This was originally an introductory post to springloadedpig.net but since we decided to scratch the whole combined blog idea and just go with seperate ones, again, I moved it here. Oh and this site’s new (semi) permanent home is at http://springloadedpig.net/~necius/

Hello all,

Welcome to the first spring loaded pig post. Stupidity, birth, stupidity, taxes, stupidity, death, stupidity. It seems our lives are shrouded in stupidity. Why I wrote that, I’m not entirely sure, but a first post needs to be profound, does it not?

Let me clear up the confusion, each of the stupidities mean something specific:

1. Teenage parents have a drunken evening, lo and behold, nine months later a child is born.
2. That child is sentenced to 12 years education, sometimes more for the unlucky ones, during which time it learns nothing of any real value and gains a score which lasts a single year.
3. The adult, previously child, gains a position in a workplace. It produces nothing of value, working in a bureaucratic (thank something for spell-check) environment that prevents any real progress from being done the significant majority of the time.
4. The corpse, previously child then adult, is ‘laid to rest’ with the promise of an afterlife and a ridiculous ceremony which, once again, achieves nothing.

My solution:

Sex, drugs, alcohol, atheism, and a strong sense of cynicism. Hey, at least it will make you feel better.

So Long

Necius

— This post was originally posted on 22 April 2009, and has been reproduced here because I felt like it —

He speaks again,

To be perfectly honest I am unfortunately in a relatively good mood, which isn’t ideal for this situation, so I have to attempt to cast my mind back to how I was feeling on Sunday, when I had an assignment due the next day, and it wasn’t working, thus I was rather wound up (i.e. I felt like stabbing anything that made a noise). Unfortunately I seem unable to do that, so I will give a reasonable insightful post (breaking the order of things) and put forward points for societal customs which are not currently the norm. This post will be about the legalisation and normalisation of Marijuana, I plan to follow it up with another post on a different topic.

Marijuana is easy to defend on a practical, evidence-based, level. Just keep in mind as you’re reading this that I have never used cannabis (or any other illicit drugs) and therefore am not speaking from personal experience. To begin with I will talk about a purely benefit/detriment to society level. This has been something that has interested me for a while, but my interests were raised after reading this article in New Scientist. Called “Radical alternatives proposed for cannabis controls” it presents a reasonably impartial view of cannabis’ effect on society and proposes some changes to the regulation surrounding it. The most impotant points that it raised, in my opinion, is the comparisons between the illegal drugs marijuana and heroin, and the legal drugs alcohol and tobacco. And the result: alcohol is worse than cannabis in almost every way (the only way in which marijuana posed a greater risk was in repository diseases caused by the common methods of consumption). The most important statistics, in my opinion, were as follows “cannabis intoxication raises a driver’s risk of crashing by 1.3 to 3 times. By contrast, alcohol intoxication raises the accident risk by up to 15 times”, “About 9 per cent of regular cannabis users become dependent, compared with 32 per cent of tobacco smokers, 23 per cent of heroin users, 17 per cent of cocaine users and 15 per cent of those drinking alcohol”, and “Overall, an analysis of 20 drugs by David Nutt at the University of Bristol, UK, who chairs the ACMD, rated cannabis as the 11th most harmful drug, well behind alcohol and tobacco“. So what this is saying is that Marijuana, a relatively harmless drug, is banned while alcohol, a much more harmful, yet much more socially acceptable, drug is sold with slight regulations and is consumed by millions (if not billions) of people, many of whom are well respected in the community. Another interesting statistic given by the article is the increase of the average strength (content of THC) within available Marijuana, as it has been developed through the years, compared with the number of hospitalisations. It shows clearly that the strength is increasing through the years, and as this is happening the drug is becoming more dangerous. The solution seems obvious to me, and many other people: legalise it, and regulate it. It is not possible for a government to regulate something that isn’t legal, and without decent regulation there is no real way to reduce the damage it causes, as it will remain a problem if illegal, no matter what the authorities attempt.

My second point on the topic of cannabis is on a more individual basis. I wish to debate the idea that Marijuana, if used responsibly, is especially harmful to the user. I mentioned above the comparison between alcohol and marijuana, and it seems that few people advocate total alcohol abstinence (apart from certain religious groups, who are probably nuts anyway), whereas the general feeling of society is that marijuana should remain banned. The primary reason for this is misinformation. It seems that very few people alive today were around before prohibition, and as such, don’t realise the effect (or lack of a significant detrimental effect) on normal, healthy people. Instead we see the seedy side of things, with only people who are willing to break the law having access to illicit drugs, and then pinning their behaviour as an effect of the drugs, rather than the other way around. There are, many very successful people who use marijuana. While many of these are artists, who some may argue, are more likely to succeed in an envrionment where their brains function very differently to normal, people in other fields also been successful while being regular users of marijuana. My favourite example is Carl Sagan, famous American scientist, author and ‘populariser of science’, who credited his marijuana use with brilliant insights: “I am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with cannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and our educational system, un-available to us without such drugs.” As I like to say, “If it’s good enough for Carl Sagan, it’s good enough for the rest of us.”

I plan to follow up on this post with another one that may raise a few eyebrows, you will see when/if I post it.

Just have fun…

Hello again.

It’s been a while without a post, and I think this one serves as an interesting enough one to last another few months.

Today, at Uni, I was sitting talking to a Christian friend of mine (hello Isaac if you are reading this), and there came a man from the ‘student life’ group, a conglomeration of the many of the vast number of Christians who study at USQ (my uni). He walked up to us, sat down next to me, introduced himself, and after talking to Isaac for a period of time, turned his attention to me. After asking me what my beliefs were, and asking me what I thought a Christian was (both of which I answered rather tentatively as I didn’t want to offend), he proceeded to list his beliefs. Then asked me if I wanted to join his group and/or attend the ‘Christianity explained’ course. I politely refused his offer, rather than telling him where to stick his illogical, superstitious beliefs, because I didn’t want to be rude.

Unfortunately he caught me rather off guard, and I erred on the side of caution, so as to be not rude, and unfortunately didn’t debate the point much at all. This evening, however, in my boredom, I created a list of my own beliefs (as well as some things I don’t believe), so that if faced with a similar situation I may be able to recall some of these points (or alternatively link him/her to this post).

So here they are (I’m not sorry if you are offended, as these are not offensive and if you think they are you are probably a gimboid):

• I believe in the Scientific Method.
• I believe in evidence.
• I believe in logic.
• I believe in Occam’s Razor.
• I believe in evolution.
• I believe in the Big Bang.
• I believe that the Earth is a Giant sphere of rock, that orbits around an even larger ball of gas, which itself revolves around a large cluster of large balls of gas.
• I believe that when I die, I will decompose.
• I believe that there is “no hell below us, above us only sky”.
• I believe that I only have one life, and thus I don’t want to waste it.
• I believe in freedom of thought, speech, and beliefs.
• I believe in gender equality.
• I believe in sexual freedom.
• I believe in choice, on multiple levels.
• I believe in mathematics.
• I believe in the separation of church and state.
• I don’t believe in a cruel, vindictive, violent, petty, arrogant, illogical deity.
• I don’t believe in any other deities, be they ultra-powerful men, ultra-powerful spaghetti, or teapots that are not where they are supposed to be.
• I don’t believe that the threat of such deities should be used to control (and/or to make money out of) the population.
• I don’t believe that such a disbelieve should lead me to be killed, attacked, pitied, or ‘saved’.
• I don’t believe in slavery.
• I don’t believe that life is just something to be endured on the way to something better.
• I don’t believe in torture.
• I don’t believe in indoctrinating children into a potentially harmful set of beliefs.

This list is not exhaustive, I wrote it in a relatively short space of time. If you have any comments, or additions I may add them (if I agree with them). Once again, if you are offended, you are probably taking this to seriously.

Goodbye again.
Tim

I’ve had several blogs in the past which have failed for numerous reasons. I hope to keep this one alive (though somewhat doubt it). I will also be posting my old posts here, so people who love me don’t have to try and find them on a website that is no longer available.

Please enjoy my thoroughly disinteresting stupidities.

Tim