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  • Scary site of the day

    This site is
    ruthlessly efficient at organizing publicly available information on
    the internet in order to assist the world's aspiring stalkers.

    You can read more about it here.

  • If I could turn back time

    You know that thing where you say something, but then immediately
    wish you'd said something else, something funnier? It happens to me often.
    Usually it's because my mind didn't work quickly enough. Sometimes,
    though, saying the right thing just feels too risky. Here's an
    exchange that took place at the Bible study that I host, during the
    quiet moments when everyone was studying Scripture by themselves.

    What I actually said:

    Asa (sorting through my pens): You have a lot of pink pens.
    Mark: Well, they were presents. Or maybe I just found them were lying around outside.

    What I should have said:

    Asa (sorting through my pens): You have a lot of pink pens.
    Mark: That's because I'm gay.

  • On the poker message boards that I frequent, there is a thread whose
    basic thrust is: "how can Christians believe that the universe is only
    six thousand years old?" At times like
    these, I wish it were widely known that the young-universe theory wasn't generally believed
    until this century, and that it still is generally disbelieved by
    Christians outside America.

    I am also reminded of St. Augustine's remarkably prescient (and tragicomical) thoughts on these matters.

    Quote of the day


    Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the
    earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and
    orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the
    predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and seasons,
    about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge
    he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.

    Now, it is a
    disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably
    giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we
    should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which
    people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame
    is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside
    the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and,
    to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our
    Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men....

    Reckless and
    incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on
    their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false
    opinions and are taken to task by these who are not bound by the authority of
    our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously
    untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and
    even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position,
    although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which
    they make assertion.

  • One-third movie review

    Everyone I know quotes this movie relentlessly, so I broke down
    and started watching it on DVD. I got through forty minutes before I
    had to turn it off. It's kind of amusing, yes, but far too precious for
    my taste. (Or maybe it was just his haircut that was annoying me.) Am I alone on this one?

  • You may think your blog is cool...

    but do you have your own parody blog?

    No, it wasn't written by me.

  • Commerce trip report

    This weekend I was at the Commerce Casino in LA, playing poker. I
    played no-limit holdem, and I played at both the $100 buyin and $200
    buyin
    tables. The $100 and $200 tables are all jammed together, but they can
    be easily sorted by the appearance of the players.

    At the $100 tables, the players look like friendly folks who just walked in off the street.

    At the $200 tables, half of the players look like the $100 players. The
    other half are stone-faced twentysomething white guys wearing visors
    and sunglasses.

    All of the players are horrible.

  • Happy Presidents' Day, everyone!

    I hope that on Monday, you can take some time off from your
    reflections on the legacy of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in
    order to do something fun like watch TV or eat a Pop-Tart. Enjoy the
    holiday.

  • Moral lesson of the day

    My
    Bible study group is teaching me to consider the wider ramifications
    of my everyday choices, which I think is pretty cool. It does, however, make it difficult for us to
    reach group consensus, since even the smallest decisions can take on
    unanticipated ethical importance. Here is an exchange from last night, as we
    attempted to make plans for next week's fun "social night."

    C.: Why don't we go to Dave & Buster's?
    A.: Oh, no. You guys can do that if you want, but I'm not going.
    Me: Why not?

    A.: Dave & Buster's
    represents all the worst things about America. It's a big corporation
    that charges large amounts of
    money so that people can play video games -- not even real games! -- rather than actually talk to each other. Why would you
    want to support that?
    (beat)
    V.: (brightly) Well, sometimes you just want to play Skee-Ball!

    This sparked a brief discussion not on the social impact of video
    games, but rather of the fact that it's not easy these days to find places to play Skee-Ball.

    In the end, we settled on having a potluck dinner.


  • Tech Support Tip of the Day

    If you're running Windows XP on an LCD monitor and haven't run
    ClearType yet, I recommend that you do so. ClearType makes your
    onscreen fonts less jagged and more readable. There's a web interface which didn't work for my computer, so I used the downloadable PowerToy version.

    There are two types of LCD monitors. Most are RGB, but a "very small"
    fraction are BGR. "Very small" includes my monitor at work, so take the
    time to compare the test displays.

  • Link of the day

    http://maps.google.com/

    This is, by far, the best free mapping site on the web. It might even
    be better than MS Streets & Trips, which I actually paid money for.

    So far, Google is pretty much fantastic at pretty much everything they do. How do they do that?