tcpip | Anime, Lost Dogs, Gordon Bell, Weird Creationists

Wednesday night went to the Astor Cinema with

imajica_lj to see Interstella 5555 an animated musical of the Daft Punk album "Discovery", doubled with Akira. The first film was quite cute, with a bit of self-referential humour, even if their music isn't entirely my style. As for Akira, it mostly has a great story and some very forward-thinking motifs, but I had forgotten how boring the Tetsuo and Kaneda fight scene was. If it had been 1/3 as long, it would have three times as good.

On the way back from the cinema hidden under the bridge of Windsor station we spotted a small terrier, a stray that seemed to have had hurt its back legs. The poor thing was very scruffy with some incredibly matted hair and spending a night under the blaring light and cold concrete of the train station just didn't seem appropriate. So we took the old girl home, snipped some of the worst dreadlocks, gave her some cooked 'roo mince and provided a warmer, softer place to sleep that night. The following morning

caseopaya contacted the RSPCA who took her away. I rather suspect if she'd stayed another 24 hours I would have insisted on keeping her. She seemed very grateful for our actions. Anyway, I present you "Digger".

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to attend two seminars by one of the pathbreakers in computer science, Gordon Bell. The first was on MyLifeBits an attempt to provide a complete digital record of a person's life, based on the 1940's Memex vision. The second was on the history and operations of the massive Computer History Museum. Chatting over coffee I got him to sign my copy of a PDP-11 core memory maintenance manual (he was responsible for the unibus and general registers architecture). He was so fascinated by the book for a moment I thought he didn't want to give it back!

Afterwards I attended a meeting of the Sea of Faith to hear Rick Barker speak on "The Godly Delusions of Richard Dawkins: The Darwina Codes". The somewhat harsh title contrasted with rather convivial in content and discussed the differenced between "Darwinism" and "scientism" as an ideology versus the actual scientific contributions of Darwin and the facts and theories of the evolution. During the question time after the presentation a woman made the claims that there have been no observed instances of speciation and that there are no intermediate fossils. I suggested to the questioner that this was not the case and that references could be provided, the person got up from their chair, put their hands over their ears and started to make for the door saying 'No, I don't want to hear it! I don't want to know!. How the hell are you supposed to reason with such people?

Threaded | Flat

I rather suspect if she'd stayed another 24 hours I would have insisted on keeping her

I did ask if you wanted to, though it is a small flat with two rabbits and two rats already

Poor wee dog! She looks miserable!

Thank-you for looking after the poor lost puppy dog. I hope that my little one never gets lost but if he did, I would hope there would be some-one out there who would look after him & take him to the RSPCA or similar so he could be re-united with us.

Funny, I can hear horrible stories, or see horrible images of people in distress & it doesn't overly effect me. An animal however, has huge impact.

Poor puppy dog, I hope she finds her way home soon.

The Akira poster, framed, on my wall; a survivor from the days when each of my walls had at least two posters.

I saw two Dawkins-related posts on my Friends list, one after the other, and the most recent was yours, so I couldn't pass up referring to the content of the other.

I don't think we can reason with people in that position.

Me, I don't even know what to do about those who see an improper teleology in evolution ('striving for the heights with intent', I would call it).

txxxpxx said, thank you for looking after the little wee dogga. Many wouldn't have been so kind.

Poor sad little dog.

How do you reason with such people?

A heavy, blunt object helps me, I find. Luckily, I always carry my wit (ba-dum-ching)

How the hell are you supposed to reason with such people?

I don't and can't - but if they appear in debates, they make great case studies for the rest of the audience.

Ah, you named her she's yours! Will the RSPCA contact you back if her owners aren't found? I ended up with more than one pet that way, and never regretted it. :) Even a cat we didn't name for a week in case someone came and claimed him.

"I suggested to the questioner that this was not the case and that references could be provided, the person got up from their chair, put their hands over their ears and started to make for the door saying 'No, I don't want to hear it! I don't want to know!. How the hell are you supposed to reason with such people?"
Seriously???? I somehow suspect that you're joking to some degree, but I don't get it - did she really say that??

Anyways, I respect Dawkins as a scientist and his theories are interesting, but his view of the human mind is far too mechanistic (plus his insistence that anti-theology has any real import compared to other social movements is a disturbingly narrow-minded approach to social change).

No, I don't want to hear it! I don't want to know!

Although this sort of thing does leave me gasping,
it does have, at least, the virtue of honesty.
The bulk of th population tend to employ more sophisticated methods of anti-communication,
leading to countless wasted hours chasing the tantalising hope
that at some point information might be exchanged.

Over the years, i'v reached the conclusion
that you can't tell a person anything
which they don't already get, in some sense.
That is, you can help them become aware of something buried in their subconscious,
you can give them words to express something they've felt but couldn't explain,
you can reassure them that other ppl have thought what they're thinking,
those sort of things, but
you cannot communicate to them something outside their world-view,
it simply does not exist for them.
You can connect the dots, but you can't make the dots.

My tactic these days is to simply ask people questions about what they think,
so that hopefully they'l meet their own inconsistencies,
and evolve their own answers to these problems.
It still gets a fairly anti-communicative response,
people still believe i'm trying to convince them of something,
have some agenda up my sleeve or whatnot,
but it's th best i'v come up with so far.

I love you guys for taking the puppy dog home.

I've done the same more than once - but I always give the dog (plus the largest donation of dog food I can afford) to a non-kill shelter if I can't re-home it myself. The RSPCA are a wonderful wonderful organisation but they are unfortunately still a kill shelter (and one of the dogs I re-homed years ago was a wolf-dog hybrid which have quite an underground popularity but are decidely illegal - but personally I'm willing to go outside the law when puppy dogs are involved!)

Have you had any updates on whether Digger's been re-homed yet? *fingers crossed* :) x

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re: the blue piller

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