Well, my adventures in Linux continue. Initially, I was quite happy with Linux Mint, but it soon became clear that it had some stability issues. Specifically, it would frequently crash when suspending to RAM or hibernating. On top of that, I was getting kernel panics far too often. I think the wireless driver was the culprit there, but I wasn’t able to get anywhere with that. So I decided to try openSUSE 11.1 with KDE 4.2, which I was familiar with from our lab computers. While openSUSE was far more stable than Linux Mint, it had other problems. By far the most severe were the graphical issues. Unlike Linux Mint, openSUSE 11.1 suffered from terribly unresponsive graphics with my integrated Intel gpu. The worst manifestation of this was very laggy window scrolling, particularly with Firefox. Then Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) was released in May, so I decided to switch distros again. I’m glad I did. Unlike Linux Mint, which, weirdly, is based on Ubuntu, Ubuntu Jaunty has been solid as a rock. I have had zero crashes in ~3 weeks of usage, and I have no problems with suspend or hibernate. And unlike openSUSE 11.1, the graphics are quite responsive. There are still some issues with the linux driver for Intel graphics chips, but I can live with it while the driver is further developed. So I’m pretty darn happy with Ubuntu 9.04, and I don’t see myself switching distros anytime soon. Anyone looking for a good linux distro for their Thinkpad would do well to try Jaunty.
As far as desktop environments go, gnome has really grown on me. It might not be as slick as KDE 4.2, but with some tweaks it can look quite nice. Below is a picture of my current desktop. I’m still playing with things, but I’m pretty happy with it. The dock is the Docky plugin for Gnome-Do, which I prefer over AWN. My conky configuration is from this site.
I tried to stay away from Conservapedia, but I just can’t. Despite what I said in my previous post, nobody on the web does stupid like Conservapedia. And I’m not talking about your everday, vanilla kind of stupid. No, this is spicy, arrogant stupid. It’s the stupid that comes from people who are too stupid to know they’re stupid, and my latest Conservapedia discovery serves as a perfect example of this arrogant ignorance. Stumbling around the site earlier, I eventually came across a link to the Conservapedia article on Richard Lenski, so I decided to take a peek and see if they’d found any new bullshit to throw at the man or his work. Well, I was pleasantly surprised to see that they had.
The bullshit in question has been hurled at the statistical analysis used in Lenski’s inaugural PNAS paper, and it’s particularly ripe. It opens with a heaping pile of fail:
Blount, Borland, and Lenski[1] claimed that a key evolutionary innovation was observed during a laboratory experiment. That claim is false. The claim was based on incorrect measurements of statistical significance.
The person who wrote those words understands approximately shit about Lenski’s paper. The claim of an “evolutionary innovation”, specifically the evolution of aerobic citrate utilization in a population of E. coli, was not based on any statistical argument. It was based on the direct observation of the Cit+ phenotype. Statistical methods were used in the paper to evaluate the hypothesis of evolutionary contingency, not to support the observation of aerobic citrate metabolism. So right off the bat it’s clearer than Crystal Pepsi that the dildo who wrote this exercise in creationist self-delusion doesn’t know the first thing about the paper he/she claims to be critiquing.
I’ve recently discovered RenewAmerica.us, which just might be crazier and dumber than Conservapedia. Of all the RenewAmerica columnists, I think you’d be hard pressed to find another who can bring the stupid like Cynthia Janak. Cynthia doesn’t like vaccines, especially the Gardasil HPV vaccine. Cynthia also has the scientific literacy of an eighth-grader, a fact she basically admits with alarming frequency. But she doesn’t let this limitation stop her from wading into the scientific literature to find evidence that vaccines cause all sorts of nastiness, often resulting in hilarity. Anyway, I just couldn’t make it past the third paragraph of her latest juicy turd:
Since September of 2008 a mystery illness has struck the UK after the HPV jab Cervarix was implemented in a school vaccine program.
It has been reported in the UK Mail Online that 1,340 reports have been filed coincidentally after the HPV vaccine Cervarix was implemented in September. This mystery illness causes Paralysis, Convulsions, Sight problems, Nausea, Muscle Weakness, Fever, Dizziness and Numbness, Bell’s palsy, Hypoesthesia (loss of sense of touch) and Guillain-Barré syndrome.
With the knowledge that I have from an insider as to how the young girls and women are being treated by the medical establishment in the UK, I feel it is safe to say that approximately only 1% are reporting. So if 1% are reporting that means that the real number of girls affected by this mystery epidemic is more like 134,000. That means that 19% of the girls getting the jab have acquired a new medical condition. I came at this percentage because it states in the article at 700,000 girls aged 12–13 have been vaccinated. This vaccine is also being given to 17 and 18 year old girls.
Wow. Cynthia finds a couple of girls who thought they were treated badly by their doctor and concludes that 99% of patients aren’t reporting paralysis, convulsions, Bell’s Palsy, and the loss of one of their five senses.
Vermont is now the fourth state to recognize marriage equality. Unlike Iowa last week, it was legislature, not the courts, that legalized gay marriage in Vermont. The best part of this, of course, is that it really fucks with the heterosexual supremacists. Screaming about activist judges is of no use here, so how would they respond? Apparently by crying and getting confused. First up is this choice press release from the Anal Sex Family Research Council:
Family Research Council (FRC) President Tony Perkins today condemned the vote of the Vermont State Legislature to overturn the Governor’s veto on same-sex “marriage” as well as the vote by the District of Columbia City Council to recognize same-sex marriages performed in the 50 states.
“Same-sex ‘marriage’ is a movement driven by wealthy homosexual activists and a liberal elite determined to destroy not only the institution of marriage, but democracy as well. Time and again, we see when citizens have the opportunity to vote at the ballot box, they consistently opt to support traditional marriage,” said Perkins.
Well, as long as you’re being reasonable, Tony. Let met get this straight. Last week when the Iowa Supreme Court overturned a law banning gay marriage that was passed by the legislature, that was another example of activist judges overturning the will of the people. But this week, the legalization of gay marriage by a state legislature is further evidence of a grand homosexual scheme to destroy democracy. If legislative action isn’t democratic, then what the hell is? Ballot initiatives? And what happens when a ballot initiative legalizes gay marriage? No doubt Tony Perkins will find some way to decry it as undemocratic, and it will be a sight to behold.
Next up is a video being pushed by the National Organization for Marriage that is just a tad overwrought:
Got that? Allowing gay people to marry infringes on homophobes’ right to….well I’m not sure. Apparently anything that interferes with their effort to completely shield their children from things they find objectionable is an affront to their civil liberties. Or something. Shit, this argument is so fucking stupid that it’s insulting. The same exact argument can be made against allowing interracial couples to marry. I mean, what about those poor racist parents who have to watch their children go to schol and learn that white people and black people can get married. The horror! Oh hell, let’s go back even further. What about the rights of many American men in 1920 when women were given the right to vote? There they were, just trying to raise their children, and all of a sudden their sons are exposed to radical notions of gender equality. And they couldn’t even make shitty internet videos complaining that their freedom was being taken away.
Fuck these people. The tide is turning and they are on the losing end of history. This is just the death rattle.
Wingnut blogger Ed Morrissey makes the case that Obama is just as dumb as Bush because Obama thinks Austrian is a language. After quoting Obama saying, “I don’t know what the term is in Austrian”, Morrissey snipes:
Austrians speak German primarily — and I’m sure some Austrians speak languages ranging from Albanian to Swahili, being an intelligent and cultured people. However, none of the speak Austrian, because it doesn’t exist.
Technically, he’s right. And the tomato is technically a fruit, but I have yet to find a can of fruit cocktail with tomato in it. See, the thing is, there are numerous German dialects that differ drastically from another. For example, and I know this from personal experience, Germans who speak the Berlin dialect often cannot understand Germans from Bavaria. So contrary to what Morrissey seems to think, a Berliner would likely struggle to communicate with someone speaking Austrian German. Sorry, Ed. I know it upset you greatly when people pointed out how dumb Bush sounded, but you’re gonna have to try harder if you want to pass that torch on to Obama.
Douglas Napier, senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, explains to OneNewsNow that the court overturned the state’s Defense of Marriage Act. “The Iowa marriage law was simple, settled, and overwhelming supported by Iowans for 170 years in the history of Iowa,” he notes. “There was simply no legitimate reason for this court to redefine marriage.”
Napier asserts that the justices stepped out of their proper role of interpreting the law and have instead created new law. A recent poll, which compares to others, indicates 62 percent of Iowans are against homosexual marriage.
“And it’s astounding the Supreme Court would usurp the role of the legislature, put a choke hold on the democratic process, and take that from the people of Iowa and claim to know better,” the attorney exclaims. “They don’t know better — and the people of Iowa need to vote on a marriage amendment and put it in place and let the Supreme Court know that they can’t speak for them.”
Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel and dean of Liberty University’s Law School, had this reaction. ”These activist judges are no more than proselytizing engines of social change,” he offers. “That’s not the role of a judge. They are to be umpires merely calling the balls or strikes. They don’t rewrite the definition of marriage.” And they do not go against the will of the people, he adds.
Alright, D-bags. Let’s pretend for a minute. Imagine that the population of Iowa was, say, 90% fundamentalist Muslim. Now imagine that a law was passed in our fantasy Iowa, with overwhelming public support, that criminalized Christianity. Would you support a court decision striking down that law as unconstitutional? If yes, then you are either raging hypocrites or too profoundly stupid to understand the shit that comes out of your mouths. If no, then congratulations. You really don’t understand that the function of the judicial branch in this country is not to merely interpret and enforce laws, but also to overturn laws that are contrary to the constitution. You know, that whole “checks and balances” thing.
Perennial conservative douche George Will continues to distort reality in his drive to cast doubt on anthropogenic climate change, despite having been caught making shit up in his last column on the subject. This time, he trots out the zombie lie that global warming has stopped:
Reducing carbon emissions supposedly will reverse warming, which is allegedly occurring even though, according to statistics published by the World Meteorological Organization, there has not been a warmer year on record than 1998.
Will, like everyone who makes this argument, is shamelessly cherry picking data. Let’s take a look at some data and see how well Will’s claim holds up:
The blue lines show 8-year trends in the global land-ocean temperature. Some 8-year trends show a decrease in average temperature, while others show a drastic increase. Clearly, any given short-term trend tells us little about long-term changes. Yet, that is exactly Will and other denialists use regularly when they claim that global warming has stopped. They take the short-term trend since 1998, which was anomalously warm, and use it to argue that warming has stopped. Such an argument is clearly wrongheaded. And this isn’t a hard concept to grasp, so the question is, then, why does anyone listen to anything George Will has to say? He’s either incredibly dim, which I doubt, or he’s dishonest enough that he’s willing to distort science to fit his ideology. Either way, I can’t understand why anyone thinks his opinion matters.
Well, I figure it’s time to get back into blogging. I haven’t had the motivation or the interest for it the last several months. A number of factors contributed to that, one of them being the decrepitude of my aging G4 iBook. For one, it just couldn’t keep up with Leopard. Even after maxing out the RAM at 1.5 GB, it was still a sluggish mess. And recently, the computer has been running very hot. After about 30 minutes of usage, it becomes a lap-scorcher. Oh, and the battery doesn’t hold a charge for longer than 10 minutes. Basically, it’s just a miserable experience using that thing, so I’ve decided to put the old iBook out to pasture.
It took me a while to decide on a replacement. The immediate choice was a new Mac. I think OS X is the best operating system currently available, and I generally like the Mac design esthetic. The problem with that option was, of course, price. I wanted a 15″ screen, which is only available on the Macbook Pro, meaning I’d have to spend at least $1900 for a new Mac. So I decided against the Mac in favor of a PC laptop running Linux. I loathe Windows–hard. After a bit of research, I settled on a Lenovo Thinkpad T500. Thinkpads are very solid machines, with a build quality that rivals Macs. Combine that with a bitchin’ online sale, and I was sold.
I’m currently dual booting Linux Mint and Windows. The Linux Mint install was almost flawless. The only thing that didn’t work right away was flash video, but I got that taken care of in a matter of minutes. Compiz-Fusion 3D compositing works great with the Intel integrated graphics chip; the only issue being some slight window tearing when windows are moved, but this seems to be a problem with Compiz on just about every video card as far as I can tell. Wireless works perfectly, as do the Lenovo volume and mute hotkeys. I’ll probably spend a few weeks with Linux Mint to see how I feel about the Gnome desktop. After that I’ll likely install openSUSE 11.1 to test out KDE. Whichever I like best will become the permanent distro. So I’ll probably have post up in the future about my experience installing openSUSE.
Holy shit. That pretty much sums up my feelings right now. This election has been very stressful for me, so much so that I’ve deferred on commentary for the most part. I must say, however, that I’m extremely pleased with the results, and that Americans have pleasantly surprised me this evening, to say the least. Truly a historic moment, one that I’ll never forget.
Gerlach is the blog name of a biophysics graduate student at Yale University. His research utilizes NMR spectroscopy to study protein structure and function. He hopes to entice at least five people to read this blog at some point.
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