6.29.2008

Slaughterhouse 1945

http://www.newsweek.com/id/143739/output/print

This is a letter from Kurt Vonnegut to his family when he was a POW in Nazi Germany in 1945.   It’s an amazing letter and is included in a collection of writings on war and peace, “Armageddon in Retrospect”. 

The timing of the book, as the US enters it’s fifth year of war in Iraq, is fortunate.  The more people read about the horror of war, the less it is sanitized and glamorized. 

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6.28.2008

Lousiana Science Education Act - setting Science Education back 100 years

streamdocument.asp (application/pdf Object)

OK, all you centers of higher education, please note that the next generation of Lousiana graduates will require remedial Science studies before they can compete with other students.

In a baldly political move, they have added language directing teachers to
"...create and foster an environment that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the origins of life, global warming, and human cloning."
Human cloning isn't a theory. And none of these issues are controversial within the scientific community.

As I have stated before, we have Scientific Method. If anyone has a theory, they should publish a paper describing a contradictory view for peer review. If the view is valid, the prevailing theory will be updated to reflect new findings.

Intelligent Design, Creationism, and other 'theories' are not scientific. There have been no scientific papers published for peer review on any of these topics, so they should be limited to religious or philosophical classes, not Science.

6.18.2008

Citizen Kubrick | Features | guardian.co.uk Film

Citizen Kubrick - Guardian Film

I used to get the Guardian (and a bunch of other newspapers) each Sunday while we lived in Ireland. It's a great paper, and this article is a great article about Stanley Kubrick, one of my favorite directors.

Dr. Strangelove is one of my favorite films. A discussion spontaneously started about the film at lunch one day. Everyone at the table had seen Dr. Strangelove, in four different languages no less. How many films are there that everyone has seen, and in multiple languages?

The Guardian article has some very interesting details about how Kubrick worked and I'll have to dig around to see if there is a Kubrick biography available.

6.15.2008

Register for SolarWinds Exchange Monitor v1.0.1

Register for SolarWinds Exchange Monitor v1.0.1

Very interesting monitor application from Solar Winds that supports Exchange 2000 and 2003 (sadly, not Exchange 2007). It monitors queue lengths and high level performance stats for the server (disk space, CPU and Memory utilization).

6.13.2008

The Kozinski mess (Lessig Blog)

The Kozinski mess (Lessig Blog)

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski is in the news a lot this week. Lawrence Lessig is a lawyer who focuses on computer issues and he has posted an insightful article with a lot of details that have been overlooked by traditional television and print media.

My take on Judge Kozinski is that he is a victim of a defendant who has been trying to discredit him. Read the article (and comments) and make your own decision.

I wish the news media had less pressure to publish crap, more insight into technology issues, and better editorial oversight. Maybe next year...

6.11.2008

Letters - Evolution and Creationism in Schools - Letter - NYTimes.com

Letters - Evolution and Creationism in Schools - Letter - NYTimes.com

This is a letter to the editor from Ivan Schuller, a professor of physics at UC San Diego. I quote extensively because I feel he summarized my view of Creationism versus Evolution so succinctly.

The scientific method has well- defined rules by which we decide whether a solution to a scientific problem is correct or not. It is not that we believe or have the opinion that a certain solution is correct — we prove it scientifically one way or another.

Thus there are right and wrong solutions that may seem unfair, undemocratic and elitist. But this is how science advances and produces the marvelous technological developments that surround us. And this is not a belief. It is a fact.

6.03.2008

Ben Stein's Expelled Exposed: Scientific American

Ben Stein's Expelled Exposed: Scientific American

The article, details Ben Stein interview of Michael Shermer for the movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed". I am shocked that Stein, a lawyer and generally intelligent guy, was so focused on supporting ID that it impacted his ability to interview Shermer. Generally, the interview process for journalists is very much like Scientific Method - process the information provided in an interview of a subject matter expert and include it in the movie.

The level of detail about the interview gives additional insight into Stein's decent into madness, and I echo the last sentence - "... will anyone take Ben Stein seriously again?".