I never knew

Nouveau Yulzine en ligne depuis quelques secondes. Merci à Alex qui m’a dépanné en acceptant ce matin de faire un remplacement et à moi même pour avoir fait la même chose ce soir.

Great little article in the NYT debunking the Intelligent Design ‘theory’. Some good bits:

Brilliant as the design of the eye is, it betrays its origin with a tell-tale flaw: the retina is inside out. The nerve fibers that carry the signals from the eye’s rods and cones (which sense light and color) lie on top of them, and have to plunge through a large hole in the retina to get to the brain, creating the blind spot. No intelligent designer would put such a clumsy arrangement in a camcorder, and this is just one of hundreds of accidents frozen in evolutionary history that confirm the mindlessness of the historical process.

Yes, eyes are for seeing, but these and all the other purposes in the natural world can be generated by processes that are themselves without purposes and without intelligence. This is hard to understand, but so is the idea that colored objects in the world are composed of atoms that are not themselves colored, and that heat is not made of tiny hot things.

To date, the proponents of intelligent design have not produced anything like that. No experiments with results that challenge any mainstream biological understanding. No observations from the fossil record or genomics or biogeography or comparative anatomy that undermine standard evolutionary thinking… Instead, the proponents of intelligent design use a ploy that works something like this. First you misuse or misdescribe some scientist’s work. Then you get an angry rebuttal. Then, instead of dealing forthrightly with the charges leveled, you cite the rebuttal as evidence that there is a “controversy” to teach.

[Update] Another good article on the subject, One Side Can Be Wrong in the Guardian.

Blink

Fantastic Four (7.5)

In the first 6-7 months of 2005 I didn’t go to the movies once, kind of insane. In the last few weeks I’ve gone a few times, starting with some blockbusters, they’re the ones that benefit the most from the big screen. A few notes (soft spoilers in there).

Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith

Starts slow, continues with some bad acting but the visuals are incredible and it’s fun the rest of the way. Not great but fun and it ties up things acceptably well. Question: How the hell is it better to leave the dude burning alive than to finish him off?

Batman Begins

Best non-comic Batman version evah! Good story, good action, looks good. Ex.cell.ent. Could have done without the Batmobile chase scene though. Useless.

Fantastic Four

Johnny Storm superbly done. Jessica Alba is too hot to be Suzie Storm. The Thing was ok, I was expecting a bit better. Reed Richards sucked arse. They fucked up Doom’s origin.

I’m sure you use Wikipedia all the time, why don’t you help them along by giving some money for their fund raiser.

Dark Places

Is it just me? (or what/whom I read) Or has the word moblog almost completely disappeared and been replaced by Flickr? For a little while a year and a half or so ago it seemed like moblog was going to catch on but now people aren’t “moblogging”, there just saying “I’ll put it on Flickr”. Good thing too, hated the word.

Man On Fire (8.0)

Very cool Flash application that lets you zoom around earth. I took the opportunity to find the hotel I was at in Paris this spring. It’s right here in the middle under the little plus sign. Cute little square right in front and one of my favorite places, place des Vosges a few minutes away.

(Via m-c)