Category Archives: Ideas (blog)

bug babble.

An Introduction to Science, the Kansas Way.

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The Kansas Board of Education will soon be voting to determine whether or not Intelligent Design should be taught side-by-side with the theory of evolution in their schools. Obviously, such a decision is highly important, as it affects whether or not science teaching in the United States continues to go to Hell in a handbasket. To whit, I present a excerpt from one of the letters that the Board has received:

I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

Take this seriously, please. Go learn more about FSM and Pastafarianism and why we should all address this important educational issue. Science is, as Wikipedia defines it, “Reasoned investigation or study of nature, aimed at finding out the truth. Such an investigation is normally felt to be necessarily methodical, or according to scientific method – a process for evaluating empirical knowledge”. Faith, on the other hand, is “as the affirmation of belief without an ongoing test of evidence, and even despite evidence apparently to the contrary”.

If we’re going to teach our students that science=faith, we might as well choose the stupidest possible faith to set equal to science, because we’re already destroying their ability to reason and think.

Entertainment! Nifty!

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So Nighthawk was looking for a natural language interpreter when he came across a site with interactive fiction. Those of you who can actually remember the eighties might know “interactive fiction” better as “text adventure games”, though many of the “games” on this site aren’t really games so much as interactive stories. We went through 9:05 and through Photopia — they’re both excellent, you should try them. But you have to run/install stuff to get them to work, so you probably won’t be able to check these out at work.

On miracles and mental breakdowns.

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Yeah, so last night at about 11:30, I was working on some code for a little side-project while watching the Phillies game and generally trying to spin down from a crazy day. I got about 2/3 of what I needed done, and I tried to push a new stylesheet up to the system, when suddenly everything choked. Dreamweaver, which is prone to the occasional odd error message, informed me that it couldn’t upload the file in question because, well, the file didn’t exist, or maybe I didn’t have permission to use it.

And, well, that’s bunk, because I’m the ONLY one with permission to use these files, and this particular one had been uploaded mere minutes before. So I logged on to my web host and decided to manually upload the file instead…. only to discover that Dreamweaver wasn’t lying; the directory I was working in was empty. So were most of the others. Most of the pages here woudn’t load, and a good chunk of my other work was just plain gone.

Panic ensued.

I sent a note to the support team, waited a few minutes, and watched as one by one entire directories just poofed. No backup files, no forum, no wordpress… Another panicked note to the support team. This time, a response: they’re aware of it and working on it and it’ll be up within the hour. But that was at 1 AM and I have to be to work early today for a meeting. (yay meeting.)

Did you ever go to bed at night and wonder if everything you’d done was going to be there in the morning? Not a comfy feeling. I think I “get” Neverending Story in a whole new way now.

After a fitful night sleep, I’m back, and so is everything else. The support team was, as always, good to their word. And I am immediately applying what I learned. First, a backup was done. (I do these regularly, but not regularly enough.) And second, I’ve added a link to my Xanga blog in the links section. Strangely, when everything else was disappearing rapidly last night, the homepage was still there, so the links section was still functional. If all else has failed, I’m relatively sure Xanga will still be standing, and since it doesn’t live on the same server as everything else, it’s a decent place to post updates when I can’t post updates. Of course, in case of catastrophe, homepage mileage may vary, so you may want to make note of that one somewhere if you haven’t already.

So anyway, mental breakdown over, and I have to get my butt to work. Here’s hoping the next 24 hours contains fewer heart-attack inducing elements for all of us.

Should’ve become a rock hound.

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It’s likely to be a “many mini-posts” kind of day for me. So far, everything I’ve read on my Daily Comic List has made me want to go, “Ooh! Read!”.

I have that problem a lot with Schlock Mercenary. But then, nothing makes me happier than a plot-heavy space opera with science lessons scattered in for good measure. Today’s a bonus: it’s on earthquakes.

Makes me wonder what I’d be doing for a living if I’d’ve signed up for a geology course in my junior year of college instead of computer science.

It goes by so fast…

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Apologies for the radio silence, folks. It’s been a bit of a crazy week.

Wednesday evening I went out for celebratory “We did it!” drinks and snacks with a classmate. Had a good time but got home fairly late, and still had to work a bit on the comic for Saturday, which I can just about guarantee won’t be up on time.

Thursday night I went over to Mike & Steen’s to visit with them and Justin and Ginia. Justin and Ginia (who you might know from the forum as jzimbert and vjinton) were up visiting both friends and family all over Pennsylvania all this week – their first trip north from Georgia in five years. We had a great time, dinner and card games until late into the evening.

Today we took the day off from work to visit some more – took a trip out to Reading to a Dave & Busters-like arcade called The Works, where we also had a lot of fun, and some good food. But J&G need to be in Nashville by Saturday noon, so we couldn’t exactly make a weekend out of it.

And this evening, after returning from The Works, Nighthawk and I drove over to my parents with the pudge-dog, ate pie, checked out my sister’s schedule of classes for high school, and celebrated my brother’s birthday. We only arrived home here at about 11:00pm. (Did I mention the comic? It’ll be late.)

Lots of highs and lows – a rollercoaster’s the best way to describe the week. Everyone and everything is busy, busy, busy, and has been since I graduated. I feel like I’ve barely gotten my feet under me. I wouldn’t trade the time I spent with J&G for anything, because it’s been way too long, but it also felt way too short, and I miss them now more than I have for a long time. I can only imagine how their minds have been reeling from a one-week tour of the places and people and things that had once defined their lives. If the “up” of seeing them is tempered by the “down” of watching them leave for me, it can only be that much harder for them. Still, they’re doing well in Georgia, and I’m glad to see them happy and healthy and able to visit.

It doesn’t feel like 5 years since Ginia and I were roommates in college. It doesn’t feel like 13 years since I entered 11th grade. It all goes by so fast.