http://blogs.scienceforums.net/capn Otherwise known as "I couldn't think of a clever title." Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:42:14 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Write like this. http://blogs.scienceforums.net/capn/2009/12/17/writing-concisely-for-dummies/ So it seems a thread on SFN inspired me to create Alex's Law of Internet argumentation. I'd like to elaborate a bit on that, and propose a new Law or two: Alex's First Law As soon as an online discussion becomes an argument, the participants will never admit they are wrong, no ... http://blogs.scienceforums.net/capn/2009/12/11/alexs-laws/ Evangelical minister Ray Comfort recently put out a "150th Anniversary Edition" of On the Origin of Species, with a Special Introduction attacking Darwin, the theory of evolution, and atheism. Yeah, big deal. It's been all over the Internet lately. Well, as an assignment for one of my university courses, I wrote ... http://blogs.scienceforums.net/capn/2009/12/03/making-darwin-uncomfortable/ I've been a moderator here at SFN for almost four years now, and an administrator for about three. (The promotion to administrator was rather ad-hoc and I'm not entirely sure when it happened in retrospect; one day blike needed help fixing something in vBulletin and he promoted me so I ... http://blogs.scienceforums.net/capn/2009/10/31/moderation-observations-part-1/ First, read the poem What I Believe, by Michael Blumenthal. It's crucial to understanding my poem. What I Believe I believe that unicorns exist, but that dolphins and iguanas are entirely imaginary. I believe that a hamster's bite won't kill a man, but that his wife will. I believe that the weirder you get, the crazier you are, but the ... http://blogs.scienceforums.net/capn/2009/10/31/nerd-poetry-no-2/ [Note: There's basically no point to this post. But hey, it's the Internet. That's allowed here.] Media I can use to communicate with people I know in person: Phone call. The highest-bandwidth and lowest-latency medium, unless you get voicemail. But somehow the least preferred. Text message. Annoyingly brief and usually vapid; useful for ... http://blogs.scienceforums.net/capn/2009/06/29/communication-media/ To prevent phishing, all Internet scams and cons should be required by ICANN to use the TLD .con rather than .com. That is all. http://blogs.scienceforums.net/capn/2009/06/16/brilliant-idea/ Deep in space, a fire burns. It is not an ordinary fire. It is the heat of uncountable gazillions of tiny pairs of protons and electrons being squished together at incredible temperatures, releasing scads of energy. The energy is transmitted outward, through clouds of zillions of other pairs, until finally it ... http://blogs.scienceforums.net/capn/2009/06/04/what-a-weird-world/ This is what happens when you tell a nerd to write poetry. 'Twas a warm summer day in La-La Land, Fields of grass swayed lazily in the breeze, The cool wind made ripples in ponds quite grand, Cattle grazed quietly in the tall trees. Fields of wildflowers, cover'd in white snow, Were drinking from the ice-cover'd ... http://blogs.scienceforums.net/capn/2009/02/02/nerd-poetry/ Kommandant of commas Sultan of spelling Advocate of adverbs Adjutant of adjectives Savant of style King of correctness Guru of grammar Partisan of participles Mogul of modifiers General of gerunds Pontiff of punctuation Archbishop of articles Kaiser of clauses Fountain of phonetics Syndicate of syntax Dystopia of dyslexia Conductor of conjunctions Purveyor of periods Secretary of semicolons Mullah of metaphor Imam of imagery Admiral of ampersands Priest of perspective Apostle of apostrophe Hyperion of ... http://blogs.scienceforums.net/capn/2009/02/01/list-of-loopiness/