Shorter Deepak Chopra: “I don’t know how DNA works, so there must be an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient God-field who does.”
Wow, but that guy is one long-winded, boring gomer. It sounds like he might be planning to fart out just one more of these stinkers, but I’d thought he’d run out of gas somewhere around part 0.
I take my criticisms back. It seems Intelligent Design creationism has made a profound contribution to computer science.
Introduction
Intelligent design sort is a sorting algorithm based on the theory of intelligent design.
Algorithm Description
The probability of the original input list being in the exact order it’s in is 1/(n!). There is such a small likelihood of this that it’s clearly absurd to say that this happened by chance, so it must have been consciously put in that order by an intelligent Sorter. Therefore it’s safe to assume that it’s already optimally Sorted in some way that transcends our naïve mortal understanding of “ascending order”. Any attempt to change that order to conform to our own preconceptions would actually make it less sorted.
Analysis
This algorithm is constant in time, and sorts the list in-place, requiring no additional memory at all. In fact, it doesn’t even require any of that suspicious technological computer stuff. Praise the Sorter!
The denizens of the local chimpanzee refuge have begun to document their strategies in the War on Christmas. I have my own grand scheme, and all I’ll say now is that it is subtle and eeeeevil.
Any parents out there? I bet you know the children’s book, Goodnight Moon. I read it a few million times myself, with each kid as they came up through those preschool years, and I can still remember each page and how the little ones had to repeat each goodnight. Lance Mannion finds the strangest summary of the book, though—it’s a dark nihilist tract that portrays the inevitability of death.
Whoa. Heavy, man.
The other obsessive touchstone of my children’s early years was Pat the Bunny, where each page had a different texture glued on — a piece of sandpaper, a feather, some soft fluff — and the kids were supposed to touch it as we read it. I anxiously await the review that reveals this was actually naturalistic/materialist propaganda designed to inculcate the all-ness of the physical world into impressionable young minds.
I don’t remember much about my early reading habits, although I think Mike Mulligan’s Steam Shovel was in there, along with lots of Dr Seuss (One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish…oh no, he did warp my brain!) I know that once I got away from picture books, some of the earliest reading my father passed on to me were the Mars books by Burroughs, which perhaps explains my current fascination with many-limbed creatures and naked hotties who lay eggs.
Retroactive reinterpretation of kids’ books is fun!
This story says it all in the title: He was naked, on crack and in alligator’s mouth. It does make me feel a little better about waking up to single-digit temperatures and that blowing powdery stuff on the ground, I will say—we don’t have much of a problem with naked unconscious people getting eaten by alligators around here.
One of my favorite signal transduction pathways (what? You didn’t know that true nerds had favorite molecular pathways?) is the one mediated by the receptor Notch. Notch is one of those genes in the metazoan toolkit that keeps popping up in all kinds of different contexts—it’s the adjustable wrench of the toolbox, something that handles a general problem very well and therefore gets reused over and over again, and the list of places where it is expressed in Drosophila is impressive.
What could be worse than sharing a long border with hundreds of millions of ignorant, gun-crazed Americans? How about sharing a border with hundreds of millions of ignorant, gun-crazed, hungry Americans? Here’s an evocative map for you.
That’s how the primary wheat-growing region in North America will shift if global warming continues. Farming is one of those hot-button red state issues (it’s perfect: show family farms to reflect traditional values, while supporting the reality, which is the corporate megafarm), yet what we have here is red state denialism working to help destroy one of their props.
This story has been simmering for a while: Kenyan fundamentalists are trying to suppress the fossil evidence, so well represented in their country, of human evolution. On one side, we have Richard Leakey:
He told The Daily Telegraph (London): “The National Museums of Kenya should be extremely strong in presenting a very forceful case for the evolutionary theory of the origins of mankind. The collection it holds is one of Kenya’s very few global claims to fame and it must be forthright in defending its right to be at the forefront of this branch of science.”
On another side, we have fundagelical goobers:
“The Christian community here is very uncomfortable that Leakey and his group want their theories presented as fact,” said Bishop Bonifes Adoyo, head of the largest Pentecostal church in Kenya, the Christ is the Answer Ministries.
“Our doctrine is not that we evolved from apes, and we have grave concerns that the museum wants to enhance the prominence of something presented as fact which is just one theory,” the bishop said.
But you know what? There’s also a third side.
“We have a responsibility to present all our artifacts in the best way that we can so that everyone who sees them can gain a full understanding of their significance,” said Ali Chege, public relations manager for the National Museums of Kenya. “But things can get tricky when you have religious beliefs on one side, and intellectuals, scientists, or researchers on the other, saying the opposite.”
We’ve recently had a bit of a shouting match about “appeasement”, and this is exactly what we’ve been complaining about. This is not a tricky situation at all. There is no rational reason we should respect “religious beliefs” as equals to the evidence and ideas of “intellectuals, scientists, or researchers”. This false equivalence, supported by the people who claim to be defending science, lies precisely at the root of the problem. Museums should never have to defer to myths and superstition—so why is this even a controversy?
Larry Moran wonders why people accommodate religious foolishness, whether because of a sincere belief in religion, a more cynical belief that it is a useful palliative, or out of fear of antagonizing dangerous mad people. I wonder what Chege’s answer would be?
Some real estate agent, Bill Wiese, had a bad dream: he thought he was in hell, and that Jesus had put him there so he could see what it was really like, and testify to the people. Alas, some people think this guy’s fantasies are reality. That link is to a painful half-hour interview with Sid Roth, a crazy Jew-for-Jesus kind of guy, and they go on and on together, plugging a video you can buy, all about this guy’s pathetic dream. I skipped most of it, I’m afraid, and got just enough of a taste to feel nausea.
So this is what happens when you mix up stupid people and religion. It’s hell on earth.
Since Wilkins, Lynch, and Mike are doing this, I must follow (my mom said something about friends and cliffs once…I’m hoping that they don’t ever decide to jump off one). The two mad biologists achieve parity!
You are a terrorist-loving, Bush-bashing, “blame America first”-crowd traitor. You are in league with evil-doers who hate our freedoms. By all counts you are a liberal, and as such cleary desire the terrorists to succeed and impose their harsh theocratic restrictions on us all. You are fit to be hung for treason! Luckily George Bush is tapping your internet connection and is now aware of your thought-crime. Have a nice day…. in Guantanamo!
I can’t gloat too much, though. This is one of those skewed tests where I think you’d have to be certifiably insane to score below 90%.
