Grammatical MC

Posted by Dan | Posted in Pedantry | Posted on 22-09-2011

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I love Sons of Anarchy, but I’m just not sure I can overlook this…

And don’t even get me started on the missing apostrophe in Hells Angels…

Teddy Mohammad

Posted by Dan | Posted in Religion, Writing | Posted on 08-07-2011

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This satirical article was originally published on UnNews back in 2007. I’m on a mission to dig up some of the stuff I’ve had published across the internet and collect it all into one place.

For those who don’t remember the original story: basically a teacher in an Islamic country let her class name a teddy bear, so a lot of Muslims felt it only fair she have her head cut off. No, I’m not kidding. [Story here]

 

Mobs of Atheists Demand Decapitation of Teacher Over “Richard Dawkins” Teddy Bear

OXFORD, ENGLAND – Hordes of enraged Atheists have swarmed the walls of the Sudanese Embassy in Oxford in retaliation against an act of unforgivable heresy in a local primary school earlier this week.

The act is believed to have occurred during a Darwinism lesson, taught by Sudanese supply teacher Muhajiin Fatwa, when it is alleged a pupil produced a teddy bear from his rucksack. While this in itself is not normally a punishable offense within the United Kingdom, controversy emerged once the teacher asked the bear’s name. According to witnesses, the boy replied “His name is Richard Dawkins. I named him out of respect for Dawkins’ condescending attitude towards religions which take insignificant events far too seriously and are thus detrimental to the progress of the human race.” Astonishingly, and out of blatant disrespect for the religious rights of Atheists, Ms Fatwa neither confiscated the bear nor beat the child savagely, both of which any true British person would have done immediately.

While naming a boy Richard Dawkins is considered respectful among Atheists, allowing a woman to live after she has learnt the name of a teddy bear without interjecting is strictly forbidden and, as decreed in Chapter VI of The God Delusion, “punishable by rape, beheading and being crushed to death by Salman Rushdie novels.”

Atheists have already begun beheading people who may or may not have had any connection with the incident. Fundamentalist A.N. Wilson, wielding a burning torch and clutching the head of an infidel, made the following remark: “BEHEAD THOSE WHO INSULT FREE THOUGHT.”

The case continues.

As the pupil in question was male, the boy was alleviated of all guilt and is expected to receive Ms Fatwa’s possessions if the demands for her execution are met.

 

Sources

P.Mohammed “Some bloke named Mohammed, commenting on the day’s events“. Jesusandmo.net, Nov 30, 2007

Tolerance Teddy “ToleranceTeddy.com”. toleranceteddy.com, Dec 01, 2007

Religious Moderates

Posted by Dan | Posted in Religion | Posted on 04-07-2011

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“If I believe in a peaceful version of my religion, and it’s not hurting anyone, so then why do you still think that’s bad?”

Put it another way: let’s say you believe in a peaceful interpretation of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. You follow the ‘good’ bits and ignore the ‘bad’ bits. You would never dream of harming another human being or anything like that, and regard all those who do as “extremists” and people who have “taken Hitler’s writing out of context”. Thus, you proudly wear your Swastika, state your political allegiance as “Nazi Party” on the census and live a perfectly good and moral life.

You raise your children with the same beliefs and values you follow, and they too grow up to be nice, moral Nazis who assert that anyone who gases Jews is a dangerous extremist who gives your political party a bad name, and that it is wrong to judge all Nazis just on the behaviour of a few fundamentalists.

A few years down the line, a large percentage of the country regard themselves as Nazis. The vast majority of those would never dream of condoning anything bad, and if questioned on the specifics of their belief will say something along the lines of: “Oh, well I believe that to be a good Nazi you just have to be nice to people and go to the local Third Reich meetings once in a while.”

The result of this is that the Nazi Party hold serious political weight. It would be a disastrous move for a politician to publicly state that he disagrees with the Nazis. If he attempts to point out that there are some very horrible ideas in Mein Kampf and there is clear evidence that teaching people that this book is a fine example of moral fibre increases the number of those who commit atrocities directly attributable to its teachings, he is told: “Oh that’s just the extremists – MOST of us would never dream of doing that.”

So it is generally accepted that Nazism is fine, morally admirable and generally a great thing because a lot of the people who bear the flag are at heart nice people. Nazi charities are set up, and they give millions to charity. Copies of Mein Kampf are placed in every hotel room in the country, and children are raised to believe that they are ‘bad’ and ‘wrong’ if they question the teachings of Hitler.

Do you see what’s wrong with this picture?

The moderates are the dangerous ones, because they make unacceptable ideas appear acceptable.

Must-Have For OS Geeks

Posted by Dan | Posted in Nerd | Posted on 30-06-2011

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If you run more than one operating system on your machine, you’re no doubt aware of the dull default bootloaders that assault your eyesockets every time your machine powers up.

Eyesocket-raping default bootloader

I’ve just discovered BURG (it’s GRUB backwards, and rather loosely stands for “Brand new Unified loadeR from GRUB” — they might as well just call it “Beautify UR GRUB” really). Despite the poor acronym, this is an absolute must-have for any machine running more than one operating system: it brings a much-needed GUI to replace the aged text-only interface.

Here are some screenshots to give you a taste of what it can do:

Big thanks to OMG! Ubuntu! for making me aware of this neat little tool. Click the link to get it and for a simple walkthrough on how to install it.

UPDATE: For Ubuntu 12.04, follow this guide.

Virus Warning: Softwarear (“Powerfull” PC Protection)

Posted by Dan | Posted in Nerd | Posted on 28-12-2010

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Merry Christmas/Happy Hannukah/Hail Krampus/Praise Mithras/[insert other two-word-capitalised-Seasonal Greeting]

What does your family do at Christmas time?  The general tradition in our family is for everyone to get together, eat a lot of turkey, and then go: “Hey Dan, how are you?  Say, I’ve been having some trouble with my PC…” (cue me spending the next two days dismantling machines and pouring the software equivalent of bleach over family members’ hard drives.)

Being both a nerd and a pedant, I do actually take a lot of satisfaction from a repair job well done.  Most of the problems can be fixed with a healthy dose of CCleaner (‘Crap Cleaner’), TuneUp Utilities and Avast! Antivirus.  ((Or, if I can get away with it, a complete format and the latest Ubuntu distro.))  Computers have always been a hobby of mine and I enjoy fixing them, even if it does mean that while the rest of the family are sitting with their feet up sipping Bucks Fizz and playing with their new presents, I’m on my knees cleaning cigarette ash out of my grandmother’s Sony VAIO.

Today I got around to looking at the machine my teenage sister uses.  It was the first rig I built, back when I was 18, and was already well-armed with maintenance and protection software when I gave it to her so it rarely has any problems.  But I have just finished wrestling to the death with one motherbitch of a virus that crept onto the machine, and am now full of both disgust and a little bit of admiration for whoever wrote it.  As part of my catharsis, here is a brief explanation of what it is and exactly how to kill it.

The Motherbitch Virus: Softwarear

The reported problem was “everything is going slowly and it’s making weird noises from inside the case.”  I immediately saw what she meant: just turning the machine on had the CPU fan sounding like it had a dying pigeon stuck inside it, and the machine would intermittently make a weird alien bleeping sound I have never ever heard it make before.  Something weird was going on, and before I went any further I cleaned and re-seated components inside the case in case something had come loose or clogged.  Made no difference.

I booted up and got this message:

I’ll admit, I skimmed it and clicked — expecting Security Centre to pop up.  What I should have noticed from the outset was that Avast! Antivirus had been disabled (the icon to the left, with the red x) and I have never seen that white and green icon on any Windows security thing ever.  And, if you actually read the text, you’ll see the tell-tale sign of a scam: Engrish.  The fact it was a scam became apparent to me when I saw what was brought up:

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