What are the chances?

Well I just got back from an interview trip to California. It was kind of fun. Oddly I found the worrying about driving more stressful than worrying about the interview (or actually doing either). The flight went off without a hitch and (once I figured out how to get way from the airport, man I hate construction) the driving wasn’t even that bad. The interview was fun, I enjoyed chatting with the people and the flight back was mostly on time.

The fun part started in the San Jose airport while I was waiting for my flight back: I got there early and was standing around waiting when someone I knew from collage spotted me! I’m just shy of 690 miles from home in a city I can’t name a sole in and I run into someone I know and they're on the same flight as I am. What are the odds? (It was a Friday and this was the late flight home so if I was going to run into anyone I knew, it would be there and then.) Well it gets better. At Sea-Tac, while waiting for our connection (it sure was handy having someone who knew there way around there to follow), I ran into someone else I knew coming from Alaska and, just before the flight boarded, yet another coming from Boston. What are the odds? (Better than you might think given that it was the last flight to the local airport,.. but three different people in one trip?)

The best kind of vigilante justice

Every once in a while a story pops up about someone who takes the law into there own hands, almost always indicating a failing on some level: like the story of the town thug who got shot dead in the middle of a crowd of several hundred people and not one person saw the shooter.

Well here is a story that is just about the best possible case of vigilante justice I can think of: thief robs man, man tackles thief, man cuffs thief with wire ties, thief left for police in middle of main street. Now aside from the going after someone wielding a knife, and (maybe) the public humiliation factor, I can't see anything anyone can object to.

Turnabout's fair play

Quoting from a letter to Scientific American by Oscar Estévez about Creationism, Intelligent Design (ID) and the theory of evolution:

The questions they [students] should ask are, Does ID make predictions? And can those predictions be tested? If the answers to both are negative, they themselves can conclude that ID is "only a nonscientific theory."

I'll ask the same in return:

Does the theory of evolution make predictions? And can those predictions be tested? If the answers to both are negative, you can conclude that the theory of evolution is "only a nonscientific theory."

I challenge Mr. Estévez to point to point to a predictions made by the theory of evolution that can be tested and where the test will show it to be either true or false.

Note that there are a number of predictions made by the theory of evolution than can be show to be true but can't be show to be false. For example, failing to demonstrate the creation of new species can always be discounted on the grounds of "We just didn't run the experiment long enough" or "we haven't found the right fossil yet".

Irony: the Alanis Morissette kind

Actually, I find it more funny than ironic, but whatever it is, it is a little annoying.

I was searching for literature on Mandatory Work First ordering and guess what, I'm the top hit for "Mandatory Work First" min max. Lot of help that does me.

It's sort of like being your own sys admin when things go wrong:

Computer: "The system has crashed. Please contact the system administrator"
Me: "Ok self, fix it"