Perfect: cobble together an obscenely irrational hybrid of religion and science in the vain attempt to appease everyone at once, and what do you get? Something to annoy everyone at once.
I have to take back some of the mean things I’ve said about Intelligent Design creationism. They have finally made a significant contribution to a science…in this case, computer science. Behold the awesome power of the Intelligent Design Sort!
Intelligent Design Sort
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!
Feedback
Gary Rogers writes:
Making the sort constant in time denies the power of The Sorter. The Sorter exists outside of time, thus the sort is timeless. To require time to validate the sort dimishes the role of the Sorter. Thus… this particular sort is flawed, and can not be attributed to ‘The Sorter’.Heresy!
It’s a kind of universal argument, too — just replace the word “list” with “gene”, and it transforms into their usual assertion about biology.
Yeah, there’s little I like better than some sweet snarky skewered Libertarianism.
Of course, if you don’t like it, you could always go complain in the comments over there.
The Onion has just announced that the pope has reversed some traditional teachings.
The divine proclamation, which contradicts prior teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, was reportedly made by Pope Benedict after a late night phone call to his Vatican residence. According to witnesses, His Holiness was seen pacing back and forth, nervously wringing his hands, and cursing at himself in a hallway mirror before coming to the sudden decision.
“My friends in Christ, brothers and sisters of the cloth, having an abortion is…err…not that big a deal,” announced the anxious pontiff while reading from a series of hastily scrawled edicts. “In fact, it is written, uh, somewhere, that the taking of an innocent life might even be something of a blessing in some cases.”
“For example, when a mother’s life is at risk,” continued Benedict, wiping several beads of sweat from his forehead. “Or, say, when someone is just way too old to become a father at this point.”
That kind of short-term pragmatism over doctrine is common among Catholics, so that part is believable…but that Darth Benedict could have sex? Unimaginable. At least it is now, after my imagination just melted down and dribbled out my ears while I was trying to picture it. It didn’t help that the only mate I could picture was Frau Farbissina.
This recent xkcd should have you all reaching for your calculators.
I had to look up the population density in my area…it’s 18. Not 18 thousand, just 18. When I plug that number into the formula, I got a value of 4,500 meters, almost 3 miles. The parents of our students will find that a reassuring statistic, I hope.
Of course, the formula lacks a temporal component — that mean distance is going to vary with a circadian rhythm, I would think, with peaks in the evening and early morning hours. Rather than a static number, it should be a function that measures a kind of hourly flux, with all the sexy time people hovering in close around dusk and receding during the day.
Hmmm. If XF included masturbation, that number would be much higher…
Now this is effective birth control.
Abstinence suddenly looks much more appealing.
I must echo Huxley and say, “How stupid of me not to have thought of that!” in response to the discovery of a new mode of evolution. This changes everything!
In an entirely relevant mode of logic, I have noticed that we are suffering with a surprising and rather nasty blizzard today, which was clearly intended for tomorrow. Its appearance today only makes sense if it is Australian, and therefore John Wilkins is responsible for flying over here and shoveling my driveway.
Administrators at Boston Latin prep school issued a notice that there were no — I repeat, no — vampires attending the school. Read the article, and apparently there was also a rumor of at least one werewolf running around.
They issued no disclaimer against the existence of decrepit old mummies or mindless zombies, however, which should be grounds for concern. They’re probably among the staff.
Last night’s Family Guy featured an unsurprising revelation about a character.
(via Sunny Skeptic)
