Toren Atkinson’s Absolute Blog

Today, on the internet (here), I pre-ordered the Bitter Films Volume One - six films by Don Hertzfeldt. After I did so I got an email that said “As an added bonus for pre-ordering, you may enter the promotional code “CLARITY” during checkout in the official Bitter Films store for 15% off your order. This offer expires August 18th and may only be used one time.” Too late for my use, but if anyone else wants to support Mr Hertzfeldt, they can do so a little cheaper.

Meanwhile, Bad Girl Chocolates has been updated with the pinup girl images I did for my fabulous chocolatier/gamer friend Kelly! http://www.badgirlchocolates.com/girls.html (you can hit F5 to refresh and cycle through the 4 girls).

It’s my birthday! And to celebrate I’m making up a D&D character and tonight I’ll be working on Thickets music in my closet studio.

At some point I’ll be announcing the date of my birthday auction, but between organizing Slackademics and the ST:TNG How to Host A Murder game I really have no idea when it’ll be. In the meantime you can give me the birthday gift of critiquing the WWFJ characters in the appropriate post comments!

Three more WWFJ characters for your eyes.

What can I say, I’m on a roll.

I posted a link to the Mutants & Masterminds boards and they gave me a couple more ideas to steal: Pork Chop, Catmandu & Rockadile. I also had a great idea for Junkyard Dog today, which I will reveal soon. Also, consider this: Scare Bear.

I quote Bad Astronomy

If I do think the Universe is accidental, that does not mean there is no rhyme or reason– all of science depends on the Universe obeying a set of rules (even if the rules are hidden, or hard to understand, or involve seemingly random events as quantum mechanics does). So right away, even if I do think the Universe is accidental, I would say that quotation is going too far and is wrongheaded, but not in the way the quiz means.

I also may not think life on Earth is inconsequential. I have heard this many times from religious people talking to atheists: how can you cherish life if you don’t believe in God? I find that question pretty funny, actually! The mindset is, if atheists don’t cherish life, what is to keep them from simply murdering anyone who ticks them off?

The answer is that atheists, as well as believers, have evolved a sense of morality over millions of years. Mammals tend to be family-oriented, and primates very much so. Tribal customs evolved to aid survival, which means helping others when needed. It’s not hard to get an idea of how morality evolved from that, although of course I am grossly oversimplifying things here.

If you think this is wrong, then consider this: if no God means no morality, then you’d expect atheists to commit more crimes. Yet, if you look at prison statistics, atheists are grossly underrepresented in jail. Only 0.21% of prisoners are atheists, though in the US some 3-9% of the population call themselves atheists. If religious people were more moral than atheists, then you’d expect the number of atheists in prison to be much higher than their percentage in the population. Yet the opposite is true. This means that atheists commit proportionately fewer crimes than religious people (well, it really means that atheists are caught and successfully prosecuted less, but one can assume those numbers scale with the numbers of crimes committed).

Are atheists more moral than believers? That’s a hard jump to make. But those numbers are very interesting.

Tonight’s session of M&M was really fun, because it got really ridiculous. Nothing holds my attention better than getting to choose a new power each turn, as my character is a power mimic. We trounced some nazis in the nazi universe fairly well, but my character (Zero) got his clothes exploded off, Ken’s character healed Lucky’s (Caleb’s character) stupid darkness-creating dog, and Mike’s character remote controlled a tank with her brain. Then we visited the ape universe where I fit in by being invisible. We realized with Ken’s illusion powers and eidetic memory, we could not just explain to the super-ape team what happened, but we could show them exactly, on a small scale, but with bigger capes and more moustaches.

To celebrate, I’ve posted some more WWFJ characters, a few of which are suddenly very close to my heart (I’m looking at you, Salamancer). You can go directly there by clicking here and please comment thereat!

The names Nix and Hydra have been approved for the two small satellites of Pluto discovered in May 2005. The International Astronomical Union (IAU), the internationally recognized authority for assigning designations to celestial bodies, approved the names this week.

ps, here’s a fascinating optical illusion

I went to see Sophie Scholl (the film) yesterday with Stephane at the Vaneast Theater. Huge spoiler follows. Stephane does their website so he gets perks and he knows the staff. So we walk in and Stephane asks how the movie is. This guy, who I guess is Korean, is disappointed because it’s in German with English subtitles. And then he says, get this, “The ending is a little annoying. She gets her head cut off.” I’m thinking, well, he wouldn’t just blurt something like that out, knowing that we came to see it. It must, strangely, not be important to the plot. Well, it’s the very last scene in the movie. Good thing I didn’t pay any money to see it. Otherwise…high 7/10. 

Superman opens on my birthday (two days)! 

So I went in to jam in Chilliwack as usual yesterday, and saw the remains of a gruesome accident involving at least 4 mangled hulks. Traffic was backed up for miles and miles and everyone was so late that we actually only got to rock for about 45 minutes. Then I had to get on the last Greyhound to Vancouver. And that sucked the suckyiest suck. But during the trip I came up with some more WWFJ characters, which you must now rate on a scale of 1-10:

Stagosaurus

The Toad Warrior

Torqupine

Robonobo

Shaolin Monkey

Elk Diablo

Salamancer

Dynamole

Hellhound

I promise the highest rated one will get a drawing. Others will too but not necessarily all of them.

This is for Canadians:

In an effort to encourage more customers to utilize our capability to recycle their empty ink and toner cartridges while simultaneously encouraging them to try our Green Top papers, Office Depot has announced a program to provide a FREE ream of EnviroCopy Recycled Copy Paper (500 sheets) for each ink or toner cartridge returned to our stores. (See store for details.)

(slightly larger than life-size)

Last night on the way home from Sunshine Market I saw an overturned bug. A big one. A coleopteran. I tried to flip it over without touching it with my skin in case it had some kind of defense mechanism, but I wasn’t having any luck with my grocery bag, so I used my foot. So this huge june bug latched onto the side of my Converse and I mosied over to the grass where I tried to shake it off. O beware the tenacious grip of the june bug, for it is mighty! I had to pry it off and it sounded like velcro. It’s a good thing I like bugs or I would have been freaked out.

It inspired me for yet another anthropomorphic super - Bugbear! Speaking of which–three more additions to the anthropomorphic supers post below. Check ‘em out.