Tuesday, December 20, 2005
SCIENCE: Take that, idiots! A Penn. judge has kicked Intelligent Design/Creationism out of the Dover school district, just like the voters kicked the board members who created the policy out of office a few months ago. This is a major setback for the ID crowd, I'd say, and a major step forward for intelligence and science in schools. Yay for U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III!
Here's the funniest part of the judge's ruling:
It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.
I think that says a lot about the people behind this policy. If you disagree with evolution on religious grounds, fine. You're wrong, but fine. Just don't pretend to be all about science and truth when all your trying to do is push religious doctrine.
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
NARNIA: I meant to post this earlier (like a week ago when it was sent to me, oops) but there were some technical difficulties with the blog server, plus I was insanely sick a couple of days last week.
But anyway, I want to point Narnia fans to Narnia Confidential, a new wiki set up for fans of the books. I love wikis for this type of thing. If you don't know, a wiki is a website that can be edited by the readers of the site. This wiki lets fans of the books compile basically an encyclopedia of information about the books, the movies, the world of Narnia, etc. There are some problems with wikis, the main one being that jerks can edit things out and add junk but as long as a community is built up around the site that usually doesn't screw things up too badly. They've got a lot of good info on the site so I would recommend it if you're looking for more Narnia info. And if you have something to add, please do!
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
NARNIA: It's Narnia time again here at Matt O' Rama and I've just read a remarkable article on the religion of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe in The Guardian. I don't agree with it but it's mostly well-considered (One wrong thing is that Edmund is never meant to bear the true brunt of what he has wrought in the book, Aslan sees to that specifically). I never saw the religion in the books when I first read them many years ago. It wasn't until I read that Aslan was supposed to be Jesus that I saw it. It's not like Lewis has Aslan say "I was brought back to life by my father who art in heaven to wipe away your sin." He says he was brought back by "deep magic from before the dawn of time," which is perfectly normal in a fantasy context. I know Lewis wanted the books to be sort of an undercover introduction to Christianity, a way of preparing the field so to speak, but it certainly had no effect on my belief system and I'll happily read the books to my kids.
The author of this piece seems to have a general hate of Christianity, something I can't muster. I don't believe it, don't like it, but can't gather up the bile to bother. I read the stories of Narnia as fantasy books, and that's all. She does make a good point though, showing how a lot of religious groups are using the book to further their own ends, just as they do with other books. When the governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, wants to make sure all the kids in his schools read the books it's not okay. He doesn't want them to be read because they're good, he wants them to be ead because it's a way of pushing Christianity without running into that pesky "seperation of church and state" thing. That's hateful, not the portrayal of religion in Narnia.
The Chronicle also has a good defense of Lewis and the Narnia books. They've come under some attack for being numerous things; sexist, racist, violent but I tend to agree with this defense. Once I reread all the books I'll have more of an informed opinion on the assertions. I do keep in mind though that Lewis was brought up in a time when things we wouldn't say today were everyday ideas.
I'm glad that these books are being pushed to the forefront with the release of the movie. That's the best outcome for a book-to-movie conversion, in my mind. They two will always be separate experiences and separate stories but if the attention gets more kids to read the books, awesome. Plus if the extra talk means more money for the movie, they might eventually decide to make the movie of Voyage of the Dawn Treader and we'll all be in for a treat!
tags: grommes, narnia, religion, christianity
TSHIRTS: I've decided to make links to cool shirts I find a regular part of the site. Here's a couple more from Threadless, which is rapidly becoming my favorite clothing store online.
The poor little unicorn is totally what makes the shirt.
I just bought this one during the recent sale. I love the serious look on the bird's face, like he's doing serious work here. Plus, who doesn't love rocket-packs?
Monday, December 05, 2005
ORGAN PRINTING: Wired News has an article about so-called 'organ printing', where they use what is effectively a printer and a sheet of gel to print sheets of cells to make new organs. This, needless to say, rocks. The best part about it, this:
Prestwich guessed initial human organ printing may be five or 10 years away.
Not a decade or more, not twenty to thirty years, 5 to 10 years. The fact that people are using such short timeframes for incredibly cool and useful technology as this is just mind-boggling.
I'm in the middle of The Singularity Is Near, a book by Ray Kurzweil, one of the most technologically optimistic people on Earth, and some of this timeframes seem a little too optimistic sometimes but wow, things like this really just show how close this stuff is. Biotech is going to be for the next 20 years how the computer industry has been for the last 20. And the cool thing is, the computer industry is also going to be the computer industry of the next 20 years. It's a good time to be alive.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
FIREFOX: If you've upgraded to Firefox 1.5 (and you should have!), go to Tools->Extensions and look for updates to your extensions. A lot of them have release 1.5 compatibility patches. After you've upgraded all the ones that could be upgraded, remove the ones that are still marked in Red. I had a couple still installed and even though they were disabled one of them was causing weird HTML problems. As soon as I uninstalled them, all the issues went away.
Also, if you use the Javascript console I recommend installing Console². The new Console includes CSS errors and if you visit many pages your console will very quickly fill up with stuff you don't care about. Console² allows filtering of the Error Console so it's usable again.
tags: grommes, firefox, web+browsers
GIFTS: My family is always asking what to get me for gifts since I'm sure they're tired of getting me books, which is the primary thing I ask for each year and also the primary thing that populates my Amazon wishlist. For them, here's a list I'll be updating with some cool, somewhat cheap things I'm looking at.
- Good soldering iron (this one's recommended by MAKE magazine)
- Subscription to MAKE magazine (use code CMAKE for the best price)
- Watchmen: Absolute Edition (yeah, it's a book but what a book it is!)
- Brother PT-65 labeler
- Complete Calvin & Hobbes
- Complete Far Side (More books but come on! These things are beautiful!)
- Sin City: Recut, Extended, Unrated DVD(the new 2 disc set)
- The Legend: Johnny Cash(the 4 disc set)
To be updated!