Today is the traditional date of Shakespeare's birthday, and also the day of his death. You may not have learned in school that Mr. Shakespeare may have been a closet Catholic; it is indisputable that he was surrounded by Catholics his entire life, and they must have had some influence over him. Wikipedia has a brief but cogent discussion of his possible religious committment(s).
Of course, today is an excellent day to visit Open Source Shakespeare.
Among my friends, there are plenty of ex-Slashdot readers. They just couldn't take the number of asinine contributors in the discussion threads, and I don't blame them for avoiding the site.
I still read the front page on most days, because are usually two or three items that are worth reading. Occasionally, I will read a thread if there is a good chance the participants aren't mentally out to lunch. But on any political topic, the lefty-libertarian fringe comes out in full force, screaming at the top of its lungs about Bushitler MONITORING MY FREAKING BROADBAND CONNECTION!!!! This is interlaced with huge doses of adolescent sarcasm, misfired jokes, and signature lines referring to Unix system processes.
Case in point: you know how when you're in a group of people, you can pretty much assume that everyone will agree that kiddie porn is horrible, and child pornographers are the lowest form of human scum? Not on Slashdot. A sample of the discussion is below -- each paragraph is from a different person:
When will the think of the children bullshit stop? It's obvious why they want all this data retention, and it AINT child porn. dataveilance...This is what happens when you let Johnny have a computer in his room.The whole "child porn argument" is poorly thought out. It's a knee-jerk line brought out by politicians when they don't have any other way of garnering support for an unpopular and invasive policy, which is so polarizing that it automatically casts a shadow on anyone who opposes it.
If America sacrifices its ideals and stops being America, there won't be any "American" children to protect.
Wholly 1984 Batman!
This is yet another attempt by the Bush administration to increase domestic surveilance, and to create a de-facto state of permanent constant survelliance on all Americans.
How many people are online? How many of those are surfing for child porn? A depressingly larger number than we'd want, yes, but compared to how mnay people aren't? So they're going to keep records of everyone's activities online and sift through all of that to find the people surfing kiddie porn? Wouldn't it be easier and faster to surf the internet for kiddie porn and bust the sites that are spreading it? Hey, maybe we could have the FBI do that.... no wait, theye're too busy working for the RIAA and the MPAA instead investigating dangerous crimes like they used to.
Well, it's like the AG said, the internet is creating a feedback loop where younger and younger children are exploited. Since there's a lower limit to how young a child can be, those sickos have gone on to fantasize about children that aren't even born yet! That's why they're using cartoons, because they can't take pictures of people who haven't even reached the stage of fertilized egg yet. They're being victimized years before they'll even exist. Think of the future children!
Funny thing is, I can take measures to protect my daughter from sex perverts, but how do I protect her from a government that is slowly turning into an orwellian police state?
I think that laws making child pornography possession illegal are, at best, in line with laws making drug possession illegal to try to reduce the demand to squeeze out drug sellers. We want to step on sexual abuse of children, so we stomp on child pornography production. To stomp on that, we try stomping on child pornography consumers to reduce demand. You're talking about a pretty darn indirect benefit at a potentially steep privacy and civil rights cost.
I haven't read it yet, but I'd like to dig into the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Ironically, the condensed version has a much longer title.
Jimmy Akin has read the Compendium, and likes it. I happen to like Jimmy Akin, as we once sat and smoked together in a San Diego tobacco store, so you can trust his judgment.
One reason I'm anxious to get my hands on this volume is so I'll have better answers for my kids when they ask questions. Explaining justification is quite easy. Explaining the Trinity is not.
The cause of "Tibet" appears, at first glance, to be one of those fashionable causes that celebrities love to embrace. Anything endorsed by Brad Pitt, Richard Gere, and the Beastie Boys is suspicious, don't you think?
Yet Tibet the nation, as opposed to Tibet the cause, has a very legitimate grievance against the Chinese government that has attempted to absorb it. China has murdered several hundred thousand Tibetans during their obscene occupation, and driven a similarly large number into exile. Now they are encouraging Han Chinese immigration into their restive "territory," and ethnic Tibetans will soon be a minority in their own ancestral lands.
The one bright spot for Tibet is its spiritual and would-be temporal leader, the Dalai Lama. Normally, one may safely assume that any Eastern spiritual leader known to Westerners is a charlatan, more interested in selling books and conducting seminars than achieving inner peace. A sure mark of the religious dilettante is the remark, "I'm interested in Eastern spirituality."
Real Eastern spirituality, as opposed to the denatured, consumerist version, has some rough edges to it. For one thing, the various moral codes differ, but they generally agree that giving into one's sexual passions is not the way to achieve happiness. Many strains of Buddhism place a very low priority on any bodily activity; celibacy is widely practiced and considered a highly desirable state for advancing in the life of the soul.
All of these points are raised in this account of an interview with the Dalai Lama. He takes a dim view of homosexuality, which might surprise his lefty fans. Not to mention his chummy behavior with their Black Beast:
Although he appeared not to approve of the war in Iraq, he was admiring of [President] Bush.This passage could have come from Popes Benedict or John Paul:"He is very straightforward," said the monk.
"On our first visit, I was faced with a large plate of biscuits. President Bush immediately offered me his favourites, and after that, we got on fine. On my next visit, he didn't mind when I was blunt about the war.
"By my third visit, I was ushering him into the Oval Office. I was astonished by his grasp of Buddhism."
"It is fascinating. In the West, you have bigger homes, yet smaller families; you have endless conveniences -- yet you never seem to have any time. You can travel anywhere in the world, yet you don't bother to cross the road to meet your neighbours," he said.I read another article where he condemns syncretism, and gently chides Westerners for trying to combine elements of Buddhism, Christianity, and bits and pieces of other religions and spiritual practices. He doesn't think that's healthy, and usually recommends that people work from within their tradition unless they have a true conversion of the heart."I don't think people have become more selfish, but their lives have become easier and that has spoilt them. They have less resilience, they expect more, they constantly compare themselves to others and they have too much choice -- which brings no real freedom."
The late Holy Father attempted to reach out to leaders of other religions, including the Dalai Lama. Over the years, self-styled defenders of the faith have criticized him for this. But isn't this a man we should be working with? Sure, make it politely clear that we are not compromising our faith in the One, True God, but we as Catholics should work with any man of good will.
Read the whole article. It isn't very long.
Below is an excerpt from an episode of "South Park." I gather that the show "Family Guy" is going to depict Mohammad (npffp) in an upcoming show. The speech defending free speech borders on eloquent; the crowd's reaction is sadly believable. Check it out.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is one of my living heroes. She has a tremendous independence of mind and spirit, with the confidence to issue orders and the humility to carry out orders. It would take a long essay to explain why she is the foremost Total Bad-Ass in the Bush Administration. Here is but one example: she is an accomplished amateur pianist:
After the Shostakovich, they turned to Brahms's Piano Quintet in F minor: "Condi's piece," as Mr. Battey called it. This intense, intricate and extremely difficult work is one of Ms. Rice's favorites. She reveres Brahms, she said, because the music is "passionate but not sentimental." In the scherzo, the players set a breakneck pace. Sometimes notes splattered and coordination teetered on the brink. It hardly mattered. The music-making was risky and vital.
Can anyone point me to a good Web site statistics tool? I've used the various free options out there, but they're not terribly impressive. Here's what I need it to do:
1. It should be able to filter out referrer spam from a hostname list that I specify.
2. It should do a reasonably solid job at Web analytics -- e.g., it should be able to tell a robot from a recurring user.
3. It should be free.
Any thoughts?
