PHP, Cocoa, Mac OS X, Webdevelopment, dreamweaver extensions, movies, sillyness.
Contents:
The stupidity, it burns
Haha, the wedge idiots of Uncommon descent don't understand the 2nd law of thermodymamics.
No big surprise there, but the boldness with which they close the argument is beyond belief. You're no longer able to comment on the post "In the Beginning and Other Essays on Intelligent Design" which is a crying shame as I have some thoughts on that.
I'll repost the final comment by Granville Sewell which is simplistic and stupid in the extreme: ?Entropy? is understood by physicists as a measure of disorder; so I define ?order? to be the opposite of entropy, period. Thus where entropy is quantifiable, as in thermal entropy (or entropy associated with the distribution of anything else that diffuses), it is simply the negative of entropy. Where entropy is not so quantifiable, I still define it as the opposite, so that when entropy increases, eg, when a building is demolished, ?order? decreases. I could have made the whole argument in terms of ?entropy?, only used the term ?order? because I thought it was less confusing to talk about order increasing than about entropy decreasing, but apparently that didn?t help. Go back and re-read, everywhere you see ?order increases? read ?entropy decreases? and vice versa, and it should be clearer.
But I don?t understand how you could think the ?creation of a spaceship out of a lump of metal? would constitute a decrease in order, everyone else would consider this a decrease in disorder, ie in entropy.
What mr. Sewell appears to not understand (or refuses to understand given his first paragraph which is redundant to say the least) is the simple fact that spaceships do not appear out of nowhere simply by the input of energy (from the sun I assume). They are built by beings that use fossil fuels to extract, refine and smelt metals from the earth. These beings build upon scientific and engineering knowledge gathered throughout millennia to construct craft that are capable of interplanetary flight. Sewell's argument is akin to the blind watchmaker argument, which has been countered ages ago.
As The Panda's thumb states about this: [...]in a closed system entropy does increase, but the biosphere is not a closed system ? it is utterly dependent on inflows of energy, mostly from the sun, and the entropy increase from the outflow of energy from the sun far exceeds the decrease of entropy by reproduction and by evolution.
How do you think fossil fuels got here? How do you think a spacecraft engineer fuels his/her metabolism and lifestyle (food, housing, ipods)? How do you think an engineer refines metals? How do you think (s)he evolved? Do you think that burning fossil fuels gives you a net loss or even an equilibrium of entropy? If so you should have failed basic physics in high school (or equivalent if you're not an American like I am).
Any step requiring energy constitutes a loss of energy and therefore an increase in entropy. Photosynthesis is stupendously, remarkably efficient, but there is still a loss of energy and thus an increase of entropy. Fossil fuels are created, ultimately, by photosynthesis so there's your first (and second) loss. Burning fossil fuels to first build and then power your spacecraft gives you another series of losses. Also you need to power the thought (and associated cost) that goes into building and piloting a spacecraft and before you know it less than 1/10.000th (I'm being optimistic here as I disregard the whole cost of life's history, if we accept that whole evolution thing,) of the energy of the sun put into plants is put into the construction of your spaceship. It's all of a level a high school student should understand to be honest.
By the way I am not the harold commenting (4th) on The Panda's Thumb thread, though I do agree with what he says as far as I understand it, he seems like a smart person, worthy of the name harold, though I would have written it with a capital H :).
I Aten't Dead There once was a time when all food was organic and no pesticides were used. Health problems were treated with folk wisdom and natural remedies. There was no obesity, and people got lots of exercise. And in that time gone by, the average lifespan was ? 35! Longing for a past that never existed
I was talking with some friends only a few days ago about this and other aspects of science. It was a most stimulating conversation.
I am slightly more than a week away from 40 as I write this, there is no doubt in my mind that without modern medicine I would have been dead by the time I reached 16 as that is when I had acute appendicitis. I remember it well as I had to take some exams a few weeks later and used my time in hospital to study. Of course 50.000 years ago I wouldn't have gone to school either and would probably have believed the sun was pushed through the sky by a dung beetle or something.
I do like beetles though...
Winter
The continuing winter is getting tiresome but Winter's Into Darkness/Eternal Frost album from 1992 is still insanely cool.
Edit: woops, they also have Into Darkness but sadly in horrendous quality.
Edit2: seems you need to have an account (free though) with Grooveshark to listen to the previous links I posted but here's a widget that should work for everyone:
Do Olympic athletes dream of lost worms?
Had the most stunning dream just before I woke up: line up about half a dozen worms and let 'em watch TV. See if they get bored. Write a paper and win the nobel prize.
On a separate, but slightly related, note Dutch TV is airing Lost season 6 and all I can say after seeing the first 3 episodes is:
WhattheFUCKisgoingon???
Use your words!
Ah, language. If it hadn't been invented yet we'd have to jump through a lot of hoops to mock the foolish.
Column: Hate, in the name of science Christians may refer to themselves as a "flock," but they aren't sheep. It takes courage to say you believe in something that can't be proven. When scientists formulate hypotheses, they are vulnerable to critique, and they must conduct research to remove all doubt. Religious believers must deal with the same vulnerability, but with the knowledge that they can never prove the existence of a God. Religion takes bravery.
To which commenter DuckPhup responded: I'm afraid that you seem to be unable to differentiate 'courage' and 'bravery' from gullibility, self-deception, self-delusion, irrationality, willful ignorance, intellectual dishonesty, credulity, lies, hypocrisy, and toxic, drooling stupidity.
Don't you just love language?
Clipart sucks, you should use it too!
After working for 12 years at the same place today I have made my first Powerpoint presentation, to be delivered Thursday.
Until now I have always been successful at avoiding Powerpoint, but I felt it was time to dive in and test the water.
Frankly I must say that Powerpoint isn't that bad as an authoring tool. Setting up slides was fairly easy and as long as you stay away from the annoying transitions and styles and themes and whatnot the results can be quite good and clearly presented.
Of course there's an unwritten law that states that every Powerpoint presentation should have at least one slide with gratuitous, unneeded and cheesy clipart (so bad it's almost real art!). So I felt obliged to insert that with the title (loosely translated) "Gratuitous clipart as required by law".
The biggest and most time consuming part of the project was animating that last slide so parts fade in and out to provide a flowcharty time-line type of thing (with Custom Animations as they're called). Powerpoint sucks at this. Big time. Seriously, this is the best Microsoft programmers can do? I guess it shouldn't come as a big surprise.
But I did get to use that lovely clipart!
Open letters Open Letters to People Or Entities Who Are Unlikely to Respond contains so many entries that are too brilliant not to mention that I can only gasp and give up on the effort which would surely fall far short of any mark that would count as close to accurate.
I despair at the brilliance of the gems hidden here. Yet I am also elated to have found you. Oh Open Letters to People Or Entities Who Are Unlikely to Respond, I salute you.
awww nuts Air Canada told to provide nut-free zone. What's amazing to me is the comments from people that think this is just some wanton infringement on their freedoms. To be sure there is some infringement going on here, that is not in question, but I think there is a need for regulation to protect those who really need it.
I have a nut allergy and while it's (probably!) not enough to kill me when someone else is eating nuts it is bad enough that I can become quite ill when several people near me are eating fragrant nuts or nut-based products like peanut soup.
I once spent an extremely miserable half hour between London and Schiphol because the only food handed out was a packet of peanuts (this is a flight that lasts an hour and food is handed out about 15 minutes after takeoff). Whilst I didn't eat anything (obviously, as I might not have survived and certainly would have been puking my guts out over random people) the smell of 60 people munching peanuts made me sick to my stomach.
The enclosed space and large amount of people eating peanuts meant that the odour of peanuts pervaded the entire plane and there was no escaping this, it seems the windows in planes can't be opened to let in some fresh air :-). I used large amounts of medicine to stave of allergic and asthmatic attacks, in fact I used more medicine than is allowed in a single day in that one hour just to keep control over my breathing. Hours later I still felt weak and feeble.
Please do not tell me about infringing on your freedoms. My allergy is by no means as bad as it gets and I can certainly imagine someone dying over this, or if not actually dying then at least going into anaphylactic shock, which can lead to death if not treated very very quickly.
One of the commenters wrote: "I do not want my seat selection options to be limited by this fringe group of nut-sensitive agitators".
Presumably this person would be quite happy to sit on an 18 hour flight with a dead person stashed in the seat next to them? Now why do I doubt this?
I do not mind people eating peanuts or other nutty things but I do object to large amounts of people in an enclosed space eating them when there is no way to get away from the smell. That is torture.
Some simple rules should be able to prevent this: do not serve peanuts in small and medium sized planes where there is no escape from the smell, do not serve an entire plane peanuts or smelly nuts (not all nuts smell, at least to me).
There's a lot of research into allergies and it shouldn't be too hard for some experts in the field to come up with simple to follow guidelines for airlines that would allow those that need it the protection they deserve and the fervent nuteaters their pleasures. For example by providing a buffer zone or separate room with better ventilation.
As a society we often infringe upon some people's rights to protect the weak who have no control over their genetic, physiological or mental condition. No one choses to have a food allergy, and it is the right of those people to not only be accommodated but also protected by the companies they do business with.
Ronflonflon
Note: This is only of interest to those of the Dutch persuasion.
Ronflonflon, legendary anarchic radio show from the 80s. We used to stay home for this and discuss the latest antics of the crew the next day in school. Presenter Jacques Plafond (Wim T. Schippers) talked through his guests and music. Got into fights, played countless self made jingles, called up people and deliberately misunderstood them and got into irrelevant semantic discussions. And of course he shamelessly plugged the productions of his friends and himself.
I've been a bit under the weather this weekend and listening to these again has been a real boon for me. Now if you'll excuse me I have about 270 shows to go. I should be done around March.
