It's a few days now since Clifford Longley's supposed complaint to the ASA was released on the internet via the wonders of blogging (for example search Google for the string "According to growing numbers of scientists, the laws and constants of nature are so").

I did just that search, along with a few others to see whether Clifford Longley had indeed made that complaint to the ASA with the plagiarised text.  (See my post Rebutting Clifford Longley), and I'm unable to see any  evidence that (a) the complaint has been made and (b) that it is anything to do with Clifford Longley.

The ASA complaint about the Atheist Bus ad campaign, as reported in the Guardian website supposedly emanates from one Clifford Longley.  In fact, the complaint is largely plagiarised from a religious website, and makes the same strategic cock-ups as many a creationist tract does: old quotations, out of context quotations, quotations incorrectly attributed, quotations that may never have been made.  Add to the mix an argument from authority, presumably right up the street for someone who can accept the most improbable drivel from an priest figure, and you have a classic set of misapprehension masquerading as an academic exercise.  Perhaps the whole thing is a hoax?

I read in the blogosphere that over 50 complaints have been made to the ASA - if they are all as pathetic as this one and that of Stephen Green, I say bring them on!

Introduction

I fancied a change from the old website template, which has been going for more than a year.  The new template is a modified Siteground template.

I had a few issues making the header image work with Internet Explorer 6 and earlier (the notorious png problem), but seem to have cracked that.  As usual, the the site has been tested with a variety of browsers on Linux (Firefox 3.0.5, Epiphany 2.24.1, Konqueror 4.1.3, Opera 9.63).  In Win XP I've looked at it on IE 6 and 7, and it seems to work (now the png fix for IE versions =<6 has been implemented.  I haven't tried Chrome, or any browser on Mac OSX.

I was interested to know more about Stephen Green, the man who has filed a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority against the Atheist Bus ad campaign.  The blog site mediawatchwatch has an interview with Stephen Green, dating from June 2005.  In it, he demonstrates an astonishing lack of understanding of biology and evolution by natural selection.  For example, on one of the classic examples of sexual selection, the peacock's tail:

Why does the peacock have such a magnificent tail? ‘So he can attract a mate', the evolutionist replies. So how does the hedge-sparrow do it? 

Here's another attempted broadside from religious wackos. A comment article on the Guardian website from Andrew Brown presents a statement that "distinguished religious affairs commentator" Clifford Longley (who? Presumably this Clifford Longley, who's website hasn't been updated in a while) has made, in addition to the crackpot Christian Voice, complained to the ASA about the atheist bus advert.

In an astonishingly inane piece, Longley maintains

it would be honest and true to say the opposite - "There probably is a God."

Christian Voice are an evangelical christian lobby group which is a bit cross about the atheist bus advert campaign.  From their website, Christian Voice...

...is a ministry for those Christians who are fed up with the way things are, who have had enough of secularist politicians imposing wickedness on the rest of us and who are not satisfied with trying to get ‘Christian influence in a secular world' because they know ‘The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein' (Psalm 24:1). If you want instead to lift high the Crown Rights of the King of kings, you have found the right place!

For some months now the campaigners at nodpi who are working to prevent widespread adoption of deep packet inspection such as that implemented by Phorm have been seeking clrification of why the BBC use cookies to send of records of your IP address, your Post Code*, and what parts of their website (e.g. iPlayer videos) you've been viewing off to a third party company in the USA. This third party is Omniture, formerly known as Visual Sciences. The BBC say this is in order to monitor usage of their website. Response is here; the whole thread can be viewed here. Interestingly, such transfer of personal data seems to be legal under EU legislation, as indicated in this quotation from the FOI response Dephormation finally received:

To the extent that the bbc.co.uk homepage is capturing IP addresses and post code data for anonymous statistical reporting purposes, the BBC confirms that the BBC treats both IP addresses and post code data as “personal data” within the meaning of the Data Protection Act 1998, despite the currently uncertain legal position around IP addresses in particular. Given its position, the BBC does not permit the transfer of IP addresses and user post code data to countries outside of the European Economic Area (“EEA”) unless those countries have “adequate data protection standards” and/or there are strong contractual data protection provisions in place with the data processor. It is correct that Omniture is a USA company and therefore operates outside the EEA. However, Omniture do satisfy the European Union's Directive on Data Protection’s requirements by demonstrating “adequate data protection standards” by registering with the US Department of Commerce’s safe harbour framework.

The Times reports that the Home Office has adopted a plan to allow British police to hack into people's personal computers without a warrant.

If true, this is a pretty shocking extension to investigative powers.  Apparently it was made possible by an amendment to the Compter Misuse Act 1990 - the proposals included breaking into a suspect's house to install keyloggers and sending emails bearing malware that allows remote access to a PC.

The Daily Telegraph today has a report on the British Humanist Association's atheist bus advert (which I posted about back in October: Humanist message on London buses).  It's a peculiar article from the religious affairs correspondent that seems to emphasise the existence of the buses bearing the advert, rather than what I take to be the significant aspect of the story - that enough cash has been raised to fund 800 buses across the country (not just London).  Amusingly, one of the links on the sidebar is to this story from August entitled Atheists fail to cough up for London bus ad, while another, from October is entitled Atheist buses ready to roll across country after making £31,000 in a day.

I guess I must have missed the initial unsuccessful phase of the fund-raising campaign, and merely contributed to its resurrection in October!