Those bitches. A while ago I reported a bug in Mozilla. They weren't respecting the background-color of elements without content. So for instance the little black lines between the different sections of my page layout would be little white lines. It was kind of arbitrary, and with it not respecting the background-color the only way to have a black 1 pixel line that goes all the way across the screen was to put a transparent 1 pixel gif in there while setting the background-color to black. My reasoning was that anything that shows up on a page (something that has dimensions) should respect the background color.

They marked my bug "WONTFIX", but I just downloaded one of today's builds (the first one I've downloaded in a while) and it has the behavior I originally expected. I guess they changed their minds and saw my side of things

Here's the bug report I filed. I even tried the sample code I included with the report, and that works now

Permalink | Comments? | id 1316

15:35 (utc-5)
edited: 16:03 (utc-5)

 

FrontPageMagazine: Europe’s "Concern" for Al Qaeda: "ALL THOSE SENTIMENTALISTS in Europe fretting over the al Qaeda terrorists imprisoned in Cuba remind me of the "committee of sappy women" in Tom Sawyer, who are petitioning the governor to pardon the murderous Injun Joe. "If he had been Satan himself there would have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble their names to a pardon petition, and drip a tear on it from their permanently impaired and leaky waterworks.""

"The Europeans, of course, profess their own reasons for this "concern," but they are ridiculous. The demand that these fanatics who do not wear uniforms and who target innocent non-combatants be treated as prisoners of war is absurd. If these thugs are to be considered an army subject to the Geneva Conventions, then any armed gang is an army."

Permalink | Comments? | id 1315

14:20 (utc-5)

 

I'm now reading an excellent article by Phil Johnson, author of, among other things, Darwin on Trial.

"In the July 1992 issue of Scientific American Stephen Jay Gould wrote a scathing review of Phil Johnson's book Darwin on Trial. After unsuccessfully ignoring the book for two years, Gould finally attempted to discredit it with a nasty review, claiming the book was full of errors. Johnson wrote a detailed response--but Scientific American refused to give him any print space. They have also refused requests from other organizations to reprint Gould's review along with Johnson's response."

"So here we print Johnson's reply to Gould's review. You'll just have to go into the library and look up the July 1992 edition of Scientific American to read Gould's review and find out why he and Scientific American are so afraid of Phil Johnson."

Examples of natural selection in action, like Kettlewell's observation of population shifts in the peppered moth, actually illustrate cyclical variation within stable species that exhibit no directional change. The fossil record--characterized by sudden appearance and subsequent stasis--is notoriously reluctant to yield examples of Darwinian macroevolution. The therapsid reptiles and Archaeopteryx are rare exceptions to the general absence of plausible transitional intermediates between major groups, which is why it is important to understand that even these Darwinist trophies are inconclusive as evidence of macroevolution. No wonder that prominent authorities like Stephen Jay Gould and Lynn Margulis have yearned for a new theory on the ground that the evidence contradicts the neo-Darwinist claim that macroevolutionary innovation results from the accumulation of small genetic changes by natural selection.

The point is not whether "evolution" in some vague sense is true. "Evolution" has certainly occurred, but the scientific importance of this statement is slight when evolution is defined vaguely as "change" or modestly as "shifts in gene frequencies." No doubt the pattern of relationships among plants and animals invites and inference that there was some process of development from a common source. But how much do we know about this process of development? Perhaps one day scientists will be able to test some macroevolutionary mechanism, involving changes in the rate genes or whatever, that will explain how a four-footed mammal can become a whale or a bat without going through impossible intermediate steps. The difficulties should be honestly acknowledged, however. What evolutionary theory needs is a reliable creative mechanism, capable of building highly complex structures like vision and breathing systems again and again in diverse lines. Speculation about how an occasional jump might occur won't do the job.

Johnson gets it. He wisely points out the metaphysical nature of the choice to believe in evolution, due more to one's naturalistic presuppositions than persuasion by the evidence:

The review itself merits no further response, but what requires explanation is the hostility. What divides Gould and me has little to do with scientific evidence and everything to do with metaphysics. Gould approaches the question of evolution from a philosophical starting point in scientific naturalism. From that standpoint the blind watchmaker thesis is true in principle by definition. Science may not know all the details yet, but something very much like Darwinian evolution simply has to be responsible for our existence because there is no acceptable alternative. If there are gaps or defects in the existing theory, the appropriate response is to supply additional naturalistic hypotheses. Critics who disparage Darwinism without offering a naturalistic alternative are seen as attacking science itself, probably in order to impose a religious straitjacket upon science and society. One does not reason with such persons; one employs any means at hand to discourage them.

Permalink | Comments? | id 1314

12:25 (utc-5)
edited: 12:27 (utc-5)

 

I wish I'd kept count of how many times I've cleaned up my dog's pee over the last day. I've definitely lost count. And I've breathed in so many Fantastic fumes from cleaning it all!

In case you haven't been paying attention, my dog had her gall bladder removed. She has trouble walking, but she's eating and going to the bathroom ok, and she seems to be recovering, although I was worried earlier today. She's definitely not herself, and has been peeing all over the house. Even worse, it's usually on big tile, which is so hard to clean because you have to get into all the thick grooves. The tile we have in our kitchen and, um... foyer?, isn't like bathroom tile.

Permalink | Comments? | id 1313

03:08 (utc-5)
edited: 03:09 (utc-5)

 

I just watched the episode of Enterprise I recorded on Wednesday. It's becoming a really good show.

Permalink | Comments? | id 1312

01:54 (utc-5)