The last couple of days have been very heavily drama-laden. Change has come, and it is most definitely not good. I have the day off tomorrow, and I’m feeling rather guilty leaving my new comrades to deal with the drama alone. So I’m going to post some happy things on my blog! I know most of them don’t read it, but hopefully somebody will.
Smile! Laugh! Decide that for the next five minutes, you’re not going to give a fuck what anybody else wants, and you’re going to be happy, dammit.
Check out this game: Merry Christmas from GROW!
Enjoy these wonderful sites:
http://cuteoverload.com/
http://kittenwar.com/
If you’ve got a lot of time to be bored or sad (or both,) do a Google Video search for “Fred Rogers.” You can’t listen to this man talk and not feel happy.
Watch the two happiest flashes in the whole world! one two
Listen to some music from Hackers! one two
Check out the archive of craaaazy work-safe wallpapers I set up.
And so it begins: Intelligent design ruled unconstitutional by Federal judge. This is really the news of the week. The ruling itself (which you can read here – yeah yeah yeah, PDF, I know, but goddamn, it’s like awesome given document form) has some really awesome quotes in it as well.
If everyone spoke this well, I’m fairly certain this debate would never have happened.
Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.
To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.
I know I have a few people who read this page occasionally. I know I spew a lot of bullshit. That’s what this page is for. I’d like to serve to educate a little, as well, and to that end I suggest you take a few minutes out of your day and read this:
“What You Can’t Say” by Paul Graham.
Longtime readers will recognize this, yes, I have posted this before. It was just a little over two years ago. I think I’m gonna make posting it an annual tradition. Having read a number of papers and articles in my lifetime, I can honestly say that I can count on one hand the number of times a paper has hit me with that “This is exactly what I want to fucking say” feeling. This is one of those few, and I believe it is the best of them.
I think I’m going to print out a few copies and take them to work.
