Happy New Years!

It's been a while since I posted, yes, but I have been busy busy with work and home life. I hope all who read this have had a great 2007 and will have an even better 2008!

Scientists a step closer to steering hurricanes

Clicking on the image above will give you a larger version.

I wonder if there will come a day when man really can control the weather?

Scientists have made a breakthrough in man's desire to control the forces of nature – unveiling plans to weaken hurricanes and steer them off course, to prevent tragedies such as Hurricane Katrina.
The damage done to New Orleans in 2005 has spurred two rival teams of climate experts, in America and Israel, to redouble their efforts to enable people to play God with the weather.

Click here to read the rest of this fascinating article.

Picture of the day - WTF?

See if you can figure out what it is that makes this picture a
WTF? picture.

Food items of the day - part 2

Arctic Delight — Reindeer Paté

While this is probably the most palatable food on our list, we include it for the wrongness factor: "Mommy, why is daddy eating puréed Rudolph?" Here's the upside to snacking on Santa's Little Helper -- because the reindeer are farm-raised by Sami herdsmen in Sweden on a simple diet of moss and lichen, your dinner delicacy is delightfully hormone-free. Not to mention, this other red meat is incredibly lean, clocking in at a mere 2 percent fat content, making it one of the least-fatty meats in your cart. As an added bonus, there's no such thing as mad reindeer disease.

Food items of the day - part 1

For Emergency Use Only — Sue's Canned Whole Chicken

Canned meats generally don't put a rumbly in our tumbly, but in a pinch, perhaps in the event of a major cataclysm, we'd throw down with some Vienna Sausages. However, this canned chicken takes the canned-meat cake. The impossibly tiny chicken crammed into this 50-ounce can slides out with a generous portion of gelatinous goop, or rather, "delicious gravy."

Our advice? Keep a can on hand for emergencies, and ignore the serving suggestion to snack on the dish cold. Holed up in a fallout shelter during the aftermath of a nuclear war might be the perfect (and probably only justifiable) opportunity to scarf down a bowlful.

Picture of the day

Clicking on the image above will give you a larger version.

Internet Commenter Retirement Party

Iz on ur computr, captioning ur videeowzz!

Lots of language!

Internet Commenter Business Meeting

This is what happens when corporations change pwn3rship.

Lots of language!

Steve, Don't Eat It!

Here is another collection of foods that I myself would be reluctant to try, but Steve is willing to do so for all our sakes so we don't have to! Check out the goods here.

!!! WARNING !!!
Some adult material there!

Been a while...

I know it has been a while since my last post, but the excuse I am choosing to use is "writer's block". Perhaps I will post things here in the future, I am just not sure at this time.

6 Canned Foods We’re Reluctant to Try

"With hurricane season almost upon us, it’s time to start stocking up on bottled water, extra batteries and canned food. But why stick to just beans and corn? Here’s a look at some more exotic (read: disugusting!) canned foods we found..."

Please click here for the rest of this most informative and educational article.

Nintendo Sixty Fourrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!

This video almost defies description. The maniac kid is definitely a basket case and will be needing intensive psychotherapy for years to come.
Comments?

What Your Cat Is Trying To Tell You

* Clicking on the image above will give you a much larger version.

Report: 70 Percent Of All Praise Sarcastic

Report: 70 Percent Of All Praise Sarcastic

Kodak - The Winds of Change

Rabbit in the back yard

I snapped this rabbit a few days before the Target incident and am just now getting around to posting it online. As you can see, I like my images black and white and contrasty as hell. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

* Clicking on the image above will give you a much larger version.

Tanked by Target

To make a long story short, Target has decided to cut me loose two months into the deal. Keith, my ETL-Food said that Target is "excercising it's 90-day option" with me and that as of the May 31st, 2007 that my services would no longer be required.
Needless to say, I am a bit dissapointed and even more so unemployed.

Darth Vader's Psyche: What Went Wrong?

The original article from CBSNews.com is right here

Anakin Skywalker, Who Became Darth Vader, Had Borderline Personality Disorder, Psychiatrists Report

The news comes not from a galaxy far, far away, but from San Diego, where the American Psychiatric Association (APA) is holding its 160th annual meeting.

Experts from the psychiatric department at France's University Hospital of Toulouse told the APA's annual meeting that Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader could "clearly" be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

Borderline personality disorder is a serious mental illness marked by instability in moods, interpersonal relationships, self-image, and behavior, according to background information on the Web site of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

The French psychiatrists — who included Laurent Schmitt, M.D. — based their diagnosis on original Star Wars film scripts.

Schmitt's team describes Skywalker's symptoms, including problems with controlling anger and impulsivity, temporary stress-related paranoia, "frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment (when trying to save his wife at all costs), and a pattern of unstable and intense personal relationships," including his relationships with his Jedi masters.

Changing his name and turning into "Darth Vader" is a red flag of Skywalker's disturbed identity, note Schmitt and colleagues.

The researchers aren't suggesting that real people with borderline personality disorder are Darth Vaders-in-the-making. Skywalker's symptoms are an extreme, fictional case.

Borderline personality disorder can be treated through psychotherapy and with medication. But that wasn't part of Skywalker's script.

Tale from Midnight City

The new Maroon 5 CD is out and it is good!

The new Maroon 5 album It Won't Be Soon Before Long is out and it is good good good! You can use iTunes store to search for and listen to 30 second samples of each of the 12 tracks off this CD. It is well worth buying either the CD itself, or you can purchase the tracks from the iTunes store for your iPod if you are so inclined.

Here is a review of It Won't Be Soon Before Long from Amazon.com:
Sometimes it's O.K.--even important--to put aside your reluctance to embrace artists who make teenage girls scream. It happened in 2006, when Justin Timberlake scraped the sludge off pop and left something shiny behind, and it's happening again in 2007 with Maroon 5. It Won't Be Soon Before Long, the L.A. band's sophomore studio disc, rode in on a crest of hype and crumpled expectations--fan reports had it that Adam Levine & Co. scrapped their signature pop-soul sound for something harder and darker. Not so. Shades of Prince, Hall & Oates, and Sting still color the Maroon sound (check out the spectacularly fizzy "Little of Your Time," as well as the first single, "Makes Me Wonder," a song catchier than fire), but they're made ever fainter here by the clamping down of five guys on what is essentially the most distinctive pop sound to emerge from a single band since the Bee Gees squealed into the mid-'70s. It Won't Be Soon squares hip-hop sensibilities ("Wake Up Call") with rock ones ("If I Never See Your Face Again") and stormy moods ("Can't Stop") with bittersweet ballads ("Better That We Break"). It's a disc destined to defy detractors and go on to greatness, elevating the credibility of teenage girls for years to come. --Tammy La Gorce

Product Description
Global neo-soul rock superstars Maroon 5 are back with their much-anticipated sophomore album, It Won't Be Soon Before Long. The follow-up to the 10x platinum, Grammy-winning Songs About Jane will be "sexier and stronger," according to frontman Adam Levine, who looked to '80s icons such as Prince, Michael Jackson, and Talking Heads for inspiration. Recorded at home in Los Angeles with producers Mike Elizondo (Fiona Apple, Eminem), Mark "Spike" Stent (Bjork, Keane, Gwen Stefani), Mark Endert (Madonna, Fiona Apple), and Eric Valentine (Queens of the Stone Age, Nickel Creek), the album promises to be a louder take on the pop sounds of their first effort. "It's definitely aggressive, upbeat and pounding," says Levine.

Panasonic's 12 megapixel Lumix DMC-FX100: a wide-angle, "HD video" shooter

Note: The original article from Engadget is right here.

Oh boy, lookie lookie. Panasonic just announced their new Lumix FX top-ender, the DMC-FX100. Packing a 1/1.72-inch, 12.2 megapixel CCD, this compact shooter manages to squeeze in a 28mm wide-angle Leica DC lens with 3.6x optical zoom. The cam features VE III processing along with Panny's Mega Optical Image Stabilizer and Intelligent ISO control (up to a 6400 sensitivity) to reduce blurring. Shutter release is measured at 0.009 seconds while bursting 8 shots per second at full resolution. It even records WVGA (848 x 480) video at 30fps or 1280 x 720 at 15fps direct to SDHC/SD cards. Nice, should be a winner by the time the reviews roll around.

15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense

Note: The original article from Scientific American is right here.

When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 143 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution's truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere--except in the public imagination. Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. They lobby for creationist ideas such as "intelligent design" to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms. As this article goes to press, the Ohio Board of Education is debating whether to mandate such a change. Some antievolutionists, such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial, admit that they intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a "wedge" for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God. Besieged teachers and others may increasingly find themselves on the spot to defend evolution and refute creationism. The arguments that creationists use are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution, but the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage. To help with answering them, the following list rebuts some of the most common "scientific" arguments raised against evolution. It also directs readers to further sources for information and explains why creation science has no place in the classroom. 1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law. Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter--they are not expressing reservations about its truth. In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as "an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as 'true.'" The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling. All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot see subatomic particles directly, for instance, so they verify their existence by watching for telltale tracks that the particles leave in cloud chambers. The absence of direct observation does not make physicists' conclusions less certain. 2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest. "Survival of the fittest" is a conversational way to describe natural selection, but a more technical description speaks of differential rates of survival and reproduction. That is, rather than labeling species as more or less fit, one can describe how many offspring they are likely to leave under given circumstances. Drop a fast-breeding pair of small-beaked finches and a slower-breeding pair of large-beaked finches onto an island full of food seeds. Within a few generations the fast breeders may control more of the food resources. Yet if large beaks more easily crush seeds, the advantage may tip to the slow breeders. In a pioneering study of finches on the Galápagos Islands, Peter R. Grant of Princeton University observed these kinds of population shifts in the wild [see his article "Natural Selection and Darwin's Finches"; Scientific American, October 1991]. The key is that adaptive fitness can be defined without reference to survival: large beaks are better adapted for crushing seeds, irrespective of whether that trait has survival value under the circumstances. 3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created. This blanket dismissal of evolution ignores important distinctions that divide the field into at least two broad areas: microevolution and macroevolution. Microevolution looks at changes within species over time--changes that may be preludes to speciation, the origin of new species. Macroevolution studies how taxonomic groups above the level of species change. Its evidence draws frequently from the fossil record and DNA comparisons to reconstruct how various organisms may be related. These days even most creationists acknowledge that microevolution has been upheld by tests in the laboratory (as in studies of cells, plants and fruit flies) and in the field (as in Grant's studies of evolving beak shapes among Galápagos finches). Natural selection and other mechanisms--such as chromosomal changes, symbiosis and hybridization--can drive profound changes in populations over time. The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not--and does not--find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (144 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly. Evolution could be disproved in other ways, too. If we could document the spontaneous generation of just one complex life-form from inanimate matter, then at least a few creatures seen in the fossil record might have originated this way. If superintelligent aliens appeared and claimed credit for creating life on earth (or even particular species), the purely evolutionary explanation would be cast in doubt. But no one has yet produced such evidence. It should be noted that the idea of falsifiability as the defining characteristic of science originated with philosopher Karl Popper in the 1930s. More recent elaborations on his thinking have expanded the narrowest interpretation of his principle precisely because it would eliminate too many branches of clearly scientific endeavor. 4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution. No evidence suggests that evolution is losing adherents. Pick up any issue of a peer-reviewed biological journal, and you will find articles that support and extend evolutionary studies or that embrace evolution as a fundamental concept. Conversely, serious scientific publications disputing evolution are all but nonexistent. In the mid-1990s George W. Gilchrist of the University of Washington surveyed thousands of journals in the primary literature, seeking articles on intelligent design or creation science. Among those hundreds of thousands of scientific reports, he found none. In the past two years, surveys done independently by Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University and Lawrence M. Krauss of Case Western Reserve University have been similarly fruitless. Creationists retort that a closed-minded scientific community rejects their evidence. Yet according to the editors of Nature, Science and other leading journals, few antievolution manuscripts are even submitted. Some antievolution authors have published papers in serious journals. Those papers, however, rarely attack evolution directly or advance creationist arguments; at best, they identify certain evolutionary problems as unsolved and difficult (which no one disputes). In short, creationists are not giving the scientific world good reason to take them seriously. 5. The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution. Evolutionary biologists passionately debate diverse topics: how speciation happens, the rates of evolutionary change, the ancestral relationships of birds and dinosaurs, whether Neandertals were a species apart from modern humans, and much more. These disputes are like those found in all other branches of science. Acceptance of evolution as a factual occurrence and a guiding principle is nonetheless universal in biology. Unfortunately, dishonest creationists have shown a willingness to take scientists' comments out of context to exaggerate and distort the disagreements. Anyone acquainted with the works of paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University knows that in addition to co-authoring the punctuated-equilibrium model, Gould was one of the most eloquent defenders and articulators of evolution. (Punctuated equilibrium explains patterns in the fossil record by suggesting that most evolutionary changes occur within geologically brief intervals--which may nonetheless amount to hundreds of generations.) Yet creationists delight in dissecting out phrases from Gould's voluminous prose to make him sound as though he had doubted evolution, and they present punctuated equilibrium as though it allows new species to materialize overnight or birds to be born from reptile eggs. When confronted with a quotation from a scientific authority that seems to question evolution, insist on seeing the statement in context. Almost invariably, the attack on evolution will prove illusory. 6. If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? This surprisingly common argument reflects several levels of ignorance about evolution. The first mistake is that evolution does not teach that humans descended from monkeys; it states that both have a common ancestor. The deeper error is that this objection is tantamount to asking, "If children descended from adults, why are there still adults?" New species evolve by splintering off from established ones, when populations of organisms become isolated from the main branch of their family and acquire sufficient differences to remain forever distinct. The parent species may survive indefinitely thereafter, or it may become extinct. 7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth. The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry. Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have originated in space and fallen to earth in comets, a scenario that may solve the problem of how those constituents arose under the conditions that prevailed when our planet was young. Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science's current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if life on earth turned out to have a nonevolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then would be robustly confirmed by countless microevolutionary and macroevolutionary studies. 8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance. Chance plays a part in evolution (for example, in the random mutations that can give rise to new traits), but evolution does not depend on chance to create organisms, proteins or other entities. Quite the opposite: natural selection, the principal known mechanism of evolution, harnesses nonrandom change by preserving "desirable" (adaptive) features and eliminating "undesirable" (nonadaptive) ones. As long as the forces of selection stay constant, natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times. As an analogy, consider the 13-letter sequence "TOBEORNOTTOBE." Those hypothetical million monkeys, each pecking out one phrase a second, could take as long as 78,800 years to find it among the 2613 sequences of that length. But in the 1980s Richard Hardison of Glendale College wrote a computer program that generated phrases randomly while preserving the positions of individual letters that happened to be correctly placed (in effect, selecting for phrases more like Hamlet's). On average, the program re-created the phrase in just 336 iterations, less than 90 seconds. Even more amazing, it could reconstruct Shakespeare's entire play in just four and a half days. 9. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become more disordered over time. Living cells therefore could not have evolved from inanimate chemicals, and multicellular life could not have evolved from protozoa. This argument derives from a misunderstanding of the Second Law. If it were valid, mineral crystals and snowflakes would also be impossible, because they, too, are complex structures that form spontaneously from disordered parts. The Second Law actually states that the total entropy of a closed system (one that no energy or matter leaves or enters) cannot decrease. Entropy is a physical concept often casually described as disorder, but it differs significantly from the conversational use of the word. More important, however, the Second Law permits parts of a system to decrease in entropy as long as other parts experience an offsetting increase. Thus, our planet as a whole can grow more complex because the sun pours heat and light onto it, and the greater entropy associated with the sun's nuclear fusion more than rebalances the scales. Simple organisms can fuel their rise toward complexity by consuming other forms of life and nonliving materials. 10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features. On the contrary, biology has catalogued many traits produced by point mutations (changes at precise positions in an organism's DNA)--bacterial resistance to antibiotics, for example. Mutations that arise in the homeobox (Hox) family of development-regulating genes in animals can also have complex effects. Hox genes direct where legs, wings, antennae and body segments should grow. In fruit flies, for instance, the mutation called Antennapedia causes legs to sprout where antennae should grow. These abnormal limbs are not functional, but their existence demonstrates that genetic mistakes can produce complex structures, which natural selection can then test for possible uses. Moreover, molecular biology has discovered mechanisms for genetic change that go beyond point mutations, and these expand the ways in which new traits can appear. Functional modules within genes can be spliced together in novel ways. Whole genes can be accidentally duplicated in an organism's DNA, and the duplicates are free to mutate into genes for new, complex features. Comparisons of the DNA from a wide variety of organisms indicate that this is how the globin family of blood proteins evolved over millions of years. 11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life. Evolutionary biologists have written extensively about how natural selection could produce new species. For instance, in the model called allopatry, developed by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, if a population of organisms were isolated from the rest of its species by geographical boundaries, it might be subjected to different selective pressures. Changes would accumulate in the isolated population. If those changes became so significant that the splinter group could not or routinely would not breed with the original stock, then the splinter group would be reproductively isolated and on its way toward becoming a new species. Natural selection is the best studied of the evolutionary mechanisms, but biologists are open to other possibilities as well. Biologists are constantly assessing the potential of unusual genetic mechanisms for causing speciation or for producing complex features in organisms. Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and others have persuasively argued that some cellular organelles, such as the energy-generating mitochondria, evolved through the symbiotic merger of ancient organisms. Thus, science welcomes the possibility of evolution resulting from forces beyond natural selection. Yet those forces must be natural; they cannot be attributed to the actions of mysterious creative intelligences whose existence, in scientific terms, is unproved. 12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve. Speciation is probably fairly rare and in many cases might take centuries. Furthermore, recognizing a new species during a formative stage can be difficult, because biologists sometimes disagree about how best to define a species. The most widely used definition, Mayr's Biological Species Concept, recognizes a species as a distinct community of reproductively isolated populations--sets of organisms that normally do not or cannot breed outside their community. In practice, this standard can be difficult to apply to organisms isolated by distance or terrain or to plants (and, of course, fossils do not breed). Biologists therefore usually use organisms' physical and behavioral traits as clues to their species membership. Nevertheless, the scientific literature does contain reports of apparent speciation events in plants, insects and worms. In most of these experiments, researchers subjected organisms to various types of selection--for anatomical differences, mating behaviors, habitat preferences and other traits--and found that they had created populations of organisms that did not breed with outsiders. For example, William R. Rice of the University of New Mexico and George W. Salt of the University of California at Davis demonstrated that if they sorted a group of fruit flies by their preference for certain environments and bred those flies separately over 35 generations, the resulting flies would refuse to breed with those from a very different environment. 13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils--creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance. Actually, paleontologists know of many detailed examples of fossils intermediate in form between various taxonomic groups. One of the most famous fossils of all time is Archaeopteryx, which combines feathers and skeletal structures peculiar to birds with features of dinosaurs. A flock's worth of other feathered fossil species, some more avian and some less, has also been found. A sequence of fossils spans the evolution of modern horses from the tiny Eohippus. Whales had four-legged ancestors that walked on land, and creatures known as Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus helped to make that transition [see "The Mammals That Conquered the Seas," by Kate Wong; Scientific American, May]. Fossil seashells trace the evolution of various mollusks through millions of years. Perhaps 20 or more hominids (not all of them our ancestors) fill the gap between Lucy the australopithecine and modern humans. Creationists, though, dismiss these fossil studies. They argue that Archaeopteryx is not a missing link between reptiles and birds--it is just an extinct bird with reptilian features. They want evolutionists to produce a weird, chimeric monster that cannot be classified as belonging to any known group. Even if a creationist does accept a fossil as transitional between two species, he or she may then insist on seeing other fossils intermediate between it and the first two. These frustrating requests can proceed ad infinitum and place an unreasonable burden on the always incomplete fossil record. Nevertheless, evolutionists can cite further supportive evidence from molecular biology. All organisms share most of the same genes, but as evolution predicts, the structures of these genes and their products diverge among species, in keeping with their evolutionary relationships. Geneticists speak of the "molecular clock" that records the passage of time. These molecular data also show how various organisms are transitional within evolution. 14. Living things have fantastically intricate features--at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels--that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution. This "argument from design" is the backbone of most recent attacks on evolution, but it is also one of the oldest. In 1802 theologian William Paley wrote that if one finds a pocket watch in a field, the most reasonable conclusion is that someone dropped it, not that natural forces created it there. By analogy, Paley argued, the complex structures of living things must be the handiwork of direct, divine invention. Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species as an answer to Paley: he explained how natural forces of selection, acting on inherited features, could gradually shape the evolution of ornate organic structures. Generations of creationists have tried to counter Darwin by citing the example of the eye as a structure that could not have evolved. The eye's ability to provide vision depends on the perfect arrangement of its parts, these critics say. Natural selection could thus never favor the transitional forms needed during the eye's evolution--what good is half an eye? Anticipating this criticism, Darwin suggested that even "incomplete" eyes might confer benefits (such as helping creatures orient toward light) and thereby survive for further evolutionary refinement. Biology has vindicated Darwin: researchers have identified primitive eyes and light-sensing organs throughout the animal kingdom and have even tracked the evolutionary history of eyes through comparative genetics. (It now appears that in various families of organisms, eyes have evolved independently.) Today's intelligent-design advocates are more sophisticated than their predecessors, but their arguments and goals are not fundamentally different. They criticize evolution by trying to demonstrate that it could not account for life as we know it and then insist that the only tenable alternative is that life was designed by an unidentified intelligence. 15. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution. "Irreducible complexity" is the battle cry of Michael J. Behe of Lehigh University, author of Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. As a household example of irreducible complexity, Behe chooses the mousetrap--a machine that could not function if any of its pieces were missing and whose pieces have no value except as parts of the whole. What is true of the mousetrap, he says, is even truer of the bacterial flagellum, a whiplike cellular organelle used for propulsion that operates like an outboard motor. The proteins that make up a flagellum are uncannily arranged into motor components, a universal joint and other structures like those that a human engineer might specify. The possibility that this intricate array could have arisen through evolutionary modification is virtually nil, Behe argues, and that bespeaks intelligent design. He makes similar points about the blood's clotting mechanism and other molecular systems. Yet evolutionary biologists have answers to these objections. First, there exist flagellae with forms simpler than the one that Behe cites, so it is not necessary for all those components to be present for a flagellum to work. The sophisticated components of this flagellum all have precedents elsewhere in nature, as described by Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University and others. In fact, the entire flagellum assembly is extremely similar to an organelle that Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague bacterium, uses to inject toxins into cells. The key is that the flagellum's component structures, which Behe suggests have no value apart from their role in propulsion, can serve multiple functions that would have helped favor their evolution. The final evolution of the flagellum might then have involved only the novel recombination of sophisticated parts that initially evolved for other purposes. Similarly, the blood-clotting system seems to involve the modification and elaboration of proteins that were originally used in digestion, according to studies by Russell F. Doolittle of the University of California at San Diego. So some of the complexity that Behe calls proof of intelligent design is not irreducible at all. Complexity of a different kind--"specified complexity"--is the cornerstone of the intelligent-design arguments of William A. Dembski of Baylor University in his books The Design Inference and No Free Lunch. Essentially his argument is that living things are complex in a way that undirected, random processes could never produce. The only logical conclusion, Dembski asserts, in an echo of Paley 200 years ago, is that some superhuman intelligence created and shaped life. Dembski's argument contains several holes. It is wrong to insinuate that the field of explanations consists only of random processes or designing intelligences. Researchers into nonlinear systems and cellular automata at the Santa Fe Institute and elsewhere have demonstrated that simple, undirected processes can yield extraordinarily complex patterns. Some of the complexity seen in organisms may therefore emerge through natural phenomena that we as yet barely understand. But that is far different from saying that the complexity could not have arisen naturally. "Creation science" is a contradiction in terms. A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism--it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms. Thus, physics describes the atomic nucleus with specific concepts governing matter and energy, and it tests those descriptions experimentally. Physicists introduce new particles, such as quarks, to flesh out their theories only when data show that the previous descriptions cannot adequately explain observed phenomena. The new particles do not have arbitrary properties, moreover--their definitions are tightly constrained, because the new particles must fit within the existing framework of physics. In contrast, intelligent-design theorists invoke shadowy entities that conveniently have whatever unconstrained abilities are needed to solve the mystery at hand. Rather than expanding scientific inquiry, such answers shut it down. (How does one disprove the existence of omnipotent intelligences?) Intelligent design offers few answers. For instance, when and how did a designing intelligence intervene in life's history? By creating the first DNA? The first cell? The first human? Was every species designed, or just a few early ones? Proponents of intelligent-design theory frequently decline to be pinned down on these points. They do not even make real attempts to reconcile their disparate ideas about intelligent design. Instead they pursue argument by exclusion--that is, they belittle evolutionary explanations as far-fetched or incomplete and then imply that only design-based alternatives remain. Logically, this is misleading: even if one naturalistic explanation is flawed, it does not mean that all are. Moreover, it does not make one intelligent-design theory more reasonable than another. Listeners are essentially left to fill in the blanks for themselves, and some will undoubtedly do so by substituting their religious beliefs for scientific ideas. Time and again, science has shown that methodological naturalism can push back ignorance, finding increasingly detailed and informative answers to mysteries that once seemed impenetrable: the nature of light, the causes of disease, how the brain works. Evolution is doing the same with the riddle of how the living world took shape. Creationism, by any name, adds nothing of intellectual value to the effort.

Science vs. Faith: the flowcharts

This is not meant to be insulting by the way, merely thought provoking. I do not mean to offend anyone or any group with this.

* Clicking on the image above will give you a much larger version.

Video: Talking Cats!

Two new macros

One of the trees in the front yard has some interesting buds that I wanted to capture before they came into bloom. It was a bit windy so I had to take the pictures in between the gusts.
I used the macro feature on the Lumix to get mere centimeters from the buds, as I am telling you, what you see in these pictures is in real life real itty bitty and you can only get this "close" to them using a good macro lens.

* Clicking on the images above will give you much larger versions.

"The Snowball Effect"

Another great video. Really well done.

"The Landlord"

This video is absolutely HILARIOUS! There is some language used in it so be forewarned.
Also, Wired.com has a great story on the making of the video HERE.

*UPDATE* I had to make a few changes to reflect some linking issues, so click here for a direct link to the video.

A new critter in the yard

I discovered this moth in the bushes in the front yard this morning. It is quite the stunner as far as colors go. However, as far as camouflage goes, it isn't well hidden amongst the leaves of the bush that it is in. Any bird could have spotted it and made a quick meal of it.
I don't know what happened to it after I took these pictures.

* Clicking on the images above will give you much larger versions.

Bluegrass Radio on iTunes

I am not ashamed to say that I really enjoy Bluegrass music and that as of late I have been listening via iTunes Radio to Bluegrass Radio - 100 Percent Pure Acoustic Bluegrass, which can be found on iTunes via Library - Radio - Country - Bluegrass Radio (see above image). I like this particular stream because it has more of an eclectic mix of traditional and modern styles.

For those of you who would like to check out Bluegrass Music without having to install iTunes, you can check out Bluegrassradio.org and listen to their stream via the links on the left side of the page.

* Clicking on the image above will give you a larger version.

The Mac Pro: Now with 8 core goodness!

Oh baby! Now that is what I am talking about!

Main Page

Processor

Design

Graphics

Expansion

Performance

Technical Specifications

And let's not forget that Macs can now run Windows. So, the old
"I don't like Macs because they won't run my
(insert Windows application here) programs!!!"
excuses don't cut it any more.
See here and here for more information.

* Clicking on the images above will give you much larger versions.

Upgrading an Intel Mac Mini with an Intel Core 2 Duo T7600 (2.33Ghz) Merom Processor

This is a fascinating article for a PC guy like myself. It shows that there is a future for PC users who like to tweak, mess around with and upgrade PCs, but who want to make the switch to Mac and still tweak, mess around with and upgrade their Macs.

It is an excellent read, so don't miss out!

For those of you who don't follow the Mac scene, the Mac Mini (pictured above) ships with an Intel Core Duo processor of either the 1.66GHz or 1.83GHz variety. The real plus with these new fangled "MacIntel" (so-called) Minis is that the "Yonah" Intel Core Duo processors that they ship with can be upgraded directly to a "Mermom" Core 2 Duo, which is more advanced technology.

For Great Justice!

Unless you are a true internet nerd, you are not expected to get the references in this classic Calvin & Hobbes strip.

* Clicking on the image above will give you a larger version.

The iRack: You absolutely MUST go and see this!

The link is here. It is a MadTV skit that spoofs both the way that Steve Jobs presents Apple's new "i" items (iMac, iPod, etc) and is also a thinly veiled commentary on the situation in Iraq and our involvement there.

So, if you haven't done it yet, stop what you are doing and go see it now!

* Note: iRack has nothing whatsoever to do with George W. Bush eating a kitten. That is another story entirely.

A few new pics (macro photography)

I have figured out that I have a definite slant towards images that exhibit a higher contrast than the norm. Take a look at these two images and see if you see what I mean.

* Clicking on the images above will give you much larger versions.

What if...

What if Jesus had been a cat? or a dog?

* Clicking on the images above will give you larger versions.

My quest for employment is right on "Target"

Finally, after my sixth consecutive interview, this time with the District Team Lead (DTL), Target made me an offer making more than what I was making at Harris Teeter. How could I possibly refuse such an offer I ask you?
After being unemployed for 24 days it certainly feels good to be working again.

30 Funniest Jerry Seinfeld Quotes

I was the best man at the wedding. If I'm the best man, why is she marrying him? It's amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper. What is a date really, but a job interview that lasts all night? The only difference is that in not many job interviews is there a chance you’ll wind up naked. You know you're getting old when you get that one candle on the cake. It's like, "See if you can blow this out." Men want the same thing from their underwear that they want from women: a little bit of support, and a little bit of freedom. Dogs are the leaders of the planet. If you see two life forms, one of them's making a poop, the other one's carrying it for him, who would you assume is in charge. Now they show you how detergents take out bloodstains, a pretty violent image there. I think if you've got a T-shirt with a bloodstain all over it, maybe laundry isn't your biggest problem.Maybe you should get rid of the body before you do the wash.

That's the true spirit of Christmas; people being helped by people other than me There's very little advice in men's magazines, because men don't think there's a lot they don't know. Women do. Women want to learn. Men think, "I know what I'm doing, just show me somebody naked." According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy. Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason The Swiss have an interesting army. Five hundred years without a war. Pretty impressive. Also pretty lucky for them. Ever see that little Swiss Army knife they have to fight with? Not much of a weapon there. Corkscrews. Bottle openers. "Come on, buddy, let's go. You get past me, the guy in back of me, he's got a spoon. Back off. I've got the toe clippers right here." Why do people give each other flowers? To celebrate various important occasions, they're killing living creatures? Why restrict it to plants? "Sweetheart, let's make up. Have this deceased squirrel." Why do they call it a "building"? It looks like they're finished. Why isn't it a "built"? People who read the tabloids deserve to be lied to Seems to me the basic conflict between men and women, sexually, is that men are like firemen. To men, sex is an emergency, and no matter what we're doing we can be ready in two minutes. Women, on the other hand, are like fire. They're very exciting, but the conditions have to be exactly right for it to occur. The big advantage of a book is it's very easy to rewind. Close it and you're right back at the beginning. I have a friend who’s collecting unemployment insurance. This guy has never worked so hard in his life as he has to keep this thing going. He’s down there every week, waiting on the lines and getting interviewed and making up all these lies about looking for jobs. If they had any idea of the effort and energy that he is expending to avoid work, I’m sure they’d give him a raise. To me, a lawyer is basically the person that knows the rules of the country. We're all throwing the dice, playing the game, moving our pieces around the board, but if there is a problem the lawyer is the only person who has read the inside of the top of the box. Men don't care what's on TV. They only care what else is on TV. The idea behind the tuxedo is the woman's point of view that men are all the same; so we might as well dress them that way. That's why a wedding is like the joining together of a beautiful, glowing bride and some guy. The tuxedo is a wedding safety device, created by women because they know that men are undependable. So in case the groom chickens out, everybody just takes one step over, and she marries the next guy. My parents didn't want to move to Florida, but they turned sixty, and that's the law. I will never understand why they cook on TV. I can't smell it. Can't eat it. Can't taste it. The end of the show they hold it up to the camera, "Well, here it is. You can't have any. Thanks for watching. Goodbye." Somebody just gave me a shower radio. Thanks a lot. Do you really want music in the shower? I guess there's no better place to dance than a slick surface next to a glass door. See, the thing of it is, there's a lot of ugly people out there walking around but they don't know they're ugly because nobody actually tells them. What would the world be like if people said whatever they were thinking, all the time, whenever it came to them? How long would a blind date last? About 13 seconds, I think. "Oh, sorry, your rear end is too big." "That's ok, your breath stinks anyway. See you later." You know what I never get with the limo? The tinted windows. Is that so people don't see you? Yeah, what a better way not to have people notice you than taking a thirty foot Cadillac with a TV antenna and a uniformed driver. How discreet. Nobody cares who's in the limo. You see a limo go by, you know it's either some rich jerk or fifty prom kids with $1.75 each. You can measure distance by time. "How far away is it?" "Oh about 20 minutes." But it doesn't work the other way. "When do you get off work?" "Around 3 miles." Are there keys to a plane? Maybe that's what those delays are sometimes, when you're just sitting there at the gate. Maybe the pilot sits up there in the cockpit going, "Oh, I don't believe this. Dammit..I did it again." They tell you it's something mechanical because they don't want to come on the P.A. system, "Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to be delayed here on the ground for a while. I uh..Oh, God this is so embarrassing...I, I left the keys to the plane in my apartment. They're in this big ashtray by the front door. I'm sorry, I'll run back and get them." I once had a leather jacket that got ruined in the rain. Why does moisture ruin leather? Aren't cows outside a lot of the time? When it's raining, do cows go up to the farmhouse, "Let us in! We're all wearing leather! Open the door! We're going to ruin the whole outfit here!"

Captain America...not dead?

In reference to this prior post, it seems that Captain America might not be dead after all? I don't read comics at all these days, but when I did read them, CA was on the list of monthly items that I would subscribe to. All I have for now is this panel and a link to a Digg thread where there is a discussion concerning the panel.

* Clicking on the picture above will give you a larger version.

Molly, Queen of the Cats

This cat has an attitude problem. Dare I say "catitude"? Molly looks at me as if to say "Hey, human! How about you go and fetch me a can tuna and then go change my litter box. After that go and fluff my bed pillows so that I can take my 17th beauty nap of the day."

* Clicking on the above picture will give you the full size version.

You have to do this!

Stop whatever you are doing right now and head over to Imagini VisualDNA and get started answering the questions. You will be absolutely amazed as to how accurately this website gadget thingie can tell you all about you. I was astounded, because there was very little in the final report that was off.
Go check it out right now!

By the way...

In case you hadn't guessed it by now, I am ready to drink the Kool-Aid, the Apple flavored Kool-Aid that is. I don't know why it has taken me so long to realize it, but I guess what it took was an hour and a half with a totally devoted Apple Store Guru to show me the light. I can say now without a shadow of a doubt, that with the exception of a very very few games, a Mac can do everything you want and need a PC to do, but without all the fuss and muss of owning a PC.
And no Gary, I was not brainwashed.
Friends, Macs just work, and they keep on working, even after the PC has broken down for the fifth time or has just contracted the most recent virus.
As soon as I can afford to do so, I will be "switching" to a Mac and I won't be looking back.

A band I recommend

When I look back at which bands are getting the most play on the iPod, I have been seeing that Default has been receiving the majority of the repeat plays. You can listen to most if not all the tracks from the most recent album One Thing Remains at the link I have provided.

Some info from Amazon:

After two years on the road with such bands as Evanescence and fellow Canadians Nickelback, Default returns with their most mature and uncompromising collection of songs to date. "One Thing Remains" equally channels the classic and the modern--from Led Zeppelin to A Perfect Circle--into something unique. The undeniable riffs and passionate vocals of the first single, "Count On Me"

I own One Thing Remains, The Fallout and Elocation and if you were thinking of taking a chance on Default, I would definitely steer you towards One Thing Remains as I think it is the best of the three, but that is not saying that the other two are bad which they are not.

By the way, Mom, Diane and Fred, you will not like this kind of music. Fair warning!