I’ve just started populating my photo gallery on grommit.com. (Thanks, Steve!) I’m beginning with three albums: my Sunday tour of Hyderabad, gliding in Boulder, and stunning pieces from an exhibition at the Harvard Museum of Natural History.

The permalink to my gallery can be found on the right, in The Basics section at the top of the sidebar.

[Steve: Any idea why a few of the thumbnails show up as "broken image" icons? I've used Gallery Remote, but I don't have Image Magick installed.]

Before heading out on my last trip to Colorado, I (finally!) replaced our old LinkSys 802.11b router with a Belkin Wireless G Plus. Both laptops (my PB and Merry’s iBook) were G-capable, so I only had one desktop PC (USB) adapter to replace. I futzed around with WPA but couldn’t get it just the way I wanted it, so I stuck with WEP. The bottom line: things are much more stable, and we can now use the cordless phone or the microwave oven without disrupting the WiFi.

From CNN.com: “A former top State Department official said Sunday that Vice President Dick Cheney provided the ‘philosophical guidance’ and ‘flexibility’ that led to the torture of detainees in U.S. facilities.Retired U.S. Army Col. Larry Wilkerson, who served as former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff, told CNN that the practice of torture may be continuing in U.S.-run facilities.‘There’s no question in my mind that we did. There’s no question in my mind that we may be still doing it,’ Wilkerson said on CNN’s ‘Late Edition. ‘There’s no question in my mind where the philosophical guidance and the flexibility in order to do so originated — in the vice president of the United States’ office,’ he said. ‘His implementer in this case was [Defense Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld and the Defense Department.’“

So what exactly is the process for impeaching the Vice President?

First we have Alec reporting on the Top 20 geek novels from blogs.guardian.co.uk. I hope the fact that Alec hasn’t read Consider Phlebas doesn’t mean that he’s ignorant of Iain M. Banks’ work.

Meanwhile, over at Slashdot the usual crowd is debating the merits of Space.com’s best space movies poll. Like many Slashdotters, I find the concentration on the various Star Trek and Star Wars films is (a) inevitable in today’s ADD world, and (b) really sad. If I could add one film to the list, it would be Silent Running, one of the most haunting movies ever made. (I also really enjoyed Serenity; it’s a shame that it flopped so badly.)

What we need now is a “top space TV shows with no Star Trek connection” poll. Just think of it: Blake’s 7, Space 1999, and more recently Firefly. Of course the top of the list will be Red Dwarf….

Like most of us in Sun, I’ve been waiting for ZFS to arrive. Now it has. So on Monday I plan to update my Acer Ferrari 3400 laptop to Nevada build 27. Right now it’s set up to triple-boot Nevada (50GB), Ubuntu Linux (20GB), and WinXP (10GB). I’m going to blow away the Ubuntu partition and create a couple of 10GB partitions which I hope will be sufficient to let ZFS show its paces. (However if anyone has a tried-and-tested laptop configuration for demoing ZFS, I’d welcome a link. No point in reinventing things.)

Charles Krauthammer had an excellent piece in the Washington Post, entitled Phony Theory, False Conflict, on the farce of intelligent design. Money quote: “The school board thinks it is indicting evolution by branding it an ‘unguided process’ with no ‘discernible direction or goal.’ This is as ridiculous as indicting Newtonian mechanics for positing an ‘unguided process’ by which Earth is pulled around the sun every year without discernible purpose. What is chemistry if not an ‘unguided process’ of molecular interactions without ‘purpose’?”

As I’ve always said, creationists and ID’ers aren’t simply attacking evolution. They may not realize it (since they seem to have difficulty with logic), but they are taking on all of science – evolution, biology, chemistry, physics, geology, astrophysics, mechanics…. And ironically, by turning their backs on science they are rejecting the principles that underpin the technologies (radio, TV, computer networks) that they use to spread their ignorant blather.

Now I know that I’m not “supposed” to belittle these people. I’m supposed to treat their (presumably genuine) religious beliefs with respect. (Next thing you know, someone will hail their views as a “different way of knowing” – ugh!) But they are ignorant, in much the same way that a witchdoctor is ignorant of antibiotics and by-pass surgery. As a species, we have collectively learned important things about the world, and in many cases this knowledge has superseded earlier beliefs. For example, anyone who still thinks that epilepsy is caused by demonic possession is, quite simply, ignorant, and we expect that a parent who uses physical force to “drive out the demon” in their epileptic child will be arrested for child abuse. To fail to call the believers in creationism what they are – ignorant – is either patronizing or hypocritical.

(Via Sully.)

In a recent article in the Sunday Times, Andrew Sullivan contrasts the values of Bush-and-Blair with those of their frequently-cited* hero, Winston Churchill:

In a telegram on November 21, 1943, Winston Churchill defined a fundamental difference between the Anglo-American way of war and that of our enemies. Churchill wrote: ‘The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.’

Perhaps Tony Blair and George W. Bush regard Winston Churchill as a bleeding heart lefty. But what Churchill’s view represents is an old, very basic principle of Anglo-American warfare and justice: fight war with ferocity, but never lose your democratic soul.

Yes indeed. And Bush-and-Blair’s betrayal of this principle is one of the most tragic aspects of this whole sorry affair. It is depressing to think how easily a demagogue (or a puppet) can push a democratic nation towards totalitarianism….

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*For example, “Sometimes Churchill will talk back, sometimes he won’t, depending upon the stress of the moment, but he is a constant reminder of what a great leader is like.” — Dubya’s assessment of Winston Churchill, who has been deceased for 35 years. Washington, DC, July 16, 2001

My colleague Dale Ferrario (with whom I travelled to Hyderabad and Bangalore) is now blogging. Hey, Dale: if you need a picture for your template, I have plenty from the SeeBeyond party….

Alec blogged a link to Brent Rasmussen’s DarkSyde’s What It Feels Like to be an Atheist with the comment “One for Geoff”. (Thanks, Alec.) Here’s Brent’s DarkSyde’s intro:

“I’m amazed everyday of my life that everyone isn’t an atheist like me. But they’re not, I have no idea why that is, but it is reality. And based on many questions over the years it sounds possibly hard for someone who is not one to understand it. So follow me for a bit if you can. And I’ll try to describe the world as seen through atheist eyes.”

As rants go, it’s a real tour de force, and it’s definitely worth reading. However in the final analysis it didn’t really work for me. Rather than tackling theism head-on, Brent DarkSyde offers an analogy:

“Say they believe in Santa Claus; beard, the big red suit, the flying reindeer, the sled loaded with a billion gifts, the North Pole Workshop, Mrs. Claus and the elves; all of it. But in this fantasy world, they’re not content merely to believe in Santa Claus, they want you to publicly agree all the time that you also believe in Santa, in their specific version of same, and they pressure everyone else in numerous ways to pretend that they’re not strange or childish for believing in this.”

While many of his subsequent points are effective, the Santa Claus parallel falls down in two important respects. First, it is too damn specific, too concrete. Different people use the term god to mean totally different – and grotesquely incompatible – things, from concrete physical phenomena to vague psychological or emotional tendencies. On the other hand, Santa Claus is pretty much defined by a handful of 19th century stories and carols and an avalanche of Disneyesque Hallmark products.

Secondly, Santa Claus doesn’t have all of the baggage that the various god-ideas are encumbered with. The importance of this is not that passages like this are a stretch:

“Just two or three-hundred years ago it was totally SOP to take folks, men, women, children, who didn’t believe in a specific version of Santa and stick red-hot steel objects into their rectums and vaginas, boil their limbs, beat them senseless with padded clubs, tear them apart with teams of horses, cut open their stomachs and rip out their intestines while they’re still alive in front of their loved ones, or slowly burn them alive in public; all in the name of Santa’s good will and often on the mere anonymous allegation from some two-bit ten-year old kid or a crazy deranged nutcase suffering from schizophrenia that you once said you don’t believe Santa can really fly.”

No, the problem is that the Santa Claus analogy misses one of the key aspects of being an atheist: the sheer head-spinning contradictions and hypocrisy that we encounter all the time in believers. For example, I simply don’t understand why liberal Anglicans don’t rip out the pages of their Bibles that glorify ethnic cleansing, rape, pillage, and stoning to death for just about everything, or why Bible-belt footballers violate the Sabbath rules set forth in what they view as the word of their god. I guess tradition and tribal identity are more important than intellectual honesty these days.

Brent DarkSyde followed up this piece with one on why he’s an atheist. This was less interesting. Since he claimed he’d been an atheist since he was a small child, he should perhaps have called this one “ideas that sustain my identity as an atheist”. No big deal.

UPDATED 20-Nov-05: As Brent pointed out, the original piece (and follow-up) were written by DarkSyde.

A nice little quiz from the New Humanist. Rather specifically English, which has led to some confusion.

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You go out of your way to build bridges with people of different views and beliefs and have quite a few religious friends. You believe in the essential goodness of people , which means you’re always looking for common ground even if that entails compromises. You would defend Salman Rushdie’s right to criticise Islam but you’re sorry he attacked it so viciously, just as you feel uncomfortable with some of the more outspoken and unkind views of religion in the pages of this magazine.

You prefer the inclusive approach of writers like Zadie Smith or the radical Christian values of Edward Said. Don’t fall into the same trap as super–naïve Lib Dem MP Jenny Tonge who declared it was okay for clerics like Yusuf al–Qaradawi to justify their monstrous prejudices as a legitimate interpretation of the Koran: a perfect example of how the will to understand can mean the sacrifice of fundamental principles. Sometimes, you just have to hold out for what you know is right even if it hurts someone’s feelings.

What kind of humanist are you? Click here to find out.

(Via Majikthise, who got the Hairshirt card.)