Archive for August, 2007

A Number of Playlists

Friday, August 31st, 2007

Albums

7, Apoptygma Berzerk
18, Moby
154, Wire
90125, Yes

Songs of the Year

1921, The Who
‘39, Queen
1959, The Sisters of Mercy
1963, New Order
1981, Public Image Ltd.
1984, New Model Army
2000, Tuxedomoon

Others

13, They Might Be Giants
18, Moby
39, The Cure
40, U2
9-9, R.E.M.
107, Orgy
225, New Model Army
5 8 6, New Order
1010, Ministry
6794700, Birmingham 6
6060-842, B-52s
8675309, Tommy Tutone

Update, Sep. 10, 2007:
Not [...]

Sony Learns Nothing From Its Mistakes

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

Remember back in 2005, when Sony decided it would be a smashingly brill idea to include a rootkit on one of their CDs? Well, now they’re selling USB keychain drives with built-in fingerprint scanners, and they figured it’d be totally rad to include a rootkit with that as well.
As the old saying goes, subvert my [...]

The Further Adventures of Ted “Completely Heterosexual” Haggard

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

Remember Ted Haggard, the right-wing preacher who got busted for having sex with a male prostitute, and buying meth from him?
If Bonnie Goldstein at Slate is right, he might be entering the lucrative field of financial shenanigans (a career for which his experience as a preacher prepared him well) (maybe he can share a cell [...]

Retro-Toy

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

One of the departments at work is moving offices around, so there are piles of junk in the hallways, some of it cool, most of it not.
One thing I picked up was a Gerber Variable Scale, invented by H. Joseph Gerber as a more elegant solution to an engineering problem that had originally required the [...]

/kernel.el

Tuesday, August 28th, 2007

From an Ubuntu security advisory:
After a standard system upgrade you need to restart emacs to effect the
necessary changes.

Details follow:

Hendrik Tews discovered that emacs21 did not correctly handle certain
GIF images. By tricking a user into opening a specially crafted GIF,
a remote attacker could cause emacs21 to crash, resulting in a denial
of service.

Gosh, they make it sound [...]

China Regulates Reincarnation

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007

From Newsweek:
China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is “an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation.”
This may seem [...]

Summer Movie

Monday, August 20th, 2007

I either really really want to see this movie, or I really really don’t. I can’t tell which.

Another Problem With Searle’s Chinese Room

Sunday, August 19th, 2007

(Update, Aug. 20: John Wilkins, an honest to God philosopher, tells me in the comments that I’m wrong. So take this with a grain of salt.)
For those not aware of it, John Searle’s Chinese room is an argument against the possibility of artificial intelligence.
As recounted by Roger Penrose in The Empereor’s New Brain, it goes [...]

Any Questions?

Thursday, August 16th, 2007

I just watched PZ Meiarz’s talk about mind and brain, and listened to Ron McLeroy’s talk at his church, about the evils of materialism and evolution. I’ve also listened to Kent Hovind’s schpiel, and seen his show live.
One thing that struck me—and it’s a small thing, but I think significant—is that PZ took questions during [...]

Crippling Brains for Jesus

Wednesday, August 15th, 2007

Does anyone need more proof that Ron McLeroy, the newly-appointed Texas State Board of Education Chairman, is a superstitious asshat who’s out to cripple the state’s education system? Here’s what he told his church in 2005:
“Whether you’re a progressive creationist, recent creationist, young-Earth, old-Earth, it’s all in the tent of intelligent design,” McLeroy said. “And [...]