The Blog with No Name

As Phildog notes on this day in 1947 Marvin Lee Aday, a.k.a. Meat Loaf, was born. I celebrated by listening to “I Would Do Anything for Love” while I had breakfast and got ready for work. That song rocks!

The Poison Picker asks you to reflect on this song and what you, a love-soaked person, would do for love.

It’s good to hear a lot of other people have the same problem. “Good” in the “I’m not alone” sense. The screen on the iPod nano is extremely susceptible to scratching, allowing it to get so scuffed up that it’s hard to read. I have a slight scuff on my screen (luckily it’s on an edge so it’s not too annoying), and I was a little perturbed by it. At the time I thought it was because I had absentmindedly stuck it in the same pocket with a bunch of other metal stuff. It’s still usable for me, but I’ll definitely have to be more careful until cases come out for it. It still is disappointing that such a marvelous little device has such a stupid flaw. Considering Apple’s experience with making iPods, how the heck did this get by the QA guys?

UPDATE: My buddy Soini sent me a link for what looks like will be a great protective cover for the nano. It’s a strong, durable, and transparent plastic film that covers the iPod. I think I’ll order one before Squirt gets too scuffed up.

Ha ha:

RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.

According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.

Money quote:

“The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted.”

Yup, you bet.

(via Drudge)

UPDATE:
My fire-and-forget posts often don’t work out too well for me. Kyle appropriately smacks me for not doing my homework. Eliciting my response where I link the actual study and actually put a smidgen of thought into the issue. Right now, I’m deciding between whether this study is either just another one to be thrown in the Stack of Studies or a clarion wake up call for theists in the U.S. to get their sh** in order. If you don’t want to read the comments, the bottomline is that the news article mangled the study. Surprise surprise.

Finally, here’s some food for thought. This is the opening graph of the study’s discussion:

The absence of exceptions to the negative correlation between absolute belief in a creator and acceptance of evolution, plus the lack of a significant religious revival in any developing democracy where evolution is popular, cast doubt on the thesis that societies can combine high rates of both religiosity and agreement with evolutionary science. Such an amalgamation may not be practical. By removing the need for a creator evolutionary science made belief optional. When deciding between supernatural and natural causes is a matter of opinion large numbers are likely to opt for the latter. Western nations are likely to return to the levels of popular religiosity common prior to the 1900s only in the improbable event that naturalistic evolution is scientifically overturned in favor of some form of creationist natural theology that scientifically verifies the existence of a creator. Conversely, evolution will probably not enjoy strong majority support in the U.S. until religiosity declines markedly.

This puts an interesting spin on the evolution vs. creation debate.

For the life of me, I cannot come up with a good name for this blog. A good name is important. Indeed, a good name has been called the “jewel of the soul.” I’m tempted to go with one that Greg came up with (Grin and Barnett), but something is holding me back. Pretty much everything else I think of is either hackneyed, depressing, emo, or pretentious. Harumph.

Day by Day hits the nail on the head:

Cox and Forkum aren’t so nice either:

Why on earth do we have supposed conservatives and Republicans defending and expanding a bloated government?

I once heard an interesting theory explaining why we have such a phenomenon, but it didn’t apply precisely to this situation. However, the gist of it goes like this: the real goal Bush and his crew are pushing for is not an expanded government but a broken government. The idea is that by ballooning the federal government’s budget, it will push it faster towards bankruptcy and collapse, resulting in the ultimate in small government: no government. This seems outlandish to me, but it’s fun to think about, no? That’d be the ultimate Bush coup. Break the federal government, reducing the United States to a group of provinces controlled and governed by mega-corporations such as Big Oil and Halliburton!

A recent edition to my lavatory library was a Calvin and Hobbes comic book. As I’ve been flipping through it, once again I am reminded just how cerebral, artistic, and altogether awesome Calvin and Hobbes was. I was very sad to see Bill Watterson to retire. My local hometown paper had a contest of alternative endings to Calvin and Hobbes. One of the entries was just a simple drawing of a stuffed tiger in a box in an attic. That one almost made me cry. However, there is some hope for the die-hard Calvin fan. Behold, The Complete Calvin and Hobbes. 1440 pages containing every bit of Calvin and Hobbes goodness. I want.

Wildlife exterminated! A lethal brew of heavy metals leaking into pristine waters! Weird reddish foam and scum in rivers! A natural catastrophe in progress! Destroyed vegitation! Melting ice caps! Sulfuric stench! An entire river system shuts down as it is poisoned by a foul slurry that would kill all fish! Eyewitnesses exclaim, “It’s like someone dropped a bomb on the place”!! What hath man wrought!?

Oh, wait it’s just a little volcano in Alaska leaking some junk out. (courtesy of Chris via email)

As long as we’re talking about environmental stuff, the Mars Global Surveyor has uncovered more evidence that the Martians clearly have no sense of how to be eco-friendly:

And for three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near Mars’ south pole have shrunk from the previous year’s size, suggesting a climate change in progress.

This is old news, but they still should have signed the Kyoto Treaty! (via Instapundit)

DeLay’s recent comment concerning the fitness of the federal budget is getting slammed and scoffed at from many sides, including conservative circles. And well it should be. It’s an utterly ridiculous comment that shows either DeLay is massively stupid or he thinks the public is massively stupid. The Cato Institute has published a list of government pork totaling $62 billion that can be trimmed off and used for better things, like say Katrina relief. Also, Instapundit and The Truth Laid Bear teamed up to introduce Porkbusters, a page dedicated to eliminating governmental pork. So far it has an impressive collection of federal pork projects, valued at $1,561,254,400, that can be eliminated. Topping the list (due to alphabetical order) is the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” that is to be built in Alaska at a cost of $315 million.

One of my super-sweet commenters asked if I could enable comment editing after it has been posted. I looked into this today, checking if there was a plug-in that I could get that would allow this function. So far I’ve found nothing that allows for editing after the post, but I found a neat little plug-in that enables a live preview of the comment. Check it out, it’s pretty cool. Let me know if you have issues with it. I did check to see if the users function of WordPress would allow for my loyal readers to create accounts that would enable them to edit their own comments. Alas, this is not available. I can enable users to edit all comments but not just their own comments.

I’m going to take this moment to give the brief rundown on my comment policy. In a nutshell, I have a hands-off policy. It is extremely rare I delete a legitimate comment, and when this does happen it’s usually when the commenter has such a slim grasp of the English language that the comment makes no sense (or is only smilies). If I remember correctly, I’ve only deleted one comment out of sheer annoyance. Otherwise, pretty much all comments are allowed. Fortunately, 99.99% of my commenters show class and maturity, so I trust them. As far as correcting misspellings and grammatical errors, I nearly always let them be. I do realize that this may be embarrassing to commenters at some points, but I’d rather do this than take the time to play copy editor. I also hope commenters are gracious to each other, realizing y’all only have one shot to get it right.

I’ve also re/moved some code that was slowing down load times, so everybody should see the page load faster (possibly significantly faster).

And the Palestinians show themselves to be worthy heirs of Gaza.

Palestinians looted dozens of greenhouses, walking off with irrigation hoses, water pumps and plastic sheeting in a blow to fledgling efforts to reconstruct the Gaza Strip.

American Jewish donors had bought more than 3,000 greenhouses from Israeli settlers in Gaza for 14 million US dollars last month, and transferred them to the Palestinian Authority.

Former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, who brokered the deal, put up 500,000 dollars of his own cash.

Meanwhile in Gaza City, tens of thousands of Palestinians gathered for the largest Hamas demonstration ever seen there, celebrating the Israeli pullout a huge statement of strength by the militant Islamic movement.

Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar insisted his group would not disarm.

“These weapons will remain aimed at the chest of the enemy until we achieve liberation, God willing,” he told the crowd. “We are not going to rest until we raise the flag of Islam over the minarets of Jerusalem.”

Appeasement does not work. Period.

Yeah, and pigs fly:

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said yesterday that Republicans have done so well in cutting spending that he declared an “ongoing victory,” and said there is simply no fat left to cut in the federal budget.

I’d recommend to Mr. DeLay that he never try to enter one of those contests to see who’s the best liar. He sucks at it.

Conservatives, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others. — Ambrose Bierce

Sounds about right.

Behold the iPod nano:

(14.7 MB QT mov)

The unbelievable iPod nano was announced today. If it wasn’t at apple.com I’d say it was hoax. Mindbendingly tiny, color display, photo function, 2 or 4 GB storage (as much as my current iPod mini), and only $200 for the 2 GB and $250 for the 4 GB. Two colors too: black and white. This is easily the coolest iPod since the original. I’m just astonished. I will be buying the black model as soon as I can.

Oh yeah, and new iPod phone and iTunes 5.

An old floor buddy of mine has obtained, scanned, and made available the Seattle Civil Defense Manual from the 50’s. It’s pretty funny as it shows the good denizens of Seattle how to prepare for an “atomic attack.”

Unfortunately, in this age of terrorism the slogan “No city is safe from atom attack” is all too true.