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posted by [personal profile] emperor at 04:32pm on 04/04/2008 under
My LJ is 7 years old today. I seem to only intermittently comment upon this milestone. I've been back and tagged all previous posts made on 4/4 "ljversary". I also note that it was 5 years ago today that I first made mcdp work. I've added a load more features since then, but it's still what I use for cd-playing. There was even a disorder plugin for a while, although it needed Some Work.

There are lots of things I sort-of want to LJ about, but at the moment they never quite match my mood. Maybe later.
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posted by [personal profile] emperor at 03:08pm on 04/04/2006 under
[usual disclaimers about theological posts apply]

It is, I think, fairly self-evident that science and (Christian) theology are uncomfortable bed-follows. Many scientists regard Christians with suspicion, and vice versa. The two disciplines are, to my mind, asking essentially different questions, but nevertheless do interact, more or less fruitfully.

One subject that I've discussed with friends from a theological perspective recently on a couple of occasions is the problem of nature being "red in tooth and claw". Why, in a world created by a loving God, do some animals make a living out of eating other animals? There are many approaches to answering this question, but I was intruiged to spot an article in Nature referring to a paper in the Journal of Ecology this week that suggested another approach: predators may actually be necessary for the balance of an ecosystem with plants and herbivores in. The work published this week is the result of monitoring the biodiversity on the islands created when what is now Lake Guri was flooded. On the smaller islands there are no predators, and so the extant herbivores are slowly destroying the plant biodiversity on those islands; on the bigger islands where there are predators, the natural order is preserved.

It would be foolish to claim that this solves the issue I mentioned, but it's certainly an interesting piece of scientific work that could (and I venture to suggest should) inform theological reflection.

References:
News and views piece Nature 440, 613-614
Original article Terborgh, J. , Feeley, K. , Silman, M. , Nuñez, P. & Balukjian, B. J. Ecol. 94, 253–263 (2006)

[you may need a site licence or athens account to view these]
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posted by [personal profile] emperor at 02:11pm on 04/04/2006 under
A while ago, I read the Nature comparative review of Britannica online and Wikipedia with some interest: despite all the concerns raised about the potential unreliability of a wiki-based reference work, Wikipedia was of comparable accuracy to Britannica.

I was a little surprised by Britannica's robust response to the article; if they'd said nothing, the world at large would have forgotten fairly quickly. Maybe they thought that Nature's editorial team would lie down and play dead if shouted at.

I am unsurprised to note that Nature has done nothing of the sort. It sticks to its guns vigorously and is refusing to retract the article.

I am entertained by the fracas, and interested by what it says both about the relative merits of Wikipedia and Britannica, and indeed about how the two publications view each other.
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posted by [personal profile] emperor at 01:56pm on 04/04/2005 under
...to my LJ! It's 4 today.
Mood:: 'content-free' content-free
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posted by [personal profile] emperor at 08:00pm on 04/04/2003 under
Today is the second anniversary of my Livejournal - I've been boring you all with rubbish for two whole years now. I think some drink should be consumed in honour of this evening.

Today I've written almost a complete CD-playing application. Go me :) It has error-checking and everything. All in 500 lines of code. Looping and random play will be added tommorow, probably.

The first entry was here
Mood:: 'indescribable' indescribable
Music:: Killing Miranda: My housemate is a sad old goth :-)
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posted by [personal profile] emperor at 11:46pm on 04/04/2001 under
By grand tradition, I guess this should be a luser-ish "first entry" entry. So nerr. Today was fairly idle really, and I didn't get *that* covered in blood...
Mood:: 'tired' tired

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