Many congratulation to the team of hard working scientists, lawyers and concerned citizens who successfully fought off the Intelligent Design agenda in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Today, Judge John Jones III ruled in Kitzmiller et al v. Dover Area School District, a case where the non-scientific ramblings of the Intelligent Design (ID) camp had successfully made it into the school district curriculum. Back in October 2004, the school district adopted this language in the biology curriculum:

“Students will be made aware of the gaps/problems in Darwin’s theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design. Note: Origins of life is not taught.”

This is a very important ruling. Non-science nonsense like this needs to be fought at every turn. Here is an excerpt from the judge's ruling (highlights mine):

In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.

…

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.

For more information about this case, here are some informational links:

• Judge John Jones III's Ruling (PDF)
• CNN Story
• Scientific American Report
• Coverage by Ed Brayton on his blog

(It is also worth noting that the citizens had already voted out the members of the school board who voted for the ID language in the curriculum and that the new board had already agreed to abide by whatever the judge decided, so it seems very unlikely that there will be an appeal.)

UPDATE: Comment re-enabled after much discussion via email and over here.

Disclaimer: This post is about religion, philosophy, atheism and the like. Stop reading if you are sensitive to these subjects.

I don’t know about you, but I love listening to NPR on my drive into work in the morning. It is about the only way I get my traditional news anymore and I find that it sets me up for a good day at work.

On Monday mornings, NPR does a weekly thing called This I Believe where people spend a minute or two reading a 500 word essay they’ve written that describes their personal beliefs. I have found that most of them are good, even if you don’t agree with the author. But every now and then one will come on that perfectly jives with your personal beliefs (or lack thereof).

This morning, was one of those times. Penn Jillette, author, lecturer and the bigger half of magical team Penn and Teller came out firing with both barrells this morning in his essay titled There is No God.

I believe that there is no God. I'm beyond Atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy -- you can't prove a negative, so there's no work to do.

Wow. As he said those words, they rang true for me. I apologize if this offends you, but it shouldn’t. I do not prosceletize my beliefs and this blog post is not about trying to convince or convert you. Just something I felt like I had to say about myself.

So, anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in God and then look for evidence of God. She needs to search for some objective evidence of a supernatural power.

Again, Penn is right on the money here. You see, I’m a deep believer in the scientific method. I use it at work to debug code. I use it in my life when I can’t figure something out. All Penn is saying here is that people should use it to help them make a decision about faith.

Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.

When I have had discussions with religious people about this topic, it is interesting to me how often they feel that religion provides some sort of moral compass that helps people be “good people”. I, like Penn, believe that you can be a good person without a religious order to do so. In fact, not having a forgiving god to fall back on should give you more reason to be good:

Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.

Penn’s final point is, I think, one of his strongest. How many times are you watching something on television and you see the all-star athelete thank god for his successes. Or the family crying “praise the lord” when some brave person rescues their child from a flood. God gets all the props when people do well. But no one ever seems to give him/her any credit for the bad things.

Believing there is no God means the suffering I've seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn't caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn't bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.

That is perhaps the best argument there is. Less suffering for more people.

Yes please. I’d like two of those and a side of fries.

(For the full transcript of Penn’s essay, visit NPR at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5015557.)

Just saw this today on eSkeptic:

My confidence in venturing into science lies in my basic belief that as in science so in Buddhism, understanding the nature of reality is pursued by means of critical investigation: if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.

– His Holiness the Dalai Lama from his book The Universe in a Single Atom

Gotta love that quote. I have great respect for that man.

…Cold Stone Creamery’s Cake Batter Ice Cream.

It’s back. And it is just as good as it was before.

<rant>

Here at Microsoft, the IT people frequently scan every computer connected to the corporate network, checking to see if it has all the required patches and whatnot. This is a good idea and not something I would ever say I was opposed to. But strangely, there are a few patches that Microsoft Update, MBSA, etc. can not detect. And if they can't detect them, it makes it rather difficult to know if you are fully patched.

And here is where my rant begins... you wouldn't believe how much time in the past 6 months I've spent on the phone with tech support after getting my port turned off. You see, I have a Virtual Server running in my office. I use it to host anything new and exciting that I'm unwilling to install on my laptop. In the run up to Whidbey Beta 2, I was taking fresh drops every couple of days and putting them in fresh new guest images. I've been doing similar things with Vista (formerly Longhorn), Avalon, Indigo, etc. And apparently my base image, which I made back in late '05, wasn't patched for MS05-009 (the PNG exploit).

So every time I brought a new image up, I either a) had to remember which download to get to fix the base image or b) wait for them to shut my port down.

(Yes, yes... you are all now wondering why I didn't just fix the base image, but there is a certain amount of laziness inertia to contend with here...)

Each time they shut my port down I have to spent 10-15 minutes I'm on the phone with corporate IT support. And each time, I ask, "Hey, how can I detect these things? I'm fully patched as far as I can tell. There has to be a way for me to know this without you guys shutting down my port."

But they always come back with, "Well, the only way is to check this EXE for its version, do a search for that DLL and check its version, look in this registry key, etc."

I thought Windows Update (and now Microsoft Update) were supposed to solve this for us... but apparently there is something about checking file versions that it can't do.

Now for the worst part... It turns out that there are scan tools for all of these "undetectable" issues. They just aren't advertised much (and are apparently unknown by our own tech support people). So, if you want to be 100% sure that you don't have any of these issues, go and get the Enterprise Update Scan Tools from Microsoft Downloads and scan your machines. They aren't quite as easy to use as MBSA and Microsoft Update, but there aren't many of them and you won't have to do them very often.

</rant>

I’ve wanted to complain about this before, but I didn’t. But then today I lost my Omea Reader database and had to start over with my RSS feeds.

I knew I was caught-up with my feeds as of about noon today, so after reloading my OPML file (you should always remember to keep a backup of that) and then sync-ing my feeds, I selected everything older than noon and marked them as read.

You’d think I would be done, right? No. Instead of the 26 or so posts that had come in since noon, there were more than 60 unread posts. The extra ones all had their dates set to the date when I sync-ed them.

Why? It turns out that it is caused in part by my reader (Omea Reader 2.0 RC) and in part by people not generating very good RSS.

As far as I can tell, Omea Reader doesn't seem to grok the <dc:date> element (from the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative). Or if it does, the feeds in question aren't sending good date data. I'm not sure which. I suppose Omea should probably handle the Dublin Core stuff (I'm going to post to their newsgroup and ask), but my real question is why people use it when RSS 2.0 has elements for this purpose? FWIW, Mark Pilgrim claims he does it to respect prior art, but personally I think that is silly. (Probably not as silly as Omea not supporting Dublin Core, but silly nonetheless.)

Sure, that part can probably be blamed on my aggregator. Surprisingly, however, there are famous people out there who don't use either date element in their feeds. Why don't they take the extra time to help ensure that their feeds are complete? I don't know. The teenage girl down the street blogging about her cat has her feed set up correctly, but these gentlemen can't get it right? It doesn't seem likely given that I have books on my bookshelf, books in the "recommended reading" list on this blog in fact, that were written by the people I'm talking about. So do you. I guarantee it.

I know this is not really important in the grand scheme of things, but it annoys me.

I just saw this movie meme on Brad Wilson’s blog.

Here’s the rules: Italicize the ones you've seen and Bold the ones you actually liked.

1. Titanic (1997) - $600,779,824
2. Star Wars (1977) - $460,935,665
3. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) - $434,949,459
4. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) - $431,065,444
5. Spider-Man (2002) - $403,706,375
6. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The (2003) - $377,019,252
7. Passion of the Christ, The (2004) - $370,025,697
8. Jurassic Park (1993) - $356,784,000
9. Shrek 2 (2004) - $356,211,000
10. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The (2002) - $340,478,898
11. Finding Nemo (2003) - $339,714,367
12. Forrest Gump (1994) - $329,691,196
13. Lion King, The (1994) - $328,423,001
14. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) - $317,557,891
15. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The (2001) - $313,837,577
16. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) - $310,675,583
17. Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) - $309,125,409
18. Independence Day (1996) - $306,124,059
19. Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) - $305,411,224
20. Sixth Sense, The (1999) - $293,501,675
21. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) - $290,158,751
22. Home Alone (1990) - $285,761,243
23. Matrix Reloaded, The (2003) - $281,492,479
24. Shrek (2001) - $267,652,016
25. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) - $261,970,615
26. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) - $260,031,035
27. Jaws (1975) - $260,000,000
28. Monsters, Inc. (2001) - $255,870,172
29. Batman (1989) - $251,188,924
30. Men in Black (1997) - $250,147,615
31. Toy Story 2 (1999) - $245,823,397
32. Bruce Almighty (2003) - $242,589,580
33. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) - $242,374,454
34. Twister (1996) - $241,700,000
35. My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) - $241,437,427
36. Ghost Busters (1984) - $238,600,000
37. Beverly Hills Cop (1984) - $234,760,500
38. Cast Away (2000) - $233,630,478
39. Lost World: Jurassic Park, The (1997) - $229,074,524
40. Signs (2002) - $227,965,690
41. Rush Hour 2 (2001) - $226,138,454
42. Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) - $219,200,000
43. Ghost (1990) - $217,631,306
44. Aladdin (1992) - $217,350,219
45. Saving Private Ryan (1998) - $216,119,491
46. Mission: Impossible II (2000) - $215,397,30
47. X2 (2003) - $214,948,780
48. Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002) - $213,079,163
49. Back to the Future (1985) - $210,609,762
50. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) - $205,399,422
51. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) - $204,843,350
52. Exorcist, The (1973) - $204,565,000
53. Mummy Returns, The (2001) - $202,007,640
54. Armageddon (1998) - $201,573,391
55. Gone with the Wind (1939) - $198,655,278
56. Pearl Harbor (2001) - $198,539,855
57. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) - $197,171,806
58. Toy Story (1995) - $191,800,000
59. Men in Black II (2002) - $190,418,803
60. Gladiator (2000) - $187,670,866
61. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) - $184,925,485
62. Dances with Wolves (1990) - $184,208,848
63. Batman Forever (1995) - $184,031,112
64. Fugitive, The (1993) - $183,875,760
65. Ocean's Eleven (2001) - $183,405,771
66. What Women Want (2000) - $182,805,123
67. Perfect Storm, The (2000) - $182,618,434
68. Liar Liar (1997) - $181,395,380
69. Grease (1978) - $181,360,000
70. Jurassic Park III (2001) - $181,166,115
71. Mission: Impossible (1996) - $180,965,237
72. Planet of the Apes (2001) - $180,011,740
73. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) - $179,870,271
74. Pretty Woman (1990) - $178,406,268
75. Tootsie (1982) - $177,200,000
76. Top Gun (1986) - $176,781,728
77. There's Something About Mary (1998) - $176,483,808
78. Ice Age (2002) - $176,387,405
79. Crocodile Dundee (1986) - $174,635,000
80. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) - $173,585,516
81. Elf (2003) - $173,381,405
82. Air Force One (1997) - $172,888,056
83. Rain Man (1988) - $172,825,435
84. Apollo 13 (1995) - $172,071,312
85. Matrix, The (1999) - $171,383,253
86. Beauty and the Beast (1991) - $171,301,428
87. Tarzan (1999) - $171,085,177
88. Beautiful Mind, A (2001) - $170,708,996
89. Chicago (2002) - $170,684,505
90. Three Men and a Baby (1987) - $167,780,960
91. Meet the Parents (2000) - $166,225,040
92. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) - $165,500,000
93. Hannibal (2001) - $165,091,464
94. Catch Me If You Can (2002) - $164,435,221
95. Big Daddy (1999) - $163,479,795
96. Sound of Music, The (1965) - $163,214,286
97. Batman Returns (1992) - $162,831,698
98. Bug's Life, A (1998) - $162,792,677
99. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) - $161,963,000
100. Waterboy, The (1998) - $161,487,252

Of course missing from this list is one of the best movies of all time: The Godfather Part I and Part II. And yes, as you can see, I boycotted Star Wars Ep 2 and 3 after seeing Ep 1.

And if you want to see something funny, go see Scott Densmore’s list. Apparently he likes anything.

Scott Hanselman just posted this...

Greg Hughes and I were talking about this idea. The power of blogging isn't citizen journalism, it's the power to start a movement.

Nick Bradbury is donating his profits to the Red Cross. Kudos Nick. Let's ALL take our passive Google Adsense Revenue for the year and donate it directly to earthquake relief. Mine so far is US$287.53 since I started ads in June. I'm sure hundreds of thousands, even millions could be raised quickly in this manner.

To that end, let's pressure Google into allowing us to automatically donate our revenue from their side! Spread the word and trackback this link.

To me, spreading an idea like this is the power of blogging, more than citizen journalism.

I'm in. Come on Google... DO IT!

No I'm not talking about politics, per se. I'm talking about how the American media is so... well... American-focused.

22,000 people dead (at last count this morning) from the 9.0 earthquake in Indonesia and CNN makes sure to point out how few Americans were involved. I understand that Americans want to know about Americans, but don't forget about the millions of Southeast Asian folks who live and work here every day. Don't discount their losses just because they aren't of western-european descent.

Rather than go into a long diatribe about it, I'll just point you to Scott Hanselman's post on the subject.

Now playing: A Perfect Circle - Imagine

Yesterday I left my travel mug at home and since I only have one, I was coffee-less for my drive into work. Sure, I could have stopped at Starbucks and bought a $4 mocha, but I have a hard time justifying paying that much for coffee.

So I stopped at 7–11 to get a Red Bull and notices that they are now carrying Bawls. Before today, the only place I had seen Bawls was on ThinkGeek, so I grabbed one.

Mmmmm mmmm good. Tastes like cream soda, with all the caffeine (or more) of a Red Bull.

PS. I know how silly it seems that I will buy an energy drink but not a Starbucks, but that’s just the way I feel.

Now playing: Porcupine Tree - Lips of Ashes