Worse Than Hunting Snipes

I return after yet another unannounced sabbatical, but by now anyone who still visits must be used to such occurrences. The last few weeks have been pretty tough, what with multiple exams and projects being due in rapid succession but I’m almost through it. A C++ project due Wednesday (and another next week Friday) along with a probably exam in Programming Languages should be all that stands between myself and a week down state for Thanksgiving break. Of course, over said break I’ll be working as many hours as humanly possible at Siemens VDO (the same place I worked over the summer) for what will hopefully be a dollar more an hour. Although I spoke poorly of the job over the course of the summer, hindsight has turned my outlook slightly more positive. It seems that Quality Assurance is one way to break into the gaming industry and two (hopefully) summers plus breaks of experience in this area will look much better on a resume than I have initially thought it might.

Speaking of jobs, I’ve finally found a few offers here in Houghton and they’re far more desirable than the Subway position I initially coveted. It seems as though two departments here at MTU are looking for a webmaster to redesign and manage their respective web presences, something I would be only too happy to do for money. The latest (still unfinished, I know) redesign of this site prepared me well for the new direction web design is heading and I’d love to apply it in a more professional sense.

Between homework and exams I don’t really do much anymore besides play Final Fantasy XI, a situation that shoulders much of the blame for my vastly reduced internet footprint. I’ll try to be better about it in the near term. No, really, I mean it this time. Hey, where are you going?

I Thought We Already Settled This

First, if you haven’t already, go read this article and then come back again. Done? Good.

The creationism vs. evolution debate has existed pretty much since Darwin created the theory more than a century ago. In the distant past the debate was excusable, perhaps even acceptable; after all, Darwinian evolution was a brand-new theory that went against a thousand years of religious teachings. Even as late as the famous Scopes trial the battle was at least bearable. If nothing else, humans as a herd animal have proven difficult to convince of anything. To continue to hold this debate today, however, is a sign that something is seriously wrong.

Perhaps my biggest problem with the entire “debate” is the relative cluelessness of those on the side of creationism, which I refuse to call by its adopted name of “intelligent design.” It’s one thing to debate foreign policy and politics with a relative ignorance of history. You could reasonably argue that these matters have a healthy dose of opinion and personal belief built in. Science, on the other hand, is not a question of beliefs. Science does not care if you think gravity is caused by microscopic gnomes – unless you can provide some evidence of it your beliefs are of no merit at all.

I was shocked to learn that people like George Gilder are behind the intelligent design movement, and to be perfectly honest it makes a lot of the previously incomprehensible things the American wireless companies have done clearer. It’s tough to competently rear an industry when you can’t even be bothered to consider the most rudimentary facts when forming sweeping opinions on the origin of life.

Creationists will make all sorts of arguments against evolution, and to someone who’s never read anything on the subject they are understandably compelling. A favorite example creationists use to undermine evolution is the eye. The argument goes something like: “how could something complex as an eye evolve? There’s no advantage to having half an eye, after all.” At which point they’ll get a slightly triumphant (one might even say condescending) smile that comes from the smug satisfaction of putting an upstart atheist pig in his place. What they fail to realize, mostly because they refuse to investigate the facts, is that their prized example has already been explained. Marine animals have been found (a species of octopus, actually) that have what can be best described as half an eye. It includes the basic optic cavity, rods and cones, and nerves required for sight. What it lacks is a lens to focus the light properly, resulting in what is probably a blurry and only marginally useful sensing device, comparatively speaking. And yet it exists.

So, this is my request to anyone out there who considers themselves a creationist or those who simply aren’t sure what to believe: read The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins. If you can read that and still tell me that evolutionary theory is bunk…well, actually, there’s no reason to bother with that contingency. Because you can’t. What American needs more than anything right now is a population that is comfortable with careful reasoning and intelligent discussion, and so long as we continue to allow baseless beliefs to rule our schools we will never have it.

I Wonder How Much This Option Costs

People like to accuse modern movies of taking computer-generated images and graphics too far, making noise about how they detract from the overall quality. I, however, am here to assure you that they have not gone too far, indeed they have gone just far enough.

I don’t think there’s anything else that needs to be said.

Urban Archipelago

In a somewhat ironic twist I seem to have become more political after the presidential election than I was during and before it. I could spend an entire post idly questioning why that is (and who knows, I might later) but for now I’ll just get on with the point.

I was browsing through Metafilter – a site that has become slightly more readable now that the election is over, although it’s clearly going to take them some time to settle down – when I came across a link to Urban Archipelago. The site’s purpose is to establish a new identity for the Democratic Party in the wake of the failed election bid this year, and despite its needlessly harsh rhetoric I think their concept brings up some interesting questions.

People on both sides love to talk about how deeply divided this country is, politically speaking, but one thing they never bother to investigate is why. Not the general why, since I think it’s fairly common knowledge that cities tend to vote Democrat while the rural areas go Republican, but the specifics of why. The description of the “urban lifestyle” presented by Urban Archipelago, on the other hand, suddenly makes a lot of things clearer.

The cities and countryside have been at odds almost since humans first started collecting into tiny villages, so this debate is hardly new. What’s interesting to me are some of the points on things like welfare and health care. Although I was peripherally aware of it, I never really thought about the dependency of rural areas on state and federal funding for survival (that’s not entirely true – I actually had a conversation with one of my roommates about it recently). When you factor in the wildly disproportionate amount of taxes the urban population centers pay the Republican tendency to be against such measures suddenly looks a lot like biting the hand that feeds you.

Of course, beyond the truth or falsity of Urban Archipelago’s assertions there is another matter: is this the sort of divisive politics we want to encourage? In some ways it’s unfair to level that accusation at the Democrats. After all, no matter how you feel about the Republican’s stance you can’t deny that a lot of their recent success has come from preaching directly to their core demographics. Although I’ve yet to see a Republican treatise that advocates the level of abject antagonism that Urban Archipelago does, you could perhaps argue that it’s only fair for the Democrats to use the same tactics.

I don’t know the right answer, but I can say that a truly unified America seems less possible with each passing day. Whether or not that’s a bad thing I leave up to more intelligent people than I.

Birthday Is One Word

First things first, a big happy birthday to Haesung! I’m terrible at remembering things like names, birthdays, and…well, anything really, but those are the ones that tend to get me into trouble. Haesung’s is easy, though, because 11:24 just so happens to be the time of the shinkansen I took to Tokyo on the day I left Japan. For some reason little things like that tend to stick in my mind, which is probably why I can still remember the parking lot my family parked in at Metro Airport when we went to Disney world ten years ago or so (5B North).

There really aren’t any other things to say, making my first line a terrible, filthy lie. I guess I could mention that my parents have an incredibly crappy internet connection, but since I’ve spent most of my break at Siemens anyway the use of corporate broadband largely makes up for it.

Except that I can’t view any sites that have the word “game” in them. Including this one now, probably.