Category: Personal

An article in this week’s Time (A Test of Kerry’s Faith) points out some contradictions of modern life and especially politics. The article looks at the conflict between John Kerry’s professed Catholic beliefs, Catholic Church officials’ statements on belief and politics and Kerry’s position statements on related issues like abortion and gay marriage.

The Church statements say that Catholic politicians have an obligation, in order to maintain their good standing in the Church, to vote and make every effort to follow Church teachings on these issues. For example, Kerry and other politicians, therefore, must vote against allowing abortions and in favor of making them illegal but Kerry has always voted pro choice. Recently, Church officials have taken their positions to an even more certain level by stating that politicians at any level of government who do not vote in line with the teachings will not be permitted Communion and other graces.

So we come down to the nub. America among those countries with both political freedom and religious variation and so some politicians, just like some number of other citizens, have come to hold positions on issues in conflict with what the leaders of their religion claims is the Godly choice. The Roman Catholic Church is a strong example of this, IMO, because of its extremely hierarchical structure and insistence on Papal infallibility. We Americans claim to have and to support separation of church and state and to leave explicit religious instruction at the doorway of the legislatures and council halls but then turn and see this is far from the truth.

Just another reason why I believe organized religion–especially the true, fanatical believers–is not only a foolish remnant of less-sophisticated, less-educated times but also a hindrance to further social evolution and cultural maturation. I obviously believe Kerry is a far better choice in the November election but one can only wonder how this factor will play out in states where the outcome is still undecided.

Joe’s latest project: weekend mode… aka

Pam made some sweet music tonight at the Harmony Bakery in Palo Alto and TS1 and I were there to enjoy most of it. She sang and played piano, accompanied by her friend Tim on acoustic guitar. Most of the songs were unfamiliar to me except for her original composition, 400 Miles, which is a beautiful song she wrote for her fiance Henry before they got engaged. They’ll be playing again the last Friday of April at the same space, try and catch them.

The SEC is going to use $52.5 million dollars out of the settlements paid by various Wall Street firms for the nefarious schemes–misconduct by research analysts–to fund investor education programs. Does this sound to anyone else the way it does to me, that this money will essentially be used to advertise services of which the guilty parties are the largest sellers? Education my ass.

Wow: The Israel Defense Forces is equipping its forces with a new range of spy drones small enough to fit in a soldier’s backpack. Even smaller models to follow soon. Wonder if the pricing and image quality on these would make them interesting additions for TV sports broadcasting.

Are you a healthy nosepicker?

Another good idea I want to implement after work. Later: I would do this except that, of course, Blogger does not give us access to the RSS template for editing. Got to ask Steve when this will change…

President Bush needs to learn the difference between gentle fun and buffoonery.

Many, many news reports have shown that Diebold and other voting machine vendors have performed terribly in recent elections, yet the county registrars who make the contracts for these machines have not stood up and demanded answers. Yesterday, that changed when the Alameda County Registrar sent a formal demand for compliance to Diebold demanding “deliver within 10 days a written plan to correct multiple problems.” Kudos to Brad Clark for finally showing at least his citizens that at least one county is not just in the vendor’s pocket!

Where have all the naked people gone? There used to be naked people everywhere, on the train, in any random Starbucks, but now, well, I just don’t see them even in the most obvious places.

Props to Martin Brodeur on becoming the youngest goalie ever to reach the 400 win plateau! And how about another Cup to top off the season, eh?

All you Microsoft Bloggers, please explain to me why updating Office requires the original CD in the drive. And when it’s there, why does the installer fail to find it, ask repeatedly for it and then when I tell the installer the original disk is right where the supplied dialog suggests it ought to be, it takes forever to see it?

And an Outlook spam filter request: how about an option to mark all mail to a given address or from any sender in an entire top level domain (that is, anything from .ru or .kr), or as junk?

Bring Back Kirk has released its second trailer, what seems to me to be a pretty amazing effort by a volunteer group of fans who have some good ideas on how to revitalize the franchise. Their HTML skills could use some help but do yourself a favor and download and watch their nine minute production.

Presumably the same fraudsters who tried to auction off my now-sold Telecaster on eBay are at it again. When I wrote about their previous effort, at least one person who was about to be relieved of some serious cash was caught in time, perhaps this will help once more.

Further, instead of just the best reporting facility I could find on eBay’s site, which only allowed me to submit the suspect auction number into a black hole, this time I wrote an email to the one person working at eBay whom I’ve met. Micah is not in that part of the company but I’m hoping he can connect me to someone who is.

I don’t know the alleged seller, ralphpacini55, but the person who almost got shivved last time forwarded the email he recieved with payment instructions. Which, despite the location being listed in the auction as somewhere in Canada, called for a money order to be sent to a man right here in the South Bay, Peter Bijlsma in Los Gatos. If any of you know this person, please tell him to stop trying to sell a guitar he doesn’t own, okay? Thanks.

Related: The Times on eBay vigilantes, of which I am not one.

The FDA plans to put its two cents in on what low and reduced carb actually mean. Hopefully this will be a good thing but…

Some movies, especially indie movies where the protagonist is a young man, are clearly the wet dream version of a writer’s own idealization of his coming of age. So no surprise that Elijah Wood’s character in All I Want claims to be a writer even at age 17, even still a virgin, even though he does nothing all day but write letters to a father he’s never met that tossed into a footlocker rather than mailed.

Wood’s Jones Dylan shows up in some anonymous small town (which is not in Texas and is somewhere 2000 miles from either Chicago or New York), drops out of college and takes an apartment off campus. He clearly has issues, having shown up with nothing but the aforementioned footlocker and an old red portable typewriter on which he composes the missives. A quick learner, he buys things as soon as their absence is mentioned by one of his housemates. Who are a gay painter cowboy (Aaron Pearl), an aspiring slut actress (Mandy Moore looking luscious as a blonde) and a confused photographer (Franke Potente from Run Lola Run and Bourne Identity), and of course the two women despise each other so having to do with one puts the other off the range.

Wood’s character frequently hallucinates and in some scenes I feel we are supposed to be uncertain whether he is dreaming or not. The belly dancer is obviously in his head, for example, but the scene where he is making out with Moore, well, not sure. Presumably the car crash is real. In a craftier director’s hands, this trickery might be more successful but Jeffrey Porter is too much of a novice to properly handle the surreality. Overall not bad, definitely has some good performances, but not something I’d go out of my way to see even on TV.

okay

Back when I was in high school, I don’t know if there was a funnier movie or one I wanted to live in real life than Animal House. John Belushi, with his awesome body language, eyebrows that had a life of their own, and nasty, witty dialog, set a standard with Bluto Blutarsky that as yet no college comedy has come close to matching. John Landis, Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney and Chris Miller created amazing farces, characters and situations that just blew our minds.

That’s the standard that Old School is competing against and by that standard, fails. But if you want 90 minutes of laughs and aren’t in the mood to watch Belushi and crew again, you might watch this anyway. Todd Phillips, who co-wrote and directed here, is developing a touch that continues to grow in the current Starsky and Hutch and, one can hope, do even more in the upcoming Jim Carry version of The Six Million Dollar Man. Luke Wilson, Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn team up here with a display of behavior that tittilates and amuses. A boatload of hijinks and eye candy.

recommended

In which we see that politicians are the same in Europe as they are here, no matter how loudly they protest otherwise.

eBay can be great if you?re an honest person, I know a few people who are making a living from selling on it, but that takes a lot of work an insight into what people will buy. But as the system gets bigger, more people will at least try to take advantage of innocent/naive/unsuspecting buyers, as happened the other week with someone trying to sell my guitar. That episode seems to have turned out alright and in fact I have sold the guitar for a decent price without paying eBay any fees. The Times weighs in today with an article on some people who’ve decided this burgeoning Wild West needs a few independent law folk, even if the company doesn’t care for them or to acknowledge the volume of criminal activity. Personally, I have my doubts about buying anything costing more than a few dollars without serious fact checking.

Gee Grum, you left a few key items off your list: EPL and Champions League, plus UEFA CUP, are coming down to it and the MLS season kicks off!

The first two days, my shortened first week, at Intransa are over. Scoble, from the best I can tell, I’m the only blogger working there though I hope to spread the gospel in the future. How did it go? Pretty good, I’d have to say, and fortunately my boss seems to feel the same way. Making connections is easier here than at Sun, not too surprising, and similarly I’m seeing more flexibility and freedom in the coming workload. For instance I suggested something a little outside my scope to the Bossman and he said go for it. Nice. Being in an office after all this time is different but I suppose more of the old skillz will come back as the days go by.

Cringely on NMCI: How to hugely screw your company and your customer with the standard in IT fixed price contracts. And isn’t nice that the US taxpayers (hey, that’s us!) will surely be the ones screwed the worst in this huge screwup?

Coder To Developer: Resource List, very, very extensive.