Evolutin vs. Creation but not

The Royal Society has a podcast on the topic of why Creationism is wrong and Evolutionism is right. An interesting topic, but Steve Jones of University College London who gives the talk engages in rather irritating devices in his talk. He starts off by pretty much dismissing creation myths by belittling them in a straw-man sort of way. This wastes the opportunity to actually engage in any kind of reasonable comparison leading to a proposed conclusion. Additionally, Jones says at the beginning of this talk that one must embrace doubt and uncertainty but seems in his whole talk to do the opposite. Another irritating thing Mr. Jones does is engage in class-based derogatory remarks about the accent used by Prince William. He suggests jokingly that it's hard to understand and that perhaps in a few generations the whole royal family may descend even further in their pronunciation. I had no difficulty in understanding the prince in the clip provided and can't for the life of me grasp what makes his pronunciation any worse than any other accent.

To sum up, what bugged me as I listened to this talk was the use of elitist, exclusionary, and derogatory talk by someone presented as a researcher and thinker of some note. Mr. Jones should have stuck to his main topic of interest. Those bits were interesting.

The Royal Society makes the lecture available as a podcast one but only apparently compatible with Itunes. This fits in well with my sense of them (confirms my prejudice) that they are rather used to keeping and dishing out information in as exclusive a way as possible rather than disseminating it for the good of humanity ASAP. They go back a long time. VanLeeuwenhoek was a member (after waiting a rather long time for membership if I recall). They have apparently made their archives available free but only as a sort of marketing move that will end in less than two months from now. As far as I can tell you can't actually search their archives from the free interface. You have to rely on their glowing writeup which acts as mothering docent to the archives, never letting you just roam and read. May exclusive clubs like this change or wither and die (that's my freedom of information flow curse). In the morning, as they surfed along, they saw the Royal Society archive website had withered from the roots. Apologies to Mark.

Truth and lie together again

Maher Arar, wrongly sent to Syria and tortured by the US after the Mounties fed US intelligence fairy stories about nonexistent ties to Al Qaeda, was not tortured, as far as the US attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, knows. That was most likely a lie, but Mr. Gonzales showed a trait evident in the current US administration and with good liars everywhere, denied an over-precise fact. Mr. Gonzales said that "we were not responsible" for sending Mr. Arar to Syria. Technically, the US dept. of justice does not handle such things, now. It did back then, ruining the lie and causing a technical re-statement by one of Mr. Gonzales' underlings.

One of my favourite lies is when George Bush said that he did not "have a plan for the invasion of Iraq on my desk right now". Not on his desk.

Of course, Mr. Arar would not have gone to Syria without the incompetence and sycophance of the RCMP and Canadian politicians eager to "help" in the "war on terror". Following Mr. Arar's deportation lies were spread about his character and actions. More were sprinkled about after his release. The Mounties also obstructed the inquest into Mr. Arar's deportation and torture. The full report has been censored for "national security" reasons. And they call it democracy.

Woodworking

I've been to Lee Valley Tools a few times this week. They opened a store four blocks from my work this past April. They obviously place great stock in carrying only products they believe to be of good quality and value and go out of their way to ensure that you know what you're buying and why they think it's a good product. When you visit some product pages on their website you get a message that the product is no longer available as they are not able to offer it at a competitive price. Nice and straightforward. Anyway, I've purchased drill bits and accessories for countersinking screws and making plugs (my brother the cabinetmaker recommended doing screw and plug joinery because it doesn't require clamping), a stud finder, on-sale German wire working pliers, a set of four Czech-made chisels, a flush cut saw (for cutting off the bits of plugs that stick out), a small tool holding roll, very nice German deck screws that you can screw into wood with no predrilling (it's amazing, they go in like butter), some "Gorilla" glue that works amazingly to glue metal to metal, metal to wood, plastic to wood, etc., and quite a few small rare earth magnets.

I've used the glue and some magnets to make 'fridge magnets and glued some more magnets to the wall in the basement to stick my new chisels to. I've used the chisels to hollow out a spot in our front door frame where Lewis had ripped the screen door pneumatic door stopper screws out by repeatedly opening the door beyond its normal maximum In the hollowed out spot I've glued and screwed a new bit of wood. I also purchased a two dollar wire coffee filter holder that I put on a cupboard door.

This all may seem a bit quotidien, but I've been waiting years to have the tools to fix things up around the house. I'm having a lot of fun. My first larger project will be to make a bench with integrated shelving in the kids room.