Wil Wheaton audio

I think I now understand Phil Plait’s man crush. Wil Wheaton was just at the Pheonix Comicon and there is some audio of him performing an excerpt from his book Happiest Days of Our Lives, and his review of the Star Trek Next Generation episode Justice from TV Squad.

Death cold coffee from the skies!

In case you’re interested, the asteroid TU24 has passed it’s point of closest approach, and we appear to have avoided fiery liquid death. (Although my coffee was a little cold this morning … Gah! Curse you TU24!)

Security and privacy are not a zero sum game

Another brilliant essay by Bruce Schneier, examining the false dichotomy of security versus privacy.

Debating Science

I as a general rule, I don’t think that the debate format is appropriate to scientific topics. A debate necessarily has a winner, whose ascendancy is determined by their ability to make a superior argument in the eyes of some theoretically impartial adjudicator. Reality however, doesn’t really care about rhetoric or majority opinion, and neither should science. The debate format is a circus, lending equal weight to opposing views that may or may not merit such treatment and which may or may not fully encompass all of the possible views. It also presupposes that the debaters are themselves qualified to argue their points and that the adjudicating person(s) is similarly competent to impartially weigh the opposing arguments.

As a case in point, consider this debate between Christopher Hitchens and Jay Wesley Richards.

Death Sentence for Afghan Student

Last year Saudi Arabia and Sudan were vying for the Award for the Most Stupid and Pernicious Exercising of Religious Law (in a serious film or screenplay). Well, now it looks like Afghanistan is getting in early for the 2008 competition:

KABUL, Afghanistan – An Afghan court in northern Afghanistan sentenced a journalism student to death for blasphemy for distributing an article from the Internet that was considered an insult to the Prophet Muhammad, the judge in charge of the court said Wednesday.

*Smack*

Here we go again.

Nasty old men should be seen and not heard

The disgusting black hearted evil hate-monger Fred Phelps strikes again, arranging a picket of Heath Ledger’s funeral. I guess it was too much to hope that he might have learned his lesson.

Sometimes it sucks to be an atheist, because I don’t even have the comfort that the miserable old bastard will eventually get what he deserves.

*Sigh*

Disaster from the skies! Apparently.

The image above is a pointlessly alarming graphic that is at best tangentially related to the following post. Silly I know, but all the cool kids are doing it.

If you don’t believe me, take a look at this ridiculously alarmist video that now seems to be making the rounds on Facebook. The video makes a few vague slaps at NASA and the evil scientific establishment before launching into a presentation on apparently potential dire consequences of the asteroid TU24 passing close* to the Earth.

Tom Cruise : Scientology Superhero

It just doesn’t end.

If you thought that this ten minutes of madness was frightening, Gawker is now hosting four new clips of the Jesus of Scientology.

Is it possible that is he actually as insane as he sounds?

Well, he talks like a lunatic, and he walks like a lunatic, so I guess you’ll have to draw your own conclusions.

*Quack*

Tom Cruise Scientology Video

I was eventually going to get around to posting this, but it looks like I waited too long and YouTube have yanked the original “due to a copyright claim by Church of Scientology International”. This sort of thing is nothing new for the Church of Scientology.

So I’ve had a poke around my feeds and found a few versions that have yet to be stepped on:

via Defamer

via Popsugar

via Gawker

Give yourself a little treat. Watch. Consider. And most importantly, learn*.

UPDATED TO ADD: Rebecca reports that Gawker has just been threatened with copyright infringement. Surprise surprise. Hurry and watch it while you still can!

Thanks to Skepchick, Pharyngula and The Rogues Gallery for the links.

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* Well, learn the true meaning of schadenfreude anyway.

Open WiFi

Interesting article by security guru Bruce Schneier outlining why he runs an unencrypted open wireless network at home.

Whenever I talk or write about my own security setup, the one thing that surprises people — and attracts the most criticism — is the fact that I run an open wireless network at home. There’s no password. There’s no encryption. Anyone with wireless capability who can see my network can use it to access the internet.

To me, it’s basic politeness. Providing internet access to guests is kind of like providing heat and electricity, or a hot cup of tea. But to some observers, it’s both wrong and dangerous.

He makes some very good points, but they must not have download quotas to worry about in the US.