Religion Bad

If you've ever had doubts that religion should be kept to the status of 'private hobby', let them end here.

For the modern businessperson who doesn't have time to click links, here's the summary: 20,000 people marched in Pakistan claiming that they should be allowed to rape women.

Take a second to unscrew your face from 'maximum horrified and disgusted'.

The existing law states that a woman has to produce four witnesses to the rape in order to press charges. The current president cleverly deduced that this means that, as long as a rapist resists the urge to invite a barbershop quartet to the event, he gets away with it. Further, he realised that that was not okay, a step that has apparently eluded the entire Pakistan government for the last twenty-seven years.

The protesters claim that this change violates Islamic law and all the usual bullshit, but here's the thing: words are infinite while actions are binary. Right now somebody is saying "Women shouldn't be raped" and you are either for that or against, whatever you say your motivations are. Astonishingly over twenty thousand people - equal to nearly half the population of the Cayman islands - come out to stand in the open and clearly identify themselves as people who think 'raping women is cool!'. Even worse, none of the police on the scene realised that this was the very moment that machine guns had been invented for, and thus lost the chance to increase the average intelligence of the world by five points with half an hour of sustained fire.

Decision making

Alas, this is a fairly accurate model of some decision making I had to do this week.

Click for full size.

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My work for Lowpings.net. I get to play video games, write about them, and get paid for it. This is why when somebody says technology isn't awesome I punch them in the face.

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Real Life Katamari

Katamari damacy is a very special game. It may not have the fond memories of Street Fighter II, the fun evenings of Mario Kart, or the sheer joy of GoldenEye - but it's a game that my girlfriend likes and so has a value above silver and gold. Recently she's been working very hard on her PhD and various "Being an Excellent Girlfriend" duties which I won't discuss, so I decided to build her one.

Luckily I'm a kick-ass physicist with a fully functional lab and workshop. This project is an excellent first step as I shift my research from 'Regular Science' to 'Mad Science', which is where you get all the cool gadgets and 3-D holographic displays. Plus a personal visit from James Bond!

While I was working on the Katamari, it twitched a little as if trying to devour me. As a scientist working on a world-threatening monster which is currently under my control, but has the capacity to grow, I ignored it. Since I only watch the first ten minutes of any science-fiction or horror movie I don't see how anything could possibly go wrong.


Aww, isn't a cute little .... Hey, did you hear something?





Note the soft padding material - World-devourers capable of ripping continents from the very earth must be protected from drops and sharp knocks
When gifting your beloved with an apocalyptic device of Doom it's important to label it suitably. I once gave an (ex)girlfriend an incendiary grenade in an unmarked box, but before opening she held it to her ear and shook. Boy, was my face red! (along with everybody else between ten and fifteen meters from her at the time).

The present was very well received! She plans to keep it on her workbench in the genetics laboratory, which also contains radioactive elements. So we're all entirely safe forever.



Study this carefully - next time it may be too large to fit in your field of view.