I do a fair bit of bitching here (like most bloggers). But I want to end the year with a positive thought. So I am going to put up this picture.

I shot this from my hotel room in Bombay a few weeks ago on a Saturday. It’s a group of girls returning home from school in their uniforms with their books. They were all living in a shanty on illegally occupied land by the airport, ext to my hotel.

That families living in such poverty value their daughters education so much they put scarce money into investing in their future is a wonderful sign of hope.

Best wishes to you all for 2006!

Right. I think I sorted my technical issues. If you do find blank pages or things like comments don’t work can you let me know.

I am also taking the opportunity to clean up the site. Some pages are being axed. Mainly in the “Writings” and “Others” sections. Ironically probably the most popular download from the site has to be the papers I wrote 7 years ago when doing computer engineering in UL. Well no more. They are all gone from now. I guess all those lazy students will just have to write their own material in future.

It’s very appropriate that on this solstice day that in a US court a brilliant ray of light has helped push back some of the darkness. The judge in the Evolution vs Intelligent Design (ID) trial in Dover Pennsylvania ruled totally in favour of science, education and enlightenment. He was scathing on pretty much every part of the ID case. And this from a Christian judge appointed by GW Bush. In his own words he ruled that ID:

“singles out the theory of evolution for special treatment, misrepresents its status in the scientific community, causes students to doubt its validity without scientific justification, presents students with a religious alternative masquerading as a scientific theory, directs them to consult a creationist text as though it were a science resource, and instructs students to forego scientific inquiry in the public school classroom and instead to seek out religious instruction elsewhere”

and

“we find that ID is not science and cannot be adjudged a valid, accepted scientific theory as it has failed to publish in peer-reviewed journals, engage in research and testing, and gain acceptance in the scientific community. ID, as noted, is grounded in theology, not science. Accepting for the sake of argument its proponents’, as well as Defendents’ argument that to introduce ID to students will encourage critical thinking, it still has utterly no place in a science curriculum”

and

“Moreover, ID’s backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny which we have now determined that it cannot withstand by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard. The goal of the IDM is not to encourage critical thought, but to forment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID.”

He also accused some of the ID backers of lying, and hoped that no court would have to waste their time judging this nonsense again in the future. In short, it ain’t science, so it has no place in a science course.

Game, set, and match to the Scientific Community and the Evolutionists. Well actually it probably isn’t match. ID has powerful backers. And when it comes to religion most believers won’t accept anything short of their deity descending in a cloud to tell them they are twits. Which of course is why the whole thing is impossible to falsify. But for now the ID proponents of creationism have to sulk off to dream up a new way to sell their rancid medieval superstition.

It has come to my attention that the upgrade to WP1.5 did not go as smoothly as I first thought. All sorts of things are broken around here. I will be trying to fix them this evening.

Hmm, some files seem to be incomplete…

It’s the Winter Solstice. The day the sun stands still. From tomorrow the days will start to get longer. According to Weather Underground tomorrow will be 1 second longer.

The Winter (and summer) Solstice is a funny day. Though it falls in the depth of winter it marks a new beginning. The time when the new year really starts (it is just a quirk of our calender that the year end is marked on December 31st). The real year end is today and the new year is now upon us.

To any civilisation around thousands of years ago (that had figured out basic calenders) it was one of the most important days of the year. After the solstice they would see that their gods had not forsaken them and the worlds descent into winter would be reversed. Hence sites like Newgrange. For over 5000 years when the sun illuminates the inner chamber it marks an acknowledgement that though the world may be dying in the grip of winter it was to be reborn from that moment. It was such a powerful moment that the early Christians jumped on the Roman solstice feast of Saturnalia to celebrate Christmas and the birth of their saviour.

Of course today we are such clever clogs that we have ditched most of these silly superstitions. We know know it is all about the axial tilt of the planet and so on. But even in my cold spiritually hostile heart on this day a ray of sunlight penetrates to bring some awe at the wonder of the world.

So happy solstice to you!

A photo of the snow in Alpe d’Huez.

For no other reason than it’s winter and I like snow. And this year I will not make it skiing. *sigh*

For the purposes of this discussion we shall assume that Laura’s second name is Murphy. It isn’t but she likes to maintain her privacy.

As you may know we got married back in September. Of course we had been living together for about 15 months before we got hitched. Ahhh, I miss those days. Things aren’t much different now, but the forbidden fruit is often sweeter

Anyway, now it is Christmas, the time when Christmas cards arrive on our doorstep. It has been interesting to see how people are choosing to address post to us as a married couple. Some of our friends and relatives have gone with just one name at the top of the address, Seamus K****, or Laura “Murphy”. I am not totally sure about that approach.

There has been some “Seamus and Laura K****”. This is usually someone being very traditional, or in the case of some of my friends, mischievous. Whatever else Laura became when she said “I do” I think we both are pretty sure that she didn’t become a K****. I have always been very insistent that she retain her own name. I like my wife with her own identity thank you very much. We will not become subsumed into some messy dual entity that is “Laurmus”.

I think the preferred way for people to send us post has to be “Seamus and Laura” (or “Laura and Seamus”). But I want to make it totally clear that “Laura and Seamus Murphy” (as appeared on one card) is totally unacceptable!

Well that seems to have gone smoothly. I didn’t bother with a wordpress themes. Instead I just reloaded my original index.php and it seems the new wordpress was happy to work with the old layout. Normal service has been resumed.

Although I will be doing a minor overhaul on the site. It’s time I cleared out some of the dead wood.

Well the upgrade seems to have gone okay. I just need to put my index.php and style sheets back.

I am going to upgrade to WordPress 1.5. Things might get a little broken around here for a while. Please bare with me.