“Intelligent Design” vs. Evolution

 Religion, Science  No Responses »
Jun 302007
 

There are some knuckle-dragging Neanderthals (and I’m being insulting to Neanderthals making that comparison) who when they can stop drooling, parrot some nonsense about how they have come up with a “scientific” demonstration of how the evolution hypothesis is wrong and that the ages old creation myths given a quick paint of pseudo-science is a suitable explanation of how life came to be.

There are supposedly several arguments for “Intelligent Design” …

The first of course is the dumb religious prejudices of those who support “Intelligent Design” in that they cannot bring themselves to believe that the theory of evolution is compatible with a creator. This is principally a failure of imagination. Assuming you go with the Genesis creation myth, the dumber believe that God created the world exactly as depicted in Genesis. Just imagine for a minute, God trying to explain how he created the universe to a less educated man of pre-history … he would almost certainly resort to a simplistic explanation to avoid having to spend years at the task. If the Genesis myth is real, then it is most likely to be as described … a simplification suitable for man. There are many religious people who accept this and accept evolution as a reality.

The second argument is that evolution is an unproven theory over which there is considerable debate amongst the scientific community. Well the scientific community is wondering where all the argument is. As to whether evolution is unproven, well of course it is. There is supporting evidence, and nobody (with any credibility) has disproved evolution. It is the currently accepted theory as to how life came to be as is now.

There is also the complexity argument … those who argue for a “designer” claim that there are elements in life which are too complex to have evolved and this demonstrates that a designer was necessary. Not so … believing that a system is too complex to have evolved is again a failure of imagination. We may not understand how something could have evolved, but that does not mean it did not evolve.

Those in favour of “Intelligent Design” are anti-scientific bigots (it has been demonstrated again and again that there is no science in the “theory” of “Intelligent Design”) who want to turn back the clock to a time when anyone wondering about nature would be told “God made it that way” and to stop wasting their time. They want us to return to the dark ages.

Laugh at them. Spit on them. And ignore them.

And if you live in a country where they are corrupting the education system, fight that corruption!

Just How Democratic Is The UK ?

 Politics  No Responses »
Jun 292007
 

Well the answer to that question is not very … we elect representatives who make the necessary decisions on our behalf. Of course we’re a lot more democratic than some other places, and less that some others. For the record we’re probably more democratic than the ancient historical source of the idea of democracy … Athens. The Athens city state was only democratic if you were rich and male.

We happened to have had two examples of exactly how undemocratic the UK is this week … the resignation of Tony Blair and his replacement as Prime Minister by Gordon Brown, and the defection of Quentin Davies from the Conservative party to the Labour party.

The constituents of Grantham & Stamford are probably somewhat taken aback at finding themselves represented by a Labour MP; after all they were under the impression that they had voted for a Conservative MP. Well, no they hadn’t really … they really voted for Quentin Davies through thick and thin, and officially the party he belongs to is irrelevant. Of course his constituents might disagree, but their only avenue of complaint is when he tries to get re-elected.

Similarly nobody voted for Gordon Brown as Prime Minister. We all knew he was going to get into the hot seat of course … unlike Mr Grey’s (John Major) coup d’état where he replaced Margaret Thatcher. We didn’t have any say in the matter … the largest party’s leader is always (by convention) asked by the Monarch to become the Prime Minister. We may think that we are electing a Prime Minister (and the politicians encourage this), but really we ave no say in the matter except in having some influence on what party becomes the largest.

Does this need reforming ? Well perhaps, although there is always a danger in reform that we make things less stable. I think at the very least MPs who leave their party should resign their seat because we really are not living in a time where each MP acts more or less independantly.

Why Rockbox Your iPod, iRiver, Gigabeat, or Archos Audio Player

 Computing  No Responses »
Jun 212007
 

I have been stimulated into writing this by a slashdot article (not worth linking to) where people were arguing about the merits of installing Rockbox onto a compatible audio player … such as the iPod. Some people seem to think that replacing the standard iPod software is heresy!!

Or at the very least are complaining that Rockbox does not work the same way as the standard firmware.

I am in a somewhat odd situation … I bought an iPod after I was aware that Rockbox supported the iPod (and specifically avoided the 80Gb Ipod as it wasn’t supported at the time) to replace a rockboxed iRiver iHP100 (more commonly known as an iHP110) that was suffering from a lack of battery “oomph” (and yes I had tried replacing the battery). I spent probably just a couple of minutes in the native firmware before switching to the Rockbox firmware because I did not want to re-encode several thousand OGG-encoded tracks.

Now obviously I cannot criticise Apple’s interface or functionality on the iPod because I have not really used it.

However I can say that the Rockbox firmware is a perfectly adequate interface to run on an iPod and is getting better every week. Some of the features the Rockbox has include :-

  • Multi-codec support to play MP3, OGG, FLAC, AAC, WAV, … encoded files. I haven’t pulled down the full list but you really cannot get an audio player offering more codec support on a portable device. Not everyone needs this of course, but it is nice to have the choice.
  • The default Rockbox interface is kind of ropy on the iPod, but it is “themable” and some of the themes are pretty good … just have a look at the Rockbox Themes website (I have linked to the iPod Video themes)
  • Numerous “plugins” for playing games, displaying photos and other miscellaneous things. I must admit I don’t use them too much, but being able to play Jewel whilst bored waiting somewhere does come in useful.
  • The standard mass storage method of storing audio tracks in a way that can be easily accessed outside of iTunes does mean it is easier to copy some tracks to another computer easily. Of course I mean the freely distributable tracks!

Rockbox does have some disadvantages … the battery life is relatively poor compared with the native firmware (but very much better than an iHP100 with a tired battery!), and if you have a lot of investment in iTunes you will suffer from the lack of support (although the Rockbox database will track down files stored on the iPod whether they were put there by iTunes or just copied).

The most sensible advice for an iPod user thinking about making the switch is just to try it out. You may like it or you may not, but you don’t have anything to lose as you can always go back to the standard firmware. In fact as you can easily switch from one to the other, you can try out Rockbox gradually over time … go back to the native firmware when you are lost, and go back when you are feeling adventurous.

Another advantage that the existent Rockbox provides, that many people miss is that it may just put some pressure on Apple to improve their native firmware. If Apple notices that many of their iPod customers install Rockbox, they may be inclined to take a look themselves and start implementing features in their native firmware to “keep” their customers … surely something that would be good for all iPod owners.

Women or Men Are Better At Parking ?

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Jun 202007
 

There has just been an item on the morning news about how good at parking men and women are and which ones are better. It may be entertaining, but is also so inane that I can’t remember which sex was supposed to be better. Lets suppose men were worse at parking than women. Why? Perhaps because they drive more than women, or perhaps they have a tendency to drive bigger cars than women. Who knows ?

Personally I believe whatever the reason for someone being a bad parker, it is very unlikely to be because they are a man or a woman. Whilst such surveys are entertaining and provide a bit of ‘water cooler’ discussion material, all too many people jump to the obvious conclusion. All such a survey shows is that men have a statistically significantly greater chance of having an accident parking than women (or the other way around).

It does not show that men are worse at parking than women. That may be the case, but the survey doesn’t show it … because it doesn’t answer other questions :-

  • Do people who drive more than an hour a day have more or less accidents parking than those who drive less than an hour ? Repeat for other time periods.
  • Do people who drive larger cars have more accidents parking than those who drive smaller cars ?
  • Does parking in deprived areas result in more or less parking accidents ?
  • Does street parking result in more of less parking accidents than in car parks ?

The list goes on, and then you have to discover the differences between how men and women park.

We are too quick to jump on apparent evidence that shows men are better than women, or women are better than men. In reality, if you pick a woman driver and a man at random, there are probably many differences between them that could explain different driving risks, and that the difference in sex is probably the least likely explanation of differences in the risk of driving accidents.

Salman Gets A Gong, Iran Offended

 Politics  No Responses »
Jun 172007
 

So Salman Rushdie get a gong in the birthday honours list. Good for him!

And Iran gets all hot under the collar about it. Bad for them! I hope someone in the Foreign Office points out that it is none of their business and they should sulk about it in silence. After all, we’re not exactly threatening any Iranian citizens with murder are we ?

And a few days later, Pakistan also gets into the act. Again, what right do they think they have to criticise us when we honour a great writer ?

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