If you or anyone you know (who has a computer science/engineering background) would like to possibly work at Amazon.com, flood me with your resumes.

So, there might not be a Mardi Gras next year. Of course, that's just idle speculation. But as I type this, hurricane Katrina just got raised to a Category 5 Hurricane with winds reaching 140 knots and above (160 mph, or 252 km/h).

Unfortunately, New Orleans lies directly in the projected path of Katrina. A cat 5 hurricane hitting any city is bad enough, but for New Orleans, this coule be the Big One.

You see, New Orleans is unique in that it's right on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and yet the city lies beneath sea level. They have a levee around the city, and mega pumps to pump out water in case there's heavy rainfall. But with a major hurricane like Katrina, the wind and rainfall she brings can destroy buildings and flood the city entirely (some parts up to 20 feet of water). It could even flood or destroy the pump stations, leaving New Orleans to be a shallow lake. From the nola.com article,

"If one goes to construction equipment rental firms, you can rent pumps with a capacity of 6,000 to 8,000 gallons a minute, but that's just not enough capacity," Combe said. "After (hurricane) Betsy the corps employed six dredges with a combined capacity of 243,000 gallons per minute. It would take 44 hours to drain a half-inch of water from the New Orleans metro area that way."

But that's not even the worst of it. This giant bowl of soup would be contaminated with industrial waste, toxic chemicals, gas, sewage, dead animals, etc. The water would be so dirty that it may need to be treated before it can be pumped out. This standing cesspool would be an ideal breeding ground for mosquitos, the survivors of the hurricane wouldn't have any clean drinking water, and outbreaks of yellow fever can ensue.

Just to outline the seriousness of this threat, the mayor of New Orleans has ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city, all lanes of I-10 has been converted into one-way traffic out of the city, and it's still gridlocked. The Superdome has been opened for people who cannot leave. It's now less than 24 hours until the projected hit.

Evangelist Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Venezualan president Hugo Chavez in his TV show last night by saying:

We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability ... We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator ... It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.

This is from the same man who claimed that feminism "encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." (emphasis mine).

From gizmodo:

Tired of the RAZR yet? I mean, if one more person whips his out on an episode of Entourage I’m going to puke.

After a long day of driving, we got back Friday night, and have been relaxing in the summer Seattle sun since.

Day 3 at Panorama was miserable. The morning started off with a little mist (after it's been raining all night), which made the rocks, roots, and all the wood structures extra slippery. I fell off a wood bridge that was about two feet off the ground. It was a good thing I was wearing armor. I gave up about 3 runs in, when it started raining hard again. Instead, I relaxed in the hot tub with raindrops falling on my head. Dinner was wing night, and I bet JF that he couldn't eat 100 wings. He couldn't.

Day 4 was back on the slopes, after a quick 2 hour cross country ride first. We went on another crazy double black that I shouldn't have been on. After some walking (it's very difficult trying to walk a heavy downhill bike down a steep hill), and some bruises, we did make it safely to the bottom.

Now I need a vacation from my vacation.

After a day of hardtails, we were done with our bikes. Today we rented some DH bikes from the shop, and used those. It's a night and day difference. I could just roll over roots and rocks while sitting down, and the shocks are amazingly plush.

I'm getting pretty comfortable with the blue runs, and getting on some blacks. There's a lot of steep sections that are just mind blowing. I even went on this double black run that was something like a 60-70 degree incline. There was a turn halfway through, and looking from above, you'd think that that was the end, but it kept on going, and going. I was leaning all the way back, with my butt pretty much on my tires. My quads and hands were so tired at the end of that run, it was unbelievable.

I think we'll need to stick with the rentals for the rest of the week.

First day on vacation, and I'm geeking out already, perched outside the deli stealing their wifi.

Matt and I drove to Panorama Sunday. It was a long drive, and there's nothing to look at in Eastern Washington. Spokane was barely a blip on the radar. Things got even bleaker in rural BC. Cranbrook's Safeway is dead on a Sunday night, but their Superstore is happening.

The first day of riding was ... rough, especially when everyone else has downhill or at least good soft tail cross country bikes. Many things broke, and I've dumped a lot of money into my poor bike. It's not meant to take such a beating.

I might have to rent a bike for the next couple of days, and see what the difference is like.

Today I got home from lunch to see a UPS missed delivery tag outside the apartment building door. Having received all of my internet purchases, I was naturally curious as to what the mystery package could be.

Unfortunately, the UPS facility isn't open on Saturdays, and I'm going away for a week next week, so we'll have to wait.

But apparently it's from Bottomline Ink, in Maumee, Ohio. Since Bottomline Ink is a distributor of printed material, it didn't really narrow anything down for me.

Let the speculation begin.

Anyone have any experience with renting out art galleries, or any gallery, on the cheap?

The debate about whether to teach Intelligent Design (ID) in US schools has be going on for years. But it's been brought into the limelight again by some recent comments by President Bush. Proponents of ID are saying that it does not have a religious basis, and should be taught as an alternative alongside evolution in high school science classes.

So let's take a look.

1. Why is there a need to teach it, especially in high school?

Pretty much all of the stuff I've learned in high school science were not cutting edge science. They've been studied for decades (at the least), and are well formulated for understanding. ID is such a new field in science (if it is science at all - see below), that there's not even ONE peer-reviewed paper published in a journal, anywhere.

Proponents of ID are making it look like ID and Evolution are two theories that would each hold its own weight when looked at side by side. The truth is, it isn't. ID has no scientific reputation, no supporting evidence, and is not recognized by the vast majority of scientists. It does not belong in a high school science curriculum.

2. Is it science?

We first need to agree that just because some scientists agree with something, doesn't make that something science (lots of scientists believe in God too, but that's not science either). Science is where we formulate a hypothesis, use observational data from experimentation or empirical data, and come to a conclusion. Sometimes this conclusion is only a thoery, and needs to be studied more, but a theory needs at least some supporting evidence. (For example, if I said that the pyramids were made by aliens, that's pure speculation, and not science. If I did an archeological dig around the pyramids, and found a spacecraft that seems to be not from this world, then I have some basis to formulate a scientific theory).

Now let's look at ID. One of its primary premise is Irriducible Complexity. It basically states that because some basic building blocks in biology are so complex, where even if one little part failed, the whole system would fail, and the system could not possibly have come from random mutations and natural selection, that there must have been an intelligent designer who designed it.

The problem here, is that it's a false dichotomy. Even if there are irriducibly complex systems, that doesn't mean an intelligent designer is the only conclusion. There may need to be adjustments in evolutionary theory, or there may be an entirely new theory out there. Just because some people postulated this as the conclusion doesn't make it so (see arguments from ignorance)

Also, there's no supporting evidence. ID doesn't try to explain who the intelligent designer is, just that one exists. But the only supporting evidence to the existence of an intelligent designer is the postulate that there is one (because some systems are irreducibly complex, there must be an ID). This is proving things exist by assuming that they exist.

3. Does it even make sense?

Many people who are trying to push ID into the science curriculum are emphasizing that ID is not based in religion, that it does not postulate God as the designer. This is because trying to establish religion in the public classroom is against US law.

So let's say that we don't know who the designer is.

Let us also say that when there is an irreducibly complex system, there must have been an intelligent designer (this is the premise of ID).

I'm going to make a bit of a leap here, and postulate that the intelligent designer is also an irreducibly complex system (for surely a simple system could not "design" an irreducibly complex system - and if they could, then the whole ID argument would be moot because then a irreducibly complex system could have evolved from a simple system).

The following argument is now paraphrased from the wikipedia article on ID.

If the designer of the irreducibly complex system is also irreducibly complex, then who designed the designer? This creates a bit of a chicken and egg problem, and the only logical solution that may fit within the bounds of a finite universe (if we believe in science) is that there was an initial designer that wasn't created by anything, and was just there.

And who can that designer be but God?

Check out start, seems like a pretty cool portal/aggregator, even if it's made by Microsoft.

Cool features include (after 5 minutes of playing):

* minimal, but usable UI (try clicking on the start - upper left - if you can't figure out how to add more feeds)
* nice javascript eye candy like being able to move blocks around
* a nice preview option

The thing that possibly sucks is that it uses a cookie to store the session id, so if you delete your cookies, all your customizations will be gone.