Saturday, November 12, 2005

This is so cool!

Insomnia proves to be a wonderful thing.

First, let me say that I am a geek. I am a Certified Electronics Technician. I dropped out of the College of Electrical Engineering at Penn State (note: I did not flunk out. I was doing very well in the classes I bothered to attend)

I found this article. It is referenced in Dr. Jeffrey Shallit's expert witness statement for the Dover Panda Trial.

When I found this, I lost all interest in whatever it was that I was reading. This was too cool. I had to read it.

Then I had to stop to make this post, because I had to tell someone. But I'm going back afterwards. I will probably have to finally go to bed before I finish, but I have all weekend.

Later,

Friday, November 11, 2005

Whatever happened to Rincewind?

I have read most of the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. In the first few, there is a character named Rincewind. He is a wizard. It says so ("Wizzard") in big sequined letters on his hat.

What happened to him? I missed a couple of books after "Sourcery," so I don't know if he was in them, but he hasn't been in any since "Men at Arms," as far as I know. It may be unrelated, but the series seems a lot darker since about then, too.

Oops, he was in "The Last Continent," too. But still.

Later,

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Avast!

What's your pirate name?

Mine is Bloody John Flint.

Later,

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

This is hilarious

Check out this page of flash toons. Evil Josh and Billy.

Later,

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

I really need to learn HTML

If you check out my sidebar, you will see that I added a links section. Go me!

I don't know any HTML, and was just copying stuff and making changes that seemed appropriate. It worked. The sidebar will get more elaborate as I have time to work on it.

In the meantime, check out those four links.

Later,

Open mouth, insert foot

Over on The Panda's Thumb is a post about Professor Behe's testimony supporting ID in the Dover trial. It's funny, because while he tries to defend irreducible complexity, he ends up totally sinking it. It is a good read, and well worth the time.

One of the comments touched on a peeve of mine.

This comment said "If the bacteria on the soles of your [shoes] is still bacteria, then obviously it hasn’t been evolving, has it."

WRONG! Every living thing on earth has been evolving for the exact same amount of time. Darwinian evolution (natural selection) does not mean that a species must change. Natural selection preserves successful survival techniques. And if a new survival technique comes up, the "old way" of surviving may still be successful. Especially if the "new way" changes the organisms that have it enough that they don't compete strongly with the "old way."

Anyway, it's fun to see ID proponents (that is, Creationists) shoot themselves in the foot.

Later,