The road to perl is paved with good intentions.
Well, the perl blog quiz script is done. You can give it
a trial run or
download it for your own use from the
blogquiz page.
Soon there will be an exciting mod quiz, but for the moment, the results
are a bit dull:
You Are Category 2
People of category 2 are…
Take the Which Category are You? Quiz
Lori linked the
Partial
Logic Test. I got all the questions right and wondered why they were
all the same question. I guess it explains a lot about the world that 75-80% of
people can’t follow conditional statements. I shouldn’t be surprised when I say
if P then Q and everyone blows up at me because they think I
said if Q then P.
A quote from the explanation you get after you take the test
(no cheating, please!):
One of the most interesting things about this
phenomenon is that even when the correct answer is pointed out, people feel
resistance to it.
There are a number of important implications of the fact that we tend to be
bad at the Wason selection task (and indeed, other similar tasks, e.g., the
conjunction problem). One has to do with the notion of justified belief. If a
belief is recognised to be based on defective reasoning, then to continue to
believe it is not justified. But if we systematically, and unconsciously, reason
badly, then the extent to which reason actually acts as a constraint on belief
is a moot point.
The more I think about this, the more depressing it is. It would make a
good sci-fi story, though - something along the lines of Forever
Peace, except the thing killing intelligent species would be sheer
irrationality, rather than primitive aggression.
It hasn’t been ten minutes since I threatened to do this on ASC, and here it is:
Title: Filk, Filk a Filk Original: "Sing, Sing a Song" Disclaimer: Lyrics and music of "Sing, Sing a Song" are by Joe Raposo. This parody is protected as such by the copyright laws of the United States of America. ***** Filk, filk a filk Filk it proud Filk it long Filk of science not faith Filk of species not race. Filk, filk a filk Make a rondel to last The whole night long Don't worry that it won't rhyme enough for anyone else to bear Just filk, filk a filk. Filk, filk a filk Let the stars filk along Filk of futures to be Filk of Adam and Eve. Filk, filk a filk Make a rondel to last The whole night long Don't worry that it won't rhyme enough for anyone else to bear Just filk, filk a filk.
Plus, a blogsticker from the blogsticker factory: 
I’ve been surfing blog quizzes in search of the perfect script
for Liz’s
evil plan. (That link will expire, but the permalink wasn’t working.) First
I checked all the quizzes in my quiz category;
which led me to The
What Should Your New Year’s Resolution Be? Quiz. If you view the source,
you’ll see it’s based on javascript.
I’d rather Perl, so I continued my quest, taking the occasional quiz along the way:
HEIGHT="31" BORDER="0" ALT="manila"> |
| You are a very conservative and introverted person. You live in your own world and you’re not very easy to approach. |
That one was javascript. In the following one, the whole page was
generated by a perl script.
I finally found an actual script:
Quizmaster,
which looks like more than I need.
The fanfic list is in a
previous
post.
Which Episode II character are you?
Probably the greatest Jedi Knight of all. Like Obi Wan, you are wise and keep your feet on the ground at all times. You will not be outsmarted by anyone. You are always faithful to your friends. Be careful though, danger lurks around every corner - you could even be betrayed by those closest to you.
This is the inaugural entry in my new sci-fi category, for the moment. Eventually, my other blog will get imported into MT and there will be plenty of back-entries on the topic. I’ve learned a lot from fandom, and one of the most important lessons is never let your real opinions slip out. But I’ve already alienated everyone who wanted to be alienated in fandom - an unintentional slash-and-burn, but a useful one nonetheless - so I can move the other blog here without any major worries that David Brin will hate me forever for my personal opinion of his fiction.
I went shoe-shopping yesterday, and, as usual, found no shoes. I came home with a bag full of used and remaindered books, though. You should have seen the one that got away… One of the ones that got away was a new anthology by Orson Scott Card, of the best stories of the century. I glanced through the table of contents and was pleased to see my favorite short story in there: “Dark they were, and golden-eyed,” by Ray Bradbury.
I wandered over to OSC’s page today to track down the title of the anthology, but I was distracted from my quest by his Open Letter
to fellow Mormons about whether he plagiarised the Book of Mormon for one of his novels. There are bits of the letter that are rather interesting, especially the part about science fiction being the only practical method of discussing moral and cosmological issues across the gulf between worldviews. He seems like quite an interesting guy. I had no idea he was a Mormon, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
For reader convenience, here are some (non-contiguous) quotes from OSC’s open letter:
You cannot plagiarize history.
[…] I nevertheless had in mind one of Milton’s goals: To make the central defining myth of my own people available to those who do not believe it as scripture but might nevertheless respond to it as story.
You don’t have to know the Book of Mormon to read The Memory of Earth, because if fiction works at all, it works as a story in itself without the reader resorting to specific knowledge of other literature.
Indeed, I believe that speculative fiction is the one literary tradition available today to writers who would like to deal seriously with great moral, religious, cosmological, and eschatalogical issues without confining themselves to members of a particular religious group. That is, if I want to write about the end of the world, and I do it in a specifically LDS context, then I will only be able to speak to other Latter-day Saints because my work, avowedly religious and tied to just one religion, could only be published within and for the LDS community. But when I deal with such issues in the context of science fiction or fantasy, the issue of belief is sidestepped and the ideas can be developed as thought experiments which a much wider audience can take part in, so that my speculations and explorations can be shared with and responded to by a much wider spectrum. Stupid people don’t read science fiction, and few closed- minded ones either, with the result that by writing stories dealing with issues that I care about and believe in, I can get a much more serious reception from the science fiction community than I would ever get were I treating such issues in the so-called “mainstream.”
In short, while never overtly talking about religion at all, I can deal with religious, theological, and moral issues with greater clarity in science fiction than anywhere else, precisely because science fiction allows the writer to set these issues at one remove, freeing writer and reader from biases and issues relating to particular religions or philosophies in the present world.
You can read the original Ender’s Game on OSC’s page. And don’t click on the “More” link below unless you’re ready for a slam from a Big Name Writer. (Don’t make me say I told you so…)