Cassowaries Rant

Why organised religion isn't that bad

Before we begin, I’d like to say that I’m an Agnostic and see Beliefs in God as just as bad from the atheist Side as the religious one. That is, neither Side have proved their Position and so neither can call their Position more logical than the other. Especially not the Atheists, because at least it’s logically possible to prove that something exists (which is not to say it’s not possible to prove/disprove the existence of God in some other Way). However, this Argument does not rely on God’s Existence or lack thereof; it is about Society.

Atheists have a Habit of blaming all the World’s Ills on Religion, especially organised Religion. Look, they’ll say, at the Crusades, at Terrorism, at the mediæval Priesthood, at the modern Priesthood, at the roman Priesthood. So yes, let’s.

The modern catholic and anglican Priesthoods, so the Theory goes, are filled with Pedophiles and People who cover Pedophilia up. This, then, is somehow supposed to be generalisable to all Religions are bad. I’m not entirely sure how. The only Way you can universally generalise is if you created a new Constant when you universally instantiated to begin with (the anglican Priesthood isn’t new). Logic aside, yes. Bad Argument. Bad Pedophiles and Pedophilia Coverer Upperers, but Bad Argument too.

But that’s not my real Point. My Point is that if we compare most of what they complain about—the evil vicious and horrible Behavior of evil vicious and horribly dead Priests—with Today’s organised Religions, you’ll notice some differences. These Days, most religious People I’ve met are either so because their Parents were (and in this Age, this Group is rightly shrinking), or because they honestly came to the Conclusion that this is the best Way to live their Lives—just the same as Atheists who came to the Conclusion in Spite of a Lack of Evidence that there is no God. Religion is no longer a Device of mass social Control. For that, turn to the Mass Media and related areas. Everything you falsly epitomise in Religion is actually epitomised there.

People who hate Religions should leave well enough alone and go tourment Things that deserve it.

Ah, love the Internet. Where anyone can write things written dozens of Times before as badly as they want.

Vanity searching

I did a Google for my surname and got the following interesting results:

• Google turns up 15 300 results. I have no intention to go through all of them at this time of night, so there will no doubt be stuff missing.
• There is a reference to me on the first, second and third pages. I take a break on the fourth and fifth pages, but return with two on the sixth. The first reference to my webpage is on page three, with the next on page seventeen. Contrast this with the 1 170 pages a google for tristan mcleay turns up, where you have to go to the fourth page to find one not me. Obviously I’m not very popular on the web. My older sister, Emilly, also gets a mention on the sixth and seventh.
• There is an Amerind by the name of Don Mc Leay who carves totems.
• Mc Leay Geological Consultants of Canada have, since 1976, been providing the petroleum industry with geological services.
• There is a reader in biological sciences at Waikato University named Dr Lance Mc Leay. He is probably insane, and got his PhD at Melbourne University.
• There is a lecturer in mathematics education at University of Wales, Bangor named Dr Heather Mc Leay. She is clearly insane.
• The Hon. Leo McLeay, the Labor MP from NSW, rates a mention on the second and third pages. He’s related to me.
• Also at the University of Wales, Bangor, there is a Professor Stuart Mc Leay. In the event that that page is down, here is the google cache of the page. He is in the division of financial studies there, and has held a position at La Trobe University (where I go).
• There is an 18- or 19-year-old Canadian skier by name of Dustin Mc Leay who won his first gold medal in January last year. Perhaps Kieran won’t be the only sporty Mc Leay.
• Mc Leay and Sons have been selling carpets in South Australia for four generations.
• In 1828, R. brought a case of libel against the Hon. Alexander Mc Leay, a Colonial Secretary.

That gets you up to the fourth or fifth page. I might add some more later, but don’t hold your breath.

Incidentally, the google.com.au server is located in the US, and it takes more hops to get to it than to straight google.com from my Bigpond broadband connection.

Smartypants test

This is just a test—just a test, and nothing more—of ‘Smartypants’. ’Twas interesting, was it not?

I’m really not sure if he said I would have you killed or I should have you killed: he was running at 40–50 km/h when he spoke!

Wow, that’s … fast!

My point exactly!

Getting two sets of quotes? Ask your browser supplier to support CSS or switch to Mozilla Firebird today!

On a related note, there’s this café, called, one presumes, Socrate’s Café. One presumes this rather than knowing it, because it has so many different forms of its name: Socrate's Caf'e, Socrate´s Cafe (yes, that’s right, with an acute for an apostrophe!), Socrates Cafe̍ even! They just never call it Socrate’s Café. I really don’t understand what’s so hard about putting an accent above the letter and knowing where apostrophes go…

I have good punctuation

I would like to remind everyone that I’m a pedant and actually have good punctuation. And if I slip up and I’m able to, I’ll probably edit it. The fact that the name of this site is and has been continuously since I first named it ‘Cassowaries Rant’, therefore, indicates that it was intentional. Now that we’ve eliminated ignorance as a posibility, we have two options left:

• I purposely decided to give it a badly punctuated and spelt name; or,
• ‘Rant’ is being used as a verb, rather than a noun, and ‘Cassowary’ is being used as a plural, rather than a possessive.

You can assure that the former is not the case. The little comment thing I have in the top-right corner of every page? It’s there because I wanted to kinda hint about that.

Alex, fix up your link! (And Mason, don’t correct me when I tell you something. As many of my Uni friends can attest to (i.e. will refute, but they are slowly learning! God knows I’ve told them offen enough!), I’m never wrong.)

(Also, side note: I’ve gone through and accessiblised this page. I’m almost certain it’s AA (priority 2)–standard. Bobby gives me AAA, but I’m not sure that I pass all its user checks. Sure, I find it highly unlikely that anyone blind happens to read this site (and if you do, email me and tell me what it’s like), but it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it? Also, I can’t wait till XHTML/2.0 is out. The semantics/syntax of its <p> tag is so much better. I hate having to break a paragraph to put in a list.)

Yay! Weekend

Yay! Weekend! Time to sleep! Time to do C++ assignment I didn’t hand in that was due today! :(

Oh well, only one more week left of semester! Then I can redesign my site yet again instead of studying for exams!

(On a side note, I still like ’The Secret People’ and ’The Logical Vegetarian’ by G. K. Chesterton. Popups are still evil, wysiwygs are still wysiags, and I feel like creating an ’aside’ paragraph format, but the way I want to do it I don’t think CSS supports. I want to have big brackets the size of the pagraph surrounding it.)

You gotta love mathematicians

Unlike other similar fields (and I could point one Ken Greenwood to Psychology here… repeat after me: I am a person, not a textbook), Mathematicians don’t take issue to giving things precise terms using English terminology. Sure, there’s random things like sine and stuff, but that’s all historical, held over from the day when everything was written in Latin anyway.

You just have to love the name of the χ² goodness of fit test. (Technically I probably should’ve used MathML for that. I hope you can forgive my thinking it isn’t worth learning a new language after midnight so that I can write χ².)

Sorry for the popups

I feel it necessary to apologies for the popups which have until recently been gracing this site. Implemented in JavaScript, even worse. I apologise for this hypocracy; I had not read the source code nor used all aspects of this site enough to realise that the default MovableType code made use of these. There may be some more left.

Why do I dislike popups/new windows so? They remove a feature. In most browsers, it is possible to manually decide if you want to get a link to open in a new window. It is, however, not possible to decide if you want a link to open in the same window if the website designer has chosen to override this. It means that you can’t assume what behavior will happen. I would like to assume (while browsing the web) that left clicking opens the link in the same window and middle clicking opens it in a new window. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Sure, I’ll survive. But you’ll have to put up with my whingeing till you get rid of it. It’s only fair—you annoy me and I’ll annoy you.

Another drop-cap test

’This is another dc test.’

On a side note, XHTML 2.0 looks like it will be quite nice. Much better than XHTML 1.x, which reak of HTML.

And Mozilla isn’t behaving :( It doesn’t seem to know about xml:lang or something.

Drop cap test

‘This’, he said, ‘is purely a test post. I’m wondering how punctuation marks affect the dropcap seen in Mozilla or the large but undropped cap seen in Opera. Internet Explorer shows neawiht beyond the usual’.

Gentoo again!

I have installed Gentoo again. Ah, so much nicer than Debian. And quick to install to a working state using the GRP. Plans for future Gentoo installs: Install the GRP, then emerge rsync && emerge -u world, which is what I did today. Also slightly easier on the bandwidth because I can download the GRP for free.

Some random links

Just some things I’ve had open for a while…

• G. K. Chesterton’s poetry, because ’The Secret People’ was nice, so I read some more.
• Jabber Australia Forums, because they’re finally open.
• The Italian Futurist Book and
• Musica futurista (Futurist Music), because someone mentioned Italian Futurist and Russian Konstruktivist typography and I wondered what it was like.

No, your screen is bigger than mine

A CSS test

This is just a test of my CSS file. You may disregard it at will.

Singly, doubly, trebly and quadruply <em>phasised text.

Singly, doubly, trebly and four times <strong> text.

Updated 14.10.03, 8.35 pm: I’ve gone back to the traditional look, but for historical reasons this post and the next one include the vast array of colors, thanks to the glory of XHTML.

Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes

Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes is scary.

Thought for the period of time

Here is your thought for until I post a new one. Consider its wisdom deeply.

(23:20:17) Other Person: That’s the problem with modern society I reckon :D

(23:20:19) Other Person: [We] spend too much time on our arses.

(23:21:08) Casoar: I dunno… given the choice of knowing where my next meal is coming from and having to sit on my arse all day versus not knowing where my next meal is coming from and having to run around all day, I’d prefer the former.

(23:21:28) Casoar: I’m even able to skip a meal and know i’ll still have enough energy to get the one afterwards!

(23:22:14) Other Person: *L

(23:22:19) Other Person: That’s the wierdest thing you’ve ever said!

(23:24:18) Casoar: That’s a pretty big call! I reckon it’s one of the most accurate, though. Take a look at our history. How much of the history of mammals has a mammal been able to say ‘even though i have food available it is safe to not eat it, because i’ll be able to eat in a few hours time’?

(At this stage, the person I was talking to’s head exploded in the face of my superior intellect, so the conversation could not be continued.)

One good reason for lazy people to hate Qt

I hate Qt and Java. This is because people who use it are lazy. Think about it: write once, use anywhere. Qt apps can run on Unix-like X Window Systems, on Windows, on MacOS X, and probably other platforms besides. However, what does this mean? This means that the applications aren’t native. As a user of mostly Gnome applications, if I write a Qt app, it’ll probably look like one. Due to the relationship between the Gnome HIG and the Aqua HIG, it’d probably be acceptible on the Mac, but there’ll certainly be problems on Windows.

Case in point: the Opera webbrowser. Opera was written in Qt. The K Desktop Environment (KDE) was also written in Qt. One would hope, then, that the X version of Opera might at least be similar to the X version of KDE. Not so. The X version of Opera looks and feels exactly like a Windows application. It simply doesn’t fit. It makes me wonder whether the Mac OS X version suffers the same problems—does it have the same MDI? I imagine it’s spared of the Windows 98–style saveboxes, though.

Having to program different interfaces separately means that you’ll be more likely to get a native inteface on every platform. (That being said, there’s no reason why internal stuff shouldn’t be write-once-run-anywhere.)

More subtle changes

I might have fixed up the last remaning IE bug. I’ve certainly fixed up the last remaining Konqueror bug in this page that I know of and know how to fix. Chances are it’ll look okay, even if you can click on non-links… If any links give you issues, post a comment or tell me.

Additionally, I’ve stopped it from lowercasing links, abbreviations and source code. So while random words in paragraphs will be lowercased, when case carries meaning, it should mostly remain.

About Smug Lisp Elitism

I’m a relatively inexperienced programmer. My first language language was Visual Basic 2.0, so perhaps I’m missing something.

On the other hand, I’m right now doing a Java assignment, and being thoroughly annoyed by the language.

For instance, there is an arbitrary distinction between types such as chars, ints, booleans and the like and types such as String, LinkedList or Employee. I’ll be damned if I can work out why I can’t switch over a String, simply because it’s a String.

Its syntax feels like it was designed by someone who only knew C, which isn’t surprising given that that’s what it’s designed to be like. C, however, has a very bad syntax. Not having keywords or equivalents is incredibly annoying—the only way to know whether foo.pay(12, 34) means give foo $12 over 34 weeks or $34 over 12 weeks is by memorising the method. I’d much rather be programming in Lisp where I can say (pay foo :amount 12 :weeks 34) or in Objective C with [foo payAmount: 12 weeks: 34] (I think, I don’t know ObjC enough).

And all those complaints about the prefix syntax—what’s with them? How does foo.pay(12, 34); reflect any better ’pay foo $34 over 12 weeks’ than (pay foo :time 12 :amount 34)? (We all know that 3 + 4 is more natural than (+ 3 4), but the cake cuts in two ways.) The syntax is just syntax. Rumor has it that Lisp’s syntax gives it significant advantages over other languages, pity about the look. Seeing as neither syntax is better at reflecting English than the other, why is that a strike against Lisp? Lisp isn’t any harder to read than, say, Python, given that most Lisp code is well-idented. And because it doesn’t have the braces, you don’t get people complaining about where to put ’em :)

I’m also a firm believer in Object-Orientation-​Doesn’t-Solve-All-​The-World’s-Problems-ism. Java is a firm believer in If-Object-Orientation-​Doesn’t-Solve-This-Problem,-​Look-Elsewhere-ism. When I have the pains of having to deal with something object orientedly that simply doesn’t work like that more freshly in my brain, I’ll make a post of them.

Java’s I/O leave something to de desired. BufferedReader keyboard = new BufferedReader (new InputStreamReader (System.in));?

And Lispers aren’t the only people who forget the truth about their own language. I suggest some of them look into Objective C. If Objective C had taken over the world—good luck to Apple—then it would be that much better (than it is given that Java has). And YES and NO are much funkier than true and false :)

(PS: that isn’t all my complaints with Java. Java jenerally sucks.)

Update (8.14 p.m.): One example of object orientation’s badness as implemented by Java is Integer.parseInt(aString) ⇒ int. What this does is reads aString representing a number which can be stored by an intand returns that int. It is a static method (i.e. a(n object disoriented) function). Upon seeing it, my reaction was something like «that really should be aString.parseInt() ⇒ int», so, for instance "3".parseInt() would return 3. In fact, I’m reluctant to say it shouldn’t not be that in Java: it does have the rather stupid and arbitrary distinction between the built-in datatypes and class-based datatypes, so it isn’t that unreasonable for a class to implement some of that stuff on it’s own. The thing is: sometimes we will be implementing type A when we want to convert from type A to type B, but other times we will be implementing type B. With these mono-methods, we will get things like aSchool.convertToShoppingCentre() and aSchool.convertFromLibrary(). Very ugly.

And one last thing today

Two site updates: I’ve fixed this page up to make it XHTML 1.1 compliant again. For the most part, the errors were caused by me thinking the <abbr> tag was <abbrev>; a few were caused by general stupidity, and one by i-have-no-idea-what-I-was-thinking-when-i-wrote-it–type stupidity.

Secondly, as a courtesy to romance conlangers (that is, people who construct languages based on languages related to Vulgar Latin, which are called Romance languages because of their relationship with Rome), I have a mostly-complete mirror of the retiring romanceconlang@yahoogroups.com Yahoo! Group archives, which became a spam-haven due to Yahoo!’s friendliness. Future postings on that topic should be made to the new romconlang Yahoo! Group. Yahoo! has an understandable tendency to close down unused groups &c., hence the need. A European mirror of the romanceconlang archives is also available

Update (1.26 pm): I have made changes to the CSS file so that it now renders comparably in both Gecko and Internet Explorer. However, due to General IE crappiness, I still recommend the use of an alternative browser, such as Mozilla or Opera (comparably is not the same as identically—check out the tables, for instance).

Computer Masochism in the form of a Ramble

Once upon a time, in a land far away (i.e. when I still lived in zone 1), I used to willingly endure complicated computery things because I thought it was good. This is not to say I no longer do, but rather that I now endure the CCT because it is a trade-off between using what I know, being able to do CCT to mean I have to do fewer CCT, and having other people more willing to make software that means I have to do less CCT. Also, sometimes, one has no choice: enduring complicated computery things means that I can give things the best appearance possible; for instance, I am loath to use a word processor because LaTeX’s (pr. /la:tek/ \LAH-tek\, not /læiteks/ \LAY-teks\) output is vastly superior in almost every single way, and no harder once it’s been learnt.

(In my ramblings, I’ve actually managed to say or imply most of what I want to say. If I was writing to be published or marked, I would whinge and complain at myself and re-edit this. Fortunately this serves its job just as well if I’m the only person reading it, so my rambles are fully justified. If your browser supports CSS well enough, they’ll be justified in two senses of the word. Hence, I shall continue.)

Time has this irritating habit of passing. The passage of time means that procrastination is probably inappropiate for many occasions, and is a habit I should get out of, given that time doesn’t look like it’s going to break its. Another consequence of this passage of time is that one has the chance to get thoroughly irritated with one’s current means of doing things.

So basically, what I’m saying is that I grow weary of these complicated computery things, and fret that in spite of it’s utter ugliness and the fact that it has many sad mistakes in its UI, I probably should’ve got a Mac, because while MacOS X is utterly ugly and has many sad mistakes in its UI (I refuse to ever get over the fact that some idiot——that is to say, designer thought it was a good idea to lump the maximise, minimise and close buttons together and distinguish them only by rollovers and colors. It was discovering this that really made me lose my respect for the Mac designers.

On the other hand, it does occur to me that if I could be bothered doing just a few extra CCTs, I wouldn’t need to be bothered fretting about it because I wouldn’t have to use very ugly replacements, merely sort-of ugly ones. Better still, I could do even more CCT and have them fixed in elegant ways, submit the patch to the necessary people, and live life happily… But it’s never gonna happen, is it?

In summary, I set out to say the following:

• Computers are annoying shits
• Using them is a waste of time, which is a pity, given that they have so much potential and the Internet ranks up there with food and sleep in my list of essentials
• A useable environment is a good thing.
• I should probably have got a Mac.

However, I succeeded in saying the following:

• Computers are annoying shits
• Using them is a waste of time, which is a pity, given that they have so much potential and the Internet ranks up there with food and sleep in my list of essentials
• A useable environment is a good thing.
• MacOS X ranks down there with Windows XP in the sensiblity of interface design dept., though it might be better from a purely useability standpoint. If I’d bought a Mac, it would’ve been for the hardware, not the software.
• I can’t wait for improvements from any of Gnome, ROX and/or GNUstep

Additionally, Seth needs to fix up the keyboard controls in Gnome-Blog and add suppport for lists.

(Oh, and one last thing: while cute, annecdotal evidence suggests having the time displayed as ’It’s nearly half past eleven’ and the like might actually increase the chance of misreading the time.)

Ego, ego, ego!!!

I got mentioned in Mason’s blog, Dodge This. This is purely an egopost. Beyond this, it contains no content.