Author: andy

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Of principles and $$$…

So yeah, I got to thinking today… I use Linux and various other open-source programs instead of Windows for a variety of reasons, but one of those is that the information contained within is freely available to anyone who wants it. What does that mean? Well, it means that if you download the “source code” of the Linux kernel and other “open-source” programs, you can edit it and tweak it to your heart’s content. If you decide you don’t like the way a certain function of the program works, you can (assuming you know some programming…) change it to fit your purpose. The reason why this is cool is that it allows knowledge to travel freely between different groups; what one person starts with a program can be learned from and transferred to another application, allowing for the programming itself to improve over time.

Now, switch gears into science. My plan has been to get my Ph.D. and then work in industry for awhile, making some cash, and then maybe switch back into academia and teach for a few years to alleviate boredom around retirement time. The correlation is that academia is like “open-source,” where information is published and freely available for other scientists to learn from and take a step further, while industry is like “closed-source” where you work toward patents that can allow you to make money and prevent y our opponents from coming up with a solution to a given problem that’s better than yours.

So, the question remains: am I hypocritical in using open-source software, believing in what it stands for, and then getting a job and making a career in industry where I will work in a “closed-source” environment? I mean, I have relatively expensive hobbies (computers/electronics, etc.) and I’d like to be able to finance them, and to do so, I need a job in industry so I can afford that 1969 Shelby Mustang…but is it right to compromise principles in doing so?

I dunno…I guess there’s no simple answer to the question…but I’ve got 5 years to figure it out…

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gDesklets

So, I discovered gDesklets this past week… It’s been out for awhile, but I just now found out how badass it is… Here’s what my desktop looks like on the laptop:

Screenshot

As you can see, the bar at the bottom functions like the one in OS X, so when you highlight an icon, it has this nifty animation on it…and you can set up different windows that are on your desktop, such as weather, a Gmail checker, or even an RSS (news…) reader or little “Post It” notes to mark things on… Here’s a more close-up look at the launcher at the bottom:

Launcher

The only thing I can complain about is how much RAM the damned thing takes up…I mean, 512 MB can run it just fine, but much below that may not be a good call…

So yeah, here’s the deal: install Linux on your computers. It’ll look pretty. Prettier than WinXP. You can install it on your desktop as a secondary OS so you can run WinXP by default and boot up Linux when you feel like toying around. seriously. Do it. I’ll install it for you.

“It is your destiny.”

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Good vs Evil

You know, I tend to try avoiding preaching when I post on here…as in, trying to talk about Christianity as a religion in any way, shape or form…yet, the subject does enter into my opinions on things like teaching Intelligent Design in our public (non-Christian) schools. Therefore, let me digress from “the norm” a bit…and in light of that, let me quickly propose my definition of a “good Christian:”

One who believes not only that Jesus Christ is the son of God and that He gave His life for us, but also that this person lives their life as an example of what God envisions for His people.

If you have an addendum to that statement, please post a comment. Personally, I think it’s the latter part of that definition that gives people some contention, since many of us tend to disagree as to what “God envisions for His people.”

I, therefore, wish to put forth a statement from someone I consider to be a “bad Christian:”

“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover (Pennsylvania): if there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His help because he might not be there.”

This statement is not an example of what a “good Christian” would say, for obvious reasons. A good Christian does not wish ill will upon others. As the Bible dictates, Jesus was all about living his life and being an example of what we should be doing, even though that may be difficult. At no point in my recollection of the Bible (and I could be wrong…and I’ll correct this if proved otherwise…) does Jesus ever wish God’s wrath upon anyone. Note: the statement written above does not explicitly express “ill-will,” but I think it’s implied…again, perhaps I’m wrong on that…

Pat Robertson, you are indeed a terrible Christian and a very bad example of what Christians are taught and seeking to accomplish. You are, however, doing an incredible job of putting lies in the heads of non-Christians who now, due to your innate stupidity, have no good reason to change their minds about the religion. Good job, you worthless, lying, bastard.

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Hmmmm…well…

So yeah, had my third exam today…could have gone better, probably could have gone worse. I’m having a difficult time deciding which is worse: sitting through a 3 hour Physical Chemistry exam with under 10 questions that you have to think about a lot to get a good answer down, or a 3.5 hour exam where you have maybe 20 essay questions that you do know answers to, yet you don’t really understand what the hell the question is asking you… (i.e. you can read the question, you know information on the subject and you could easily answer a multiple-choice question, but you don’t really know what the professor is getting at…so you write down too much stuff and they count off for it…).

Anyway, I’ll get that back next week, I guess…no one was particularly happy about the test, so we’ll see what happens…

On a lighter note, Brooke and I are visiting Hannibal this weekend…haven’t been there since, like, summer…’bout time, I guess… I also start my rotation with Dr. Zahm next week, so I won’t have my afternoons off anymore…dammit… Nathan, I’ll post up a research summary when I get a chance… 😛

Not much else going on…but I’m quite ready for Thanksgiving Break, yo… Holla…

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Links and more…

The Kansas Board of Education has, again, voted in favor of Intelligent Design instead of Evolution in high school classrooms. Two-page article…don’t forget to click “next” at the bottom… A few good quotes from that article:

?This is a sad day. We?re becoming a laughingstock of not only the nation, but of the world, and I hate that.??? said board member Janet Waugh, a Kansas City Democrat.

…and…

In 1999, the board eliminated most references to evolution. Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould said that was akin to teaching ?American history without Lincoln.??? Bill Nye, the ?Science Guy??? of children?s television, called it ?harebrained??? and ?nutty.??? And a Washington Post columnist imagined God saying to the Kansas board members: ?Man, I gave you a brain. Use it, OK????

Also, Jerry shot me this e-mail with a note passed on by Dr. Lockhart at Truman, a Biology professor, essentially outlining “not-so-intelligent design” in humans…kinda amusing, really… Things like high blood pressure, colon cancer, etc…if we were so well designed, wouldn’t we have better defenses against such things? Who knows…not I…

Apparently, the Dover, Pa. school board members that were up for re-election have all been booted…and there were 8 of them… This is where the infamous Scope’s Monkey Trial took place many a year ago, and the site of a new trial where the board was trying to force ID on high school students…w00t!

And finally, there’s an essay in TIME Magazine this week written by a Nobel Prize-winning physicist that discusses his opinion on the issue…and I whole-heartedly agree… It tells us how ID does nothing really to forward scientific thinking and really hampers it by placing all of current knowledge in a box (with everything outside this box being in “God’s realm”).

You all know my opinion(s) on the matter, so I won’t rehash them… Actually, that last link is probably the best descriptor of my views on the subject that I’ve read yet, so if anything, check that one out… And if you go to school in Kansas, my apologies…start voting so that you don’t remain the laughing stock of the world, yo…

More on this later, I’m sure…this issue isn’t going away anytime soon…

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Review: Good Night, And Good Luck

GO SEE THIS MOVIE!!!

“We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.”
— Edward R. Murrow

…now, I’ll continue… “Good Night, And Good Luck” is a movie co-written and directed by George Clooney…and it’s good… For those who don’t know, it’s a movie about Edward R. Murrow and his work at CBS News in the 1950s fighting against the McCarthy hearings (and Senator McCarthy himself).

Here are a few “oddities” about it:

    1). The “villain” (McCarthy) plays himself in the movie, only appearing in TV spots where he was filmed in the 1950s.
    2). The movie is filmed in black and white, which really helps since all the newsreels from the 50s are also in black and white…
    3). There isn’t much of a soundtrack… There’s some music (jazz…) here and there, but not a lot…

Anyway, the movie is really good, but the reasons that it’s good aren’t necessarily due to strong filmmaking and acting (which are all top-notch, in their own right). The movie is good because of its relevance. It brings up two very good points about today’s world and recent events:

    In the movie, the government employs fear tactics to enact laws, etc. that impinge upon our Constitutional rights…in the very same way that the Patriot Act does it today. The movie is generally an allegory to what is happening as we speak in Congress, where we’re giving up our rights because of fear.
    Murrow has some problems with the “higher ups” at CBS and ends up making various statements incriminating the American public as only caring about entertainment rather than news, and we see this today as well (to an extent). For example, we are much more likely to turn on “The Tonight Show” rather than “Nightline”…we’d rather watch something funny or dramatic instead of learn more about the plight of women in Africa, or the people losing their jobs as their work is moved overseas. This is the fault of not only the American public, but also the TV networks for allowing this to take place.

So yeah, overally, a really good movie that you all should see at least once. If it isn’t playing where you live (i.e. Kirksville), drive to Columbia or St. Louis/Kansas City. Just see it. It is completely relevant to today’s world without saying anything specific about it. A very timely and well-done movie. Go see it. Right now.

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Sega Dreamcast: TNG

The Slashdot crowd will have already seen this, but it’s kinda freaky to look down this list, even for the non-geeks.

This website at 1UP.com describes 23 similarities between the launch of the Xbox360 and the Sega Dreamcast (remember that?!)…it continues on to describe 10 reasons why the 360 won’t fail as the Dreamcast did…but still…it’s kinda funny to look at…

…as you read this, just keep in mind that PS3 will still win out overall…but I’m pulling for my underdog Nintendo to the (bitter?) end… 😉

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Oh, cholesterol…

So, Dr. Stephenson was talking to us in class today about something he read in the Journal of Clinical Cardiology recently, saying that they believe we should all strive for the lowest total-body cholesterol count possible. Basically, we shouldn’t try to have a count of “below 200” or “around 150″…we should just go and go until it’s as low as it can go.

Anyway, he then mentioned some studies that show up years ago on the same subject… These studies said that people who had low cholesterol were less likely to die of cardiovascular diseases. However, keep in mind, this data only reflected death by cardiovascular problems, not by other factors.

Essentially, it came out that, yes, people with cholesterol counts around 130 or a little higher did well…but people lower than that started to die off. Why’d they die off? Suicides and murders. Apparently, people who had extremely low cholesterol counts died because cholesterol is a relatively key component of cell membranes, especially those in your brain…so people would start getting either really depressed and would kill themselves, or they would get psychotic enough that someone would kill them…

Take home message: eat a lot of fatty stuff and die happy, rather than depressed or crazy.

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Review: Wallace and Gromit

So we saw “Wallace & Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit” last night, and overall, it was pretty good. I haven’t really seen many Wallace and Gromit flicks (I can only remember one, and it probably wasn’t all the way through…), but I did see “Chicken Run” a few years ago and thought it was alright.

The story itself was entertaining and somewhat fun to watch. I got pretty bored for the first half of the movie, honestly, but the last half really picked up as you figured more stuff out about “the origin of the were-rabbit,” etc… Generally, the humor was rather cute-sy, as opposed to “laugh out loud” hilarious. There were certainly some amusing parts, but the only “laugh out loud” stuff was toward the very end.

The cool stuff was really in the production of the film. I mean, the whole thing (well…save a little CGI…but very little…) was claymation…including things like liquids. It’s crazy that they poured tea…and it was done with clay…and it looked really good. The impressive part is that you really get lost in the story and don’t notice the claymation; it’s like you’re watching any old cartoon or Pixar flick, but with clay textures.

So anyway, the movie was certainly alright and worth seeing, but perhaps worth waiting until it comes out on video…although, I think it’s on the way out of theaters, anyway… The movie is generally amusing and, if anything, a triumph of clay animation. Kids will surely find it entertaining and get into the story more than adults, but it’s still worth a look for us “big kids”…

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…what a weekend…

So, yeah…we were both pretty busy this weekend…again… This time, I played poker on Friday night at Jeremy’s, which was cool, as usual… Then Saturday, Stu and Joel came to St. Louis for some frolf action…there are pictures posted, but I’m sure most of you don’t care…but you should, ’cause frisbee golf rocks tremendously. We played at Watson Trails Park and Jefferson Barracks, neither of which I’d ever played at. Later that night, Stu and I went to a concert at Pop’s featuring Strapping Young Lad and Fear Factory. Who are these bands? They’re death metal bands. Yes, I went to my first death metal concert. In East St. Louis. Next door to the Penthouse club. Needless to say, it was an interesting night…

Arguably the most pertinent part of the weekend, however, came on Sunday… Brooke and I were wanting to get a pet, so we finally did. While I wanted to get a dog, it wasn’t really feasible for our current situation (i.e. I don’t have time to take one out for walks, teach it not to do its thing on my computers, etc…), so we got a cat. We went to the Humane Society on Sunday afternoon and picked out this little fella:

Sam the Cat

He’s 6 mo old and was a stray before being picked up and taken to the Humane Society. He was very well-tempered at the shelter and seems to be pretty friendly, thus far. They named him “Constantine,” but we decided that a 3 syllable name is a bit long for a cat, so we decided to call him “Sam”…seems like a name befitting a kitty cat… There are a few more pictures of him up in the Photos section now, too…

Now, time to get back to reading for this week… I don’t have to start my next rotation until November 14th, so I’ve still got afternoons off for the next 2 weeks…w00t!