Win some, lose some

I've abandoned my www.stelcoball.com web site - the one for my Wednesday night baseball league. The convener wouldn't give me updated rosters or game results, so the site is hopelessly out of date, and almost nobody in the league was looking at it, so I dumped it.

Then this week, I offered to build a new web site for my friends Stacy and John, who are running a golf tournament in memory of their son Deiter, who died at the age of six months while waiting for a bowel and liver transplant. This is almost the same transplant as our friend Sarah had when she was six months old. Sarah is now a happy and healthy eight-year-old, who's in the Guiness Book of Records, as the youngest ever multi-organ transplant recipient. Anyway, I'm playing in the golf tournament in September, and I suggested to Stacy that I could create a web site for the tournament. She said that they already have one, but it's out-of-date, and she would be happy to let me build a new one. I've already done a prototype site that looks very similar to the old site, and Stacy's going to get me some pictures of Deiter to put up, and possibly some pictures from previous tournaments (this is the third one, I think).

Important note: If you haven't signed your organ donor card, please make sure you do! There's absolutely no downside, and you could save more than one life.

Work sucks

Well, not really (actually, I love my job), but I'll bet the title is eye-catching to any of my colleagues who happen to come across this blog. I found out today that two of the aforementioned colleagues, John and aListair are both active in the blogosphere.

John obviously has a digital camera that he uses frequently, so his blog is fancy with pictures and everything. I, on the other hand, have a 35mm film camera (purchased in the previous century), so there are very few pictures on my blog. I'm trying to convince Gail that we need a digital camera as well, but she won't go for it.

Wacko Creationists

Dr. Kent Hovind is the founder of Creation Science Evangelism, which is a ministry that teaches that the Bible is "literally true and scientifically accurate". He believes that the world was created by God in 6 24-hour days about 6000 years ago, and that dinosaurs (which humans called "dragons") lived at the same time as humans. He has even offered to pay anyone $250,000 for "scientific evidence" of evolution.

The offer is, of course, horseshit, as this article describes. In essence, the only way to win the money is to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" that God does not exist. This is obviously impossible, and so the fact that nobody has yet won the money proves exactly nothing.

It is amazing to me that intelligent, educated people can still believe stuff like "since there is no evidence that life can be generated from non-living matter, then God must be responsible". The fact that we have not yet discovered the answer to a particular question (indeed, our minds may not yet be advanced enough to be able to understand the answer) does not mean we should just chuck all of our scientific knowledge and go with "God did everything".

Sherlock Holmes once said "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remained, however implausible, must be the truth"1, and this seems to be the reasoning behind intelligent design / creationism — evolution is "obviously wrong", and therefore the only alternative is that God did it. First of all, "obviously wrong" is rather vague - there are never any scientific exlanations for why evolution is wrong, just the standard "if evolution is right, then how did X happen?". Again, just because we don't know the answer to every question, this doesn't mean that the theory is wrong. Secondly, even if our current theory of evolution is wrong, why is creationism the only alternative? You cannot prove creationism true by proving evolution false. Proof by contradiction doesn't apply here - evolution is not the "logical opposite" of evolution.

Here is another interesting article, this one by the editor-in-chief of Scientific American, listing some popular arguments against evolution, and why they are all bogus.

1 - Note that this is probably not a direct quote - I'm quoting Lt. Cmdr. Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation, who quotes Holmes in one episode.

States I've visited

Here is a neat little site that shows all of the US states you've visited. Here's my map:

The only eastern ones I'm missing are Delaware, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.

Update: Made the picture smaller so that IE doesn't get screwed up when trying to display the columns.

Update: Added Nevada and Arizona!

A Month of Sundays

I used to work for Harvester
I used to use my hands
I used to make the tractors and the combines
that plowed and harvested this great land
now I see my handiwork on the block
everywhere I turn
and I see the clouds cross the weathered faces
and I watch the harvest burn

I quit the plant in '57
had some time for farmin' then
banks back then was lendin' money
the banker was the farmer's friend
And I've seen dog days and dusty days,
Late spring snow and early fall sleet
I've held the leather reins in my hands
I've felt the soft ground under my feet
Between the hot, dry weather and the taxes and the cold war
it's been hard to make ends meet
but i always kept the clothes on our backs
I always put the shoes on our feet

Grandson, he comes home from college and says,
"we get the government we deserve"
Son-in-law just shakes his head and says,
"that little punk, he never had to serve"
and I sit here in the shadow of the suburbs
and look out across these empty fields
I sit here in earshot of the bypass
and all night I listen to the rushin' of the wheels

The big boys, they all got computers
got incorporated, too
Me, I just know how to raise things
that was all I ever knew
And now it all comes down to numbers
now I'm glad that i have quit
folks these days just don't do nothin'
simply for the love of it

I went into town of the fourth of July
watched 'em parade past the Union Jack
watched 'em break out the brass and beat on the drum
one step forward and two steps back
and I saw a sign on easy street,
said "be prepared to stop"
pray for the independent little man
or I don't see next year's crop
and I sit here on the back porch in the twilight
and I hear the crickets hum
I sit and watch the lightning in the distance
but the showers never come
I sit here and listen to the wind blow
I sit here and rub my hands
I it here and listen to the clock strike,
and I wonder when I'll see my companion again

Don Henley "A Month Of Sundays"

What an amazing song.

Showin' Shaq the money, and goodbye to Joe and Gary

The Miami Heat signed Shaquille O'Neal to a 5-year $100 million contract today. This will actually result in a pay cut for Shaq, because his old deal (which he has now opted out of because of the new deal) would have seen him make over $30 million next season, but it gives the Heat more flexibility to be able to sign more players and still stay under the cap. The quote from Shaq that I thought was funny:

This contract allows me to address all of my family's long-term financial goals while allowing the Heat the ability to acquire those players that we need to win a championship...

Sorry, Shaq, but if you haven't addressed your family's long-term financial goals by now, 12 seasons into your hall-of-fame multi-million-dollar-per-year career, either your financial goals are a touch lofty, or you really suck at financial planning.

So Gary Roberts and Joe Neiuwendyk (yes, I had to look up the spelling) have signed with the Florida Panthers, and so will not be back with the Leafs next season. I liked both of them, but I can't say I'm really all that broke up about it - both of them are still good players, but well past their prime and too expensive. I'm sure players that are just as good, younger, and cheaper are out there -- one of whom is Jeff O'Neill, who the Leafs just signed. Now if I could only convince the Leafs not to resign the vastly overpriced Tie Domi (unless he agrees to a big-time pay cut), I'd be a happy guy.