I’ve been doing a lot of talking about how silly “Intelligent Design” theory is, but deep thinking SF writer Karl Schroeder has pointed out that I (and a whole bunch of other folks, including almost everyone more optimistic about humanity than I am) may have been guilty of making the same mistake in the other direction: The idea that organisms… Read more →
Author: Mr. McLaren
Understanding my weekly game
I’ve always been interested in the idea of information visualization–that there are better ways to present information than the simple ones we always use. In fact, I once wrote a university paper on things that were experimental at the time, like transparently overlaid GIS information, etc. In this spirit, I present the eight other players in my weekly poker game,… Read more →
100 things we didn’t know this time last year
Each week BBC’s “the Magazine” picks out snippets from the news, and compiles them into 10 Things We Didn’t Know This Time Last Week list. They’ve put the lists from 2005 together and made a master list of 100 things we didn’t know this time last year. Here’s a couple of snippets to encourage you to click through: 8. Devout… Read more →
US government warns it’s running out of cash
OK, let’s just quickly check out the article: US government warns it’s running out of cash Treasury Secretary John Snow has warned that unless Congress raises the national debt limit, the US government will run out of cash to finance its daily work in two months. In a letter to Senate leaders Thursday, Snow said the statutory debt limit imposed… Read more →
A Friday Miscellany
Photographer Bobby Neel Adams has a web gallery of images, including a set of what he calls “age-maps” which are created by photomontaging images of the same person at radically different ages. At first they look kind of cool, but the more I look at them the more they creep me out. Really, really creep me out. I can’t figure… Read more →
Three completely unrelated citations
So we all know Bush broke the law, and illegally allowed the NSA to spy on American citizens. He says that “the practice is limited to occasions when an individual in the U.S. is communicating with someone overseas who has a known link to Al Qaeda, other terrorist groups or their supporters.” However, the LA Times has a different spin Read more →
Steinback captures it
I’ve written quite a bit about my shock, awe, and frank disgust at how the Bush administration (and frankly, the FBI under Clinton were bad at this too) get away with pushing what are essentially police state tactics by fear mongering. For me it always comes back to that Ben Franklin quote about people who are willing to trade liberty… Read more →
As promised…
…some photos. They wound is very minor, but the pictures are a bit on the gross side, so I’m not using thumbnails. First, here’s how it looks professionally dressed by the hospital staff: hospital_dessing.jpg The first closeup, while a little blurry (I suck with the one-handed macro lens), clearly shows the depth of the cut, right through the thumb, and… Read more →
A Day of Firsts…
… first time I’ve injured myself while making a club sandwich. … first time I’ve injured myself in a residential kitchen. … first time I’ve driven myself to an ER. … first time I’ve been to the hospital in Halifax for myself. … first time I’ve had a ring block. … first time I’ve had stitches. … first time I’ve… Read more →
My new favourite cookies
As I mentioned below, Trish made these for the holidays and they were YUMMY. The recipe is from Chatelaine (the recipe there has nutrient information as well, but you may not want to know). The bourbon we used was Woodford Reserve. Southern pecan-and-bourbon bites Pecans and bourbon mixed into a buttery cookie make a sought-after addition to any holiday dessert… Read more →
Happy Holidays
Happy Holidays, to you all. (Oh, and if you have a problem with “Happy Holidays”, then I have just the site for you.) Things went pretty well here for Christmas–I just put up a ton of Sarah-based pictures on her blog, so that the family back in Ontario could follow along the first Christmas that Sarah was actually involved in… Read more →
WTF (or “Amazon loses the plot”)
You know how Amazon keeps track of things you’ve purchased, and can send you emails of the form “if you liked X, then you’re sure to also like our new product Y that just came out”? Apparently there is either A) some kind of weird snag with the recommendation engine, or B) there are vast, secret, and strange connections underlying… Read more →
Two things that have cheered me today
1) Meditating on the amusing fact that the judge in the Pennsylvania “intelligent design” case was appointed by Bush. This puts a whole different spin on my notion that the “engage the base” machine would be going after the judge. 2) Reading all the reactions to the decision, summarized so well at The Questionable Authority. “The judge clearly has extrordinarily… Read more →
Getting away with it
So, I’m still recovering from my scandal screed, but I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the underlying question of why this series of scandal after scandal hasn’t seemed to hurt the Bush administration. My default theory is that something like 51% of Americans are crazy, but maybe there’s actually something deeper going on here. Peter Daou thinks so,… Read more →
Scopes Trial V2.0 has better result
From CNN, with bolding by me: “Intelligent design” cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district, a federal judge said Tuesday, ruling in one of the biggest courtroom clashes on evolution since the 1925 Scopes trial. Dover Area School Board members violated the Constitution when they ordered that its biology curriculum must include the notion that… Read more →
