Expelled

Thanks to Jeff for passing on a link to this post:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/expelled.php

Read it and smile. But then ask yourself: who are these midwestern police officers who remove atheists from movie theatre line ups?

Fforde

My friend Richard put me on to Jasper Fforde. I'm halfway through his second book in the Tuesday Next series, Lost in a Good Book, and am just loving it. Watch this space for a thoughtful review—but make sure you set a timeout interval or you're liable to expire before one appears.

For now, let me just say that I've seen comparisons to Terry Prachett and Douglas Adams, but neither seems quite right to me. These books are meatier. They are full of literary allusions; I'm madly taking notes of things I should read or re-read or research to see if they're real or made-up as I work through them. Right after reading The Eyre Affair, I beelined for a copy of Jane Eyre in the bookshop. I meant to buy it and read it, thus filling one of many embarrassing (but not unexpected) gaps in my literary education, but I'll sheepishly tell you that instead I just flipped straight to the end to see whether or not Jane actually ended up with Rochester. (She did! Hoorah!)

I'll do my best to marshall my thoughts about these books into something sensible for my next post.

Begging the Question

T-rex always puts it so much better than I can. Awesome.

"I select you"

A day late....

skepchick has posted some Darwinian Valentine's Day cards. Things like: Your secondary sexual characteristics bring all the boys to the gene pool. Have a look; it's a cute idea. (But they're not nearly as funny as I'd hoped!)

Ever better is G. Pullum's Language Log post from last year: The Prescriptivist Valentine. ("And remember, when a grammarian kisses you, you stay kissed").

6 Matches, 4 Triangles

Use 6 identical matchsticks to create 4 equilateral triangles. The solution does not require you to break any matches.

Dinesh is Freaking Me Out

Dinesh D'Souza's blog is freaking me out. A couple of his recent articles, "How Atheists Celebrate Christmas" and "Why Atheists Are Such Lousy Debaters" are full of slanderous (at worst) and silly (at best) ad hominem attacks:

Drunk: "... Hitchens reaches for his glass with the same alacrity* that fundamentalists reach for the Bible."

This undermines Hitchens's arguments.... how, exactly?

Drunk and silly: "...[an atheist Christmas is] bitter guys making sophomoric jokes and staggering out of the room inebriated."

That's why I like it so much. I can't think of a better combination than bitter guys, sophomoric jokes, and inebriated staggering! No matter what time of year!

Scared: "... these guys are scared to debate me."

Scared? Umm, no; I don't think so. In The Devil's Chaplain, published a few years before The God Delusion, Dawkins includes a series of letters that he exchanged with the late Stephen J. Gould. Although those two didn't agree on everything, they did agree on this: debating creationists gives creationists an undeserved legitimacy. News for you, Dinesh: Dawkins was quite settled in this position long before you started tugging on his shirtsleeve. Here's an excerpt from a letter that Gould sent to Dawkins in 2001 (boldface mine):

...we have the advantage [over creationists] that evolutionary scientists don't need the publicity that such debates can bring. In the unlikely event that a significant argument should ever emerge from the ranks of creationism/'intelligent design', we will be happy to debate it. Meanwhile, we shall cultivate our evolutionary gardens, occasionally engaging in the more exacting and worthwhile task of debating each other. What we shall not do is abet creationists in their disreputable quest for free publicity and unearned academic respectability.

* Good word though. "Like it, centurion; like it, like it."**
** D'Souza thinks Monty Python is sophomoric. And not in a good way.

"Can Atheists Be Parents?"

Did you see this article in Time magazine recently? Very chilling. An atheist couple in New Jersey adopted a baby though an agency, brought her home, and expected the required final approval from a judge to be a formality. Not so:

In an extraordinary decision, Judge Camarata denied the Burkes' right to the child because of their lack of belief in a Supreme Being. Despite the Burkes' "high moral and ethical standards," he said, the New Jersey state constitution declares that "no person shall be deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshiping Almighty God in a manner agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience." Despite [the baby's] tender years, he continued, "the child should have the freedom to worship as she sees fit, and not be influenced by prospective parents who do not believe in a Supreme Being."

The Burkes were ordered to send the child back to the adoption agency. The case is headed for the New Jersey Supreme Court.

I'm on tenterhooks.

Thanks to Mittal for the link.

[Update 2008-02-15: Darren has pointed out that this story is, um, 37 years old...just like me!! You'd think I'd be old enough to check the date of an article before mindlessly passing it on, wouldn't you? Oops!]

Pills

Here's a puzzle that my friend Kevin sent me.*

You have five jars of pills. All the pills in one jar only are contaminated. The only way to tell which pills are contaminated is by weight. "Good" pills weigh 10 grams while "bad" (contaminated) ones weigh 9 grams. You are given a scale and can make just one measurement with it. How can you tell which jar holds the contaminated pills?

Here's the answer to a follow-up question I had; it may help you:

Q: Is the scale a balance scale?
A: No; it's a regular kitchen scale that tells you how many grams something weighs.

* Kudos to Mark for solving this in about 30 seconds.

Unexpectable Know-Where-It-Goes

My daughter received a cute toy from her dentist the other day. It's a bouncy ball, all covered with knobby bits. Which means that its bounces are unpredictable - it careens around the room in a most unexpected manner.

Guess what my son calls it, lacking a ready-made term for it?

Unexpectable Know-Where-It-Goes.

No one could do better.

Dinner table debate

Oh and how I love Stephen Fry. He's been blogging lately, which is a treat. Blessays, he calls them; you can access them from this site: http://stephenfry.com/blog/

In a recent blessay, "Getting Overheated," Fry writes of a dinner party at which he got into a debate with an American about global warming. It's well worth reading, mainly for some very good points he makes about intelligent argument and his reasons for taking action even in the absence of utter certainty. And he says some amusing things about Terry Pratchett fans that I managed not to take personally. Read it, do.

What struck me first in this article, though, is an observation Fry makes about the difference between the average Brit and the average American 'round the average dinner table (and this has nothing to do with whether the milk or the tea goes in first*):

I like to think I’m never vituperative or too ad hominem but I do know that I fall on ideas as hungry wolves fall on strayed lambs and the result isn’t always pretty. This is especially dangerous in America.... Americans are not raised in a tradition of debate and that the adversarial ferocity common around a dinner table in Britain is more or less unheard of in America. ... To a Briton pointing out that something is nonsense, rubbish, tosh or logically impossible in its own terms is not an attack on the person saying it – it’s often no more than a salvo in what one hopes might become an enjoyable intellectual tussle.... Americans really don’t seem to be very good at or very used to the idea of a good no-holds barred verbal scrap. I’m not talking about inter-family ‘discussions’ here, I don’t doubt that within American families and amongst close friends, all kinds of liveliness and hoo-hah is possible, I’m talking about what for good or ill one might as well call dinner-party conversation. Disagreement and energetic debate appears to leave a loud smell in the air.

Is this so? Americans unused to debate? Adversarial ferocity? Verbal scraps? This is not my experience, but I experience Americans as a Canadian, not as a Brit. Anyone else care to weigh in?

* Milk first is, my dear, non-U. And I can even tell you why: Poor quality tea cups could crack when filled with boiling water straight from the kettle as Orwell recommends. If it's, "Milk in first, Dinah, and save the crockery," then we know a thing or two about the quality of your tea service. The finest bone china requires no such manoeuvrings.

Riddle

What comes once in a minute, twice in a moment, but never in a thousand years?

(Sorry for the long absence, my loves.)

Oh, wicked, bad, naughty Zoot!

Well, I was saving this for Zoot's birthday. But that's too long to wait. Here you are then, Zoot; you were not the first Zoot I knew. This is a gem of an excerpt from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). With love, Dingo.

GALAHAD: Zoot!

DINGO: No, I am Zoot's identical twin sister, Dingo.

GALAHAD: Oh, well, excuse me, I--

DINGO: Where are you going?

GALAHAD: I seek the Grail! I have seen it, here in this castle!

DINGO: No! Oh, no! Bad, bad Zoot!

GALAHAD: What is it?

DINGO: Oh, wicked, bad, naughty Zoot! She has been setting a light to our beacon, which, I just remembered, is grail-shaped. It's not the first time we've had this problem.

GALAHAD: It's not the real Grail?

DINGO: Oh, wicked, bad, naughty, evil Zoot! Oh, she is a naughty person, and she must pay the penalty -- and here in Castle Anthrax, we have but one punishment for setting alight the grail-shaped beacon. You must tie her down on a bed and spank her!

GIRLS: A spanking! A spanking!

DINGO: You must spank her well. And after you have spanked her, you may deal with her as you like. And then, spank me.

Hall

I came across The Hall of Documentation Weirdness again recently, a great site by a Vancouver writer called Darren Barefoot. It features unintentionally hilarious technical illustrations from around the world, made all the more humorous by Barefoot's quizzical captions.

The site has been around for a few years now, and it's as good as ever, although I notice that it now includes some ads. (I remember its popularity spiked back in 2002 or 2003 when it got slashdotted: Barefoot was probably inundated with offers that he could not refuse.)

Anyway, it's wonderful; you must check it out. Here's a teaser:



"From a Dell computer box. I believe the caption should read 'If you drop this box on a dog, don't trip over its tail'."

Minimalism

I attended a seminar on somefink called "minimalism" recently. Naturally, what this is depends entirely on the context. If I were an art historian, you might think I was talking of Stella or Serra. If I were an architect, you might think I was talking of Mies van der Rohe.

But I am a technical writer. (Now, stay awake. I'm not finished yet. You don't want me to tip Tilted Arc [1981] over on you, now do you? It's heavy.) Talk of minimalism in technical writing circles always comes 'round to JoAnn Hackos, technical communications superstar. Yes, we have them too. Superstars, that is. You haven't heard of them, but they're out there. And Hackos is their Queen.

The seminar was unbelievable!

Here are the highlights:
- We write too much; no one reads it. (This manual..., In this chapter..., This document assumes..., Before you begin..., Introduction..., Getting to Know the Product Features..., Navigating the User Interface..., Document Conventions..., Related Publications..., Overview of...Using the Such and Such Feature....) Yawn, yawn, yawn. All a waste of time and space.
- We don't provide what people want. (Just tell me how to increase the volume of my cell phone! Just tell me how to increase the volume on my cell phone! Just tell me how to increase the volume on my cell phone!)

We meticulously document every software feature, yet we're still somehow missing the point.

Why? Because we don't understand what customers are actually trying to do with the product. It's actually easier to write from spec, from talking to engineers, and from looking at the user interface than it is to talk to users. So that's what most of us do. But it won't do. It won't do.

I was pretty inspired to do things differently. Stay tuned. I hope I'll have more to tell you soon.

GodTube

Remember when I got all excited about the iBelieve?

Well, the Christian techies are at it again. Check this out: GodTube ("Broadcast Him"), a video social networking site that sounds like a cross between YouTube and Facebook.

It's described here as "The fastest growing Internet site in the US" with a growth rate of 973 percent in the single month since its launch. The same article tells us this about the site:

One of the hottest and "most viewed" videos on the site's home page is called "Rapture – End of Times". It depicts recent world events as a prelude to the second coming of Jesus Christ at which time only the faithful will accompany the saviour to heaven (in the video they disappear into thin air during an Adobe Flash of lightning*) leaving the sinners and non-believers behind in a hell on earth of their own making.

* LOVE that: Adobe Flash of lightening. Why can't I think up these gems?

Ergonomic Keyboard for Pirates

Spotted off the starboard bow of Language Log. Did you know that today is Talk Like a Pirate Day?

I looked up avast, by the way. According to Merriam-Webster, this is "a nautical command to stop or cease." Sort of like the seafarin' version of ESC.

What do you get when you cut an earthworm in half?

Did YOU think the answer was "two earthworms"?

Sadly, no.

Turns out that the lengthy Death Spasm of the earthworm outlasts the attention span of small children.

SLICE!

You: "Hey! Two earthworms. Cool!"

You: "Hey! Dirt! Cool!"
You: "Hey! Isn't that Jacques Cousteau?! Cool!"
You: "Hey! Ice cream! Cool!"

ZOOM!

Earthworm:


Fact courtesy of Q.I.
Q.I. courtesy of Richard.
Jacques Cousteau distraction courtesy of Scott.

Don't Forget the Chicks This Time

I am thinking of getting my boss this t-shirt for Christmas. She will LOVE it. Shhh... it's a secret.

Available in assorted sizes from the fine fellow who brings us Dinosaur Comics.

Rigourizing

A friend forwarded me an e-mail message from the Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy about their Masters of Science in Animals and Public Policy program*. He had a feeling that one of the words in the message would raise my eyebrows a fraction. He was right. Here it is:

"You might like to know that we have completed a second year of rigourizing** our curriculum."

Rigourizing?

I have nothing against made-up words. All words, after all, are made up by someone at one time or another. This, however, is a particular type of made-up word that bothers me: it does not improve the sentence.

It's pretty clear that rigourize is inspired by the adjective rigourous. According to m-w.com, rigourous means manifesting, exercising, or favoring rigor: very strict. Tufts is making this program more rigourous; I can see that, but only after stopping at this new word, doing a quick translation, and returning to read the rest of the sentence.

In this case, the new construction murkifies the sentence, blockifying my comprehension. Instead, I would suggest:

"You might like to know that we have spent two years making our curriculum more rigourous."

And I do! I do like to know!


* Which sounds simply spanking! Here's an enticing description of the program (from the same e-mail message):

Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy pursues research on the changing place of animals in society. Our Master of Science in Animals and Public Policy (MAPP) is an interdisciplinary degree in human-animal studies and public policy.

Human-animal studies is kin to environmental studies with a focus on wild or domestic animals in relation to nature and society. Our program is interdisciplinary with a curriculum that balances theory, methods, topics and research. We welcome students from the natural and social sciences, as well as the arts and humanities. We also give due attention to both qualitative and quantitative modes of research.

**His word absent from the dictionary or not, our Tufts author is not utterly alone: rigourize gets 7 hits in a Google search; rigorize, 1,150. Looks like the Americans are more likely to use it. Our author, I'm guessing from the ou spelling, is likely a Brit or Canadian living in the US, but I'll wager he's been there awhile.

More Pundles

Here are some more pundles*; good luck!

1.

o er t o

2.

faredce

3.

k k

c c

u u

t t

s s

word word word word

* Acnowledgements to http://www.billsgames.com/. No peeking though. You know I hate that.