07/06/2009

Not Obsolete Politics

The chancellor, the late chancellor, was only partly correct. He was obsolete, but so is the State, the entity he worshiped. Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete. A case to be filed under "M" for mankind—in the Twilight Zone.

Posted at 08:19:36 PM EDT | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

06/09/2009

Searching for Miracles Philosophy

Some believers see commonplace miracles. They experience the suspension of the laws of physics every time they turn around.

Others look for such miracles, but find none.

I can show you a miracle, if you're willing to see it.

There's more... you should read it!

Posted at 04:05:58 AM EDT | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

06/06/2009

Let Every Breath Philosophy

On the day of Pentecost, we commemorate the foundation of the Church, the Body of Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, as recorded in Acts 2. But what does that mean? The first clues are found at the very beginning of the Bible.

There's more... you should read it!

Posted at 08:11:57 PM EDT | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

06/05/2009

Thank You to My Readers Website Matters

As of today, my page view count reached 36,000 since September 2004.

Posted at 11:52:00 PM EDT | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

06/04/2009

Dan's Mind, Writ Large Personal

I've written about my late friend Dan before, but last night I saw something that reminded me of him in a very painful way.

There's more... you should read it!

Posted at 10:00:00 AM EDT | Comments (1) | Trackback (0)

06/01/2009

Warm Weather Warms My Heart Personal

Now that my utility bills are approaching their nadir, I decided to re-activate my Internet access.

Still, being unemployed sucks.

Posted at 09:36:51 PM EDT | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

05/20/2009

Life Story, Recovered Personal

I thought I had lost a whole bunch of stuff from the last 6 to 10+ years, during my last foray to California. No, all this time, it's been in storage at my parents' place. Yesterday, I retrieved eleven boxes of stuff.

In this case, "stuff" refers to books, clothes, photos, books, nick-nacks, clothes, books, place settings, books, a clock, photos, my high school yearbooks, clothes, stuffed animals, and books. You get the idea.

And the clothes still fit! Of course they do; I bought them when I weighed fifteen pounds more than I do now.

Posted at 10:24:56 PM EDT | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

05/02/2009

Terminating a Bad Assumption Computers

(Original post here.)

Earlier today (as I write this), our esteemed tuxchick made a very bold statement:

If people don't want to learn an unfamiliar environment why do they stick with windows? Win 95 was radically different from 3.1, and it was a huge success. XP was way different from 2000, and everything was moved around and stuffed into different places. Vista was even weirder, with the added free bonus of new extreme annoyances like UAC. Windows 7 is organized differently yet again, and the tech press are all swoony over it and hailing it as The Best Windows Evah.

This touches on something I've been shopping around privately for a couple weeks now: Why do we in the "Linux community" assume prior experience with Windows, or any WIMP interface? At its core, this is a bad assumption for absolutely everyone, proprietary software houses included.

There's more... you should read it!

Posted at 10:07:37 PM EDT | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

05/01/2009

Microsoft: Tool of Terrorists Computers Media Spin

One of the big arguments against Free Software is the supposedly inherent insecurity of publicly-available encryption systems: "If it can be studied by anyone, it can be cracked by anyone!", implying that Free Software was a tool of terrorists and other criminals. Yet right now, I see this very telling headline from Associated Press:

Al-Qaida used Hotmail, simple codes in planning

In the timeframe before 9/11, Hotmail was a Microsoft-owned service. The article seems to dodge this salient fact, but Wikipedia comes through for us on this one.

So who's the real tool for terrorism?

Posted at 10:55:55 PM EDT | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)

04/27/2009

Seeing Them Being Handed Down Philosophy

I talked a bit about tradition in a previous post, but tonight I got to witness some of it. I was in the store, looking for a few items, when I overheard a twenty-something woman inviting someone to her son's First Communion.

Like every generation before, I've worried about the generations that follow. Tonight brought a welcome relief from that worry.

Posted at 09:47:33 PM EDT | Comments (0) | Trackback (0)