I meant to write this entry days ago, but things have kept me busy. I wanted to say that I am tired of the bullying that goes on at RSBANDB regarding religion. It’s often now that I see videos not unlike the one I saw a few days ago which compared god to a jug of milk. Time hardly goes by without a spiteful jab thrown from the opposing side that uses condescention to essentially shame people when it comes to the matter of god and religion. The pure childishness of this amazes me. If any grown adult posted something like that, I’d have called him a child. But since a child posted that, I have nothing to say for his ignorance.

This isn’t about who believes what, it’s about the lack of maturity and pseudo-intelligence used by people to make themselves feel better. Never once have I called anyone’s beliefs stupid, illogical, or pointless. Nor have I ever attempted to humiliate anyone for what they believe. I hear some Atheists say that a world without religion would be a lot better. Is a world full of sheer bigotry without the guise of religion to lay blame really any better?

I don’t want to debate religion anymore. The people who constantly try to wind others up are simply lacking in their own lives and I don’t want part of it. I believe that to only accept truth as seen by the five senses is unintelligent in itself. To simply stop and say “I only want to believe what I can see. Nothing more” is knowingly cheating yourself of the journey to find truth. The small voice in our minds that tells us right from wrong, the event that happens in our lives that we have no explanation for..to me, these are mysteries worth not discarding as fiction or attempting to rationalise when they cannot be rationalised. They’re the very things which set us apart from all other animals and I am proud to always be in wonder.

I am ecstatic to see that the goal sigs are now a part of RSBANDB. I hope everyone enjoys them since Shane and I put a large amount of work into creating them. Check out Shane’s blog post on it for more details about what has been upgraded and added. Now we can move onto a much larger project ;)

On a slightly lower note, there seems to be management problems on Draynor.net.

As for the reason I left, I left simply because Clooth was dictating most of my decisions and then yelling at me for the decisions I had made. After a period of time it became ever so annoying, so I simply said goodbye. Also, I do not wish to ever be added to the ‘Honoured (Should be Honored.) Members’ group. Seeing Clooth obviously doesn’t trust me as he once did. Finally, congratulations Tovent, well deserved position for you. Best of luck in the future mate’. - Mostovskiy

From the words of a former admin himself regarding the reasons why he left. It seems to me that there are some pretty sketchy issues going on over there in how Clooth is dealing with admins. I’m not sure if this alleged attitude trickles down to the moderators or what. All I can say is that when you have a former admin publicly post something like that, there’s bad blood going on. On RSBANDB, you don’t see us moderators or administrators post things like this. We handle our disagreements privately without subjecting an entire forum to our arguments.

I guess that’s one of the things that makes me happy to be on RSBANDB and not Draynor.

Edit: I found this funny.

Yesterday, I was talking a bit about summer reading with Brad and I realised that I’ve not sat down to read a good book for a long time. So, since I’m going to be busy this summer (getting a job soon and all), I’ve limited 5 books for myself this summer. I know what I want my first 1-3 books to be, but I need a few of your suggestions.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:

- Freakonomics: This book would’ve helped me out during my Economics class, but I figured I should give this a try. Looks fascinating.

- The Language of God: Now, I did get a chance to look this over before I left for the US because I had borrowed the book from a friend. I didn’t get very far since I was busy and now I want to get back to it. After reading The God Delusion (Dawkins), I felt that I should probably get another educated opinion of Mr. Francis S. Collins (SINCE I TOTALLY MET HIM ONCE..well I shook his hand. Still.).

- The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: I saw it at the bookstore and thought it interesting.

Now, good friends, I’m relying on your suggestions for the last two books. I’m into fiction and also non-fiction (so long as it’s interesting and not obscenely long). I particularly like sci-fi and fantasy. I’m also into non-fiction philosophy, politics, and economics. But..I also like the classics

If you can think of any more, feel free to post them here.

1. Cheese - Probably the most bullshit “random” word of all. People who write this word in attempt to look cool and eccentric are complete morons. Avoid them at all risks.
2. Moo - Stop the moo-ing. It’s not cute, funny, original, or random.
3. Llamas - It was funny four years ago and it was semi-funny in Napoleon Dynamite. It’s not funny from you.
4. Pie - “Man, pie is good” or “I like pie.” You’re an idiot.
5. Pants - LOL WEARING ARTICLES OF CLOTHING IS FUNNY. It’s not. Please stop it.

I’m in a bad mood.

Alright, I had to remove some links from my sidebar because some of the blogs that I linked to weren’t updated frequently enough. So. I want everyone who sees this post now to post their blog links so that I can link to you. I can’t, however, link to you if you endorse anything that’s against RSBANDB rules. No low polygon nude RS characters, please.

Post away. But please, only BLOG links.

I got a real treat today.. I got to visit Amish country in Pennsylvania. It was extremely interesting to see how they live their lives. When we were driving along busy roads with nowhere for pedestrians to walk, there they were. Walking in the hot sun. They’re pretty quiet people and they don’t engage anyone in conversation. I bought some preserved jam from them and they’re very polite. I almost wanted to speak German to some of them (it’s fascinating how they speak an antiquated form of High German), but I figured it wasn’t really..right.

So anyway, we went around their little town. They make pretty simplistic furniture and their idea of a good meal is pickled vegetables with undercooked meat. Not my taste. But yes, it was interesting. I had a strange feeling of respect for them, even though they’re extremely devout Christians. I guess it’s the fact that they keep to themselves which makes them sort of admired and also mysterious.

I got a Daily Deviation today! For today, one of my pieces of art is on the front page of DeviantART. I am so proud (and shocked) since getting two Daily Devs in 3 months is almost unheard of. I am truly flattered that I was chosen out of so many other works.

I’m going to go jump around some more.

Okay, first things first… This was all my fault.

It turns out that my two original psd’s of those two sigs weren’t containing the watermark. I have no idea how that happened since all sigs I made for people had them. The watermark layer could’ve, I don’t know, been hidden.  Either way, when I uploaded it, it didn’t have one! So, in essence, the screw-up was on my side.

Now, with that said, I feel honestly terrible. I seriously do. So I’m saying right now that I’m sorry to Nate for my stupid mistake. None of this was his fault at all and I wrongly WRONGLY accused him of something he never did. So, let this be a lesson to me.

So, today I’m not talking about god or Jagex. I’m talking about how the chat admin of our site ripped off my signatures. I started a signature shop not too long ago because I wanted to give back to the people on RSBANDB. I made up a set of 8 guild wars signatures and put them up in Graphics Trader. All I asked in return was that people did not enter these sigs in the SOTW and that they did not alter them. This INCLUDES the watermark. Does the watermark say “Made by MQ”? No. It says “www.rsbandb.com”..the name of the community which I’m proud to be a part of. I wanted to put the site address on there so that people who used the signatures off-site displayed the address to RSBANDB where they could get a sig like that of their own.

Back on track. I got a PM from Nate about three days ago where he asked for each sig with his name on it. Now, in the past, a lot of us ex-DCC members have had some bad blood with each other. Since then, we pretty much made up, so I made him these sigs without any second thought. I give him them a day later and he IMs me on MSN:

Nate (Frogger): hey you there?
MQ: yep
Nate (Frogger): Could I have you change the rsbandb.com to natedentzau.net? =\
MQ: sorry, i can’t.
Nate (Frogger): Why?
MQ: i rather have a watermark that leads back to my home, rsbandb. lol
Nate (Frogger): Ok.
Nate (Frogger): do you have any avy’s?
MQ: and i guess i want people to know where they can get their own version of the sigs
MQ: no, i never made any. if you like, you can crop each one to your liking
Nate (Frogger): I’ll be using it on other sites other than rsbandb.
Nate (Frogger): All my sigs link back to my site natedentzau.net
Nate (Frogger): that’s why i asked
MQ: i know that. but since i made it, i’d like to have my own watermark on it.
Nate (Frogger): it’s not really your own.
MQ: yeah, i know. but if you want to use them, i’d rather they stay unaltered. unless you wanted to make your own from the GW renders on their official site
Nate (Frogger): nah it’s fine
Nate (Frogger): i can live with it.
MQ: ok
Nate (Frogger): grr
Nate (Frogger): what font do you use?
Nate (Frogger): I’m waaayyy over sig limits right now
MQ: resizing it in ps doesnt help?
Nate (Frogger): it would look weird if i cutt 50px from the pic. o_O
MQ: no, just do an image resize. it wont crop anything.
Nate (Frogger): but it will look weird
Nate (Frogger):
MQ: theres hardly a difference.
Nate (Frogger): ok
MQ: in PS go to image/image size and chop off 50 px and check “constrain proportions”

After that, he didn’t respond. Notice how I didn’t even get a “thank you”? Well, that sort of bugged me and the whole convo bothered me. I got the weird suspicion that he just went ahead and edited out the watermark anyway. He probably thought that I would never figure it out since I don’t visit RuneVillage. Well, thankfully, I did check up on him and I saw this.

Original:

Nate’s “version”:

Original:

Nate’s “version”:

So, thanks a lot, Nate. It’s good to see that you lead by example. I realise that these two were the only ones you “altered”. Perhaps you hadn’t got around to editing RSBANDB out of the others.

You know how sometimes you completely disagree with people, but you still enjoy reading what they write? Well, case and point.. I was bored to-day, and I paid a visit to Richard Dawkins’ official website. Well, despite having a different ideology from the guy, I find him clever and not difficult to read/listen to/watch. After browsing the site (Check my Tumblog for a sort of funny picture I found), I found myself really interested in his blog.

The payoff for bin Laden has been mayhem and chaos, costly delays and maddening inconvenience to millions of travellers, in every hour of every day, in every airport of every country (except some third world ones with the good sense to ignore the whole charade). Those useless plastic knives and forks were nothing but a signal to the home electorate: We’re gonna kick some ass, and these plastic knives show it, you better believe it. And did some bearded loon once pack explosives into his shoes? Right then, we’ll show those folks we mean business. We’ll smoke ‘em out and teach those terrists who rules this town, yessirree. From now on nobody – and ah mean nobody – boards a plane without first removing their shoes, whenever they board a plane anywhere – and ah mean anywhere – in God’s own country.

Firstly, I’m dying to hear a Dawkins Southern accent. It’d just be humourous to see that little grey-haired man dressed in his sweater break out into some good ‘ol country speak. That aside, I was a bit troubled. I expect my grandparents to complain about taking their shoes off at the airport (should they ever visit the United States), but that’s mostly because old people, understandably, smell badly in general and removing one’s shoes can be a bit embarrassing because of it. I’m straying from this point though. I mean to say that complaining about a country’s “security” measures is something that we all do..young and old. The only difference is that Dawkins is sort of putting the cherry on top by suggesting that this is a result of god– not incompetence in America’s foreign policy.
Sure, you may say that religion does play a role in this and I wholeheartedly agree. But, to what point? To the point where we can use god as an excuse for every bad thing that humans do? We humans, as complex and wonderfully sophisticated as we are, aren’t perfect. We hurt people in the name of power, greed, anger..the list goes on. So how much of this is related to believing in something supernatural?

I can’t really answer that and neither can anyone else. All I can put forth is that religion is used as an excuse on both sides. It’s used by Islamic extremists to coerce young men into radical behaviour. It’s used by evangelical Christians to secularise and radicalise parts of the country. It’s even used by authors, Dawkins included, who want to push an agenda as far as they can. The thing that all of these people have in common is that they’re trying to breed a revolution. Dawkins wants people to believe that a world without god would be peaceful and happy. Terrorists want to believe that a world without Western powers would be peaceful and happy. Christians, same thing. It’s the “salvation” belief.
I’m in no way saying that Dawkins is deserving of being compared to terrorists, but I’m saying that the same method exists in what he says. “Well, maybe, but he’s not telling people to go out and hurt others!” Of course, but that’s what the Atheist movement is lacking.. a plan of action. The current plan of action is to just hope that people on YouTube watch some videos and subscribe to this ideology? That people in bookstores read his book and their “eyes become opened”?

Well, here’s the sad fact: it almost doesn’t even matter if you read books or not. People will be sheep– even in the name of almighty science. It all depends on social needs, self-esteem needs, etc. Does this lead down the road to Maslow’s self-actualisation hierarchy? You know, not always. Religious people and Atheists alike..there are people who are just content with feeling superior. Lots of them.