Archives October 2008

Another Political Tool

(No, not Tom DeLay. <rimshot>)

GovTrack has a
page
that shows congressional districts as a Google Maps layer. This means
that unlike the maps at
NationalAtlas.gov
you can easily zoom in to see the
crinkly bits
that make gerrymandered
districts to much fun to study. I could’ve used this during a
discussion on the subject with a friend today.

AZ-2
is nice, especially the part where it follows down the middle of the
Colorado river without touching the banks. But in the end, I have to
support the local team and go with
MD-3.

Floor’s open for discussion. What are your favorite congressional districts?

Gerrymander: the Game

Have you always dreamt of redistricting a state to disenfranchise a large minority party, or prevent those pesky ethnic minorities from having an effective voice in politics, while obeying the letter of the law? Then maybe you should play the Redistricting Game (Flash warning) and find out why some districts have the shapes they do.

Ray Comfort Is Making My Argument for Me!

In his
latest post,
Ray Comfort disagrees with Dawkins’s famous quip about the god of the
Old Testament being “the most unpleasant character in all fiction”.
Specifically, he takes Dawkins to task for excluding the god of the
New Testament:

The God of the New Testament is just as offensive to the
ungodly as the God of the Old Testament, because they are One in [sic]
the same.

Look at His terrible New Testament judgments: He killed a husband and wife, simply because they told one lie (see Acts 5:1-11). His “wrath” abides on every unbeliever for their sins (see John 3:36, Ephesians 5:6). He will punish the unsaved with a fearful “indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish” (Romans 2:8-9), and warns that He is going to be “revealed from Heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” (see 2 Thessalonians 1:8).

He is so angry at this world He calls us His enemy (see James 4:4) and promises to “shake not only the earth, but also Heaven” in His wrath (Hebrews 12:26). Our God is “a consuming fire” (see Hebrews 12:29) and His justice will cause some to gnaw their tongues in pain (see Revelation 16:10). He is so serious about sin He will cast all liars into the lake of fire (see Revelation 21:8).

Okay, so the NT God is just as mean and nasty as the OT one.

Actually, no, he’s not:

If you still want to paint the Old Testament God as been mean and the New Testament God as being nice, please realize that the God of the New Testament proclaimed the death sentence on every man, on every woman and on every child of the human race. Every single human being will die because they have violated God’s Law (see Romans 5:12, 6:23).

The god of the New Testament is nastier, since he punishes people
forever in Hell. At least the OT god was polite enough to stop
torturing people once they were dead.

With opponents like Comfort, who needs allies?

(Matt D. says almost the same thing as I do. Except he said it to Ray directly.)

Commentary Track for Expelled

Shane Killians has
released
a subtitle track for Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
that aims to correct a lot of the errors and lies in the movie. So if
someone bought the DVD and wants you to watch it, you can add
subtitles so your
friend/relative/smizmar
can get a real-time rebuttal to the claims presented on screen.

The link above includes instructions for getting the subtitles to
display in some popular media players. In addition, I think MPlayer
should automatically pick up the .srt file (dunno about the
.ssa one).

You’ll also need to buy/rent/rip/bittorrent/teleport a video file of the movie, but you’re on your own for
that.

The Election, Explained

Right now, Five Thirty-Eight
gives McCain’s win percentage as 3.3%. Or, to put it in gamer terms,
he has to roll a natural 20, and then he has to roll 5 or 6
on 1d6 (or 3 on 1d3).

As for Palin, from her interview and debate performances, she reminds
me of nothing so much as a verbose
Eliza:
you ask her a question, her internal
regexp
parser picks out a few keywords, and she spits out a string of
preprogrammed phrases, with possibly a few pattern substitutions.

Of course, the original Eliza was designed to be terse so as to hide
the simplicity of the algorithm. Palin goes on for minutes, making her
more of a cross between Eliza and
Dissociated Press.

Language Peeve

In
this episode
of the John Cleese podcast, he takes on a pet peeve of mine, and
explains with graphs and charts exactly why it’s wrong to say “I could
care less”.

Oh, and for those who didn’t know that John Cleese has a podcast:

John Cleese has a
podcast.

Box Office Numbers

Since some cdesign proponentsists were getting all excited about the
release of
Expelled
on DVD, I looked it up at Box Office Mojo and found:


Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed:
released Apr. 18, 2008, total lifetime domestic gross: $7,720,487.


Religulous:
released Oct. 1, 2008, total lifetime domestic gross: $10,599,000
(estimate).

Read More

Putting Money on the Races

I’ve just chipped in to two more races:

  • No on Prop 8, against California’s proposition 8, which would amdend the state constitution to ban gay marriage.
  • Kay Hagan, who’s running for Senate in North Carolina, because Elizabeth Dole is a loathsome bigot.

Because when a woman who knows how to use a whip and handcuffs
tells me to,
I must obey.

Campaigns Interpret Regulation as Damage

The idea behind election finance reform is a noble one: elections tend
to go to whichever candidate wields the most money and can buy the
most votes; so let’s even out the playing field, and give less-rich
candidates a chance.

There are a number of problems with actually achieving any change,
though. For one, campaign finance reform has to be enacted by
politicians whose own reelection campaigns are likely to be hampered
by it.

Another is that any reform is unlikely to address the core problem.
John Gilmore is
quoted as
saying that “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around
it.” In other words, let’s say you’re trying to move pr0n from point A
to point B. But some site in the middle doesn’t like pr0n, so it
intercepts your data packets and drops them on the floor. From your
point of view, it looks as if that site has a broken cable or a power
outage or something. But the Internet is failure-resistant, so your
data packets find a different path, avoiding the affected site
altogether.

And so it is with campaign contributions.

Read More

Wednesday Playlist
  1. Mathématiques souterraines, H.F. Thiéfaine
  2. Side Ways Calculus, Velvet Acid Christ
  3. Gravitational Constant: G = 6.67×108 cm3 sec2, Type O Negative
  4. Experiment One, X-Fusion
  5. Test, Ministry
  6. Find Out Why, The Inspiral Carpets
  7. Experiment IV, Kate Bush
  8. Chemical Burn, The Dust Brothers
  9. Bio-Mechanic, Front Line Assembly
  10. Desde el observatorio, La Mode
  11. Geography I, Front 242
  12. Science Genius Girl, Freezepop
  13. She Blinded Me with Science, Thomas Dolby
  14. For Science, They Might Be Giants
  15. Big Science, Laurie Anderson
  16. All that Love and Maths Can Do, The Durutti Column