Ask MeFi are talking about long battery life laptops.
David Galbraith: “For people who would like to see a world of both reason and understanding, then the best thing to do is to teach young children to have an open mind, to enjoy mysteries and fiction but to question and discover the wonder of the world around them”.
Jason Rosenhouse: “ID is reviled among nowledgable people because the embarrassing emptiness of its arguments is matched only by the boundless arrogance of its leading proponents. If more time were all they wanted, everyone would be happy to give it to them. But no one who has been following the last ten years of ID activity could posibly believe that scientific progress rates highly on its list of priorities.” But, Jason, splitting the log of metaphysical naturalism with the wedge of truth and putting Darwin’s head in a vice is science! Honest!
Presentation Zen has a list of free and inexpensive stock photo websites.
The Guardian are reporting that gay men earn £10k more than the average.
Values or Else
Wikinews are reporting that the New South Wales government are introducing the national anthem in to school classrooms as well as “Australian values” lessons in primary schools.
They also seem to be enacting a regime much like Mr Blair wishes to with his “respect agenda”. The Aussies are at least being explicit: they want respect for authority, goddamnit! And the best way to do that is to spend a couple of minutes every day playing the national anthem at students!
These ‘values’ that the politicians seem to desire to promote are always essentially meaningless. At the Fabian Society this month, Chancellor Gordon Brown labelled British values as being liberty, fairness and responsibility. But, of course, he’s never going to say the opposite. ‘British values’ would never be illiberalism, unfairness and irresponsibility.
But, of course, it’s far easier to preach to us about ‘values’ while the biggest immoralist is the government themselves. It’s not the individual citizens or the damn schoolkids who start wars, prevent people from defending themselves, nanny them excessively, get them on to dreaded social ‘programmes’, shoot them in the head seven times and demand porn from search engines.
Maybe if they were without sin, they could start lobbing rocks. But they are far from that. Taking morality tips from government is like sex advice from a priest.
This BBC News article is getting a lot of linklove, but it’s worth it. Because, you know, scientists aren’t normal people like us philosophers. “;->”
Pharyngula is reporting that an Inherit the Wind remake based on Kitzmiller.
Boing Boing has an article on how to prevent sneaky governmental M-F’s poking through your search history.
The US spends a truckload of money. Don’t you feel safe as a result?
Apparently, the Pope’s divinely inspired words are now copyright. What, “Copyright 2006 God”. Gee, I’d like to see that one enforced.
I’m on the bus at the moment, but when I was in Charing Cross railway station half an hour ago, there was one of those “Could Inspector Sands please come to Platform Five?” warnings that means there’s a fire or a bomb scare or something similar. You heard it here first, guys. I walked back past the station about five minutes ago, and it was fine. When the alarm was going, the gates were open.
Jeffrey Shallit reviews Not Just Science: Questions Where Christian Faith and Natural Science Intersect.
Kent Newsome is asking: Web 2.0 only for geeks?
