Why Dont You Blog?

I dont have a huge amount of online time at the moment so I cant do these two news items justice. However, I still think people should read them (both from New Scientist)

• New Legal Threat to Teaching Evolution.
• Archaeologists refuse to help over possible Iran Strike.

The first link is a depressing indictment of a society that has allowed itself to be tricked into thinking there is an even argument betwen Evolution and Creationism. This is madness of the highest order. The concept that “teaching both sides” is a good thing only seems to apply against evolution, but still no one notices the weirdness. Shame on the nation that allows this sort of thing.

The second is worrying. Not so much that Archaeologists seem willing to allow world heritage sites to be hit during an attack but the implicit assumption there will be an attack.

Not a good day.

Popularity: 23% [?]

Popularity: 23% [?]

It has been a while since I posted some interesting links, so here goes:

http://www.rense.com/general72/size.htm - visual representation of how the size of the Earth relates to other structures in the universe. The last image shows just how small the things we think are large, really are.

http://dmartin.org/weblog/things-i-can-do-in-linux-that-i-cant-do-on-windows - summary of why Linux is better than windows, as if people needed telling

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ - how to boot and run linux from a USB drive.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/06/appeals_court_r.html - from Wired.com: “Appeals Court Rules Cops Can Steal Cars and Lie to Victims To Conduct a Warrantless Search”

http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/M42HeartNMCropM.html - image of the M42 Nebula in Orion.

http://www.religionfacts.com/ - information about the worlds religions, surprisingly detailed from what I have read so far and (also so far) does not call Atheism a religion .

http://www.forbiddenlibrary.com/ - “Banned and Challenged Books” - while interesting in that it shows what books have been “challenged” in the past, it also shows what wingnuts think they can get away with. Is 1984 pro-communist for example?

http://www.blifaloo.com/info/lies.php - “How to Detect Lies,” another one of those sites which have a little knowledge on a subject. This is one of the better ones, but it is still for entertainment purposes only. Do not rely on any conclusions you draw using the information here.

[tags]Science, Astronomy, Cosmology, Linux, Windows, Technology, Links,Law, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Orion, Nebula, Religion, Books, Body Language, Interrogation, Interview, Philosophy, Culture, Beliefs[/tags]

Popularity: 37% [?]

Popularity: 37% [?]

Just for general site admin / information purposes: we have added a new permanent page to hold the Why Dont You Blogroll. I am going to see how this goes for a while and then, if there are no problems, I will move the blogroll out of the sidebar where it currently lives.

The only hurdle I can see with this is that it may impact on any technorati link ratings. As far as I see it, each time we make a new post, the pages in the blogroll should all have their technorati authority link from us “refreshed” as it were (resetting the 180 count down). Moving them to a new page make cause problems - but as, at the moment, it seems technocrappi is not reading our outbound links properly anyway, it may not matter.

Please, let me know what you think about this.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Popularity: 19% [?]

Some early bird links to get things started:

• Amazon’s Simple Storage Solution (S3) seems to be taking off and O’Reilly Radar is talking about it. Personally I cant see the “big deal” with it but I may come round.
• Another from Amazon. Apparently it’s Mechanical Turk application has been turned to a GIS use, producing data for video. Again, interesting but it is not raising my heart rate.
• More from O’Reilly Radar - this time Spamonomics 101. I have always wondered why some emails are just steams of letters (like some comments here).
• Plaintiff Intimidation in Church vs State cases.
• A judge sentences private investigators for hacking. Quite right.
• Piratebay tries to by a nation (Sealand).

I am sure there are many more good links out there, but these will do for now!

Popularity: 15% [?]

Popularity: 15% [?]

There are two incomprehensible things with Technorati (whose name be praised - this is CONTRUCTIVE CRITICISM) at the moment.

1. It is supposed to drop blog links that are more than 180 days old. technorati’s blog It seems to interpret this at random. I.e.Even though there seems to be no change in the number of linked blogs less than 180 days old, the number goes down (and occasionally up ) seemingly at random.
2. Much more serious, it delays noticing the existence of some new posts until they are so old (say twenty minutes) appear on page two, when ranked by time/date. This can be really frustrating. It means that a post on a remotely popular tag topic doesn’t even have its conceptual Warhol’s five minutes of fame.

Only posts tagged with really unpopular tags are certain to stay on the front page for long enough for anyone to see them, and, obviously they are unpopular tags because almost no one ever clicks on them.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Popularity: 16% [?]

Not many today, visit them and you will see why:

• http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/01/carnivalia_and_an_open_thread_44.php
• http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/01/eskowyet_another_backlasher.php

Make sure you follow the links they offer.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Popularity: 12% [?]

Been a while, so here are some entertaining and informing links. Hope you enjoy them:

• http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/01/ the_backlash_is_winding_up.php (more Dawkins related debate!)
• http://proman.compuskills.co.uk/introduction_projects.php (An introduction to project management)
• http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/ 4107 (Greasemonkey script to kill file blog comments)
• http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/01/ stupidity_from_our_old_friend.php (excellent deconstruction of an idiots argument)
• http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/01/ exposing_the_frame_atheism_and.php (discussion about an American attempt to remove the privilege Atheists get…….)
• http://service.compuskills.co.uk/blog/2007/01/ 04/ what-are-the-main-differences- between-html-and-xhtml/ (HTML newbie advice)
• http://service.compuskills.co.uk/ rss.php (Compuskills web design service newsfeed)

Popularity: 13% [?]

Popularity: 13% [?]