Monthly Archives: February 2005

Mapping a Phone Number

This entry was posted in Google Information Marketing Technology on by

Ursula is not real happy with one aspect of Google searching:

I use Google everyday, but I am not digging their new feature that allows you to enter a phone number and get a map to the address

These capability with or without Google has been around a long time. Just go to any of the various white page services, key in the number, and they will do a reverse look up and provide an address. Take the address to your preferred map site and, presto, you have the same thing Google is doing.
Me, I’d like to see the kids at Google talk to each other! Really, shouldn’t they at least be listing the Google map?

Friday Ark

This entry was posted in Friday Ark on by

Cats, Dogs, Spiders and ? every Friday.
I’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals as I see them (no photoshops and no humans).
Leave a comment or trackback to this post or email me and I’ll add yours to the list. Check back regularly for updates throughout the day on Fridays and somewhat less frequently over the weekend.
Do remember The Carnival of the Cats every Sunday and hosted this week at Flying Space Monkey.
Archive editions of the Friday Ark.
Cats

DogsBirdsOther VertebratesInvertebratesDidn’t Make It

Turning off the Federal Government

This entry was posted in Capitalism Federal Government Immigration Libertarianism Regulation War on Terrorism on by

I haven’t heard anything good about the REAL ID Act, HR 418. Ron Paul, though, hints at a way to turn off the federal government:

Supporters claim it is not a national ID because it is voluntary. However, any state that opts out will automatically make non-persons out of its citizens. The citizens of that state will be unable to have any dealings with the federal government because their ID will not be accepted. They will not be able to fly or to take a train. In essence, in the eyes of the federal government they will cease to exist. It is absurd to call this voluntary.
If the people of enough states just say no then most of us can cease to exist in the eyes of the federal government. What a pleasing thought!
Aside from this remote possibility there are many reasons this legislation should be squashed. Read it, weep, then call your congress critter and tell them to just say no!
Via Declan McCullagh.

Catching up on Genetic Dispositions

This entry was posted in Biology Politics Psychology Religion on by

Well, by mistake I decided to read Kristoff’s column from yesterday:

Instead, modern science is turning up a possible reason why the religious right is flourishing and secular liberals aren’t: instinct. It turns out that our DNA may predispose humans toward religious faith.
Via previous education I knew just where to look for the antidote to this stuff and Myers was P.Z. on the spot:
It�s nothing but modern molecular preformationism. Palmistry for the genome. We�ve been fighting against this simplistic notion of the whole of the organism prefigured in a plan or in toto in the embryo since Socrates, and it keeps coming back. We�ve moved from imagining a little homunculus lurking in the sperm to one hiding in the genome. It�s just not there. You can�t point to a spot on a chromosome and say, �there�s the little guy�s finger!�, nor can you point to a spot and say, �there�s his fondness for football!�.
Kristof, for instance, points to a particular gene as the source of piety. Piffle. Here�s his shining locus of sacredness, VMAT2:
It won’t hurt you to read the rest of the post yourself…
Over at Crooked Timber John Quiggen provides additional curative resources by working through some statistical, logical, and definitional failings in Kristoff’s piece and more generally with pop evolutionary psychology.
As usual the comment threads to both posts provided plenty of stimuli for both my chuckle gene and my thinking gene.