Archive for March, 2006
links for 2006-03-30
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artist makes rock videos with ASCII
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kevin kelly on where science is going including triple blind experiments etc.
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this pretty cool. series of small logic puzzles that show the underlying visual patterns of logic.
links for 2006-03-29
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new lonley planet book on 200 cities. incudes Taipei no less.
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belief in god as an evolutionary phenoumena of mental development
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more on the problems of group idea creation from Nick Currie i.e. Momus.
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GM and a nod to Mosanto (of all people) in a brief piece that summarizes the developments of GM foods that are stocked with all the stuff that makes you smart. From Knowledge Problem… a great blog.
Why education sucks.
While granted you got essays and other open ended research subjects we teach as if conclusions on everything have been reached. If there’s one thing to learn from video games it’s that an open ended environment in which people create their own meaning has a tendency to create situations that are memorable, but perhaps not always meaningful. Teaching history or science or math as closed systems in which the teacher is orator or in which the end has already been revealed seems like a nice way to further reinforce the same boredom that anyone feels when someone tells them what to do. Ignorance is key to education, it is the state in which one wants to learn versus the history book or the english book which already has a solution. That the present is the only story we’re allowed to create actively is what makes it precious, if we can’t create a greater level of flexibility in instruction and do away with definitives in some cases then we’ll always be stuck with a mass of people with little enthuasism to sit through another day of a system that they don’t control. My point being, let’s just leave some stories blank and let kids create their own story through research and interpretation. Let the finished ones, the ones vital to cultural understanding be the cut scenes in a system that rewards the more interactive use of the history of thought.
technorati tags: education
links for 2006-03-28
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not as impressed with this as I thought I would be, but I did like the windwaker game. anyway, new zelda for DS. looks kinda cool in the touch screen implementation, but the game itself looks a little old school in the overhead aspects.
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part 2 of the centipede mouse videos. from screenhead and cynical-c
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from wondershowzen and screenhead.
links for 2006-03-27
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summary the French government’s system of appointing a p.m. instead of electing one might explain the problem in the French Government and their tendency to riot.
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qoute “.
Unemployment of young persons in most countries tends to be about twice the overall unemployment rate, and so it is for France. Youth unemployment rate is about 22 per cent, and fewer than 30 per cent of French youth between ages 15-24 have jobs
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dude who made a false claim to have discovered fusion reactions lands a job at a company claiming to be developing fusion.
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myspace deaths. I know this is supposed to be sad, but I can’t keep from laughing.
Second Life Third Entry
Since finding Tringo have moved on to Sandboxes.
Attempted to build a mountain wth phyiscs.
Around physcis piece 300 some guy began to complain it was lagging the sim.
Anyway, took a lot of pictures none of them made it to disk.
One of the reasons why SL probably continues to exist
is that you consistently do run into weird shit.
Sandboxes before 3 .a.m. were mostly houses
after 3 a.m. I started to make a sculpture like thing
when I turned around some woman had made a series
of neo-classical Davids behind me and some other dude
had created a tram. Some other dudes seemed to be recreating
Starwars and there was a random robot lying on the ground you
could sit on. There also a was dog sled, but the dude who made
it wasn’t around. Some dude up in the sky was recreating
a clock tower from kingdom hearts and had an entire plan worked
out for the town. He seemed a little nuts. Also might add before 3 .a.m.
wipe on sandbox meet some dude who was bragging about the Lindens
kicking him off the server who then flew over and begged for money
when I didn’t give him anything he left at which point I found out
I couldn’t move and apparently had been disconnected from the server.
The woman who made the Davids also was saying the Lindens were asking
her to put a fig leaf over her David. Anyway, that should go to show how
life works in a Dictator for life software based autocrarcy.
technorati tags: second_life
links for 2006-03-25
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another one of those cripple ware things.
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according to my stats page about one person per day comes here looking for what are galoshes? so just go here to wikpedia and find out.
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conservative blogger plagiarized.
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doodle chemistry apps
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more on the middle east and it’s moderates etc.
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ubiquity release of old soul artist who made public access videos in the 70s.
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frankly I don’t follow red state anymore around the time of the Harriet Nyers thing, I just kinda lost interest, but this a recap of comments and my favorite comment so far: “
What is most distateful about this episode from the perspective of the blogosph -
once again my sound is out on linux hence I can’t hear this. Bruce Sterling interviewed in Minnesota.
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new super mario bros footage. picked up the Keroro game today, but didn’t buy. found some decent card/game shops in Taipei.
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while an oil crisis hasn’t quite happned yet this list contains the top 10 cities most prepared for one. It’s interesting that they didn’t use actual consumption of oil and fossil fuels as a critieria. It would be interesting to see who has the most nucle
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japanese music blog
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insane guy from the u.s. bombs a hotel in Bolivia. And yeah of course somehow it becomes the u.s. is sending terrorists to Bolivia.
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accepted in 150 countries and used most recently bhy the bolivia bomber, it’s a passport for expats etc.
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how to get past the 1k limit on google.
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ok on this one they looked at renewable energy. I agree this needs to be dealt with immediately.
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rising water levels + flood maps
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basically there’s a lot of people out there doing a lot of stuff. This all sounds like a good thing for us I mean I’ve changed rss readers like 3 times in the last 6 months and thanks to OPML I’ve been able to take, but her point is it’s probably better t
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microsoft backed technology panel on the future of computing.
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new site for the collection of flash based games and tagging ‘m.
links for 2006-03-24
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moustahce blog with a free Gary Higgins mp3. recommended by Travis.
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wooo. this is good. found it on last.fm no less.
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fairly impressive french pop from a former model.
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or why are they some much wealthier than Malaysia?
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collection of screenshots of video games 20 years ago and today. it is rather amazing when you realize how much games have changed graphically in such a short time.
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book about how shipping containers changed commerce.
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surprisingly humble demands from the vice president.
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immigrants making more jobs… again… and again… and again…
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well at least somebody’s making money from the abortion ban.
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did i already post this? kinda cool travelogue of a dude growing up in Palestine.
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ye olde second life spot for skizophrenia
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japanese woman makes memorial Hiroshima in a video game.
Pieces
On my mailing list an actual debate has come out about I.D. and creationism and all that. What's interesting is that it has amazingly managed to not be a total flame fest, but actually is fairly interesting. Basically, the first Amendment states,
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and
to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
As Peter Barber points out, "I think it is safe to say that many of us believe the non establishment
clause in the First Amendment restricts Congress and only Congress. It seems
perverse to us that it would be used somehow to silence schoolchildren or any
citizen from speaking about God wherever they may be. It seems to us that the
First Amendment was written to insure that right. Am I reading it wrong ?"
It turns out he was wrong becuase after the civil war the first amendment was extened to include state and city level governments. Hence states could no longer fund faith based iniatives, but this still left open the possibility of schools and other state based programs containing religion with in them. This changed in 1947 when the supreme court ruled:
it's a 1947 case in which the supreme court ruled: The "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment means at least this: (1) Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. (2) Neither can pass laws which aid one religion aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. (3) Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. (4) No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. (5) No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. (6) Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa.
Basically the first amendment was interpreted so that no religious group could be funded or aided even if it included all religions at once and indirect funding in the form of supplying money through non-religious laws became illegal. This effectively set the standard for the seperation of church and state in the U.S. It's surprising that this is so recent a ruling seeing as how many of the founder father's writing on the constitution and their views there in were more certianly opposed to the concept of government and religion co-mingling. It's interesting too in that the U.S. is one of the few countries where this exists. While we have an image of Europe as more aesthest and many studies back up this belief, it's still a matter of government when it comes to funding religious schools in Ireland, England, and beyond. What this suggests to me is that we're really just the start in this entire mess, that with an already existing school system that favors religion (and England is working to include Islamic schools as part of their state schools in order to greater "assimilate" their Muslim communities a problem France doesn't seem to have if the word of Palestinians educated their holds true) it would be much easier for creationists to win their war abroad. What's interesting about this is why are creationists asking for federal funds? With churchs already not taxed their effectively asking that the rest of the U.S. support their beliefs. Taken that the number of Christians and actual Church attendance has been diminishing per year (yet the number of contributions to faith based NGOs continues to rise) and that Churches are adopting programs like Evolution Sundays it does make one wonder, are we witnessing the bottlenecking of a group of people that happen to be serious about their belief? How many of these Churches professed to such hardlines on evolution before Rove attempted to convince that they could make their mark politically through Bush? In the end I.D. will survive as Christian Scientests have, as the church of elvis has, as the mormons have, as the jews have, as the buddhists have, as many religions have. While Christianity continues to shrink every year with the occasional flowering of a "revivalist movement" you have to wonder how long before these people figure out that the money they pump into world prayer groups and lobbying could be spent providing schools for their faiths and iniating new members with good standing in the community? As Jane Galt pointed out, of course religious groups are lobbying for their beleifs, they don't have a choice. We live in a system where people have to stand for their beliefs and defend them, and while democracy isn't necessarily a bad system, from time to time we'll always see these movements. What's interesting though is that here we have non-profits that are highly profitable pushing for the federal system to pay for something that they could probably pay for themselves. Mormons don't seem to be to upset that they don't get anything from the federal government except a tax break, and the Amish don't seem to be complaing much either, neither are the creationists of the 80s, or the Christian Scientests of today. I.D. stands the chance of being a decent religious movement and more importantly, to play with the words of The Economist, a step forward to including scientific reasoning into the arguements of religion. That money is being poured into research groups that are willing to question science and catalog the gaps in it's knowledge can only go so far as to strength an enterprise that has always purported to be able to answer every question with a simple experimental approach and some math. That science or religion expects anyone to beleive what they say absolutely will always be an assumption that life can not bear out truthfully.
technorati tags: church, intelligent_design, creationism, religion
edit I mentioned Jane Galt in this post and in a different one, apparently Gane Galt is a psuedoynm for a writer from the economist:
http://www.kailiu.com/public/2006-03-28_442a0550.xhtml&displayGuid=&storyGuid=zuKHz1ro4_l-PjUG
So I'm assumin Jane's views are tought experiments similar to Tyrone's on marginal rev.
Last.fm is amazing
just found about ten news things in 5 minutes.
really really really impressed with this. can’t believe this is possible
just to get this much stuff in one place. Lozenge is good btw.
