Archive for May, 2007
Apple Stores to finally block Myspace squatters?
Everytime I go to the Apple Store at Town Center, or even walk past, all I see is kids hanging out on Myspace and wasting time. Why? I’m on Myspace, have been for about 3 years but I don’t make it the sole focal point of my browsing needs. But every single time I waltz past this store, I see at least 5 people on the demo Macs, futzing around on Myspace and uploading pictures they just took with the iSight. Hopefully that’s all about to come to pass so, you know, people can actually DEMO the damned things without kicking some 14 year old off who’s simply loitering.
According to TUAW, Apple Stores are going to be outright blocking the site completely. I thank someone in their company for finally realizing the waste of time these people are. However, this has been stated before and was proven false so we can only hope that it’s true this time. I’d like to be able to demo the new MBPs without having to wait for xXlilXcutieX69Xx or whomever to get off the laptop and stop wasting time.
Working from home
May 28th, 2007 • chatter, work
Well, today is my first day working from home for my company and so far, it’s really quiet. I don’t have to deal with noisy people in the office and I can turn up my music as loud as I want to. I woke up the same time as usual and made a smoothie but that was a bit of a failed experiment since I used too many slices of banana and not enough oranges.
Aside from working, I’ve spent my whole morning ripping CDs into iTunes and enjoying my new set of speakers. I hope everyday is like this.
And we’re off!
May 24th, 2007 • movies, pirates
…to see Pirates 3! Both my girlfriend and I have been eagerly anticipating this movie since we saw the premier of Pirates 2 last year and were expectedly left hanging. Now, we get to see the amazing conclusion to the Pirates series!@#! Also, we don’t have to see it at the NOISY theater with all the twelve year olds, thank Satan!
Who were the Kenites?
May 22nd, 2007 • 22 comments christianity, confusion
Just who are the Kenites? Getting a concise answer is actually very difficult. I was proposed this question during a discussion between a Christian and myself. Amazingly, the Bible offers little to no help at all and this is one of the few pieces of literature they’re ever mentioned by name. Being a non-theist I wanted to know a little bit about their origin in history and if they were ever a significant force in the world. Well, to answer the latter question up front, not really. I also wanted to find out why this particular person thought they were the spawn of my dear Satan.
So I started out on finding out about who the Kenites might be and where they’re from. The Kenites were a small tribe of Palestine but where they came from before that is practically unknown so I will stick with this viewpoint. They were a tribe of southern Judah and Palestine that were assimilated, by the revered King David, into the tribe of Judah. This helped seal their fate as “children of God”. This is where there is some controversy between Christian thought. According to Scripture, they’re a peaceful people whom are typically related to — or synonymous with — the Midianites. The Midianites were always held in a lofty light, having been peace-loving and Moses’ father-in-law Jethro was a Midianite (with some speculation that Moses was also a Midianite). This said, if Moses were a Midianite and if Kenites were another name for those from Midian, Moses would not be an evil and vile person would he? The latter part of that sentence brings me to the over-the-top and bizarre counterpoint to everything stated in Scripture: Kenites are the spawn of Satan. Yep, they’re descendants of Cain and thus, the world-bound demon spawn of Satan and all that is evil. This is the sole view of one right-wing, crazy, and seemingly racist “preacher” Arnold Murray of his own cult church the Shepherd’s Chapel. Before I even began wanting to believe a Christian this crazy could be believed, I consulted a reverend’s wife who just happens to be my sister. She confirmed what I’d read about his insane views of Orthodoxy and Christianity in general. Going off what he espouses to be Gospel, I tried to understand the etymology of the word Kenite in both Hebrew and English and why he would think what he says. The Hebrew translation of the word kenite would be Qayin which is the name Cain in early Hebraic text. As is the word Kajin and the Greek would be Kain. OK, so Murray might be onto something with the transliteration of the name but the word kenite itself also translates to “smith” so they could have been metalsmiths and not some blight upon the world.
Murray’s views are where he completely separates himself from Christian thought and his own bog of oddity. In fact, in apparent Christian form, he blasts any view other than his own:
Kenites
What about the use of the word Kenites? It is a Hebrew word that has only one meaning, “sons of Cain.” It does not mean Judah. The word Kenite cannot be translated Judah and is never used of Judah. Anyone saying that I use the word to describe Judah is not telling the truth; it would be a lie, because I have never said this.
Wow, someone got offended pretty easily. Now, we have to understand that he used the “original scriptures and documents” to formulate his propaganda orthodoxy. So why do many people translate the word so much differently than he? I think it’s because he’s insane and profoundly racist — based on other things told to me by members of the Shepherd’s Chapel.
With the brief history of the Kenites I’ve presented, why is there such a schism in Christianity over who they were? Since they’re almost solely mentioned only in the Bible, I’d figure it would be pretty cut and dry who they were. I simply chalk this up to another reason why Christianity is a bizarre cult that has no end. Rarely have I ever seen something so studied and laid before us with so many different opinions and ideas about the exact same source material.
RIAA is completely lost in a sea of stupidity
May 22nd, 2007 • chatter, idiocy, intolerance, music
Never one to want to be out of the spotlight, the RIAA — Recording Industry Association of America — is up to their tricks again this week. For years they’ve been heading down a never ending road of stupid moves from suing people without a computer to dead people to newborn babies. This week takes the cake, however. The RIAA has now decided to start suing those who made them rich in the first place: radio stations. They’re going to start suing radio stations over an exemption that allows stations to play music without having to pay royalties. Now the RIAA is clearly biting the hand that feeds. Without the thousands of radio stations across the nation, the execs of the RIAA would not be as filthy rich as they are now. So now the RIAA wants to basically negate the last 50 to 60 years of completely free promotion — and incredibly good sales — by suing radio stations.
They’re still struggling to place more blame on lack luster music sales on people downloading music — legally or otherwise — instead of realizing that the largest portion of consumers with the most money (humans ages 13-40) in their demographic are completely unhappy and unsatisfied with the choices they’re being offered today. This is the sole reason that indie labels and formerly unknown genres, such as emo and metalcore, are thriving. These offer the consumer something new to listen to and enjoy without all the overhead and politics of supporting Big Music. Do you think it’s pure chance that bands like Fall Out Boy or HIM are so incredibly popular because they’re incredible musicians? Hardly. It’s because the people with the money skyrocketed them into the spotlight by sheer buying power and word of mouth alone. This is also why bands and genres you’ve never heard of will have millions of profile views on sites like Myspace, it’s all word of mouth and grassroots viral marketing not manufactured music and personas.
When are they going to learn that business models are changing and they have to adapt and adopt, not sue and subpoena. Most Fortune 500 companies that deal with music and artists have adapted to the changing marketplace, so why is the RIAA so against it? Techdirt offers a very funny yet serious opinion on this new wholly deplorable tactic.
What does your coffee mug say about you?
Reading through my feeds tonight, PZ had a post about his coffee mugs and what they may say about him which was inspired by his fellow Scibling David Ng’s post about the same thing. David posited three simple questions about your mug:
1. Can you show us your coffee cup?
2. Can you comment on it? Do you think it reflects on your personality?
3. Do you have any interesting anecdotes resulting from coffee cup commentary?
3. Can you try to get others to comment on it?
(I believe the second #3 is either supposed to be #3b or #4)
So, what’s my mug? It’s a Starbucks 16oz write-on tumbler in the fashion of their paper cups:
This is my 4th tumbler from Starbucks and is the second one like this I’ve actually bought. I broke the first one by first giving it a nice drop kick in the dark when I dropped it and mistook it for a cat — no, I wasn’t trying to kick my cats — and I also dropped the top and broke its sealing arm. Does it reflect on my personality? I don’t really think so. If it spoke of my personality, it’d simply say that I’m a herd-following coffee guzzler that’s “hip” and likes to be in the “third place” according to Starbucks. Those who know me know that I’m anything but a herd follower and much prefer to do my own thing. I think the cup simply reflects on my fondness of convenience of coffee. For #3a, I’ve had quite a few comments made about the cup. A spry barista at Town Center’s new Starbucks commented on how “cute” and “awesome” it was that I had my order written on the cup, ready for them to prepare. She doesn’t realize that I got it because I’m tired of people mucking up what I want and prefer a more streamlined experience of getting my coffee. Most baristas love the fact that they don’t have to hear my psychobabble about my order and then have to transcribe it to their own shorthand. Now, there’s an easy formula for them to follow written right there: SFV S L (and I wrote Grande at the top so they know what size it is after being asked about 15 times “Is that a venti?”). This too makes it easier for them to ring me up although, most still get the price wrong. Down here, it’s $4.10 after tax and the paltry $0.10 cup discount. I only get $0.10 for trying to save the environment!?
As for others commenting on it, I get lots of looks at the local Starbucks from patrons and workers alike. Many people still comment on the “cool” aspect of having a cup that looks just like the regular cups. Shocking! I just like having an always available cup for whenever I want coffee, whether it’s at my office or out on the town.
The Physics of Fire review
May 18th, 2007 • metal, music, reviews
So this week I got Becoming the Archetype’s new album The Physics of Fire. It’s an excellent all around death metal album that I’ve spent a little over a week listening to. So I went and reviewed the album. I love this new CD and hope their next one is just as good.
Google’s new Experimental search
May 16th, 2007 • 3 comments google, search engines
So Google’s now unleashing some new ways to search. So far, my favorite is the left-hand search navigation that’s already been popping up in many of my current searches. It’s come in handy the times it has shown up however. I think the feature I’m looking forward to the most is :map. It’d be instantly helpful for many things I end up searching for if I can find them geographically just by appending :map to my search, such as “Boca Raton:map” and up pops a map of my town.
Now, when I’m busy reading Aardvarchaeology, I can pinpoint on a map where Martin is talking about!
The ever so busy admin
May 16th, 2007 • chatter
The lack of posts this week are due to a never stopping stream of work. I’ve been rather overwhelmed at work with trying to make a few dead weight employees redundant and other managerial things. I’ve also been busy trying to acquire myself a new job having put in my resignation earlier in the week. I realized months ago how hard it was to find a job in a market flooded with admins willing to work for peanuts, purporting their work to be “reliable” and “top-notch”. If they’re as good as they say A) why are they currently out of a job with such stellar skills and B) why are they undercutting themselves so much? Yeah, the question answers itself. I deal with people like that at work everyday and it’s utterly disenchanting.
I’ve got some things coming up that may interfere with writing but I’ve also got two or three other posts that I’ve delayed posting due to lack of concrete information. Thankfully, I’ve got some pious churchgoers in my family that are more than willing to point me in the right direction of what I need.
Welcome addition to dogma questioning comics
May 11th, 2007 • comic, funny, web
Culled this from my feeds earlier today and gave it a quick spin. Unlike LOL God, which also offers some pretty good macros or comics, this one comes with a discussion. The first one many of you will see is Satan betting God over Job and if Satan can turn him evil.
Many of the strips are like this and are originals, not pulled from another source. This’ll be going on my blogroll for sure.
