A perpetual problem with scientific software is that much of it starts out as one-time scripts written to analyze a specific piece of data, and then it gets released into the wild as The Way To Analyze This Type Of Data. A closely related problem, which affects repositories of scientific software, is that a kind of informal API develops among the developers and users (who are initially the same people) of packages within the repository, without ever being really documented in a way that makes sense to people who have not been involved in the development. What documentation there is tends be rather ... self-referential, shall we say, and assume a whole lot of background knowledge about how the software works which new users will, in almost all cases, not have.

Not to break my arm patting myself on the back, but I have to say that my years of industry experience in writing end-user applications, and managing a development team made up of people who had all joined the team at different times and had to understand what was going on, taught me a lot about how to write good documentation. Industry programmers could learn a lot from academia about how to make software run better, because scientific users have to squeeze every possible bit of performance out of every processor cycle. Academic programmers could learn a lot from industry about how to write documentation that allows people to use that performance without wanting to tear their hair out.

... I have to admire the Republicans for their ability to stick to their predefined narrative, even when it's the exact opposite of reality. The purpose of CISPA is "creating this monster here in Washington to control what we would see and not see on the Internet." Obama's veto threat is aimed at preventing the creation of such a monster. But that doesn't fit with Boehner's definition of The Way Things Are, so ...

Boehner rebukes W. H. on CISPA veto threat

... because you know, James Lovelock. And somebody lost his temper in an e-mail once. And haha, Al Gore is fat.

Antarctic ice melting from below, reveals satellite

This has garnered lots of comments along the lines of "Great, now schoolkids in TN can give answers based on Islam / Buddhism / Hinduism / FSMism and get full credit and there's nothing they can do about it! Be careful what you ask for, fundies! Hah hah hah!"

It does not work that way. Here's how it will work. Religious answers which will be acceptable, and more generally, religious challenges to school authority which will be acceptable, will be those based in Christianity, specifically fundamentalist Protestantism. And students who profess other beliefs will be even more ostracized than they already are. This is what the sponsors of the bill wish to achieve, and if the bill becomes law and survives the inevitable court challenges, it is what they will achieve. To think anything else is naivete of the highest and most dangerous order

You have to read carefully to understand what's really being debated here. Short version: in 2008, Louisiana passed a law which more or less mandated the teaching of creationism, Luddism, and denialism, and now they're trying to repeal it. I don't know enough about the current state of LA politics to know if the repeal effort has a prayer (hah!) of succeeding, but I wish the best of luck to Sen. Peterson, Mr. Kopplin, and their supporters.

What makes this particularly irritating is that the language of the 2008 law is designed to make it hard to challenge; its supporters can ask with wide-eyed innocence, "Who could POSSIBLY object to 'critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion'?"

The answer, of course, is "nobody but a bunch of creationists, which is why we want to repeal the law." But the wording is an ugly trick, on par with the title of the USA-PATRIOT Act. See also, "But Hussein is his middle name! Why do you have a problem with his name?" and other acts of right-wing disingenuousness.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the "if we teach Biblical creationism then we have to teach all the other religions' creation myths too" argument is a bad one to use against these loons. They're not interested in "religious freedom" or "equal time" or anything else of the sort; what they want is a Christian (specifically fundamentalist evangelical Protestant) theocracy, and no one should have any illusions about their goals. If they get their way, we will have to teach (their version of) Biblical creationism, and we will not have to, or even be allowed to, teach anything else.

The same goes for the closely related "if we have Christian prayers in schools, then we also have to have Jewish / Muslim / Buddhist / Hindu / Wiccan / Satanist / etc. prayers too" idea. This is an appealing argument to tolerant, open-minded liberals, but it is a dangerous misunderstanding of the thinking of the religious Right.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/01/12/missouri-republicans-introduce-bill-that-forces-educators-to-teach-creationism-in-schools-and-universities/

If the DNC did this, then every Democratic candidate for office, from Obama down to the guy running for county dogcatcher, would be peppered with endless questions about it at every press conference, and would have to issue a statement either endorsing or repudiating the Committee's stance. It would be the greatest campaign issue for the Republicans in recent history, and they wouldn't let it slip by them. It would, more or less, be equivalent to the entire Democratic ticket saying, "You know what, we don't really care about 2012, you guys can have it."

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/01/11/402358/republican-national-committee-files-brief-seeking-to-allow-corporate-funding-of-campaigns/

I will now eagerly await the actions of the Democratic attack machine on this story in 3, 2, 1, ... still counting ..., 0, -1, -2, ... um, guys?

We have already seen that "piracy" (in the IP sense, not in the original meaning of the word) is one of four root passwords to the Constitution. The others are "drugs," "child porn," and "terrorism." It's time to fight fire with fire.

I therefore propose that We the People, in order to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish these Talking Points:

(1) Lamar Smith gets campaign contributions from drug dealers!

(2) PIPA stands for "Porn Infant Porn for All!" You know it's really bad 'cause it's got "porn" in it twice.

(3) If SOPA passes, the terrorists have won.

None of this actually makes sense, of course, but if we repeat it loudly enough and often enough, it should work.

This is a nice, compact debunking of the "B-b-but in the 1970's all the scientists were predicting global COOLING!" meme that the denialists seem unable to resist. It won't help with the hardcore denialists, of course -- "You can't reason someone out something he didn't reason himself into" -- but it's worth keeping around to show those who might be on the fence. Be sure to follow the links; there's some good stuff there.

Derailing for Dummies

I'm not going to say I agree completely with all the arguments herein, but it nonetheless ought to be required reading for anyone (and particularly, yes, for white men) who is considering jumping into discussions about race, sex, religion, and other Sensitive Subjects. It strikes me as being akin to lists of common logical fallacies -- not at all (a large number of Slashdotters to the contrary) the be-all and end-all of understanding how to have a good debate, but an incredibly useful tool for understanding the basics of how not to make yourself look like a fool.