Frankenfood to the rescue? Bananas are going to be an endangered species. One scientist estimates that bananas may face extinction within ten years because they lack genetic diversity. Bananas are seedless, and so, as the article puts it, "they haven't had sex in years." Genetic engineering may now be the only way to save bananas as a species.

It's happening with increasing frequency: the over-simplified anti-scientific faction of environmentalism encounters a contradiction which it cannot resolve. Another example was on Fark a few days ago: Manatees rely on warm waters ejected from power plants. We can't let a species die out! We can't allow genetic engineering! We can't spend as much time studying as we do yelling! We can't bathe! When human activity changes the environment, it isn't inherently bad. We are part of the environment. I hate trying to be an environmentalist because I feel so outnumbered by empassioned and sadly ignorant pathological activists. They've managed to create a rediculous divide between science and environmentalism. I say ditch the "environmentalists" and keep the scientists. I see no evident purpose for the fomer.

Chance or design: Nature creates precise patterns of rock and soil. Evidently the freeze-thaw cycle in places like Norway and Alaska causes rocks and soil to separate, forming neat, regular piles of soil and precise rings of small stones. The results look like some ritual monument. A geologist has come up with a mathematical model that explains how they are formed, and says “You can measure the stones moving across the surface at about a millimeter per year or so.” It reminds me of a large-scale, very slow version of how magnetic moments in iron spontaneously orient themselves in concert to create a net magnietic field (in fact they arrange themselves in a regular pattern of local magnetic "cells").

   “WHEN PEOPLE see these, their first impression is ‘Wow! Who did that?’” said Mark A. Kessler, a geologist at the University of California at Santa Cruz. “We are just not used to such dramatic self-organization of stones and soil.” But in a study in the journal Science, Kessler said the arrangement of the rocks is the work of nature, using long seasons of deep cold and the heaving and contraction of water-logged, frozen soil. He and B.T. Warner of the University of California at San Diego, present a mathematical model that explains how Mother Nature builds such bizarre shapes in the Arctic soils.

Okay, Mr. Geologist, you can call it a "slow natural process" all you want, but I'm skeptical. I think those are God droppings out there, and we need to get William Dembski out there to prove it. Those fields of circles have all the earmarks of design, which we know (thanks to Dembski) we can detect with mathematical certainty. Dembski could no doubt head out to that field, take some relevant measurements, plug them into his trusty CSI Field Calculator™ and when the little light flashes, we know this was the work of God. Scientists may find this approach a bit quirky: design is always detected (God is the creator of all things, therefore all things are a product of his Design). Scientists don't often trust a test that always comes out positive, but the discovery of Design in all things is clear evidence that all things were created by God in accordance with his Grand Master Plan®. I'm having fun with the character map today.

My posts have not appeared for several days, though I type them dutifully. My publish requests must not be getting through. I'll wager something is amiss in the lands of publishing. Treasonable.

Oh, damn. Now, this moment, is the worst possible time for me to be writing a blog. I'm just not with it. And behold, my blog suffers. You, the reader, for example, have no idea what I'm talking about. 'Tis the earmark of poor composition. I have stumbled one stone past mediocrity and must be stopped.

Sickening: Bush has declared "Sancitity of Human Life Day." As James put it: "It's about time we had a day like that. Now we need an 'RU486 Always Causes Inoperable Brain Cancer Day' and a 'Day of NARAL Sucks'." Perhaps he might also declare "Democracy is a Waste of Time, All Hail Caesar Day." Or, as an equally appropriate presidential gesture, he might declare "Sanctity of Tax-Free Dividends Day." Yay! Days for all the divisive bullet points on our personal political agendas!

I picked up a copy of The Salmon of Doubt, a final collection of articles, anecdotes, and unfinished work of Douglas Adams [sigh]. It is very excellent. Naturally my eye was quickly drawn to an interview with Adams for the American Atheists. You can read the interview text here. I'd quote some highlights, but unfortunately Douglas Adams provided very little non-highlight material. I think the best line overall was "I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." (you may note that this is now my blog description). It was interesting to read about Douglas Adams' personal history as a devout Christian in his youth. It reminds me of my own history with religion, and it reminds me of other prominent skeptics such as Michael Shermer. Perhaps feeling like you were thoroughly hoodwinked by religion -- feeling like you wasted years of your life on someone else's delusion -- that makes some people take a watchdog stance toward religious groups.

God bless The Onion: Creationist Museum Acquires 5,000 Year-Old T-Rex Skeleton. One of my favorite lines: "Methuselah [the T Rex] was discovered last summer in northern Turkey by a team of Oral Roberts University archaeologists, who were on a dig searching for the Tower of Babel."

From the irony dept: the University of California at Berkeley has censored Emma Goldman quotes from a fundraising mailer because they are worried about appearing "anti-war." According to this article in the New York Times, the administration felt that the following quotes sounded too much like a political statement and were therefore inappropriate:

In one of the quotations, from 1915, Goldman called on people "not yet overcome by war madness to raise their voice of protest, to call the attention of the people to the crime and outrage which are about to be perpetrated on them." In the other, from 1902, she warned that free-speech advocates "shall soon be obliged to meet in cellars, or in darkened rooms with closed doors, and speak in whispers lest our next-door neighbors should hear that free-born citizens dare not speak in the open." ***
   "I feel this is not the way the university either should or wants to operate," said Robert H. Hirst, general editor of the Mark Twain Project, another documentary editing project at Berkeley. "We just got through creating the Free Speech Cafe on campus, and we have a free speech archive. How many times does this have to happen at Berkeley before they learn?"

This story smells like California during the Reagan years... I wonder if there were sudden problems with "communist faculty" popping up at Universities in Texas while Bush was governor...

Lieberman for President? Forgive me for saying so, but it seems to me that with our present diplomatic situation in the middle east, having a Jewish president sounds like a pretty bad idea. It doesn't seem like a good way to improve relations with Arab countries. It especially wouldn't help the US appear impartial in its efforts to mediate between Israel and Palestine. I think having someone of, say, Lebanese descent, like, say, Ralph Nader, is a much better idea. Nader was guest host on Crossfire yesterday. There were a lot of accusations tossed around, like "Lieberman would already be Vice President if not for you!" It was good fun. I hope Nader runs again because I'd rather not vote for Lieberman anyway. And it looks like George Bush is doing better in the polls than when he started, so he only really stands to lose the election if we have a huge defeat in Iraq or something. Which is sad. He should lose the election because he's a moron. And Lieberman should lose the election because he sucks at everything and has little of value to say. Nader should win because he's a resilient outsider with some new ideas and he's not afraid to say what he really thinks. He isn't wrapped up in the strangehold of Republicratic politics, so he doesn't have anything to lose by being honest and direct. I like him.

Well great. Now my ankles are swelling. It's a side effect of Norvasc, my new blood pressure drug. Evidently combining Norvasc with an ACE inhibitor eliminates this side effect. Lotrel is basically Norvasc with an ACE inhibitor. I took it before I moved to Canada, but they don't have it here. So now I have plain old Norvasc and swollen feet. Damn it all. I need to smuggle my drugs in from the US now.

Wow! Look at this cool new computer case design: it's way cool!.

While at the airport last week I picked up a copy of Laptop Magazine. There was an article in it titled Linux for Laptops. I need to air some grievances about that article. According to the article's introduction, it is written as a review to determine "whether this open source OS can be considered a true Windows replacement." Replacement? The next sentence read, "Technically speaking, Linux isn't an operating system at all." Huh? The author doesn't give his definition of operating system. In a later section, the author reviews KDE (he chooses to review only KDE), and complains, "KDE does not recognise new hardware, does not provide a way to adjust screen resolution, won't automatically mount CDROM drives, and limits its help system to issues related directly to the GUI. In other words, KDE is not an operating system at all." So he's complained that the distribution is not an operating system, and neither is the window manager. That would be like reviewing a car and complaining that, technically speaking, it isn't an engine. And the steering wheel isn't an engine either. [More info on Operating Systems can be found here]

He also refers to Linux as "an immature OS," and says that "the operating system is still in its infancy." A knowledgable person might think of Linux as a kind of late-generation member of the Unix family. Given that this is an old and venerable OS family, the reviewer's remarks seem (to me) akin to comparing the Kennedy family with the Gates family, and suggesting that a member of the former is not as well established as the latter. With his thumb clearly on the pulse of trends in the Linux community, this reviewer examined two of the most popular distributions: Suse (out of Germany) and Lycoris (one designed to look Windowsish). He gave them low marks: Installation, grade D. System migration, grade D. Security, grade A. Networking, grade C. Display, grade C. Support, grade D+. Why he didn't review Red Hat (which I use and which seems to be the most well known), I do not know. Perhaps if the reviewer spoke German he would have given better marks on support to the Suse folks.

Now I want to compare my own (anecdotal) experiences with the reviewer's complaints. I've been running Red Hat on my laptop for years. The day I bought my laptop, I went to install drivers for my new digital camera hardware. Windows ME died. It would not recognize the hardware after the drivers were installed. By the end of the day, it wouldn't even boot. Installation had failed. I put Red Hat 7.0 on the laptop, and it installed in under an hour. It recognized all of my hardware, even the digital camera stuff, with no special drivers. I put Windows 2000 on my other partition and spent days trying to get the driver installation right. Some devices never worked in Windows (even though they were designed for Windows). Some devices worked briefly and then failed after a few weeks. I've had the same experience with Windows XP: my digital camera stuff and my external hard drive do not currently function under my Windows partition. They work fine in Linux, sans drivers. My BusLink USB 2.0 cardbus doesn't work any more in Windows. It works fine in Linux, sans drivers. To sum up: What the Hell is Wrong with Windows? Windows installation: grade F. Linux installation: grade B+.

The B+ grade is for some font and software stuff that's a little bumpy under Linux, but at least it all works (and continues working) once its in place. Now for System Migration. I have seperate partitions for /home and /usr/local. This is recommended by the Red Hat setup. If you do this, system migration is as easy as sticking in the new CD and clicking a few options. To upgrade Windows, I typically have to back up all files, scrap everything, and install from scratch. Windows upgrades do not produce stable systems. You must scrap and reinstall. In Linux you need only scrap and reinstall the root partition. You don't even need to do that, but I do clean upgrades because I'm a non-expert and its easier. To sum up: for system migration, Windows grade C, Linux grade A.

Security is a no-brainer. Everyone (even the ignorant reviewer) knows that Linux wins. But grade C on networking? Come on. The reviewer says, "Most distributions support WiFi connectivity, although many adapters require extensive tweaking. SuSE 8.1 supports Bluetooth personal area networking using an application called BlueZ." That sounds nitpicky to me, as I sit wondering why I can't make my Windows XP box talk to my Windows 2000 box. When Windows fails, I have nothing but wizards to work with. When the wizards don't make it work, the troubleshooter says "contact your system administrator." Well fuck, I am my system administrator. I can't get two damn Windows boxes to talk to eachother on a LAN and this fuckhead has the balls to give Linux a grade C in networking. I'd also like to note that Windows requires two ethernet adapters to do internet connection sharing. Linux can use IP masquerading (or IP chains, or whatever the latest thing is) to do it with a single adapter. Why can't Windows do that? If Linux gets a C in networking, Windows must get an F.

I'd also like to point out all the neat tools and programs that come with a Linux distribution: FTP, SSH, multiple browsers, telnet applications, IRC, multiple email readers, various low-level network monitoring tools, etc. You don't get shit with Windows. Thank God for OpenSSH on Windows. It's the only set of Windows-based connectivity tools that function reliably.

On to the "Display" category. "Some distributions have a hard time with higher resolutions..." Okay, don't use those distributions. Problem completely avoided. "fonts do not always display properly, causing strange bitmapping to occur." True. But this is easily fixed. You can just search font howto files to get the easy five-step solution. Besides, I think Red Hat 8.0 doesn't have that problem any more. I had resolved it under 7.0, but when I installed 8.0 I think the problem no longer existed. The real point to note here is that Linux problems can be solved. There is a vast library of documentation: FAQs and Howtos written for everyone from the newbie to the expert. Many of these files are bundled with distributions as part of the documentations. Bejillions of such files can be found online. With Windows there is nothing but shadows and mystery.

Lastly, support. This is my favorite: the reviewer complains about phone support that "in some cases, such as with the German-based SuSE, native language barriers required having to repeat the description of the problem several times." No shit. Use an American-based distribution such as the near-universal standard Red Hat and you will have no such problems. But if you choose obscure/foreign distributions to review then you should expect to encounter some odd problems. Honestly. The great thing about Linux support is that I've never truly needed it. The howto's always come to the rescue. Or in the worst-case scenario, I can just reinstall my root partition without losing any personal data. No matter how bad the problem is, I can be back to work in a matter of hours. But what support have I ever found for Windows? Windows support has always been necessary and never been helpful. Sony and Fujifilm don't even return my email inquiries, which usually say something like "Windows has forgotten what my digital camera is. It used to work but now it says 'unknown device' when I plug it in. What do I do?" They don't even reply because they don't know what I should do because there is nothing I can do. Windows fails.

I had read that article hoping to find some enlightening information about the latest laptop trends for Linux. Instead I found a misinformed piece of crap by a guy who didn't do his homework. I can't describe the sort of zen-peace that I feel when I leave behind the catastrophic Windows environment and enter the harmonious sanctuary of Linux. God has smiled upon Linux and said, "it is good," and the heretic author of the review in Laptop Magazine has committed blasphemy against something rare and pure. Bastard.

Update on moon rocks:

December 24 -- NASA has released the following:
   On December 17, 2002, Tiffany B. Fowler and Shae L. Saur appeared before a United States Magistrate Judge, Middle District of Florida, and pled guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit theft and interstate transportation of stolen property. On December 18, 2002, Thad R. Roberts pled guilty to the same charges.
   Fowler, Saur and Roberts, students working at NASA's Johnson Space Center, conspired to steal a 600-pound safe that contained priceless lunar samples and Martian meteorites. A fourth individual, Gordon S. McWhorter, was also charged with conspiracy to commit theft and interstate transportation of stolen property. McWhorter is scheduled to go to trial in January 2003.

This story is still really surreal to me. There's a lot of things I'd like to know, but it's not easy to get information. I tried exploring the issue a little while I was a feature writer at the Chronicle. I found the issue is very divisive even among peolpe who have no direct connection to it. Just making it through a night of interviews with the student astronomy group was hellish. It was clear that everyone had strong feelings about it, and the club and department had been very affected. But they were firmly united in the position that nothing should be published about it in the school paper. "Why don't you write about our research, our successes? How does writing a Thad article help the school?" I never interpretted "helping the school" as the function of the paper. I wanted to say, "I don't write about the research because this incident is obviously more significant, even to you. When you get this worked up over your research I'll write about it." But instead of saying that, I gave up and wrote about some research. I think in order to be a good journalist you have to be comfortable with seriously offending a lot of people, all the time.