That's torn it. I just paid my entry fee for the 2012 Kanangra Classic Mountain Bike Enduro. It takes place in October 2012, the weekend before my 38th* birthday, in Kanangra-Boyd National Park, in the Blue Mountains Plateau, somewhat south-west of my usual biking trails in the mid-mountainsplateau. To be honest, I'm not too intimidated. I've done the 100km thing quite a few times this year, including a two-day ride with a 130km second day, and the reputation of Kanangra trails is that they're relatively friendly and don't have the horrifying climbs you find, for instance, going up Ingar and down Anderson's. Still, I've never...

My correspondent of yesterday's blog doesn't seem to get it. So, while I've dealt with the ontological argument before, this will be a series of three posts in which I deal with the absurd fantasy precepts of the ontological, teleological and moral arguments for the existence of uncle skyfairy. First, what is the ontological argument? Taken from the Iron Chariots Wiki, the ontological argument runs: God is the greatest imaginable being. All else being equal, a being or entity that exists is greater than one that doesn't. Therefore, God exists. Sometimes the...

I've been doing this "arguing with godbots online" thing for some time now, probably as long as I've had a reliable internet connection, yet some things never change. First, some background. This week, word got around that Moore College, a cult consolidation center here in Sydney, had an open twitter wall. And as we all know, open twitter wall means TROLLIN' TROLLIN' TROLLIN'. Soon, atheist quotations and provocative tweets were flowing onto the #MooreCollege hashtag, in the sure and certain hope that they'd make it onto the tweet wall and cause either some annoyance (blackhat trolling) or cause someone to genuinely...

Which is, apparently, American Airlines' new corporate motto. The background: Meryl Dorey of the AVN has recorded an interview, in which she repeatedly herps on topics of which she is ignorant and unqualified. American Air picks up the segment for its inflight entertainment program and magazine. Public outcry, and right now, there's a twitter storm a-happening. PZ Myers (102,000 followers) and Phil Plait (174,000 followers) have picked up the story. Stop The AVN have been vocally hammering the twitter stream and email channels. Many prominent medical voices on social media are throwing their weight behind the message. This is not acceptable. American's response? The mind...

... which is to say i have in my possession a device called, oddly, an "iPhone" - but I am no longer using it as a telephone. It is now merely a hand-held internet device, portable music player, GPS,audio recorder, bookshelf, storage device, game centre, clock, calculator, camera and pocket computer. Well, I say merely - that's a pretty impressive list, but it no longer accepts calls. There was a time, oh, a hundred years ago, where the idea of being able to talk directly to someone a great distance from you seemed a positive wonder, and one which people lined up to...

This past weekend in Melbourne two packs of non-Tooth Fairy believing heathen monsters gathered for festivals of depravity and sin. The Global Atheist Convention brought 4000 avowed non-Tooth-Fairy believers together in an orgiastic bachanal of tooth-fairyless hate, and at the same time, the Reason for Faith rally brought together a number of so-called "christian churches" - actually a sinister cult whose main precepts deny the existence of our saving lady the Tooth Fairy (may blessings be upon her wand) - in a sick and depraved ritual of  Tooth-Fairy denial. ...

ACT ONE The scene: A tiny upstairs newsroom in one of Melbourne's less salubrious quarters. In it are crammed four desks, the largest and most imposing of which is lorded over by The Editor. The Editor's off-white striped shirt is stained at the pits with the sweat of editorial stress. His hair is thinning, but he retains the muscular frame of a weekend rugby player, though these days it's overlaid with a generous veneer of fat. His tie hangs from his chairback, and hasn't seen his neck in some time. Several stained whisky tumblers litter the desk, and the nearby wastepaper basket shows the neck...

So anyway, while I've been riding my bike around the place and losing fifteen kilograms or so of unwanted adipose tissue, the world of skepticism and atheism has been chugging on regardless. We have much action over at Stop The AVN, as Dorey and her dim-witted troop of flying monkeys continue to make shit up with gay abandon despite being thoroughly and eloquently rebuttfucked. We have #atheistcon approaching like a freight train toward Wile E. Coyote, and we have, as of the last week or so, a rapidly developing case of the Streisands, occasioned by the delivering by Francine Scrayen upon...

The view from Hassan's Walls Lookout As I noted in the previous post, my plan for the weekend of 31st March - 1st April 2012 was to ride my bike across the Blue Mountains, from West to...