Toren Atkinson

I really like this quote:

 “If you should see a blind man lying in the gutter, kick him. Why should you be kinder than God?”

for obvious reasons.

And now a word on statistics:

“Misleading”

And now for a whole slough of words:

Whenever I hear anything–especially in the news–remotely involving statistics, by default I doubt it. And Ben Goldacre illustrates how misleading they are in this post on cocaine use doubling in schools as reported in the NYT and other papers. And I’ll point out somebody’s comment that notes how meaningful stats depend on those surveyed providing truthful information, which isn’t necessarily reliable with kids.

Take that Mike Tice and your 2000 people! Nyah!

My forays into myspace has resulted in many a headshaking, and I’ll tell you why. People are so adamant about having a million things on their profiles to show the world how unique and special that they are, that the profiles turn into Homer Simpson’s website (you know, the one with the dancing baby and all those other animations) and are virtually unreadable. It gets even worse when the people who add comments have to include animated gifs and giant images in what they post. All style and no content makes the internet a dull boy. It’s like having coffee with someone that has dozens of bad tattoos. They may be talking about something but you don’t hear a word over the sensory overload.

Meanwhile, let’s recap what’s happening for the Saturday Morning Cartoon Party:

The theme is “April Fools & Other Pranksters.” Here are some episodes in the running:

SPIDER-MAN Spidey has to resort to pranksterism to defeat the Vulture, Green Goblin, Electro and Dr Noah Boddy when they try “To Catch A Spider.”

BATMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES. Whose “fool” act has got the Joker in a tizzy? Here’s a hint: “Beware the Creeper.” 22 minutes

DUCKMAN. Some whacko kidnaps Duckman to prove that he’s a TV show in “Clip Job.” 22 minutes

SUPERMAN 1941 “The Bulleteers” 8 minutes.

THE MIGHTY HERCULES. With softness in his eyes and fire in his thighs, Hercules fools the Thracian king. 5 minutes

THE TICK “The Tick vs Arthur’s Bank Account” Arthur is unhappy when The Tick blows his bank account to upgrade their “secret headquarters” so Tick moves out to his own rather shaky “Crime Tower.” 22 minutes.

CAPTAIN AMERICA “Zemo and the Masters of Evil” featuring Thor and Iron Man! 15 minutes

SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS “Fools in April.” Spongebob’s favourite holiday messes with Squidward. 11 minutes.

POWERPUFF GIRLS “Jewel of the Aisle” A bumbling thief loses his stolen diamond in a box of Lucky Captain Rabbit King Nuggets, the Powerpuff girls favourite cereal. 11 minutes.

STAR TREK ANIMATED “Practical Joker.” The Enterprises’ computer develops a sense of humour. 22 minutes.

LOONEY TUNES “Little Red Riding Rabbit.” Hey Grandma! Those are awful big eyes for you…ta have! 7 minutes

FREAKAZOID! “Wrath of Guiterrez” If you were at the 5th Cartoon Party, you’ll remember Freakazoid’s origin story. Now the Ricardo Montalban-voiced villain is back. Laugh with me! 22 minutes

THE VENTURE BROTHERS “Mid Life Chrysalis.” The Monarch sends Dr. Girlfriend undercover to seduce Dr. Venture in order to inject him with a body-altering serum. Meanwhile, Brock is deeply depressed to learn his secret agent license to kill has expired. 22 minutes.

HOME MOVIES “Broken Dreams” After Melissa and Jason break their respective arms, Brendan tries to break his own to get out of a test. Who’s fooling whom? Meanwhile, McGuirk takes a lifesaving course. 22 minutes

BATTLE OF THE PLANETS “The Space Serpent” 22 minutes

SAMURAI JACK “X-9” 22 minutes

Wonderful Stories of Professor Kitzel “King Tut” 4 minutes

I forgot my livejournal password so I can’t comment on Marlo’s blog with this information, so I’m just making a new blog post. It’s fun for the whole family, anyway:

Yes, it’s time for a great new game which we just invented. It’s called There’s No Such Website! and your mission, should you choose to accept, is to spot the fib. Below are links and descriptions for five websites. Four of them actually exist on the Internet. One is a phony that we made up. Study all five and see if you can guess which link won’t lead you to the website in question. There is no prize for this except that you get to visit four weird websites and to feel smug if it doesn’t take you five clicks to find the phony. Enjoy

http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/nosuchwebsite.html

Created by Mark Evanier, writer for comics (Groo) and cartoons (Dungeons & Dragons)

Meanwhile, not far away…

They have scalloped potatoes…who wants to help me come up with a recipe for potatoed scallops?

Mike’s blog link to a statement on the traditional definition of life in the bible (basically – life is in red blood, that’s why good Christians should eat flesh but let the blood “spill into the dust” (paraphrasing), and octopus and squid don’t have red blood so therefor they aren’t alive) led to me posting the link to The Octopus News Magazine Online TONMO.com which led to a careful discussion of religion vs science. I wasn’t going to just say “you religious people are delusional” so I skirted the whole religious issues to say:

Do whatever works for you to be a decent human being. If you have to wear a yellow t-shirt to avoid going on a stabbing spree, then far be it from me to tell you that yellow is a yucky colour. But don’t expect me to wear a yellow shirt. Conversely, if your belief in the Spaghetti Monster leads you to go on a bloody crusade, I’m against that.

Then there was some discussion about how much religion was responsible for violence in history. Clearly: lots. However, to think that getting rid of religion would end war and conflict in the world is specious. People are jerks and will fight over anything – land, skin colour, oil, sexual preference, women, etc etc etc.

And THEN somebody brought up this: “What lends the Bible credibility over the holy Koran, the Torah, the Egyption Book of the Dead, or the Greek pantheon of mythos? Holy texts depend on themselves as the base of their credibility.”

What’s interesting is that science textbooks are also bibles of a sort. Which is not to say that I believe they are sacred scriptures. My point is unless you are going to recreate every science experiment for yourself, you do have to take certain ‘tenets’ of science ‘on faith.’ Do I know for sure that quarks exist? No, but I put faith in science (generally speaking), and the reason for that is science’s foundation is one of logic, perception and constant analysis and revision. Christianity, on the other hand, is about wacky stretches of logic, unquestionable doctrine and outdated tradition.

On another note, who remembers MAOAM candies?