Sam's L33t Journal

A few things, in no particular order:

• The show at anime club on Friday was Mahou Shoujo Tai Alice, and it was better than I expected. The world is pretty creative, and the animation is really well done. (As a side note, they actually pronounce the main character's name as "Alice" so as to really hit the viewers over the head with the literary reference, which, as the main character literally falls into a magic world, is quite apt.)
• Barnes and Noble University is having a class on Dungeons and Dragons. Amusing.
• The Red Cross is considering a new emblem.
• Check out this site on the Stanford prison experiment. It's one of the more interesting studies that's been done in the field of social psychology.
• "Back in my day, our quantum computers were measured in qubits. A qubyte was some kind of newfangled experiment."
• Finally, this infuriating blog entry on homelessness. Actually, the entry isn't that bad (it discusses a news special where panhandlers seem reluctant to work for money), although its analysis of the situation is weak (it neglects that a lot of homeless people are mentally ill and it neglects the sketchiness of the whole situation (as one Anon puts it: "... imagine you have no social support, no one who'd notice if you're missing, and no cell phone. A stranger pulls up and asks you to get in his car for $20. Do you really think this is a wise decision?")). It's the comments that are infuriating. Apparently, quite a few people think the homeless should be enslaved or slaughtered, and many more seem to think that people have a right to never interact with those they find unpleasant.
• Finally, check out this excellent parody piece on intelligent design and language. (Of course, as is often the case with good parody, reality beats it to the punch.)

I felt very fidgety today, but at least that was better than yesterday. (Despite the icon for this post, I didn't have an excessive amount of caffeine... well, not more excessive than usual, at any rate. Also, yes, I did get more icons; I'm a sucker for wasting money on the internet.) Work was all right, anime club was good, DDR afterwards was totally awesome.

A quick poll. A lot of my journal posts lately have just been rambling, without much of a focus. Since my blog is read (presumably) by other people, I was wondering what sort of posts you all want to read:

[Poll #546818]If you have other suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments.

A few links to share:

First, one on the natural gas peak in North America. According to Exxon (and this is from a while ago), this has already passed. (If you've heard politicians fussing about liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals, this is why.)

Second, two on the Shrub. One talks about his recent endorsement of Intelligent Design. On a related note, the second talks about how Bush thinks.

On a funny note, I found this response to the Intelligent Design story, suggesting that our existance would be better explained by the existance of a creator that is just plain dumb. (Although, to give credit where credit is due, that idea isn't new.)


I'm all for teaching DUH
in America's schools!

And now, a quick rant:

I've found the recent stupidity in Kansas (and, recently, Utah) really aggravating. It's not just that Intelligent Design isn't science. And it's not just that Intelligent Design is an attempt to sneak creationism into the schools, to create a God shaped hole in the science curriculum. It's that Intelligent Design, like all forms of "Creation Science" is opposed to intellectualism in general.

There is no limit to how absurd this sort of thing gets, and it's not something that just goes away.