Author: alternateorg

Everything on this list might fool unwitting teenagers, that is until they realize that adding “…and then have sex” to most of them makes them so much better.

You’ve most probably used his software, or an open-source version of it, most likely. He’s Justin Frankel, he wrote Gnutella, Winamp among other things, all while working for AOL. And somehow, he still works there.

Good morning, passengers. Those on the right side of the bus will now notice that Dennis Miller has joined you. (NYTimes, registration req’d)

Those on the left feeling like they’ve been hit with a freight train, please exit the rear.

WTF? How is Dennis Miller now on the FoxNews Network as a conservative talk show host? First it was Monday Night Football, and now this? Jeez. Well, Dennis, I guess we’ll always have your re-runs on HBO Comedy.

I must note here that he’s still socially liberal, just pro-Bush and pro-Iraq war now. Libertarian? Almost. Running out of money and needing to side with the (currently) winning team to land a TV show on Fox? Perhaps.

This is post # 1200. So it’s fabricated and only exists to be post # 1,200, but still. Rather exciting, no?

No? I guess it does point out the fact that humans put a strange amount of weight on numbers that were bound to happen anyway… Or maybe it’s a testament to the fact that we’ve been around almost 4 years. Either way, happy 1200th post and we hope you’re around for another 1200 more, tops.

I can’t remember where I got this quote:

“This book, the Bible, has persecuted, even unto death the wisest and the best. This book stayed and stopped the onward movement of the human race. This book poisoned the fountains of learning and misdirected the energies of man.

“This book is the enemy of freedom, the support of slavery. This book sowed the seeds of hatred in families and nations, fed the flames of war, and impoverished the world. This book is the breastwork of kings and tyrants – the enslaver of women and children. This book has corrupted parliaments and courts. This book has made colleges and universities the teachers of error and the haters of science. This book has filled Christendom with hateful, cruel, ignorant and warring sects. This book taught men to kill their fellows for religion’s sake. This book founded the Inquisition, invented the instruments of torture, built the dungeons in which the good and loving languished, forged the chains that rusted in their flesh, erected the scaffolds whereon they died. This book piled faggots about the feet of the just. This book drove reason from the minds of millions and filled the asylums with the insane.

“This book has caused fathers and mothers to shed the blood of their babes. This book was the auction block on which the slave-mother stood when she was sold from her child. This book filled the sails of the slave-trader and made merchandise of human flesh. This book lighted the fires that burned “witches” and “wizards.” This book filled the darkness with ghouls and ghosts and the bodies of men and women with devils. This book polluted the souls of men with the infamous dogma of eternal pain. This book made credulity the greatest of virtues, and investigation the greatest of crimes. This book filled nations with hermits, monks, and nuns – with the pious and the useless. This book placed the ignorant and unclean saint above the philosopher and philanthropist. This book taught man to despise the joys of his life that he might be happier in another – to waste this world for the sake of the next.

“I attack [the Bible] because it is the enemy of human liberty – the greatest obstruction across the highway of human progress. Let me ask you one question: How can you be wicked enough to defend this book?”

— Robert Ingersoll

This one I got from here via Kottke:

Brian Eno

Eno’s First Law

Culture is everything we don’t have to do

We have to eat, but we didn’t have to invent Baked Alaskas and Beef Wellington. We have to clothe ourselves, but we didn’t have to invent platform shoes and polka-dot bikinis. We have to communicate, but we didn’t have to invent sonnets and sonatas. Everything we do—beyond simply keeping ourselves alive—we do because we like making and experiencing art and culture.

Eno’s Second Law

Science is the conversation about how the world is. Culture is the conversation about how else the world could be, and how else we could experience it.

Science wants to know what can be said about the world, what can be predicted about it. Art likes to see which other worlds are possible, to see how it would feel if it were this way instead of that way. As such art can give us the practice and agility to think and experience in new ways – preparing us for the new understandings of things that science supplies.

Rules the bottom of the list…:

• –49th in income growth in the country
• –50th in immunizations for children
• –For the first time since the Great Depression, Colorado is headed toward two straight years of job losses, economists said. (Daily Camera, 11/8/03)
• –Nation-leading bankruptcy and foreclosure rates
• –48th in high-school graduation rates
• –140,000 Coloradans can’t find jobs; 650,000 Coloradans can’t afford health insurance; and 400,000 Coloradans – more than one quarter of them, children –live in poverty.
• –Upper education bankrupt by 2010
• –$30 billion transportation investment deficit
• –46th in the country in special education funding
• –One of 6 worst in the country in tobacco cessation efforts

Never buy a .nu domain. Unless you can guarantee yourself that you’ll remember when to renew it. Because Nunames isn’t going to remind you to do it.