Elegant Chaos

Caroline pointed out this little tidbit from the New Scientist.

THE board for Beebe School District in Arkansas voted on 12 July to remove from textbooks stickers promoting an "intelligent designer" over evolution. Feedback wonders if they were influenced by an open letter to the State Board of Education in neighbouring Kansas circulated by Bobby Henderson, a "concerned citizen".

"Let us remember that there are multiple theories of intelligent design," is its crux. "I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster," Henderson affirms.

Actually Caroline was pointing me at the story about Microsoft and Apple on the same page, but it was the Flying Spaghetti Monster that caught my eye.

A few weeks ago I posted a rant about spam and how I'd quite enjoy the irony if a bunch of "good hackers" decided to take down the sites of some of the spammers.

According to the BBC, it looks like it's already happening.

I'm not sure what I feel about this sort of vigilante action.

On the one hand, it seems like it might be setting a dangerous precedent. On the other hand, people who send spam are moronic fuckers who are ruining the internet for their own personal gain, and I have no sympathy whatsoever for them.

Kevin Marks pointed out Danny O'Brien's pledge over at PledgeBank, to create a British equivalent of the EFF.

This sounds like a sensible idea to me, particularly with the current political climate. Sign up please!