That old Second Law

The Second Law of Thermodynamics argument is one of the hoariest, silliest claims in the creationist collection. It's self-refuting. Point to the creationist: ask whether he was a baby once. Has he grown? Has he become larger and more complex? Isn't he standing there in violation of the second law himself? Demand that he immediately regress to a slimy puddle of mingled menses and semen.

P. Z. Myers, Pharyngula

Anecdotal and amusing

Today, I went to Khatsalano Clinic to see a doctor¹. It's a small walk-in clinic, but I really rather like it; I've seen two different doctors there, both of whom were very, very nice, and took a few minutes to chit-chat. The doctor I saw today asked about my reading material (I'm reading The Panda's Thumb by Stephen Jay Gould), and we traded a few remarks about authors of books on evolutionary biology. It turns out that we both hold Richard Dawkins in high esteem, particularly enjoy The Selfish Gene², and I rather share the opinion he expressed that The God Delusion is a book of good, common sense…

He also asked my occupation, et cetera. On the subject of computers and software development, he briefly mentioned that he's a Linux user himself—but, here comes the good part. Way back when, he was a resident at a hospital in Alberta (a university hospital?) in the Ob/Gyn department. As part of his duties as a resident doctor, he had some med students assigned to him for various periods of time. Some of them weren't really planning to make a career out of Ob/Gyn, and he told them that it was no skin off his back if they just did the basics, what they needed, and spent the remaining time doing something else. A bunch of such med students did precisely that, and spent a fair amount of time writing and working on some projects in their notebooks.

This lackadaisical Ob/Gyn students' project was eventually released under the title of Baldur's Gate.

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I don't know exactly how accurate this anecdote was, but Wikipedia will confirm at least that the founders of Bioware went to med school in Alberta. Whether it was exactly this project they were working on at the time mentioned…I don't know, but does it matter? I still find the whole thing curiously amusing, six degrees statistics notwithstanding.

¹ Mostly to renew a prescription, but also to have my right ear checked out. I correctly suspected that I had an impacted wax buildup—I bet you wanted to know that. It means that I feel as if I'd shoved about a bagful of cotton into my ear; I can hear very little on that side, especially high-frequency sounds, and since everything reverberates through my skull my hearing is affected in general. Hopefully, I'll be able to get rid of it in a few days. Blessed relief of aural pressure, I can hear again!

² If you haven't read it, what's your excuse?