Actually, every Ramones song would have pretty much the same structure.

Inspired by this directed graph of 'Hey Jude', here's my take on the Ramones classic.

With help from Graphviz.

You know who else liked biscuits?

Racism is serious, and therefore charges of racism are serious. Sometimes racism gets incorporated into the language in unexpected ways. Like I still can't believe they have 'Coon' cheese in Australia. And my mom remembers a time when brazil nuts were called 'nigger toes'.

But I don't think this is one of those times.

What's in a name? Coles biscuit slammed as racist

The name of a range of Coles chocolate and vanilla biscuits has been labelled racially loaded and a throwback to Nazism by a prominent Brisbane Indigenous leader.

The name of the Coles brand biscuits, Creole Creams, has sparked controversy in the wake of the much-derided Hey Hey It's Saturday blackface skit earlier this month.

The biscuits, similar to Arnott's Delta Creams and Oreos, with a chocolate exterior and cream centre.

Sam Watson, the deputy director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit at the University of Queensland, said the word "Creole", often used to describe a person of mixed European and Africa ancestry, was a racially loaded term.

"The word Creole comes from a period when people's humanity was measured by the amount of white blood they had in their bloodstream. This is the same kind of thought that underpinned horrific regimes like the Nazis," Mr Watson said.

Watson clearly hasn't spent much time on the net; he's blown his Godwin on the very first round.

But besides that, I think his argument's overblown. Two things:

1. Coles isn't the first to call these things 'creole cremes'. I found a reference to them on this 2007 post from someone in Melbourne. I'm not sure how widespread this usage is. Anyone?

2. I've studied terms of abuse. 'Creole' could be used as a term of abuse, but I'm unable to find any examples of people doing so (which I find kind of surprising). On the other hand, 'Creole' is used to describe a genre of cooking in Louisiana USA. This page even has a recipe for Creole Cream Cheese, which might go well between two chocolate cookies.

So at this stage, I think this is a frivolous charge of racism. But I don't know. I thought the biscuits had that name because of the kind of language they invent when talking to other biscuits.

What deconversion is like

I see that someone else has had this thought before me, but it's a good one, so I'm going to post it here anyway.

Imagine that you're hanging on to a rope, suspended over an abyss. All around you are other people, all clinging to their ropes. You shout encouragement to each other, telling each other not to let go of the rope or else you'll fall. Hang on to the rope! they say. They even have a song: "Hold On to the Rope". They sing it to each other on Sundays.

You've been hanging on to the rope for a very long time, and your arms are tired. All this rope-holding doesn't seem to make any sense sometimes. The rope burn is terrible. But you don't dare let go of the rope because of all the awful things that will happen to you if you do.

At last, you become so tired of holding on to the rope that you let go, and fall.

Six inches. That's how far away the ground has been all this time.

This is a great surprise. So you tell the others, "There's no danger! You're almost touching the ground as it is!" But they won't listen. They just cling to their ropes all the harder.

And now you have choices. You can walk around. You can run, or even dance if you want to. Or you can talk to other people that have also let go. Strange how you never noticed them before. You also have two free hands that you can use to build things, examine things in this new world, or hold hands with someone nice, instead of just holding on to the rope all the time.

Life is good with your feet on the ground.

Email: The atheist professor

Dear Sister has sent me this email again, so she must be trying to convey something. It's one of those glurgy stories where the wily student turns the tables on the Atheist Professor.

Aah, the college professor. I don't know why people love to bash on them. Maybe they got bad grades in college. Or possibly they had their faith challenged by someone smart and it frightened them. Now they're hostile to Book Larnin'. Or perhaps there's this malaise among some religious people, like science is making great strides in understanding the world and the universe, and they're just stuck there in church like every other week, sucking in the vacuity. They understand that science and reason is in opposition to their god (which is why they warn each other to be cautious about it), but they can't figure out what to do about it, and it's frustrating. They could take on the problem, but that might be hard. It's so much easier to forward an email instead.

Goodness knows this is all I ever do in class -- argue with students about god -- especially because we aren't busy doing any actual course material. I've got free time to burn, which is why I often take the opportunity to belittle my students about their religious beliefs. And they love it -- it's why they worship lecturers like gods, and immediately take on their slightest opinions.

The actual email is very long and boring, so I'm putting it below the jump, with my comments.

UWA Atheist & Agnostic Society posters

At last, all the posters that have graced our fine campus this semester, and all in the one place. Collect the set!

A Labor PM who swears? Get out of town!

One of my areas of linguistic interest is swearing. That means that if the Prime Minister uses naughty words, I get phone calls. And not only did Kevin Rudd make a (suspiciously calculated) slip-up on TV, but a new book claims that he's got quite the mouth in private.

So here's a recent interview I did with Kate from HypeFM, talking to the kids about why Mr Rudd is admired if he swears in public, but they get punished.

Nice call, committee.

I love the sound of wingnut heads exploding in the morning.

Mr O wins the Nobel.

The crazies will carp, and the spittle will fleck. The Liberal Peace Prize, more like. They gave one to Yassir Arafat, too! And Woodrow Wilson! With all that League of Nations stuff, you just know he was trying to undermine American sovereignty! I can hear them now.

If Obama can deal with the likes of them with his customary poise and equanimity, he's earned the Nobel Peace Prize in my book. Rebooting American foreign policy (somewhat) and revitalising the Middle East peace process is a bonus.

How to make your own shroud

From the Department of Ersatz Relics, a new development:

The Shroud of Turin has been reproduced by an Italian scientist in another attempt to prove that the cloth bearing an image of Christ's face is a fake.

A professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia said he had used materials and techniques that were available in the Middle Ages.

These included applying pigment to cloth and then heating it in an oven.

Tests 20 years ago dated the fabric to between 1260 and 1390, but believers say it is an authentic image of Christ.

This reminds me of 1991, when two men revealed that they were responsible for making all those crop circles. If anyone doubted them, they went ahead and demonstrated how they'd done it, using ropes and boards. By showing how they could have faked the crop circles, they essentially discredited the alien hypothesis in the minds of most people. Occam's Razor and all that.

If anyone still believes that the shroud is authentic, I suppose this won't convince them. But now it's been shown that it dates to no earlier than medieval times, and could have been made with the technology of that time. Occam's Razor suggests that this is the most likely scenario.

h/t to Jessica