Epsilon Clue

Back in High School, when I got interested in computers, I naturally started out writing toy programs: four-function calculators, Hanoi towers, and so forth. And I looked up to the people who wrote tools like compilers and operating systems: they were demigods who bestrode the earth like colossi. The day when my friend and I learned how to make operating system calls and get the name of the current user so that our program could greet him by name, it was as if we had learned to tap into some source of deep magic bestowed upon us mere mortals by the benevolent gods of the data center.

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Last year, the governor of Georgia asked his citizens to perform a rain dance to alleviate the drought in that state.

Now the mayor of Birmingham, AL, Larry Langford, has decided that the crime rate in his city is way too high, and that it’s time to try to look as though he’s doing something about it.

I suppose if it were me, I’d start by sitting down with the police to find out what they’re doing and what support they could use from the mayor’s office. And since the University of Alabama’s Department of Justice Sciences is conveniently located in town, I’d call them up and see what works in crime prevention. I bet the FBI or DOJ might be helpful, too: maybe they can recommend a few speakers, or send some brochures, or something.

But obviously Langford isn’t me, because his innovative solution is to dress up in a burlap bag and shout.

That’s quite clever, actually: when the criminals hear about this, they’ll be too busy laughing their socks off to resist arrest.

Either that, or Langford and a large number of people around him really are credulous superstitious fools who believe in magic. And yet somehow manage to function in 21st century society.

I’m currently laid up with the flu, feeling sorry for myself, watching trash on TV and periodically shoving cat butts out of my face.

The reason for this, of course, is that new strains of influenza virus appear all the time. Like it or not, that’s evolution.

On the plus side, I’m glad that my ancestors had to deal with a lot of the same problems, and thus developed a robust immune system that can fight off new types of attacks, including (and this is part of what’s making my life miserable at the moment) raising my body temperature so that hopefully some of the chemical processes that viruses depend on to multiply won’t happen as quickly, and thus slow down their reproduction, to give the rest of the immune system a chance to catch up.

(Another reason why I’m sick, interestingly enough, is that I live in a country that has lots of direct commerce with China.)

If you’re a touch-typist, you’ve probably typed a word without realizing that you had placed your hand in the wrong position. As it turns out, sometimes this can yield a different existing word:

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A certain movie was released in theaters today, and several critics have already weighed in on it. Rotten Tomatoes‘ tomatometer is a good tool for seeing at a glance how fresh (lots of good reviews) or rotten (lots of bad reviews) a movie is. But rather than jumping straight to the chase, allow me to place it in some sort of context:

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In case you missed the flap over the animation of cellular processes in the upcoming movie Expelled, here’s the nutshell version:

People at prerelease screenings said they saw footage from XVIVO/Harvard’s The Inner Life of the Cell. Bits of very similar animation appear in promotional clips for the movie such as this one. There’s a post at antievolution.org that shows stills from both films, side by side.

Now XVIVO, the makers of the original animation, are suing the makers of Expelled for copyright infringement.

My IANAL thoughts below the fold. Read the rest of this entry »

In the packrattish hoard of accumulata that is my music collection, I recently discovered a song by Russian singer Alla Pugacheva, about a man who loves a woman so much that he sells his house and buys a million red roses, so that she opens her blinds and sees a sea of flowers outside her window. In the end, she can’t stay, and he winds up alone, but it’s okay because they shared a moment in this sea of flowers.

Apparently this is supposed to be romantic. I confess that my first thought was, “Where’s this moron going to live, now that he sold his house to pay for a bunch of flowers that are going to wither in a few days?”

It’s one thing to have larger-than-life events in a story or song; it makes things more exciting. But the story in this song is just insane. So there must be something else going on.

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If I may boast for a bit, it looks as though the folks at the ACA liked my April Fools piece, enough to mention it on the latest episode of The Non-Prophets (about 6:00 through 6:30 minutes into the episode). (You can listen to the intro to hear where the phrase “Dillahunty International Studios” comes from. Short version: it’s really the host’s apartment.)

Over at Dembski’s wankfest, Denyse O’Leary is having an outragegasm over her favorite PZ Myers quote. So nothing new to report in that respect.

But a few sentences caught my attention:

Myers, who teaches at a Minnesota liberal arts university that is proud of its status […]

But most Americans do not know even about it, let alone contemplate what it means that a teacher at a “liberal arts” university should express himself in this way.

Thus, a person who writes as Myers does is nonetheless viewed as a mild-mannered gentleman and scholar, worthy a place at a liberal arts university.

The only way I can imagine this making sense is if O’Leary thinks that a liberal arts college is a politically left-leaning school.

Denyse, if you happen to stumble upon this post, allow me to quote from a source you might trust: Conservapædia:

Liberal arts refers to the non-technical disciplines ordinarily taught as part of a baseline college education at American colleges. These include philosophy, history and English literature, and sometimes Latin, which lay the foundation for a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree. As such, many American colleges are referred to as “liberal arts institutions.” Technical fields of study are common, but not included under the aegis “liberal arts.” In Europe and Canada the Liberal arts are generally called the ‘Humanities’.

The term bears no connection with the modern political ideology of liberalism, save in the classic, historical sense.

(Update, Apr. 10: Rep. Davis has apologized to Rob Sherman. Good on her. Oh, and the hearing described here wasn’t about the moment of silence thing.)

Eric Zorn reports an exchange in the Illinois General Assembly between State Rep. Monique Davis and Rob Sherman, an atheist who opposes Illinois’s law mandating a moment of silence:

Davis: I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children. […] What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous—

Sherman: What’s dangerous, ma’am?

Davis: It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists!

(Emphasis added. Oh, and the audio is also available.)

Stop right there. Reread what she said. She said it’s dangerous for kids to even know that there’s such a thing as atheism.

Davis conceded right there that religion has nothing going for it. If your viewpoint is so weak that it can’t tolerate so much as the existence of an opinion that you’re wrong, then you’ve lost; your viewpoint isn’t worth having.

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