Oh. Right. Today.

Almost wasted. I had to go for an employment agency meeting with someone who turned out to be sick. So I waited for an hour to be told I had not been processed properly and perhaps must wait for the end of the month.

I did get, however, to make a bit of a start on Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders. That was interesting.

Captain's Log, Additional

I was just conscripted for an emergency drive. It was delightful. Here, in the still-light early evening, cool and breezy with the promise of rain to make one feel life flowing through veins, are the days I live for.

'Twas perfect driving weather, though windows must remain shut until my hair is either restrained or shortened (new objective: discover how to wear hairbands with glasses), until it turned into the rainiest rain I ever did drive through. After I was pointed to the various anti-rain defences it was all okay and turned into a challenge to balance the whee of going fast in the rain with the eek of losing control and exploding (I erred on the side of anti-eek). The roads looked like thin rivers flowing over sheeted glass. Beautiful!

I Have SEEN The Light!

    Reading through the 56th Skeptic's Circle I had an epiphany near the beginning of Tara C. Smith|Aetiology's entry Skiff: long on rhetoric, short on light. When she wrote:

"Presenting a typical creationist background ("I was raised to be a
'Darwinist'"), Skiff began by documenting his early educational
history, where he claimed he was "trained to see religion as an
obstacle to knowledge" and then became a Christian after reading the
Bible in college."

    I had not realised until I saw them both mixed in together but the conversion stories that make up the standard presentation are very similar: "I was once a sinner" vs. "I was once a Darwinist [whatever that is]". I suppose that goes along with the equally standard and also silly claim that evolution is a religion, which apparently is a bad thing when that religion is not Christianity.
    This sort of story is not going to have much effect on anyone who knows what's what except to annoy them but I believe it can be powerful for swaying the uninformed. If a person pretends they were once a whole-hearted supporter of something but later changed their mind after learning more about it, well, it sets them up as someone who is knowledgeable on the subject, someone honest about their position, someone open-minded enough to give things a chance before rejecting them, an independent thinker. People love following independent thinkers.

Lara Croft: Quantum Function

    Thanks to the very educational Jennifer Ouellete|Cocktail Party Physics for pointing me to this marvellous post by Terence Tao, who is apparently some kind of mathematician.