Regarding Supernova 1987A: Astrophysicists had long theorized that when a star explodes, most of its energy is released as neutrinos—low-mass, subatomic particles that fly through planets like bullets through tissue paper. Part of the theory is that in the early phase of this type of explosion, the only ob- servable evidence is a shower of such particles; it then takes another few hours for the inferno to emerge as visible light. As a result, scien- tists predicted that when a star went supernova near us, we’d detect the neutrinos about three hours before we’d see the burst in the visible spectrum. (The Long Tail by Chris Anderson p58)

Many people have cited 1987A as an example of FTL, which is an inaccurate representation. Whilst it would appear that if the neutrinos arrived hours before the light of the supernova it seems that FTL is possible, and even probable.

The short answer is that the neutrinos must have got a lead on the light. When supernovae occur, neutrinos AND photons are created at the core of the stars gravity well and start pouring out into space, but the other layers of the star are still in the way. Neutrinos fly through anything, they’re applied physics’ answer to ninjas, so they reach deep space far sooner. Photons however can be blocked, deflected, redirected, et cetera, even by the gaseous material getting blown away from the star so it appears it takes a few hours for the photons to begin to emit through or get through anything blocking it’s path. Logical? Very. It’s that difference that gives neutrinos a head start.

If neutrinos DID travel faster than light, there would have been a significantly different time span in arrivals in SN 1987A, which occured more than 150,000 light years away; which would mean neutrinos had a significant amount of time to overtake photons if they would or could. If the recent claims of FTL neutrinos were accurate, then the neutrinos from this event would have arrived SIX YEARS earlier than the photons did.

This doesn’t mean FTL is impossible, but it is highly improbable. If the above logic holds then the measurement is wrong; if the measurement is right however there could be something else more complicated than we can empirically measure at present occurring.

In this instance, the statue of liberty should be confiscated from the US and returned at the end of the year if good behaviour and better grades (ie: behaviour has a U, your English sucks!) then you MAY get it back. First and foremost, before reading my argument, I want to tell you what I want you to do. I want you to think about this, I want you to talk about this to three other people, perhaps even link this to them. I want you to spend 120 seconds to defend your liberty, the ‘freedom’ you so gladly instill on backwater middle eastern countries and tearing over sixty nations apart in the past thirty years.

I want you to write one email to your member or parliament, senator, or whatever representative comes up when you google your states government officers. It will take you less than 120 seconds, because you can cut and paste this URL and pass it on to them, letting them know you agree with this post and will vote accordingly. THEN! I want you to remember this, I know all American’s have a VERY short memory, I mean Bush did get voted in for two terms, even after being the most protested man in human history, more than Hitler! So try REALLY hard to keep this one in your goldfish brains. Next time an election is up, I want you to google the parties up on offer and GLANCE at their POLICIES. Policies are what you vote for people on, voting isn’t like football, you don’t go for the team your dad does, or your mates do. You vote based on your INTELLECTUAL evaluation of candidacies for the betterment of your country for your people. I know there’s some big words there, but still, hang in there kiddo, we’re almost there.

Your nation is full of infringements of liberty and lacks fundamental human rights and freedoms the rest of the world, especially Europe, Canada, Australia, etc still retain even though we have the same batshit insane September 11 based ‘anti-terrorism’ laws which give far too much power to law enforcement.

In the United States, during even a routine traffic stop, the police may place handcuffs on you, make you lay face down, make you stand somewhere, do something, or otherwise lose your freedom of movement. This is being placed under arrest. The second someone lays their hand on you and you feel you are no longer free to move of your own will, that right there is arrest. So, before you’re even SUSPECTED of anything criminal, they can arrest you.

Guilty until proven innocent? I think so.

The Patriot Act (one and two) allows the arbitrary kidnapping of US civillians without warrant, without having to inform them what they are charged with, without due process, without habeus corpus, with absolutely no human rights retained; and they are slipped off to countries with no human rights for ‘interrogation’. Keep going kids, you’re almost at the level of a 12 year old politically conscious Norwegian kid.

Human nature dictates that self-preservation surpasses all requisite needs of civility. Running from the police, evading arrest, destruction of evidence, and impeding a police investigation is the DUTY of every person arrested or persued by the police for self-preservation. It is a fundamental normality that every person wishes to live their life without infringement upon their liberty, and even criminals have a hard coded genetic urge to survive and live and enjoy their lives.

To criminalize these actions or deeds is to criminalize human nature, an unavoidable instinctive reaction in panic, fight or flight, et cetera. It is impossible to avoid such events, and it is purely the nature of the beast that such things occur. It is patently absurd, ignorant, and pure arrogance to claim otherwise, let alone to allow it to be the SOLE CHARGE that people are brought up on.

If the police chase you, and you’ve done nothing wrong to give them suspicion to chase you (therefore their chasing you isn’t warranted) in the United States THIS alone is a criminal offence, and you then get arrested just for not wanting to be arbitrarily arrested (or ‘detained’, or ‘cuffed for their safety while they ‘talk’ to you’) and have your entire day and possibly life derailed by some skin head chubby angry divorcee with nothing better to do than try and inflate his or her ego by dicking other people around.

We’ve all watched Cops, we know it happens, hell it even happens where I live sometimes; I personally have been dicked around by the police in all states except Western Australia and the Territories where the police are amazingly civil and polite and legitimately feel like they’re there to help you. I’m a nobody, an everyman, therefore an easy mark who will cop it, pay the fine, not fight the matter, and give them their figures that their entire budgets are based off (a whole other rant about how that sort of setup encourages bullying and corruption rather than protection of the innocent)!

And don’t even get me started on stings, or entrapment, let alone the fact television shows are made up entirely of corporate muppets staging such entrapments and causing criminality then liasing with the police to have them storm in and arrest people who otherwise without encouragement and baiting may not have committed a crime to begin with.

Or arresting you if you refuse to sign a traffic citation, which would be signed under duress of threat of imprisonment anyway, thus would be void even if signed; so that’s just a whole other circle jerk of assinine logic and poor understanding of the law enforced by your police and judges right there. Hell, your law enforcement think so little of you they make you place an inked hand or finger print on the back of citations, just as the English did in India to scare illiterate peasants that they could ‘track them down’ and made them ink a palm print on the back of contracts instead of signing them. I shit you not, google the history of fingerprints. You’re an illiterate Indian peasant to them, and you take it like a bitch and love every minute of it.

Now, that is the short and sweet argument I wanted to put forward, the inflammatory title line and my attempt at being abrasive is purely to make sure you’re somewhat bitter whilst reading this post, and now you should (provided you’re not mentally handicapped) realise that I just dropped some pretty profound wisdom on you, for your sake, for the sake of your family, and for the sake of your children; and in a round about way I am providing you with the right to arms you lost that was purely in place to overthrow tyranny and injustice when encountered.

I’ve armed you with an outsiders view, and the weapons of mass destruction I’ve tucked under your belt are your votes. Your government MUST fear you, they MUST know that if they do not provide what you demand you WILL sack them. You control this, and only you right now are responsible in my eyes for where your nation heads. Don’t vote another Bush in, don’t forget to vote, vote hard, on policy, and make fucking sure the pricks give you back your freedom!

Then and ONLY then will I have words with France and see if they’ll give you back your confiscated statue. Peace. <3

Very recently Australia has begun the rollout of the largest sequential bank of radio telescopes in history, producing one behemoth structure per week. Also recently we have begun broadcasting, to planets in the goldilocks zone shortlisted as most probably capable of sustaining life.

The new radio telescope banks will form one badass giant radio telescope. This will undoubtedly be at some point used in the above grandiose endeavor of pestering the neighbors, like some chav council housing skank (iPad in it’s infinite fail thinks skank is REALLY an attempt to type ska keyboard … ) blasting Celine Dion waking the elderly residents nearby.

Stephen Hawkings, Arthur C. Clark, even the late Carl Sagan in his infinite wisdom held misgivings about sending out signals. It’s too early in the morning to research my usual citations or sources, but I do believe another equally brainy chap addressed that at any point in human history where a more advanced civilization encounters a lesser advanced it never worked out too well for the locals.

Even decades ago we made such mistakes. The Voyager program is carrying a gold plated copper record (like a vinyl record) that contains audio AND images and a means to access them through convoluted brainy calculations based on the rotational cycle of electrons in hydrogen atoms (I shit you not).

The collection of images includes many photographs and diagrams both in black and white and color. The first images are of scientific interest, showing mathematical and physical quantities, the solar system and its planets, DNA, and human anatomy and reproduction.

Care was taken to include not only pictures of humanity, but also some of animals, cattle, insects, plants and landscapes.

Other images show food, architecture, and humans in portraits as well as going about their day to day lives. Many pictures are annotated with one or more indications of scales of time, size, or mass. Some images contain indications of chemical composition.

All measures used on the pictures are defined in the first few images using physical references that are likely to be consistent anywhere in the universe.

In what may be the worlds most expensive attempt at a galactic message in a bottle we forget one thing.

Globally we feed over TWO HUNDRED TIMES what would feed the entire world to ecologically destructive animals bred for consumption by humans. This, to any advanced culture, would appear asinine, idiotic, and worse, primitive.

Do we REALLY want to be pestering the neighbors, not with Celine Dion, but proof we’re so massively under evolved that while one in three humans lives in squalor going hungry another one in three are not only inflicting horrid acts upon the creatures we share this world with but do so in what could be the most aggrandized snub to our own fellow creatures suffering?

Do we think our ET chums will rock up with a food basket and a nice bottle of ’89 Chardonnay? Or are they more likely to lob some nanite enriched astroidal planet killer our way with cellular destructive technology perfectly attuned to the human genome we so very kindly GAVE THEM extensive mapping of to help liberate all the other animals enslaved, used, and abused under our destructive reign, possibly even signed off by a galactic interpretation of our very own United Nations, for the greater good?

I leave the conclusions to you, dear reader.

In February, the citizens of Detroit successfully lobbied for a giant statue of RoboCop to keep its crims in line.

In the same week, news broke that a three-metre tall Arnold Schwarzenegger statue will stand guard outside the Governator’s former home in Thal, Austria.

Both of which kick Robertson’s giant poo-tato and Ballina’s prawn to the kerb when it comes to cool icons for your country.

And now you can add — possibly, unless George Lucas hears of it — a lifesize, fully-functioning replica of a Galactic Empire AT-AT walker to the countryside somewhere in Oklahoma, if Mike Koehler gets his way.

Note fully-functioning — not like that static tat at Disneyland’s Hollywood theme park.

The 16m tall (some nerds experts put them at 23m) All Terrain Armoured Transports featured most famously in the attack on the Rebel forces’ secret base on Hoth in Empire Strikes Back, where one tripped over a bit of rope and exploded.

Another one makes a cameo in Return of the Jedi after a smaller version — an AT-ST — gets smashed by monkeys with logs.

But they look fearsome enough and Mr Koehler has been given the green light by online fundraiser Kickstarter to begin collecting cash to realise his dream.

It’s called AT-AT for America and Mr Koehler’s welcoming any offers of help or donations.

We chatted to him about why his country needs it…

Why did you choose a symbol of the Empire’s destructive capabilities to represent the US?

The AT-AT is not so much a representation of the US as it is a monument to what geek culture and its know-how has done for people in the country and, as I am quickly learning, folks all over the world. The can-do and cooperative spirit that nerdy pop culture has inspired can’t be overlooked in the past 30, 40, 50 years.

I wanted to make something that was: A) Doable. Fast-than-light and force field technology made many options unrealistic. B) Big enough to be awe-inspiring. Many people have made R2 units and Back to the Future Deloreans. The AT-AT is 50-feet tall.

If it proves too difficult, do you have any smaller scale Star Wars projects in mind?

I guess we could do one of the smaller scout walkers, but that seems like copping out.

If it proves easy, would you consider building a Death Star?

The Death Star would involve too much red tape I’m afraid, unless I could get Richard Branson on board.

The original AT-ATs had some notable design flaws. How will you Ewok-proof it?

No Ewoks will be allowed around the build sites. Sharpened logs will also be strictly prohibited. We are working towards some strong anti-log technology.

Have you had any interest from Mythbusters et al?

No word yet from the Mythbusters, though I hope as we continue to build momentum that we will get a lot of help from some of our geek heroes. When I first thought of this, my ideal project managers were Adam and Jamie.

If Detroit can get a RoboCop statue, maybe you should pitch your AT-AT for a permanent public space…

Once we’re done, I would like for the AT-AT to find some place nice to be housed and admired as a monument. Since it will be fully operational, people will be able to ride it. It would be an art piece on par with the Statue of Liberty, but with the ability to mosey around the block.

Have you had any cease and desist orders from George Lucas yet?

We have not heard from Lucasfilm yet, though there is that expectation. All I can say is that we won’t be making any money off this project, we consider it a public work of art and we would gladly locate it where ever Mr Lucas would like us to. This is a testament to how many dreams his work and other work like his has inspired in people my age and younger.

Will you live in it once it’s finished?

No, I won’t live in it.

Can I?

You can’t live inside it, though you are welcome to string a hammock between its knees.

Is there ever a chance that such a monolithic, relentless corporate machine could ever be seen in Australia?

Given enough support and volunteers, the AT-AT, like Oprah, would be happy to visit Australia.

Related Coverage

This recent bullshit in Libya has been irking me though, ever since the greater population of the world decided to get involved. Gadaffi is a muppet, sure. But he’s pulled his head in happily leading his banana republic and would continue to do so until he died of old age, at which point allegedly according to multiple statements over several decades the nation would be left with democracy.

We have to keep in mind here, the ‘rebels’ may be looking for political change, but most of them are NOT supporters of democracy and are supporters of sharia law and Islamic government. The ‘interim governments’ set up in all these middle eastern nations who’ve recently slung off the yolk of their opressive tyrants are just a COUNCIL of tyrants who’re batshit insane religious nuts, most members of these ‘interim governments’ are members of the political movement Muslim Brotherhood. Or at least their own admission to the media on the subject says so.

So you’re ditching one tyrant who’s hands are tied and has literally been towing the line and being a good little prat since the September 11 attacks last decade and has gone out of his way to try and appear to transperently oppose ‘terrorism’ and other negative adjectives I’m sure. And you’re what, hiring a pack of mouth frothing god botherers who’ll put women below goats as far as human rights go and instil their personal favorite weapon of mass subjugation, Islam, on the people through sharia and other such nonsense.

Why are we supporting this action?

Now we’re talking about ARMING these rebels, even though we’re not asking the hard questions of who they are, what they aim to achieve, what their political and ideological and most importantly THEOLOGICAL motives are.

We should stop meddling with the middle east, or other far slung nations, because time and time again we find our views aren’t reflected by the people we’re aiding or opressing regardless, and that we end up with everything blowing up in our faces and fighting not one, not two, but now several vietnam wars of clusterfuck after clusterfuck with the cost in blood usually being paid more by the people we’re trying to ‘help’ (including women and children) than by the ‘bad guys’ or our own military.

I understand the human need to help others, but when you do so without questioning and understanding the situation as the ‘west’ so often does, it is little wonder that things don’t always go as planned.

Below is an excerpt from an article that set me off on this tangent. Maybe instead of arming them, or talking about military intervention, the ‘west’ could … I don’t know, maybe ASK Gadaffi to take a holiday and resign? Pretty sure he’d do it if he realised it’s that or another wonderful ‘westerner intervention’.

LOYALIST forces have overrun the Libyan oil town of Ras Lanuf, scattering outgunned rebels as world powers debate arming the rag-tag band of fighters seeking to oust Muammar Gaddafi.

Rebel fighters said Gaddafi’s troops swept through Ras Lanuf, strategic for its oil refinery, blazing away with tanks and heavy artillery fire soon after dawn yesterday.

Panicked rebels fled in their hundreds through Uqayla, 20km east of Ras Lanuf, calling for coalition air strikes on Gaddafi’s forces, before driving further away from the front lines through the oil town of Brega and on towards the main city of Ajdabiya, 120km away.

“We want two things: that the planes drop bombs on Gaddafi’s tanks and heavy artillery; and that they (the coalition forces) give us weapons so we can fight,” rebel fighter Yunes Abdelghaim said.

The 27-year-old, who was holding a Russian AK-47 assault rifle and French flag, said it seemed as if the coalition had halted its air strikes for two days coinciding with a London conference on the Libyan crisis.

Curious I tried to pause-skip to it, which is usually doable if your reflexes are fast enough. But after a few dozen attempts of not being able to nail it, I broke out CS3 to narrow the goal posts and found it was a single frame and it was an advert for 10 by 10 entertainment (see attached).

I thought it was odd for a production company to use a subliminal insertion of their own logo in their outro, so I screen capped it as you see it with intent to add a little quip and tweet it. It wasn’t until I got side tracked, came back and googled the show I found it’s actually produced by Red Production Company which is registered and operated in the UK.

I thought perhaps it was a failed hashing in of the audio and clip bar of the show Blue Bloods which was being pimped out in the voice over, but a little more digging around I found that 10 by 10 Entertainment is a registered US trademark for the company that produces America’s Next Top Model and … well, that’s about it.

I’m not sure what it’s doing inserted subliminally for exactly one frame (I mean c’mon, what’re the chances of pollution being exactly a frame?) or why I suddenly want a Big Mac and am wondering what smoked baby tastes like, but it kind of makes you wonder about the ethics behind this kind of shit.

The show is full of flashy lame ‘freak out’ scenes involving lots of cut-scenes so what else could be inserted in things? I mean, didn’t that really bad attempt at subliminal advertising in the MTV VMA’s for KFC and stuff lead to almost all nations outlawing the practice?

What’s the deal Sky UK?

(Ps: A link of this blog post has been sent to Sky UK, Red Production Company, and 10 by 10 Entertainment, I’ll update on any replies.)

The fake coat of arms used by scammers.

I got bored. As I often do. And you know what happens when I get bored. Someone always ends up crucified. Usually scammers who exploit the stupidity of others, sometimes the stupid for being scammed, but this time around I flogged the self professed Laird’s of Lochaber. A friend of mine bought a square foot of land ages ago on the internet and started posting shit calling himself a Lord, I too own a square foot of land, I bought it purely because I wanted to build a one foot square castle one day, I ignored the big sexy deed scroll in hand ink stating my Lordship’s validity, although retrospectively they did a far better job faking it back in the days of mail order before the internets was readily available. Do note however, my friend was fully aware it was a scam and he too bought it to be a dick, and most probably to build a square foot castle too. Oh, we should totally go to war and raid each others castles. And kick their walls in! :O

Anyhow, I turned to Google and found that the district as an Estate was only registered in 1975 and dissolved in 1996. Ironically they sell ‘woodland plots’ of half and quarter acres for merely 10x the price they extort for a foot square. I actually am wondering whether they legitimately hold right to SELL the land in question.

Wikipedia had several people posting on the Lochaber page claiming to be the current Laird of Lochaber, so I piped up on the discussion page to let them know that it’s scammers who bought a foot of land online.

I turned to google again and found a discussion thread run by the guy selling the land on a forum entitled Highland Titles, ironically the landed gentry in this alternate universe are so poverty stricken they have to have their forums on freeforums.com. I found that the only named admin of the forum was a ‘Lady Arwen’ (clearly one of ‘those types’, we’ve all met them, basement dwelling nutjobs with celtic princess fantasies that lurk MUD’s and MMO’s when they’re not taking up space being hippogoths at SCA gigs) who ironically is morbidly obese, wears black and purple velvet, and cites her interests as “Tolkien, Scotland, Reading Fantasy, Herbology, Cooking” clearly my interpretation of that is along the lines of she cooks brownies with special herbs, read too much Tolkien, and lives in a Fantasy Scotland in her head. She comes from Passadena in Texas, US I might add.

I noted that one critic was cited by the site owner and the rest of the ‘Lairds’ were ripping in to him in a thread entitled “To the critics (competitors) of Lochaber Highland Estates”. Breaking down the psychology applied, they were basing their entire claim upon a dictionary definition of the origin of the term and that it is up to others to disprove their claim. Now to address this as the two elements of logical fallacy they’re employing, firstly the dictionary reference completely neglects to point out that there is a court of law appointed specifically to administer these titles and the arms that go with them, and only this court of law can decide who and who can not use these titles, but further (to their defence, they are clearly idiots for buying something on the internet thinking it’ll give them some form of prestige or respect to begin with, so they’re clearly either morons or merely utterly delusional to start with) and I’ll totally carriage return to give this it’s own line because it’s a common idiotic fallacy you’ll encounter: -

IT IS UP TO THE PERSON MAKING THE CLAIM TO PROVE THE CLAIMS CREDIBILITY, NOT TO ANYONE ELSE TO DISPROVE THE CLAIM.

Now, I feel so much better. The caps was kind of a last minute addition, and it was very satisfying. It wasn’t caps either, I’m that passionate about stamping out moronicism I went the whole hog and held the shift key. Now that’s nerd rage. :P Okay, now, where was I? Oh, yes. Well, they were all hurring and durring backing up their fallacious logic and I decided to rain, no, not rain, piss with the power of the gods, like a giant fucking riot water cannon, all over their parade, in their ears, eyes, nose, and I’m pretty sure I got one in the mouth. I couldn’t restrain myself, I had to address their stupidity. So I launched into my vitriolic attack, and hopefully by syndicating it here, and given the popularity of my blog I’ll most likely hijack their keywords, this post alone I know will incur serious financial harm to the owners and operators of the scam, but my reply was along the lines of: -

Whilst I’m aware it’s highly unlikely my reply will remain on this forum without being deleted by the scammers selling land to saps on the interbutts, I’d like to address those poorly educated individuals claiming title to Lairdship, or Lordship.

You are the claimants of the title, it is up to you to prove your claim. It’s not up to the ‘critics (competitors)’ to prove, that logic is utterly flawed and absurd. But, then again, you also believe you hold a Lordship you bought online.

Further, you did throw down the gauntlet asking the critics (competitors, lol) to prove your claims are invalid, allow me to cite the following sources: -

“Scottish Highland Titles”. http://www.faketitles.com. http://www.faketitles.com/html/scottish … itles.html. Retrieved 18 June 2009.
Cramb, Auslan (11 Dec 2004). “How to lord it over your friends for only £29.99″. Telegraph.co.uk. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ … 29.99.html. Retrieved 20 June 2009.

Both sources clearly reflect the view of the Court of the Lord Lyon, which considers these particular titles to be vacuous and meaningless in claim. Now given the absurdity of the claimants to begin with, I’d like to clarify who the Court of the Lord Lyon is, because I honestly doubt the mental acuity of anyone who’d think they can buy gentry or peerage status through a cheap internet transaction.

The Court of the Lord Lyron is the standing court of law regulating heraldry in Scotland, an equivilent of the English College of Arms it maintains the register of grants of arms for all arms and bearings of Scotland as well as the genealogical records involved.

Per the internuts: The Lyon Court is a public body, it is headed by the Lord Lyon King of Arms, who must be legally qualified, as he has criminal jurisdiction in heraldic matters, and the court is fully integrated into the Scottish legal system, including having a dedicated prosecutor, known in Scotland as a Procurator Fiscal. This contrasts with England, where the College of Arms is a private body, and the Court of Chivalry, which is a civil court, has met only once in 230 years, in 1954.

So, your Lairdship is far less valid than my Lordship where I bought a square foot plot of land by mail order back in the early 90′s before internets shysters existed in England. But, that being said, I know for a fact buying a square foot of land is just that, and won’t try to use it to scam respect or attempt to garner positive prejudice from others based purely on my own shortcomings as a man.

FYI, I have syndicated this post on my blog, I’ve got a 4M reader demographic and I enjoy sharing my exploitation of scammers and morons alike.

So I’ll leave you with some (paraphrased) words of a true Laird of Scotland; you may take my post, but you can never take my freedom (of press). You’re a bunch of dolts. (<– He said that, the last part. Prove me wrong. Because y’know, people in your world apparently can make batshit insane claims and it’s up to others to prove their claims wrong. )

I’ll let you folks know if I get a reply, although I’m not holding my breath. Scots-titles.com found another Laird of Lochaber scamming to the extreme and outed him in a post at http://www.scots-titles.com/2011/02/10/reverend-cardinal-lord-dr-kim-moffatt/ – very worth reading, his claims are batshit insane, but there seems to be an underlying pathology behind these individuals where they think they can buy the respect they should be earning through words and deeds, or somehow purchase prestige to make up for a vacuous missing element in their life. Amongst his claims he’s the Reverend Cardinal (Dr) Kim Moffatt Lord of Lochaber. He’s also the Governer of the British East India Company, which he registered as a business name, and a ‘trillionair’ after spending ten pound on a 100 trillion zimbabwian note (the editor at scots-titles points out that the trading cost is actually one quid, irony seeing a scammer get scammed).

The scots-titles editor also has a page on the scam, pointing out that: -

The purchase of land in Scotland is not sufficient, per se, to qualify anyone to legally use the title of Laird.  The title ‘Lord’ is a ‘Peerage title’ (or a courtsy title of a Scottish ‘Law Lord’) and although it is true to say that the word Laird does derive from Lavert, which is the same root as the word Lord, a genuinely recognised Laird, is a member of the Nobilitas Minora, whereas those who are legally entitled to call themselves Lord, belong to the Nobilitas Majora, or the Peerage.  The two terms are certainly not interchangeable.

A Lairdship is, in itself, a title which is linked to the Land, but for it to become a title and part of the name of the individual who owns the land, it is necessary to petition Scotland’s supreme herald, the Lord Lyon King of Arms, for the title to be officially recognised.  The Lord Lyon does not actually recognise anyone as a Laird.  Rather, he recognises their right to a territorial designation.  For example, if someone buys a Scottish estate which for many years has been known as Glensmith, and if this meets the land criteria stipulated by the Lord Lyon (in terms of acreage), on petitioning for a Grant of Arms in that name (or for a change of name certificate if he already has Arms) he will be recognised as “John Smith of Glensmith”.  He is also entitled to call himself “The Laird of Glensmith”.  It is impossible to have numerous “Lairds” of a single Estate at the same time, as has been advertised by these companies. It should also be pointed out that an area of between one and one thousand square feet does not constitute a legitimate “Estate”! If simply being a landowner in Scotland made you a Laird, Lord or Lady then every owner of a house, garden plot or window box would be one….how ridiculous!!

In closing, I’ll end with the paragraph he posted in relation to Mr Kim Moffat’s incredulous claims: The so called Lochaber Coat of Arms displayed on his website, appertaining to his 1sq ft Scottish Estate, leads you to believe he has a Grant of Scottish Arms. Displaying Arms which have not been officially granted to you or to which you do not have a legal right, can lead to prosecution in Scotland where heraldry is carefully and rigorously regulated. In other countries you could merely look foolish and attract a certain amount of ridicule.

So remember, when you see a Lord, Laird or Lady, google their title, if it’s fake, don’t have anything more to do with them. If you’re in the UK, call the police and report it as it’s a criminal offence. You CANNOT buy respect or prestige, so don’t show pity to those who think they can.

Attachments: post4363.html

To the critics (competitors) of Lochaber Highland Estates

Moderators: Lady Arwen, LochaberEstates

BaSH PR0MPT

So I contemplated what the makers of Audi, BMW and Mercedes, et al would do to efficiently dispose of corpses and assumed they’d incinerate the vast majority if not all of them. Let’s take Auschwitz as one example to work with, whilst I can only find reference images of mass graves at that location I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they had an inkling of guilt enough to try and cover up their crimes and thus incinerated their victims. This is where it got gross. Whilst the only figures I can find online are from some lass named Lucy Dawidowicz or a bunch of batshit historical revisionists (who usually claim that the Jews weren’t killed and were merely talented at playing hide and seek) we’ll work with Lucy’s figures.

She estimates that 6,000,000 died, but her break down of the deathcamps gives us 8,000,000 plus.

Her figure for Auschwitz is 1.1 million to 1.4 million. We’ll work with the smaller of those figures. Now assuming that the average person produces a density of 30cm cubed of 10kg’s of ashes (this is original research, sadly, I admit, based purely on the several dozen creepy encounters I’ve had with ash remains of dead folk sans urns (no you sick fucks, they were in boxes from the funeral home)) by modern standards, so let’s double that to reflect the haste required of mass murder then assuming that the average mass grave was a good depth, say 3 meter trenches with at least 1 meter topsoil above them, that gives us 1.1m * 60 / 1000 (to give us the result in meters) gives us 66,000 meters of surface area divided by the 2 usable meters depth gives us 33,000 meters.

Or 33 square kilometers.

Now open Google Earth, and go to 50° 2′ 9″ N, 19° 10′ 42″ E, the location of Auchwitz.

Notice that it’s only about 2 kilometers square? Notice what’s around it as far as the eye can see?

… FARMS. D: D: D: D: D: D:

Now this is with the assumption that they burnt all their victims, which they probably didn’t. So this figure is relatively conservative, albeit the scientific aspect of it is hillariously poor given that it’s got more assumptions in it than a first year law class and a lot of my assumptions were based on the stereotype of German’s, but seriously … I went through each and every other prison camp registered as having carried out mass executions (that we KNOW of!) and around each and every one of them were farms. Farms for kilooometers. Nothing but farms.

That being said, these are only figures of the Jewish death toll, not taking into account Russians, Poles, Romani, the disabled, Freemasons, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and just about anyone else who looked at them funny. So whilst flawed, these figures may even be more conservative than expected when taking the grand scale of the executions into account.

I’d end this like I do most hypotheticals with the comment of ‘food for thought?’ but in this case I think I may just take up breatharianism.

There are two takes on this bullshit age figure, some claim that people ‘lived that long back then’, which is pure pishposh, others claim that they were ‘given extended lives’ which also macks of buttfuckery, then there’s the ‘authors of the scriptures were morons’ which is more likely. At a literal value, 100 years build, a non literal value, we could safely estimate 10 years, with idiot authors adding an extra 0 to everything. Now, either way, 100 years sounds rubbish, so we’ll dismiss that out of hand, let’s work with 10 years. Could you imagine constructing some behemoth of wood with crude hand tools in the middle east, which was very technologically disadvantaged in it’s peasant regions which is where Noah was from? Course not.

I then began to question a conversation I had with a Baptist ‘professor’ from a ‘university’ that teaches creationism, I asked him a little about some dinosaur fossils they have that they claim are ’3,000′ years old. I introduced myself to him as a casual blogger who’s merely curious about these fossils. He immediately got defensive, snooty, rude, and demanded I provide him references as to what journalist outlet I represent and wanted a link to my blog to review my writing before answering my question. So let’s run with the generic creationist view, right. So we have 7 pairs of ‘clean’ animals and 2 pairs of ‘unclean’ animals on the ark. That means 14 of every dinosaur. That’d sink the titanic let alone the ark.

We also have 1.5 million catalogued species of animals that currently exist, with an estimated 50 million yet to be catalogued. So let’s run a median of 25 million. The average weight of an ‘animal’ per unit of measure can be factored in by examining a few dozen heavy animals and a few dozen light, finding a median and you get roughly 14 kg’s (most ‘animals’ are bugs, or small critters y’see), but now let’s do the math. 4.9 million tonnes of clean animals, 1.4 million tonnes of unclean animal. That’s 6.3 million tonnes of animal right there.

The size of the ark is given to us from various faiths as 157m (515ft) by 26.2m (86 ft) by 15.7m (52 ft) or 64,580 meters cubed. This gives us a density of 97.55 kilograms per meter cubed. This density of mass is merely 1g/cm3 off lead. The animals would have to be put through a blender and then compressed to an immense density for these figures to even match up.

That being said, this post did start on Twitter, with a comment of what was vexing me at the time. The Ark was built 5766 BC. We’re 2010 AD. In 7776 years, with over 400 BILLION photos on three of the biggest websites for storing photos online (and 10 billion on Facebook) I have not been able to seek and find a SINGLE IMAGE of a dove carrying a branch, twig, or even an olive, let alone an olive branch. So what’re the odds of that never having been seen since the end of the flood? Improbable, that’s what they are. THE ENTIRE THING MAKES NO SENSE.

I’m sure creationists won’t stop and apply critical thought based on this post, because … well, the entire concept of religion and critical thought in this modern era are diametrically opposed. I think only the Jews have had the bollocks to question ‘Gods will’, a brilliant example of which was when they put ‘god on trial’ in the death camps in WWII (Brilliant and touching film by the same name, really worth watching, reviewed by yours truly a few months back btw!) but the rest of us following Judiac derivatives are too full of cocks to think straight. Mind you, one or two figures may be inaccurate above, but the end result is still incredulous; although I’m sure crazy creationist types will find a single fault in my calculations and write the entire thing off as some random atheist slagging them (Note: I’m not an atheist, and it’s 3am on a Friday night, give me a break.)

And there you have it ladies and gentlemen.

The Auditor-General found only 18,900 soldiers, about 53 per cent of troops, were ready to go at short notice.

Now let’s draw things into perspective. The Australian Bureau of Statistics cites that the average weekly income of an Australian is $1,268.50 with the average public sector employee being exactly a hundred more at $1,368.50. There are several methods of entry to employment with the Australian Defence Force (ADF), but I’m writing this primarily as a post-grad qualified guy who dabbled with the idea of off-setting university costs with enrolment for some time before realising it just had no financial worth at all. If you’re a professional with even reasonable qualifications you can easily make four to five times in private sector as you would with the ADF. But let’s assume you’re not.

Let’s assume you’re a regular person who signs up at age 18, for the first two years you’ll be getting 2/5ths of the average weekly wage Australian’s would get elsewhere. On completion of training, you’ll get a base wage of $25-$30k based on the salary scale on the ADF website. At the HIGHEST non-commission rank you can reach (and let’s face it, a lot of ADF personel can spend twenty years in and not get a commission) CPO/WO2/FSGT you will be on $1,138.53 so you’re still falling $100 short of the national, or $200 of pub. sec.

The biggest insult of it all is, part time ADF employees don’t pay income tax on their ADF salary, whereas full timers pay the same income tax as civillians. So drop several more hundred off that reach for full-timers as Australia is one of the worlds highest taxed nations (not to mention surprise tax, as I like to call it, on almost everything you purchase, from GST, to stamp duty, to other mythical unicorn taxes, speeding fines, bus lane fines, parking fines that hedge just short of $300 a piece, you name it).

So it’s safe to say we’re a reasonably expensive nation to live in, the ADF are paying fuck all, and then people rage at them for having people who can’t be arsed. Would you do your job for their wage? Would you do THEIR job for their wage? Fuck no.

Food for thought.

Let’s assume you don’t roll over into a new 30 second block, and merely pay per second, and let’s give it a really conservative estimate of 1 cent per second. The average time to drop carrier for my iPhone 3G’s and my iPhone 3GS is between 6-8 seconds. There are over 4.6 billion mobile phone subscriptions in the world. Let’s assume that all of these lag 6 seconds for efficacy of fact. That’s $240,000,000 in phone fees just from one design flaw coming out of every mobile phone owners pocket.

Let’s go one step further and assume that each phone makes one call per business day of the week, that’s $1.2 billion per week. I guess designing flaws in your technology is big business, because you know there’d be kick backs. Let’s not even count in the money makers of voice mail, or other scammy crap. $62.4 BILLION per annum, and remember these are conservative estimates.

You know, that almost makes you sound like a rapper. I am writing this merely to mock you, knowing the people reading it will appreciate the tongue in cheek as I illustrate the ‘fair shake of the sauce bottle’ you’re dishing out to smokers. I’m aware you’re about as detached from reality as a politician can get, but I do know the 12 year old korean sweat shop workers you have in your off shore PR department will read this and hopefully also get a chuckle at your expense.

Smoking, filthy habit, right? Some say it’s as hard as heroin to kick. In Australia, the land of the ‘surprise tax’ as I like to call it (we’re already one of the most taxed nations yet we have ‘stamp duty’ tax on … everything, which is usually 10% (see: bankrupting on your first home or car purchase by surprise tax) as well as road tax, breathing tax, you fucking name it tax) but now we have taxes on taxes. Cigarettes were always taxed at a premium, where a pack of fags would set you back $7 in the 80′s and early 90′s as opposed to $1-2 outside Australia.

Smokers clog up the healthcare system, right? What with their dying all the time and stuff, why not tax them? Fine. Smokers pay a lot more tax than any other Australian, with almost 90% of the price of them being ‘tax’ all going to the medical system. But fuck giving them organs, they’re smokers. Hell, let’s tax them more. Now we’re nearing $1 per cigarette, and what happens? The price of ‘quit smoking aids’ which always work out to cost more than cigarettes go up too.

As much as governments pretend to want us to not smoke they realise that the tax they can milk out of us by keeping us alive an average 10 years more is far less than what they can by taxing our addiction. I say this as an intermittant lifelong smoker, who quits as often as he restarts, but fairs fair this new tax has gone way too far.

Heroin addicts get shooting galleries, social support, free housing, $380 a fortnight and FREE methadone to inject instead. Smokers get mortgages, bills, two point seven five children, two cars, and a fuckload of surprise tax on top of their taxed taxes of cigartaxes and placebo ‘quit’ substitutes that freely state in their instructions that they won’t give you the ‘fix’ or ‘buzz’ of cigarettes (and thus never last more than a week in a smokers addiction).

So, I propose this K-rudd, rather than making heroin far more appealing to Australian’s, how about you cut back on the smoking tax, or even it out across the three big killers, obesity (being the biggest killer in this nation) and alcohol (and see how long it takes until parliament house is burnt down and you’r nailed to the flag pole given how crazed Aussies seem to be about drinking (coming from a non drinker here)), which I might add are two elements I do not participate in. Maybe we should have photos of the mega-litres of fat sucked out of womens arses and thighs and the horrible chaffed cellulite gone necrotic fat people get attached to every edible product? Why stop there, why don’t we up the gore level and throw up some awesome pics from ogrish of splatter deaths from drunken road kills of people?

Or better yet, maybe repeal the tax and stop being a cunt, eh?

Much love,

BaSH (Your #1 Fan) PR0MPT

Ps: Why the fuck did I vote for him? I guess he was Obama before Obama, he looked good because the competition was horrendous, and promised the right things, then backflipped on all of them.

Many people replied, however the most thought out response came from Gisele Baxter who’s quite the avid ball of gray matter and took the time and effort to address a very complex topic through the very limited means of 140 characters per reply.

I’ve figured instead of the redundant Follow Friday type setup, and considering I openly fun the Twitter Follow 4 Follow network (shameless plug: follow it for thousands of new followers, no catch) I should perhaps feature users who answer my random hypotheticals in illustrious manner.

Follow Gisele Baxter on Twitter

Question: At what point would you say a situation can transcend morality?

Answer: First of all, you need to consider if there is an absolute, universal definition of morality, and whether it is dogmatic or flexible.  Second, you need to consider whether you believe the universe is deterministic or whether it allows for the exercise of free will.

If your universe is flexible and allows for free will, it allows for socially determined definitions of morality, also for situation ethics. So now you have to decide in what situations actions that go against your moral code (however you arrived at it) can or should be taken.

Most people apply situation ethics to large-scale issues: the so-called ‘greater good’. So let’s consider: when might you kill someone? Would you kill someone to save a group of people, or even one person, from death or torture? Or kill someone to spare that person from pain? I’m thinking of a book review I read once, about hospital personnel who euthanized patients rather than let the Nazis get them.

There might be people whose morality is so absolute that they could not conceive of killing, in any circumstance, whatever the consequence.  But many people, at least in the moment, might find themselves able to make that choice, even if otherwise they’d say they couldn’t kill.

Theft is generally not regarded on the same level as murder, but some might be able to steal if they or their loved ones were starving.  And then there are the smaller moral quandaries: lies to protect people’s feelings, or to spare them knowledge they couldn’t deal with.  Like at the end of Heart of Darkness, when Marlow lies to Kurtz’s girlfriend: though Marlow hates himself after and feels he betrayed Kurtz.

In Apocalypse Now, Willard trades military-sanctioned murder (his mission) for something almost like assisted suicide in killing Kurtz.  But I’m either veering off topic or opening up a philosophical discussion that could go on and on and on. I like these questions though.

What’s wrong with this picture? What the fuck is right with it? (If you answered nothing, read on, else beat yourself across the head, re-read, and repeat until enlightenment)

It’s 2010, when our prime minister lied about stopping Japanese illegal whaling, withdrawing our troops from America’s war against adjectives, and getting rid of the vile fuck-the-workers “work choices” scheme … we saw no one swamp the streets to protest.

In 2008 during the mandatory censorship protests we saw only 5,000 mob Town Hall to protest the decay of Internet freedom in our nation not to mention free speech at the draconian hands of Senator-can’t-program-a-VCR Conroy.

What is wrong with a society which has crazed teen girls acting like sleazy 40 year old men with their hand in their pocket over some kid? In what jilted fucked up take of reality do we see people mobbing barricades and police lines over some b-grade net celebrity? When did Australia turn into the US?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m well aware that teenage females are the least intellectually gifted let alone autonomous minority in our society and I’m also aware that they’re brain washed to be the future of mindless consumption technicians that will keep our male workforce subjugated; but there’s something seriously wrong with parents who don’t discourage clearly unhealthy behaviour.

I don’t have children, well none that Centrelink can prove are mine, and I’m personally a fan of ‘late term’ abortions up to the age of 35, but seriously, seeing this in the news disgusted me.

These silly little trollops need to watch less OC/hills/jersey shore and get the fuck back into a classroom or better yet an adidas sweat shop. We boggle our logic to no end trying to figure out why women are paid less than men and have more dick-in-butt ratio in the socio-economic front yet allow borderline psychotic behaviour and encourage hive mentality and worship of TV-told-me-to tin gods. No male would get away with that over any female without their mates outright telling them they’re bent in the head and probably slap them around when they won’t talk about anything but their obsession. Not to mention the extremes many young girls go to (see: changing their online surnames everywhere to reflect obsessed marital fantasies) are just bizarre and unhealthy.

How young females can’t see that there’s no such tangible thing as a ‘fanboy’ but ‘fangirl’ is an ever present term and not appreciate that they’re jipping themselves out of individualistic thought or gender rights progression is beyond me.

Pre-pube girls, grow the fuck up. Pre-pube girl parents, put them in therapy you disillusioned cunts.