Off By One

This is a two-pronged posting:

Domain name change

First, as you probably failed to notice when you clicked into the comments on the pages, there’s a new name for this site, in terms of ways to get to it: www.offby1.net. The old offlineblog.com address won’t stop working, so worry not, but offby1.net is now the preferred URL, and all links on the site will point to it, as soon as I figure out how to walk my MySQL database and convert all of the old URLs.

Anti-scientific idiocy

Second is a pointer to some more ludditism: The New Internationalist, a newsmagazine recommended to me by Char is a mostly-interesting alternative view on the world; not one with which I agree on most points, but nonetheless a refreshing perspective, but subject to some of the common flaws of its kind, including this example of total technological paranoia, calling for a small, but scary, symbol for nanotechnology, and demonstrating a complete inability to distinguish means from ends. This mini article is analogous to calling for a warning label on all products made with screwdrivers.

Why can’t people pull their heads from their asses and ensure that they know what they’re protesting? I want to ask if it’s too much to ask for people to inform themselves, but the ‘protest movement’ is an adequate demonstration that I needn’t bother; it is too much to ask.

A choice quote:

Yet invisible nanomaterials are already being used in our food, cosmetics, pesticides and clothing, even though they are not labelled and we do not know what their health and environmental impacts might be.

Uhm…

You do know that your “invisible nanomaterials” are completely indistinguishable from atoms, right? It’s almost like (gasp!) matter is entirely made up of some “invisible nanomaterials” whose characteristics are not completely understood.