Warzytopia

Zynga thinks I'm a troll!

2010-12-24T16:22:00.002+13:00

They didn't seem to like this jocular little post I made on their forum:

Zynga to release SpamVille?
________________________________________
Rumours are rife amongst the Facebook gaming community that, following the runaway success of its stable of games which include FarmVille, FrontierVille, CityVille etc etc., that Zynga is well advanced with plans to release the ultimate in social gaming applications, provisionally dubbed "SpamVille".

Speaking under conditions of near anonymity, an Industry spokesman commented, "Zynga has always been renowned for its ability to infest Facebook user's profiles with spam, advertising its own games. Under the guise of sending "gifts" to other users to enable them to complete missions (and hopefully to get them to respond by sending "gifts" back to allow you to achieve your own), Zynga has artfully commandeered users walls so that in some cases more than 90% of users messages are to do with some Zynga game or other."

"We're betting that this is what the users really want, so after a slow start in their latest offering CityVille, they're ramping up the missions that require you to do nothing else but send and receive gifts. We reckon, that given the intellectual capacity of the majority of the users, this is what the users really want to spend the majority of their time doing. Plus, it's easier for Zynga to code, because they just have to relabel existing processes and merely add more of the same, admittedly with a little extra artwork, which all helps profitability".

Now Zynga apparently hope to take things to a whole new level. "What we've seen", said an insider, "is that people really, really want to send in-game messages to their friends over and over again ... just look at the figures, they keep doing it in ever increasing numbers, so it must be true! This is what social gaming is really all about!!!!" So, what is planned is to produce a new generation of games where the whole ethos of the game is just to send gifts to each other, with all of the rest of the game content removed."

We're sure it will be a winner. If they can get away with conning people into signing up to cellphone applications with hidden weekly costs just to get the results of a quiz, I'm sure they can swing this one too.

Facebook Games: CityVille gripes

2010-12-23T06:32:00.009+13:00

OK, I'll admit it. For a 55 year-old guy, I waste far too much of my time playing games on FaceBook, the majority of them made by Zynga. The latest is a sort of sim-City variant called CityVille which was released in early December 2010 and already has in excess of 2 million players, which I think is a pretty amazing growth rate. I've already spent far too many hours playing the game and to be fair, have enjoyed it. However, I think that it does have some serious deficiencies and annoyances, and I'm going to detail those below. If you haven't played the game yet, they probably won't make much sense ... but if you have just started out, here are some things to watch for.

Gripefest follows:

First, let me say that when I started playing it, I though it to be a really good game. I still think it’s a good game, but as they say, familiarity breeds contempt, so with a little more experience some niggles become apparent… so what is wrong about the game?

1. Missions involving neighbour gifts.

This is the most unsatisfying part of the game and unfortunately very prevalent in Zynga games and part of the reason I have stopped playing FrontierVille, FarmVille and Mafia Wars. There is nothing intellectually challenging about waiting for your friends to click on a link from a message you have sent to them, just irritation and embarrassment that you are forced to do this to the same people over and over again and that your Facebook wall becomes cluttered with such stuff. When CityVille started off with its first crop of missions, thankfully there was a limited amount of this stuff, but once the baseball field missions were completed we were back to form with the dire “let it Snow” and “Keep your tree growing’” goals, which just required standard tedious requests for “presents”, “snow flakes” and “snowballs” a la FrontierVille model. No requirement to work hard to obtain drop items or complete collections or other in-game stuff such as an amount of coins or zones, just boring old message sending ad nauseum.

It might be good business for Zynga to plaster constant adverts for their games over all our friends walls, but it just ruins the general feel of our Facebook profiles for use and makes us feel resentful to Zynga for making this happen.

2. Too easy to obtain massive amounts of coins and assets.

Considering the game was launched on the 4th December 2010 and I find that I have 3,300,000+ in coins and probably in excess of that again in game “assets” such as the supposedly hard-to-obtain revolving restaurant and two skyscraper condos and it is not yet Christmas, it’s hard to see what’s left for me to do with the game. I’m not going to sit around churning goods into vast amounts of coins if there is no reason to do so, and there seems nothing else to buy, and nothing interesting coming along, except for the odd new business which of course requires city cash not coins, and are merely rehashes of other previous businesses with no particularly interesting rewards for completed collectible sets.

3. The game system is too vulnerable to exploits involving decorations bonuses.

Sweet spot surrounded by tennis courts, trees, flowers etc.

Is it really sensible to allow configurations of decorations to allow bonuses approaching 500% and for these to be available on every single business just by the player using the simple expedient of setting up a “sweet spot” surrounded by judiciously-placed decorations and then moving each business in turn to that spot to claim the vastly-increased bonus each time? I think this hopelessly skews game-play and allows the player to acquire assets and reach goals far too early and for the whole game system to become subverted. At the very least Zynga should consider methods to stop people moving businesses around once they have been supplied with goods and until the rewards have been collected.

4. Performance.

Despite having a reasonably recent HP Pavilion Elite with 64 bit Windows 7 and 4 processors with 4 Gb of RAM, there are times when the animation just grinds to a halt. This seems to be most evident when you have a largish city and your last business has just run out of goods and the population need to be sent home. If you then try to move a business which has completed its goods to another location whilst the population are going home, everything slows to a crawl. Even when this is not happening, the animation has a “choppy” beat to it, with pedestrians appearing to “walk with a limp” some of the time.

5. Redundancy.

Once you have obtained a new business, you can attempt to collect random collection items associated with that business for additional rewards. These may be small bonuses of XP, energy , goods or coins, or unusual items that you cannot obtain from the build menu. It’s a nice idea and adds interest, especially when these items are required to complete quest goals, but unfortunately apart from the randomness about when such items drop, once completed there is typically no reason to go on completing each collection. There are only so many white goats, black cows, red dog houses and the rest which you could possibly need on your map, so there is little incentive to continue to use earlier businesses unless such items are wanted by mission goals (which as stated above, is something of a rarity as Zynga’s preference seems to be to invent new items which can be only obtained by begging friends to click on links in messages sent to them ad infinitum). As a result, as they progress through the game, players maps become littered with businesses which users will not supply with energy because the rewards are too little and because they no longer need the collection items. Indeed, I find I can satisfy my coin needs with just 3 cinemas and a single revolving restaurant and all the rest of my businesses just sit there largely unused. My suggestion is that instead of just one known reward which is the result of a completed collection every time, Zynga could perhaps vary these either randomly, with a chance to get hard-to obtain rarities, or maybe based on the number of times the collection has been successfully completed?

6. Pace.

With half the map completed and nothing much more to do that wait for Zynga to release further features, I’m rather left wondering what to do other than twiddle my fingers. Will the promised “Beach Town coming soon” signpost just prove a con like the similar signposts in FrontierVille, still pointing to nowhere a year or more after initial release? Will we get some larger, more difficult and huge missions someday soon, like an International Airport, a container port, light or heavy industrial businesses, new and different ways of obtaining a steady flow of resources (other than by sending a train every 5 minutes)? Who knows. But I just hope they release some interesting stuff soon. Many more missions like the “let it snow” or “presents Xmas tree” and I’ll be long gone, and I suspect many other gamers will too.

Harvey Smith, why can't I forget you?

2010-07-27T05:04:00.003+12:00

It’s night, 4 am. , yet I’ve only been to bed for an hour or so. Seems the older I get, the more erratic the sleep comes. It’s been one of those nights where you try to get to sleep but it won’t come, or if it does, it just doesn’t seem like sleep.

I’ve been half-dozing, random and I mean, really random elements of my past life slipping through my thoughts at breakneck speed. Is this the brain's normal clean up duty? Is it lucid dreaming, REM sleep whilst nearly awake? I wish I knew. It seems more like a trip without drugs to me. Maybe I’m so tired that I’m hallucinating mildly. But it’s interesting to me, at least until I forget it all, and it’s passing even now.

So here, for posterity, is tonight’s list of unusual items: Harvey Smith, olden-days British show-jumper famous for getting Mrs Mary Whitehouse clutching at her pearls with his then-shocking V-signs on TV; a wall of animated designs, in esoteric cat-like shapes flicking smoothly between forms; “Dreamland”, the basement at my boyhood house, where I would pretend to my youngest half-brother that a magical land existed beneath the myriad cardboard boxes; some largish aluminium cooking pots inside each other; and other stuff, so ephemeral and non-noteworthy that they are gone already.

Perhaps that’s how it works … your overnight crap-checker examines your memory stores and deletes the crap. The rest of it has gone … I simply can’t remember now. Yet maybe part of me still wants to remember with fondness Harvey’s V-sign, Dreamland and the cat images …at least they were cool! Not sure about the cooking pots though …

My own programmed obsolescence

2010-06-07T12:33:00.006+12:00

There comes a time in life when it becomes not fun to have another birthday. I'm sure many of us have reached that stage (except for the kids and those super-confident 20-somethings). What starts out as the odd stray wrinkle rapidly starts to degenerate into a plethora of things going wrong which seem to get progressively harder to put right.

Some of us are luckier that others in the ageing game. I can remember meeting a truly extraordinary attractive woman back in the UK who told me that she was a grandmother in her 50s whose features would have suggested that she was only 25 or so. She told me that for some reason, her family's skin seemed not to age at the same rate at most other peoples. Whatever she has in her DNA ... I want some!

For myself, I thought that I was going to be a winner in the ageing game, as throughout my 30s and 40s I seemed to defy gravity somewhat, wearing rather better (or so I thought) than my similar-aged colleagues. Alas, I was merely being lulled into a false sense of security, for the cogs of my personal ageing clock were poised to go into overdrive.

At 34, the bathtub provided my first sharp reminder that any lingering hopes of emulating Dorian Grey had been dashed, as a suspicious clump of fallen hair was quickly traced back to a small, but noticeably growing bald patch at the top of my head. Panicky, ineffective (and expensive) treatments of Rogaine (rather hopefully hopefully and misleadingly dubbed Regaine in the UK) ensued, but the moult continued, although at a slow enough rate to (almost) ignore the dwindling of my thatch.

At 42, bang on schedule, the self-cleaning apparatus of my lenses decided to become so thick as to overcome the desperate attempts of my eye muscles to stretch them and long sightedness was the inevitable result. Surely someone will one day invent some clever mechanism to de-gunk a lens?

By 45, I still looked OK (or so I thought). By 50 I had arthritis in my left knee and was having flaking cartilage removed via keyhole surgery. Because I had to be largely immobile while things sorted themselves out, my formerly strong, rowing enhanced thighs dwindled to atrophied chicken legs. To add insult to injury, I noticed that my calves had followed my bonce in losing their furry coating, so that it looks like I have been shaving my legs. Curse you, Dihydrotestosterone!

By 52 my eyes had started to go. Astigmatism and a rather disconcerting tendency to go cross eyed at inconvenient moments (like when having ones photo taken,, for example) were the joys on offer. Oh, and having jowls with the elasticity of a great dane. I really feel in need of some botox, or at the very least a suitable clothes peg administered to the back of the neck a la Kent Brockman, newsreader on the Simpsons Movie.

At 54, what remains of my mop is now grey, apart from a tiny bit of brown around the top of my head, with each flank seeming in a race to see which side can make the grey meet the pink of my pate first. I also notice that my tummy is bigger than it has ever been in my life.

So why "programmed obsolescence"? Well, some years ago I had my DNA tested (for family tree research) and recently the company made available some additional tests, one being to illustrate one's likelihood of getting male pattern baldness (*only works for guys, of course!)

Apparently, researchers at McGill University, King’s College London and GlaxoSmithKline Inc. have identified two genetic variants in Caucasians that together produce an astounding increase the risk of male pattern baldness.

Here are my results:

Notice the highlighted ones annotated "more likely to go bald". Yes, you guessed it, those are mine. It seems that people with those two markers are 7 times as likely as the rest of us to go bald. Well, I at least can vouch for that! Now I guess I have to break the bad news to my poor son, Thomas!

Seriously though, it seems that more and more conditions are becoming detectable with personal genomics, and whilst the industry seems nowhere near the level of reliability to take this from a "what do you think of this factoid" statement to a serious synopsis of what's likely to kill us in the long run, I can't see it being too long before this starts to happen, with interesting consequences for our personal medical insurers. Personally, I'm glad I don't know when and where the next blow is likely to hit. Ignorance might not be bliss, but I guess, for the moment, I prefer it that way.

Eyjafjallajökull volcano footage

2010-05-15T21:52:00.003+12:00

The eruption continues and now I have another Science Blogs blog to follow , "Eruptions", to go alongside my long time favourite haunt Pharyngula.

The music is by an Icelandic band called Sigur Ros and the song is called "Sæglópur" (Saeglopur)... a shame it cuts off abruptly at the end though!

Climate-deniers unsubtle facts-twistings

2010-05-15T04:12:00.005+12:00

Here's an excellent debunking video which perfectly illustrates how certain unscrupulous people with an agenda to sell will misuse scientific statements to further their cause!

Hat-tip to PZ Myers at Pharyngula.

Thunderf00t videos

2010-05-02T16:54:00.015+12:00

For those of you out there yet to see a Thunderf00t video on Youtube, I'm embedding a typical one below. How this one guy turns out such a series of high quality commentaries I'll never know ... I just wish I had half his talent and knowledge.

This particular one got taken down off Youtube after a spurious copyright claim by Viacom, which they later withdrew.

2010-05-02T06:59:00.005+12:00

It’s been a long time since I felt like being in a blogging mood, so after a considerable hiatus I thought I would at last put finger to keyboard and see if I still have anything worthwhile to blog about. I thought I should start with what I have been up to of late and the reasons why I haven’t been so active here.

Lecturing

About a couple of months ago, I received a call asking me whether I would like to do a bit of lecturing on the subject of Business Computing. I’ve had a 20 year-odd career in computing, (followed by an eight-year lull bringing up my young family), and, despite some initial trepidation, I decided to accede to the request.

Now, I’ve presented computing subjects to many people in my career, but never to a mixed group of approximately 70/30 Koreans and Indians, many of which do not have English as their first language, so it was quite a new experience for me. I have to say that I hugely enjoyed the job and that the students were (in the main) delightful and very respectful. I haven’t quite got over the experience of being called “Sir” or “Teacher” instead of “Greg”, and despite the need to get up at three a.m. every morning to do lesson plans and presentation slides and hand outs, I’d do it all again. I’ve not been so busy, so stressed or so satisfied in 10 years or so, and that’s with 3 kids to bring up!

Back to computing

Computing has been a bit of a forgotten passion for me over the last few years. Time was, as a young man way back in 1980 I’d be coding using Commodore Basic on my 8K PET all through the night, devising games with which to confound my managers back at the bank I used to work at. I can remember writing a game which solved the then-popular “Mastermind” game in 5 moves using no more than 64 bytes of machine code, and writing a simple “hangman” type word game which defeated my Scottish boss at work with the word “Sporran”, which ultimately was responsible for my transfer to the Data Processing Department of the Bank.

After 20 years in my subsequent career in computing, I got so fed up with computers that I couldn’t wait to get away from them. These days though, I find myself glued to the Internet as a principal source of information and even delving into computing manuals to educate myself once more. I guess I’ll always have a lust for the logic which underpins the dark art, and though my brain might have lost some of the plasticity of its youth, I still wish that I could make my computer do the stuff which I see presented by other cleverer people all around me. Oh that I could start again with what we have available now, rather than the green fluorescent dumb terminals of 30 years ago!

Anyway, at least I've been trying to teach myself a bit of Visual Basic.NET, ASP.NET and some fancier bits of Excel, to keep my mind from atrophy. I need to do this a bit more immersively for it to stick in my brain, though.

Personal stuff

Well, we moved over Christmas, to an area near where we used to live, for the major purpose of being “in-zone” for some brand new schools for our 3 kids, who are 13, 9 and 7 respectively. It’s been a success, with everybody liking the new home much more than our old one, the schools turning out to be just as good as we had hoped, with all the kids doing really well.

I do run a small lighting business “Greg’s Lights” and it’s been a bit of a struggle finding space for all my disco equipment, but the school has an excellent Performing Arts theatre with professional rigging and so most of my lights are to be found high up in the ceiling at the school these days, except when I hire them out to other people. I’ve supplied the lights for a disco at the Junior College and the nearby Primary School, and by all accounts this made a huge improvement, even though, from my point of view, it was a hell of a lot of work!

So these are my excuses for not blogging, although, in truth, I have had plenty of time to get cracking … I guess I’ve just not been inspired enough (or angry enough) to be motivated to post.

That said, expect me to be really angry if Chelsea fail to bring home the FA Cup and Premier League trophies this year (although I fear they will find a way to muck that up at the last moment). I think I’ll also be a bit disappointed if the Liberal Democrats fail to do well in the UK election as well, despite a very good showing this time around, one week before polling in the UK. But we shall see. Why I still care about UK politics evades me though. I guess I'm just still a sucker for the underdog.

Other blogs and stuff I like

I've been following the debate on the Catholic Church's mishandling of its dodgy priests and spend a fair amount of time on PZ Myers' excellent Pharyngula blog, which I very much recommend. I also recommend NewScientist.com as a way to stay informed on what's new (although it does help that I still have a few months remaining on the subscription to see the best stuff there). I like the Beeb's news website too, and of course the inevitable Facebook, where, alas, I find that I have not been immune to the predilections of Farmville and Treasure Isle, though (thank goodness), I am tiring of these of late!

No-one loves you like your Mum!

2010-01-17T19:36:00.006+13:00

As many who will have read this blog before will know, my family have, from time to time, been prone to outbusts of poetry, some, though not all of it, quite good. This one is one of my favourites, as it's one to me by my natural mother Janice, shortly before she died of lung cancer, a few years ago now.

I was adopted by my natural Grandparents, Nina and "Nick" du Pille, Janice's parents, when I was very little and I grew up thinking of Janice as my big sister. Although her poem reveals her rather embarrassing name for me as a baby and rhymes "anger" with "stranger" it still has a very special place in my heart!

Before your birth there seemed no option
But to give you for adoption
Then when I held you in my arms
And gazed upon your baby charms
I felt such love and so much anger
I couldn't give you to a stranger.

You stayed withing the family fold
And for a time were mine to hold
You grew into a handsome fellow
To me you're still my "Butchinello"!
But Greg I tell you - and it's not corn
There's no-one like my very FIRSTBORN.

(p.s. I am assured that the word "Butch" didn't have it's current connotations way back in 1956, btw!)

Kids ... who'd have 'em

2010-01-10T08:32:00.001+13:00

When they do this?

Queenstown erotica and curling confusions

2010-01-05T20:07:00.017+13:00

After only 8 years and 4 months in New Zealand, we have at last gotten around (colloquialism for my US readers) to visiting Queenstown in the south of the South Island. For those of you who don't know, Queenstown is one of NZ's premier tourist destinations, so it really is a bit shameful that it has taken us so long to get down here, and to be fair, it really is a lovely place. So, of course, we have totally messed things up, by only staying for just under two days, meaning that on this trip we have been totally unable to see most of what the region has to offer.

We flew down from Auckland on Sunday, took the kids up the gondola ride and onto the luge ride, took them to the mini golf the next day but totally missed out on the multifarious attractions because we had to catch our flight to Christchurch earlier today. Our 13 year old daughter did have an amusing brush with authority on leaving Queenstown though, as her 240 volt curling tongs were wrongly interpreted as some kind of high-powered electronic female erotic toy by an over enthusiastic airport security guard, who asked loudly whether said item was a dildo? Perhaps the female officer involved was merely worried about the interference use of such a device might have caused to the navigational instruments on board?

Good on my daughter for not losing her cool or cringing with embarrassment at the interested looks from the following passengers. Had this event happened in the USA, rather than sleepy old NZ, I have little doubt that my daughter would by now have been followed by a possee of lawyers itching to sue the Government for megabucks for the trauma and embarrassment involved.

I have no doubt to thank the school system in NZ for her easy knowledge of what everyone was talking about though, I suppose. Thank God she also knows the difference between two batteries and 240 Volts!

Apophis - we're not doomed ... or are we?

2010-01-01T09:53:00.007+13:00

I don't usually react to new items in a way that makes me go "Hmmm...." but I must admit that I did when I read this one on the BBC's News website.

Sure I'd known about Apophis and its near approach to the Earth in 2029 and again in 2036, and how the odds of impact, which had once seemed in the 1 in 45,000s had gone way out to the 1 in a few hundred thousands. "Well, that's OK!" I thought to myself.

But when I saw the BBC News article with what the Russians are planning to do, it did set me thinking. Why, if the odds are really so small, would Russia, which does have a track record of cancelling rather important space projects because of funding issues, want to get involved in a project to potentially alter the orbit of Apohis?

Two possibilities occurred to me:

1. The odds of impact are far shorter than we've been lead to believe and we are being fed misinformation to prevent panic. I doubt this theory though, as I imagine that there must be any number of scientists out there who can do the math on the orbit of Apophis and other objects and who would be able to shout loudly in alarm if need be.

2. The Russians need a cover story to develop some weaponry. We know that they are alarmed by the USA's missile defence shield capabilities, and so maybe they are using this as a cover to enhance what they have?

If anyone has an alternative theory, I'd love to hear it!

The poems of my grandmother

2009-12-29T20:32:00.009+13:00

Nina Olive du Pille was my natural grandmother, but she adopted me as a child so I grew up with her as my mother, with 6 siblings who were at least 14 years older than me (really my uncles and aunts).

Nina died in 2002 aged 90. Although she was old, she had a young attitude and complained often that she felt that she was "a young girl trapped in an old woman's body". Nina liked to write and some of her poetry alludes to her dislike of the ageing process, whilst others wistfully recount her emotions of being seperated from her family in NZ.

My young cousin James this evening handed me a folder of some poetry that Nina had sent from the UK to her grandchildren in NZ. Nina's handwiting can be hard to read for those not used to it, so James asked me to decypher it for him and so here goes:

The Moon

A mysterious Globe,
A World unknown.
Through all my faith,
A phantom Queen
A fairy thing of light and shade
Mountains, rivers and a sunny glade.

First words of love,
I've yet to share
Under her shimmering silver glare
And, man, in his unquenching haste
reduced, my lovely world to paste
Destroyed my youth,
Destroyed a myth.

A Family Afar

"This, I wrote as if I was your mum (Nina's daughter Pamela). I'm sure she must feel very like this inside."

I close my eyes,
To see you all again,
To hold you close to my heart
I wish you well
I cannot touch your hand
For you, and yours
Are in another land
The photos you send,
Are a pleasure
I can see the rosy cheeks,
the happy laughter
on the faces of my grandchildren
I cannot feel
the wriggling warmth of their bodies,
I cannot touch
their golden hair
Or feel the soft kiss
upon my cheek
As, I go to sleep,
the day for me is done
For you, the day is just beginning
My love comes winging to you,
My daughter.
Over the seas,
through time and tide
to you, my family afar.

Untitled

Complacent, one takes a back seat
and watches youth from afar
as if I were a star
out of reach,
beyond control

Farewell, my youth, you have served me
faithfully and well.

I shall have memories sweet,
in my old age,
on which to dwell
I leave you,
a legacy to the world,
your pleasures to unfold
in more capable hands than mine.

For I have grown tired,
I have grown old.

Unconscious Ruth

"I wrote this in hospital. Ruth was only 23 and married when she had a tumour in her brain. She had her head shaved, she lay for weeks unconscious and her young husband sat for hours just holding her hand. In time, they did get her to be able to dress herself. I don't know how much better she will ever get. It was so sad to see her and her husband. I don't know if they have a future."

As I sat beside your inert body
You are like a barren land.
Cold, icy, all but dead,
your eyes, unseeing, glazed, stare into mine.
I know you are there. I will you back to me.

As you lay so still,
I take your hand in mine,
there's no response,
I know you not,
this still, white figure,
that drifts in and out of life.
You have become a thing
not flesh and blood,
that was my wife
come back to me
make me whole.

(c) Nina Olive du Pille 2002

NZIS immigration woes - one year on

2009-12-29T07:52:00.006+13:00

I've written here before about the problems my in-laws have been experiencing in getting a residence visa to live with us in New Zealand. They were turned down in December 2007 because of my mother-in-law's rheumatoid arthritis, we won the appeal against that decision in December 2008 and it is now December 2009 and we now know that NZIS are considering turning her down again, for the very same reason and using the same logic which was found to be faulty way back in December 2008 by the Residence Review Board.

Expenses so far in this exercise total in excess of $6,700 and counting, and the whole thing has now dragged on for coming up on 3 years. Bearing in mind that my in-laws are in their 70s, my wife is their only surviving child and that they are fast running out of years and can quite do without the expense and stresses involved in this whole process, to say that I am somewhat ticked off with NZIS and the way that they have handled this case is somewhat of an understatement. And all because they failed to do the hard yards in coming to a correct assessment as required by their own Policy.

So where do we go from here? Well, NZIS are under notice that we shall soon have to resort to the formal complaints procedure, given their awful tardiness and apparent neglect of the directions raised by the RRB. Then what? To the High Court I suppose, with all the attendant costs and risks that involves.

I imagine that if that happens, and INZ lose, as I expect them to do, two things will happen. The whole exercise will have cost NZ far more than the savings made by the Health Service avoiding the probable expenses that my mother-in-law's condition would likely have implied; that INZ would have to do far more work in future to justify turning down Rheumatoid Arthritis sufferers than merely pointing to the medications they are taking and might wind up having to amend their policy on such matters. Lets hope so, anyway!

Family Values

2009-12-28T13:26:00.015+13:00

Family Values

The festive month
A time of joy
Or pain
Of love lost
And not regained

You seem to think
It's really quite OK
To wend your happy way
Forgetting where you came from
Until another day

An interlude of months
A churlish txt or two
No friendly information
No banter to and fro.

Yet Christmas looms
and with its chill,
embarrassments abound.
What is the etiquette
For saving face these days
To let you come around?

For families not valued
Are hard to just swing by
When you don't really love them
And you're not sweet as cherry pie.

I'll give you just one little tip
Or maybe two or three
For saving hurt at Yuletide time
For she and thee and me.

An insincere request
To come and see the kids
(Not us of course)
But makes us think
how to respond
for love's there still, somewhere maybe?
Or are we being conned?

Did you really think, no really,
We'd gasp with open mouths
with rapt approval
The beneficent generosity
To grace us with your presence
In our castle of renewal?

Consume our food
Curdle our hearts
Dazzle our eyes
While we mourn for what's lost
between us all?

Maybe perhaps, one future day
A lighter tone will enter play
And Christmas friendship found at last
renews all in a special way.

So, sorry
Your Munificence
Welcome mat's been put away
Though with a twinge of heavy heart
This game's not one we wish to play.

The Known Universe and Back in 6 minutes

2009-12-27T14:53:00.006+13:00

I really like this video posted by the American Museum of Natural History, which renders the known universe s accurately as is currently known, and gives the viewer a sense of the enormity of space and the total insignificance of our little pebble in the backwaters of a small galaxy. How one can see this and imagine that the stars were placed in place just as "signs" or as a pretty backcloth for mankind escapes me.

So next time you are worried that some cosmic deity has time to be concerned over the naughty thoughts you might have been having about a neighbour's wife, you might think instead that He has probably has plenty of other more significant things to be worried about!

Changing house at Christmas time

2009-12-27T07:28:00.004+13:00

Wow, what a long time since I've posted any sort of meaningful article here! I plead the Christmas rush and moving house as excuses of course.

I suppose my wife and I are getting through middle age now, me more so than her of course, but at least we still retain the ability to change things suddenly if the opportunity arises, although not without cost, as on this occasion.

A respected neighbour of ours came to our old 1950s place which we rented out after selling out big place earlier this year, (not wanting to dip our financial toes back into a falling property market which had latterly burned us so badly), and asked us whether we had seen the new schools recently built in a nearby district, close to where we had formerly lived?

Well, no we hadn't, so my wife made an appointment and a day or so later we were being guided around the gleaming, superbly-equipped primary school by the deputy principal. The only snag was that they only accept "in-zone" students, so, if we wanted our children to attend, there was nothing to it but to move into zone.

Well, from the school we went straight on to the local realty agent, found a couple of properties to look at, and within 36 hours we were all signed up for a new home and a new school for all three kids.

The problem then was moving all of our vast collection of possessions from our old place to the new one, all during the Christmas rush. Well, it wasn't easy, and despite the new landlord being very nice and allowing us to move in one week early rent-free, it still took about two weeks of ferrying our stuff from the old place to the new, before the removals men turned up to cart across the remaining large and heavy items of furniture to the new place. The only breakage was our glass dining table, which to be fair, was already substantially disfigured, having been the victim of an experiment by our daughter with a staple-gun some months before. As it turns out, we're quite glad of the space not having that table has given us!

So, we're all in and enjoying our new, shiny place which is only six months old, in contrast to our rather run-down (but still pleasant) old 1950s home. We'll probably be here for a year or so, but we'll see how it goes.

Having said all the above, we have almost totally failed in our Christmas obligations to our friends and families this year, so if you didn't get a card from us when you usually do, well, we're very sorry and we haven't crossed you off our Christmas lists, we've just been rather overloaded this time around.

And if you don't know us, but just read my occasional blog, thanks for dropping by, I hope you had a great Christmas and good luck for 2010!

Wordle

2009-11-28T18:36:00.005+13:00

Hmm. The above wordle was created automatically from the most common words on this site. It's only too obvious to see my what motivates me to post, isn't it?

Another piece of flesh goes missing

2009-11-24T04:02:00.003+13:00

I'm not sure that I like this getting old thing. Either bits stop working, fall out, change shape or just get uglier these days.

So having more or less reconciled myself to my dodgy knees, cranial nudity, wonky fingers, dodgy eyes and drooping jowls, today was the day that I finally did something about that annoying little mole on my left arm.

In truth, I'd been worrying slightly about it for a few weeks now, but inertia meant that I hadn't done anything about it yet. But I live in New Zealand, where the UV levels can be extremely dangerous and it really does not do to ignore such stuff for too long, so off I trooped to the local skin cancer clinic to get it checked out at last.

After some banter with the friendly receptionist I was ushered in to see the jovial lady doctor and after another joke or two she got down to work, taking a picture of said mole and enlarging it on the screen for me.

The news? Not brilliant but not yet dreadful. The mole was of a type where melanoma couldn't be dismissed, as there were some features which could indicate something untoward going on, although it was still unlikely that it would be cancer. Better to remove it as a precaution, anyway. So five minutes later, a jab of anaesthetic, a whip of the scalpel and no more mole. Just a wait for a few days to see what the lab makes of it. Then either stitches removed in 10 days or so, or more flesh to be removed, depending on the result.

So I guess it's just a queasy wait for a day or two. The doctor said that I shouldn't worry excessively, but that she is a lady people really don't like getting a call from, after their moles have been removed!

Australia Tourism Fail

2009-11-11T10:32:00.003+13:00

Of course the Steve Irwin reference is in extremely bad taste. Other than that though ...

ID poll results

2009-11-10T22:53:00.012+13:00

I recently ran a small online poll into belief of Creationism or Evolution in NZ. The results are in, and thanks for all who took part. I didn't vote, btw!

Question 1. asked "I think ... best describes the origin of life as we know it today on Earth?"

a) Intelligent Design = 18.2%

b) Creationism = 9.1%

c) The Theory of Evolution 68.2%

d) Another explanation 4.5%

So, if one believes that Intelligent Design is another form of Creationism, that leaves a chunk of some 27.3% (against 44% in the US) who prefer religious explanations over science for the origin of life.

My answer would have been d) (another explanation), as I regard the Theory of Abiogenesis (in the natural sciences, the study of how life on Earth could have arisen from inanimate matter) to be about the origins of life, whilst evolution is really all about "change in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next", although I am conscious that for many people they see it as a competing theory for "the origin of life" and many have never heard of abiogenesis!

Question 2. asked: Regarding Intelligent Design...

a) this is a relatively new scientific concept =10%

b) this a rehash of Paley's Blind Watchmaker argument for God since the 1800s =0%
c) has been unfairly dismissed by scientists =10%

d) is religiously based, warmed over Creationism with the God stuff removed. =75%

e) another answer =5%

Of those answering c) above, all of those answering also identified themselves as Christians who preferred intelligent design as the best explanation.

Of those 75% answering d) above, 65% were supporters of evolution, 5% were keen on ID and 5% identified as Creationists.

My own answer would have been b) or d). I would not have voted a) as, although ID has been around since at least 1987 (which is relatively recent), its claims for a Designer are not falsifiable, as it speculates on supernatural causation, which takes it outside the realm of science. You can argue about this below, if you wish.

The Rev William Paley made a widely accepted (at the time) analogy for design in the 1800s with his "Blind Watchmaker" argument, basically saying that life looks to be designed, therefore there must have been a Designer. As for d) being religiously based, its Creationist roots were amply demonstrated in the Dover trial and few, these days, dispute that it is really "Creationism with the God stuff take out", even, it seems, its own supporters.

Question 3 asked: "I would describe my religious views as ..."

a) religious (Christian) =19%

b) agnostic =23.8%

c) atheistic =38.1%

d) religious (other) = 0%

e) something else = 19%

I would have answered c) (atheistic). I was surprised by the relatively low proportion identifying as Christian (19%), as I had always seen NZ as a much more religious country than my native UK, but perhaps this is due to the relatively small sample replying to the poll. However, it is more than I would have been expecting from a poll of UK people, and less than I'd expect from Americans, so I guess it's not too surprising a result, albeit on the low side.

Question 4 asked "I believe that life on Earth has been around for approximately ..."

a) 10,000 years = 10.5%

b) 10 million years = 15.8%

c) 35 billion years = 26.3%

d) something else. = 47.4%

I would have plumped for c) except for the missing decimal point which should have made it 3.5 billion years, not 35 billion! So d) would be the choice that science agrees with, with the estimated age of the Earth being some 4.5 million years , with the first life appearing approximately 1 billion years later.

For those who answered a), that is the answer that Young Earth Creationists would give as it agrees more with the genealogical records reported in the Bible. This however puts it at odds with various branches of science, such as cosmology, which insists that the doppler-shifting of light from far-off galaxies gives an approximate age of the known universe to be of the order of 14 billion or so years. Some Creationists have countered that the speed of light must have been 300 times as fast as it is now, although that is not a view supported by science. There were other objections too, but I don't want to get into them here!

Question 5 asked : "I believe evolution says that ..."

a) We are descended from Chimpanzees =0%

b) Chimpanzees and Humans are both descended from an ape-like mammal =57.1%

c) All animals and plants are descended from a common ancestor =33.3%

d) none of the above. =9.5%

I would have plumped for b) and c) which both seem correct to me. I'm glad to see that no-one plumped for a), whether they accept evolution or otherwise!

On to Question 6 which asked " I believe that Intelligent Design came about from ..."

a) a group of non-religious scientists who found flaws with evolution and who were unfairly shunned by mainstream science. =9.1%

b) a group of creationists who wanted to publish a Creation Science schoolbook in the USA but were concerned about a Supreme Court ruling. =27.3%

c) the Discovery Institute, who fund their own research into Intelligent Design in Seattle =9.1%

d) The Churches, who wanted a scientific rebuttal of evolution because they believe it would threaten the Adam and Eve story and therefore question the ideas of Original Sin and redemption. =27.3%

e) Some other reason. =27.3%

Perhaps unsurprisingly, people who voted a) or c) were also Christians who accepted either Creationism or Intelligent Design. I would have voted for b), and possibly for d) ... to see why, visit this post at Warzytopia. I couldn't accept c), because although the Discovery Institute are very active in promoting the concept of Intelligent Design, I don't think it is true to say that they do scientific research, as they don't publish peer-reviewed scientific research on the subject, or that they originated the concept.

And lastly, Question 7 which asked "Evolution is ..."

a) Just an unproven theory, unsupported by enough evidence to regard it as fact. =4.5%

b) A well proven theory that has not been refuted in well over 100 years and is regarded by the overwhelming proportion of scientists as proven fact. =40.1%

c) somewhere between a and b =45.5%

d) is completely false =0%

e) another answer =9.1%

I would have chosen b), as evolution is one of the most proven of all scientific theories. For a discussion of why, go see the video by Prof Jerry Coyne here, but be warned, this was presented at an Atheism International Conference!

I like Creationists

2009-11-04T12:37:00.015+13:00

Well, debating with them anyhow. Here's an extract of a recent one I had on Facebook, (with my embarrassing typos hopefully corrected!).

Greg, This may interest you, from a friend of mine:

In answer to your question, the Church has not given an official stance on evolution, but it has declared that we are to understand that Adam and Eve were the real first parents of all of humanity.Personally, I think that the intelligent design movement is gaining momentum as science continues ... Read more to discover the amazing "irreducible complexity" present in the structure of the cell which Darwin thought was 'simple'. DNA itself is more and more coming to be viewed as 'biological computer code'. Programs such as "The Privileged Planet" scientifically demonstrate that conditions suitable for complex carbon-based life are such that one could only reasonably expect to find one out of every trillion planets habitable; therefore, complex life would be quite rare even in a universe as gigantic as ours.

My reply:

Haha! Sorry , I don't know which church your friend attends, but it is likely to be one of the more fundamentalist ones, because the Catholic Church certainly does accept evolution, as do the more mainstream Anglican churches, as opposed to the Evangelical and Southern Baptist ones.

It's important that you understand who the "Intelligent Design Movement" actually are, why they exist and what "Intelligent Design" really is, and why some churches peddle it.

"The Intelligent Design Movement" is the same Intelligent Design Movement promoted by the Discovery Institute, which was founded once the US Supreme Court ruled against teaching Creation Science in State schools (because it violates the Establishment clause of the US Constitution (Edwards v Aguillard 1987).

The would-be publishers of "Of Pandas and People", a creationist schoolbook, realised they had a problem, so basically they went through their book, taking out all the overt "God stuff" and bulk-renamed all references to" creationists" as "design proponents" .... and thus "Creationism" or "Creation Science" was reborn as "Intelligent Design" ... tada!...

Basically, all the above was proved in court in 2005 when early drafts of the book had to be produced and, embarrassingly for the Discovery Institute, (who had denied until they were blue in the face that "Intelligent Design" was really creationism), there in one of the early drafts of Pandas was a partly-changed artifact which had been left in by mistake, of "cdesign proponentists", which, as if any more evidence was needed, gave the game away completely!

"Irreducible complexity" is a concept promoted by Michael Behe of the Discovery Institute and is not in the slightest bit scientific and has been thoroughly debunked by scientists, as were the supposed examples of it put forward by Michael Behe in the Kitzmiller v Dover Area School District Board in 2005. Basically Behe argued that structures such as the eye, the bacterial flagellum and the blood clotting pathway were all examples of irreducible complexity arising in nature that proved design and could not possibly have arisen through evolution.

Expert scientific witnesses conclusively debunked each example, showing that Behe hadn't read the relevant peer-reviewed scientific literature, and that each of these contained elements which had been formerly used for other biological functions and had been co-opted through evolution to form the structures we see today. See the Kitzmiller trial transcript for the hilarious way in which Behe was exposed as a charlatan (in my opinion), where he was shown to be wanting to redefine the definition of "science" so that it would accommodate "intelligent design" and that his definition would also permit "astrology" to be considered a science!

Even Dembski was shown to have a religious motivation for propounding "Specified Complexity". He was quoted as saying (in a 1999 interview) "[i]ntelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.".

There is nothing sciency about the Intelligent Design Movement. Almost alone amongst them, Michael Behe is a qualified biologist, and not a very informed one at that. William Dembski is a mathematician, yet his theories have been well and truly debunked by other mathematicians. What the people at the Discovery Institute are is religious, not scientific. Don't believe me? Look up "The Wedge Document", a document of theirs leaked onto the Internet which exposes their religious motivations and strategies.

No, Intelligent Design is not "gaining momentum as science continues ...the amazing "irreducible complexity" present in the structure of the cell" ... far from it. Instead it is a religious, creationist shell-game, masquerading as science, producing no research of its own and parasitising science documents to support its case via the rather immoral and intellectually dishonest practice of "quote mining" scientific discoveries out of context.

Intelligent Design really is no more than the restating of Paley's "Blind Watchmaker" argument for design popular in the early 1800s.

Fundamentalist churches, who typically believe in the inerrancy of the bible and a literal interpretation of what is in it, rely on the Adam and Eve story to underpin one of the fundamental tenets of Christianity, that of Christ's redemption of Man's sin on the cross.

They're particularly uncomfortable with Evolution, because it invalidates the "literal truth" of the Garden of Eden story, complete with talking snake and all.

This is important for the Church because, without the supposed inheritable "original sin" of Adam and Eve, there would be no Sin passed down to all of us, and therefore whether or not Christ truly existed and died on a cross, there would have been no "original Sin" to redeem and so whatever "Christ" might have died for, his "sacrifice" would have been unnecessary.

That idea is profoundly unsettling for a great number of theologians, so it is perhaps unsurprising that anything that appears to provide some sort of scientific fig-leaf to shore up the idea of "Special Creation" is potentially very attractive to them. Unfortunately, crafty attempt as it was, "Intelligent Design" does not really do that, albeit their best hope to date, so it still gets trotted out and put in front of the uninformed, in an attempt to bolster the case for creationism.

Later...

"Did your friend have a riposte to the above?" ... so far, not a word. I'll keep you posted if there is one

Just the small matter of a receipt

2009-10-31T07:32:00.013+13:00

Just back from the UK following the purchase of a new laptop from Curry's in Kingston ... I was dead lucky, the store was closing down and they had some really great deals ... my laptop was reduced from £550 to £420 as a result, and also because of imminent arrival of Windows 7. My machine has Vista on it, but the deal was that there was a very cheap upgrade if I bought the laptop.

So I used the Laptop while I was in England, and being me, promptly mislaid the receipt from Curry's.

Now back in NZ, with Windows 7 being released, naturally I want to claim my cheap upgrade .. but I've hit a snag. The HP site wants a proof of purchase ... I can scan that in if I like. Damn! I'll have to phone Curry's back in the UK. In the middle of the night, probably.

I eventually get through, but the first person I talk to can't find my name on their system, but he sends me to someone else. I have more luck here, she finds my details. But here's the snag. Under their Data Protection Act procedures, they can't actually give me the receipt unless I physically walk into one of their stores with some ID. They will not post or email me a scan of a duplicate. I ask them whether they have any stores in NZ (of course they don't) and whether they will make an exception. They won't, so then I ask to speak to a supervisor. She even phones their Head Office, but they are adamant that I must come in!

I must say that I was not quick enough to ask whether in that case Curry's would fund my trip from Auckland to the UK so that I could turn up in person, but no doubt that line of attack would also have been futile.

Anyway, the supervisor (bless her), then apologetically told me all the details on the receipt (in apparent violation of the Data Protection Act) that she couldn't apparently give me a hard copy of, (because of the Data Protection Act), which I dutifully copied down, typed up my own "receipt" in Word, scanned and uploaded to the HP website.

If HP have a problem with that I shall just have to direct them to Curry's, although I imagine that Curry's might want to discuss the issue with them in person at one of their stores, just to prove that they are really talking to someone from HP, you know! "Curry's, no worries" ... righhhht.

I'll let you know if I ever get my upgrade, although HP will only deliver it to the UK and with the current postal strike there I expect that I'll be after a Windows 8 upgrade before I get that one!

Great books to read: The Greatest Show on Earth

2009-10-30T12:42:00.005+13:00

If you are a creationist you'll probably hate it. If not, Richard Dawkins' latest book provides a wealth of evidence for Evolution. I read this on my way over to the UK and thoroughly recommend it ... way, way better than "Biology for Christian Schools", which I reviewed earlier on this site!

You can read the first chapter for free by going to here.

I feel like a rant.

2009-10-27T16:54:00.012+13:00

No reason, in particular, just feel rather growly today, so, in no particular order, here are a few things that I feel like ranting about today.

1. Conformity. Not everyone thinks that public transport is a "good thing", yet the thought that someone might hold the opinion that we'd actually be better off without legions of empty subsidised buses ploughing the streets for the vast majority of the day, spewing unhealthy diesel particulates into the atmosphere for no particular good reason seems to be an attitude that it is rather indecent to hold these days.

2. Kow-towing to religious sensibilities. "Respect for Religion" is one of those phrases that makes me cringe. Whilst I have no problem respecting someone's right to hold whatever religious notions they might have, no matter how loony, how self deceiving or however unsupported by any realistic evidence, I do draw the line at respecting the religious ideas that they might choose to express. If something is just plain barmy, I will reserve my right to express that opinion, whilst all the time respecting the right of the person the hold whatever idiotic views he likes. That is not the same as repecting those views. I have no respect for ideas such as blood sacrifice, endorsement of slavery, genocide or sex with 9 year olds by old men, for example, however hard the religious might wish me to endorse them.

3. Insipid friendship. If you are really are a friend you will be interested in what's going on in the life of your friend, and know that they are interested in you too. That's especially true if you have been through a lot together. A two-word text every three months or so won't really cut it, especially not if you give the impression that you are just going through the motions. Really, why bother? Better to just be honest and let it go. No-one really needs fair-weather friends anyhow.

On the other hand, making one welcome, travelling a hundred miles just to see your friend and spending a pleasant afternoon just talking about old stuff you did together is my idea of a lasting friendship, even if you haven't seen eachother for five years or so. Thank goodness I have at least one good friend like that.

4. Baldness. Unlikely ever to be fashionable. Except if you are Cameron Diaz. I hate that.

5. Strabismus. I thought that was something to do with violins. Unfortunately it's to do with having eyes that like to wander ... across eachother's line of sight. Not a good look at all!