Suck on that, Hubbardians

My dislike of Scientology is almost turning into a personal crusade to laugh as much as possible.

Germany, a country that has already displayed its worth to the world by refusing the money-making venture (I can't even call it a cult) religion status, and making it difficult for Tom Cruise to film there (which should happen because he's Tom Cruise, but instead happened because he's a Scientologist, which is just as okay by me), is considering banning Scientology as a threat to human rights.

Suck on that, Hubbardians!

Do you salivate when your computer beeps?

Or do you scream at it instead?

Your computer is a Skinner box.

If you don't know what a Skinner box is, have a look at the wiki.

Study: Disadvantaged people aren't as well off.

There are far too many studies that should never have been done, should never have had the time wasted and the money spent, yet clearly need to be done because some people obviously need to be smacked about the head with a large fish before they get the message.

"A new report by the welfare group, Anglicare shows Tasmanian parents raising children with disabilities lack support, and often have to cut back on food and heating." - ABC News Online

Well, fuck. I'd never have guessed.

One giant leap forward for science fiction writers

The number of science fiction writers who have posited a form of external brain storage, external interface, neural net that replaces your biological brain when it starts to die off at age 30 (unfortunate but true fact, there) etc., is immense.

The number of working computer models we have of an entire brain, which would enable this, is, um... 0. But give it time, give it time.

We've made the first step.

I can not stress enough how extremely cool I think this is. What they haven't said here is how far this will go towards diagnosing and treating deficits resulting from neurological injury, which is my current professional interest in the matter.

We'll get there, we'll get there.

Guaranteed ways to fuck with your productivity...

Find that 1300AD are now trading as Brothers At Arms, and find their website. There is sooooo much that I want...

Telcos are idiots.

Why are telecommunications companies so incompetent at website design? If you log into Vodafone, you get a page called "My Vodafone" (Microsoft has a lot to answer for, and Memnoc himself could not devise a sufficient punishment) extolling all the things you can do, like pay your account online (ooh! innovative!) or manage your voicemail, or stuff like that.

Here's the thing:

None of the icons, and none of the list items, are links. You'd think, wouldn't you, when faced with a website, that clicking on an icon that said "My Account" would take you to said page, wouldn't you? No. Apparently not. Apparently Vodafone haven't heard of user interface enhancements like that, and don't like their customers. So you have to go to the unfriendly, badly designed menu list on the left and find the appropriate entry just so that you can navigate through the unfriendly, badly designed website.

Virgin Mobile are looking really attractive right now.

Ha! I can predict the future!

Well, not really.

But back on Thursday, July 12, in my post "The Great Global Warming Swindle Swindle", I wrote this paragraph:

"I'm not quite sure, these days, what to make of the Australian Democrats. They're consistently less unworkably extremist than the Greens, but as minor parties go they appear to have fallen into the trap of not being controversial enough to be visible."

Now what happens? They nosedive out of political life, losing both seats, if my news feeds this morning are anything to go by. I'm sorry to see Andrew Bartlett go (the only openly goth MP in Australia), but I can't help but think that they bought it upon themselves by, well, not bringing success upon themselves.

Which disappoints me, but I generally like the Democrats. Liked.