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28 June 2002 ::
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I am not the atheist chaplain
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In comments on the First Amendment ruling of the Ninth Circuit Court regarding the Pledge of Allegiance, President Bush stated:
"I believe that it points up the fact that we need common-sense judges who understand that our rights were derived from God. And those are the kind of judges I intend to put on the bench."
Jay Manifold, a weblogger,
puts this statment
side-by-side with Article VI of the
Constitution of the United States, a document and compact which Bush swore to uphold
and defend, as set out in Article II
of that same document.
I am rapidly putting the lie to that "I am not the athiest chaplain" header, aren't I?
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OoooOoOoooo...it's a free play-by-mail
Singularity game!
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Speaking of the Singularity, how long will it be until we have
cheap, human-level computers?
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Screwed up? Need to apologize to an evil overlord, a powerful shogun, or your wife?
You need an automated groveller.
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Mike Ryan
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An advertisement in the
Philadelphia City Paper for a restaurant in Old City called Saint Jack's has
Thais in an uproar. The ad depicts Bhumibol Adulyadej, the king of Thailand, as a
hipster sporting mod threads and an Adidas logo. Thai diplomats have called the
restaurant repeatedly, and have dispatched letters to the governor of Pennsylvania and the mayor
of Philadelphia threatening this will damage diplomatic ties.
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One of the most evocative turns of phrase I have read in a while:
"Being in
Iraq is like creeping around inside someone else's migraine."
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27 June 2002 ::
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If I was a car, I'd exchange myself for a newer model --Glenn Juskiewicz
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I'm sure my American readers (which would, from my referrer logs, be almost all five of you) will have heard
that the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has declared
the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of
Allegiance constitutes a violation of the separation of church and state.
I don't usually get political in this space, because I doubt many people care about my politics. You most
likely come here for links to science sites or goofy sites or goofy science sites. However, I have read a lot of
idiocy by (mostly conservative) pundits regarding this, and I feel it is necessary to dissent.
Some state that this First Amendment question is a picayune distraction from the War on Terror. This shows an astounding lack of understanding of
how real politics and law work. Are we supposed to stop all non-war related activities for the duration?
Should we stop the proceedings against Arthur Anderson? Should we give up on prosecuting car thieves? Should Congressional discussions on tort reform stop because of the unnamed war? The statement
that defending the First Amendment is somehow less important than the War on Terror is either naive or motivated by the political interests of the religious right.
"It won't poison the minds of our children to hear the name of God," the
pundits write, "and anyway the mere mention of a non-Christian God is not religion as meant by the First Amendment."
I wonder if we could change the Pledge to read "one nation under Allah" or "one nation under an unnamed demiurge" and get these same reactions. I also
wonder if these pundits have ever heard of the people who consider any mention of deity at all to be a poison
poured in the ears of children - the large and growing group called atheists. (Caveat: I am not an atheist.
I am an agnostic. As if you care.) God is religion, and in America religion and the state are separated. If one has a problem with
this, there are many states such as Saudi Arabia or England which have an established state religion to which one can look for guidance and possibly a passport.
I wouldn't be so worked up about this if the pundits weren't so damned smug.
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Is your dealer refusing to honor the warranty on your scooter? Use the postmodern power of
eBay to broadcast your annoyance:
Auction off all
your Honda cars, and append your amusingly misspelled letter of complaint to the auction.
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There is a new page of A Miracle of Science
up today. In this update, Mark forgets that he no longer has a thousand flyover miles insulating him from me...
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Vernor Vinge has retired from San Diego State University. Three of his most interesting
essays are hosted on SDSU servers, although no one knows how long it will be before some
penny-pinching bureaucrat or careless student sysop wipes out the files.
So I've decided to mirror the essays here on Cinxia.com. The header documentation for the
essays states that they can be reproduced for noncommercial purposes - and I can't think of
any purpose more noncommercial than "information should never be lost."
So go and bask in the brilliance of Professor Vinge at the new
Vernor Vinge mirror site. If you've never read
his essay on the technological
Singularity, you owe it to yourself to read it at least once.
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View this fine, if small, treasury of
Calvin and Hobbes quotes.
I don't need to compromise my principles, because they don't have the slightest bearing on what happens to me anyway.
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26 June 2002 ::
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Would you like fries with the groin-kick you're about to receive?
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The fastest material object ever detected: the
Oh My God Particle.
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The first
official bloodshed of the Civil War occurred when men of the
Sixth Massachusetts Militia were attacked by the citizens of Baltimore
while the soldiers were on their way through the city. (The riot
in Baltimore occured after the attack on Fort Sumter, but no one
died at Sumter.)
The South fired the first shots at Fort Sumter, but
when the Union guns replied the
first
shot from the cannons of Fort Sumter was fired by
Abner Doubleday, who
it is occasionally claimed invented baseball.
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25 June 2002 ::
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Reinforcements aren't allowed to call for reinforcements! That's just silly!
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There was new A Miracle of Science
up yesterday, but I forgot to link to it 'cause I'm an idjit.
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Man, the
Fightin' Red Onion Head
looks like crap nowadays. The Gazebo
looks the same as ever, though. (Photos by Fred
Coppersmith of the Penn State Monty
Python Society, an organization which once honed my utter lack of comedic talent
into a five-book record deal with Sony Pictures.)
Speaking of the F.R.O.H., this Collegian
article on the Fighting Red
Onion Head mentions "a top ten list - composed by former students - of alternate uses for
their oversized inanimate neighbor with the irreverent nickname." I'll bet I still have my copy of
that list somewhere...
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There are still people in England who belong to the
Stalin
Society. They believe that Stalinism is a glorious political ideology that
will lead mankind into a bright socialist future. They are, in other words, nuts.
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24 June 2002 ::
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Smart, pretty, and a heretic! And you're still single?
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Where did the lions and elephants killed in the ampitheaters of Rome come from? The answer
is a picture of the Roman Empire in miniature: they were
captured by the Roman military
in part to keep soldiers in practice and in part as a spectacular waste of resources in service
of the glory of the Emperor.
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Consult this handy list of
Philadelphia
skyscrapers to determine what you're seeing on the skyline. There are enough tall buildings in Philly
that the city requires a second page. Neat. From the really cool
Skyscraper Page.
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The dying star W43A is spewing jets of water
into the space around it. The corkscrew
jets are temporary, and may explain why planetary nebulas aren't always spherical.
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23 June 2002 ::
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DO NOT READ THIS SENTENCE.
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The shiny new Department of Precrime--er, the Department of Homeland Security--will be
shielded from the
Whistleblower Protection Act and from the Freedom of Information Act. So insiders
will not be able to tell the public what is going wrong inside the Ministry of
Peac--sorry--inside Homeland Security, and the public will not be able to directly require
the dissemination of information via the FoIA.
Update: On review, I realized that this sounds rather paranoid / conspiracy-theory /
tinfoil-hat. I'm not stating that the Administration are attempting to build an American
NKVD.* I am, however, disturbed by the idea that a large section of the Executive branch
of government could be shielded from basic public scrutiny in such a forthright manner.
* Although I bet John Ashcroft's wet dreams all involve jackboots.
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22 June 2002 ::
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I dub thee Sir Phobos: Knight of Mars, Beater of Ass!
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The U.S. Congress has passed a resolution declaring
Antonio
Meucci the inventor of the telephone. How very odd.
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In a world where there really are world-wide villains, there are people who will meet this
untapped demand for business. The evil folks at
Villain Supply can provide for your
every unspeakable need. Find something you want, then click on
"Add to Cart." (The payment options
are worth it.) Don't miss the message from The Preserved Head of Josef Mengele, Webmaster.
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How close did Asteroid 2002 MN come to hitting the Earth?
Too damned close.
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Monday was the thirtieth anniversary of the
Watergate
break-in, and I had this link ready...and I forgot to post it. Well, here it is,
a few days late.
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21 June 2002 ::
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It was a nice spring day, and besides, all the other cars seemed to be on fire
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The summer solstice was today at
9:24 AM EDT.
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Asteroid 2002 MN
missed the Earth by only 120,000 kilometers on on June 14. Scientist discovered it
after it had passed by. That's like a bridge dropping
onto the road only nine and a half car-lengths behind your Nissan.
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Inspired by his never-ending quest for progress, in 2084 man perfects the Robotrons: A robot
species so advanced that man is inferior to his own creation. Guided by their infallible
logic, the Robotrons conclude: The Human race is inefficient, and therefore must be
destroyed. You
are the last hope for mankind.
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20 June 2002 ::
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Actually, I'd rather wear the Kitty Girl Ears of Command! --Susan Monroe
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19 June 2002 ::
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Hell hath no fury like a psycho hippo with a heavy machine gun!
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The Institute of Space and Astronautical Science of Japan is going to
engrave as many as a million names
on a sheet of foil inside a target marker which will be landed on the asteroid 1998 SF36
in 2005. My registration number is 007469700011569.
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There are two ways to remove creationism from the
world. One is to point creationists to this
Scientific
American article titled "15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense" in order to convince them of
their erroneous thinking through logic. The other is to bash them on the head with a
baulk of lumber and remove them from the gene pool, thus proving evolution in a nicely
ironic fashion. Guess which method I'm in favor of.
The article. The article! Jeez.
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Some clever fellow is running a weblog as
Julius Caesar. Great Caesars's ghost
has so far written entries up to the death of Caesar's daughter, Julia, in 54 BCE.
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18 June 2002 ::
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I just didn't get a chance to go outside today 'cause of the Robotech marathon on PBS
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Junk science
dumbs down public debate and salts the body politic with poisonous untruths.
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No-till agricultural methods, also called
slot planting,
are designed to cut down on erosion and can even increase crop
yields in well-drained cornfields. No, I don't expect anyone on Earth except me cares...
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17 June 2002 ::
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I beat the Internet. The end guy is hard.
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Monorail? Bah!
Teleporter!
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Once more unto the breach: new A Miracle of
Science.
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Okay, this is clever: Get kids interested in working out during gym class by
installing
Dance Dance Revolution machines.
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Mike Ryan
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Some of you may remember the stunning original
artwork and animation in a short anime music
video by Griffin Waldau. It turns out he has
a Web site.
Complete with animations.
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The worst comic strip on the Internet,
User Friendly, is having
financial difficulties.
While I suspect Mike Ryan will
disagree, I see this as a case of overwhelming self-satisfaction and pride getting its due.
You can't run a comic strip with no artistic talent, little humor, and a nose-in-the-air
cooler-than-thou attitude and expect to survive for long after the dot-com boom ends.
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15 June 2002 ::
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Either it's the rapture...or I put tinfoil in the microwave again
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A century and a half ago in Gibraltar quarrymen found a woman's skull that is both
the
first and the last of the Neanderthals. Modern scientists ponder the intellectual
virus of language that led to her species' death.
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In this badly
written article from the BCC, we learn that the books
you read affect your dreams. Or that the type of person you are
will affect your book choice and the contents of your dreaming.
The author doesn't make it clear.
Nor does he explain why reading a lot of computer books leads
to odd dreams where giant space orangutans chase you through the
moons of Jupiter.
What? What!?
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14 June 2002 ::
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You were doing well until everyone died
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Two hundred million years hence the
Milky Way
may become an active starburst
galaxy, spewing two great jets of matter and energy into the void.
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13 June 2002 ::
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I thought bluegrass music was but a legend to frighten children
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12 June 2002 ::
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O frabjous day, calloo, callay. Excuse me if I sulk. --Fred Coppersmith
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11 June 2002 ::
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It sort of rocks you to sleep while you burn up in Earth's atmosphere
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Mister
Sparkle: He identifies himself as a magnet for foodstuffs. He boasts
that he will banish dirt to the land of wind and ghosts.
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Glenn Juskiewicz
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I can't read Korean, but I can look at the pretty pictures of the
most
stunning computer mod I've seen in a long while.
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Glenn Juskiewicz
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10 June 2002 ::
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HBO is showing adult films 24 hours a day, and twice as often on Sunday because it makes the Lord cry. --Jon Kilgannon
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8 June 2002 ::
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...just like it was before we all turned suddenly and inexplicably dumb as rocks
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And below the bridge, the great beasts Scylla and Charybdis
gnash their fangs and sharpen their claws on wave-girt rocks in the wine-dark sea...
Italy is building a
bridge
over the Straits of Messina that will carry twelve highway lanes
and two rail lines. It will have a central span of over three
kilometers. The
Straits
of Messina, home in legend to Scylla and Charybdis,
lie between mainland Italy and Sicily.
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Mike Ryan
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7 June 2002 ::
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No, our fear-triggered adrenal glands. Scare us and we outrun light.
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Hackers are being called upon to
break the passwords of a
Norwegian technician who died a few years ago. Until the passwords are discovered,
the password-protected archives that contain data on a collection of thousands of documents
and books will remain inaccessible.
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Mike Ryan
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Unless you're too far to the east (as I am here in Philadelphia), you will be able to see
the setting Sun
partially eclipsed on Monday evening. If you are lucky enough to live in a thin belt
to the south and west of the mainland United States, you will see an annular eclipse.
If you are west of the "Eclipse Begins at Sunset" line and south of the "North Limit
of Eclipse" line on this
NASA map, you can see the eclipse. Mark, you
are hereby ordered to go out and watch this eclipse since I can't.
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6 June 2002 ::
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Back to what I was saying before we were rudely attacked by nothing
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5 June 2002 ::
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I'm sorry. I have offended the world with glitter & pink & fuzzy & leopard & my big ass head.
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4 June 2002 ::
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Your theory of a donut-shaped universe is intriguing
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3 June 2002 ::
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Don't tell me he's trying to take over the world! Can't he come up with something more original than that?
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I have just finished twelve hours of torture with a Belkin F5D5230-4
router/proxy turnkey device. It had worked flawlessly for half a year,
then stopped answering DHCP queries or connecting to the outside world
after it went through what was apparently the horrible stress of
being turned off for half an hour.
I had to reinstall all the software on the proxied computers, reset
the proxy itself to factory defaults, and then attempt to input the
IP address of the proxy's external interface over and over again for
five hours before it would begin to function properly.
My verdict: Don't buy a Belkin 4-Port Cable/DSL Gateway
Router. They're awful. I wish the idiots who review these
devices hadn't all been on hard drugs the day they wrote the
reviews I read before I purchased the device.
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We proudly present
A Miracle of Science, a romantic comedy
set in the glorious future year 2148.
It is drawn by
Mark Sachs and written by yours truly. It will
appear on Mondays and Thursdays, and is guaranteed to teach you a fool-proof method of
real estate investing
and cause your car's engine to run 30% cleaner.
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Much of the document is blithering and buzzwords, but there is a cyberpunk
grace surrounding the concept of
DNA seen through the eyes of a hacker.
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Even though it was written the day of the initial screening of the movie,
Roger Ebert's original
review of 2001 gets it right.
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(The Side of the Angels)
Projects:
A Miracle of Science
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Portrait of the Artist as a Young Biomechanoid
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Pinfeathers:
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House of the Whispering Woods
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Maximum Verbosity
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Features:
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