Monkeys Not Writing Shakespeare
An amusing article about what happens when
someone tested Thomas Huxley's claim that a million monkeys typing for a million years would eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare, at random.
Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, the theory goes, and they will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare.
Give six monkeys one computer for a month, and they will make a mess.
Researchers at Plymouth University in England reported this week that primates left alone with a computer attacked the machine and failed to produce a single word.
"They pressed a lot of S's," researcher Mike Phillips said Friday. "Obviously, English isn't their first language."
Flames that this is some sort underhanded way to attack evolutionism or creationism are reading
way too much into this.
posted by Clayton at 11:01 AM permalink
This is SO San Francisco
I am way, way too polite to discuss this on my blog. You'll just have to go visit this
Reuters news story and ask yourself, "Is there something in the water out there?" Something that used to be a criminal offense in a public place--is now something that you send out press releases for.
posted by Clayton at 8:07 AM permalink
Some People Just Aren't Too Bright...
For example, if you are going to reimburse your low level employees for their contributions to a political campaign, it is generally wise to make sure that all the $2000 maximum legal contribution checks don't all arrive on the same day--and it's even more wise to make sure that people that make practically nothing don't make $2000 contributions.
Read this story from The Hill, and ask yourself--is there something improper going on here?
Sen. John Edwards� presidential campaign finance documents show a pattern of giving by low-level employees at law firms, a number of whom appear to have limited financial resources and no prior record of political donations.
Records submitted to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show these individuals have often given $2,000 to the North Carolina Democrat, the maximum permitted by law.
In many instances, all the checks from a given firm arrived on the same day � from partners, attorneys, and other support staff.
Some of these support staff have not voted in the past, and those who have voted include registered Republicans, according to public records on file with various county registrars of voting.
Edwards� campaign records also reveal that many of these individuals� spouses and relatives contributed the maximum on the same day. The Hill found many of them to be first-time givers. Some have no previous demonstrable interest in politics, while others appear to be active Republicans.
Stacy and Robert Kern of Los Angeles, for example, are among those who contributed to Edwards� candidacy. Stacy Kern is listed as an administrator at the law firm of Howarth & Smith. The firm participated in the class-action suits against the tobacco industry.
On March 6, Stacy Kern contributed $2,000 to the Edwards campaign. Two associate attorneys and five of the firm�s six partners also contributed the maximum amount. Los Angeles County records show that Stacy Kern is not a registered voter and has not previously voted or contributed to a federal campaign.
Her husband Robert, a self-employed travel agent, also gave $2,000 on the same day. Robert Kern was at one point registered to vote in Los Angeles, but after numerous unanswered letters since 1996 from the county registrar of voters, he was dropped from the voter rolls last year. As with his wife, Robert Kern has no record of having voted and made no previous federal campaign donations.
In 1998, Stacy Kern declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy in California, with assets of $7,925 and liabilities of $126,769. In 1994, California assessed her husband with a $33,254 state tax lien, active until 2004. The Kerns are not listed as property holders.
There's lots more details to this story, with many of the "contributors" showing little or no evidence of political interest (as indicated by bothering to vote), and very limited financial resources. Edwards probably has nothing to do with this (I'll give him the benefit of the doubt)--but it does make you wonder how to brains behind Edwards' very impressive campaign contributions, if they are this clueless.
The news story isn't perfect. It keeps referring to California's closed primary system, where you can only vote for candidates of your party. That
used to be the case, but California went to open primary several years ago. I regret having given into political calculation, and crossed party lines to vote for what I perceived as the weakest Democrat in the field--Gray Davis. (Sorry, those of you still stuck in Davis's financial disaster.)
UPDATE: I'm told that the courts have since closed the primary system in California, so this article is apparently correct.
posted by Clayton at 12:36 PM permalink
This Is, Like, Oh Wow!
The U.S. Ninth Circuit refused an
en banc rehearing of the dangerously stupid Silvera decision--but the six judges that voted
for a rehearing have written
very, very pungent and effective dissents. Some of these are flaming liberals, too, but they can see what Judge Reinhardt cannot--the Second Amendment protects an individual right. From Judge Kozinski's dissent, just a few marvelous fragments to give you an idea--you really should read it all:
Judges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted.... When a particular right comports especially well with our notions of good social policy, we build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases --or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text. ... But, as the panel amply demonstrates, when we're none too keen on a particular constitutional guarantee, we can be equally ingenious in burying language that is incontrovertibly there.
It is wrong to use some constitutional provisions as springboards for major social change while treating others like senile relatives to be cooped up in a nursing home until they quit annoying us. As guardians of the Constitution, we must be consistent in interpreting its provisions. If we adopt a jurisprudence sympathetic to individual rights, we must give broad compass to all constitutional provisions that protect individuals from tyranny. If we take a more statist approach, we must give all such provisions narrow scope. Expanding some to gargantuan proportions while discarding others like a crumpled gum wrapper is not faithfully applying the Constitution; it�s using our power as federal judges to constitutionalize our personal preferences.
...
All too many of the other great tragedies of history�Stalin�s atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few�were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here. See Kleinfeld Dissent at 5997-99. If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars. My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed�where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees.
However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once. Fortunately, the Framers were wise enough to entrench the right of the people to keep and bear arms within our constitutional structure. The purpose and importance of that right was still fresh in their minds, and they spelled it out clearly so it would not be forgotten. Despite the panel�s mighty struggle to erase these words, they remain, and the people themselves can read what they say plainly enough: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The sheer ponderousness of the panel�s opinion�the mountain of verbiage it must deploy to explain away these fourteen short words of constitutional text�refutes its thesis far more convincingly than anything I might say. The panel�s labored effort to smother the Second Amendment by sheer body weight has all the grace of a sumo wrestler trying to kill a rattlesnake by sitting on it�and is just as likely to succeed.
This is the most poetic, but the other dissents are pretty powerful, too.
I smell a Supreme Court decision coming.
Labels: gun rights
posted by Clayton at 3:53 PM permalink
There's Some Flying in My Future
I just received notification that the NRA Civil Rights Legal Defense Fund has approved my request for a research travel grant. I will be able to request reimbursement for research expenses for the next two books that I am doing. This is very good news. Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Winterthur Library (where the DuPont records ended up); the American Antiquarian Society, are all on my list of places to do some digging.
posted by Clayton at 3:16 PM permalink
