Teddy Kennedy's Temper

The testimony of Clifford D. May

For 20 years I have kept my silence. I will do so no longer. In the debate over John Bolton's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, it finally has been made clear to me that a human being who yells at another human being does not deserve to hold high office. It's what Sen. George Voinovich calls “the Kitchen Test.”

And so, it's time I finally told the painful truth: Ted Kennedy yelled at me. He hurt my feelings. Therefore, those who believe John Bolton does not deserve to be confirmed must surely also agree that Senator Kennedy must step down. Here is the never-before-told story.

Christian Teen Blog

I know this site has now moved, but read some of his stuff here. It is well written and poetic. No wonder he won Best Evangelical Teen Blog in the 1st Annual Evangelical Blog Awards.

The Question of God

I think this would be interesting to read.

This book undertakes the task of examining the biographies of C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud, to see if the lives they actually led strengthen or weaken their arguments for and against the existence of God.

Thinking Machine Chess

The artwork is an artificial intelligence program, ready to play chess with the viewer. If the viewer confronts the program, the computer's thought process is sketched on screen as it plays. A map is created from the traces of literally thousands of possible futures as the program tries to decide its best move. Those traces become a key to the invisible lines of force in the game as well as a window into the spirit of a thinking machine.

Until now, the thinking of the computer was hidden from the player's view. I remember some game that featured a fast-moving display of what move the computer was thinking out spelled out in chess notation (e.g. d2-d4 d7-d5) so unless you could keep up with the display you couldn't tell what the computer was thinking.

More Time Taken Off for Ill Pets Than Ill Relatives

As the number children decrease, pets take on a new role- that of child. It just goes to show that we all want someone to need us.

"If you have pets, most people would agree they are part of the family and therefore you should do for them what you would do for your children. Harry is like my second child.

"People should only get a pet if they work for animal- friendly employers who are willing to allow time off to care for the animal when it is ill,"

To Catch a Thief

A Berkeley Professor and a stolen laptop. Listen to the audio. The comments are just as interesting.

Email and Texting

Key points
• Texting makes you less intelligent, it is revealed
• Brains suffer from information overload, apparently
• Solution is: switch off!

Guess the Google

Now this is fun. A grid of images are shown and you have to figure out what word when googled would return these results. Make as many guesses as you can in 20 seconds.

Institute for Backup Trauma

It's your hero and mine- John Cleese- now in a public service message for backup trauma.

This is really well done! Check all the pages, visit all the rooms, and enjoy.

Thoughts on Leadership by Jason Zahariades

This guy makes a really good point I have been thinking about for a while:

There is not a leadership model on earth, whether organic, decentralized or hierarchical, that will form a leader into a Christlike leader or even guarantee the freedom from the misuse of leadership. Systems are the structural expression of those who operate in the system. Therefore, any system can be corrupted and taken advantage of. Simultaneously, a Christlike leader can work in virtually any system to lead with Christ’s character and power. Even the most hierarchical system can be the environment for healthy and conscientious leadership if the man, woman or team is truly becoming like Christ. According to Paul, the onus of proper leadership rests on the leader, not the system. If the one gifted with leadership is following Christ into the true embodiment of love (sacrificially willing the good of others), then that person will lead well.

Evangelicals and LDS seeking common ground

I'm not sure how far I could go to seek common ground with the Mormons. But if they believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, shouldn't we try, for the unity of the body?

Fla. Man Secured BenedictXVI.com Weeks Ago

WashPost:

By the time Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany assumed his new papal moniker on Tuesday, it was already too late for the Vatican to buy the corresponding dot-com Web address.

That's because a St. Augustine, Fla. man, Rogers Cadenhead, registered the address BenedictXVI.com on April 1, hoping that would be the name of John Paul II's successor. To cover his bases, Cadenhead, 38, also registered ClementXV.com, InnocentXIV.com, LeoXIV.com, PaulVII.com, and PiusXIII.com.

Read Rogers Cadenhead's blog, especially where he talks about the whole thing.

SamDonaldson: Network News Dead

So the first of the stars of the old media has admitted it. Or is he just a bitter old man with no show lashing out at the industry that (pretty much) turned its back on him?..

Celebrity Blogs

By ANN MARIE McQUEEN -- Ottawa Sun--

Britney Spears announced her pregnancy on it, Rosie O'Donnell takes to verse in hers and last week Tom Green even used his to lash out at fellow comedian Martin Short and got fans to do the same.

Even Ottawa-born Keshia Chante, courting fame as she prepares for her album's release in the U.S. later this year, answers fans' questions online at www.vikrecordings.com/keshia. Her favourite colour, for those who are wondering, is pink.

Stars from A-list to C are blogging like crazy to connect with their fans, often tossing aside grammar, punctuation, capital letters and concern for their image in the process. Their blogs are sometimes fascinating, often banal and frequently embarrassing.

Some celebrity blogs:
Tom Green
Rosie
Bruce Willis
David Duchovny
Wil Wheaton (popular)
Dave Barry
William Gibson
Moby
Neil Gaiman
William Shatner

for more start here...

Aire Freshener

Small, freeware program that plays loops of ambient noise: Night Surf, Summer Night, Cicadas, Campfire, Thunderstorm, etc. Good for going to sleep to.

Lecture Musical

A cute show put on by Prangstgrup.

The setting: a college lecture hall.
The time: during a lecture.

Generation Y embraces choice, redefines religion

From the WashTimes -- story intro:

Most young Americans strongly believe in having choices, an attitude that is likely to shape their identification with traditional religions, a study says.
"Generation Y," born between 1980 and 2000, is "bringing [media] industries to their knees" by embracing IPod, TiVo and other technologies that allow unprecedented consumer choice, said Roger Bennett, co-founder of Reboot, a Jewish group that is examining generational issues.
The big question is how traditional religions will respond to a new generation of Americans who value choice, informality and personal expression, he said.
It may mean the rise of "orthodoxy a la carte," where, as with IPods and music, young Americans take a "mix and match" approach to religion, said Bill Galston, a domestic policy adviser in the Clinton administration.
It also could mean an even deeper culture war, said Mr. Galston, as young Americans push their religious pluralism and a backlash emerges from other young Americans who don't want to lose traditional and religious moorings.

More here.

BJ Leiderman: Rocking the Bottom of the Dial

This is an interview with BJ Leiderman, most notably the composer of the theme to Morning Edition on NPR. A couple of things that really surprised me: he lives in Virginia Beach, and has been for four years the the music director at Christ Unity Oceanside Church, which meets at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia (gmap).

Long-Lost Beethoven Duets

The lighter side of Beethoven! Five arrangements of Irish and Scottish folk songs have been found, tied with the original twine. They date from 1815.

This was quite an unusual thing for Beethoven to be involved with. He really poured himself into these settings and took them very seriously. This is Beethoven at his closest involvement with British and Irish culture.

Beethoven, who lived from 1770-1827, grappled with settings of God Save the King and Auld Lang Syne.

In his diaries, he wrote: "The Scotch songs show how unconstrainedly irregular melodies can be treated with the help of harmony."

Nukes Are Green

The environmentalists are in a quandary. Nuclear power is the only power sourse that does not contribute to global warming.

One of the most eloquent advocates of nuclear energy is James Lovelock, the British scientist who created the Gaia hypothesis, which holds that Earth is, in effect, a self-regulating organism.

"I am a Green, and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy," Mr. Lovelock wrote last year, adding: "Every year that we continue burning carbon makes it worse for our descendents. ... Only one immediately available source does not cause global warming, and that is nuclear energy."

Sony Invention Beams Sights, Sounds Into Brain

From Reuters:

If you think video games are engrossing now, just wait: PlayStation maker Sony Corp (SNE.N). has been granted a patent for beaming sensory information directly into the brain.

The technique could one day be used to create videogames in which you can smell, taste, and touch, or to help people who are blind or deaf.

I knew this was coming.

Downs Syndrome or Not

Blood tests to determine if a baby has Down Syndrome are only 60-80% acccurate. The rate of Down syndrome births has not changed, but 80-90% of women told their baby will have it agree to abort their child. What's going on? How many "normal" babies are we killing because of faulty science?

Drudge gets competition

CBS MarketWatch:

Matt Drudge has owned the online news/gossip/investigative reporting/scaremongering Web space for almost 10 years. That may be set to end Wednesday, as blog publisher Nick Denton is launching Sploid.com, a tabloid Web site for breaking news with attitude.

"Sploid is a news site with a tabloid mentality -- top stories up top, played big, as fast as they break," Denton said in an e-mail. "If there's a political line, it's anarcho-capitalist -- sniffing out hypocrisy and absurdity, whether from salon left or religious right."

Befitting with Web style, headlines on Sploid.com link to the full stories on other sites. In a preview this morning, little original reporting was evident, other than an editorial comment roasting CNN for being too "perky" in its Wednesday broadcast. Straight stories like "Halliburton Gets Billion-Dollar Payday" and "Iraq's Got a Prez" were accompanied by a sensational item, "Ms. Wheelchair Runner-Up Blasts Pageant."

I've been checking the site today and it's finally up. We'll see how long it lasts -- as Drudge told the Observer, the news is an exhausting, all-consuming business.

China's Labor Shortage Woes

Capitalism at work in China! Workers of China Unite!

China remains a country where migrant workers are routinely exploited. But after a decade of stagnant wages, these workers are showing more willingness to demand their rights. Last year, factory workers rioted and held strikes in Guangdong. Other workers just left.

Matrix: The Postmodern Organization of the Church

Describes "the four identifiable cultural-intellectual eras in the history of Western civilization", postmodernism being the latest, and how the church organizes itself in response to the changing culture. Also an interesting list of trends which he thinks will emerge and/or continue through postmodernism at the end.

Bloggorhea

Lots of interesting stuff about the current state of the news biz outside of the MSM: Drudge, Gawker, Sploid, Wonkette, the "Huffington Report", etc.

The report will probably rotate off soon...

Primetime Live Setup

Was this a bait and switch, or just another example of media bias running out of control?

A Virginia family claims producers at ABC News used them to "help further the homosexual agenda" during the filming and production of an upcoming segment for the "Primetime Live" TV newsmagazine.

One TB Desktop

We have not hit a technological wall yet!

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Inc. later this year will begin selling hard disk drives based on perpendicular recording, a yet-to-be commercialized recording method that should enable engineers to continue increasing drive storage capacity beyond today's limits,

The Week

I saw an ad for this weekly. Have you seen it? It seems to be a Reader's Digest of news.

Google Unveils Upgraded Email Storage for Gmail Users!

"...starting today, we're beginning the roll-out of our new and top secret Infinity+1 storage plan. The key features are:

* Write, don't worry.
You want to stop caring about storage. We want to keep giving you more. Today, and beyond.

* The gift that keeps on giving.
1373.326442 megabytes of storage (and counting) for every user.

* No complicated equations. No tough algorithms.
Just this one graph:


Gmail turns 1 today. And we've always loved a good joke. We know we won't reach infinity, but check out what we will do ..."

Seriously, they did add rich-text support to Gmail.