I’m not going to pretend that she was my best mate, that I think about her every day, or that I presume to know what she’d want people to do now she’s gone, because frankly I think all those things are an insult to her memory… although clearly she touched the lives of many people.  What I will say is that she was an immensely likable, gentle but fun girl of wholesome character, without whom the world is a slightly darker place.

I’ve understandably received a fairly large number of hits to my memorial post to her.  Looking back, in honesty the post was a bit camp.  Since then, someone whose name I forget approached me asking for permission to use one of my photos in a video commemorating Rhi’s memory.  I think she did a much better job of it than I.

I don’t think that my picture was used.  It was probably for the best.  It’s quite saddening that the only picture that I’ll ever take of Rhi is one in which she inexplicably has a tree growing out of her head.

Just one of those things, I guess.

If you’ve found this post because you’re looking for details of Rhi’s commemorative party this year, then don’t worry, you didn’t miss it, the one on Monday was cancelled for fear of bad weather.  It’s been rearranged for Friday, 12PM, Darley Park, opposite the swings.  Sadly it looks like the weather will be even worse on Friday.  Meh, we’ll work something out.  Alternatively if you’re looking for her MySpace page, then it’s not here, it’s here.

A couple of weeks ago I promised to myself that I would stay awake until my I.T. coursework was finished.  I ended up working from 6 p.m. , way past midnight, had a break for some munchies about 4 a.m., ran a final spell-check at about 9.30 a.m., printed it, and was in college for 10.30 a.m.  I had a 10 minute nap during a free in the afternoon, was rudely awakened by the head of year, and remained awake until 9.30 p.m.  All in all I was awake for around 38 hours.  Why wasn’t I tired?

I figured that the longer you are awake, logically the more tired you must become.  At 12 I’d be groggy, 1.30 lethargic and 3.30 a practical zombie.  But actually, as the night progressed I felt less and less tired and more productive.

The little taskbar clock reads 00:57.  I told my girlfriend I would have to leave lest I inadvertently drop off on the keyboard and write a 125,000 character thesis on sleep deprivation consisting mostly of the letters G, F and J (again), but actually I feel perfectly alert.  Turns out that, according to this excellent article on sleep, your body doesn’t actually make itself feel tired because you need to rest.  In reality, you feel drowsy because your circadian rhythm (read: body-clock) wants you off in order to perform some mental housekeeping.

You could, in fact, get by on just 3 hours of sleep per night.  Your capacity for learning and remembering will be reduced to something akin to Bernard, my adopted moth who has been attempting to immolate himself on my ceiling light for 20 or 30 minutes now, but it’s possible.  But your body won’t thank you for it.

(Cartoon thoughtfully borrowed from PBS.org)

Why is it that such nuisances as A-levels must distract me from my geekery?  That in the distance is my computer, and in the foreground a short essay that has been bothering me for the last couple of hours.  It doesn’t contribute any marks towards my final grades, but nonetheless it was due in about a week ago and people are still going to get very annoyed if I neglect it for much longer.

But alas, I can’t find the bastard plan for it which means I have to continue it by ear, not something I want to be doing at midnight when I have much much serious IT deadlines.

I guess this is what you get for procrastinating.  And now I’ve taken the time to write a blog post and edit a photo.  What a failure I am.

My personal favorite: “It’s estimated that a week’s work of New York Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18th Century”.

There’s a US version updated for 2007 with more up-to-date facts available, but this older, UK version has cooler music.

This is an interesting question that it is easy to dismiss. Along with 9 other often overlooked questions regarding faith, a blog asking this question made ‘most interesting blog’ on Myspace today, attracting over 30,000 views.

The questions are as follows:

1. Why won’t god heal amputees? There are cases where people claim to have been healed by miracles. One can’t help but to notice that these are in almost every case things that might just have got better anyway.
2. Why are there so many starving people in our world? If you propound that God listens to you and answers your prayers, how can you believe that he answered your prayers for a raise and yet allows millions to die from starvation and disease?
3. Why does God demand the death of so many innocent people in the bible? There are probably more than you realize - the demands listed in the post (to kill anyone who works on the sabbath day, homosexuals, girls that are not virgins when they marry etc.) just scratch the surface. And ‘the bible corrects itself elsewhere’ isn’t a defence; how can you full heartedly trust something that contradicts itself?
4. Why does the bible contain so much anti-scientific nonsense? Such as the idea that the universe is only a couple of thousand years old, that Jonah lived inside a whale for 3 days etc.
5. Why is God such a huge proponent of slavery in the bible? The post includes examples of how ’slaves should obey their masters as they would obey Christ’, amongst others. Personally I would substitute this one for something else. Perhaps ‘why is God so jealous and unforgiving in the old testament?’
6. Why do bad things happen to good people? Such as their deaths in painful ways. If they are going to meet God anyway, why deprive them of their lives?
7. Why didn’t any of Jesus’ miracles in the bible leave behind any evidence? It’s quite strange. All we really have is a book compiled 200 years after his death, written mostly by people who never met him.
8. How do we explain the fact that Jesus has never appeared to you? If he’s all-powerful and timeless, why wait for a second-coming?
9. Why would Jesus want you to eat his body and drink his blood? If you actually consider this for a second, it sounds more Satanic than Christian. And no, if you are Catholic as opposed to a derivative such as an Anglican, you believe that you are really consuming Jesus’ flesh and blood.
10. Why do Christians get divorced at the same rate as non-Christians? “What God has put together, let no man put asunder”. But it happens regardless.

This is by no means a perfect list. The questions can be deflected by clumsy rationalization; for example ‘bad things happen because it gives us a chance to do good’. That doesn’t answer a question, however - why would a loving god allow such injustice? Even with suggestions such as the Irenaean Theodicy, such suffering directly contradicts the idea of the Christian God as omnibenevolent.

Another seemingly good argument that could be used here is the idea that ‘badness’ is merely a lack of ‘goodness’, and as God is ‘goodness’, ‘badness’ can be assumed to be the lack of God. However, I feel inclined to quote Steven Weinberg: “With or without religion you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” Feel free to substitute ‘bad’ for ‘evil’.

What’s more interesting than this imperfect list, however, is the responses of many of the Christian commenters. There is more reasoning and intelligent conversation happening lately, but some of the older ones really are quite pathetic. Like suggesting that the argument isn’t valid beacuse of grammatical errors and incorrect word usage. And attacking the author, an ad hominem argument. Excluding unfounded outbursts of zealous blind faith, of course.

For a couple of months now I’ve been getting some weirdass bugs with it… for instance, the submit button would jump away if you moved your mouse near it.  Quite funny to watch, but not very practical.

I just re-wrote it pretty much from the ground up, and it seems to be working OK so far.  For now.  For the time being all that I’m aware of is a cosmetic issue with the submit button overlapping the text area in IE7 - if you notice any bugs on other browsers then drop me a line in the comments.

See those cool little avatars next to peoples’ comments down below?  Those are called Gravatars, and they’re basically little display pictures that follow you round the internet on Gravatar-enabled sites based on your email.   They’re free.  The latest release of WordPress, the platform behind orangeacid.net, has Gravatar support built-in.  If you don’t have a Gravatar already then they’re about to take off so now could be a good time to make yourself one.

Next step is to re-write the footer and sidebar to actually be useful.  But more on that later.

I’ve found myself procrastinating a lot recently. This has generally been regarding my AS Applied IT coursework - I let myself slip so far behind that even thinking about makes the insides of my palms cold and wet.

I exaggerate, but in all seriousness, falling behind is not something that sits well with me. As soon as I see myself slipping I panic, and then something very strange happens: I decide to do nothing about it, and instead procrastinate.

It could be worse, I could just doss. As it happens, during my recent procrastination I have:

• Updated my blogging platform and now have properly drawn-out plans on how to iron out some of the glaring imperfections and other bugs;
• Drawn up a new, workable design for the website of my Young Enterprise group, Viper;
• Started to assemble my portfolio;
• Made preparations to re-immerse myself in the GTD system which in practical terms saved my GCSEs;
• Written this blog post.

I’d probabaly be better off (read: less stressed and more likely to pass AGCE IT) if I had just finished my work; on the other hand, lots of other useful things also got done.

So is procrastination really that bad?

(Yes, it is, because the other 90% of the time I’ve been skulking on Flickr and Facebook)

Sometimes I will attempt to challenge your perception of things. Sometimes I will ask you to forget about your morals and deeply ingrained opinions and to look at something objectively. And sometimes I will be linking to media that some people may find outlandish.

In preparation for this, here are two introductory snippets from someone who I consider to be fairly stimulating. Whilst I don’t agree with what he says in all of his videos, and whilst the way he voices his opinions can be a little questionable, he’s someone that I will be linking to on here in my quest to get you to think.

With that in mind:

OK, so hopefully you’re thinking now. I’ll be posting similar videos on a fairly regular basis.

In the video, Bush says:

“Five years into this battle, there is an understandable debate over whether the war was worth fighting, whether the fight is worth winning, and whether we can win it,” he said. “The answers are clear to me: removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision - and this is a fight Americans must win. Because we acted, the world is better and the United States of America is safer.”

He then goes on to say:

“The battle in Iraq is noble, it is necessary, and it is just. And with your courage, the battle in Iraq will end in victory.”

Which is great, but I can’t help but wonder: in which middle-eastern country the war will continue?

The war in Iraq was about large bombs. When it transpired that, actually, there weren’t any, it became the war against al-Qaida. Now its more generically ‘The War Against Terror”, which conveniently can never be won as you can’t fight battles against fear and emotion. The terrorists will be replaced by freedom fighter ‘terrorists’ at war with our ‘good guy’ permanent bases established in Iraq. Meanwhile the US government will continue to ‘fight the good fight’ against other ‘evil’ far-away lands whilst unifying and numbing its patriotic citizens and systematically removing their rights via such chestnuts as the ‘Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism’ (USA PATRIOT) Act of 2001.

It would not be constructive of the USA to return to peace after Iraq, as it would bring into question the fairly recent legalization of the USA spying on its own citizens and unifying them over a common effort over which they ultimately have no control, and allow its citizens to concentrate on problems back home.

So, where next? Iran? Syria?

Edit:  Oh, and here’s a nice story following the Guardian article on how the USA has made the world a safer place