Closing some tabs

[undyingking]

A few things that have caught my eye just lately:

• PMOG, The Passively Multiplayer Online Game -- mentioned by killalla, basically a way of making ar$ing around on the Web more fun. Needs Firefox. See also pmog.
  
• What does atheism mean to you? Interesting finding from the Pew Foundation that an impressive 15% of US atheists are either absolutely or fairly certain that there is a God. (As are a mighty 40% of agnostics.)
• Nice little film of a mechanical escalator device. I just think this is a really ingenious design.
• Labrador have released their free 2008 Summer Sampler, to which I can't find a link on their site, but here's a direct link to the zip itself. "A summerish mix of recent favourites from The Sound of Arrows, The Radio Dept. and Club 8, lost classics from Acid House Kings, Caroline Soul and Chasing Dorotea and sun packed songs by [ingenting] and lots more." Many of the 30 songs will already be familiar if you know Labrador stuff, but if not then you really should.
• Typetester is a neat little online utility that allows you easily to compare your chosen sample text in a variety of fonts, spacings, colours, weights etc. I anticipate using this a lot.
• Relatedly, see your chosen text as smoke, droplets, lovehearts, fireworks etc, here. Pretty!
  
• This looks like a good recipe for elderflower cordial, which now is the time to make. Anyone tried doing so?
• Does reading Stephen R Donaldson's Thomas Covenant books make you feel as gelidly preterite as a carious scoria? It does me, but this useful page helps make sense of it all.
• Conservapedia has posted this email exchange with evolutionary microbiologist Professor Robert Lenski (longish, but worth reading). Good example of how a scientist can comprehensively demolish an idiotic opponent. I can only guess that one of the other Conservapedia editors hates Schlafly.

That'll probably do for now!

Comments

[killalla]

If anyone is interested in PMOGing, let me know, and I can invite you and help set you up with some extra tools and such - as befits a fundraiser, I'm a Benefactor. I only play it at home (we use IE at work), but it's fun without being all consuming, which I like.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Go on then, invite me please?

[killalla]

I thought I'd invited you after we spoke (and I pimped it) earlier this month, but I've just done so again - let me know if you don't get an e-mail soon.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I've got it now, and have signed up (under this name), thanks!

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

Ooh, yes please!

[killalla]

I'd better confirm your current e-mail - can you drop me a line at [myljusername] at gmail dot com?

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the fonts page - I suspect I'll use that.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Interesting finding from the Pew Foundation that an impressive 15% of US atheists are either absolutely or fairly certain that there is a God.

Wut?!

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

The alternative theory is "Quite a few Americans don't know what 'atheist' means", I suppose.

[zengineer.livejournal.com]

Possible to believe there is/are god(s) without wanting anything to do with the dangerous blighters if you take the meaning 'without god'.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I suppose so. Although it would seem a risky position to take.

[zengineer.livejournal.com]

My reading of the Old Testament is that you are much safer being a Gentile avoiding the Israelites than you are having anything to do with God or his chosen people. If Job is anything to go by even being faithful is no defence against His capriciousness.

[ao-lai.livejournal.com]

That was my interpretation, I must admit...

[secretrebel.livejournal.com]

Last link is broken. :(

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

The Conservapedia one>? It's working for me...

[secretrebel.livejournal.com]

I tracked it down although their own front page link is also broken (in Firefox).

http://www.conservapedia.com/Lenski_dialog

gets me there. Your link and the one on the front page blank pages at me.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Strange, maybe it's some browser-specific JS thing (although I'm also using FF...). I'll amend my link to your version.

[zengineer.livejournal.com]

Neither link works for me using FF3.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

It may just be that their server is a bunch of ar$e.

[thecesspit.livejournal.com]

Lenski dialog... I got that through PZ Meyers Pharnygula blog...

The man needs a gold star for not only breaking down a stupid argument into small pieces, but doing it in such a way a casual, educated observer could understand each stage.

If you read the responses on Conservapedia, you realize the whole pointlessness of trying to debate science with some people. Many of the nutjobs think the reply means that Schlafy is vindicated!

[sesquipedality.livejournal.com]

PMOG sounds kind of cool until you realise it's basically dumping your browser history to a web site. I feel ... uncomfortable with that idea.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Very true, I think even the keenest player would be well advised to restrict it to a subset of their web activity.

[killalla]

Well, I use another browser for my e-mail, livejournaling, etc. and I look at my Firefox with PMOG as a neat way of enhancing my daily check of webcomics, news websites, and the like. Because of the way it works, you can get suggestions from other users about alternative news and information sites, which can be quite interesting.

Moreover, I tend to think that as I'm not a sophisticated user, most of my web use is probably already being tracked recorded in some form in any case (I don't constantly use an anonymizer, I have a standard commercial antivirus and firewall, but no special programs) so I'm not as bothered about it as others might be.

[dmwcarol.livejournal.com]

I make elderflower cordial most years, it's easy and very yummy - especially if you dilute it with sparking water (or wine for that matter)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I've heard it's good in a cocktail with gin, too.

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

Excellent linkage, thank you for sharing.

15% of US atheists are either absolutely or fairly certain that there is a God

*headdesk*

I don't buy zengineer's 'without god' stuff - atheism is believing there is no god. Agnostic is not knowing. Anything else is a belief system, whether you choose to practice or not.

[fractalgeek.livejournal.com]

I particularly enjoyed the email exchange...

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Mm, very fine!

[jackfirecat.livejournal.com]

Me too. Fine work by Professor Robert Lenski who deserves some sort of award for his efforts (the Accreditation Re Science-Explaining to Doubters award, perhaps).

Conservapedia.. a strange thing. It has been shown that conservatives live in a much better world than the rest of us, a fictional one in which bad things happen less often, but normally this is (I assumed) due to them misundertanding /not knowing (score less well on factual tests) not questioning things - normally, the Left are the questioners, the doubters, of authority, received opinion, etc. But in the case of evolution, .. You can see some thinking going on in their active doubting, and therefore his explaining may not fall on univerally deaf ears. It's bizzaro world.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

conservatives live in a much better world than the rest of us

Strange, I think of them as living in a grim dystopian world of the struggle of each against each, with vicious hoodies prowling the street corners, the EU stealing your hard-earned money, and so on.

[jackfirecat.livejournal.com]

There was some psychology study that asked people to answer factually-verifibale questions about the state of the world, including, like, how many people live in poverty, what's the average wage in the USA, how many people die of AIDS each day, and so on and also aksed political persuasion, and ended up with significance that conservative-voters had answered the questions on the less-bad side more often than not. But not just different, wrong.' Liberals' got the answers right more often. NB Not that 'liberals ' were more pessimistic than 'conservatives' but that 'liberals' were more accurate. A hugh citation-needed hanging, I know, but I can't remember where I saw it.

The idea of Conservatives as viewing the world through rose-tinted spectacles fitted my pre-concieved ideas, as in that conservatives basically like the status quo. Left-wingers are the critics/doubters, who want to change the way things are.

Interesting that conservatives, in order to like the current set-up, have to see it wrongly. Which (sort of) brings us back to Conservapaedia.