Thursday 3 May 2012

How to get into Pirate Bay if you're blocked in the UK

 I wonder why they bothered to block Pirate Bay in the UK, if the following things are still rumoured to work:

  • This FireFox add-on:

  • Downloading and running the Tor Browser (doesn't need to install) from torproject.org

  • Or the easiest is to just go to http://proxybay.info/ which lists mirrors of Pirate Bay that are still known to work.
Here are some other interesting links:

The Pirate Bay on Facebook
The Pirate Bay on Twitter
Kick Ass Torrents (Another torrent site)


Now, I'm not saying that piracy should be allowed, I mean, there's no difference between making a copy of some digital ones and zeros and killing babies.  So, piracy is very, very bad.  It also prevents Hollywood, an essential industry on which our lives depend, from buying sports cars.

So, please don't pirate, because if everyone pirated, then the governments wouldn't be able to do anything about it, and that would be bad.

Piracy is also bad for the porn industry, and causes a spread of knowledge.  Too much knowledge is bad.

There are less important things to worry about, like feeding starving kids in Africa.  Governments should forget about that and focus on fighting piracy.
 
If we didn't live in the perfect system that we live in today, I'd say that we'd need a new system that works for everyone, but since capitalism is perfect, we need to defend it.

By the way, you can download my novel, "The Mischievous Nerd's Guide to World Domination," for free here:  http://losthobbit.net/download.php

... or you can buy it from Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mischievous-Nerds-Guide-World-Domination/dp/1453841326

Here's an interesting article on Piracy: 
http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/02/03/you-will-never-kill-piracy-and-piracy-will-never-kill-you/

Sunday 8 April 2012

What I'm too scared to tell anyone.

I was brought up in the Church of Christ. Every sunday I went to church, and became a very devout Christian. I would teach sunday school, lead the singing, and run the youth group. Out of love, I tried to teach people about Jesus, in the hope that they would become Christians and go to heaven.

From about the age of twenty, I started to realize that things weren't quite right. No matter what anyone said, I couldn't understand how a loving, almighty God could put people in Hell. I kept praying about this, begging God to give me some sort of explanation, but he simply wouldn't. I couldn't understand why such a powerful God, who considered himself to be my father, wouldn't want to take an hour out of his day to explain such an important concept to his servant.

The only thing I could do was think up excuses. I could not consider the possibility that the bible could be wrong, so I told myself that maybe God's just telling us that to try to make us do good, and when judgement day comes, maybe he'll just put everyone in Heaven anyway.

And so, for another five or so years, that was what I believed. During that time I learned about the concept of "cognitive dissonance." Cognitive dissonance is my favourite word, because, when you understand what it means, you understand why you think the way you do, and there is hope that you might realize the difference between what you know, and the truth. If you've never heard of "coginitve dissonance", look it up now.

When I got married, my wife and I decided to leave our churches and switch to a church which taught something inbetween what our two individual churches were teaching. It was then that I realized that the first thing I needed to do was speak to the preacher about my Hell theory. The preacher pointed out something that was quite obvious, but, due to cognitive dissonance, I had never allowed myself to think... "If you don't believe in Hell, then you believe that Jesus isn't saving you from anything, which basically means that you don't believe Jesus is your saviour, and you're not a Christian."

During the next few years I continued to find many more problems with the bible. It was as if my eyes were opened and I was suddenly able to see all the contradictions and ridiculousness that I'd never seen before. I didn't keep it to myself, because I tried to be open minded about the whole thing, and asked some of the most devout Christians that I knew to explain the things I had problems understanding. None of them could, and two of them recommended a book, which didn't explain it either. I thought that surely there's a reason they're so devout, but I discovered it was not because of knowledge, but because they believed that even though they didn't understand the bible it was still true. This leads me to wander, why would they think it's true, if they don't even understand it?

Anyway, I made a video with ten of my top problems with the bible and put them as questions on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo6m-FD_Sto

I received many views and many "answers". I put "answers" in quotes because none of them could answer my questions logically. I eventually had to realize that no matter how much I wanted to be a Christian, I simply was not. When I finally accepted this I was at peace... everything in my mind was ordered and logical, and I could finally be honest with myself.

Now, you would think that if it's so difficult for me, someone who has spent thirty years in church, and tried desperately for many years to find answers, to be a Christian, that it would be easy for me to point out the flaws in other people's thinking, but it was not so. No matter what I say to a Christian, they stick to their beliefs.

My biggest problem is that my mom, and both sets of in-laws are devout Christians. Even most of my friends are Christians. When I married my wife I thought I was a Christian, and promised my father-in-law that I would keep taking my wife to church. They all believe that anyone who is not a Christian is going to burn forever in Hell. I cannot let them know that I am not a Christian.

My mom, however, is very persistent, and realizing that my attitude towards the religion has changed, she managed to squeeze the truth out of me. She tells me that she often cries, because I am not a Christian, and no matter how much I try to explain the logic behind my thinking, she won't accept it. She never will be able to overcome her cognitive dissonance.

I want to come out of the closet. I want to tell the world that I am not a Christian. I want to explain why, but I cannot. I don't want to hurt anyone, especially not my wife, who understands that I have problems with the bible, but I don't think she quite gets how much I hate the lies that are found in the bible.

Christians are taught how evil the "world" is, but they really have no idea how loving and good an Athiest can be. I am a big supporter of The Zeitgeist Movement, something I do mostly because I am a good, loving person, but my mother doesn't see it that way... "Jesus said 'There will always be poor people,'" she tells me. She thinks it's pointless that I'm trying to help solve the problem of poverty... all I'm supposed to do is "pray". I am sick and tired of praying to a god that NEVER EVER answers.... EVER!

My friends and family keep posting on Facebook how great and wonderful Jesus is, even though he is the cause of all my family problems, but I cannot say anything. I want to point out the ridiculousness, but I cannot.

I want to explain to my mom how it's actually IMPOSSIBLE for me to be a Christian. I have let go of my closed minded thinking, and entered the world of logic, and I will never go back to the spagetti "logic" of the bible. I cannot make myself believe something if all evidence points to it being untrue.

Hardly anyone I know, knows this blog exists, so this is how I vent. I love this blog... my little connection to reality.

Saturday 28 January 2012

A Short Story: The Real Genesis

The Real Genesis

I had one goal, "To make them think I don't exist."

It sounds simple enough... all you have to do is do nothing. Looking back I should probably have done that, but I didn't. This is my story.

Six thousand years ago I created the universe. The universe was small, but flexible. I placed the Earth, an amazing, spherical planet, with the ability to grow to adequately cater for an infinite number of occupants, directly in the center of it.

The Earth was incredible. I distributed rivers and fertile soil evenly throughout the entire planet so that no-one would ever be without food or water. I had special trees which produced fruit, others which produced clothing, and even trees that produced bedding. Wherever anyone went they would be safe, warm, clothed, and comfortable.

I produced some men and women. Every one of them was heterosexual, and very good looking. They had plenty of sex, and each time they did so, the female could decide whether she would like to become pregnant or not.

The people invented lots of games and spent all their time having fun. They never got old, never got hurt, never wanted anything that they couldn't have, and never had any reason to fight. Everything was perfect.

Unfortunately, one day, as they were gathered around a bonfire, one of them asked a question which forced me to change everything, "How did we get here?"

As they sat, roasting marshmellows from the marshmellow tree, they offered various hypothesis:

"Have you noticed how perfect everything is? Someone must have created us."

"That's not possible, for how would such a person have come about? Surely he must have evolved."

"What makes you think it's a he? It could have been a she."

"Whether it's a he or she, nor where they came from doesn't matter. What matters is that they exist."

And so the humans wasted their time trying to contact me. They called to me, and threw things into the sky. They set fire to things, to see if they could get my attention, and started writing big messages in fields. All I wanted to be was invisible.

I simply wanted it to seem like I didn't exist. I thought back to the conversation that the people had, and then it dawned on me... I could make it seem like they were created by evolution, and so I froze the humans and kept them in a storage facility as I started to change things.

I made the universe infinite in size, and created billions of useless planets and stars. I moved the Earth to a completely random location. Then I made all the planets spin and move outward at incredibly dangerously high speeds. I sped up time, so that fifteen billion years would pass. When it was all over I placed the humans back in their surroundings and thawed them out.

"We are not stupid, oh great one!" They shouted out. "Just because things are a bit more random, doesn't mean you don't exist. We see how perfect things still are. We know you're out there!"

"Damn it!" I shouted. All my work had not succeeded. I had to make things less perfect. I had to bring pain. "When I bring pain," I thought to myself, "then they will know that I do not exist."

And so I froze them again, and changed their world. I removed half of the trees, made it very cold in winter, and hot in summer. I removed ninety percent of the rivers and made everything appear to be random. Then I put them back.

"We still know you're out there! They shouted. We know you have given us painful times so we can appreciate the good times."

I couldn't believe it. They accepted my existence in spite of being cold and hot. As much as it broke my heart to do so, I had to bring more pain.

I created hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes and floods. I created insects that would bite and annoy people, large animals that would hunt them, trample them, and eat them, and snakes and spiders that would poison them. I made them smell bad, so that they had to continuously wash themselves, made them grow old, and become hairy. I even made some of them ugly, and some of them homosexual, so that they would not be able to have children. I made them unable to choose not to be pregnant after having sex, and made the women feel lots of pain, especially in child birth. I invented diseases, horrible ones, which would spread in all sorts of strange ways.

"Now you will know that I don't exist, I told their frozen bodies."

I thawed them out, and placed them back on the Earth.

"Oh great one!" They shouted out. "Heal us, mend us, make us well. Soothe our pain. Feed us."

No matter what I did, they still believed that I existed, and so I thought, if there's nothing I can do to make them think I don't exist, maybe I can just place the blame on someone else, and so I told them, "Twas not I! Twas the evil one! Twas the DEVIL, who gave you such pains, because you are a naughty bunch of moany, groany dimwits! But nevertheless, I am GOOD. I will cure your diseases, and feed you. I will give you warmth and comfort you. I will de-odorize your bodies and make your poop smell good. But whatever you ask for, do it quietly. You're such a noisy bunch, and I can hear your thoughts."

And so it was that I had some peace for a little while.

Little did I know that the dimwits had written down everything I had said. They made copies, and shared it amongst themselves. They spoke continuously about the writings, making up theories, expanding the written works with their nonsense.

After four thousand years, the writings had expanded to thousands of pages, filled with strange sayings and laws that I had supposedly made up. Their writings covered the entire Earth, but whenever they were transferred, changes were made. The east of the Earth had completely different writings to the west, and the middle, between the east and the west, was just completely muddled up. As I began to learn more I discovered that even in small areas, where they had the same writings they argued day and night about tiny details.

"I will end this, once and for all," I told myself. "I shall come down there and say something so ridiculous, and contradictory, that none of them will ever believe in me again."

I lay awake in bed that night, thinking of what I would tell them, writing down my ideas. I would tell them:

I am the great one that created you, and he is my father.

I am good, and just, and I will burn you eternally, so that you will have unimaginable pain for eternity if you don't believe in me.

The world will end in this generation. (When the generation dies out, they will have to stop believing in me)

Pray to me, and I will cure your diseases and remove your evil spirits. (When they eventually figure out the scientific method, they'll understand the problems with this.)

And so I went down to Earth and told them, and once again, they wrote down everything I said, copied it, made changes, and spread it throughout the Earth (except to China, because they had laws against this kind of thing).

Two thousand years later I returned and discovered that one third of them still believed the four lies that I told them.

Some philosophers had almost figured me out, but the rest of the world were dumfounded. The most notable of philosophers were these guys:

Adolf Hitler said, "Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it."

Charles Taze Russell, the fellow who invented the Jehovah's Witnesses, figured out nearly all the contradictions in what I said. His little organization almost had it, but instead of realizing that I was lying, re-translated my writings to say what he wanted them to say.

And so I ask you, dear humans, after doing everything God could possibly think of to try and make you believe that he does not exist, what more can he do to prove it to you?