Random monday thoughts

I really like root beer. I am on a root beer kick right now. Mug, IBC, Barqs, Stewarts, Jones, it's all good, but I keep coming back to A & W. Just a quality brew that never lets me down.

I'd like to take up golf this summer. Anyone with me on that?

It looks like we are going to build the Twins a new ballpark. I think that's a good thing. Something for our 8 billion dollar train to take us to that we might actually want to see. Now maybe it's time to rebuild the club itself so we have a semi-decent team once their new home opens.

I miss TGIF on ABC-TV.

Anyone who thinks that our economy is bad and that only the rich are "getting richer" should talk to someone who lived through the Great Depression. Then they should shut up.

Coca-Cola is better than Pepsi-Cola but not as good as RC Cola.

Pollution a sin?

Here's a question for my gentle readers:

Is pollution of the environment a sin?

When I say "sin" I don't mean it in a hyperbolic sense but in a very literal sense. Is pollution, i.e. damaging the environment knowingly, a sin that seperates us from God on par with lying, murder, idolotry, etc. Is polluting a shame that we need to ask forgiveness from God for?

I've seen a lot of talk lately about the environment from Evangelicals of all theological stripes, some even going so far as to sign their own "petition" against global warming. Is the welfare of the natural enivironment an issue that should be of primary importance to the church?

Argh

I usually don't post on Macintosh/technical help type things but this is really frustrating me.

For some inexplicable reason iTunes keeps opening itself up! It happens completely randomly and doesn't seem to be connected to any specific action or program usage. It's driving me insane. I turned off "auto Podcast updating" but that hasn't helped.

Do any of you Mac-heads know what's going on here?

Let's read some books people

Today I saw a car with a bumper sticker that said:

"The last time we tried to mix politics with religion people got burned at the stake"

Now the first thing that ran through my mind was that whoever is driving this car is a moron who doesn't know anything about history. But then I thought that's really not much of a deduction since most people everywhere are morons who don't know anything about history (irregardless of what their bumper stickers might say).

The problem with the statement should be obvious. I would assume it's a dig at the "Religious Right" or "Neo-Cons" or President Bush or any other of the myriad of excuses we use these days for everything from high gas prices to hurricanes. When people knock religion in America they aren't doing so in a vague or general fashion. They aren't talking about Buddhism or Ba'hais or even Islam. They are talking about Christianity. So what makes that pithy bumper sticker statement so stupid is simply this: Christians were by and large the ones being burned! The sticker makes it sound as though Christians the world over were getting appointed to high-office then running around tying people to posts and setting them ablaze. Crazy Roman Catholics were doing this yes, but they were burning the early ancestors of the very same people now being accused of "mixing politics with religion"—protestants. The problem then was the government tampering with religion not religion tampering with the government—and there's a big difference between those two things.

The idea that you can seperate politics and religion is a fallacy anyway. The gospel of humanism that athiests follow is as much of a "faith" as Christianity or Judaism. And the worship of man has led to more misery, death and destruction than all the crusades, and witch-hunts, and stake burnings in the world. Indeed, you have to serve somebody.

End women's suffrage!

So many funny things

Animatronic band takes guesswork out of worship

Cussing evangelist brings Gospel to the vulgar

Friends not friends forever, even if the Lord's the Lord of them

and finally, another one that just hits too close to home:

"eXtremely Radical" youth group just make-out den, youths say

Brilliance

The world has never had a good definition of the word “liberty.” The American people just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty. But in using the same word, we do not all mean the same thing.

What constitutes the bulwark of our liberty and independence? It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling seacoasts—these are not our reliance against tyranny. Our reliance is in the love of liberty, which God has planted in our bosom. Our defence is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own door.

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow?

Never.

All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, could not, by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer that if it ever reach us, it must spring from amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be the authors and finishers.

As a nation of free men, we must live through our times or die by suicide. Let reverence for the law be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap; let it be taught in the schools, in the seminaries and in the colleges; let it be written in primers, in spelling books and almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls and enforced in courts of justice; and in short, let it become the political religion of the nation. And let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly at its altar. And let us strive to deserve, as far as mortals may, the continued care of Divine Providence, trusting that in future national emergencies, He will not fail to provide us the instruments of safety and security.

Let us not be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the government, nor of dungeons to ourselves.

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

—ABRAHAM LINCOLN, speech at Edwardsville, Illinois,
September 11, 1858

Me: These are great words, especially in light of what happened 143 years after Lincoln spoke them. "Let it be preached from the pulpit"—is he serious? Somebody call the ACLU...

Who Wants to Be a Big Loser?

It's the all the inane banter buildup that makes this so great...

The Borg

This guy is clearly a smug and annoying Trekkie (his referring to Mac users as "the Borg" is especially grating) but he's absolutely correct.

"Bootcamp marks the beginning of the end for Apple as the renegade for the design set and the beginning of Apple as a dominant player in the global desktop PC game. It will become absorbed."

P.S. In a weird way I'm kinding of looking forward to complaining with reckless abandon about how much Windows sucks once it becomes the operating system I'll be forced to use.

Very, very, very disappointed.

Looks like some of the crazy rumors are true.

Apple will release "Boot Camp" with the upcoming OS X Leopard. It's software that allows a Mac to run Windows XP and it's a really awful idea.

There's just no spin you can put on this folks: Apple is now well on it's way to making $2000 pretty Wintel boxes. I've been continually unimpressed with the direction Jobs has taken Apple the last two years or so and this really confirms my suspicions. In my estimation the success of the iPod/iTunes has totally overshadowed the company causing them to neglect what makes Apple great in the first place: their computers. I just don't see how in the long run the Macintosh enivironment can survive.

Although Apple doesn't provide a version of Windows with "Boot Camp" (and they claim they never will) how long do you think that's going to last? Why should software developers even bother porting software to the Mac if Mac users can just use the Windows version?

A sad, sad day for those of us who have followed the company through thick and thin.