test

test for commenting

Update: I think I figured it out.  Comments should work better now.

From my phone I can comment.  From my computer, I'm only able to  comment if I use a separate page for  comments.

The Baker and the Beast

I have an idea for a movie.  It's a moving tale of passion and vocation.  I've pitched it to my wife and a few friends, and all agree, it's pretty brilliant.

Since it infringes on all kinds of Disney copyright, and since the premise is kind of ridiculous, it will never actually be made into a movie.  So I figured I'd just pitch it here.

The genesis.

So, I hate pop music.

Replies not working

I just want to apologize to people who have commented and I haven't replied.  For some reason, Blogger is eating my reply comments, so that after I hit "submit" the reply doesn't get saved to the server.

A similar problem also happens to people trying to comment on older posts with lots of comments.  I can't complain about Blogger, it being free and all, but I will need to look into my server situation and perhaps go with a different hosting platform.

UPDATE: I think the problem is my computer's browser (safari).  I tried updating all of my computer's software, but it still doesn't work very well with Blogger.  I have tried responding to some comments three or four times now, and this is really frustrating.

I am a monotheist about Zeus

Growing up in the time I did, I have had plenty of chances to hear atheists -- on talk shows, PBS documentaries, classrooms, debates, YouTube videos, internet forums -- present their arguments, and I've heard almost all of them by now.  There are especially some arguments that get brought up rather frequently, and then keep getting repeated for years later.

There's one in particular I want to address, the "One God Further" argument.  I believe the argument originates with Richard Dawkins, but I have certainly heard Christopher Hitchens and others make similar arguments on stage.  This argument is that we are all atheists about most of the gods anyone has ever claimed to believe in.  I'm an atheist about Zeus, Hercules, Mithras, Minerva or any of these other figures.  Dawkins simply goes one god further than I do.

And so, to clarify this issue once and for all, let me just resolutely state that I am not an atheist about Zeus.

I'm really not.

I am a monotheist about Zeus.

My issue with Zeus isn't that he's clearly ridiculous and there's no evidence for him.  I mean, yeah, Zeus is pretty ridiculous and there's no evidence for him.  But that isn't really my objection to Zeus worship.

My objection to Zeus worship is that Zeus isn't the kind of thing that should be rightly called a god, or the kind of thing that should be worshipped.

Easier way to replicate funky dice for DCC RPG using regular d6s

I recently came across the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG and have been pretty hooked by the game since then.  The game introduces a lot of very interesting new mechanics into an over-troped hobby, most notably the magic system, the level-0 funnel, the Warrior's Might Deeds, and the dice chain, all of which bring back some of the spice of adventure and originality.

Learning Fortran is a waste of your time

Suppose you are an advanced student of physics, and you're just beginning your first research experience with a new professor.  You're excited about the opportunities this means for your future, fascinated by the implications of the research, and anxious to please.  Your professor tells you you need to run a computer simulation, and this is also exciting; you've never used a computer as a computer before -- usually just as an internet browser.  To get you started, he points you to a reference text with some sample code, or sends you one he has on his hard drive somewhere.

This code will be written in Fortran.  They all are.  All legacy codes are Fortran.

So what is Fortran?  Fortran is a high-level programming language designed back in the 50's.  Here "high-level" means that it is not assembly language, and the programmer does not directly interact with machine elements like bits, bytes, or memory addresses, though Fortran is much "lower-level" than most modern languages like Java or Python, meaning it is only just a step or two above machine code.  The name "Fortran" is short for "Formula Translation," as the language was intended to more directly translate a mathematical formula into computer code; Fortran allowed, for instance, an entire mathematical expression to be written out as a single line of code, as opposed to assembly, which would require multiple lines of register swapping and simple operations to acheive the same result.

You'll get the sample code and look at it, and it will be completely incomprehensible.  They all are.  All Fortran codes are incomprehensible.

Why is this?  There are a lot of things that contribute to the issue.

The Ukrainians From ZRus Who 'Read' My Blog

If you are a fellow user of Blogger or a similar platform, then you have probably noticed that you get a significant amount of traffic from websites in Ukraine or Russia, many with the specific domain name zrus.org.  You're probably curious about who these Ukrainians linking to your blog might be.  You may even be a little bit flattered that your tiny blog is getting international recognition.

Don't get excited, and whatever you do, do NOT click any link to these websites.  This is a well-known scourge on the blogger community, and clicking the links could infect your computer with malware.

These sites are a malicious scam.  Let me explain how this scam works.