[Conspiraloonery] You Can Keep Your Freedom, I Want My Liberty Back

Let us never forget the terrorist visa overstayer rapist junkie innocent Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes. Executed without warning for running jumping a barrier wearing heavy jacket with wires sticking out a toilet break during a steakout looking like another terrorist suspect a management failure a health and safety failure.

This one has been around for a long time, but it’s so good it deserves another airing.

HT to Stef for reminding us the government never makes decisions behind closed doors about how to hide or spin the truth.

And for anyone who hasn’t watched The Bourne Ultimatum, here are the opening scenes at Waterloo Station. “Kill the cameras”.

[Echo Chamber] I Know The Feeling

I have nothing to add other than… I know the feeling.

On second thoughts, another problem I’ve always had is posting a long and/or excellent comment on someone elses blog and wishing I had done a post on my own blog instead!

I do that often.

[Service] Bye Bye Starbucks, Viva La (Coffee) Republic

I have to admit, I’m one of those people who usually has a laptop with me whenever I’m visiting the city in the hope that I might be able to grab some time to sip a latte and surf, or just catch up on some work.

A few months ago McDonald’s announced they were doing free wifi, and although I’ve used this service a couple of times, there’s really a fine line between free wifi access, and trying to surf/work with a dozen kids screaming around you. Perhaps they should upscale some of their restaurants and restrict Happy Meals.

Well there is a new contender for my bean addiction and I’ll be making a fast switch to Coffee Republic now that they’re rolling out free wifi access for customers.

“The new service is aimed at providing Coffee Republic’s broad customer base with added-value to the service they receive in the Bars; from business professionals looking for a comfortable ‘mobile office’, to students looking for a leisurely place to download music or work on a project.” – The Retail Bulletin

This is what the laptop jockey patrons of Star Bucks have been wanting them to do for ages and they’ve been beaten to the spot by Coffee Republic.

[Lying] It’s 11pm, A Phone Is Ringing In The Whitehouse…

… but Hillary is too tired to pick up…

HT: The Osterley Times

[Atheism] How To Destroy Christianity

I’m pretty fed up of the same circular arguments and debates going round and round the tubes. Based on logical fallacies, false premises and rabid hate.

So listen closely I’m about to reveal the truth that Christians don’t want you to know. It’s hidden in their own book, the bible, and all you need to do is point out the evidence, one simple line, and you will end their faith. You will completely decimate it.

There is no need to mention Occam’s Razor, the 3rd law of thermodynamics, the Jesus Seminar, logic and reason, counter-arguments, semantics, OT eschatology, Witty Diatribes, Pseudoscience, the Da Vinci code, the FSM or the celestial teapot.

It was written long ago by one of the founders of Christianity, hidden in plain sight, the means to bring Christianity and belief in Jesus crashing to the ground. Simply prove this and even the most God-fearing, bible-bashing fundie will be stumped.

Here is the verse, from 1 Corinthians 15:13-16 of the New Testament, written by Paul:

“If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile;”

It’s that simple. If there is no resurrection of the dead, no resurrection of Jesus Christ, then their words are false and faith is futile.

If you want to rid the world of Christianity, all you have to do is prove that Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead. Should be an easy task, right?

Watch the faith drain from their eyes and their expression fill with doubt… go get ’em tiger!

[Context] That Rev. Wright Sermon In Full

Anyone with an ounce of intelligence knows that the main religion in America is not Christianity… it’s Patriotism. Christianity is fair game along with every other belief, but to appear not to be a Patriot is not only a sin, it’s an act of terrorism itself.

In the age of the internets, the Salem Witch trials are replaced by cleverly cut and edited video and images by the media.

I wonder how many of those, swift to condemn Rev Wright in the past couple of months could disagree with this one in context. I didn’t hear him mention homosexuals, abortionists or feminists once during his tirade. But he did commit the cardinal sin of criticising American foreign policy – which is the Holy Grail of Patriotism.

The only exceptions I can find of those who are free to criticise American foreign policy and have not only their words treated in context, but to have their Patriotism unquestioned are the military. So perhaps Wright should really leave it to ex-servicemen and military-men to speak out on American foreign policy and not try to win too many hearts or minds in the near future.

[Grinlish] Funny Hotel Signs

Some oldies but goodies.

[Viewer discretion is advised]

Hidden Fees

I received an email a while ago from Sue Craig of not-for-profit Hidden Fees requesting a link to their site providing genuine, free advice on avoiding hidden fees.

The site looks promising and contains many articles. I thought it was a great idea and have now added a link on the blogroll. I wrote back to Sue and advised that it needed some guides and template letters to make it really useful and she wrote back to thank me and advise it “should be on the site in the next month or so [emailed 5 Apr 08]”. For now you’ll have to have a bit of time on your hands to navigate and read the detailed but useful articles.

One thing that did concern me was their archaic and heavy-handed IP & Copyright Notice which surprises me coming from a site that purports to be helping people avoid fees and such:

Except as permitted below no part of the Website may be reproduced, displayed, copied, translated, adapted, downloaded, broadcast, used or republished in any form including (without limitation) distribution, or storage in a system for retrieval.

Considering the service they are offering it’s forgivable, but I would hope as they progress they change this not to be so drastic. Technically speaking your webpages are already downloaded and stored in the cache (physically on the hard drive) of anyone who visits the site to read the information from a library or shared computer (read ‘public’) then they are already breaking your copyright notice.

It’s something I’m willing to overlook in linking to Hidden Fees but it’s something worth bearing in mind when considering the target audience- people who seek to avoid or fight predatory and subversive systems. People who read software EULAs and seriously consider open-source. People who don’t like signing unfair contracts.