Monthly Archives: January 2007

Porn in Afghanistan

Posted on January 29, 2007 by arensb

According to the Scotsman, people in Afghanistan have developed quite a taste for teh pr0n: The heaviest fighting in five years has slowed reconstruction to a crawl in the deserts and oases of Kandahar, where the strict Taleban movement began … Continue reading →

Posted in Links, Politics, Religion | Leave a comment

Removing Accents in Strings

Posted on January 28, 2007 by arensb

I’ve been ripping and encoding a bunch of music. Since I’m a hacker, naturally I have scripts that take a file with artist, album title, and track titles, and finds the corresponding .wav or .aiff source files, encodes them as … Continue reading →

Posted in Perl, Things I've Learned | 6 Comments

Stock Scams and Pascal’s Triangle

Posted on January 27, 2007 by arensb

There’s a stock market scam that goes something like this: make a list of 1024 people, and send them an “investment newsletter”. The copy sent to the first 512 people says that a particular stock will go up; the other … Continue reading →

Posted in Math | 7 Comments

Let’s Hire A Grizzly as a Babysitter, While We’re at It

Posted on January 25, 2007 by arensb

Brad Blog reports that someone managed to make a key that opens Diebold voting machines… by copying it off of an image on Diebold’s web site. Can you imagine what would happen if an individual, rather than a company, had … Continue reading →

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Irrational Scientists

Posted on January 24, 2007 by arensb

Overcoming Bias has a good article about scientists holding unscientific beliefs outside the lab. The gist of it is, if a scientist throws out science when he leaves work, does he really understand what it’s for and how it works? … Continue reading →

Posted in Links, Science | Tagged , | 1 Comment

More on Hovind

Posted on January 24, 2007 by arensb

Jennifer Epstein has a sympathetic account of Kent Hovind’s sentencing. Interesting if you want to know more about what happened aside from the actual sentencing. And the Pensacola News Journal has a delightfully snarky editorial entitled “Earth to ‘Dr. Dino’: … Continue reading →

Posted in Creationism | Tagged | Leave a comment

Why Are Fundies Illiterate?

Posted on January 23, 2007 by arensb

I seem to have attracted a number of fundies and creationists, most likely due to the fact that I’ve been talking about Kent Hovind. curvemudgeon has pointed out that for some reason, they can’t seem to go four sentences without … Continue reading →

Posted in Creationism, Religion | 11 Comments

Hovind Sentencing: Whiny Git Update

Posted on January 20, 2007 by arensb

The Pensacola News Journal has another article about Kent Hovind’s sentencing. This one points out the contrast between Hovind’s behavior before the trial: In a recording of one of the telephone conversations played in court Friday, Hovind said the Internal … Continue reading →

Posted in Creationism | 85 Comments

Hovind Sentenced to 10 Years

Posted on January 19, 2007 by arensb

The Pensacola News Journal finally has the story: U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers ordered Hovind also: – Pay $640,000 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service. – Pay the prosecution’s court costs of $7,078. – Serve three years parole once … Continue reading →

Posted in Creationism | Tagged | 2 Comments

Gonzales to Judges: Don’t Worry Your Pretty Little Heads About the Law

Posted on January 17, 2007 by arensb

From the Associated Press: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says federal judges are unqualified to make rulings affecting national security policy, ramping up his criticism of how they handle terrorism cases. In remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday, Gonzales says judges generally … Continue reading →

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