Monthly Archives: December 2008

Irreducible Complexity Still Not Disproven… Wait, What?

Posted on December 31, 2008 by arensb

The story so far: Back in 1996, when Intelligent Design was in its infancy (and pretty much indistinguishable from today’s Intelligent Design), Michael Behe defined an irreducibly complex system as: composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the … Continue reading →

Posted in Intelligent Design | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

Audacity Tip: Cleaning up Scratches

Posted on December 25, 2008 by arensb

.figure { display: block; text-align: center; } .caption { font-style: italic; } Just something I discovered recently while using Audacity to clean up some old vinyl recordings: The Click Removal tool does a darn good job of cleaning up most … Continue reading →

Posted in Geek, Things I've Learned | Tagged | Leave a comment

Merry War on Christmas Eve!

Posted on December 24, 2008 by arensb

I can only assume that BillDo took heed of my strategy paper on the War on Christmas™, because here‘s what he’s moaning about now: “The latest gambit by the anti-Christmas Czars is to flood public parks with a vast array … Continue reading →

Posted in Religion | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Happy Solstice!

Posted on December 21, 2008 by arensb

Summer solstice for our friends south of the equator, but up north, it’s the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. This celestial event occurs every year at the peak of the holiday shopping frenzy, as millions of people … Continue reading →

Posted in Science | Leave a comment

Exploiting Personal Tragedy to Advance Ideology

Posted on December 19, 2008 by arensb

You may have heard of the tragedy of Jesse Kilgore, the college sophomore who commited suicide after, as WingNut Daily reported, reading The God Delusion and having a crisis of faith. Now, just when you thought the Disco Tute couldn’t … Continue reading →

Posted in Atheism, Intelligent Design | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Arthur Dent’s Procedural Filibuster

Posted on December 16, 2008 by arensb

Anyone who’s watched Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington knows what a filibuster is: the Senate has no time limit on debate, so a senator can just talk and talk and talk for hours, thus preventing the Senate from … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics, Things I've Learned | Tagged | Leave a comment

Pursuit of Happiness

Posted on December 9, 2008 by arensb

Greta Christina makes a great point: if conservatives want to argue that gay marriage goes against the principles that America was founded on, remind them of that founding principle explicitly spelled out in the declaration of independence: We hold these … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Character Encodings Are a PITA

Posted on December 6, 2008 by arensb

Character encoding schemes (UTF-8, ASCII, ISO-8859-1/-15, Windows-1252, etc.) are an incredible source of headaches. Stay away from them. (Oh, and if you tell me I mean “raw character encoding” or “codepoint set” some such, I’ll whack you upside the head … Continue reading →

Posted in Site News | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Foxholes and Shoe Leather

Posted on December 5, 2008 by arensb

We’ve all heard the expression “There are no atheists in foxholes”. As I understand it, it means something like: It’s easy to be self-reliant when everything’s going well. But when times are tough, when the situation is desperate, you will … Continue reading →

Posted in Atheism | Tagged | 3 Comments

War on Christmas

Posted on December 4, 2008 by arensb

Dear Fox News pundits and assorted wingnuts, I assume that this year, as has become tradition, you will once again be talking up the War On Christmas™. Since I am a liberal godless atheist who supports both separation of church … Continue reading →

Posted in :-), Religion | Tagged , , , | 10 Comments