The Naked Green

I guess I should have waited to reveal the latest Green Cite winner until today. What kind of a boring day would that have made St. Patrick’s Day Eve? I mean, we get to open one gift on Christmas Eve, why shouldn’t we extend the Green Holiday?

I don’t know why I never really noticed St. Patrick’s Day before. I’m not one for holidays in general, but here we have the perfect one. It’s not all jumbled up with different meanings because it lost its meaning long ago (just kidding). It’s not very commercialized (that speaks for itself). Best of all, it’s full of green!

St. Patrick was a slave who escaped and converted to Christianity. He felt his calling was to evangelize which he did quite effectively all over Ireland. He made many enemies on his mission and was arrested several times, but is known for great things such as raising the dead and driving the snakes out of Ireland. Sounds a bit like the Apostle Paul, doesn’t he?

St. Patrick’s Day is a traditional day for spiritual renewal and offering prayers for missionaries worldwide.

- st-patricks-day.com

The green color comes from the shamrock…

Patrick traditionally used a shamrock to teach about the Father Son and Holy Spirit. Trinity symbols are used in many different cultures and symbolize unity in diversity.

Jamie and I are celebrating tonight by going to Bennigan’s for some great food. I think I’ll stay away from the green beer, though.

The Naked Orchestra:

Do you know what it’s like to be able to see through someone? To see them naked in a sense, not in the sense of having no clothes and of seeing their naked body, but in a much deeper sense as if you can see right inside their flesh, the movement of their soul, the ebb and flow, the light and shade of their inner self.
–more–

It’s a sad story, but any author that can use the word naked so many times and not once hint at sex has got something to say as far as I’m concerned. He would understand “The Naked Green” perhaps. He talks of it, actually, which is how I found his sad story:

Now, there’s talent, there’s originality! Not a fiddle player anywhere to be seen on the naked green…

It reminds me of the movie, Kolya.

A little known fact that I think even my wife is in the dark on: My favorite color as a child was yellow.

Right on the heels of Ben Goodger’s announcement, comes another from the Mozilla community. Darin posts a very short and cryptic message which amounts to the same thing as Ben’s: ‘Oh yeah, I’m working for Google (and Mozilla) too!’

If that’s not enough, Google just announced their beta Google Video Search. Contrary to the name, it’s actually to search recent television programs. I haven’t tried it yet, nor am I really interested in searching T.V. content, but it seems to be a good idea. Google: Good ideas, scary implications!

This news first noticed at: Glazblog and The Fire Ant Gazette.

It looks like it’s finally official…Victor Yushchenko was just inaugurated as president of Ukraine! All I have to say is, it’s about time! The Ukrainian people have spoken and they enforced their decision. One more point goes to democracy.

For pictures, celebration and news, I’ll refer you again to the bloggers I’ve been following:

• Le Sabot Post-Moderne
• Orange Ukraine
• TulipGirl

This is an interesting development, though I can’t say I’m surprised. Ben Goodger, the Lead Engineer of the Firefox project for the Mozilla Foundation now gets his paycheck from Google. According to his weblog, his role will remain “largely unchanged”. Here is what he says:

I will continue doing much the same work as I have described above - with the new goal of successful 1.1, 1.5 and 2.0 releases. I remain devoted full-time to the advancement of Firefox, the Mozilla platform and web browsing in general. I’m sure you have many questions. While I will be spending more time at Google, I will work out of the Mozilla Foundation offices regularly as the need arises. For all questions regarding Google, I ask that you contact Google directly, rather than myself.
–more–

This is an interesting and, admittedly, a smart move for Google. I, along with others, wonder what they have up their sleeve. It’s nice that Ben will get what’s probably a larger paycheck and have funds freed up for the Mozilla Foundation to continue on with their excellent open source software. I’m sure that Google has plans much bigger than helping out Mozilla, though. This brings back rumors of Gbrowser and as much as I like and use Google’s products, I must say I’m getting a little nervous. They apparently have plans to take over the world (or at least the internet) and their secrecy about everything always brings up those dark questions. It will certainly be interesting to see what happens in the future as Google sees it.

Of course, maybe this all has to do with Goodger’s name. I’m sure some good conspiracy theories could be formed, at any rate.

Noticed at MozillaZine: Ben Goodger Going to Google.

That’s right folks, more information on browsers…but wait! This is not merely a comparison table with data most of us can’t pronounce much less understand. This is not a rant on security or a breakdown of rendering speed. This is the big dog, IE and the new scrappy competitor, Firefox battling in the ring of reality.

BBspot has the browser fight coverage and announces the winner of this mighty Browser Showdown. The winner who received the famed Technical Award of Excellence!

Noticed at MozillaZine.

From the MSNBC article, Judge nixes evolution textbook stickers:

Granted, the sticker put into science text books in Cobb County Atlanta are probably not on the top of the evolutionary chain. In my opinion, the same sort of message should have been evolved much further down the same line, but it was a good start. The idea was killed off by a federal judge last November. So, was it just a case of “natural selection”? I think it was just another example of the stupidity of evolution.

I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be judgmental, but this is absurd. Let’s put aside the long debate between the religion of evolution and others like Christianity. Let’s ignore for a minute what the intent of Jefferson’s “separation of church and state” was. This is what the sticker said:

…Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. The material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.

This is what U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper said:

…the sticker conveys an impermissible message of endorsement and tells some citizens that they are political outsiders while telling others they are political insiders

Excuse me? What is the sticker endorsing exactly? That evolution may not be true? That’s hardly an endorsement, in my opinion.

This, considering the fact that the sticker has nothing to do with religion, is just religious persecution:

“This is a great day for Cobb County students,” said attorney Michael Manely, who represented parents who brought the suit. “They’re going to be permitted to learn science unadulterated by religious dogma.”

Once again, I think that the sticker is not a big deal and really a poor attempt to set some things right, but the fact that people have gone out of their way to fight it tells you something. Merely calling into question the theory these people must hold on to so dearly to escape God, results in an outright attack on religion. This isn’t surprising to me, but it certainly is frustrating.

If you, my dear reader, believe in evolution, please tell me what you think. I really want to know how a majority of people out there can really think this is not absurd. I won’t flame you, I just really want to understand what’s going on.

Update (2005.01.14): Gervase Markham at Hacking for Christ has some more in-depth ideas and discussion on the evolving sticker. This is great stuff:

“Make no law respecting an establishment of religion” seems to have been replaced by the nebulous concept of “separation of Church and State”, which has then been broadened into “anything any government or state body does which is even concerned with religion is unconstitutional”, and then on to “anything any government, state or otherwise publicly-elected body does which might even be perceived as having something to do with religion is unconstitutional”.
–more–

Reading the many comments on the article has got me all riled up.

My A printer just turned 300,000 impressions old! Pretty impressive, huh? Right now it’s at 300,146. This milestone is a great precursor to my own birthday.

Speaking of which, my Mother-in-law just told me I could pick my birthday present from the internet! That’s style! My own parents already gave me my present too: some money for the REI garage sale! Jamie still has some things hidden up her sleeve (or somewhere) that should hit the spot for birthday enjoyment!

Yesterday’s post may bring up the question of why I would even be interested in an OS designed for Windows^® users. The answer is that I am a Windows user. “But why?” those anti MS zealots cry. Here is (part of) the history:

Our family’s first computer was a Commodore 64 and I learned enough to run a few games which was all we had on it anyway. I don’t even remember how to run it, but a friend actually has a working unit at his home. The IBM^® compatibles came to the scene and we mostly avoided computers for a while preferring the good ol’ books and outdoors for entertainment. We even did our homework with pencils.

I think it was junior high that I got more interested in computing. I was a DOS man, as most were, and could get around quite well. I played around with batch programming and became fairly proficient in Q-Basic building games and “screen-savers”. I put together a computer for myself out of a warehouse full of old ones at my Dad’s work and paid $50.00 for it. It was a 286 with 256k of RAM and a 20 MB hard drive. It even had a low density 3.5 inch floppy drive (if you have no clue what that is, don’t worry, you’ll probably never see one.) along with the 5.25 inch drive. In high school, between bouts of excessive drug use, I became interested in programming with C, though it was short lived. It was around then that I borrowed a dial-up connection from a friend and got lost in the world of online chat for a while.

[This paragraph belongs somewhere in the middle of the former as far as time is concerned] I was an adamant opponent to the Macintosh^® computer. A graphical UI? Bleh, who needs it? At this point, my only contact with a Mac was at school (enough said). When Windows came along, I disliked it even more as the cheap imitation of the Mac it was. At least I could still run Windows only when needed as a DOS shell, but that quickly changed.

So what happened? Why didn’t I revolt? I don’t know, I was young and ignorant I guess. The OS I knew was changing…fading away and I went with the flow. I never had money for my own computer and didn’t know enough about any other OS. I didn’t hear of Linux for many more years. DOS was not powerful enough any more and the GUI was an easy way to accomplish tasks and to play those increasingly complex games.

The first “real” computer I bought (after the 286, which I still have even after trading it for a backpack) was an iBook^® running OSX. I took the step to a better OS, but realized that I didn’t have the time to learn it. I was working on learning basic web design and with the loads of information to retain just in that field, I didn’t want something that I wasn’t comfortable with. [hanging head] Let’s face it, I’m a DOS man…all washed up. I sold it (made some money too) and eventually bought the laptop I have now.

I bide my time now…watching, waiting and dabbling. Soon, very soon I may be able to leave the OS considered to be so evil for a Linux flavor. I guess I’m getting old, but I don’t want to just rush into headaches. I’m working on my OS Mobile Home slowly and will have more options then. I want to stay open to “better change” while still making sure to manage my time well.

Not much in the way of history, due to my mixed up memory, but there you have it. Something.