Category: Random

Poking around last night, I found Dogpile, a compliation compilation search engine that has a cool logo.

And, for all those US Weekly fans, here’s its internet equivalent.

Well, after all of the hurly burly about conservapedia.com I’ve been hearing lately, I decided to go check it out.

I popped through some articles, and read their commandments, and was heartily amused. For example, under the article Theory of Relativity, there is only one mention of Eistein (what do they have against Einsten? He was Jewish?) and near the bottom was this addition.

Relativity has generated a huge following by advocates of moral relativism(Citation Needed). The idea of moral relativity may exist independent of (and substantially predates) the theory of relativity, but invocations of the theory are used in attempts to lend legitimacy to this version of morality.

Aha. What a useful addition to an article about a scientific theory. A link might be useful, but a full paragraph? Sounds like proselytizing to me.

I was going to go in and make a comment and change the article to reflect that, but guess what? You have to be logged in to edit, and there is no way to log in! You can’t register for an account (as of today). So, this conservapaedia (look, I just violated commandment 5, no non-american spelling) is a worthless piece of crap. Maybe they shut down the login because of vandalism. Who knows, because they don’t say on their main page.

Let’s take some samples from another related article. Like, Einstein, for instance.

Unlike most advances in physics, the theory of relativity was proposed based on mathematical theory rather than observation. The theory rests on two postulates that are difficult to test, and then derives mathematically what the physical consequences should be.

Difficult, yes. Impossible, not even close, as there have been many experiments confirming the predictions of relativity. This paragraph (which I’m not allowed to edit) implies that difficult = untestable.

This theory rejects Newton’s view of gravitation and replaces it with a concept that there is a continuum of space and time…

Relativity does not “reject” Newtonian physics, it builds on it. Newton’s theories work perfectly for medium speed, medium size, medium weight objects, ie. the type of things we normally encounte in our day to day lives. There’s no need to inject special relativity to get that last 0.0000001 bit of accuracy when we’re trying to figure how long it will take a plane to get from Denver to London.

Don’t you wish Christian Conservatives would spend more time doing what they say they’re after? Protecting the weak and feeding the poor?

Fines by Fone

In Dubai, UAE, the traffic police will be issuing traffic citations by phone soon. This will teach those crazy people in Lubbock who don’t want to enforce their traffic lights with automatic cameras.

Speaking of Lubbock

My former residence of Lubbock, Texas is having a bruhaha over potential red-light enforcement. The cited article decries camera enforcement prior to engineering improvements such as improved signal timing. I’ll keep in touch with my friends back there and see what happens.

Speaking of Signal Cameras

An article in today’s AJC covers the impact of red-light enforcement in Georgia (free registration req’d).

Charleston Ordinance Doomed to Failure

This ordinance, intended to prevent drivers from cutting through a particular subdivision to avoid traffic, is ultimately going to fail for several reasons (I define “Fail” to be “not satisfy the residents who pushed for the ordinance.”)