How much is that pontiff in the window?

Hey, look! It's the Pope in the window! Hey! Hey! I can see you, Pope! Hi! [waving]

Hey, wait! What are you doing? Hey! Bring that baby back inside! Stop that! Stop hanging that baby outside the window! Stop it Pope! Hey!

Anti-astrology discrimination

Aaron Swartz has some fun with David-Horowitz-worshippers:

A shocking recent study has discovered that only 13% of Stanford professors are Republicans. The authors compare this to the 51% of 2004 voters who selected a Republican for President and argue this is “evidence of discrimination” and that “academic Republicans are being eradicated by academic Democrats”.

Scary as this is, my preliminary research has discovered some even more shocking facts. I have found that only 1% of Stanford professors believe in telepathy (defined as “communication between minds without using the traditional five senses”), compared with 36% of the general population. And less than half a percent believe “people on this earth are sometimes possessed by the devil”, compared with 49% of those outside the ivory tower. And while 25% of Americans believe in astrology (“the position of the stars and planets can affect people’s lives”), I could only find one Stanford professor who would agree. (All numbers are from mainstream polls, as reported by Sokal.)

This dreadful lack of intellectual diversity is a serious threat to our nation’s youth, who are quietly being propagandized by anti-astrology radicals instead of educated with different points of view. Were I to discover that there were no blacks on the Stanford faculty, the Politically Correct community would be all up in arms. But they have no problem squeezing out prospective faculty members whose views they disagree with....

Strangely effective

A note to anyone playing the SNES game Super Bomberman: if you wait until you've killed all the enemies on level 1-2 and then bomb the exit, the game rewards you with an ice-cream cone worth 50,000 points.

Who knows what other strange bonuses await for doing really stupid things?

Don't let go of my love

Today's song recommendation: "It's The Night Time" by Josh Rouse.

Premium boob

It seems like I've been watching a lot more television lately -- probably due to the DVR on the digital cable. Here are some shows that I watch regularly.

• The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Watching the Daily Show regularly is just as important as showering regularly. Which means you probably shouldn't get near me if I forget to watch a Daily Show.
• Desperate Housewives and Boston Legal: ABC has a powerful Sunday primetime lineup. The Housewives are entertaining to watch just for the sheer suspense of what could possibly come next. And I really enjoy hearing William Shatner repeatedly say "Denny Crane" on Boston Legal.
• Two and a Half Men: This is a delightful Monday-night sitcom on CBS. Charlie Sheen plays a rich TV-jingle composer with a ocean-side house in Malibu. His brother Alan is recently divorced with a ten-year-old son. The writing on this show is top-notch, and it will have you in stitches.
• House: This is Fox's new medical drama, centering around a brilliant doctor who has an uncanny ability to diagnose (plus a repugnant personality). I agree with Blogography that the show is a bit formulaic, but the characters are so fun that I think it all balances out.
• Committed: When this show is funny, it's really funny. When the show isn't funny, you still get to gaze dreamily at Jennifer Finnigan, so stop complaining.

Kerry-over

Holy crap! John Kerry must have won!

Steady thumping

And finally, this notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. And having said that, all options are on the table.

And I told the Chancellor that I have no war plans on my desk, which is the truth, and that we've got to use all means at our disposal to deal with Saddam Hussein.

Getting carded

Some scary news of how HP laptops work:

The HP BIOS for most models of laptop now have a whitelist of allowed Mini-PCI cards that can be installed in the laptop. If your new WiFi card isn't on the (very small) list of allowed cards for that specific model of laptop, then your laptop won't boot.

So I can't upgrade my laptop. I can't replace the card if it's out of warranty. I can't put in a card that is supported by non-Windows OSes. In effect, I don't have a personal computer. I have an appliance licensed for specific tasks. Imagine my joy when I realised what I had paid that extra money for. Good old HP quality.

[via Boing Boing]

Naked ladies and snakes

I finally got HBO in the past month or two, and I've been enjoying shows like Da Ali G Show and Real Time With Bill Maher. I took the time to transcribe Maher's closing monologue from Friday's show.

Read the rest of "Naked ladies and snakes"

Gross design negligence, part 2

Silly giraffe! Why did you have to go and carelessly rewire your own nervous system so poorly?

UPDATE: I just realized that, by M.C. Barsenas' logic, my man nipples may be the result of my own carelessness! Did I neglect to see the doctor enough as a child? Did I not drink enough milk?

Gross design negligence

The New York Times Magazine published an article about intelligent design today. It takes an interesting look by wondering how intelligent the designer of Earth's life must have been. An excerpt follows:

Read the rest of "Gross design negligence"

Feeling protected

David Pogue uses a Windows machine so that he can dictate his writing to a voice-recognition system. And so he gets to experience the "joys" of that operating system:

...I wound up calling Microsoft for help. A genius named Rob walked me through using the Windows command line to restore the lost shared file from a backup. After 20 minutes, I was back in business.

I asked him, though, why, if this DLL file was so important, the uninstaller program had been allowed to remove it. After all, so-called driver protection and system-file protection were two of the most-hyped features of Windows XP.

He looked it up, and indeed, my missing DLL was on the list of protected files. Why it got deleted anyway, he didn’t know.

How could he, after all?

Premixed CD

Here's an interesting idea for a mix CD: restrict yourself to the songs at the bottom of your iTunes library (that is, the files that have no artist/album/title metadata). I have some extraordinarily strange songs with no artist information. For example, I have a quartet of guys (from what sounds like the 1950s) singing the following in four-part harmony:

Read the rest of "Premixed CD"

Blog habits

Blogography recently praised my taste in music, and noted that I was unlikely to share 5 songs that I listen to a lot because I don't do "memes". This is true -- I don't like to participate in inter-blog memes, and I really don't like taking quizzes. However, I've been known to start some memes within my own blog, and I have ideas for more. Such as:

• Geekable's Weekly Grammar Lesson! There's plenty of raw material already compiled on this subject, so all I would have to do is make it interesting, and make it stick.
• Geekable's Weekly Offensive-To-Religious-Types Entry! I found out that writing such entries is much easier than I thought it was. (Why wouldn't Jesus like corndogs, by the way?)

Those silly peaceniks

Thank you to No More Mister Nice Blog for reminding everyone of this article from the Weekly Standard, by Fred Barnes. Back in March 2003, Mr. Barnes took 10 arguments he saw as the primary anti-Iraq-war arguments and "examined" them. Here are some real beauties:

Read the rest of "Those silly peaceniks"

The missing Link

Americablog may have dug up some naughty pictures of former White House reporter Jeff Gannon, but I've found the most damning picture of all.

And what's this about Jeff Gannon working for Talon News?

I knew it when I saw it, part 2

In the interests of accuracy, I feel I must make a correction to a previous entry. Since the time I wrote that post, it's become clear that hope is not an option.

Lo! What a glorious sight appears

Headlines like this are a great way to increase readership of your student newspaper. (Wayne Review, I'm looking in your direction.)

Pleasure seeker

Brendan Benson, last night at his acoustic performance:

You guys having a good time here at the Bosco? [audience cheers] I wasn't sure, you know. I picked this place, I'm not sure why. They wanted to do it next door, and I thought that might be too big, and I thought, I would always pass by this place and think, that I could probably never get in, 'cause it seemed like they were always picking people to get in, and so, I thought this is a sure-fire way for me to get in here. And I'll tell you what -- I'm not impressed. [audience laughs] I'm kidding, I'm kidding. It's really nice. It's a very nice place.

More information about last night's concert is available at Motor City Rocks.

Damn tasty corndog

A while back Fafblog interviewed Jesus Christ, and he just happened to ask about intelligent design. After all, Jesus is the only reliable source on the subject! Here's an excerpt of the interview:

FAFBLOG: This is a really delicious corndog Jesus.
JESUS CHRIST: Yeah, I like corndogs.
FB: Y'know I heard that in California they have these corndog stands where they will make a corndog for you right there, fresh on a stick, and it is a fresh corndog, and it is the most delicious thing in the world?
JC: That's gotta be a damn tasty corndog.
FB: It is the Shangri-la of all corndogs. Now Jesus what do You think about gay marriage?
JC: In my time I was strongly opposed to the practice of divorce. Divorce is rampant in America between heterosexual couples. I don't understand how barring more couples from marrying is "defending" marriage.
FB: That sounds kinda squishy Jesus.
JC: Maybe it is.
FB: Intelligent Design is the latest hippest craze sweepin our schools. Should we replace teachin natural selection with Intelligent Design, or teach them both next to each other?
JC: I think natural selection itself seems like a pretty intelligent design.
FB: You are not givin me a lot of red meat here Jesus.
JC: I'm sorry.
FB: You would never make it on Hardball is all I'm sayin...

Was my dream machine just a dream?

Well, there goes my entire plan.

I was going to buy a new computer so I could perform calculations faster, but I've decided against it now. After all, what guarantee do I have that electricity and semiconductivity will continue to behave the same way they always have? What guarantee do I have that I'll get the same answer if I perform the same calculation twice? For that manner, would my new computer even exist as a material object? Would Apple Computer be cheating me out of my money by selling me something that's not real?

These questions are tough -- I think I'm going to stop performing meaningful work and become a philosophy major instead.

Love thy neighbor

It's Valentine's Day, and love is in the air... between Iraq and Iran!

When the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq two years ago, it envisioned a quick handover to handpicked allies in a secular government that would be the antithesis of Iran's theocracy -- potentially even a foil to Tehran's regional ambitions.

But, in one of the greatest ironies of the U.S. intervention, Iraqis instead went to the polls and elected a government with a strong religious base -- and very close ties to the Islamic republic next door. It is the last thing the administration expected from its costly Iraq policy -- $300 billion and counting, U.S. and regional analysts say...

One number is bigger than the other

Josh Marshall puts it like this:

Today on the Stephanopoulos show, George asked Sen. Judd Gregg (R) of New Hampshire about whether there should be any changes to the new Medicare prescription drug law.

Gregg noted that "over its lifetime, 75 years ... it's going to cost us $8.6 trillion, which we don't have." So that's an $8.6 trillion shortfall, albeit spread out over the lengthy period of three-quarters of a century. The president has said that he'll veto any effort to trim those costs. So that amount of money is manageable.

And yet Social Security -- the program that President Bush thinks is swooning and flailing like some B-Movie damsel in distress -- faces a shortfall of only $3.7 trillion over the same period of time.

The price of keeping Social Security kicking for another 75 years is less than half of that it will take just for the bill President Bush pushed through last year. And because of that Social Security has to go and the drug bill is inviolate.

Let me escape

Just as I start to consider moving the hell out of Oakland County, the Oakland County Executive considers making the whole county wireless.

Confusion over pension

The Wayne Review gives you "facts" about Social Security, but they seem a little dubious.

Read the rest of "Confusion over pension"

Target Disk Mode Extreme

Quick question, for those of you in the know: can a Mac booted into FireWire Target Disk Mode be accessed through the FireWire 800 port? Or is it FireWire 400 only?

Spit it out

It seems fitting that the pre-release party for Brendan Benson's upcoming album Alternative To Love is the day after Valentine's Day.

It also seems fitting that I scored two passes for it, and have no one to go with.

Dream machine

I've been thinking a lot about the computer I'm going to buy once I graduate from Wayne State and get a job. Here's what I'm planning:

• A dual-processor Power Mac G5 with an NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL
• An additional 1 GB of Ramjet memory, as it is both certified for Macs and cheaper than Apple's RAM
• A Western Digital 74 gigabyte, 10,000 rpm Raptor hard drive to serve as the main boot volume

Raw lust

Hooray for blogs dedicated to gorgeous girls from soft-drink advertisements.

Bogus, part 4

Reason magazine has a pretty good analysis of Michael Behe's intelligent design arguments. Of course, since it's Reason magazine, the last paragraph endorses school vouchers, but I think the rest of the article is just dandy.

Iraqi election

This is a long one, so I'm placing it in the extended area. Click to read on.

Read the rest of "Iraqi election"

Burning no calories

It's fun when the Wayne Review contradicts itself within the span of a paragraph, and all I need to do is highlight the contradiction. A much easier task! Anyway, try to reconcile Joe Koss saying

Bush has an approval rating of 57%.... Heh, maybe people do want to control their own lives and money... whoda thunk it?

The [approval rating] increase appears to be related to the Iraqi elections... The poll shows little change in Bush's job approval rating on the economy or on Social Security.

The [approval rating] increase appears to be related to the Iraqi elections...

Jeez, I guess I need to spell these things out in the future -- I thought my argument was completely clear.

UPDATE 2: A special thanks to Barsenas Translation Services for converting Joe-Kossian into English. I just have to wonder: why didn't Joe write

President Bush's approval rating did not decline, therefore people were not displeased with the message of his State of the Union address.

Bush has an approval rating of 57%. Not bad... but I thought after that "horrible?" State of the Union speech he gave. Heh, maybe people do want to control their own lives and money... whoda thunk it?

Pull my lever! Stuff my ballot!

Today's Borowitz Report headline:

IRAQIS PAINT FINGERS PURPLE TO PICK UP WOMEN

Bogus, part 3

I have to apologize. My intelligent-design commentary hasn't been fair, because I did not get any conservative opinion on the subject. Well, let's fix that! Here's John Derbyshire:

I like a good knock-down argument as much as the next person, but I must say, ID-ers are low-grade opponents, at least if a bulk of my e-mails are any indication. They are still banging away with the arguments I first heard when the whole thing first surfaced 10-15 yrs ago. "What use is half an eye?" "The odds against this are a trillion to one!" etc. etc. There is nothing new here. I understand why biologists get angry and frustrated with ID-ers. All the ID arguments have been patiently refuted many times over. The ID-ers response is to come back with the same arguments...

...The notion of the ID-ers, that you can find Him by staring hard at the gaps in our current scientific understanding, seems to me to be a sort of comic-book metaphysics, betraying a dire lack of imagination, and an utter waste of time.

Bogus, part 2

M.C. Barsenas also accused me of a strawman fallacy when I represented the intelligent-design movement as such:

"Well, when I completely misrepresent how evolution works, it doesn't make any sense, so therefore evolution can't account for our biological systems, and thus we should teach school-children that God designed us."

Read the rest of "Bogus, part 2"

The title of this post timed out

Cult of Mac claims that "IPod Shuffles Make World's Slowest Raid".

I bet this RAID made of floppy drives gives it a run for its money. A slow run, that is.

Bogus

M.C. Barsenas asks regarding my last post,

Does Kepler's mistake somehow impugn the claims of Intelligent Design theory?

Read the rest of "Bogus"

How do you define obscenity?

The "liberal" New York Times must have got really drunk this weekend, because they let intelligent-design douchebag Michael Behe publish an editorial defending his silly theory. I especially love the first of his linked claims, which together apparently "prove" that biological systems are designed:

The first claim is uncontroversial: we can often recognize the effects of design in nature. For example, unintelligent physical forces like plate tectonics and erosion seem quite sufficient to account for the origin of the Rocky Mountains. Yet they are not enough to explain Mount Rushmore. [emphasis mine]

Most curious is [Kepler's] view of the origin of the lunar craters, which make the moon, he says, "not dissimilar to the face of a boy disfigured by smallpox." He argued correctly that the craters are depressions rather than mounds. From his own observations he noted the ramparts surrounding many craters and the existence of central peaks. But he thought that their regular circular shape implied such a degree of order that only intelligent life could explain them. He did not realize that great rocks falling out of the sky would produce a local explosion, perfectly symmetric in all directions, that would carve out a circular cavity—the origin of the bulk of the craters on the moon and the other terrestrial planets. He deduced instead "the existence of some race rationally capable of constructing those hollows on the surface of the moon. This race must have many individuals, so that one group puts one hollow to use while another group constructs another hollow."

[Links via The Panda's Thumb]

Uncle Shelby

Metafilter just linked to this wonderful Shel Silverstein book, "Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book". I actually have my dad's copy of the first-edition (the graphic at the top of the page), and it's a delight. Pick up a copy for yourself!

Excuse me, that's 'personalization'

The Bush administration is clearly eager to embark on a partial privatization of Social Security.

I wonder, have any other nations tried the same thing? If they have, I wonder how it worked out for them?

On a roll

I'm currently ill with a headcold, so I took the time to enjoy a recording of Gershwin's piano rolls. They are excellent, but they still don't quite compare to hearing actual honest-to-goodness live recordings of Gershwin himself on the piano.

For the broken-hearted and the heart-breakers

The iTunes Music Store has your Valentine's Day covered, whether you're currently with someone, or if you're all alone.