I don't believe in Heaven. The reason people do - in fact, the reason anyone believes in any kind of afterlife - is relatively clear to me, though. The simplest way to explain it, without meaning to be crass, is that Heaven is simply wishful thinking; it is an idea created by humans to fill a gap, popularised as a reward to sweeten the deal. I certainly don't want to die, which is a sentiment I would conjecture the majority of humans share - but if I'm not going to die, there has to be somewhere for me to go when I 'appear' to die, right? Not necessarily.

Naturally, any form of scrutiny renders the idea of heaven idea fallacious. Wanting something that is impossible on human terms will not increase the odds of it actually happening, however much we might persuade myself that it will. This is all by the by - the point I want to make is, can the idea of an afterlife actually be harmful? On a personal so-called 'spiritual' level perhaps not, but for humanity as a whole, it poses some interesting moral questions.

Consider the following thought experiment. You are presented with two beings, identical in all but their lifespan. The first is predicted to live for fifty years, the second for fifty thousand. Both are wrongly accused of a crime, the penalty for which is fifty years of incarceration, without compromise. You are allowed to select one to go free.

No genuine moral person would pause for thought at this point. The answer is most definitely that the first being, with the shortest lifespan, should be freed - his incarceration would take him up until his death, while the second being would only serve a thousandth of his life imprisoned unjustly.

One message that could be taken from this scenario is that we are more likely to take action to help a person in need when their suffering is all they will ever know, when there is nothing for them afterwards. The natural counter to this is that a religious believer considers any human worthy of heaven, if they earn their place; yet the fact is that without heaven, we are not given an excuse to allow unnecessary suffering of any kind. One only has  to look at the long list of celebrated religious martyrs (Jesus is the one example everyone knows - hanging on a cross for three days would have been slightly more difficult to bear if the place he was so damned eager to go didn't exist) to see that the idea of heaven is a moral brick wall - one which impairs the human ability for reason.

Buy Call of Duty 4 from Amazon

I was struck by this fact when I completed Call of Duty 4 last week - games are becoming increasingly like films every year. Not so much due to the graphics, the score or any aesthetic reason. This game drew me in, so much so that I even began to empathise with the characters. I'm bound to drop spoilers here, so if you plan on playing CoD4 at some point, save this article for another day.

I don't play many new singleplayer games. For the past three years I've had a rather unhealthy obsession with Counter Strike - it started off slowly, I joined a clan and found myself hungering for organised matches every evening, I even went to a LAN at one point. The urge to shoot at virtual representations of real people was so great, it became a dominant part of my life. It was something of a social thing, more about the people than the gaming at times - but that's a seperate story. Most importantly, I began to realise how important a human face can be on a computer generated character's body. I barely touched a singleplayer game during my time with CS; and aside from the Half-Life series, Call of Duty 4 is the only new shooter I've properly played since 2005.

Before now, empathy wasn't a matter of great importance to me; it certainly wasn't something significant enough to consider alongside other factors. People have described feeling guilt when the friendly artificial intelligences die in their favourite games, which makes me feel like something of a sadist when I admit that I relish games with a friendly fire option. To give a small example, Valve explained their decision to make Barney (the security guard) more prominent in the sequel to Half-Life, by describing the people they asked having felt a pang of guilt when he was killed protecting them. Me? I used to shoot the guy for fun. I'm not psychopathic, it was simply that the game wasn't real enough for me to consider it a big deal.

There have been a few games which I've connected with on an emotional level. Grim Fandango was one of them, when I wasn't cursing it for some of the less obvious puzzles. The Broken Sword was another. In a way, of course, that's one of the fundamental features of an adventure game; unless the purpose is all-out comedy, at the very least you have to have a vague understanding with the characters you play - otherwise half of the motivation for continuing would be lost. But first person shooters, not so much.

Half Life 2 left me awestruck. But again, it wasn't because of the characters - in the majority of cases the interactions just weren't subtle enough to create the illusion that these were actual people. Perhaps this was due to the fact that much of the interaction occurs in between bouts of action, rather than during it; bonding in games is catalysed by firefights, and dampened by the absense of them; HL2 seperates the two far too much for its own good. Episode Two, incidentally, does a far better job, but misses the mark ever so slightly in parts.

So what makes Call of Duty 4 special? Put simply, continuous war.

The game starts by throwing you in with characters whom you have never met, you feel no great attachement to, and then throws you into action upon action, tense escape sequences which are tense despite being transparently scripted, and firefights, during which you genuinely feel part of a team, rather than a lone hero battling the entire middle-east. Empathy for your fellow soldiers is not crammed down your throat from the first minute; instead, it is allowed to develop. When your Captain pulls you up into a climbing helicopter the moment before you lose grip, your first feeling is gratitude rather than skepticism for an obvious cliché. The game is incredibly subtle in the methods it uses to draw you in; and when it spits you out, you are genuinely shocked and disheartened. At one point, I began to feel a sense of detatchment as I drifted away from yet another daring escape, in a chinook helicopter. And then a nuclear bomb detonated, in the city behind me. The next moment, I was spining towards earth, not sure if I would survive - the next moment, I was given the opportunity to crawl away from the burning wreck, dazed from concussions and radiation. And the next moment, I was dead.

Call of Duty 4 glamourises war, but at the very moment you ask yourself if it is not just another propoganda tool, you are sharply corrected. From the assassination carried out from the harsh, deserted landscapes of Chernobyl, to the execution depicted through the victim's eyes, the game is far more harrowing than many I have played so far, and does not shy from showing both sides of its story.

The poignancy of the empathy which CoD4 instilled in me struck me very close to the end of the game. After having escaped from a missile silo, I was trapped alongside your team at a collapsed bridge which served as a dead end. From the perspective of a fallen man, I watched my companions, shot one by one by the surviving opponents. With his dying breath, your captain throws you a pistol. I desperately empty the clip .. and then help arrives. The ending provides no closure, and you are left, bitter with the consequences of the war your friends have laid their lives down for, and sad at their deaths. Call of Duty does not simply present the ideals of conflict, allowing the player to act a part. The game, if anything, is an emulation of war, one you feel part of until the closing moments.

Something which has been running around in my head of late.

Firstly, I asked myself, if I was given the choice of living indefinitely would I take it? Certainly I would.

In popular media immortality is presented as a double edged sword - the allure of everlasting life, versus the inability to end it when life becomes a pain. I would have to think more carefully about that; but if humanity is to develop a means to indefinite life, it will most likely be without that second clause. So yes, I would do it.

But how? What conceivable ways could a human retain life forever?

A number of possibilities present themselves. The first is simply medicine and lifestyle; in the last millenium - even in the last two hundred years, the expected human lifespan in developed countries has skyrocketed, mainly due to increased knowledge of health, wellbeing, and the ability to target diseases with increasingly complex medical ideas and technology. Some would say this is only a temporary solution - nothing can stop the mind from deteriorating, the body's organs from failing after so many years. But what about when science is able to synthetically replicate organs, or when nanotechnology is able to repair and replace broken neurons in the brain? Once the human body is fully understood (and there is no natural law to prevent this) such procedures will enable humans to far surpass their current lifespans.

The second, and in my opinion far more intriguing possibility, is replicating the brain in a vast future computer system, and transferring human consciences to such a brain. I've discussed the idea before, and oddly it was brought back into my mind when I re-watched parts of the Battlestar Galactica remake. In this series, the cylons (human replicants) are able to transmit their consciences to a 'resurrection ship' when they die, where they are reborn. Aside from some of the obvious difficulties of this, the idea is fascinating. The concept of a conscious mind is a difficult one to understand - but even if we copy the physical structure exactly, even if we meticulously replicate memories, ideas, thoughts - is it the same person who is resurrected?

Imagine that moments before you die, a copy of everything that makes up your mind is copied to a new host body, identical to your own. Do you become that person? They certainly become you; they are aware of waking after having just been about to die, but in the mean time, you will simply die. It is beneficial for them, but not for you - or so the current ideas about consciousness would lead us to believe.

How can this problem be overcome? Essentially this method of immortality is as superficial as creating a clone, for one party still has to die; their own personal conscience comes to an end, no matter how perfect the copy. What needs to be done is for the conscience to be preserved. Imagine if a nano-robot was to replace each neuron in your brain, one by one, with an identical synthetic one, afterwards transferring the brain to a synthetic, mechanical body. The brain is not immediately replaced, nor is it destroyed: the host remains conscious, and they are essentially turned into a living machine. The idea has its merits - immortality certainly being one of them. What if such a mind was adapted, again artificially, to experience new senses beyond the limits of the human body? The ability to see the infrared area of the spectrum, or hear frequencies beyond the range of human ears.

Would I volunteer to do this?

I wouldn't think twice about saying yes.

I know plenty of sane and reasonable Christians. Heck, I'd like to hope that the majority of them are. But GodTube.com shows a more tarnished picture: created just last year, as a rival to YouTube, to anyone with half an ounce of common sense it's clear that most of its occupants are trying to make themself look … stupid, to put it plainly. There isn't any other reasonable explanation.

I hate to pick on such an easy target, but here are some of the things you're likely to see on GodTube.

Little girl recites Bible verses

At the time of writing, there are no less than three similarly named videos on the front page of the site: all depict girls under the age of ten showing their devotion to Christianity. Innocent enough, maybe, but why is this such a popular choice of video? I can only conjecture:

• Children are easy targets; if you can't convert someone your own age, convert someone that doesn't know much better. Then post it on the internet, as if it were an achievement.
• 'Cute'. If your definition of the word is to see suggestable individuals being robbed of a chance to make their own decision.
• A subtle message that people of faith, like children, are too naïve to know better?

Christian/Christ-follower

This one is apparently a parody of the Mac vs. PC adverts - and while I'll spare mentioning that it's been done, it seems to miss the entire premise of the idea. They both spout some pseudo-techy junk, the first guy dominating the conversation, the second guy bizarrely agreeeing with everything he has to say, pretty much. They seem to have missed the fact that the second guy is supposed to be ridiculed, unless I'm missing something.

They make one joke. "I'm sorry, I don't speak christianese". Slow clap.

Aside from not really understanding the original advert, why exactly do they make any distinction between a Christian and a Christ Follower? Hell, what is this video even about?

A letter from Hell

This one is actually quite disturbing. I don't mean the fact that I'm going to hell. Or the unexplained method Josh used to get his letter smuggled from the underworld. It's a scary thought that children are going to be shown that video, and actually be taken in by it; the scare tactics they use are, to be frank, disgusting. One commenter describes showing the video to his 13, 9 and 4 year old children. That's not just a warning message - that's child abuse.

Comments

No wonder Jesus wants us to be like little children…they have such a sincere and innocent faith. What a blessing to know that no matter what, she belongs to Jesus. Could a parent ask for anything more?

Sincere? Children believe what they are told to believe, it's arguably a necessary stage in life, but it's not one we should strive for after a very young age. I hope my children question everything I tell them- I couldn't hope for any more than that.

People say that God is a forgiving God, Yes He is but He is also a consuming fire. People need to be scared, they need Jesus.

Need to be scared? Come again?

yo, wat is wrong with you man. hell is the worst place in the universe! God is the infinite superior being over us. wat we know heaven to be is going to be great in God's eyes which means it will be even greater than we can imagine in our eyes.

Ah heck, I'm convinced.

Who Ya Worshippin'?

I'm sorry to lower the tone. But god damn, hah hah. That made me laugh. Religious nuts.

Any more weirdness and wonder from GodTube? Post it in the comments.

 

There's a fascinating graph that can easily be found on Wikipedia here that studies the usage of the terms "Doom clone" and "first person shooter", looking at their respective usages in Usenet posts between 1993 and 2002. The phrase "Doom clone" looks to have been conclusively defeated by "first person shooter" by late 1998, which interestingly coincides with the release of Valve's Half-Life. But like the secretive Trystero in The Crying of Lot 49 (I'm sorry, that's the second Pynchon reference in two posts – I'll try and cut them down) the phrase was not quite defeated, but merely forced underground, along with the games that remain lumbered with the label. To be honest, the fact that mainstream magazines and the game-playing public labelled games like these as "Doom clones" was a bit unfair. The games weren't exactly carbon-copies of the massively successful id classic, many didn't even use its influential engine – it's just that the early competitors to Doom were sometimes looked down upon and have been largely forgotten today – even when some of them were brilliant in their own right. So what defines a Doom clone? Well, by my definition a Doom clone is an FPS released between 1993 and 1998, which use sprites for their characters and objects and generally have Doom-esque technology to work with. Some games on the list are still famous today – others have fallen into at least partly undeserved obscurity. Because of the relatively primitive engines they use, they can often be difficult to get working on modern operating systems – but where possible, I'll offer some advice as to how these games can be played in 2008 (remember that DOSbox will theoretically run them all). Incidentally, for those who have yet to experience the joys of Doom itself, it can be found in a Collector's Edition on (for example) Amazon, and there's a guide to getting the game to run under XP over at the excellent Doom Wiki here. For now though, on with the list – from #10 right up to #1…

At #10: Chex Quest (1996)

Hilariously, Chex Quest was developed entirely for the purposes of marketing a US breakfast cereal in 1996. Consequently, it was largely non-violent and marketed towards children, allowing the kids to play as an anthropomorphic piece of cereal that was tasked with fighting off an insidious alien invasion. Despite having only five levels and having most items from Doom directly translated into cereal-based versions, it gained a downloadable sequel, Chex Quest 2, in 1997 and bizarrely, also developed a cult following. For its audacity and amusingly insane idea of removing the ultraviolence from the grandfather of the FPS, Chex Quest gets in at #10. Of course having done what it did way back in 1996, Chex Quest and its "makers" were way ahead of their time – now giving away free games with cereal is pretty normal – I remember a Kelloggs one by the name of Mission Nutrition from my youth which is now incredibly obscure (deservedly). It just goes to show that breakfast really is the most important sinister marketing opportunity of the day. Should the need to play this piece of marketing history take hold of you, there's a site here that contains what you need to know. In the mean time, see it in action in this video of the first level.

At #9: PowerSlave (AKA Exhumed) (1996)

You've got to give some credit to a game that was largely inspired by a 1984 Iron Maiden album. Unsurprisingly the inspiration is rather more famous and easy to get hold of than the inspired. PowerSlave actually also went by another name, Exhumed, as if to belatedly dissociate itself from Dickinson's outfit. Featuring the alluring combination of ancient Egyptian themes with guns, PowerSlave was released for the Sega Saturn, and then the PS1 and PC, and it was developed by the ever-so-famous Lobotomy Software. Interestingly, the game ran on the Build engine, a more powerful version of which was also used in… another game or two we may come to later. There are plentiful videos of the game around, including this one, the first in a series of speedruns. I haven't got the faintest idea how to get the game running, short of buying a Saturn or a PS1 and an old copy. If anyone has a clue, do comment and let us know. In fact, comparing the videos for Chex Quest and PowerSlave, can you believe it's the former that has a cult following? Sometimes people just can't see greatness when it's staring them in the face. Tsk.

At #8: Killing Time (1996)

Killing Time has the dubious honour of having been developed by the much-maligned 3DO, creators of the similarly much-maligned Army Men series of so-called games. It shares a bit of the Egyptian theme with PowerSlave – you play as a 1930s PI hunting down the now-deranged Tess Conway on Matinicus Island, a real island off the coast of Maine. Conway has turned the island into a haven for the undead using her experimentation with the enigmatic Water Clock of Thoth. Cue much shooting and general carnage. The game was notorious for some of its then-horrifying enemies – meat-cleaver lobbing zombie chefs, and so on. There's a theme that runs through most of these Doom clones – if you tried to develop them today, they'd most likely get banned for their ultraviolent content. Killing Time is definitely amongst those. It had some quite impressive special effects for the time, and deserves kudos for its original 1930s setting and oh-so-witty title. Its intro video can be viewed at your leisure here.

At #7: Rise of the Triad (1995)

Here's a fairly famous one. Developed by Apogee Software (later renamed to one 3D Realms) on a bodged form of id's own ageing Wolfenstein 3D technology, the coolly-named Rise of the Triad was released in 1995 and has a developed a reputation as one of the more gratuitously gory entries in the Doom clone canon. ROTT was designed by Tom Hall (whose famous "Doom Bible" was the legendary design document upon which Doom itself was based) who unfortunately was lumbered with a few technical limitations left over from Wolf 3D. Generally all the walls run at 90 degree angles, and the floors and ceilings are all of uniform height. In other respects, though, Apogee managed to push the engine surprisingly far, at least far enough to power the judicious gibs. Inventively, ROTT also featured a choice of characters with different statistics and different comedy names, including one Ian Paul Freeley. Due to originally having meant to be called Wolfenstein 3D II: Rise of the Triad, there were some Nazi Germany allusions, but generally speaking ROTT was its own game, themed around an evil plot being hatched on San Nicolas island - making it the second game in our list to take place on a real island. Curious. ROTT now stands as a slightly obscure thing sandwiched between famous things - it was in some ways the inheritor to id's own classics, and Tom Hall was to go on to Anachronox and Deus Ex amongst other things. Apogee/3D Realms also went on to bigger things, as we shall see. Again, I don't know how to get ROTT working on XP, but if you do, get in touch. There is a video containing the game's intro here though.

At #6: Shadow Warrior (1997)

It's those cheeky 3D Realms chaps again. In 1997 they were hoping that their new game would build upon the success of Duke Nukem 3D - and Shadow Warrior, starring their new ninja character Lo Wang, was that game. Running on Ken Silverman's Build engine, Shadow Warrior was extremely advanced by comparison to almost any shooter that had gone before. Because of games like Shadow Warrior, by 1997 the term "Doom clone" was looking decidedly old-fashioned. 3D Realms were pioneering all kinds of new and clever ideas, many of which were packed into Lo Wang's ultraviolent adventure. The game was packed (in true 3D Realms style) with huge numbers of tongue-in-cheek gags and comments from the talkative Lo Wang ("You're not half the man you used to be!") and popular culture references. It was an amazing cocktail, but perhaps surprisingly Shadow Warrior failed to emulate Duke 3D's success and consequently its expansions were canned, but luckily resurfaced later. The story sees Wang fighting off his former employers, a sinister Japanese corporation who have brought legions of misshapen beasts into the world. There's a video here, and a site here that gives some very handy info about getting Shadow Warrior to run (as well as Blood and Duke 3D, both of which we'll come to later)

At #5: Heretic (1994)

And so we come to the oldest game on our list. While FPS grand-masters id were working on Doom II, their great friends Raven Software were working on something very different - Heretic. Hugely advanced for the time, (having innovations even Doom II didn't have) Heretic was also stylistically different to anything else around here. A fantasy FPS, Heretic let you play as Corvus, and tasked you with hunting down and destroying the villainous Serpent Rider D'Sparil. Heretic had an inventory, and also allowed you to look up and down. It would also be the first of four games in the series, the sequels confusingly titled Hexen, Hexen II, and Heretic II (I can think of one series with more confusing sequel titles - the Rambo series). With Heretic, Raven proved that a fantasy FPS was feasible, that there were more technical innovations to be squeezed out of the Doom engine, and that they were soon to be respected as one of the great FPS developers - helping them establish their ongoing relationship with id. Thankfully, Heretic is still pretty easy to get running. All you really need is a Doom source port like Doomsday or zDoom which also has support for Heretic. As per usual, here's a video.

At #4: Star Wars: Dark Forces (1995)

A licensed game? In a top ten list?! Yes sir, Star Wars: Dark Forces surely deserves a place. Like Heretic, Dark Forces spawned plenty of sequels, starting with Jedi Knight, and then Jedi Knight II in 2002. Dark Forces was a bit of a curious Star Wars game because you couldn't get a lightsaber - whilst you play as ex-Empire soldier and Rebellion hero Kyle Katarn, Kyle hadn't become a Jedi by the time Dark Forces takes place. Instead, you're forced to use various classic Star Wars guns as you attempt to destroy the Empire's insidious Dark Trooper project, a secret weapons program that could crush the Rebellion before it gets off the ground. Despite some fairly horrendous sewer levels (also found in Doom II, of course, as well as Strife) Dark Forces was a surprisingly successful foray into FPS territory by LucasArts. Interestingly, it also features no blood - but then again, it's hardly Chex Quest either; those damned Stormtroopers get what's coming to them. If you know how to get it working under XP, let me know. Last time I played it, it was a very long time ago, and it was also in French - don't ask me why. Obligatory video!

At #3: Strife (1996)

There's been a bit of a lack of old-fashioned proper sci-fi in this list, it seems. Doom was sci-fi (albeit very silly and not well thought out sci-fi, but still - that was hardly the point) and so was Strife, which was released in 1996 by its developers, Rogue Entertainment. Strife depicted a bloody war between two factions in a dystopic environment. The Order are a crazed religious cult who have seized control of the planet - the only alternative to them is The Front, a militant resistance group you become affiliated with early in the game. Using words like "affiliated" should signal that Strife was far from an ordinary Doom clone, or even an ordinary FPS. There were tens of named characters, you could trade with NPCs, indulge in dialogue trees with various people, use multiple firing modes and types of ammo on some weapons, and the game used a hub environment system not unlike Quake II's. The plot was surprisingly intricate, featuring betrayals, horrendous conspiracies, and all centred around the player's quest to acquire a massively powerful weapon that could turn the tide against the vicious Order and their sinister overseers. Difficult to describe, Strife influenced a massive number of games in a way you can't really understand unless you experience it - the list of games that owe something to Strife includes such greats as Half-Life 2, Deus Ex, Halo, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, and tons more besides. It's an underrated classic, which whilst not quite escaping its Doom engine roots, did a huge number of things very very right indeed. It can be run using zDoom, to which I linked earlier. Here's a video - the game's intro.

At #2: Blood (1997)

We've heard a bit about which of these Doom clones is bloody and which aren't bloody, but I can bloody well tell you, they don't get bloodier than Blood. Released in 1997 by Monolith (who went on to develop Aliens vs Predator 2, Tron 2.0, No-One Lives Forever, F.E.A.R. and a lot else besides), Blood is still hugely respected. It was really a homage, it lots of ways, to the classic 3D Realms games - it's vampiric anti-hero, the remorseless horror film-quoting Caleb, had much the same popular culture quoting tendencies exhibited by butch 3D Realms heroes Duke Nukem and Lo Wang. At the start of the game, you wake up as Caleb in a grave - an atmospheric start if ever there was one - and vow revenge against the evil god Tchernobog, the source of your woes. From then on Caleb moves through his world's twisted, ultraviolent version of 1928, killing virtually anything that moves in his sadistic and insatiable quest for vengeance. Like Duke Nukem 3D, Blood was built on the Build engine, allowing Caleb to see himself in mirrors (and in the Plasma Pak version, smash mirrors, allowing psychotic mini-Calebs to pop out and attack him) and various other technical enhancements. Caleb's primary enemies were the hooded Cabal, and he dispatched them with one of the best arsenals yet seen in an FPS - including a flare gun, dynamite, voodoo doll, pitchfork, and Tommy gun. But Caleb's deadliest weapon was surely his collection of cinematic quotes - he was alive - "AGAIN!" - and he wanted a whole world of scum to know it - right before he blew them, gibs splattering everywhere, all over the damn shop.

At #1: Duke Nukem 3D (1996)

I didn't do a very good job of keeping my #1 secret, did I? To some it would have been pretty obvious before I'd begun. Ken Silverman's Build engine, married with the talented bods at 3D Realms, ended up creating by far the best shooter since Doom in the form of Duke Nukem 3D in 1996. The star of the show was the super-manly killing machine Duke Nukem, who was a huge homage to Arnold Schwarzennegger and was voiced by the now-legendary Jon St. John. Duke's mission was to defend a futuristic Los Angeles - and the world - from a malevolent alien race. With a set of guns to rival Blood's (including a shrink ray) Duke fought his way through strip clubs, Japanese villas, and a space station, annihilating everything in his path, stumbling across a felled marine from Doom, and coming out with quotes largely robbed from Bruce Campbell film Army of Darkness. And now, we await Duke Nukem Forever, and try not to think of the many cruel jokes levelled against Duke's long-awaited return. Perhaps when Duke comes across the dead Doomguy (and says, "That's one Doomed marine."), that was the very moment when the FPS began to become a genre in its own right, having moved out of Doom's shadow. Perhaps after all, that's what we have Duke to thank for. I for one can't wait for him to come back - and when he does, those alien bastards are going to pay for shooting up his ride. Oh, yeah - a video.

Conclusions

Some people say that today is the time when games, and the FPS, are at their best. I'm not sure I agree. Whilst we've had some astonishing shooters in the last few years, very few have been as imaginitive, original, funny or damn well made as some of those that followed in the wake of Doom. And yet a lot of people look down on some of these games - or can't see past their dated technology. The truth is that these games don't just show the way into the past, but also into the future - I for one would rather see another quality wise-cracking character like Caleb or Duke than another mind-bendingly boring git like whatever the guy from Crysis was called. The sense of humour, the sense of adventure has fallen out of fashion in the FPS world these days - but I think that by looking back to Doom and its followers - and they are followers, not clones, after all - we can see how we can marry modern game technology with wit, verve and style. To the past, and to the future…

My cat is sitting on the chair next to me, watching me type away.

I live in a family of four, we have one cat and one dog. The reason eludes me, but the cat, Sappho, has always been very close to me, while the dog has been distant. When people talk about dogs being a man's best friend, it always confuses me: my dog shows little regard for humans, with his tendency to deposite enough hair in a week to render most of the carpets invisible, his constant desire for food - more often than not my food - and his unescapable need to empty his bowels every day, which one of us or all of us must bear witness to on his daily walks. When he begs for food, half of the time he decides it smelled nicer than it tastes, and he coughs it up onto the floor. When he wants to leave a room, he doesn't even attempt to open the door when it is already slightly ajar. And when we are in close proximity, I normally end up with a sticky coating of saliva on my trousers.

Having a dog - or more specifically, having my dog - meets none of the prerequisites of a friendship.

Sappho, on the other hand, is the most dedicated friend I could hope for. She keeps me company when I'm alone, the end of my bed has become some kind of permanent home for her, and she doesn't smell of dog food (or cat food). Sappho can take care of herself; she regularly catches mice, she defends her territory; she keeps the dog away from all of the black clothing in my room, to which his shiny grey hair seems most attracted. Watching cats wash themselves is supposed to calm a person down; and judging by my cat's level of hygiene, I have her to thank for delaying any impending heart attack from fatty foods and stress.

Sometimes I think when she miaows I can almost understand what she is trying to say, be it food, space or attention; the dog, on the other hand, I can understand perfectly. He doesn't bark, he only sighs, obviously depressed with his relatively low position in the figurative food chain.

Over the past few months the number of arguments, debates and discussions I've had on religion has been exponential - since I decided to fully reject the idea of a god, it seems like the opportunities arrive daily. And, god (no pun intended) it ain't easy.

Hitler was a Christian … Stalin was an atheist

I'm sick of hearing those two names. The first thing people have to realise is that in their purest forms, neither religion nor atheism promotes immoral behaviour. As someone who has spent a large part of their life as a Christian, I'd define the fundamental nature of each as follows:

Religion

The belief that there is a greater force in the universe than can meet the human eye, now or ever. In many cases this force is the reason for the universe's existence, in others it is the embodiment of the universe itself. For some people, god is a personal entity, able to directly communicate with us; for others, he is a passive force, setting things into motion but not interfering afterwards. Importantly, there is an element of mysticism, which renders religion incompatible with science, but not necessarily a bad thing; whether it is right or wrong, unless it is misinterpreted it should not cause problems or harm.

Atheism

This is not necessarily a rejection of god, more a recognition that god, which by definition is unquantifiable, is unlikely as a result. Atheism is more a 'lack of belief' than a 'belief in a lack of'. The point of this distinction is that Atheists hope to get away from the idea of belief in general: the word implies faith in something which can not be proven, thanks to its continued use by the religious. Atheists prefer to have their 'beliefs' defined as a rational reaction to available evidence - that is, if there is evidence for something then it is probably true, if there is no evidence for it then it is probably not true. Again, this should spawn no tendency towards immoral behaviour - hatred of the type of religion described in the previous sectional is irrational, and should not be associated with a lack of belief in god.

—

Hitler and Stalin are examples of individuals, and the reason they are remembered is not because they were typical of atheists or religious, but because they were so different in their ideas about morality and rationality. The Holocaust, the witch hunts, the Inquisition - they are all examples of religion being perverted beyond what it should be, and even if they do give it a bad name, they should not be used to depict the people that have the right idea about religion. Similarly, if someone performs immeasurable evil in the name of atheism, which is less common, it is nothing to do with the ideology of most atheists.

Morality is innate … The Bible is necessary for Human Values

If a person is immoral, a person is immoral - and they are likely to be so more based on their upbringing, their peers and their situation. I like to have some faith in humanity where it comes to morals, and I certainly know that when I considered myself a Christian, I certainly wasn't against homosexuality, sex before marriage, religions other than my own … if that is true of me, I am fairly certain religious people are able to make moral decisions based on other factors than their holy book.

The crucial distinction that needs to be made is that atheists shoud consider religious morality unnecessary rather than dangerous. Those who are willing to literally believe what is written in the Bible are in a minority; and their tendency to do this is probably caused by indoctrination as children - if children are brought up as open minded Christians, they are less likely to follow religious principles by the book.

Can't prove he exists … Can't prove he doesn't

So why try? If someone is going to make the change either way, I would hope it would be down to an understanding of probabilty, rather than a deluded idea that it is certain than god either exists or doesn't.

I would go so far as to say that if people were less likely to pervert the idea of religion to justify war, crime and discrimination, it would be entirely tolerable. The atheist reaction to religion should be towards this alone, rather than the existence of god or the extreme actions done in its name.

There are a number of people to blame for this:

• The spambot coders. Really, there has to be a better way to make a living. What if you had a 'quality content' bot instead?

• The idiots that click on the links. You're not going to see Britney Speeaarz Expozed, so why bother!?

• Those damned celebrities.

I always figure targetting a problem at its source is the best way of solving it, so listen up. If you're a celebrity, and you're reading this, please start wearing a woolly jumper, and some kind of reflective anti camera-flash coating. Stay indoors - in fact, stay indoors in general, you have no purpose to begin with without junking up forums on the side. Change your name. Stop being vaguely attractive. And God damn it, stop exposing yourselves in public.

Hell, I haven't published a novel. But I've tried harder, and got further, than most. I remember trawling huge numbers of sites trying to find some master plan, some unstoppable secret weapon to help me get my first novel published. What I can tell you is that the guides that are out there are largely contradictory and often misleading. And whilst the business of writing and publishing novels is a difficult, time-consuming, and ruthless one, there are a few golden rules that you can try to stay within if you're really serious about becoming the next Stephen King, Philip Pullman or (god help us) Dan Brown.

Write a brilliant and/or commercial novel

To get published, a novel needs to either be brilliant or commercial. Ideally, it needs to be both. The Honda corporation has long asserted that a good product will sell itself, and this is probably true, but conversely R.L. Stine's kids horror books weren't exactly darlings of the critical media but probably made the guy enormous mountains of cash. You might imagine that for you to get your novel published, you'll need to send in a hefty manuscript which when read by an experienced and kindly publisher's employee, will suddenly set their world on fire and then bang, you're published. As we'll realise, this is a bit disconnected from the truth. That said, you do of course need to write something that makes a very good impression on the readers at the sinister corporate HQ of your chosen manuscript recipient. But remember that a novel, upon publication, is a commercial entity like anything else when the reader first sets eyes on your manuscript among countless others, there's one line they'll be particularly fixated on. The bottom line. Publishers are out to make a profit – the more huge, the better. Remember this and you have a chance.

Make your manuscript appropriately

You won't be able to visit the publishers personally and describe to them in great detail how you're epic Tolkien-esque fantasy is supposed to work. Your manuscript, a copy of part of or the entirety of your work that you send to them, must speak for you. Of course this means that your story must be clear and easily understandable – but it means other things as well. Think about what your manuscript actually consists of – seventy handwritten, painstakingly copied pages? I think not. Print your manuscript in a sensible font and size and on good quality paper, and print in perhaps tens of times. Buy plastic binding coils from a decent stationer and use these to make a smart binding for your text – you don't want pages to be flying around everywhere when it arrives, getting mixed up with period romances. Make sure the pages are numbered and that your name and the novel's title appears at least on the cover page, if not at the top of each page. Make chapters, paragraphs and sections out clearly.

Also, think carefully about how much of your novel to send off. The first chapter or a full third? Even the whole thing? Sometimes it's best to keep your cards close to your chest and send a small portion that ends on a cliffhanger. Alternatively, if you send the whole thing and they like the start, they might digest the rest and you're in there. Of course, if you're ending is poor, keep it back long enough to improve it, before they tear you apart.

Decide where to send your manuscript

This is a big decision, and you should devote a lot of thought to it – where are you going to send your manuscript? Most people would send it straight off to a publisher – I'd strongly discourage this. Publishers of any repute are huge, bustling, horrific places that don't take kindly to unsolicited submissions – like yours. Instead, I'd send your manuscript to a literary agent. These are much smaller bodies which act as an intermediary between writers and the huge publishing houses. There are various advantages to sending your text off to one:

1. They receive fewer manuscripts than a publisher, and can give yours more time
2. If you're lucky, they're more likely to respond to you personally
3. There are lots more to choose from
4. If they accept you, they do the legwork in attempting to entice a publisher

If you search around on the net, you'll soon find lots and lots of websites for these literary agents. They act as the gatekeepers for the publishing business – always scouting for the next big thing. Because of this, they often accept, or even encourage, unsolicited manuscripts. It's just a case of deciding which of them to send your text off to. Except – you shouldn't choose just one. Generally, the waiting time for a response is at least a month and so you should use a shotgun method – using the many copies of your manuscript or excerpt, send them off to multiple literary agents either all at the same time or on a staggered basis. The more you send, the better your chances of publication.

How to send your manuscript

This seems obvious – just put it in the post, yes? Not quite. Firstly, you're going to need a covering letter for each of the manuscript copies you send out. This should be a formally-addressed piece, brief but descriptive, giving the barest details about your plot and what you're trying to achieve. Don't grovel, and don't sound desperate. Try to give off a carefree attitude, as if you've got a thousand other agents to send this to. Because of course, you have.

Take account of how much the postage is going to cost you – if you're sending a 200,000 word novel in its entirety on A4 to twelve agents, the cost is going to stack up. Budget carefully if you're hoping that literary fame will drag you out of poverty. The other thing is, it's normal practice to send a stamped and addressed envelope with your manuscript so that the agent can freely send your text back to you. You don't expect them to pay, do you? Obviously, this envelope needs to be big enough.

Deal with waiting

If you get any response at all within a month count yourself lucky. This process takes time. Don't get impatient, and definitely don't badger the agent. They've no obligation to send you anything, but don't worry, they almost certainly will.

Types of responses

There are a few basic types of responses, one of which you can expect from each of the agents you send to.

1. Outright rejection
2. A letter written by the agent with their comments
3. Nothing

As you can tell, numbers 1 and 3 are pretty bad so you're hoping for 2. 1 is pretty damn likely and 3 is pretty damn unlikely. If 1 happens, you may well receive a little pre-printed card that simply and politely thanks you for your submission but informs you of your rejection. If a few months go by (say, three or four) you'll know that 3 has probably happened. If 2 happens, you can have a little celebration. You'll feel really proud, I can tell you. Basically the agent will address a letter to you personally and will send it to you in with your returned manuscript. It's possible that this letter is in itself, a rejection. If it is, however, you'll probably have received some constructive criticism from a professional, in which case, don't feel too bad. Take it on board and if you want to, try again, or re-edit your text. Alternatively, the agent might ask you to either contact them or send them more of your text if you didn't send them the whole thing in the first place. We're really entering into a grey area here – there's really no telling in many ways what the agent will actually do. They're human beings after all, and they may well have mixed feelings about your work. You'll have to hope that you strike it lucky, because there's a lot of luck involved in the whole process.

Conclusions

There's no way around it – this is a tricky business. But I must stress the first point again – you really need to be sure that what you've written is worth the cost and effort of attempting to get support from a literary agent to help you get it published. Bear in mind the vast volume of writing that both agents and publishers receive every day, let alone every month or year. Masses of it is dreadful tat, which they quickly eliminate – but no doubt there's also a lot of competition between the better pieces out there. Make sure that yours can see off the competition, in some way or another.

Once you're sure of that, my method should see you well up to the final stages. By that time it will become so personalised that there's no way anyone can predict how the interplay between writer and agent/publisher will play out. Remember that the whole game is about making yourself seem professional, passionate about what you're doing, and remaining determined. If you're truly passionate enough about the whole idea, even if you've tried my suggestions and failed – no doubt you'll one day find a way. Sometimes the way to achieve something lies beyond the realm of prediction or suggestion. But I can hardly write an article about that, can I?

Good luck.

"We use a special alphabet of our own" describes the lama. So how many characters are they using? Their limit on the length of the names is nine characters - so if we assume they plan to use words of any length up to nine characters, the number of possible names can be expressed as

Where A is the number of characters in their alphabet.

So, assuming 1 billion is 10^12:

• When A=26, the number of possible names is 5.65 billion
• When A=27, the number of possible names is 7.92 billion
• When A=28, the number of possible names is 10.97 billion

Obviously none of these results can be rounded to the nearest billion, to give nine billion. Even if we assume Clarke means only names that are nine characters long (the number of which could be expressed as A^9), we are still left with no results which round to nine billion.

Obviously given that we lack the exact alphabet used, it is impossible to reproduce the exact process described - but what if we were to try the same in Python, using our own alphabet?

alphabet = tuple('abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz')

def names(length, prefix=''):
_for char in alphabet:
__print prefix + char
__if length - 1:
___names(length - 1, prefix + char)

To test this process, I used an alphabet consisting of 'a' and 'b', with a maximum word length of two characters. And it appeared to work:

a
aa
aaa
aab
ab
aba
abb
b
ba
baa
bab
bb
bba
bbb

I ran a full 26 word alphabet with a maximum word length of nine characters for ten minutes. It reached 'aaaaajjnk'.

At the end of Clarke's story, the machine finishes its task, and the stars are described as going out, one by one.

Anyone care to try?

It surprises me that there is not more fraud on the internet. In fact, it's enough to give a renewed faith in the majority people that run their own websites.

I'm a student, and in my spare time I do some web design, and some coding - among other things. I'd consider myself fairly adept at languages like PHP and Python, and during the past few years I've written a few proof-of-concept ideas that require users to create an account, and afterwards log in.

When most people think of internet fraud, they imagine hackers in darkened rooms logging passwords, and using them to steal bank details. Perhaps this does happen, even if t's rarely heard of. What I find surprisingly uncommon, though, is people's passwords being logged simply by the owners of the sites that they visit.

Consider this. If you were to create an account on this site, or for that matter almost any other website, it would be child's play for the webmaster of that site (in the case of BlueSunCorp that would be myself or Richard) to retrieve the password you use, and the email associated with it. Obviously I'm not going to do that, but imagine what I could do with those details:

• Deny you access to your email
• Reset account passwords on practically any other site you've signed up for - given that most sites send a randomly generated password to your email when you ask them to
• Log into Paypal and other online banking systems. Paypal at the very least uses your email address as a login, so if you have one password which fits all, this would be like robbing candy from a baby
• Wreak general havoc in your name

Essentially, I would practically have the power to steal your online identity, and given the scale of some individual's presences across the internet (myself included), the implications for this would be fairly massive, on a personal level.

The solution? At the very least, have a different password for your email account. That's it. Your email account, along with the associated password, is the quickest gateway for accessing most of your online data, and it's a scary thought. So keep it safe from sites you're not totally sure about.

This isn't meant as a scare-story, or a reason to avoid signing up to sites. It's just a warning; if you imagine what your email addresses password can anable people to do, do you really want it in anyone's database?

Chinese Whispers

When I looked at Christianity (which is all I can really talk about with much confidence) in terms of the 'bigger picture', it seemed that people have believed in a God for generations upon generations simply because their parents did before them. The whole idea of having religious 'experiences' or life changing moments is rare - in my experience, people have a given religion from birth, they  don't choose it, and in the majority of cases they stick to it until death.

This hereditary belief system does itself no favours. To begin with it gives religion a lack of credibility - surely a person of religion would be far more consciously sincere about their beliefs if they had actually chosen them? I decided that I had no strong convictions for the ideas of Christianity, so I gave it up.

Prescriptive Morality

Morality is one concept for which there is a lot of tension between those with faith and without. My personal stance is that humanity would be doing itself an injustice if we believed morality was something we were incapable of on our own. Of course it can be developed over time - and no human is born with a perfect set of morals - but to make the claim that without religion we would be unable to hold human values at all is absurd. I came to realise that I didn't need Christianity for morality - and in fact, I never had.

Living to Die

Most Christians I've talked to - and this surprised even me - held the belief that if God or Heaven were to be infallibly proven not to exist, they would no longer have any reason to live. Their argument - and the logic here is very much flawed - is that if we're dead for good, then what we do during life is unimportant, and life itself is hence meaningless.

When I realised God was nothing more than a human creation, it had the opposite effect; I have even more reason to live knowing that it's infinitely more likely that there's nothing after life. It's easy as a person of religion to become complacent, thinking that death isn't the end of everything - and living less of a life as a result. I don't want to make the same mistake.

Unlikely Entity

The prospect of a god having created the universe as we see it today is so unlikely, statistically, scientifically, even rationally, that I'm surprised I ever gave the idea credit. Religious statistitians would claim that that prospect of a universe coming into existence without the invervention of a divine entity is so unlikely as to be considered impossible - but what then is the probability of such an entity itself coming into being?

In a universe where alien life, even intelligent life other than our own, is so likely - simply because the universe itself is so exponentially massive - it would be selfish to assume that our own is the one favoured by such a god. Ar situation that would yield interesting questions: what if we were to one day create life of our own, even artificial intelligence? Does that not invalidate the idea of an all powerful deity being responsible for all life?

A Source of Comfort?

Human beings, myself included, are fairly suggestable. It has been shown multiple times, through advertising, psychological experiments, even optical illusions. If an idea is implanted in our heads firmly enough - like, for example, the idea that we are able to communicate with a god through prayer or other means - it is probable that at least a part of us will believe it. This was the final thing that got me. Look at religion from outside of the box, and it is simple to see how easy it is for someone to persuade themself that something is irrefutably true, despite there being no evidence either way and a very low probability that a book written thousands of years ago is anything more than a thing of literary interest.

—

If God does exist I apologise. I am sure (given the fact that I am created in his image) he will understand why I have chosen to discount him as improbable and unnecessary. If he doesn't, a lot of people are in for a disappointing death.

Did I mention, I've just ordered a pretty powerful, expensive gaming laptop from Zepto? Some of its power, I think, might go wasted …

Anyway, the first thing I needed to do was find the disk. It definitely wasn't a DVD case, which meant trawling through boxes and boxes of disks, often with no names along the spines. Three hours later - with a sore spine and a significantly less tidy room - I gave it up.

If you see Commandos somewhere in this picture, please tell me.

—

So I was left with one option, short of buying the game again. I jumped aboard the online pirate ship, and torrented it -

Except, the torrent ran for three days, stopping at a pitiful 7%. So I scoured the net, and chanced upon another torrent, seemingly more obscure, and with far fewer seeders. I had little hope for this one, so I left it to run overnight and checked back in the morning.

And it was done!

Mounting the disk in Windows XP was no problem at all - and installing it only required me to set compatibility mode to Windows 95. Running it was another matter. It loaded fine, got to the menu screen, but the moment I moved my mouse, I was sent straight back to the desktop, with an inevitable error. No matter how I did it - and I was almost at the stage of playing with just my keyboard - it crashed. Unplugging the mouse, unsurprisingly, didn't help.

Cue me trying to run every single compatibility mode combination known to man.

—

Anyway, I'd just recently installed Ubuntu Linux onto a seperate partition on my PC's hard drive, and remembering WINE, I decided to give emulated Windows a try. If it didn't work in the real thing, I figure, how could it run under Linux? But surprisingly, anyway, it did… only at 200% speed. But I could live with that.

Two days later, I'd successfully completed the first four missions, the accelerated rate ironically doing little to help me get through the missions at any decent speed. But still, it was Commandos, I was playing it, and to a degree I had achieved what I set out to do. It was all good fun I told myself. It was all fine now.

And then it stopped working. "I CANNOT FIND DIRECT X 5" it casually told me. What could I do about it? Nothing. Support for this game under Windows is practically non existent, never mind an entirely different operating system.

—

While I was hunting around for a solution, one of the things I searched for was 'Windows 95 Emulation'. I wasn't expecting to turn up much, but one thing jumped out: Microsoft Virtual PC. It seemed like a long shot, but I had a strong need for Commandos by this point, and a Windows 98 disk kicking around somewhere in the pile depicted above.

Nice try. No Windows 98 CD key for you.

—

Windows Virtual PC allows you to run an operating system within an operating system - what better way, I thought, than to run it on the operating system it was intended for? Well, a similar operating system, anyway.

I learnt from a friend that to install 98, I needed a Windows 98 specific boot disk - thankfully these were readily available on the internet. I wasn't so lucky with the actual floppy disk; the first three flat out refused to show any signs of working, and I was about to give up for 'corrupted-file' errors before I found one (dated from about 1992) that actually worked. So I formatted my new virtual drive, and went through the archaic 98 install process, all in a window - which felt slightly weird to say the least. Typing 'format C:' in a command line was not something I felt comfortable with!

I'm glad I started with XP…

—

Anyway, to bring this tale of woe to a close; Commandos is now, for the time being, up and running on a virtual install of Windows 98, within a real install of XP. And believe me, it was worth it. If you play any game before you die, play this one.

Next thing I need to try is to install the game on a virtual install of Windows 98, on emulated Windows XP under WINE in Linux. But that's a whole new day. Right now, I'm off to play Commandos.

My A level mathematics course contains a module of statistics, in which probability is briefly covered.

Today, my maths teacher began to talk about the discrete nature of the results from the throw of "a dice". My heart sank. Does the word 'die' - as in the singular form of 'dice' - really have to end its life in so undignified a way? It's not even a logical progression of the language: it doesn't make sense to use just one word, and it certainly doesn't sound any better that way.

These misguided people - and there are a lot - aren't using 'dice' as a conscious alternative to 'die', they simply just don't know any better. Most don't even believe me when I correct them: that can't be right, they insist, and I end up having to find a dictionary to prove it to them.

Are you planning on having children? Teach them the proper meaning. Tell your friends, co-workers, teachers, because I have trouble sleeping at night knowing that one day 'a dice' could become acceptable English. I wouldn't complain if you told them about the word 'datum', too.

In issue 2623 of New Scientist, for me dated 29th September 2007, there was an article about the correct usage of Tasers, and their safety. They raised several key points about the methods which are used to test the safety of Tasers, and the danger of these weapons.

"Critics, including Amnesty International, say these studies do not ask the right questions - pointing out that they were done on healthy volunteers at rest, not under the stress of a police encounter. Amnesty points to over 150 cases in the US between 2001 and 2006 where individuals have died in custody after receiving a Taser shock. Many of these people were either mentally ill, or in a state called "excited delirium" induced by very high doses of stimulants like cocaine, PCP or methamphetamine."

"More than 50 cases of wrongful death or injury have been brought against Taser International but so far the company has won each time or had the case dismissed."

New Scientist even points to a case in which a volunteer sustained a fractured spine as a result of a Taser shock. While more recent studies have attempted to reinforce the safety of Tasers by testing them on people who have undergone exhaustive exercise or are drunk, they cannot accurately replicate the stress and anxiety that Taser victims are invariably under when confronted by the police.

Here is an article is from July 2005, and documents the first time that shocks from a Taser were named as a primary cause of death: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0730taser30.html

"The death is the 18th case in which a coroner has cited Taser as a factor in someone's death and the fourth case where Taser has been named as a cause of death. But in all of those, Taser was secondary to other factors such as drugs, heart conditions or mental illness."

Clearly the signs have been here for a long time that Tasers are not simply stun guns. Since 2001 there have been hundreds of cases of Tasers causing serious injury and even death, and yet Taser International still started marketing Tasers to the public in 2004. They've sold 170,000 Tasers in the 42 states where they are legal to buy, and the frightening fact is that these Tasers are even more powerful than the Tasers that Law Enforcement officers use, delivering 30 second jolts, rather than 5 second ones.

The second focus of the New Scientist article is on the misuse of Tasers. The example it cites it that of Andrew Meyer, who was Tasered by police after he became particularly virulent in his language during a Question and Answer session with John Kerry. The incident took place on the 17th September. The video shows the harm that a Taser can cause. Rather than merely incapacitate the suspect, it acts almost as a torture device, evidenced by Meyer's screams.

Meyer did not sustain any injuries from this Taser attack, but the excessive force used by the officers against someone who was posing no threat of violence was the subject of much criticism. The Taser is deemed an incapacitant weapon, and is intended to be used to subdue aggressive behaviour. When introduced it was termed as a way to reduce firearm related deaths. In this case, it really should be used in cases where firearms would be justified. Not because a debate is getting a bit heated.

The real eye opener was the death of Robert Dziekanski, a Polish immigrant, who on the 14th October was killed after being repeatedly stunned by police wielding Tasers: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2007/11/14/bc-taservideo.html

There is a 10 minute Youtube video in which we see him become progressively more agitated as he is stuck in Vancouver airport unable to communicate with anyone following a delayed flight and 10 hours in customs. This video is a key example of Taser misuse, where we can see Tasers used to subdue a man who is is agitated, not aggressive. Within a minute of their arrival the Police had stunned him between two and four times, reports vary, despite the fact that he had calmed down when they arrived and was being cooperative.

As New Scientist clearly stated, the effects of Tasers on highly agitated subjects are still unproven and undeniably dangerous. There were 4 officers on the scene who saw fit to stun this man, with a weapon that is known to cause death, up to 4 times when they could have easily contained him themselves. In many cases, the use of Tasers can be an unavoidable last resort, but there are serious issues when police officers turn to this device within 30 seconds of arriving on the scene. The rules surrounding Taser use are nowhere near strict enough and, unless we see a reduction of Taser usage in non-threatening situations like this, we are going to see a lot more deaths as a result of these devices.

"Finland School Shootings: The Sad Evolution Connection"

I'll pause to let you observe that heading for a second. This is the latest attack on evolution - AnswersInGenesis.org have asserted that Pekka-Eric Auvinen was not out of his mind, he was simply a Social Darwinist. Out of respect for the dead, I'm surprised they even tread near this topic, shamelessly using a tragedy to attempt to give evolution a bad name.

http://answersingenesis.org/articles/2007/11/08/finland-fruits-of-humanism

Before I criticise the article: could it ever be possible for both sides of this so-called debate to stop reasoning based on the heinous acts of historical figures, or even modern day people, who have simply got it wrong? Even if the inquisition was in the name of Christianity, or if Hitler was an atheist, they're both completely irrelevant. I'm no Christian myself, but I at least recognise that those who do believe in a god mostly have the best in mind, and do have sound moral principles. Similarly, atheists don't feel empty inside, or lacking something. But this is an entirely seperate discussion; the point is, if religion or atheism should be criticised, it should be on the basis on whether it is rational - or not - to believe in an all powerful entity.

"As Christians who hold that people are made in the image of God", they state, "there is a basis for the value of human life and for absolute morality"

Firstly, everyone values human life, not just Christians. It's a nice way to seperate themselves from any audience that isn't - well, one of them. Absolute morality? Answer this one with any absolute conviction:

Imagine an enormously fat man standing next to a train track. Further on down the track are two young children playing on the track itself. A train is barreling down the track towards the children, and you are standing next the fat man. If you don't do anything, the train will kill the two children. If you push the fat man onto the track, the train will stop, the two children will be saved, and the fat man will die. What would you do? – blogs.princeton.edu

"During this time of healing, the debate over evolutionism …"

Evolutionism? Please stop naming it as if it was a belief.

"Evolutionism denies that the Bible is God’s Word and that God is the final authority"

The theory of evolution denies the Bible about as much as the modern laws which prevent us from stoning adulterers to death. Or the medicine which makes childbirth easier. Why pick and choose - we would all benefit if creationists were to live in a civilisation where a strict conformance with Christian dogma meant you probably couldn't even post stuff like this up on the internet.

"In such a religion, if God is left out, then the only other option for supreme authority is man. If that is the case, then each person can determine what is right and wrong in his or her own eyes."

That's why we're no longer in the 'Garden of Eden'. Please get over it. What could possibly be wrong with having the ability to determine our own moral values?

"This student professed to be a 'Social Darwinist', which is a fancy way of saying he held to the religion of evolution"

Please read up on what Social Darwinism is. It's not what you seem to think it is.

"If evolutionists are upset about this tragedy in Finland (or any other school shooting), then on what basis could they make a case to condemn it? On the basis of their materialistic beliefs, what they just observed was a random set of chemicals reacting with another random set of chemicals. Do evolutionists get upset with baking soda reacting with vinegar?"

Why do they continue to assume that it is only Creationists who have morals? They do humanity a huge injustice here; if it was suddenly, unrefutably proven tomorrow that there was no God (and there are many philosophical proofs) nobody would not go out murdering, raping and stealing. Atheists don't need a god to give them a reason to conform to their own basic morality - and apparently Creationists do? Based on this, we are supposed to believe that Christians have superior ethics and morals.

I hope they checked that none of the parents of the dead students accept evolution as truth - because apparently, if they do, they have no reason to feel upset.

"In order for them to justify being outraged, they have borrowed from the Christian worldview to acknowledge that such things are wrong"

Even if you do believe that Earth is only 6000 years old, that still leaves 4000 years before Christianity came into play. It must have been a harsh world before then, without anything to base our morality on.

There are more points which I could pick out - but please, read the article yourself. I appreciate that that majority of Christians wouldn't dream of assosiating themselves with those who run and write for this website - or, hopefully, Creationists in general. And there is more on that particular site, so much so that my soul despairs. That is, the soul I would have, if I accepted the literal version of an archaic book and discounted all rationality.

I read a great page today, detailing several ideas for how computing power - and artificial intelligence - will advance. Some of the concepts Eliezer S. Yudkowsky explores here are flat out fascinating - so much so that I've written about a few of them, if you're interested in a synopsis of some of the things he has to say.

Computing Speed

"If computing speed is doubling every two years," he states, "What happens when computers are doing the research?"

This idea is central to the article; it's beatifully simple and makes a surprising amount of sense. The premise is this: one day, we can assume computers will be capable of processing powers similar to the human brain. What if, then, there was a way to let the computers themselves research their own development? To begin with, they will - theoretically - do this at the same rate we do, given similar ability. They will take two years' subjective time, to double their own intelligence. But in doing this, they become doubly as capable, and as a result two years of their subjective time is shortened to the space of one year of ours. The process repeats, the time becoming smaller and smaller, and eventually they reach a singularity of intelligence.

This has its flaws - for a start, no computer has yet been built with the potential to further its own ability, or power. This also ignores a possible physical limit to the amount of possible computing power - though with the rise of quantum computing, these theoretical limits are being pushed back further, continuously. This continually self improving artificial intelligence, asserts Yudkowsky, whether it is desirable or not, is certainly inevitable, and the natural progression for any intelligent species.

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To assert my own opinion here, the idea of artificial intelligence is one that I am sceptical of, but only with regards to present computers. At the present day, computers are designed to take inputs and give outputs; their reactions, if you discount the layers of abstraction which allow more and more complex things to be achieved with computers, are entirely predictable. The only feasable method I could imagine for an artifical intelligence would be one that was allowed to develop itself from scratch. Perhaps an accelerated version of the natural selection we see in nature, with a built in tendency for mutation? The type of computers within which AI will evolve, in my opinion, will be vastly different from those designed today.

Humans as Machines

Although this particular point seems far fetched at a first glance, it's actually a very interesting and compelling idea. What if, Yudkowsky asks, we develop sufficient nanotech to synthesise and replicate individual neurons? If, say, we were to contstruct a nano-robot capable of scanning each individual neuron in the human brain, replacing each one at a time with a perfect artificial copy. Certainly, we would not be aware of any change, and our brains would continue to function in exactly the same way. So at what point do we stop becoming human?

To extend this argument, when it is possible to create and replace every element of the human body, when a human is entirely replaced by nanotech, will we have discovered the secret to life itself? Or will we have simply turned a human into a computer?

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I only hope that if such technology does become possible, which given human advancement over the past few hundred years seems infinitely likely, I will be there to see it.

To some, the prospect of eternal life is an enticing fate, and many believe that they can achieve this with cryogenics, or cryonics to be accurate. I’ve always viewed cryonics with an intense pessimism, but I’ve become a lot more open towards it after reading several studies about the success that has been achieved in preserving the brain. However, it is still reliant on ‘future medicine’ to repair or replace the damage that your body has suffered in your ‘first life’. There are even efforts within the cryogenic community to make it more accessible to the common person, with cheaper plans available if you only want to freeze your head (Neuropreservation). This is especially appealing as ‘future science’ will undoubtably be able to provide you with a perfect new body. Perhaps this is a sensible idea though, it is much cheaper, and the process of freezing can irreparably damage much of the body.

Perhaps if my life was going to be cut short by dying young I could be enticed into spending large amounts of money trying to freeze myself, after all these people purely desire a full life, but it is the people who just want more that bother me. Disregarding any ethical issues (be it the soul, your identity, or whether this ‘future society’ will still care about you enough to reanimate you) it's just greed. Or maybe they are just afraid of death. You need to be legally dead to be frozen, so if ever cryonics is successful, then mankind will have discovered a ‘cure’ for death. That still does not mean eternal life though, and they will all have to face death someday.

Perhaps I am wrong. Maybe in 30 years, when I am getting older, Cryonics will evolve into a realistic way to extend your life. I still foresee problems. Unless Humankind spreads out a bit more, and I am equally pessimistic about the prospect of colonies on other planets (not for a long time at least) I can’t see any future society rushing to revive the hoards of people who want a second go at life.

The Cryonics institute, http://www.cryonics.org/reprise.html, seeks to answer many of the questions I have raised. Here are some extracts from their answer to the question “What happens to the soul of a cryonics patient?”

Many cryonicists do believe in a soul. If cryonics is simply an unproven medical procedure there is no more reason to believe that the soul goes away during cryopreservation than during a night's sleep.

Does this therefore mean that the soul does not leave the body when it dies? So, at what point does the soul leave the body? These patients have died. They are not sleeping.

Cryonics is not in conflict with religion any more than medicine is in conflict with religion.

Maybe from their point of view. To me, resurrection of the dead gives new meaning to ‘playing god’.

Cryonics patients are not regarded as dead by cryonicists.

So, even though they are legally dead…

How long can future medicine potentially extend human life? Perhaps by hundreds or thousands of years or more. Plans of an omniscient God would not likely be thwarted by human efforts to extend human life hundreds or thousands of years. Hundreds or thousands of years is not a significant amount of time in the context of eternity.

Am I the only person not tempted by the prospect of living for thousands of years? I can barely make it through Monday without wanting to end it all. Thousands of years? The final point that they make, however;

To refuse new life extension technologies could be a sin comparable to suicide.

Bullshit. Are they seriously inferring that not being cryogenically frozen is a sin? What narcissistic crap. I honestly cannot believe that they would say something like that, and it appals me.

Lets take a look at three news stories that I've been reading today.

Firstly, a budding mechanic: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7091904.stm 

The man … had removed all but one of the nuts on the right rear wheel. Frustrated by the one remaining nut which refused to budge, he resorted to fire power in an effort to shift it.

Secondly, the brutal uprising of man's best friend: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7068549.stm 

Alan Foster, a spokesman for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, told the AFP news agency it was not uncommon for hunters to be shot by their dogs.

 Thirdly, one of the big news stories of this past week: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7082795.stm

An 18-year-old man killed five boys, two girls and the female principal of Jokela High School.

 I'm all for humourous news articles, I hate reading newspapers and watching the news when all they talk about is death and destruction, but this is borderline hypocrisy. It fascinates me that from the huge number of gun murders and injuries, it is the light-hearted stories which they invariably use, unless we have a large-scale news story, such as the school shooting, in which case we'll inevitably see the media adopt an anti-gun stance. Maybe I just don't find guns funny, but I don't think that they should be giving humourous angles when they'll no doubt be returning to their anti-gun articles as soon as the next major tragedy occurs.

The editorial for this week's New Scientist raises an interesting question, although Jeremy Webb's opinion is not one I share. "The idea that science can replace religion in the public conciousness is not only fanciful", he states, "it's also bad for science". The article which proceeds from this is entitled "God's place in a rational world", and is written by Michael Reilly. The bulk of the conclusions he makes are as follows:

Human rights are purely metaphysical. Similar to religion, it is not possible to do a CT scan and isolate the area of our brains responsible for rights, values, etc.

Despite our limited knowledge of the human brain, this point is largely true. However, the difference between human rights and religious doctrine is its ability and necessity to adapt. Two hundred years ago, women did not have the right to vote: since then we have not evolved the ability to see our error, nor has a divine entity commanded us to change. We have simply realised that our ideas of human rights have been flawed, and likely always will be - thus we should seek to improve them whenever possible.

This method of trial and improvement ties in far more closely to the scientific method than the principles of religion. While most religious principles are agreeable, they are also idealist - and in many cases they are designed to be taken literally in today's age, despite a basis on a long gone society of the past.

Whether our minds are designed - or more appropriately evolved - with 'built-in' human rights is irrelevant: the point is that we have the capacity for it. This is the same for any abstract concept; science, religion, morality, and to say that we should respect all of them because of this is absurd. We may have the capacity in our mind for wrongdoing and maliciousness, but that is not to say that they are in any way positive things.