The Baldurs Gate site has recently dissapeared to be replaced by a placeholder and countdown clock. This is due to hit it’s target at 7pm tonight.
Excitement doesn’t cover it. Hopefully it is Baldurs Gate 3 and not some crappy beat em up skinned as it or something.
A few of us are working our way through Baldurs Gate 1 online just now so I doubt we will complete it and it’s sequel before this comes out. That’s ok though as I doubt any of us would wait a week between sessions to play it!
For the past few months I have been following the development of the Legends of Grimrock which is now in the Release Candidate stage. Some experienced developers have been working hard for the past few months on this retro style Dungeon Crawler.
To say I am excited about this is an understatement!
Perfectly times as I am just starting work on a new retro gaming site with some friends which we should be launching soon.
Looks like Gordon Wilson has got together with 199 friends to launch a campaign against gay marriage.
Their petition obviously includes the slippery slope fallacy. You can read about them here
indeed Scotland for Marriage is backed by both religious and non-religious groups. It is an expression of the breadth of concern within Scottish society.
Those organisations?
CARE for Scotland
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Scotland
The Christian Institute
Destiny Churches, Scotland
The Evangelical Alliance
The Family Education Trust
That seems really broad, 5 religious groups and 1 non religious one? (assuming FET is not religious which I am slightly sceptical of).
Given that Church attendance in England is between 2-3% you would think any significant increase on that would be shouted from the church rooftops on Scotland. So how broad is that breadth of concern?
In the British Social Attitudes Survey 2010: 75% of those questioned believed their religious leaders should not to influence their voting behaviour 67% believe religious leaders should stay out of government decision making. 45% of Britons believe that the involvement of religious leaders would have a deleterious effect on policy. Only 25% of people believe religious involvement would produce better policy. 73% of respondents believe that “people with very strong religious beliefs are often too intolerant of others”. This view was held by 82% of people who class themselves as non-religious, and 63% of those who consider themselves religious. The Humanist Society of Scotland commissioned a separate poll asking the Scottish census question, ‘What religion, religious denomination or body do you belong to?’. In response, 42% of the adult population in Scotland said ‘None’. When asked ‘Are you religious?’ 56% of the same sample said they were not and only 35% said they were.
Keep the bishops out of politics and the priests out of children.
My post yesterday on gay mariage was timely it seems.
A friend recently posted a video to their Facebook wall which is a political advert for gay marriage. It’s excellent on a number of counts, mainly because it’s for a great cause (declare bias early) but also unlike some political ads it’s not preachy and with very few words spoken throughout makes it’s point well.
I’ve only written a couple of small pieces on this blog about gay marriage, for example around Proposition Eight, but have written scattered pieces around the net for ages on message boards, Facebook walls, Twitter etc. I thought it might be time to pull some of these things together.
Why now? Well the Equality Network have been lobbying the Scottish Government on the issue (you can take part in the lobby about gay marriage here). Secondly the posting of that video on a friends wall led to a 46 comment thread where someone made a pitiful answer to the question/challenge I posted previously:
Can anyone point to an argument against gay marriage not based on religion. I have looked and looked but can’t find one.
Thirdly I had some examples to use as part of the discussion and I wasn’t completely comfortable using them. I hope that if I refer to anyone I know they won’t take offence at the reference as it’s not used to judge them, just to illustrate a point.
I have yet to hear a coherent argument against gay marriage. Most resort to terrible comparisons which don’t work or just reading out of some bronze age book (whilst ignoring any examples in the book of marriage not of the traditional 1 consenting man + 1 consenting woman model).
So in an effort at avoiding any questions put to him and ignoring massive flaws in his argument, one of those people prompted me to write down some coherent arguments for the position I took, which simplified was: A gay couple getting married doesn’t affect you so it’s none of your damn business and leave them to do it without trying to stop it.
So what were some of the arguments used against gay marriage?
Well I will try to list some of the reasons given to oppose it and show the counter argument. Over the course I hope to then flesh out a more concrete argument for gay marriage.
1. Where does someone get the right to get married from? Who gives them it?
The answer to this is pretty obvious. The state you live in. You apply to them for a marriage licence and they grant one providing they can find no reason not to do so based on that particular states laws on marriage.
No idea what point was trying to be made here. Was it that it is God who grants that right? If so you might want to check the bible.
See for example
Genesis 4:19 And Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. (polygamy)
Genesis 20:12 And yet indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife. (incest)
Jeremiah 3:1 They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man’s, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted? but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the LORD. (remarriage == bad)
1 Kings 11:2 Of the nations concerning which the LORD said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go in to them, neither shall they come in unto you: for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods: Solomon clave unto these in love. (marrying someone of a different religion is bad)
Of course most religious people won’t have read their holy book so will be unfamiliar with such verses. Those that are will probably claim these are in the Old Testament so don’t count. You can then enquire as to where in the New Testament God condemns homosexuality. They’ll struggle because they use such verses in the Old Testament to justify their bigotry.
2. Should adults be allowed to marry children? How about animals? How about their sister or brother? Surely it would be discrimination to say no.
The slippery slope fallacy. And one that was probably invoked during every change in the law relating to marriage in the last century. Utterly irrelevant. It is based on the flawed argument that if gay marriage is legalised then incestuous marriage will be legalised. Well that is assuming some massive campaign with the public support for gay marriage takes place for each of those too then?
In a ridiculous tangent the questioner also ignored the flaw in each of those arguments.
Incest is a taboo because of the genetic problems that can result from procreation in particularly close incestuous relationships. The other angle of course is the high probability of some abuse, certainly of power, if not sexual or physical which has made someone think such a relationship is acceptable.
Bestiality is a poor comparison as unlike gay marriage which involves two consenting adults, bestiality involves 1 consenting adult and 1 animal incapable of providing consent.
Strangely they then spent quite a lot of posts trying to talk about incest and come up with justifications for it if gay marriage was legalised. So ironically he himself slid down his own slippery slope whilst all those supporting gay marriage were arguing against incestuous ones.
3. There is a difference between denying someone a religious same sex marriage and a civil partnership.
The religious marriage is a slight diversion as this is not the same as as a marriage as most people have them. Some religions involve having a religious marriage as well as a traditional marriage. They then also have religious divorces, or not in some cases where strict religions refuse religious divorces even though a civil one has been granted.
So someone arguing for religious marriages as well as civil ones doesn’t see the hypocrisy in not even considering a gay marriage as well as a civil as a valid option.
Either that or they were meaning a ceremony inside a religious building conducted by a religious figure inside of a religious building. But then, if those are ok there was no condemnation of those religious figures who conduct mass religious marriages inside religious buildings.
To keep up you might want to forget looking for consistency or coherency in the anti-gay-marriage camp.
4. A whole host of other issues arise from this. What if someone refuses to marry two same sex people, do they lose their job? Isn’t that discriminating against them? What about adoption? A child will be denied a mother or father if adopted by a same sex couple.
This is two issues, firstly about someone refusing to conduct a particular marriage. Well let’s extend it to currently accepted forms of marriage. If someone was to refuse to conduct a marriage between two people of different races would they lose their job? If they worked for the state in some fashion then they would certainly be in some form of trouble. In a religious role in some religious group? Who knows, depending on how batshit insane the organisation is they might get promoted. Would such a couple go to one of these religious organisations hostile to their life choices to get approval though? Probably not.
Looked at that way how is gay marriage any different. Anyone who works in a registry office or similar should be willing to conduct any marriage which is legal. Anyone in a religious organisation would be bound by their internal rules.
The second part’s discussion ended quite soon. Arguer did not wish to argue if a recently bereaved/separated father should be forced to remarry so as to not deny their child a mother. Apparently having two daddies must be worse than 1 daddy and a mummy who has a different uncle every month.
5. If you are an atheist seeing as homosexual people would tend not to reproduce then shouldn’t their genes be selected against and eventually become extinct?
This led to a giant thread where the proponent exposed their complete ignorant of genetics (when coupled with the incest section). What relevance it has to gay marriage is a mystery,
6. If you are an atheist then you are merely an animal and it’s survival of the fittest and you don’t have a “right” to anything. You are just atoms. If you get killed or don’t get your marriage tough luck, you obviously weren’t fit enough.
Yet another strange diversion in the list arguments against gay marriage.
7. Alternative explanation is that there is God and there is such a thing as right and wrong and these decisions and choices do actually mean something.
Refused to explain why God is so lazy now that he doesn’t perform miracles any more. It’s a shame that in the world of near instant worldwide communication and ubiquitous video recording technology the number of talking burning bushes in the last century is surprisingly low.
How not to argue
What was most amusing was the complete inability to form coherent arguments and respond to direct points and questions whilst spitting them out and demanding answers from others that was displayed.
After being told my position of supporting gay marriage whilst opposing fathers marrying their daughters was inconsistent I spelled out my position as such :
Consenting adults should be able to enter voluntarily into whichever form of relationship with each other as they wish. Where there are issues of abuse or negligible effects on others then that is the point when it becomes anyone elses business. Gay marriage between two consenting adults does not. Incestuous relationships for the most part may do, and certainly enter the territory of negligible effects on others if they plan to have children. Bestiality does as animals cannot consent. Relationships with people with some forms of mental disability may if there is thought to be a lack of ability to consent even if the person is over the age to legally consent. When those people wish to formalise their personal relationship in front of friends and society then the state should either not take any part in recognising any of them or should recognise them all.
I then requested that they provide their position for supporting/opposing some forms of marriage. Obviously this couldn’t be provided as it would probably have no rational logical basis.
What now?
Well, I’m still waiting on seeing a coherent argument against gay marriage. I would award bonus points if it didn’t have it’s roots in some holy books.
I would urge you to go take part in the consultation on gay marriage here. Obviously I want people in favour of it to take part but anyone opposed should also take part (maybe from a different link) so that we can find out why they are opposed. These can then be collated into a single answer of I’m a bigot so have picked some verses out the Bible to justify it times the number of negative responses.
If you are on Twitter you should also follow these good people.
A rally 200 strong gets this much coverage in a national paper?
As expected all the spurious arguments are about religion. Take for example this completely untrue nonsense spouted by Bashir Maan a former Glasgow councillor and Muslim community leader
Marriage has always been, right from the dawn of history, between a man and a woman.
Amusingly as a Muslim community leader (elected by whom and when?) he should be aware that certain countries use Islamic rules as an excuse to allow Polygyny
In Islam, polygamy is allowed and practised under certain restricted conditions. Muslim men are allowed to practise polygyny, that is, they can have more than one wife at the same time, up to a total of four. Polyandry, the practice of a woman having more than one husband, by contrast, is not permitted.
Some Muslim-majority countries have Islamic law (sharia) which permits polygyny, although there is internal debate regarding the role of women in Islam. See this discussion on the extent to which states can and do recognize these forms as valid.
Polygamy for Muslims, in practice and in law, differs greatly throughout the Islamic world, where polygamous marriages constitute only 1–3% of all marriages.[1] In some Muslim countries, polygamy is relatively common, while in others, it is rare or non-existent. Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Tunisia and Turkey, for example, are predominantly Muslim countries that have not adopted Islamic law for marital regulations, where polygamy is not legal.
I thought being religious was supposed to make you more moral? Why do religious community leaders repeatedly lie in public?
DunDDD took place on Saturday in Dundee. The turnout was reasonable, maybe 70-80. The variety of sessions on offer wasn’t as good as DDD Scotland but being so close made up for it. No Grok talks at lunch but instead some pizza supplied by NCR. There was the usual swag throughout t-shirts, back massagers, bottle openers, lollies and sweeties but no books/licences as prizes. I think DDD Scotland normally has about 250 people though so you got a lot more interaction with speakers and more chance of face time to ask further questions between sessions if you needed it.
I previously attended DDD Scotland in 2009 and 2010, but didn’t this year for some reason I don’t remember. I think it and the 2008 one clashed with a craft fairs or something.
An old version of the slideshow exists here (he uses the Build conference in his current one and this has his old contact info at previous job on it)
Interesting talk about how you can data mine info from social networks. He used twitter as his example as the code for that is comparatively simple to implement (didn’t get to showing code and can’t see online). There are existing tools which do some of the things he was mentioning but he was custom building a lot more.
Some ways this could be useful are launching a product and seeing what the reaction is, if there is suddenly a lot of talk of your new product either it’s so amazing and life changing that everyone is keen to market for you. Or something you did in the launch has went wrong and it is broken/buggy. With the tools you could also (to some extent) track where people are when they mention you, so launch a new product and it is going down a storm in English speaking areas but your German translation is terrible etc. Some tools I already knew about can tell what way to structure your tweets (where to position links) and at what times people retweet or respond to them etc – essential to know when to maximise response for campaigns etc.
Session wasn’t as advertised. Basically a slideshow of quotes, most of which I was already familiar with but when pulled together show a coherent philosophy for writing code. It essentially boiled down to write good code that is needed, when it is needed that is well tested and documented.
Explored ideas about what makes your job or work environment enjoyable or not. Lots of crowd interaction etc. Too long to fit in an hour and would have liked to have seen a longer version. Session was amusing for the peanut gallery in the back. One manager who came along made a series of contradictory statements in an attempt to nitpick almost every slide. For example complaining he paid for people to spend 30 man years on a terrible unfinished product that no one wanted then 5 minutes later that developers asking for specifications and testers were just whining.
Someone suggested that an essential to do your job is a comfy chair, nonsense he proclaims, I lie in bed and code and someone I know sits on a sofa in a coffee shop so doesn’t need a desk. Missing the point that the general was a comfortable place to be whilst spending 8 hours at a PC and that for that developer the specific was a chair, but for the guy at the back it was a bed etc.
The main case study/anecdote at the start of the presentation was Craig Murphy who was told to do a task and it would take 2-3 weeks. He looked at the task and said no – 2-3 months. With the feature creep that this project managed then allowed, 2 years later the project was still not finished. (paraphrasing, can’t remember exact details).
Apologies to Barry Carr for mistakenly saying it was him. I was wrong on the interwebs.
Session 4 – The real time web is shocking!
Presented by Phil Leggetter, a developer evangelist at Pusher a company making technology for the real time web.
It had interesting code examples showing how you can update your website using real time information. Not sure how useful this is right now but it’s good to know this is possible using html5 magic. The shopping example on his site was really interesting and might have potential. Really looks to be at a prototype stage right now though, especially with it relying on html5 which we probably can’t move anything to be using yet. The demo used Websockets which he said there are .Net CLR/Silverlight libraries available for so it might be interesting to play around with them at some point.
Session 5 – Jedi Mind Control 101, the art of ethical persuasion
This was probably the most useful of the sessions. Guide to how to persuade people to your point of view. I found it amusing and informative throughout. Some of the notes I took down (unfortunately the slideshow isn’t available online):
It’s hard to change people’s mind, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they are wrong, hard to change mind of experiences people
When making an argument present new information early.
When making an argument present weaknesses in your argument early
Establish your expertise, or lack of, early
Ask for higher value items first when there are multiple acceptable widgets you want
Don’t diminish your efforts, when someone asks for a favour never say
All part of the job
No problem
It was nothing
It was easy
But instead make it clear you did a favour for them without rubbing their nose in it you owe me now buddy is also a terrible response.
Although all his content was based on reading about psychology and various studies/papers his personal belief was that teams really gel when people stop keeping track of favours.
During this session I made a comment and was amused to get a round of applause. There were loads of references to Star Wars throughout. One of the slides showed Yoda and Rob said something along the lines of Is this guy credible? He is a rag wearing troll who lives in a swamp and rambles incoherently? Anyone disagree with this? and I pointed out that the header should say Credible Yoda is not instead of Yoda is not credible.
So having got applause from a room full of nerds for making an obvious joke about Star Wars, a film aimed at 8 year old boys, I declare myself king of nerd comedy.
An article about the recent tragic death of 4 miners highlights the issue of lapse Health and Safety that led to their deaths.
When you read a ridiculous article in the crap tabloid press about tabloid health and safety gone mad the majority of the time it’s nothing to do with health and safety it’s bureaucrats trying to issue diktats. On the few occasions when something is related to health and safety legislation it’s usually blown out of proportion or misreported completely.
But every time you read one of those articles trying to undermine health and safety legislation the purpose is to try and create an opposition to health and safety legislation brought in to prevent tragedies like this. The reason being these events are preventable, but they cost money and greedy bastards can’t stand losing a bit of money to ensure the people who work their ass off so they can make that money in the first place do so in safe working conditions that ensure they will go home at the end of the working day.
One of the most bizarre stories of the last week has been Brian Souters rant about google.
He claims that his vanity site not appearing high in the rankings is censoring free speech. Of course his site still exists, so his free speech is not being censored. At all.
Google have previously removed BMW’s website from the listings temporarily for when they breached Terms of Service, and after buying a company also removed it from listings when it was apparant their SEO efforts were also not squeeky clean.
A couple of SEO blogs have detailed the kerfuffle as well as other commentators. They point out some reasons why Google might have lowered the sites credibility, mainly because his site is crap and has lots of duplicate content in it.
One of the interesting comments though is related to how the site deals with invalid URLs.
If you take the url
The important parts are : https://www.briansouter.com/media-centre/business-leader-accuses-google-n10150-s11.aspx.
It appears that you can change the non-bolded part and it redirects to the article. This could certainly be used for making much mischief.
Brian is rubbish at the internet.
Of course given, his well publicised views on homosexuality and his support for privatisating transport systems and support for the SNP that is 3 easy ways for people to mess with his site.
Brian Souter Buys Policy Change on Nationalisation With Boyfriend Alex Salmond to combine all three angles in one clearly not-serious story.
Of course the real reason the site will have been dropped from the search engines is probably because most of the content is duplicated from elsewhere on the internet. To Googles algorithm, his site isn’t the No1 important site about Brian, but no different to any other content scraper that duplicates articles from other sites. So it rightly bins it.
Of course being able to link to any article on the site with your own made up phrases mean that as well as duplicating keywords elsewhere, the site duplicates content on it’s own site.
So the developer thinks he’s dead clever by allowing any keywords to be stuffed into the page. What actually happens though is googles bot looks at these links and goes briansouter.com has three copies of the same article up under different addresses, flag as spam low quality site
Edit: it appears they have fixed the website to not allow you to randomly change the seo path to be whatever you want it to be.
After the last post I published, it helps to clarify the statement about bronze age goat herders. People in the 20th Century are more than capable of coming up with made up bullshit and suckering gullible idiots into handing over their dosh to join their cults/corporations
I used to keep up with what was happening in Israel and Palestine quite a bit. Over the past couple of years I haven’t been able to keep up as much in what is going on.
A couple of months ago I went to a show by Mark Thomas, he decided to walk the wall Israel is building around Israel (inside the West Bank). Along the way he spoke to people on both sides of the wall. Ultra Orthodox settlers, secular Jews, peaceniks, IDF soldiers, Palestian politics, children and workers and anyone else he met along the way.
He recorded his trip in a book called Extreme Rambling and then had the show around the trip too.
What he details is utterly horrific. I had read about the wall and though it must be bad but kind of suffered from Bad Thing Overload and it became just another terrible thing happening in some corner of the world.
The fence as Israel calls it, wall as the Palestinians call it and Apartheid Wall as it is more accurately described is a naked land grab. An attempt to steal what little land and resources are left in the West Bank, in places diverting dozens of Kilometres into the West Bank to surround illegal settlements.
Workers are herded like cattle through gates at particular times of the day whilst others are refused permits to cross the wall. Even if their ill newborn child is on the other side. In some places cars must drop their passengers off, drive through and pick the passengers up once they have trecked through the barrier themselves. Including young children and the infirm.
Children cannot cross a road, so have to go through a tunnel under it, which flows with sewage. Meanwhile the school they arrive it is having it’s toilet block demolished as it doesn’t have the impossible to get permit. Leaving aside that having building permits doesn’t stop the Israeli state bulldozing homes or surrounding them with walls anyway, whether this wall cuts through football pitches or farms is irrelevant.
Of course, this only applies to Palestinians. Israeli citizens can travel back and forward with impunity.
Meanwhile the child conscripts in the IDF snatch children, keep them in prison for days before dropping them off miles from home to get back themselves. Others are repeatedly beaten.
And after all this, people can still get through the barrier if they know the right people or can grease the right palms.
And apologists for this country which is committing state terrorism on a daily basis defend it because of made up stories in a book by bronze age goat herders about a sociopathic mountain war god!
Israel has essentially turned the West Bank into the worlds largest concentration camp. Meanwhile in the Gaza strip A4 paper and corriander are banned from importation by a sea blockade whilst the ingredients for rockets are all allowed through. Never mind that the threat from armed militias letting off these rockets is the premise used to blockade corriander but let petrol and metal tubing through.
To the west of these countries of course, the masses in Northern African countries like Libya and Egypt get full support from the West in taking up arms against despots via the UN whilst sanction after sanction against Israels behaviour in Palestine is ignored.
Until the Israeli state ceases to treat Palestinians as chattel it is difficult to take on board any of the bleating from it’s apologists. It’s hard to take the moral high ground when you invade and occupy the high ground.