Joe's Random Ramblings

I just got an email from a friend recalling his experience with a Dell customer representative when he ordered a Netbook from Dell. Here is the exchange (printed with my friend's permission.) It is hilarious:

He: "For what purposes do you plan to use this laptop?"
Me: "For school. I am a university student."
He: "There's only one problem with this system you are ordering".
Me: "What?"
He: "It comes with Ubuntu Linux. It doesn't have XP or Vista or anything."
Me: "That's perfect."
He (puzzled): "That's perfect? You cannot use it for school!"
Me: "I study Computer Science."
Then he shut up.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Texas School Board is set to vote on including creationism in the school curriculum.
Yet again, we have some religious nutcases who want to destroy the future of their children by making them the laughingstock of the nation, and the world.
Well will these idiots learn?
And the Republicans in the state are supporting this nonsense. Shame on them! They are clearly not made for the 21st Century.

The immigration advocacy group Immigration Voice has a very interesting post on their forum:
Somebody send a Freedom of Information Act request to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services agency (CIS), part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Their answer shows their incompetence in every sentence.

In order to extract the information you have requested, a customized computer program will be required. You will be charged for the time it takes to write the program as well as the time involved in running the query to extract the date. You will not be charged for duplication, review and search time. We estimate the cost to be $5000.00. Due to the time and effort involved, you will be asked to sign an advance fee agreement before we proceed with your request. In addition, a deposit of $2500.00 payable by check or money order, must be paid within 30 days of the date of this notification.

Are they really that clueless? It takes a couple minutes max. to run a few database queries.
Later on, another hilarious sentence:

Please define priority date.

They use that term and its definition every day when they process immigrant petitions.
This little sentence makes clear that this agency should be abandoned since they obviously don't even know even the basics of their work.

I just came across this blog entry about how a university professor in Vermont answered a request by the creationists who run the "Discovery Institute" to discuss creationism.
It is obvious that there is nothing to discuss, since creationism, or "Intelligent Design," as they nowadays try to re-label it to confuse people, is religious BS and has absolutely nothing to do with science.
The answer the professor gave is just brilliant.
Some excerpts:

Instead of spending time on public debates, why aren't members of your institute publishing their ideas in prominent peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Nature, or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences? If you want to be taken seriously by scientists and scholars, this is where you need to publish. Academic publishing is an intellectual free market, where ideas that have credible empirical support are carefully and thoroughly explored. Nothing could possibly be more exciting and electrifying to biology than scientific disproof of evolutionary theory or scientific proof of the existence of a god. That would be Nobel Prize winning work, and it would be eagerly published by any of the prominent mainstream journals.

"Conspiracy" is the predictable response by Ben Stein and the frustrated creationists. But conspiracy theories are a joke, because science places a high premium on intellectual honesty and on new empirical studies that overturn previously established principles. Creationism doesn't live up to these standards, so its proponents are relegated to the sidelines, publishing in books, blogs, websites, and obscure journals that don't maintain scientific standards.

And

So, I hope you understand why I am declining your offer. I will wait patiently to read about the work of creationists in the pages of Nature and Science. But until it appears there, it isn't science and doesn't merit an invitation.

Just as an aside, I also like the satirical "Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster", which was created in response to the Kansas State Board of Education considering to introduce the teaching of creationism in the schools in Kansas.
It is always funny to read the hate mail there, from people who obviously lack all intelligence (if that's what "Intelligent Design" means, the deity they refer to surely failed )

Thomas Friedman has an excellent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, about the idiotic anti-H1 provisions in the stimulus bill.
When will these stupid stupid politicians learn that we need more immigrants, not less?
The whole computer industry, the whole Internet industry, etc. etc. would not exist if it weren't for immigrants.
Protectionism doesn't work, has never worked, and will never work.
The key to our economic recovery is to get more educated immigrants into this country. This stupid anti-H1 provision will only prolong the recession. Congress needs to get rid of it now!