Archive for January, 2006

A Jim Pinkoski Treasure Trove

Saturday, January 28th, 2006

Long-time readers of Pharyngula have been treated to PZ Myyrrzz’s writings about Jim Pinkoski (”If you doubt this is possible, how is it there are PIGMIES + DWARFS??“), so I was pleased to discover a veritable treasure trove of Pinkoski’s work.

ID and Suboptimal Design

Saturday, January 28th, 2006

William Dembski has put up a paper entitled Intelligent Design is not Optimal Design, which purports to counter the argument from suboptimal design (e.g., “Why would Godan intelligent designer wire human retinas backward, when he had done a better job with octopodes?” or “Why is the panda’s thumb such a kludge? Why not use the […]

Little Languages and Tables

Friday, January 27th, 2006

Recently, a coworker whipped up a Perl script that’ll build all of the Perl modules we support. This is useful for when we add a new supported OS or OS version. This script takes a config file, moduledefs, which lists the modules to build, as well as various quirks that affect how and whether the modules should […]

Utah Creationism Bill

Wednesday, January 25th, 2006

The Utah Daily Herald has a perspicacious editorial on Utah’s anti-evolution bill. While the bill does not mention “intelligent design,” “divine design” or any other euphemism for creationism by name, the implications are clear: A number of legislators want to push religion into the public schools by force of law. We could end the discussion right here […]

Orson Scott Card vs. the Brain Eater

Sunday, January 22nd, 2006

In case there was still any lingering doubt about whether Orson Scott Card has fallen prey to the brain eater, he is now defending Intelligent Design. PZ Mhriearrr goes on a tear.

Neologism: Filibuster Screen

Wednesday, January 18th, 2006

I propose the following new term: filibuster screen. It refers to an application splash screen, such as KDE’s or OpenOffice’s, which not only takes up a big chunk of otherwise-useful screen real estate for a long time while it starts up, but also ignores window manager hints so you can’t even move the bloody thing […]

Dembski Admits Motives

Thursday, January 12th, 2006

It’s official: Uncommon Descent is an IDC circle jerk: The deal with this blog, since I’ve given it over to my friends, is to build community and “feel the love.” Unfortunately, that requires recalcitrant elements to be purged. That’s a price I’m willing to pay. Comment by William Dembski — January 10, 2006

Science Diet

Wednesday, January 11th, 2006

Every time the creation vs. evolution debate flares up, someone on the creationism side will say that “Darwinism” is an “athiest” plot to destroy religion. And someone on the evolution side will say that evolution has nothing to say about God, and is quite compatible with religion. So why don’t the creationists just accept that they can have their cake […]

Tom Toles on ID

Monday, January 9th, 2006

Tom Toles’s Dec. 23, 2005 cartoon: The tagline “Maybe a new name…” at the bottom is perfect, because that’s exactly what Bill Dembski was advocating on his weblog: I therefore offer the following proposal if ID gets outlawed from our public schools: retitle it Intelligent Evolution (IE). I wrote about this earlier, but I’m glad the creationists’ tactics […]

Pat Robertson’s God Is A Pussy

Friday, January 6th, 2006

After his call to assassinate Hugo Chavez and his claim that the residents of Dover, PA rejected God, now Pat Robertson is saying that God caused Ariel Sharon’s stroke. Which, I think, puts him in the same category as Howard Stern, Marilyn Manson, and Bill O’Reilly, since it’s obvious he’s just saying whatever will rile […]