The Nebraska Cornhuskers mens' basketball team upset the #4 team in the country tonight. (Check out the "end zone" language in the story. Good times.)
You must read this instant classic from The Sports Guy about his weekend (Vegas, Shaq, all things big...).
And the NHL, like, cancelled its season or something. And I think baseball is starting spring training or something. I dunno. Who cares.
Man, sports is boring.
UPDATE: Looks like I may be buying a football jersey in the near future.
2.22.2005
2.16.2005
Guns, Trees and Filmmakers
Straight out the pages of Wired, the American robot army comes to the NYT. A lot of this is a pipe dream (autonomous robots who know the difference between an enemy and a friend, for example) at this point, but here is something that isn't, a remote-controlled machine that comes equipped with a machine-gun and several cameras. Along with the unmanned drones Israel and the US military are now using, I see two things of interest in these stories:
1. My friends from college who spent (or spend) all of their time playing Bond and Halo are soon going to be very qualified for a military job.
2. These robotic soldiers will very soon be able to reduce the financial and human cost of fighting wars, which are pretty much the only things that seem capable of turning the American public against violence outside of our country. Yay.
The Kyoto Protocol goes into effect today. We suck.
Finally, Michael Moore has been honored once again.
UPDATE: Disaster strikes.
UPDATE 2: Saletan covers the robot soldier story and notes the most relevant detail from the NYT story that I didn't mention: these robots with machine guns will be deployed within two months in Iraq.
1. My friends from college who spent (or spend) all of their time playing Bond and Halo are soon going to be very qualified for a military job.
2. These robotic soldiers will very soon be able to reduce the financial and human cost of fighting wars, which are pretty much the only things that seem capable of turning the American public against violence outside of our country. Yay.
The Kyoto Protocol goes into effect today. We suck.
Finally, Michael Moore has been honored once again.
UPDATE: Disaster strikes.
UPDATE 2: Saletan covers the robot soldier story and notes the most relevant detail from the NYT story that I didn't mention: these robots with machine guns will be deployed within two months in Iraq.
2.10.2005
"News:" old, new, bad, good, etc.
Target heir Mark Dayton has decided not to run for reelection in Minnesota. So--brace yourselves, here--Al Franken (of Stuart Smalley fame) is throwing his proverbial hat in the proverbial ring. I actually think he's got a shot (since MN has a great same-day voter registration policy).
For those of you who missed all the capital punishment goings-on out here in New England (where the state governments haven't, um, killed anybody in quite a while), check out this story and (even more remarkable) this transcript (pdf file).
Another heartwarming story from the "old news" file is here.
In the market for a new "car?" Check this out. Seriously, now. Insane.
A chink in the armor?
Drinking kills? Not always.
This is kind of a cool site, one of those "wow, the internet is soooo building new communities" types. Basically, you post your goals and it matches you up with other people with similar goals.
I remember back when pretty much everybody on this site was a Lakers fan. Those were the days. Just to keep you former (read: "fair-weather") fans in the loop, Rudy Tomjanovich has resigned as head coach and one of the names being bandied about is Phil Jackson. Bryant has been hurt for, like, 13 games now and the Lakers are just above .500 and barely holding onto the eighth playoff position in the Western Conference.
Man, this post was pretty lame. I'll do better next time. I promise.
UPDATE: Yeah, I got had by the whole Al Franken thing. Oops.
For those of you who missed all the capital punishment goings-on out here in New England (where the state governments haven't, um, killed anybody in quite a while), check out this story and (even more remarkable) this transcript (pdf file).
Another heartwarming story from the "old news" file is here.
In the market for a new "car?" Check this out. Seriously, now. Insane.
A chink in the armor?
Drinking kills? Not always.
This is kind of a cool site, one of those "wow, the internet is soooo building new communities" types. Basically, you post your goals and it matches you up with other people with similar goals.
I remember back when pretty much everybody on this site was a Lakers fan. Those were the days. Just to keep you former (read: "fair-weather") fans in the loop, Rudy Tomjanovich has resigned as head coach and one of the names being bandied about is Phil Jackson. Bryant has been hurt for, like, 13 games now and the Lakers are just above .500 and barely holding onto the eighth playoff position in the Western Conference.
Man, this post was pretty lame. I'll do better next time. I promise.
UPDATE: Yeah, I got had by the whole Al Franken thing. Oops.
2.07.2005
Rise and Shine, Campers
Don't all rush to post at once.
One important note before I move on to the sexier bits. I neglected to post on the holiday of holidays, Groundhog Day. Please accept this late offering.
Another proponent of the Intelligent Design movement popped up on today's NYTimes Op-Ed page. The author argues, first of all, that ID is not a "religiously based idea," while acknowledging that it is often used as such. Michael Behe, the author of the op-ed piece, then goes on to lay out four claims of the ID movement, "based," he writes, "on physical evidence and a straightforward application of logic." The first, and central, claim is that one can often perceive design in nature. Analogically, we can recognize intelligence, rather than natural forces, behind Mount Rushmore (much like the Teleological "watchmaker" argument of Wm. Paley).
Right away, Behe's defense of ID seems to me to be more than slightly disingenuous. One cannot use the word "design" without implying a designer. ID does not have to say anything about a creator to carry this implication. Darwinian scientists would look at the same evidence ID researchers do and recognize complexity, but not design. Describing complexity as design requires an addition of a designer based not on evidence, but on the lack of evidence perceived in Darwinian evolutionary theory. While this addition may be completely rational, it is not, by definition, scientific. Behe's fourth claim acknowledges that there is controversy in asserting that "in the absence of any convincing non-design explanation, we are justified in thinking that real intelligent design was involved in life." Faith in a designer is justification for belief, but what angers some in the scientific community is that the faith is not acknowledged.
In this TAP article recounting the emergence of the Intelligent Design movement, the author sees continuity with earlier creation science movements and suggests that the movement itself has evolved into a more sophisticated enemy of Darwinism, but still feels that the agenda of ID is often visible.
So the question is, what do VP readers think about Intelligent Design?
One important note before I move on to the sexier bits. I neglected to post on the holiday of holidays, Groundhog Day. Please accept this late offering.
Another proponent of the Intelligent Design movement popped up on today's NYTimes Op-Ed page. The author argues, first of all, that ID is not a "religiously based idea," while acknowledging that it is often used as such. Michael Behe, the author of the op-ed piece, then goes on to lay out four claims of the ID movement, "based," he writes, "on physical evidence and a straightforward application of logic." The first, and central, claim is that one can often perceive design in nature. Analogically, we can recognize intelligence, rather than natural forces, behind Mount Rushmore (much like the Teleological "watchmaker" argument of Wm. Paley).
Right away, Behe's defense of ID seems to me to be more than slightly disingenuous. One cannot use the word "design" without implying a designer. ID does not have to say anything about a creator to carry this implication. Darwinian scientists would look at the same evidence ID researchers do and recognize complexity, but not design. Describing complexity as design requires an addition of a designer based not on evidence, but on the lack of evidence perceived in Darwinian evolutionary theory. While this addition may be completely rational, it is not, by definition, scientific. Behe's fourth claim acknowledges that there is controversy in asserting that "in the absence of any convincing non-design explanation, we are justified in thinking that real intelligent design was involved in life." Faith in a designer is justification for belief, but what angers some in the scientific community is that the faith is not acknowledged.
In this TAP article recounting the emergence of the Intelligent Design movement, the author sees continuity with earlier creation science movements and suggests that the movement itself has evolved into a more sophisticated enemy of Darwinism, but still feels that the agenda of ID is often visible.
So the question is, what do VP readers think about Intelligent Design?
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