The “Secret” Christian Subsidy

 Religion  No Responses »
Feb 062015
 

I happened to discover today that there is a chaplain within the House of Commons in the UK; fair enough. I don't really have a problem with someone being there to offer some sort of support to the HoC staff. Not even letting them incant some mumbo-jumbo at the start of the day.

But who pays his or her salary? Is it the Church of Englang? Or is it the government … and indirectly, the taxpayer? Which includes me.

I also don't have a problem with a single salary for a member of the clergy – one salary doesn't add up to much compared with the entirity of the public sector. But how many others are employed by the taxpayer?

  • The NHS employs chaplains.
  • The prison service employs chaplains.
  • Universities employ chaplains.
  • The military employ chaplains.

And probably other murkier corners of the public sector. Now when I say "employs", there are some areas of doubt – some are volunteers, and some may be paid for by the Church of England. But there are obviously many who are paid by the taxpayer.

Now I don't want hospital patients, prisoners, University students and staff, nor anyone in the military being derived of chaplains. If some people think they provide a useful service, then I have no objections to them using such services.

But why is my money being used to pay for their services? I would much rather my money was used to pay for properly trained counsellors which would provide appropriate services to all members of the public without being ever so slightly creepy (by talking about the mythical sky-daddy … or indeed the "wrong" mythical sky-daddy). If someone wants to speak to a religious consultant, then a counsellor can find a volunteer to meet that request.

Labelling a FAT Filesystem

 Computing, Linux, Working Notes  No Responses »
Feb 022015
 

Undocumented command options … grrr!

Every so often I find that I have a need to put a volume label onto a FAT filesystem – usually so a digital camera SD (or CF) card can be "automatically" mounted (actually they don't mount automatically on my workstation and I like it like that) in the right place. And of course every time I do, I remember that the command to do so is mlabel but I cannot remember exactly how to do it.

Because mlabel (together with the other mtools) has some sort of weird configuration file to turn Unix/Linux paths into drive letters‽ And yes that was an interribang although it could just as well be some other form of punctuation to express disgust instead. As it happens mlabel has an undocumented option to specify a device path … at least it doesn't appear in the usage hints :- 

» mlabel -h
Mtools version 4.0.17, dated June 29th, 2011
Usage: mlabel [-vscVn] [-N serial] drive:

It turns out that there is a "-i" option which takes a device path, but you still have to specify the drive as "::" just so things are less likely to go right :- 

» mlabel -i /dev/sdi1 ::
 Volume has no label
Enter the new volume label : LEICA1

And there it is!

Not Victim Blaming. Risk Reduction.

 General, Security  No Responses »
Jan 302015
 

There's a game called "victim blaming" which is where people decide the victim of a crime is somehow partially or wholely respomsible – the old "if she hadn't worn such a short skirt …".

Which is rubbish of course. The perpetrator of a crime is the one responsible for carrying it out whatever the circumstances.

But the shouting down of the "victim blamers" can perhaps drown out messages that allow risk reduction, and allow certain myths to be perpetuated. For example, many women believe that they are more at risk from strangers whereas most rapists are known to the victim.

Take a slightly less contentious crime – a phishing spam that criminals use to empty the bank accounts of the victim. Whilst the criminal here is obvious – the person who used stolen credentials to empty the bank account, the criminal needed the victim to make certain risky decisions.

2015-01-29_1517As you cannot look at the link contained within that, it's worth pointing out that if you paste the URL into a notebook, you will get a brazilian site … and I strongly suspect that Lloyds Bank is not very likely to use a Brazilian site (.br) for hosting their online account service.

And we call such victims "gullible". In the case of phishing, there are some simple procedures to follow :-

  1. Email doesn't necessarily come from whom it claims to be from. I can send you an email that will look as if it comes from Goodluck Johnathon without having anything to do with his email account.
  2. Don't click on links in emails.
  3. If your bank sends an email asking you to do something, shut down the email and open a web browser and use your existing way of getting to your bank's web site. Same applies to shopping sites, your workplace's IT department, etc.
  4. If you are determined to use a link from an email, copy the link into a notebook and read it. Does it make sense? Does the first part mention an organisation that has nothing to do with the organisation it is supposedly from? Don't trust it.

Plus a whole bunch more.

Detailing and quantifying risks isn't victim blaming; it's empowering someone to make educated decisions about their behaviour

1,000 Lashes To Those Who Lowered The Flag

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Jan 282015
 

Why? Why is our flag lowered to mark the passing of a Saudi despot?

Of course, punishing those responsible with a thousand lashes would be over the top – in the same way as punishing a blogger who says something you don't like with a thousand lashes.

Unlike others I don't think it is wrong for politicians to attend the funeral of the old Saudi king – in addition to attending the funeral they are also there to keep a dialogue going with the Saudi state. And the only thing that isolation causes is a strengthening of those attributes that caused the isolation in the first place. Or in other words, if you want a despotic government to change, you have to keep talking to them and keep telling them what they are doing that is wrong.

And that is one of the jobs that polticians are overpaid to do. It's a nasty little job, but as most politicians are nasty little people it's a job they are ideally suited to.

But lowering the flag is a sign of respect from the nation, and the Saudi despot did not desrve that respect.

It's a bit late, but I've been having WordPress issues!

The “Right” To Offend

 Politics, Religion  No Responses »
Jan 172015
 

In the wake of the murders of the Charlie Hebdo journalists there is a continuation of the debate over free speech (and expression). Amongst those making a contribution are those who say things like “I believe in free speech, but …”.

As soon as someone sticks a “but” into a sentence like that, you begin to wonder if they are really in favour or not. Usually it turns out they are not.

And one of the points raised after the stereotypical “but” is the issue of offence. Which is a tricky area because who likes being offended? Or to be more precise, who likes their personal sacred cows to be offended? And perhaps that is the tipping point – if your intention is to offend someone or a group of people, perhaps you should re-consider.

But if you are intending to criticise someone’s beliefs – religious or otherwise – it is perfectly justifiable. And yes using humour to make fun of someone’s beliefs is just as much criticism as a long, tedious, and boring blog posting. Any offence caused is a byproduct of the criticism, so perhaps this blog posting should be “The right to criticise includes the right to offend.”.

And in most cases the criticism comes in response to offence caused – if you create a religion that requires human sacrifice, you can expect a Charlie Hebdo cartoon mocking your religion.

And all religions include ridiculous and offensive aspects. After all the depiction of a mythical sky-daddy and impugning the godless nature of the universe causes offence to atheists.

So if you want free expression like the cartoons of Charlie Hebdo banned because they are offensive, I’ll be asking for all those religious tomes like the bible and the koran to be banned because they are offensive – to me. Your rights as a believer in fairies, angels, and other imaginary and infectious friends do not trump my rights as an atheist. Just as my rights as a godless and amoral unbeliever do not trump your rights as a believer.

 

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