An Apostates Experience

I seem to have caught the tail end of a new phenomenon sweeping the world right now –  people who have left or disowned their religions are posting their reasons on Twitter. It’s been tagged as #AnApostatesExperience.

Apostasy – a defection or revolt is the formal disaffiliation from or abandonment or renunciation of a religion by a person. One who commits apostasy (or who apostatizes) is known as an apostate.

Apostasy is not necessarily confined to the abandonment of the worship of deities; it could also apply to political beliefs or any form of ideology or ideological belief. While all these forms of disaffiliation is extremely desirable and to be commended, religious apostasy seems to cause the most consternation, with certain faiths (well one in particular) disturbingly outlawing such a practice, on pain of death in some parts of the world.

When I visited the #AnApostatesExperience Twitter page, I realised that most if not all the posts were in reference to Islam. That’s not surprising because when you hear the term apostate, it’s usually with reference to the Islamic faith. People of other faiths have been leaving entirely or converting to other religions for thousands of years, and it does not so much as raise an eyebrow (these days at any rate).

I abandoned my faith many years ago, and ever since have been abandoning one form of belief or the other as evidence surfaces to prove what a load of claptrap it was. I have never been threatened with death; ridiculed and questioned yes, but there was never a hint of a threat. Why does this have to be the case with religion? Why do the apologists for religion demand special attention?

Religion thrives on fear, and that is probably the worst of its many failings. Hence I encourage all my fellow apostates to abandon without fear but with pride.

A quotidian mess

Facebook appears to be the favoured dumping ground for usually soppy quotes by those who either harbour an agenda to mislead, or who are either too lazy to validate or just plain credulous. In the case of the former, these quotes are often misattributed to celebrated personalities. I have no doubt that Twitter experiences its fair share of quote dumping, but since I’m not a subscriber, I’ll limit myself to what I do see.

The innocuous quotes are reasonably acceptable, but annoying in that they occupy far too much Timeline real estate. The others are sinister and hide religious, political, cultural or other nasty agendas, and when spread around may case serious harm.

Off course there are quotes that are genuinely of a scientific, skeptical and educational nature that are beneficial and if humorous to boot, are quite acceptable. I’m also not averse to the odd salacious quote that exposes religious, political or social douchebaggery.

I can’t say that I’ve come across too many examples of quote mining, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if that sort of thing happens quite frequently in certain Facebook circles, especially those that promote religion and pseudo-science.

I often wonder what my Facebook friends think of me when I don’t like one of those soppy quotes they post. I have actually gotten into arguments when I commented negatively on some of them, so refrain from that sort of thing these days. The religiously inspired ones are particularly annoying. Sometimes in a fit of rage, I will repost them on my own Timeline with a snarky comment, but I try my best to control my ire. When I fail, I do hope it does not do too much damage to my Facebook friends’… er egos.

I am really pleased however that hardly any one of my Facebook friends have posted the unadulterated horse-shit that seems to be the make-up of Deepak Chopra. You could string together any of the words he spews out regularly, in random, and they will seemingly sound profound. I shit you not. Here are some examples:

Perception arises and subsides in cosmic success

The future exists as dimensionless balance

The unexplainable grows through subjective phenomena

Why not amuse yourself some more with this Random Quote Generator of the “enigmatic wisdom” of Deepak Chopra.

Have a heart?

You’ve probably seen this image or something similar, on any number of social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter on a regular basis. It is usually accompanied by an appeal to “like” or “share” or “pray” for the person/s pictured.

And it will invariably contain an exhortation such as “This will only be ignored by those who don’t have a heart,” or something to that effect.

DON’T heed the call. It is absolute bullshit!

Sometimes the appeal will state that for every “share” or “like,” some big corporation like Microsoft will donate a $1 or more towards medical care or otherwise for the hapless individual/s.

That’s even more bogus. DON’T believe it!

The particular image I chose above had attracted 1,085,499 “likes” and 85,128 “shares” at the time of posting. It had also garnered 78,254 comments, most of them sympathetic. There were those who expressed skepticism and some who were malicious, although for the life of me, I fail to understand why they even bothered wasting their time on this nonsense.

The reality is that no amount of “shares” or “likes” is going to do anything for the victim/s portrayed in the image. Neither is Microsoft or any other big corporation going to donate one red cent for any medical care or anything else. And you can pray until you’re red in the face, but it won’t change a thing either. All you achieve is to perpetuate irrational nonsense and fill the web with junk.

Some of the claims about the particular disease the individual/s in the image is/are suffering from can be corroborated via resources such as Snopes.com. In many cases, the alleged disease, causing the pitiful image is not mentioned at all, nor is the individual’s name given, so it is not always easy to validate. Those who originate the post, rely on the image to mess with your emotions.

Off course, they may be a few genuine cases of victims afflicted with life threatening illnesses posted on social media, but it is almost impossible to sift out among the cacophony of junk proliferating out there.

For those who are wondering, I do have a heart, but it’s quite preoccupied with pumping blood to my brain and body. That leaves no time for it to think or feel.

Why I don’t tweet

Yesterday, a very dear friend of mine posted on Facebook that I am very opinionated, and so she would like to see me on Twitter.

Well, I do have an opinion on almost everything, so I guess I am opinionated, but hopefully amusingly so. However, here’s why I don’t think I could ever subscribe to Twitter:

1. 140 characters are hardly enough to express oneself meaningfully. Yes, I like to waffle.
2. Twitter encourages the texting of internet slang which has become all too pervasive, infecting even those who have been taught proper written language. I’m kinda anal about language and grammar.
3. Tweets were meant to be composed on portable devices like cellular phones. I hate those things because I really struggle to type on them, whether they have keys or a touch interface. I don’t have fat fingers, just thin patience.
4. Facebook is already one social network too many. Twitter would be like the third wheel.
5. The Tweetosphere is already filled with too much noise. I really don’t care what you had for breakfast, nor do I suspect do you care that I’m stuck in traffic.
6. The pressure to post something to keep your followers interested invariably leads to more noise. I already have that pressure with this blog, and don’t wish to add to it.

Off course I suppose there are benefits, but you can just as well drop me an email to let me know what they are…

Heatmaps to give a f@@k about

Fuck you!

A common enough phrase. But would you care how often it was being said? Would you actually keep count?

Seems a company called Vertaline did just that. They tracked tweets from 100’s of locations across the USA containing the phrase “fuck you,” over a 10-day period in July this year, and created a heatmap that recorded its distribution.

And the results?

New York City and Los Angeles take a bow. It seems you do indeed give a fuck about the usage of flowery language.

However this doesn’t mean shit according to the article from where I got this crap, because the heat signatures correlate with high population densities in those areas, and hence does not make for a very scientific evaluation.

Now after reading this, I wondered how this use of heatmaps could be put to use right here in South Africa. Since we’re all pretty much fucked under the current government, I wondered if Vertaline could find another way to use heatmaps that would amuse us, and keep us busy until our turn comes to bend over.

What if they could creat heatmaps that measured levels of bigotry and sophistry. We could then have hours of fun as we uncover the gatherings off our politicians, and posh meeting venues they favour. No points for figuring out which political party is raising the most “heat” – we all know don’t we; we’re just curious about how much more than the others. Naturally, Parliament would have to be excluded; we all know what a hothouse of “fuck the people,”  that place is.

Would you be interested in my fairly brilliant idea? Do you actually give a fuck?

Today in Politics: Roasting #02

ANC secretary-general [note the fatuous military title] Gwede Mantashe has appealed to followers of his wayward organization to “stop insulting” its leaders. WTF?

Appealing to his own supporters, not detractors? First, let me get this out of the way…

Bwahahahaha!!!

It’s perhaps a good sign, because it’s an indicator that the sheeple are finally cottoning onto the real character of their political leaders, which means there’s hope yet for this country.

If Mantashe doesn’t realise that respect is earned, he should escape very quickly from the 17-year post-apartheid dream-world he’s been living in and start smelling the neglected sewer infrastructure. Politicians will only get respect from their followers and other people when:

1. They abandon the disdain they have for their own people, and become honest and caring
2. Pigs fly.

I suggest Mantashe starts praying very hard for pigs to grow wings.

………………………..

Seems former President Thabo Mbeki is still hung up about the death of his former bossom-buddy, Muammar Gaddafi.

He’s been making dubious claims that “false knowledge” spread through the internet and social media such as Twitter is to blame for the removal and ultimate death of the Libyan despot. He suggests that people believe absolutely everything they read in the various media.

While that may be true of the ignorant berks who continuously vote for the world’s tyrants, there are actually a lot of people who are discerning about the information they consume.

Is Mr. Mbeki seriously suggesting that we believe the shit that emanates from the mouths of politicians? When pigs fly, Mr. Mbeki. When pigs fly…

Pigspotting

You gotta love technology and the ingenious uses people find for it; and in so doing, provide a service to fellow humans.

Pigspotting has the makings of becoming a big hit with motorists in South Africa; and is being made possible by social networking application, Twitter. There’s this guy who has the moniker @PigSpotter who tweets about locations of police road blocks and speed traps that are set up by our good-for-nothing, mostly over-weight traffic officers.

His charming tweets about these speed-trapping locations, are by all accounts pretty accurate, and this has caused the short and curlies of certain high-ranking boars at police hog-quarters, to get into a real tangle. Subsequently they have hogged the headlines, squealing about all sorts of ridiculous transgressions that our beloved PigSpotter is supposed to have incurred.

Somehow it has not occurred to the top boars at Metro hog-quarters that policing is supposed to be visible, and that information being passed about their favorite grazing trapping pastures, is totally legal. And so they have issued some pretty dubious statements which reeks of pig-pen poop:

It’s wrong for him to inform people of the whereabouts of the officers on duty because drunk drivers will use other roads and cause accidents which could lead to innocent lives being lost

Presumably drunk drivers have enough control of their faculties to be able to follow Twitter feeds. And it seems that they should not be allowed to use “other roads” which must remain the sole hunting grounds of our kamikaze taxi drivers.

And:

He could also warn criminals to evade the police, making it easier for them to escape

Criminals evade the South African police all the time, and all intelligent people know that Twitter or PigSpotter is not the reason why. No, no, no, rotund pork-bellies and plain incompetence spring more readily to mind.

I have until now avoided Twitter like the plague, but PigSpotter may have just given me a reason to reconsider.

A quote to remember…

I don’t care too much for Twitter, but I found this tweet while looking through links posted on Reddit:

When someone makes the comment that ‘evolution is only a theory’, I reply that God is just a hypothesis.

Thanks Monicks.

Travelling Alone – Part 1

A third speeding fine, accumulated while on my recent road to Cape Town, was posted to me on Friday last week, and it reminded me that I had not quite got down to writing about it (my road trip that is), as indicated in an earlier post.

It’s not procrastination or laziness; I’ve been busy upgrading my video editing software and catching up on some developments on my project at work, among other things. It has also become a nasty habit for me to get distracted by anything and everything that’s going on elsewhere on the internet; which inevitably leads me on diverse tangents to my original bearing.  However, so far I’ve managed to stay away from Twitter and am trying really hard to wean myself off Facebook. And if I can only find out how, I’ll get shot of Plaxo too.

Back to those traffic tickets. Most law-abiding motorists would be hard pressed to regard them as real traffic violations. I mean, I was barely over the (60Km/h and 80Km/h) speed limits on all of them, and I do make a concerted effort to not drive fast. Anyway driving slowly is obligatory these days as I nurse my four-and-a-half-year old Peugeot sedan along, to prevent anything further from breaking. You see, Peugeot in South Africa, charges the most outrageous prices for parts, while it takes forever to replace (note, I said replace because it seems the technicians have not been trained to repair), and to add insult to injury, the service you get is really wretched.

Again, about those so-called speeding violations; the damned traffic police in this country are just lazy, fat-arsed, bush-hiding, camera-hugging, intellectually-challenged, revenue collectors, who think that wearing their badge and jack-boots, gives them power over ordinary motorists. And I’m just another poor sucker who hasn’t got the time or inclination to go to court, defend myself and expose this revenue-generating ponzi scheme masquerading as the policing of road safety.

Ah, I digress yet again. But we’ll get to the road trip in Part 2…hopefully.