Moving House

The Crystal Conundrum is moving house.
Check out the new Conundrum Here.
Not sure which blog I will keep yet. Probably the new one.
Let me know what you think.

Sceptical or Cynical

Congratulations to Barack Obama! That's totally unrelated to this post, but I thought while I'm posting I may as well say it.

sceptic /'skɛptɪk/, n. 1. one who questions the validity or authenticity of something purporting to be knowledge. 2. one who mistrusts and who maintains a pessimistic attitude toward people, plans, ideas, etc. 3. one who doubts the truth of the Christian religion or of important elements of it. 4. (cap.) Philos. a member of the philosophical school of ancient Greece, or any later thinker, who maintained that real knowledge of things is impossible. -adj. 5. pertaining to sceptics or scepticism. 6. (cap.) pertaining to the Sceptics. Also U.S., skeptic. -sceptical, adj. -sceptically, adv. -scepticalness, scepticism, n.

I would perhaps delete point number two. I would delete the word 'Christian' from point three, and the last part of the sentence. Then that sounds pretty much like me.

cynic /'sɪnɪk/, n. 1. a sneering fault finder; one who doubts or denies the goodness of human motives, and who often displays his attitude by sneers, sarcasm, etc. 2. (cap.) one of a sect of Greek philosophers founded by Anisthenes of Athens (born about 444 B.C.), who sought to develop the ethical teachings of Socrates. -cynicism, n.

This one does not sound like me at all.
I've been thinking lately a lot of people tend to interchange these two words, and think they're the same thing. I heard people on the radio this morning calling themselves cynical because they didn't believe in haunted houses. It sounds a little negative to me.
I'd like to think a sceptical person is an open minded person who likes to see evidence before putting faith in things. I'd like to think a sceptical person would be excited to be proven wrong about things. I heard a great quote about science on a podcast today:
"There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery." -Enrico Fermi

Definitions from The Concise Macquarie Dictionary, 1982 ed.

No, I'm from Australia. Austria is a small country in Europe.

I was listening to "The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe" podcast. It's an American podcast (hence the 'k' in skeptics'). They did an interview with Matthew Chapman (incidentally, Charles Darwin's great-grandson). Which is not really the point of this post. The point I wanted to talk about is that during this interview one of the Skeptics happened to make a comment that I thought would be a good talking point. Chapman said that "As a European I find that Americans are very disinclined to look at things in an international way"
To which one of the Skeptics replied:
"In Europe, the countries are all so close they're very intermingled and here (US) it's almost like we're isolationist, because we don't have the opportunity or didn't have the advantage of living so close to other cultures and, you know, we're just pretty much by ourselves over here with Canada, and you know it's like Canada and the United States, we're the same people- as far as I'm concerned. The Canadians don't think that!"(laughter).

Now he qualified this by saying "who the hell am I to comment" and I'll quallify my comments the same way. This is purely my opinion-
Australia is even more geographically isolated than the United states. However the average Australian knows a fair bit about foreign cultures. Particularly American and Brittish because our media is full of it. From what I can gather, the US media is largly US-centric. A majority of their TV is all American, most of their news is America.
Here a large magority of our TV is American, or Brittish. There is a channel dedicated to international television.

I would say it's the American culture itself (or perhaps the media) that keeps it 'isolationist' and ignorant of other cultures. Speaking very generally there of course. I know many Americans who are quite knowledgable of other countries and thier cultures.

Thoughts. . . ?

Take On Me: Literal Video Version

For your amusement.



Ahh, the sweet smell of Spring. . .

What a lovely time of year to be walking around in. The sun is shinning, the air is fresh, there's the sweet smell of spring flowers in the breeze.

Then some twit goes and puts manure on their garden!

If a plant needs poo on it in order to survive, it doesn't deserve to live!

I don't want to ride to work in your bathroom!

I wasn't going to work today, I was going to the osteopath, but I thought the above title sounded better than 'I don't want to ride to the osteopath in your bathroom'.

While on the train, I noticed a girl in the midst of her daily cleansing routine. By the time I got on, she was at the toner stage (I don't know how she managed the cleansing stage). She put some toner on a tissue and wiped it over her face. Over and over and over and over. She must've covered every inch of her face at least 16 times! Once she was finally satisfied with that she started with the moisturiser. Same thing, over and over and over. Her face was red from rubbing by the time she finally finished. As I was leaving the train, she was applying mascara.

Now, I've seen people put makeup on in public transport before. It always leaves me with a slightly odd feeling. Like they've decided to make the train into their bathroom, and we (the other passengers) have to be in there whether we like it or not.
It's NOT your bathroom, people. If you can't manage to put your makeup on before you leave home, either don't wear any or get up earlier! Geez, imagine if men performed their morning ablutions on the train. Doesn't bear thinking about really.

Slightly nutty rant over.

iTunes 8.0 big black balls

I've recently downloaded iTunes 8.0
At first glance the new visuals are awesome! But they don't seem to vary as much as the classic version. You can still switch to the classic version though, if you get sick of the new ones. I've yet to get sick of them.
I like the big black space balls :)

The other nice new feature is the genius button. You select a song, then click genius and it creates a play list for you. Lots of fun to play around with, though I've found it doesn't work for every song in my library.