Who counted them? And how?

Sean notes without comment a piece on how Muslims should find Mecca when traveling in space. I am in awe of the mind that could write this.

A user-friendly, portable Muslims in Space calculator , could determine the direction of the Qiblah and prayer times on the ISS. Its essential feature would be the use of the Projected Earth and Qiblah Pole concepts. These are based on the interpretation of the holy house of angels in the sky above Mecca. The place is always rich with angels worshipping. As many as 70,000 angels circumambulate it every day. Thus, one virtual Qiblah pole can be taken as a universal reference to determine the direction of the Qiblah. When Earth is projected to the height of the ISS, every point on its surface is projected also, including the Qiblah point, which can be projected upwards and downwards along the Qiblah Pole. This allows the direction of the Qiblah to be determined in space and in the bowels of the Earth.

It’s got space stations and angels all muddled up in one paragraph. Can we get the ISS to fly directly above Mecca? Would we need to install windshield wipers on it if we did so, in order to clear off the angel splat?

Watch out, Google

Microsoft has added everything to a search engine that you’ve missed in Google: long load times, half of the screen space dedicated to flash animation and another quarter just empty charcoal grey, results that are shown 3 at a time and displayed in a light gray font on a distracting pale graphic, and most importantly, the most annoying librarian in the universe, Ms. Dewey, who seems to be there to nag you to type faster and mock you if she doesn’t understand your request.

Is there a prize for the most idiotic abuse of web technology? This deserves a nomination. Unless, of course, it’s actually not a search engine, but a psychological experiment in optimizing interface design to maximize frustration and rage. It’s very good at that.

Those wacky Kansans!

The Onion reports on the latest anti-evolution tactic.

In response to a Nov. 7 referendum, Kansas lawmakers passed emergency legislation outlawing evolution, the highly controversial process responsible for the development and diversity of species and the continued survival of all life.

“From now on, the streets, forests, plains, and rivers of Kansas will be safe from the godless practice of evolution, and species will be able to procreate without deviating from God’s intended design,” said Bob Bethell, a member of the state House of Representatives. “This is about protecting the integrity of all creation.”

The new law prohibits all living beings within state borders from any willful adaptation to changing environmental conditions. In addition, it strictly limits any activity that may result in enhanced health or survival beyond the current average lifespan of their particular species.

My first thought was this will have the good effect of ending that pesky antibiotic resistance problem, but this law is going to have sweeping effects.

Human beings may be the species most deeply affected by the new legislation. Those whose cytochrome-c molecules vary less than 2 percent from those of chimpanzees will be in direct violation of the law.

There is no hint of what the penalties might be, but I think everyone better stop procreating, just to be on the safe side.

Lobster vs. Sea Hare

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Ah, Aplysia. Also known as the sea hare, Aplysia is a common preparation used in neurobiology labs; it’s a good sized beastie with the interesting defense mechanism of spewing out clouds of mucusy slime and purple ink when agitated. I well remember coming into the physiology lab in the morning to find a big bucket full of squirming muscular slugs in a pool of vivid purple goo. And then I’d reach in to grab one, and they were all velvety soft and undulating and engulfing my whole arm in this thick, slick, wet, slippery knot of rippling smooth muscle…

Ahem. Well. Let me compose myself for a moment. I will say that I always thought handling Aplysia is an amazingly sensuous experience.

[Read more…]

Maybe it would be more miraculous if a huge stone Buddha appeared there

A miracle has occurred in Florida!

The Ten Commandments have appeared at the Dixie County Courthouse.

A six-ton block of granite bearing the Ten Commandments had been installed atop the courthouse steps. Inscribed at the base was the admonition to “Love God and keep his commandments.”

The concept of a Ten Commandments monument was endorsed by county commissioners.

A six-ton block of stone just “appeared”? As in “poof”? Were there angelic trumpets, perhaps, or an astonishing bolt of lightning, or an eclipse? I mean, if a miraculous manifestation of the will of the Old Testament god actually shimmered into existence magically, with a command to “OBEY” inscribed upon it, well, I’d just have to reconsider this atheism gig.

Of course, if it were actually just another gaggle of pea-brained Republican godidiots who commissioned the carving of a big rock and smuggled it into a government establishment, eh, not so much reconsideration necessary. I’m sure the newspaper would have said something if it were a mere exercise in all-too-human pigheadedness, right?

Pinker says a whole lot of sensible things all at once

I’m not a big fan of Steven Pinker’s work, but I have to agree with just about everything he says in this letter arguing against the planned “Reason and Faith” requirement at Harvard.

First, the word “faith” in this and many other contexts, is a euphemism for “religion.” An egregious example is the current administration’s “faith-based initiatives,” so-named because it is more palatable than “religion-based initiatives.” A university should not try to hide what it is studying in warm-and-fuzzy code words.

Second, the juxtaposition of the two words makes it sound like “faith” and “reason” are parallel and equivalent ways of knowing, and we have to help students navigate between them. But universities are about reason, pure and simple. Faith—believing something without good reasons to do so—has no place in anything but a religious institution, and our society has no shortage of these. Imagine if we had a requirement for “Astronomy and Astrology” or “Psychology and Parapsychology.” It may be true that more people are knowledgeable about astrology than about astronomy, and it may be true that astrology deserves study as a significant historical and sociological phenomenon. But it would be a terrible mistake to juxtapose it with astronomy, if only for the false appearance of symmetry.

There’s more, but here’s the conclusion.

Again, we have to keep in mind that the requirement will attract attention from far and wide, and for a long time. For us to magnify the significance of religion as a topic equivalent in scope to all of science, all of culture, or all of world history and current affairs, is to give it far too much prominence. It is an American anachronism, I think, in an era in which the rest of the West is moving beyond it.

One of the sad consequences of the American separation of church and state is that it has fed the notion that church is as important as state, and that it needs to be accommodated with ever-growing privileges.

This is an experiment

Acephalous is trying to measure the rate of propagation of links across the net. He’s asking everyone to link to his post (so this may just be shameless blog-whoring under the guise of doing science), exhort our readers to do likewise, and he’s going to be monitoring its movement through Technorati, and will report the results at the MLA meetings.

So you heard me. Get on your blog, link to http://acephalous.typepad.com/acephalous/2006/11/measuring_the_s.html, and let’s see how quickly we can saturate the blogosphere.

(via Bitch Ph.D)