War isn't caused by religion

Whenever you go to that dark corner of the Internet, where atheists get all sanctimonious and start yelling at Christians, you'll find somebody saying something like "Without religion there would be no war" and swinging it around like a cricket bat.

I'm just here, to quickly say that you (Mr Irrational Atheist) are completely wrong. War is economic. Every single time, it is a response to the Malthusian principle that human population grows faster than growing agriculture can support. We start getting claustrophobic and being crushed up against our neighbours and so we lash out, we push them away (or kill them). Religion has to carry the burden of this blame because for years every time a country has had to go to war, they have used religion to rally the people under one banner. In this instance, as every other, religion is a tool. If we had no religion, we would use a different tool, war would still happen, and you are, now and forever, wrong.

Sex at dawn - the best book I've ever read!

Sex at Dawn

Sex at dawn is a book about the prehistoric roots of mankind's sexuality and the conclusions it comes to are staggering. I have rarely felt so vindicated in my life and it is truly liberating to have read this book. It gives me a new and much more open view of my innate sexuality - that quiet (sometimes loud) voice in my head telling me what I like and don't like, what I want to do and who I want to do.

Monogamy is a lie.

The Standard Narrative

This book covers a bunch of topics, starting with the standard narrative of human sexuality.

• Man
• wants to impregnate as many women as possible
• wants to ensure that he only raises his own kid.
• Woman
• wants to be impregnated by the highest quality male
• demands commitment
• demands monogamy - to ensure that all the mans resources go to her and her kids.

This leads to the conclusion that a woman will grab a man to raise her kids, while looking for a better man to have an affair with, likewise a man will sleep around with anybody he finds and both will constantly be on the lookout for infidelity. 

Humans are born to be promiscuous

Sex at Dawn goes on to prove the standard narrative wrong in myriad ways and show that this standard narrative flies in the face of almost all the evidence on human sexuality. The book presents a theory that human sexuality evolved as a method of social bonding and that we are  much more like the sexually promiscuous Bonobo (whose evolutionary path separated 5 million years ago) than the monogamous Gibbon (separated 22 million years ago).

Some Biological evidence in support of our promiscuous past

A Baboon's butt while estrous

• Our testicles and penises are HUGE compared to monogamous or polygynous (1 man many wives) apes like the Gibbon, Gorilla and Orangutan. A Gorilla's penis is about 3cm.
• Hidden or discrete ovulation cycles, shared with Bonobos. E.g. Chimps and Baboons are famous for having bright red butts, which flare up when the time is right. A hidden cycle encourages round the clock mating. Because we can't know the right time, we do it all the time.
• Female humans shouts and screams during sex will turn the heads of all men within earshot. What purpose could this serve? Promiscuous Bonobos share this female copulatory vocalisation (FCV) trait but the monogamous Gibbons do not.

There's a bunch more including face-to-face mating and all the social aspects of love making like kissing and eye-gazing which adds strength to the argument but if you want to know more, you gotta go to the source.

The solution?

The take away solution to married life's problems - be open about and willing to discuss your desires with your partner. Allow yourself to look away from societies accepted path of marry, cheat, divorce, marry, cheat, divorce, marry, cheat, divorce, die and instead consider an unjealous polyamorous (many lovers) relationship. It may help strengthen your relationship and - god-forbid - allow you to be happy within yourself.

The Bottom Line

This is a controversial topic tackled in a way that lets you take it less seriously and have some fun with the idea. This book will open your eyes to the world and make you really think about how you live your life. Highly recommend - I give it a rating of 5/5 penises.

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Read around the world!

I was just looking at my blogger audience stats - which I only do like... 3 times a day, and I noticed that I'm getting almost a third of my traffic from the US! I didn't realise I had so many friends overseas :)

The rest of my traffic is from the UK with a couple from Brazil, Israel, Germany, France and Malaysia for some reason.

Just wanna thank you for reading, it really makes my day to write these posts.

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Random music is wicked

So after that long post I'm writing a really short one saying that random music is cool - check out these facebook groups where people post random songs they like - its mostly drum n bass or trance or house or something like that I still can't tell the difference - but it's really cool when you don't want to listen to anything you know.

So here's two groups, there are probably more but I havn't looked too hard.
EDIT: The tune stop is a secret group - sorry - but drop music is open :)
The Tune Stop Drop Music











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This sentence is false - what? A logical work through

So - spending my time today very well - just handed in my final piece of coursework for my Masters degree! woohoo!

Anyway I was stumbling and ended up wikipedia - looking at the liar paradox and in particular how it can be resolved. There is one argument on there that goes like this.

Since any statement can be preceded by 'This whole statement is true and...'

The liar paradox is the sentence 'This statement is false.' The paradox is that the sentence talks about itself and you end up in an infinite loop - which I just found out is the address of Apple HQ.

So back to the resolution!
The sentence you are now looking at is 'This whole statement is true and this statement is false.' I know it's a really unnecessary thing to even talk about - it doesn't matter, but I disagree with the conclusion drawn.

In the wikipedia article, the writer states that since the paradoxical statement contradicts itself, it is therefore a false statement, but I believe it is a null statement - it is a statement which states nothing.

The purest form of logic is maths - IMO... and in maths, if you write a sentence like A and B is C,
you could rewrite it as A+B=C and this would mean the same, much like 1 and 2 is 3. So in this example A is This statement is true and B is this statement is false. So what is C?

Well if you stand back and say that A and B are basically the same except one has the word true and the other false. I'd argue that true and false are opposites of each other, or the negatives of each other. Take two falses and you have a true, just like negative numbers. Therefore A = -B and B = -A.

So now our equation looks like A-A=C. So C = 0 or a null statement.

If you agree with my arguments, then you can see, I have just logically proven that the liars paradox is so completely unimportant, it is nothing at all.

Or maybe you say that the negative of 'This statement is true' is 'This un-statement is untrue' in which case my whole argument falls apart! but anyway...

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Internet Advertising

I know how wildly popular my blog is and I'm sure you've all been wondering - 'Why doesn't he advertise? He'd make a small fortune!'
Welllll not exactly.

I'm pretty proud of my 500 odd views in a month - I think it's an achievement and I'm glad there are so many people who care enough what I have to say to pay a few clicks homage. But my 500 views would have earned me about 10p from internet advertising using some modest guesswork... (500 visitors, 1% click-through-rate at 2p per click)

Sure it makes sense now how Google makes its fortunes, sellings adverts to every other website ever but for little old me it's not worth the hassle of signing up for the account, nobody clicks on adverts.

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Revive the baby eating frog?

So, here is a brilliant TED Talk on de-extinction, by Stewart Brand. So de-extinction is exactly what it sounds like - cloning extint animals to return them to life (think jurassic park but real, though hopefully we learnt out lesson already).

The idea of de-extinction as a method of reversing some of the damage done by humans is noble and I support it in principle... but when it comes to reviving creatures like the baby eating frog which gives birth through its mouth, I start to wonder if these creatures were unfairly extincted or if they simply couldn't keep up with natural selection.

If you agree with me or even if you don't, you have to ask the question, where do you draw the line? At what point is it no longer worthwhile to revive an extinct species?

My T'ai Chi isn't real?

So I was reading a book The essence of T'ai Chi by Waysun Liao - who would have a link if there was any information on him. I think he is a T'ai Chi master in Chicago. Here are some people talking about him if you are interested.

Anyway the point is I have been practicing Tai Chi for almost 2 years on and off now and Waysun Liao states in his book that 'most of the T'ai Chi practiced today is not the original T'ai Chi, and it is devoid of meaning.'.

The fact is I've been practicing T'ai Chi Chuan - or the T'ai Chi exercise routine. This is not a spritual practice and merely facilitates strength, agility and balance. The real stuff is called Temple Style T'ai Chi or Family Style T'ai Chi. From what I can tell, studying this requires a very serious commitment that I'm perhaps not willing to make.

Anyway, I'm sad now and I thought I would share what I'd learnt. :<

Write drunk, edit sober - Not Hemingway

I don't know if you have heard the phrase 'Write drunk, edit sober' which is not a Hemingway or Twain quote (see comment by Davida) but it always seems like good advice.

With blogging, your work is mostly read during the first hours after publishing - after publishing there's not much point in rewriting or editing... So be careful writing drunk because you might just be drunk enough to publish!

Agriculture - why aren't we doing it?

In bygone times - when a landowner owned a patch of land, most likely he would hire a bunch of people (or order, I'm not sure) to farm the land. Today we all have a little patch of land - probably more than enough to give us each our fill of veggies. It'd be much cheaper to actually eat the crops we grow ourselves (and arguably healthier!). This is also a favorite tactic of those trying to survive the economic collapse of a country such as the US or UK.

The problem is to do with motivation and long term benefits versus short term payoff - a problem described excellently by this funny looking Israeli psychologist. Basically, you just need to attach something you love to the act of gardening - for more information check his video - very informative.

So if it's just a matter of incentivising, I say we do it, because hell, this is England - we don't even need to water the buggers!

The death of spirituality.

I feel like I've spent my whole life looking for a spiritual home and, sorry dad, I didn't find it in Judaism.

I'm watching Wade Davis' video Dreams from endangered cultures about the loss of cultural diversity and the spiritual beliefs that these cultures hold. This stuff really speaks to me. I've always thought that spirituality is a more powerful and pervasive force than logic (and I'm a scientist?) and I think that the state of the world today is a result of too many people ignoring that spiritual side and disregarding it as superstition, arrogantly disregarding the guiding force of their ancestors as stupidity and naivety.

I still havn't found myself, but when I do I want to bring as many people with me as I can.

Here is another video Wade Davis: The worldwide web of belief and ritual