likely the Pirate Bay will win – the admins don’t even know the new location of the servers.

But leaving aside the actual court case the argument for the court case is bogus. The claim is that copyright infringement costs the companies money.

But

Carina Rydberg

Because I want to watch movies that can neither be rented anymore nor bought on the Internet. I want to read books that are out of print and will cost you £750 eBay. For that reason, I want The Pirate Bay to stay. At the moment, I’m trying to download John Schlesinger’s ‘The Day of the Locust’; it takes time and it’s not even certain I’ll get a copy that is watchable – but at the same time I have no idea how to get the drat flick any another way…

The Pirate Bay is an invaluable source for content that publishers, record labels and movie studios for some reason can’t or won’t offer. If someone on The Pirate Bay chose to download the book I wrote in 1989 I would have no objection to that. That novel is practically impossible to get hold of and as an author I want to be read.

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Freemen on the Land seems to have started in the US and then spread to the UK. Some of the absurd arguments which reflect the US legal system seem to have translated too which is most amusing.

Basically it seems to be based around a number of premises

1. you are a freeman on the land
2. when your birth certificate is filed that is the creation of a legal corporation which bears your name
3. you can pick and choose when you are Jim Smith and when that is the legal corporation
4. courts areadmiralty court and you can demand to be tried under common law
5. taxes, driving licences, passports etc are unnecessary.

Amusingly most of their legalistic arguments don’t seem to be tested and those that are fail miserably.

You can see a number of their arguments on various Youtube videos and the David Icke Forum. They are mercilessly ripped to shreds on the JREF forum as you would expect.

One of my favourite series of videos and which explains theur fruitcakery quite well is the 8 parter by the Toronto Truth Seekers

In one of them (part 4?) one of them claims that you don’t need a passport to travel internationally as your birth certificate is fine. When asked where he had went with it the reply is nowhere. Which kind of sums it up. The Toronto Truth seekers also have videos about chemtrails, why polio isn’t real (tell my aunt who lost a leg to polio that you fuckers).

The Free Keene group are equally hilarious

Like all libertarians they probably rant about free enterprise and how glorious capitalism will lead them to riches. When asked how he will pay his fine when he inevitably loses his case he pauses. Then says from the wages from his job cleaning floors – keep living the dream.

Ben Lowrey from the UK seems to take delight in getting attention from the police and wasting their time.

Quite amusing to see some of his encounters with them – explaining how he is a member of a sovereign nation and so doesn’t need a drivers licence.

The other main tactic is to refer to a courtroom as a boat (people leaving are given a comment of man overboard) and claims that a birth certificate is Jim Smith and not the person who is called Jim Smith.

No doubt any cheques sent to Jim Smith are deposited in the human beings business account and not the non-existant corporate account for the legal fiction corporate person strawman Jim Smith.

So, has anyone encountered these guys or found better examples of their delusion?

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Before Christmas there was a stooshy in the Courier due to Dundee holding a Winters Light Festival which included turning on the Christmas tree lights among other things as part of the Homecoming Celebration.

Rants and raves from the religious and righteous about political correctness gone mad etc etc. Missing the point that people were taking part in the event who would have no interest in turning on some lights along.

Some were proclaiming that as Christians were a majority no-one should do anything in the slightest to offend any Christians etc etc (never mind the usual Revs who write in saying gay people are hell bound sinners and so on).

I wrote in asking these Church organisations to reveal their church attendance to determine whether they really were a majority or not. Should that be established then and only then could you discuss minority/majority rights/responsibilities with knowledge of the facts.

Answer came there none.

We do have a comparison though. The Church of England has released some figures.

Their average attendance in England is 1.145 million per week. This was a figure from 2008, I could only find the population figure from 2001 (49,138,831), but this will have probably risen so this will be an over-estimate in their favour. This puts attenders at 2.33% of the population of England.

Is this the figure for Scotland or Dundee – no, is it likely to be similar – no reason why it won’t be the same ballpark. Until the figures are revealed it’s as good an estimate as any.

So the next time you hear or read some Christians ranting about how they should have special rights over everyone else or how their spokespersons should have a seat on every debate or indeed that they are a majority in society – remember that figure.

2.33%

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What shocked me was that I couldn’t really think of anything significant I had done yet. For me. I thought about it a bit more and counted up about 20 days I had helped Genna on stalls including about 3 weeks of holidays from work. So from someone else’s perspective, they (hopefully ) view me as having done something significant this year.

It was kind of humbling to think that over the course of the year the things I have done and spent my time doing have had a positive effect for other people more than myself. I’m quite happy with that.

What have you achieved for yourself or anyone else this year?

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Of course it will be no surprise to know the rag source of this garbage is the Hitler supporting Daily Mail.

Of course if such a claim were true the DJ would be in luck, with a profile and a paranormal ability he can go for the Randi $1million Challenge.

Given that previous claimants with similar abilities have not been able to tell when wi-fi signals are on or not his chance of winning is low, but surely it would make his illness bearable to live off a million dollars?

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Current software I am using include WordPress, OpenOffice, Linux (Tablet PC), Firefox (and Phoenix before that) and numerous other bits and bobs including at work.

It is one of my goals for the year to find time to contribute towards at least one open source project. I have been unable to donate hours so today donated $2 to Google SiteMap Generator. This plug in automatically generates a site map for you as frequently as you wish. Really useful and has saved me more than $2 in the time to manually generate one using Audit My PC or similar.

What Open Source software do you use and have you contributed anything back – from cash to code to bug reports?

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If you needed a better reason to doubt that religion is the basis of morality and irreligion is the basis of amorality it is the recent case from Brazil.

A nine year old girl was systematically raped by her stepfather for a number of years. She eventually fell pregnant to twins. At nine years old.

Her doctors sensibly advised that she have a termination due to having the body of a nine year old and thus having a very high if not certain chance of death giving birth. Her mother supported the decision and the doctors carried it out.

Then along came the celibate ranks of the Catholic Church.

Shock and Horror, Hell and Damnation they spouted. Abortion is a sin don’t you know. Can’t have that sort in our church they proclaimed.

Cast them out like the imaginary demons they exorcise in Latin.

Excommunication for the child’s mother and the sinful doctors who save her life. The girl herself is fine, too young to be at fault – just like her foetus in heaven or Limbo or whatever the line is now. She can remain in the church. Her and her step-father. The multiple rapist (who also molested her mentally disabled sister).

Rape children or be a fascist dictator (Hitler, Mussolini, Franco) and you’re a-ok. Just repent your sins on your deathbed and it’s straight to heaven with you. You can also stay a member of the church.

Save the life of a nine year old rape victin – begone, out ye go and probably straight to hell when you die.

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FFRF

They have a wide range of topics and guests to do with atheism, secularism, humanism, philosophy etc. Some of the guests are excellent, some not so much, but it’s such a diverse view you get it’s worth wading through the occasional bad one.

RSS feed for show.

One topic frequently covered is the rights of oppressed groups, such as LGBT, African Americans, and women (Annie Laurie Gaylor, one of the presenter is the daughter of Anne Nicol Gaylor, a pioneer for abortion rights)

Show 132 which was particularly excellent.

Topic: Prop 8 & the Religious War Against Gay Rights The show will be devoted to an expose of the religious backing of Proposition 8, to deny same-sex marriage to California residents via a Nov. 4 ballot initiative. Listen for clips of religious ads, and of religious leaders inveighing against gay marriage. FFRF Lifetime Member and Gay Atheist founder Dick Hewetson will be interviewed about Proposition 8 and the religious war against gay rights.

Show 132 is a particular highlight and well worth listening to.

A word of warning, Dan Barker, the other host, used to be a minister. Although this means he has an excellent grasp of the Bible and criticism of it, he still loves playing songs on his guitar about his belief. Some of these are excellent, some are a bit cringe worthy.

Some of the excellent tracks he plays, and has others play are Bread & Roses, Nothing Fails Like Prayer, It Ain’t Necessarily So, No Gods, No Masters

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I hadn’t been reading books for a while so to get back into it started taking them for the bus journey to work and back. Unfortunately this was probably a poor choice for reading early on the day.

It’s a book analysing late 18th century political theory and is written in a style to match. Really dense, black hole academic dense. I quite enjoy books with loads of endnotes and footnotes.

The bibliography is almost 30 pages.

30.

pages.

That tells you how many endnotes etc. there were.

The book was enjoyable, interesting and informative. It just achieved these attributes in spite of its style. And it was a bargain too, normally £20+ I got it for £3 from the SSP‘s Wee Red Bookshop.

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It was a really interesting and engrossing read.

The book is split into a number of chapters, each dealing with a type of logical fallacies. These include “The right to my opinion” and “morality fever”. It is well written and funny, dissecting statements from the great and the good, showing their flawed reasoning. As well as contrasting hypothetical positions of liberals, socialists, conservatives and libertarians.

One timely chapters deals with stock brokers. After discussing whether their high salaries are rewarded for luck or for skill, and discussing statistics of results and how some of the traders will have good runs he concludes:

Investment banks should employ former winners of Lotto tickets for them. No salary could be too high for these wizards of ticket selection.

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