Author: Rory

Over at Plasticbag, Tom’s got a pretty interesting discussion going on about genetic influences on sexuality. He makes a point of noting that he’s not an evolutionary biologist, but he’s clearly got a very good grasp on the most important point. The issue is that no-one (in the discussion at least; possibly no-one at all) can come up with a convincing advantage that might accompany homosexuality that would balance the fact that, clearly, gay people are less likely to reproduce.

The best suggestion so far, I think (and I would, because it’s mine), is that exclusive homosexuality is a relatively new phenomenon and one that only seems to exist in humans, so it’s likely to be a phycological or sociological extension of the more balanced bisexuality seen in many vertebrates.

The actual post includes extensive quotes from a New Scientist article (not available online) which has a very compelling explanation for why we can assume homosexuality has some evolutionary advantage, or at least no net disadvantage.

We’re number one. It’s been suggested that Mozilla.org got to where it is today by featuring the version numbers 1.x and 1.0.x a huge number of times. Whatever the reason, it seems Google considers it number one.

To balance the hardship and suffering displayed in the previous entry, I should note that I’m now the proud possessor of half a bicycle. In the juggling business we call them unicycles – from ‘uni’ meaning ‘one’, and ‘cycle’ presumably meaning ‘impossible to ride’. Let the games begin!

After months of telling Stephen that he should use Phry (my old content manager) to run his blog, he finally asked me for it at the beginning of my final semester. It turns out that it’s not as polished as I had thought, so the ‘small’ amount of work I would need to put in to make it useable for someone else turns out to be not so small. Worse, during a period of re-writing, it became obvious that most of its flaws had been ported to scatterbrain (my current content manager) during the Great Move of last summer.

The reason I mention this is that one of said bugs prevents my new custom error 404 page from displaying any style under most circumstances. Damn.

Djinn’s interactive story began today, with the first paragraph posted by your favourite blogger. I assume. It was me. The story is taking shape at http://netsoc.dit.ie/~joleary/story.php. I urge everyone to take part, even people who might not know Djinn or me – if there are any of you reading. Just write a paragraph to follow what’s there. I left it very open to begin with. Go write.

I know I’m being neglectful, but it seems I’m actually going to have to do some work for the next while. This means you’ll have to make the best of the links I throw at you without a standard witty write-up. For starters I’d like to point out the cyclone big enough to destroy a country.

The various questions surrounding theology have been mentioned with some frequency over the last year. This is mostly, or perhaps entirely, due to the fact that it is becoming increasingly acceptable to lack theistic belief. Despite this, I haven’t written a lot of serious debate on the issue. I am not about to start. Some points are better made by others, and I’m inclined to leave this one to the Richard Dawkins and Douglas Adams of the world.

I’ll do my part for the de-woolification of thinking by promoting those that do it best. In particular I want to point you to the Wonderful World of WinAce, which turns out to be far better than its design would lead you to believe.

A comment – by the eponimous WinAce – at Fark led me to his brilliantly ironic Organisms that Look Designed. This contains the following inspired quote:

Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose by God, but we won’t admit that even if he comes down from heaven and slaps us silly.

Ditchard Rawkins, Oxbored University Professor of Zoology by day, godless communist sympathizer by night

Digging deeper – or in fact equally deep, but in a different section – I found his Homorous Images for Online Use, further satirising clueless fundies and their arguments. And since I’ve mentioned the clueless fundies, check out Fundies Say the Darndest Things. Choice quote this time (there are thousands):

If you can quote one Biblical passage that proves God doesn’t exist, or Jesus didn’t come from God or that the moral standard didn’t come from God then I will start to think about what you are saying.

I was all set to laud this site for its satire – and plain old piss-taking – which is great in itself – when I discovered a serious aspect to the site. If you’re in a contemplative mood – and I recognise that people surfing the web very often aren’t – you may want to look into Questioning Theistic Beliefs. It presents a series of questions designed to ilicit that most dangerous commodities: rational thought. It leans towards questioning biblical fundamentalism, but much of it is relevant to many religions. A question at random:

Does the intentional destruction of every newborn in Egypt as a final demonstration of power to a stubborn Pharaoh seem more consistent with an actual act by a benevolent God than invention by a Bronze Age human writer?

Incidentally, the title of this entry is taken from the site; it’s not just an affirmation of my own personality.

As we approach the first anniversary of SoylentRed, I feel it’s appropriate to revisit its only real predesessor. I tried once to keep a diary, but the value of a diary is never immediately apparent. It only arises afterwards, when you read what you wrote years ago and far away.

I considered paraphrasing ("Nothing’s happening. Nothing’s happening. Something about a girl. It’s over. A lot of people look apathetic.") but I’m sufficiently removed from the Rory Parle of five years ago that I’m not really bothered just quoting. And making snide remarks of course. Everyone wants them.

The year is 1998. The date is January 3^rd.

This is my first ever diary so I don’t know what to write. I turn to ‘The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole’ for inspiration.

This is the familiar ‘I want to write, I’ve got the means to write, what do I write?’ feeling which can be seen recurring in the first few months of this blog. People don’t change.

These are my new year resolutions:

• I will keep my room tidy.

Clutter I have amassed since writing this includes a computer with no operating system, two stacks of Empire magazine, a pile of books that literally touched the ceiling before I split it into two piles (both now nearing the ceiling), four years of pay slips and bank statements and about as much clutter again of miscellany.

• I will not bite my nails.

I don’t know off hand which poor internet users might be interested in this fact, but this resolution still eludes me. I’m much better now though. It used to hurt.

• I will do well in my Junior Cert.

This one could take a whole entry on its own, but here’s a summary: nine honours – five As, one B, three Cs – in higher level papers. It was the second best in the class and in the year. It should have earned me a plaque, but the morons deciding who the plaque went to seemingly omitted Art or failed to distinguish higher from ordinary level, so the plaque went to Stephen. He will admit this to me but to no-one else.

Rules of my diary:

• Its contents are utterly secret.

Um…

• Knowledge of its existence will be minimal.

Well there aren’t that many people online.

• Entries will be made every night when possible

This one lasted three days. This being the 120^th entry, I’ve posted on average once every three days on SoylentRed.

The rest of the entry describes my first trip out of the house for several days, the fact that I had not played GTA at all that day – which seemed like quite an achievement, and the book I bought on writing science fiction. The desire to write showed itself again.

In the interests of full disclosure, I have to admit that the list of Christmas presents I recieved in 1997 includes Spiceworld by the Spice Girls, Men in Black by Will Smith and Barbie Girl by Aqua. Annoyingly, I only thought to note the name of one of the books I got – Jingo by Terry Pratchett (some redemption at last). Interestingly my godfather gave me almost the exact same present as this year.

It’s about time. Pardon the pun. It was pointed out to me today – in Real Life if you believe it – that I had updated the about section of this site. This was not something I had been aware of. A number of weeks ago – about the time that the little blue box appeared on the front page – I rewrote most of the about section. I figured that a prominant link on the front page required some actual content at the end of it. I never uploaded the changes, believing that their completion was just around the corner.

At the time of the site-wide redesign – a few days ago – I made several code changes and style changes at the same time. To save me the effort of determining what files I had changed – and since I have bandwidth to burn – I just uploaded the whole directory from my home computer. Including the new about section. It was still unfinished, but it’s easier to just write the damn thing than to change the page to say ‘under construction’. Not to mention the fact that ‘under construction’ is pretty well the leperosy of the web. So I finished it. And it is explainful.