I just added a script from Ice Rocket to see if I can track how many (if any) linkbacks I am getting. Link Tracker seems to work more indipendently than other ping back services I have seen. So at the bottom of each post now you will see "Linking Posts". Following that link will show you a search engine result from Ice Rocket for all other blog posts which reference the one here at Green Scissors.
Ummm. Yes please? I’ll take 4. Worth looking through their site (warning, lots of needless Flash sound). I especially liked the list of games. Tre impressive!
DreamAuthentics Personal Video Arcade machines -
Soooo sweet — DreamAuthentics is putting out a Personal Video Arcade machine line geared towards consumers, with a bunch of units in true old skool arcade cabinet style. They don’t just play the classics, but can run a slew of games from the Xbox and Playstation consoles as well as off-the-shelf PC games. They’ve got several configurations to choose from, each coming pre-loaded with twelve classic arcade games, plus you can watch DVDs, listen to music and hook in your cable as well, although just standing in front of an arcade console to watch videos doesn’t seem nearly as exciting as getting your Asteroids on. As you may imagine, these things aren’t cheap, and all will run you into the several $K region. We’re thinking of raising some cash by putting all of our exergaming equipment up on eBay — screw that health crap!
[Thanks, Mike]
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(Via Engadget)
Civil Liberties be damned! At least in Iraq apparently.Hard to imagine that the Iraqi people are excited about the prospect of a constitutional democracy when they see how we are managing ours.
Let’s see, soldiers breaking into homes. People detained for months with no access to family or legal counsel while the case against you is kept completely secret. Say, didn’t we just throw out the last guy who did that?
Reuters cameraman ordered held in Abu Ghraib (Reuters) -
Reuters - A cameraman for Reuters in Iraq has been ordered by a secret tribunal to be held without charge in Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison until his case is reviewed within six months, a U.S. military spokesman said on Wednesday.
(Via Yahoo! Top Stories)
Good for her! Takes a bit of courage to tell the bus driver that your taking the rest of his kids because he’s drunk.
Girl Turns in Drinking School Bus Driver (AP) - AP - A teenager took matters into her hands when a substitute school bus driver who smelled of alcohol sped down the road with youngsters in tow, police said.
(Via Yahoo! Oddly Enough)
Today’s article on this Intelligent Design nonsense makes the same points against ID but with some twists and flavors I hadn’t heard before. Specifically, that ID is an attempt by those using it to bolster their own faith in the Creator by making it fit with science.
Rand Simberg Teaches Intelligent Design -
Rand Simberg Teaches "Intelligent Design"
In a great column by Cathy Young. It takes him only a paragraph:”Intelligent design" boils down to the claim sarcastically summed up by aerospace engineer and science consultant Rand Simberg on his blog, Transterrestrial Musings: ”I’m not smart enough to figure out how this structure could evolve, therefore there must have been a designer." Simberg, a political conservative, concludes that this argument ”doesn’t belong in a science classroom, except as an example of what’s not science."
Here’s the rest of the paragraph from Rand’s blog:
How science works is by putting forth theories that are disprovable, not ones that are provable. When all other theories have been disproven, those still standing are the ones adopted by most scientists. ID is not a scientific theory, because it fails the test of being disprovable (or to be more precise, non-falsifiable), right out of the box. If Hugh doesn’t believe this, then let him postulate an experiment that one could perform, even in thought, that would show it to be false.
And a bit more:
The point is that ID isn’t science–it’s a copout on science and the scientific method, and as I said in my post a couple years ago, creationists attempting to get their views into science class, whether explicitly as the 6000-year-old solution or dressed up as science, as in ID, is a failure of their own personal faith in their own beliefs. They seem to think that if science doesn’t validate their faith, then their faith is somehow thereby weakened, and that they must fight for its acceptance in that realm.
But that’s nonsense. Faith is faith. It by definition requires a suspension of disbelief. If their faith hasn’t the strength to withstand science, then they should reexamine their faith, not attempt (one hopes in futility) to bring down a different belief system that is entirely orthogonal to it.
This stuff is dark chocolate ice cream for the head.
(Via Advice Goddess)
Almost a million dollars for a house 5 feet wide? Ahh the indulgence! The excess! The utter lack of need for a big screen TV! Wonder if my brother and London-ite would be interested?
Skinny London House on Sale for $933,000 (AP) -
AP - A slender house measuring just over five feet at its narrowest and nine feet, 11 inches at its widest is up for sale for more than $900,00, real estate agents said Tuesday.
(Via Yahoo! Top Stories)
More news on the Intelligent Design nonsense.
Univ. of CA sued over lack of creationism in colleges - Xeni Jardin:
A group representing religious schools in California is suing the University of California system over an alleged lack of conservative Christian content in schools.
The Association of Christian Schools International, which represents more than 800 schools, filed a federal lawsuit Thursday claiming UC admissions officials have refused to certify high school science courses that use textbooks challenging Darwin’s theory of evolution. Other rejected courses include "Christianity’s Influence in American History."According to the lawsuit, the Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta was told its courses were rejected because they use textbooks printed by two Christian publishers, Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Books.
Link to story.
Image: Pastafarians don’t need to sue universities — they already know that 99% of undergrads in the USA subsist on a diet comprised largely of 10/$0.99 ramen packets. His Noodliness is amply represented in American academia.
(Thanks, Jason Schultz, via IP list)
(Via Boing Boing)
It looks like the whole "Intelligent Design" (ID) nonsense is going to replace the RIAA as my favorite thing to worry about for awhile. I shall be posting more on the topic. But most of it will revolve around this thought:
Evolution is taught because we accept the Scientific Method as an unbiased explanation of our world as best we can understand it. Any other argument, be it from the ID crowd, Pastafarians or others has at its core a belief that is not shared among all members of the society. Seperation of Church and State means that the State functions without religous beliefs since a pluralistic society cannot agree on which beliefs to use. If you want your kid to learn ID or creationism or Flying SPaghetti Monsterism then either teach them yourself or find a private school that teaches it. Better yet, go to church. But leave it the hell out of the public educational system.
The article linked below has some excellent insights and I recommend it.
Dennett’s NYT op-ed on the Intelligent Design hoax - Xeni Jardin:
John Brockman’s EDGE.org just published the full text of philosopher Daniel Dennett’s NYT op-ed from August 28. In the article, Dennett examines why the notion of so-called Intelligent Design has become so popular, in spite of the fact it cannot be substantiated by science.
"Is ‘intelligent design’ a legitimate school of scientific thought? Is there something to it, or have these people been taken in by one of the most ingenious hoaxes in the history of science? Wouldn’t such a hoax be impossible? No. Here’s how it has been done."
Link, and here’s the same text on the NYT website (reg required). (Thanks, Chris, and many others!)
Image: a devotional chalk icon of the Flying Spaghetti Monster — the only truly intelligent alternative — on a university campus in Georgia. (Thanks, Graham)
(Via Boing Boing)
Not to drool too much over Sony whom I typically despise, but this sounds like a beast of a machine and all for under $2000. First covetous thought I’ve had for a piece of gear in awhile.
Apparently Sony has been outsourcing their R&D team from somewhere in the Caribbean lately which is how they came up with the name "R" for their new line of computers. Unfortunately lead designer Jack Sparrow could not be reached for comment due to what his rep calls "swashbuckling and pillaging." What Sony is telling us however, is that basically the R line will destroy anything else. Being a Type-R computer, expect lots of ricer kids to be going to CompUSA to get fake Type-R stickers for their PCs. Don’t be fooled though. The real Type-R has everything you could want. The fact that you can burn SACDs with it alone is pretty cool if you ask me. Aside from that, it’s available with a Pentium D 820 (2.8Ghz) CPU, 1Gb of RAM, a 256Mb GeForce 6600, a DL/RAM DVD-multi-burner, a TV tuner and 320Gb of HDD space. Wow. Expect it to retail for 1500 Euros ($1844 USD).
Sony Vaio R, the audio/video monster [Akihabara News]
(Via Gizmodo)
I knew I shouldn’t have thrown away those old floppies. Now I’m going to have to go hunting for some just to try this out.
5.25" floppies make great CD sleeves - Cory Doctorow:
This is a great crafty tip for those of you with a box of old 5.25" floppy discs lying around: slit them open and use them for CD sleeves! Link (via Make Blog)
(Via Boing Boing)
