For the search in my weblog, I should change it so that if a search returns more than 20 entries or so, I give a list of all found entries rather than just dumping all the entries out.

Quick PHP tip. I've seen lots of people run into this: if you're using PHP sessions, depending on how your copy of PHP is configured you'll get URLs that look like this: "http://domain.com/?PHPSESSID=1bf25e86558f71d0cab893a2ecdd7327". This is PHP doing URL-rewriting for you to propagate the session id.

To turn it off use the following line at the top of your script:
ini_set("session.use_trans_sid", "0");

You'll typically get URLs like that the first time you go to a site, and then when you start clicking on links it goes away. The reason is that the first time you go to the site, PHP creates a session. However, since your browser didn't send back a cookie containing the session id for that request, PHP doesn't know whether your browser has cookies turned off or whether it's just the first time you're coming to the site. So if you're configured to do url-rewriting, PHP does the "safe" thing and rewrites your urls so that the session id gets propagated.

The next page you go to on the site, your browser will send the cookie back to the server, and PHP will realize that your browser is using cookies to pass the session id, so it will stop rewriting your URLs, and everything will look normal.

Yeah, there are some smart people out there. Via LtU, some solutions to ITA Software's programming problems. The Add-A-Gram solution makes really good use of C++ template classes, and is much shorter than I thought it would be.

A new URL for diveintomark: http://diveintomark.org/. Unfortunately, all his archives seem to be tied to the old site. That's why I always say "roll your own" and host it yourself. You have control over everything, and you'll never be left having to write scripts to convert from one format to another. And if you roll your own, use a database!

I suppose a quick rebuttal before your coming rebuttal is in order (By the way, I love weblogs)

I'll deal with the most important thing first (even though that violates emphatic order?). "Macro-evolution is simply the result of cumulative micro-evolutionary steps." - That's absolutely not the case. The mechanisms are completely different. Unfortunately, a lot of these terms are often used with fuzzy definitions, so let me clarify:

Micro-evolutionary changes are those changes that deal with simply a "reshuffling" of existing information. Mutation is not the mechanism here. Micro-evolution explains things like why we look like a combination of our parents, and how genes work to give us inheritable traits.

Macro-evolutionary changes are those changes which involve a change in the DNA that never existed before. The only agent of macro-evolution is mutation. People who would support macro-evolution must show that there is a mechanism by which we can account for an increase in complexity in an organism due to random mutations. There's more, but I'll leave it at that for now.

Finally, the term "natural selection" refers to the process by which beneficial traits (that have come about through either macro-evolutionary processes or micro-evolutionary processes) are passed on to future generations, and detrimental traits are wiped out, according to "the survival of the fittest"

Also, about the computer models showing how something like the human eye can evolve from a "light-sensitive patch" of cells: I don't buy it. Of course, I'd have to reserve final judgement until I see an example, but there are reasons why these programs don't necessarily accurately represent actual evolutionary processes.

Finally, I honestly don't get your animal with wheels example But before I go, I'll bring up an example of my own that I've never heard an explanation for. How could the transition from single-cellular organisms to multi-cellular organisms have come about?

Oh, one more thing. Shortly before I first read that article that I linked to immediately above, there was another article, possibly at infidels.org, that came up with "seven proofs" or something for evolution. I found the article very interesting, and learned about things I didn't know before, such as that people have written programs that can evolve themselves to perform an action with greater precision.

Another one of the examples the article gave was that of a computer program which was designed to run indefinitely and reproduce itself. The computer program was the simplest they knew how to make, and fit in 80 bytes or something. After it ran for a while, they found after a while that there were 40-something byte programs hanging around in the machine too, piggybacking off of the reproduction code in the 80 byte beasts. I guess you could call them parasites.

Anyway, the article was very interesting. I don't believe any of the examples it gave were analogous to evolution, but I really wish I could find it again. If anyone knows which article I'm referring to and knows where it is, please tell me.

Update, while searching for the original article I mentioned, I found this article describing the artificial computer ecology of reproducing programs which evolved parasites, etc. This seems like it might be an interesting read, but there's no way I'm reading it now... too tired.

Finally found it. The link's at the bottom of the page. Unfortunately, the link is broken! Argh.

Via Keith, N Korea hits back at Bush's 'evil' tag:

Carrying echoes of both Ronald Reagan's 'Evil Empire' speech in the 1980s and implying similarities with the Axis alliance between Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan in the 1940s, the label is one of the harshest used by a U.S. administration to describe North Korea.

In the past, North Korea, Iraq and Iran have been described as a "rogue states" whose military policy and support of other groups are seen by Washington as a threat to its security.

The United States, Bush said, would not permit "the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."

However, White House officials have since sought to clarify that the naming of North Korea, Iraq and Iran does not signify any imminent military action against them.

They say rather it is designed to put them on notice that Washington is keeping them under close surveillance.

Ok, well my own custom markup language is just about done. The parser weighs in at under 200 lines, and will hopefully be smaller once I clean it up. I'll probably put it on my software page once it's done so anyone can benefit. Once it's done I can finally use it for things like my weblog posts, and an article I've been wanting to write.

I'll have to do some timing to see how slow the thing is though. Lots of regular expressions, but it only makes one pass over its input (besides a potential one line "peek").

Via lgf, The Far Left in A Nutshell.