Of bicycles and go-karts

In the realm of small transportation, there are (among many other choices) bicycles and go-karts. They are different beasts, built different ways for different purposes. Some may consider bicycles more elegant and precision machines, and go-karts can sometimes be a bit sloppy, held together with duct tape and baling wire, but they can go pretty fast. (Yes, bicycles can go quite fast also but there are different approaches to making them fast and they can be quite variable)

So, if you take someone who is a decent bike builder and show them a go-kart, explain the basic principles of operation, give them the parts to build a go-kart, and suggest that they use the parts to build a go-kart and expect that their general mechanical knowledge from building bikes will be sufficient to let them actually handle the building process, then you would expect them to build a go-kart, right?

NO.

They will use the parts you gave them to try and build a bicycle. However, go-kart parts are not bicycle parts, so they will try to make do.

A bicycle has 2 wheels, but their parts box has 4 (that are qiute different). So they'll put one in front and one in back, and then since there's 2 extra, they'l put those in the back too.

A bike doesn't have an engine, so they won't quite know what to do with it. But it has to be there, so they'll strap it to the front. Not connected to anything, just strapped there. For propulsion, a bike uses pedals and a chain; there's a chain drive from the engine that looks like a bike chain (only a lot shorter), so that will work. And the brake and gas pedals look can double as bike pedals in a pinch, so those get strapped onto the chain somehow.

A go-kart frame is rather square-ish compared to a bike frame, but that'll have to do. Stuff can get bolted onto it somehow. The seat goes sort of sideways in the middle, right?

The steering wheel is a common enough thing that they realize it's for turning the wheels, even if it's different than bike handlebars. It gets bolted in there too and wired up to the single front wheel.

So after all this you have a go-kart frame all bent out of shape in such a way as to sort of resemble a bicycle, that you have to pedal very ineffectively, with no brakes, that you can barely control, and carrying the extra weight of a useless engine, that you can't make go very fast. But it DOES go.

And the builder?

They complain that the parts you gave them don't make a very good bicycle.

The death of blogging

From technolope:

Why does it seem like the comments on some blog posts are just quotes from, and links to, other blogs posts that reference the first one? While the comments section has always been something of a collective cry for attention, it is occasionally funny and interesting. But when it's all just other bloggers looking for any traffic they can grab, it becomes pathetic.

What do you think?

Kickin it old school

Early this week I found myself writing a CGI script. An old-style CGI script.

Ok, I'm not talking like Matt's Script Archive full of security-holes &format(*INFO); old-style; I at least use-d CGI.pm. But it was still chock-full of print "<tr><td>"; and the like. Did we really build the early web on this crap? (although I bet a lot of java servlets are still written this way...)

Nowadays I mostly use HTML::Mason for anything interesting, it's just so much more natural to type the needed HTML code as ... well, HTML. And, to complete the circle, yesterday when I needed to extend the functionality of my hack, I rewrote it in Mason. I feel better now.

The end of trivia?

I'm getting to really hate wikipedia and google.

It used to be that a person with a good memory for random facts could occasionally impress people by whipping out something like "The hundred years war actually lasted 116 years," or "Light takes 8.3 minutes to get from the sun to the earth," or reciting entire passages from "The Princess Bride." I used to fill my brain up with facts like these from the kind of books that you can open to any page and start reading (bathroom readers, Guinness Book of World Records, etc.) or by watching the movie over and over again.

But now, anyone can find this kind of info faster and more accurately (or at least with citations) with a quick google search, which usually lands you on wikipedia. And with the prevalence of iPhones and the like that can access google from anywhere, we're not even safe in bars anymore.

Tell me, is there a place for an old-fashioned trivia buff anymore?

I guess I'm not the only one

Intelligent Design, Evolved Stupidity

Why do 'intelligent design' proponents attack the evolution of life? It seems much easier to attack things that just "are" perfectly so. Like, e^πi+1=0 ... There seems to be a suspicious amount of design in this system of mathematics to make such a random equation turn out so neatly. Or cosmology - why are the various physical constants "just so"?

There are two core principles of ID, "irreducible complexity" which is also known as demonstrable ignorance, and I forget the other, but I think it is also demonstrable ignorance. The real answer is that Genesis doesn't mention the cosmological constant, but it really undermines any shallow credibility the ID folks might have. Wheras not asking "how did this complex system arise" but instead "where did the framework to create this complex system come from" strikes me as alot more profound.

For example, look at genetic algorithms. The final solution can be ridiculously complex, in such a way that no one understands how they work, only that they do (for example, the GA-created cube-root function curcuit. From a certain level of ignorance that could probably be proved to be irreducibly complex.) The final product was not created by any intelligence. BUT, the *framework* to evolve the complex design WAS created by intelligence.

But no, it's always "What good is half an eye?" or "Look at the motorboat flagellum, that couldn't possibly have evolved by random chance!"

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Ok, I appear to be showing my own ignorance here - the wikipedia article on intelligent design (all hail wikipedia) does make reference to this concept, calling it the "fine-tuned universe". However, I had to go looking for that. All the press reports on ID only ever mention the biology angle.

There is of course a simple explanation for this: Genesis doesn't mention the cosmological constant, relativity, complex math, or even gravity. It only explains in irrefutable form that God created all life as we know it. "But ID isn't about religion, it's real science!" they say. And it is mere coincidence that every single ID proponent is a fundamentalist
Christian, and that they all had their religious awakening before accepting ID and not the other way around.

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The use of 'ID' to abbreviate 'Intelligent Design' is not in any way Freudian. Honest.

-EO