Monday, February 28, 2005

Cows have feelings, too

from Arts-n-Letters Daily: Cows seem calm and dumb, but they are gay nymphomaniacs who are also excited by solving intellectual problems. More like us than we think... more»

Saturday, February 26, 2005

Disney

We did the combination Disney Land/Sea package this past week. All in all, it was a great getaway from winter into summer for a week. We got thoroughly spoiled and loved it. And, yes, it is a concrete jungle. We wanted to take our 10-yr-old son there, as a "life experience" for him. However, it did cost us, daily, about the same as we might earn in a week. I don't think I want to spend that much daily for at least another 15 years (~15 years ago is when my husband and I went on a cruise for our honeymoon).

It sure would be nice to be able to visit a place with eternal sunshine on a reasonable budget. I believe I'll be looking into that for next mid-winter break.

Friday, February 25, 2005

Narnia

I'm reading through "The Chronicles of Narnia," by C.S. Lewis. The most popular book in the series was, I understand, "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe."

I have just read the 1st and 2nd books, and have started the 3rd. In the 2nd one, "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," there is an event that really reminded me of the crucifixion, death, and resurrection. I'm interested to find (1) full-color images inspired by these books, and (2) written analyses of the spirituality of the books.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

I may have found it

I look and look and look. I went to the ontology site and browsed in many directions until it dawned on me that my visualization of the connection between Science, God, and Philosophy looks like this:

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Ontology@Wikipedia

Here's something I'd like to read more about: Ontology

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Evolution of a person's concerns

This article struck me. It is in agreement with many of the earth's religions and spiritual practices.

the article

Monday, February 14, 2005

Create Love Poetry

Say it with words

Answer 10 questions and we'll find a poem to touch your valentine's heart.

Gizoogle

Here's my blog gizoogled. WARNING - foul language. Maybe I should write that way more often ;-)
My brother's site gizoogled.

Politics

While my brother and I were trading mailnotes on PNAC, he provided a cast of characters, knowing that I am an avid reader and researcher. The names of those people include Michael Parenti [Amazon.com Wikipedia], John Perkins [Amazon.com Wikipedia], Lynn Stewart [Wikipedia], Amy Goodman [Amazon.com Wikipedia], Seymour Hersh [Amazon.com Wikipedia].


So, I began looking these folks up. I started with Michael Parenti and was reading reviews and my eyes fell upon this: So you'd like to... Be Thoroughly Disgusted with Politics and Politicians. That was intriguing. Although I would not voice my opinion of the political atmosphere of the US in the same exact way, I find the list of references to be good to start from.


There is so much information out there, it's very hard to figure out what the objective view is. It is dizzying.


I went through that "disgusted" list, and this book looked interesting. The book's review by frequent contributor Robert W. Moore is what got me very curious. I checked out the reviewer's other reviews and felt comfortable with them.


So, in conclusion, I'm no further than I was at the beginning of reviewing my brother's note. But, if I'm up to reading some politics, I think I'll move gently to something like this first.

Life Decisions

I enjoyed this post from Yahoo!Picks weekly:

What If...
What if things had turned out differently? What if your shattering talent had been recognized earlier -- or recognized at all? How would you have dealt with the fame? Would you have used it to help cure hepatitis, or cashed out like Jimi Hendrix? These are some of the questions on Craig Robinson's mind. Craig is best known for his minipops, tiny pixelated images of celebrities. In What If, this clever graphic designer presents a massive decision tree populated with potential Craig minipops. There's Craig the international soccer star, Craig the renowned architect, and even Craig the happy guy living in Berlin. Follow dozens of potential Craigs through stunning successes and catastrophic misfortunes. Then maybe have a think about your own situation. (in Arts > Humanities)

Friday, February 11, 2005

The Matrix

I'm a late adopter in that it took me 6 years to finally see this movie. I got it used at Amazon.com for $3 (including shipping). Not to shabby.

I was intrigued to see The Matrix after reading about it here. My son has wanted to see it for a couple of years anyway. So he got to see his first 'R' rated film tonight. Here's a site for parents on why movies, video games, etc. are rated the way they are.

I don't think it was the "Speaking of Faith" radio program that was the clincher, though. My son and I have been reading the Bobby Pendragon series, and the 4th book has quite a similar plot. Folks living in pods and by computer fantasy. However, in the Pendragon book, it is by choice.

I ended up being on the edge of my seat for quite a bit of the movie. I'm glad to have finally seen it. My 10 year old son seemed like he probably was not going to be scarred by it either. There was lots of needless violence and some "bad words", but he seemed to understand that, and remained mostly interested in the plot and the special effects (good boy!).

PNAC

Here's some info I just got from email distribution of the JUST SAY NO to Fascism site, run by my brother. There's this group, PNAC, who believes in bettering the world by spreading "the American way". Lots of info is on it at Wikipedia, another one of my favorite sites.

Several months ago I looked up the term jingoism. I believe it applies to PNAC. Now, I think the question is, is it a good thing or a bad thing? One big part of jingoism is belligerence. I am not a fan of belligerence.

My suspicion is that there are folks (members of PNAC, for instance) who believe that it is a necessary evil to force "the Amercan way" on people, for the good of the whole world. I'm not sure I completely buy in to that presumption.

Thinking about it further has me recalling that PNAC is one of gobs of groups who want to better the world. There are missionaries. There is the UN. Etcetera.

An extremely intriguing morsel of info from the NO to fascism site:
PNAC is chaired by the editor of a newspaper owned bythe CEO of FOX News, Rupert Murdoch. According toPNAC, America must dominate the world, and in orderfor events to begin that will enable this, a "...catastrophic and catalysing event - like a new PearlHarbor..." (from page 51 of the PNAC report entitled REBUILDINGAMERICA’S DEFENSES") was needed.

Thursday, February 10, 2005

I'm a people-loving Macedonian dwarf

Here's something I found at this blog: http://menagerie.mactyre.net/

After taking a little "personality test", it decided I'm Mother Theresa:

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

now my son has a blog

The report cards came. My 4th grade son does really well. However, he does not like to write his thoughts down. So I had this brainstorm: how about he gets his own blog? He has an assignment now to write a blog entry a day. Hope it helps . . .

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Forebears

I'm working through this game. It seems very interesting. A much deeper version of tickle.com's personality tests, it has the user go through many, many quotes from different philosophers to see which one they agree with. At the end, some sort of prognosis will come out as to which philosopher the user would find most edifying, I suppose. I'm only about 1/3rd of the way through it, but will persist. It seems like the results will provide me many pointers for reading material. :-)

Monday, February 07, 2005

my issue with folks who condemn others

I have an issue with people who talk about how terrible various other groups of people are. There are "fundamentalist" groups who quote the Bible out of context in order to say that some other group is awful.

For instance, there are people who like to say how terrible homosexual folks are (for the curious, I am not homosexual). Well, Paul does talk about how mistaken he believes they are (Romans 1), and that they will suffer in their hearts, and God will judge them. BUT YOU CAN'T STOP THERE. His description is followed by words like, "well you think they're so terrible, but you are the same as them." (this is in Romans 2) Everyone has their own issues to deal with; don't worry about someone else's issues - take care of your own.

I've been concerned that, historically, Paul's words have been taken as the instructions for managing Christianity, so I'm starting to study this thing I'm not comfortable with. But that's an entry for another time.

Sunday, February 06, 2005

religious left as portrayed by FoxNews.com

So, I was laying on the couch watching the Superbowl. It was on FOX. One of the ads talked about an upandcoming news feature called "Religious Left." I was curious what they might be interested in saying, so I went to their website and did a search on religious left.

Here is one of the things that came up:
... And What About the Religious Left? By Robert V ... "What about the religious left? No one seems to mind when liberal religious groups engage in political activities ... "

I'm suspecting that FOX will be responding to the sites that are listed here. I'm curious what they will say; hope I don't become even more dismayed, but I have my suspicions . . .

Saturday, February 05, 2005

what's happening in Cuba

This essay postulates on what might happen after Castro's done. I found it interesting. It seems to me that they have their organizational "engine" running so smoothly (albeit with political ideals that are very much in contrast to the US) that any sort of reform could only be brough about using violence.

Makes me wonder - what do they do to the world? Should they be left alone? I don't really know what they've been up to when it comes to world politics, but if they're generally leaving everyone else alone, and the population of Cuba in general is happy (don't know if they're happy), wouldn't other power countries (like the US, of which I'm a member), just do well to leave them alone?

Followup 2/7: I was pointed to this video, which I will probably get from the library and look at. Without looking at it, and just looking at the reviews, it looks like I'd want to see this plus something else to get a complete opinion on it.

Friday, February 04, 2005

cool political cartoons


CMM implementation

I've been browsing the MIT site again (see Ontalogical argument from an earlier post). Today, among other things, I located this set of slides that may help in the work our group is doing. We're working on CMMI, but lotsa stuff for CMM translates nearly transparently. On page 12 it talks about how long it takes to implement CMM. I need to study it more, and I might look up the whole SEI presentation on the SEI site, but it might be a good sanity check for our group.

RuneScape mom

My son and his friends are nuts about this game:


It's a role-playing game. He's also been into Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic, etc. In RuneScape a person wanders around this land, collecting abilities, strength, & stuff and can wander around with his friends and chat as well. I think playing this game with his friends is what he really likes, being an only child.


Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Perverted, God-Hating Frenchies vs. Inbred, Sex-Obsessed Yokels

Perverted, God-Hating Frenchies vs. Inbred, Sex-Obsessed Yokels
I got to this beliefnet.com article by a pointer from within an utne.com article. I think it is very insightful. However, I wonder if it has as wide an audience as it ought to? I suspect that the does not have the following groups represented as part of its reading audience:
  • members of the religious right
  • members of the anti-religious left