Year: 2005

Irony in science or a bad example of Post Hoc

While reading through this excellent website I came across an article about Post Hoc logical fallacy. To freshen your memory, this article describes Post Hoc fallacy as follows:

A Post Hoc is a fallacy with the following form:

1. A occurs before B.
2. Therefore A is the cause of B.

There are also a few examples that help to understand this fallacy. Among these examples there is this one:

Bill purchases a new PowerMac and it works fine for months. He then buys and installs a new piece of software. The next time he starts up his Mac, it freezes. Bill concludes that the software must be the cause of the freeze.

I couldn’t help the smile. In the scope of logic as a science this example perfectly illustrates the point. But in the scope of computer science this quote would be a good example of the opposite. In other words, if you computer worked fine for months and than you installed a new piece of software on it, and it started to freeze – chances are that the software is the cause of problem.

Ironical, isn’t it?

WordPress plugins revisited

Since I just upgraded my WordPress installation, I thought it would be a good time to check what’s new in the plugin area. WordPress has a lot of attention recenlty, and thus, all sorts of extensions are flourishing. Here are the plugins that I decided to try out:

  • AuthorHighlight. The number of comments on my site is slowly rising and I thought that it would be nice to highlight my own comments differnently. I still have to configure the style.
  • Archives by Year. A really small change that makes a difference. I think archives are easier to use this way. More structure is better.
  • DoFollow. All comments on this site come pre-moderated and there is no SPAM at all, so there is no good reason not to give linked sites some credit.
  • List Manager. This is one of the most useful plugins ever! I wonder how come that I never wrote it myself. It allows to manage all sorts of lists through administration interface, rather than edit posts directly. I have switched my wishlist, movies to see, and 200 things to do lists already. While switching, I’ve updated and corrected some.

I’ve also seen a number of plugins that I considered for installation or even tried, but decided to leave out for the time being. If you have nothing better to do, I suggest you check them out once in a while – things grow and expand much faster than I want to follow.

Bumped it up to 1.5.2

I’ve been very lazy with site changes these days. It’s been almost a month since WordPress 1.5.2 was released. I have updated the site only today. There shouldn’t be any visible changes as most of the improvements are under the hood. If you see any problems with the new version – let me know.

Along Came Polly

Along Came Polly (2004)I once said that I don’t intentionally want to see another movie with Ben Stiller, but it was a long time ago and Jennifer Aniston was in it, so I decided to watch “Along Came Polly“.

Directed by: John Hamburg
Genres: Comedy, Romance
Cast: Ben Stiller, Jennifer Aniston, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Debra Messing, Alec Baldwin, Hank Azaria, Bryan Brown, Jsu Garcia, Michele Lee, Bob Dishy, Missi Pyle, Judah Friedlander, Kevin Hart, Masi Oka, Kym Whitley
IMDB raintg: 5.8
My rating: 3.0 [rate 3.0]

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Criminal

Random pick from a random pyle – “Criminal“.

Directed by: Gregory Jacobs
Genres: Drama, Comedy, Crime
Cast: John C. Reilly, Diego Luna, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Peter Mullan, Zitto Kazann, Jonathan Tucker, Laura Cerón, Soledad St. Hilaire, Ellen Geer, Brandon Keener, Nick Anavio, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, Maeve Quinlan, Brent Sexton, Malik Yoba
IMDB raintg: 6.5
My rating: 6.0 [rate 6.0]

Continue reading Criminal