All posts by Andrew Arensburger

Poly Punctuation

Hey, kids! Spot the punctuation error in
this National Review article
by Stanley Kurtz:

polyamory has much greater potential appeal [than polygamy], and poses a much deeper danger to the American family […]. Take away the stigma against multiple-partner marriage, and our larger family system will be profoundly weakened.

Yes, you got it: he put a period at the end, when obviously he should have used a colon and one or more explanatory clauses.

I’ve often seen the same mistake in articles against gay marriage. Right-wingers tell us that all sorts of things will happen if gay marriage (or, in this case, polyamory) is legalized. But with the exception of a few slippery-slope arguments, sometimes involving
box turtles, they never get around to telling us exactly why these things are bad.

Read More

Advice for Christian Parents

John Wilkins has
a good piece:

Don’t try to make everything a religious matter. There’s nothing religious about plumbing, for example. Likewise, science, sports, and dress sense. People can in fact like Korn and still be Christian (although I do not think they can like Korn and still have taste). There is no “Christian” or “Satanic” music, only music that is turned to a purpose.

But go read the whole thing.

I note that he specifically addresses Christian parents. Presumably that means it’s still okay to indoctrinate children into
FSMism.

Scientists, Before and After

This
is pretty cool: 7th-graders’ drawings and descriptions of scientists, both
before and after meeting some real scientists at
Fermilab.

“We pay the teachers’ salary…”

One argument that crops up from time to time in anti-evolutionist circles is, “Teachers should teach Intelligent Design if that’s what the community wants. We pay the teachers’ salary, after all.”

I’ve finally put my finger on what was bugging me about this. It’s exactly the same as saying, “My doctor should tell me those chest pains are just gas, not cancer. I pay his salary, after all.”

Best South Dakota Comment Yet

From Digby
by way of
Firedoglake:

I hope you’re ready to be daddies, boys. Last time abortion was illegal they didn’t have DNA testing

Read More

HintWiki launched

I’ve finally installed the
HintWiki,
a wiki for adventure game hints (as opposed to walkthroughs, which contain too many spoilers).

Right now, there are only hints for
Rhem 2,
but hopefully that’ll change over time.

So pop over and take a look.

(Belated) Happy Birthday, SN1987A!

I don’t know many people who have a favorite supernova, but I do:
SN1987A.
Its light first reached Earth 19 years and a day ago (sorry, I meant to write this entry yesterday, but was too busy), on Feb. 23, 1987.

SN1987A remnant

Read More

Ajax == Emacs: the Next Generation

I’ve started learning this

thing. which allows you to do cool things like
Google Maps
and the
U Wisconsin directory search.

Read More

Web server work

I’ve just updated a bunch of software on the back end.

Read More

Fun With CSS: Large Capitals

One thing I’ve always liked about books is the way typesetters sometimes render the first letter differently from the others, usually several times larger, and with the paragraph flowing around it. Sometimes, the first line or the first few words of the first paragraph are also rendered in small caps. I’ve finally figured out how to do this with CSS:

/weblog/files/css-capitals.html

Read More