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 dobeyond simply keeping ourselves alivewe 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 cant find jobs; 650,000 Coloradans cant 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
Despite Scott’s insistence that it’s impressive because Windows doesn’t have Quartz, WinExposé still seems like a ripoff of something to me.. No sure what it could be, though…
And the fact that it uses the same hotspots, the preferences dialog looks exactly the same (but includes ridiculous options like “Speed” and “Quality”), the behavior is the same, and includes the same 2 modes (application windows only vs all windows open) make me think Apple will be hot on their trail pretty quickly.
A case for fair use, as it doesn’t compete directly with Exposé/MacOS X? Or just another Windows developer riding the only coat-tails worth it?
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.
The 11-minute Mario Video is Fake.
Well, gol-darn it.
Top 10 Internet Fads, although he forgot prefixing everything with a lowercase ‘e’ or ‘e-‘. He also forgot the translucent-turqouise-everything fad, directly following the original iMac’s success. Which may or may not be considered an internet fad. I guess it’s more of an industrial design fad.
As reported over a year ago, Steve Burns, ex-host of the long-running hit kids show Blue’s Clues, realized that singing about mail time and talking to animated salt and pepper shakers wasn’t really a long-term goal of his, struck out to become a rock ‘n roll star. That was in 2002.
His album Songs for Dustmites was recently released, and despite my best efforts to pick it up on the iTMS, I had to actually walk into a Tower Records (shiver) to actually pick up the actual album that contained an actual CD. I know, awkward.
Anyway, it’s really damn good. Check out the audio samples (in Flash) on that site and you’ll most likely agree. Yes, it’s Flaming Lips-ish but this is more than likely attributed to Steven Drozd’s help on more than a few of the songs, and yes, the ones attributed to him helping are most often the better tracks, but not a single one disappoints.
Does it rock hard? Not really. It’s very airy and experimental, but is a joy to listen to.
Meanwhile, in everything’s-animated-except-the-host-land, there’s a new host for Blue’s Clues, and his name’s Joe, apparently Steve’s brother or something. I watched Steve’s farewell episode but am a little hazy on exactly what reason was fed to the kids to accept his departure wherein he goes to college and Blue is even given a tour of the dorm. Incedentally, however, it was time for Blue’s birthday again recently and Steve even made a phoned-in (literally) appearance.
Richard Forno’s response to last week’s latest Mac-bashing tripe. Who’s Richard Forno, you ask? Just a security technologist, author, and the former Chief Security Officer at Network Solutions.
Lance also fails to recognize that Windows and Mac OS are different not just by vendor and market share, but by the fundamental way that they’re designed, developed, tested, and supported. By integrating Internet Explorer, Media Player, and any number of other ‘extras’ (such as VB Script and ActiveX) into the operating system to lock out competitors, Microsoft knowingly inflicts many of its security vulnerabilities onto itself. As a result, its desire to achieve marketplace dominance over all facets of a user’s system has created a situation that’s anything but trustworthy or conducive to stable, secure computing. Mac users are free to use whatever browser, e-mail client, or media player they want, and the system accepts (and more importantly, remembers!) their choice.
…
If Lance is sleeping well believing that he’s on an equal level with the Mac regarding system security, he can crow about not being overly embarrassed while working on the only mainstream operating system that, among other high-profile incidents over the years, facilitated remote system exploitation through a word processor’s clip art function
One thing I noticed while reading the original “article” was this pervasive idea:
I was tired of the “We use Macs because they don’t get attacked by viruses and hackers” refrain from Mac nuts. I generally counter with what is apparently a secret carefully hidden from Mac zealots: “That’s because only a fraction of the world uses Macs. What’s the point of attacking a niche market? No one will notice!”
What’s the problem with this? He seems to think that because the entire mediocre business world relies on Windows and is ritualistically attacked by teenage hackers and worm-writers, that Windows is better to run. Like I care about the reason why no one writes virii for my OS. They don’t exist, it hardly matters that (he thinks) it’s because there are relatively few of us.
