[ There's a huge amount of information here that i'm not conscious enough to grok at 2:38 am, but I plan to come back to...

-k]

The Oil Drum | Sustainability, Energy Independence and Agricultural Policy

A few weeks ago I got to visit Neoteric and check out the Nintendo Wii that he has been obsessing over... It was immediately obvious to me why Cartman had so much trouble waiting for the Wii to be released that he decided to cryonically freeze himself.

The Wii is simply fun, even in spite of the crude graphics. The act of actually performing the action the game simulates has a huge impact on your emotional reaction to the activity. I bowled almost exactly as poorly as I do in a real bowling alley, and I haven't had more fun playing tennis on a computer since the wheel controllers on the Atari 2600. I immediately decided that I had to have one for Christmas. I told my family. Unfortunately, several million kids across the country had the exact same revelation at the exact same time, and apparently Nintendo only made about 400,000 of them for post release North American sales during the holiday season, so enter the crazy feeding frenzy. I won't be getting a Wii this year.
...

[ Well written... I basically agree. I want one of these bad, but i don't expect I'll have much luck until well into 07, after the rush of parents who promised little timmy they'd get him one back in november without knowing what they were getting themselves into. Thankfully, I followed every scrap of information about the system so I both intuited how awesome it'd be and knew they'd never have nearly enough on the shelves, so I haven't really been expecting one. Keeping expectations low has kept me sane.

Nonetheless, the day I walk into a store and see one I can actually just pick up and buy, I absolutely will be doing precisely that. -k]

On Virtual Reality and Next Gen Video Game Systems

What the hell happened? Where did we go wrong? How was Christianity co-opted by a political party? Why are Christians supporting laws that force others to live by their standards? The answers to these questions are integral to the survival of Christianity.

While the current state of Christianity might seem normal and business-as-usual to some, most see through the judgment and hypocrisy that has permeated the church for so long. People witness this and say to themselves, "Why would I want to be a part of that?" They are turned off by Christians and eventually, to Christianity altogether. We can't even count the number of times someone has given us a weird stare or completely brushed us off when they discover we work for a church.

It's nice to see some people get it.

[ I fall into that category of "turned off" by the whole business. I went to church for my entire childhood. Read the bible, sang in the choir, played handbells, even did plays for the church. It was a substantial part of my life, but one that didn't ever seem like it dominated my existence as it does for some people. Nonetheless, I had a genuine and comfortable relationship with the faith

Starting in college and then accelerating tremendously since then, I began to feel embarrassed to self-identify as a Christian, because of what the zealots and the media have made of it. In some sense you could call that giving up or giving in to the extremists. People of strong faith defend their religion as fervently from the poisons within it as from the enemies wihout... even more so, I would hope.

As it turns out, I was never a particularly strong believer, really, and I guess I'd call myself more of an agnostic humanist at this point. That is to say, I believe in morality independent of any reward/punishment experiment that may or may not be in progress by one or more higher powers. That opinion earns me cold shoulders from both rigid atheists and rigid believers because they both see it as a kind of cowardly hedging of my metaphysical bets. Truth be told though, I just have a normal, unsophisticated feeling that i don't know one way or the other and neither blind faith nor logical analysis in this realm have ever held much appeal. I'm not waffling, I just don't know, but I do know that there are things that are right and things that are wrong and the rest seems pretty irrelevant to me.

Anyway, I try to treat religious people no differently than others, but I have to catch myself sometimes, because with all of the unconcionable things being carried out by powerful people who claim to espouse the teachings of Christ, well, my gut reaction generally ranges from distrust to outright disdain. It sucks, but there it is. -k]

Bakker, Brown: What the hell happened to Christianity? - CNN.com

The United States Mint, concerned that rising metal prices could lead to widespread recycling of pennies and nickels, has banned melting or exporting them.

According to calculations by the Mint, the metal value of pennies, which are made of copper-coated zinc, is now more than one cent. The metal value of 5-cent coins, made from a copper-nickel blend, is up to 7 cents. Adding in the costs of manufacturing means the Mint now spends 1.73 cents for every penny and 8.74 cents for every nickel it makes.

Until 1982, pennies were made of 95 percent copper. The commodity metal value of one of those coins, which still make up a large percentage of the pennies in circulation, is 2.13 cents, according to the Mint.

Time for plastic coins y'all. With RFID's in them...

Melting pennies for fun and profit

Not bad... apparently a couple years old now, but timely nonetheless.

-k

YouTube - Charlie Brown Christmas - Performed by the Cast of Scrubs

Awesome. Some dudes are insanely good at billiards.

-k

Tricks With A Lot Of Balls! Video

Here's the poster to the film adaptation of Nancy Drew, the premiere of which I suspect will be a Dateline pedophile raid. As the poster implies, this case features N.D. hot on the trail of finding out who shaved this fat little Ewok in the lower left.

HA! I hate to say it, but the kid really does look like an Ewok. Ouch, er, zub-zub.

I Watch Stuff! - Nancy Drew Poster

There's a Latin phrase, "Et ego in Arcadia," which means roughly that even in the midst of utopia, there is the threat of death.

Johnson and his wife are living that maxim now. If Johnson recovers, he and Barbara may look at life and its fragility differently. They will share a Christmas story replete with lessons about what really counts.

Meanwhile, I'll remember how the specter of death intruded on a holiday scene and was overshadowed by something much colder: politics.

There's not much more to this little op-ed, but I was wanted to meme it more because i was struck the same way. When I heard about Johnson, my first thought was, "That sucks, strokes are bullshit." but it was followed, with unnatural rapidity, by a pit-of-my-stomach quaver as I realized that his incapacity endangers the Democrat's political control.

I found myself pissed off at the slavering mouths of the right wing pundit class as they extemporized with barely restrained joy at the prospect of snatching back the senate before the Democrats have a chance to do anything.

At the same time, I have to wonder if I'd have thought any differently. To be sure, I'd have felt guilty about being even indirectly pleased at someone else's hospitalization or death, but I'm not sure I wouldn't have thought, "Well, at least we got the senate back... so some good will come of this guy's massive brain hemorrhage."

It's natural to care less about the wellbeing of people you don't know than those you are close to, of course, but I'm still surprised just how callous we can be these days.

Then again, looking at it another way, one could make the argument that (R) control over the senate (and the implicit support of the president conveyed by such control) endangers a lot more lives, so in some sense, it really is more important than the health of any one man. I guess I just wish I'd thought of the political repercussions later, not as an immediate reaction. -k]

The Seattle Times: Local News: A personal crisis becomes political

Some of the prints on this website are really cool. Its like an art blog with a buy button. Worth your time.

[ Oh dear. This is just so, SO dangerous. I already have no less than SEVEN prints awaiting frames. Must, resist, more, prints!

we*heart*prints

As regular readers of my blog know, I lost my voice about 18 months ago. Permanently. It’s something exotic called Spasmodic Dysphonia. Essentially a part of the brain that controls speech just shuts down in some people, usually after you strain your voice during a bout with allergies (in my case) or some other sort of normal laryngitis. It happens to people in my age bracket.

An incredible story from scott adams...

-k

The Dilbert Blog: Good News Day