Links for 2011-12-08

William Gibson is one of those writers whose name is in the process of becoming an adjective–consider Kafkaesque, Ballardian, Pynchonesque: words for which the meaning has become osmotically absorbed even by people who haven’t necessarily read the authors’ books. Now we have Gibsonesque (or perhaps “Gibsonian”? The jury remains out). As with all such things, it’s not necessarily easy to define–if it was, we wouldn’t have needed to adjective-ize the name to begin with.

[A]fter the BCS was released with Alabama ranked second, a whole new set of questions arose. Were quality wins more important than quality losses? Should a rematch be played? Should a team that couldn’t even win its own conference play for the national championship? In the midst of this dialogue, a separate debate raged over whether the BCS should be abolished in favor of a playoff. Most people support a playoff with some form of the BCS formula used to determine eligibility and seeding. Others want the BCS to remain intact. But all these debates miss the fundamental problem — the current BCS formula is a heavily flawed disaster. This formula came very close to destroying the façade of the BCS this year and represents a ticking time bomb waiting to explode on college football.

I notice it all the time- on Facebook, in the comments of a science blog, over family gatherings, or listening to a radio talk show. Someone, maybe you, is patiently trying to explain how vaccines cause autism, perhaps, or why so-called “anthropogenic” global warming is really just due to sunspots or some other natural cycle. Perhaps you are doing pretty well at first, making use of passionate, heart-felt rhetoric and well-timed anecdotes. People are nodding their heads in agreement, and perhaps you’re even changing someone’s mind. And then a scientist joins the discussion. The conversation tends to devolve from here, turning into a debate and (often) ultimately a debacle. Scientists are notoriously difficult to argue with- for one, they’re so sure they’re right! […] What makes it especially frustrating to argue with a scientist is the jargon they use; if you don’t speak their language, you’re probably not going to change their mind.

Hearing that, the good Christian people of Rhode Island realized that Chafee was right. Their Bibles, after all, don’t say anything at all about Christmas trees — a pre-Christian symbol from Pagan celebrations later adopted and syncretized into a Christian holiday — but those Bibles do have a great deal to say about feeding the needy. So … No, I’m kidding. Of course that’s not what happened. Chafee’s “holiday tree” gave these Christianists an excuse to pretend they’re being persecuted and nothing delights them more than a chance to pretend they’re being persecuted.

The cantaloupe-sized cannonball missed the water, tore through a cinder-block wall, skipped off a hillside and flew some 700 yards east, right into the Tassajara Creek neighborhood, where children were returning home from school at 4:15 p.m., authorities said. There, the 6-inch projectile bounced in front of a home on quiet Cassata Place, ripped through the front door, raced up the stairs and blasted through a bedroom, where a man, woman and child slept through it all – only awakening because of plaster dust.