November 2009
1 post
2 tags
On legal restrictions to abortion
The author of a blog called Zaius Nation wrote a post to explain why he is “very disappointed with the Stupak Amendment”. It develops a thesis along these lines: I am against abortion. I don’t really think that anybody is actually for abortion, not really. It’s like saying that you don’t like babies, and nobody really says that. (With the possible exception of W. C....
Nov 12th
October 2009
2 posts
6 tags
Atheists reveal their blind faith
(Warning: this post is a bit of a rant, and I wax a bit sarcastic towards the end. I don’t normally do that, and I apologize in advance.) I keep an eye on references to the Shroud of Turin on Twitter. After this week’s news, the number of such references exploded. Predictably, many of the tweets come from atheists or antireligious types crowing about a perceived victory of science...
Oct 8th
4 tags
So they say they've made a Shroud...
An Italian organic chemistry professor claims to have made an authentic-looking copy of the Shroud of Turin. There’s also a comparison photo of his shroud with the original. Intriguing. It would be nice to have more technical details, of course, but there are several points we can make in anticipation: - If these Italian atheists and agnostics are trying to attack religion, then it’s...
Oct 6th
July 2009
2 posts
8 tags
7 Quick Takes, Take 15
The original Seven Quick Takes Friday maven can be read here. :::: 1 :::: Let’s get the confessions out of the way first: Jenn’s coy little hint is what gave me the extra push to actually write this update. Not that I haven’t been meaning to write for the past couple of weeks, of course, but I’m afraid that I’m fairly intertial about such things. And of course,...
Jul 24th
3 tags
Somebody's trying to tell me something
I have a LibraryThing account and a Mac, so I make use of this nifty LibraryThing screensaver. It’s meant to display stacks of random cover images from the books I own. Sometimes, though, it mysteriously gets stuck on the same two or three images, tossing dozens of copies of the same book onto the screen. I actually like this ‘feature’. Just as some people like to attribute a...
Jul 8th
June 2009
3 posts
2 tags
Jun 16th
1 tag
Jun 12th
4 tags
7 Quick Takes, Take 14
All-About-Indonesia Edition! Before reading, go visit the “7 Quick Takes Friday” originator. Ready? Okay — seven easily-described things that I found interesting or surprising about Indonesia: :::: 1 :::: Everybody has compact fluorescent bulbs (often left bare and unadorned). Everybody. From a good hotel and resort house to the meanest roadside market stalls, I can’t recall...
Jun 12th
May 2009
6 posts
2 tags
The trip so far...
We’ve arrived in Singapore via Tokyo. When we landed in Tokyo, health officials in scary anti-virus outfits boarded the plane and scanned everyone for traces of swine flu. Took almost two hours. All I saw of Tokyo was the airport. We’re in Singapore now, about to go out to see a little of the actual city. We arrived at 2:30 a.m., tried to find a place to sleep, ended up on the benches...
May 12th
3 tags
May 9th
2 tags
Watch this space!
I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get online much in Indonesia. If I do, though, I’ll try to post any exciting photos or trip notes here. Stay tuned!
May 8th
10 tags
7 Quick Takes, Take 13
Visit the original “7 Quick Takes” at Conversion Diary. Jen does this much better than I do. :::: 1 :::: I’m going to Indonesia in three days! Saya akan pergi ke Indonesia Senin depan! :::: 2 :::: My final opinion on the Obama - Notre Dame conflict: No. Obama should not have been invited there. He should not be honored. He should not speak. This is wrong. Remember, people,...
May 8th
5 tags
May 4th
Harvard vs. MIT: Who Has the Better Sense of... →
May 4th
April 2009
11 posts
Somewhere someone is missing a white picket fence... →
Apr 27th
Declining Notre Dame: A Letter from Mary Ann... →
Apr 27th
Skin Deep Usability « Momentum →
Apr 22nd
Facebook Manners And You →
Apr 21st
"Fr. Jenkins Will Probably Lose His Job": Nine... →
Apr 21st
3 tags
Signs of hope →
“Ten Reasons Why the Pro-Life Movement is Winning”
Apr 17th
4 tags
7 Quick Takes, Take 12
Before reading these vague incoherencies, go take a look at how it should really be done. :::: 1 :::: Having already conquered the worlds of literature and computation, this week I move to seize control of the performing arts and creative design. Since my plans are already so far advanced as to make my victory inevitable, it can’t hurt to share my three-step plan: Master the realm of music...
Apr 17th
4 tags
The Shroud and the Templars?
The (UK) Times Online is reporting that a document from the Vatican Archives might shed some light on the Shroud of Turin’s missing history: … her study of the trial of the Knights Templar had brought to light a document in which Arnaut Sabbatier, a young Frenchman who entered the order in 1287, testified that as part of his initiation he was taken to “a secret place to which only the...
Apr 7th
3 tags
7 Quick Takes, Take 11
(As always, you’ll have a much better time reading the original Quick Takes stream at the Conversion Diary site.) Seven quick takes … GEEKY RANDOM WEBSITE EDITION. The following are seven old, old items I’ve kept bookmarked in a Safari folder called “Cool junk”. :::: 1 :::: Powers of Ten First it was a short film, which I saw sometime in junior high or high school...
Apr 3rd
“Will Bridewell, an artificial intelligence researcher at Stanford University in...”
– For all you grads out there … ouch. Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16890-robot-scientist-makes-discoveries-without-human-help.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
Apr 3rd
2 tags
“Currently, 17.8% of all Twitter traffic in the United Kingdom consists of status...”
– http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/apr/01/guardian-twitter-media-technology
Apr 1st
March 2009
8 posts
4 tags
Clinton, Sanger, and Guadalupe
Last week, Hillary Clinton visited Mexico City and stared into the eyes of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the miraculous image having been lowered to the floor for the purpose. One day later, she was accepting the Margaret Sanger award from the Planned Parenthood Federation in Texas. Clinton’s remarks about St. Juan Diego’s tilma are best left unrepeated. Her acceptance speech to Planned...
Mar 31st
7 tags
7 Quick Takes, Take 10
Visit the originator of 7 Quick Takes Friday. :::: 1 :::: I’m getting ready for an exciting overseas adventure (click to see where I’m going) and on Monday had my arms pumped full of exciting medicines and vaccines in preparation. I don’t like needles very much, so it’s been a good eight or nine years since the last occasion I had an injection. I barely felt the actual...
Mar 27th
4 tags
Notre Dame and Obama
The petition at Notredamescandal.com, calling for that school to rescind its invitation to President Obama to receive an honorary doctorate at its May Commencement exercises, now claims more than 160,000 signatures — over ten times the total number of students at Notre Dame itself. I signed it. The attempts to defend the invitation, by various Notre Dame students, alumni, and university...
Mar 26th
“Chess, for example, has 10120 potential moves, far more than the number of atoms...”
– Oops … this is what happens when you lose formatting in an online article. That should be 10^120, I think. Good story otherwise, though: http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/magazine/17-04/mf_settlers
Mar 24th
1 tag
Mar 18th
3 tags
Eh
Yesterday marked my debut playing organ and piano for Mass. It was a fairly terrifying experience. I managed to badly flub the first few measures of “Lord, Who Throughout These Forty Days” on the organ and was afraid to go back to it thereafter. Everything else was done on piano, where my numerous mistakes wouldn’t be amplified quite so much. Everyone keeps saying I did a pretty...
Mar 16th
5 tags
7 Quick Takes, Take 9
See the “Baby Edition” of 7 Quick Takes at Conversion Diary! :::: 1 :::: I got myself added to a list of Catholics on Twitter this week, and over the past two days I’ve been inundated (relatively speaking) with new followers. I feel a vague pressure now to make more of my tweets Profoundly Catholic in response to this new audience. I know that that’s not really the Twitter...
Mar 6th
3 tags
Kindle on iPhone
Amazon has come out with a free iPhone/iPod touch Kindle application, letting users buy and read DRMed e-books and synchronize them with a Kindle. The company seems to be pushing it as something to use in addition to your Kindle, not a replacement: But Amazon said that it sees its Kindle reader and devices like the iPhone as complementary, and that people will use their mobile phones to read books...
Mar 4th
February 2009
6 posts
10 tags
7 Quick Takes, Take 8
View the Quick-Takes Chieftain’s post at Conversion Diary. She has a new daughter arriving next week! Blessings and prayers. :::: 1 :::: Most airplanes offer a rather horrible user interface to their passengers. Among the many issues that need to be rethought: Many planes still sport a ‘No Smoking’ indicator light above every seat. Since this light is never, ever going to be...
Feb 27th
5 tags
7 Quick Takes, Take 7
:::: 1 :::: I’m inexplicably drawn to software that promises to organize, Get Things Done, capture my notes, act as a digital scrapbook, and/or help with the creative process. In the past I’ve tried things like DevonThink and VoodooPad, but I haven’t been able to sustain their use over time. Some of the products I do use regularly are Things, Scrivener, and Evernote. Right...
Feb 20th
Pope Meets Ratzinger →
Brilliant.
Feb 19th
Songs of Cornell →
A full CD’s worth of free MP3s featuring songs by the Cornell University Glee Club!
Feb 10th
4 tags
7 Quick Takes, Take 6
Nice graphical link to Conversion Diary that I can’t get working for some reason. :::: 1 :::: I tend to read multiple books in parallel (which is sometimes a euphemism for “starting one book and abandoning it halfway through when I decide to pick up something else, nevermore returning to its pages”, but I try to finish everything I start unless it’s pretty bad). Books...
Feb 6th
1 tag
How poorly-read am I?
No, the title of this post isn’t asking about my traffic stats. I already know how abysimal those are. Rather, The Guardian recently put together a list of “1000 novels everyone must read”. Let’s find out how low my score is! For the sake of brevity, what follows are only the works I have read. Those that have sustained multiple reads, or deserve to, are asteriskized. ...
Feb 4th
January 2009
10 posts
4 tags
7 Quick Takes, Take 5
:::: 1 :::: I’m really a morning person. No, really. Even though I occasionally stay up until two or three o’clock at night despite having an official bedtime of 10:30 or 11:00, and despite my tendency to suddenly get interested in working on a project around ten and totally disregard that deadline, and overlooking the fact that I haven’t woken up before seven in the morning...
Jan 30th
2 tags
Expectations
If President Obama is able to even come close to fulfilling all the wild hopes and expectations that everyone has apparently invested in him, then perhaps he is the minor deity that some people think he is. On the other hand, I’m hoping that there’s at least one campaign promise that he’ll break.
Jan 21st
5 tags
7 Quick Takes, Take 4
I took a few weeks off from these, but I’ve been guilted back into action this week by the unstoppable force over at Conversion Diary. :::: 1 :::: It’s cold outside. Very cold. But that’s the way it ought to be in January, so I’m not complaining! This is the best winter we’ve had in many a year, so far, despite the Ithaca Bubble having minimized the snowfall. So...
Jan 16th
“I resisted using Twitter for more than a year because it seemed like just...”
– Yeah, that’s what we all said…. A Minimalist’s Guide to Using Twitter Simply, Productively, and Funly | Zen Habits
Jan 15th
Jan 15th
4 tags
Father Roderick at the tomb of St. Peter →
Every episode of The Daily Breakfast podcast is worthwhile, but this one is exceptional. Hear Fr. Roderick recount his experience saying Mass literally right next to the tomb of St. Peter. Even vicariously, it’s an emotional experience!
Jan 11th
1 tag
Wegmans offers free antibiotics during cold season →
That’s a pretty nifty thing to do.
Jan 8th
2 tags
Watch yesterday's Apple keynote at Macworld Expo →
And while we’re on the subject: the disappointment being expressed by some parties over the revelations made in said keynote is just silly. No, they’re not earth-shattering; but there’s some pretty cool stuff in there nonetheless. (And I don’t see what the big deal is about non-removable batteries!)
Jan 8th
2 tags
The news from Cardiff
I’m not going to say just what the news from Cardiff is, because I’d like to keep it a surprise for some friends who might be reading this. If you’re interested in the topic area, you’ve probably already heard it anyway.  :-)   My thoughts? I’m intrigued; seems like there’s potential, good potential based on the interview; the obvious stumbling block for many...
Jan 5th
2 tags
25 Years of Mac →
Jan 3rd
December 2008
46 posts
2 tags
Happy Christmas to all
I’ve been not traveling all day. My six a.m. flight out of Ithaca was cancelled, and my rescheduled three p.m. flight out of Elmira is now six hours late (and counting). In all likelihood, I’ll spend the night in a random hotel in Detroit — which is not where I was intending to go.  But none of that matters. It’s not how I’d choose to spend my Christmas Eve, but to be able...
Dec 25th