Taking the evolution sticker comedy one step further Read more →
Author: Mr. McLaren
Nerd Dad Fashion Sense Part 2
A followup to the earlier post. Ladies, and Gentlemen, I present yet another photo of Sarah Kathleen McLaren. I’m burning the comedy ones onto a disc that we will use to embarrass her for many, many, years to come. Read more →
Blogger As Developer
Warning: this will be a very geeky post about WordPress internals and a bug I just fixed in the current version. Feel free to skip this if that stuff isn’t up your alley. So, this PHP stuff is pretty easy to figure out compared to the stuff I do every day at the day job. I had been unable to… Read more →
Songs Stuck in Your Head
I’ve been walking around all day humming and singing bits from Danny Michel‘s alt.country cover of David Bowie’s Young Americans. Of course, this isn’t such a bad thing–if you have to get a song stuck in your head, it might as well be something good. Last week it was Ice-T going on about how “my lethal weapon is my mind”… Read more →
Religious Red Code
You know, looking at this map ( from the Glenmary Research Center) of the US by primary religious group, all I can see is a really scary game of Core Wars being played out. I’d love to see a time-lapse animation of this–I bet the explosion of the Southern Baptists and the slow creeping of the Mormons to infect Utah’s… Read more →
Even Greenspan is worried about the dollar
Of course he won’t come out and say it in those terms, but his statement at a banking conference in Frankfurt (as reported in Reuters) is about as close as he can get” “It seems persuasive that, given the size of the U.S. current account deficit, a diminished appetite for adding to dollar balances must occur at some point,” Greenspan… Read more →
Oenophile
My favourite red wine right now is the Gumpr’s Block Shiraz from Richard Hamilton. It’s the perfect blend of fruit and tannin. I encountered it entirely by accident–I’m generally a fan of Aussie Shiraz, and whenever I see one from the McLaren Vale region that I’m not familiar with, I make a point of picking it up–for the obvious sentimental… Read more →
Patent Stupidity
On my list of things to post about, I have a rant about how algorithms should not be patentable. However, looking at some of the applications makes the argument more elegantly than I ever could. Read more →
It’s a blog
So, while I’ve been playing with this site over the last month, I’ve been telling myself that I’m just learning how to use WordPress so I can set up a blog for a friend. Tonight I solved my last remaining technical problem (nerdy details below) and now I am forced to admit that I am enjoying this process enough that… Read more →
What Canada Should Do
For a long time I’ve been saying that we need to diversify our trade more. The ease of access we have to the large American market makes it all too easy to put all our eggs in one basket. There are several problems with this, though. First and foremost is that it gives the American administration too much power over… Read more →
“Extraordinary Rendition”
AN executive jet is being used by the American intelligence agencies to fly terrorist suspects to countries that routinely use torture in their prisons. Who says so? That crazy, unreliable, tinfoil hat conspiracy rag, The Sunday Times Bob Baer, a former CIA operative in the Middle East, said: “If you want a serious interrogation you send a prisoner to Jordan.… Read more →
Still more on Gonzales
Report: A.G. Nominee Worked to Keep Info From Press Lots of interesting, and depressing information here about Gonzales’ role in the administration’s continuing policy of secrecy and back room dealings. At the White House, however, the report points out Gonzales’ interpretation of executive privilege, which he has sought to broaden under the Bush Administration, as potentially the most troubling of… Read more →
Evolution, Textbooks, Fake Science
Continuing the discussion of the evolution sticker story is this insightful essay from Maud Newton: Blog which looks at the possible consequences of fake science ending up in textbooks. The piece has lots of good reading in it, but I’ll just quote a little from the wrap-up. It’s bad enough that adults are being seduced by, or at least remain… Read more →
Weak US Dollar (Part III)
Continuing our look at the weak US dollar we have a couple of articles from this week. First up is US dollar weakness worries EU, which includes this tasty bit: While the US Treasury continues to insist the Bush administration favours a strong dollar, foreign exchange markets assume Washington is happy with a weak currency as a means to bolster… Read more →
Interesting and Scary
A short interview from New Scientist with a Shin Bet interrogator. My understanding is that you can make a lose analogy between the Shin Bet and the FBI, in the same way you can losely compare the Mossad to the CIA. (I do wonder, though, how this interview fits into the “Meet people shaping the future of science” category.) The… Read more →
