It’s pretty cool when your pastor uses a Monty Python reference in his sermon. In this case, it was the “Department of Redundancy Department.” Tim was talking about how the term “born-again Christian” is redundant, since by definition someone who is a Christian is born again through his new faith in Jesus Christ. He threw in the above Python gag as a further example of said redundancy.
Former Dallas Star Joe Nieuwendyk, currently with the New Jersey Devils, reached the 1,000-point plateau last night with a goal against Magnificent Mario’s Pens in a comeback win for the Devils. Many Stars fans, myself included, were sorry to see Nieuwey go, though we understood Stars management’s thinking at the time. Congrats, Joe!
Froogle, currently in beta, is a Google project for product price comparison.
Burger King has joined McDonald’s on my places of never to eat again.
Mark Newhouse’s daughter Jordan donated a 14-inch ponytail to Locks for Love on Valentine’s Day, and Mark has documented the event in the form of a QuickTime movie:
“Locks of Love is a non-profit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children across the U.S. under age 18 suffering from long-term medical hair loss.
“It takes ten to 15 donated ponytails to make one hairpiece because Locks of Love only uses lengths of 10 inches and longer. 80% of donors are children.”
Ann cracks me up:
“If liberals cared about ideas or knew any facts, they would cease being liberals. Even the audience for the left’s government-supported radio network, National Public Radio, has more conservative listeners than liberal listeners. According to a Pew Research Center study released last summer, conservatives consume far more news than liberals–including listening to NPR and watching PBS more than liberals. (As Mickey Kaus said, ‘No wonder conservatives are so pissed off.’)
“Liberalism thrives on ignorance. Their media are ‘Lifetime: TV for Women,’ NBC’s ‘The West Wing’ and 4 billion ‘Law and Order’ episodes in which the perp turns out to be a Christian, white male who recites the Second Amendment before disemboweling a poor minority child.
“Liberal persuasion consists of the highbrow sneer from self-satisfied snobs ladled out for people with a 40 IQ. This is not an ideology that can withstand several hours a day of caller scrutiny where their goofball notions can be shot down by any truck driver with a cell phone.”
I don’t know why my wife watches “Law & Order,” “NYPD Blue,” et al, when she spends half the episode complaining how the cops twist citizens’ rights to gather evidence and/or get a confession. No, she’s not a criminal attorney, but yes, she is a lawyer and remembers all of this good constitutional stuff from law school.
(Thanks, Rick!)
I share Michael’s iChat irritation. One of the things I love about Fire is that I can drag a log file onto BBEdit and have it open up in the text editor. iChat logs have to open in iChat, presumably so you can see the pretty word balloons. The solution, obviously, would be the ability to open my iChat chat log in BBEdit and read it in plain text glory, or open it in iChat and get it with the balloons.
From a UI perspective, I prefer iChat over Fire, since most everyone I know uses AIM. Two friends stubbornly cling to MSN (Hi, Wil!). I have accounts with ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo! Messenger, but with the aforementioned MSN exceptions, everyone I know on the other services also uses AIM, so iChat it is.
Michael notes Bill Bumgarner’s example on using Mac OS X 10.2.4’s new PDF Workflow feature. I tried out Bill’s example, since it plays into my own web reading habits, and it’s wicked cool. Bill also says:
“But PDF Workflow is even more flexible than that. It isn’t limited to just saving PDF. You can also drop scripts, apps, filters, and other mechanisms into the PDF Services folder. That’d be the Workflow part of the whole thing.”
Doing the right thing is oftentimes not the easy thing to do. With regard to Saddam Hussein, President Bush’s course of action is the right thing to do, though it certainly isn’t easy. This is counter to the Clinton model of executive leadership, always putting a finger to the wind to test popular opinion. What amazing foresight Winston Churchill had:
“Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling one’s pulse and taking one’s temperature.”
This is why President Bush is also not listening to the “news” media and the peace protestors (whom with, again, I have no problem regarding exercising their right to protest, rather with their reasons). Despite what the “news” media would have you believe, the current peace movement does not reflect the popular will of the American people. Even if it did, that still wouldn’t make it right.
“The Founders understood that democracy was important, but if you didn’t filter it through a republican system you’d be just as likely to end up with a tyranny of the majority as you would with a healthy society. Don’t worry, I won’t quote the Federalist Papers, but trust me, it’s in there.” —Jonah Goldberg
The “news” media and peace protestors would be wise to hearken this advice, as well:
“We do need to remind everybody that tyrants don’t respond to any kind of appeasement. Tyrants don’t respond to negotiation. Tyrants respond to toughness. And that was true in the 1930s and 1940s when we failed to respond to tyranny, and it is true today.” –Condoleezza Rice, U.S. National Security Advisor, over this past weekend
Tyrants don’t respond to peace protests and sycophant “news” media in other nations as well. At least not in any way that would make them less of a tyrant.