Thursday, June 23, 2005

Defended by Jesus

A recent TIME article talks about Evangelicals in the military, specifically in the Air Force Academy. With the tacit permission of the administration, the academy is turning into a subtle Christians-only club.
Yet religiosity infiltrated the school's unofficial vocabulary--cadets who did not attend chapel were known as the "heathen flight"--and presented some with down-the-rabbit-hole conundrums.

The fact that they have a term for non-Christians is significant -- assigning a label to a group of people is generally the first step towards marginalizing them.

Thursday, June 16, 2005

Unexpected Consequences

A couple interesting tidbits from this article talking about Dell being willing to sell PCs running OSX. Personally, I think it's just a negotiating tactic to beat down MS on price -- Dell is famous for it's one-processor (Intel), one-OS strategy.

The stumbling block could be product-tying laws that have plagued Microsoft recently. From the article:

"If you sell software that can run on hardware that you do make and hardware that you don't make, you cannot require people to buy your hardware to run your software," Brookwood says. If Dell really wanted to sell Mac OS X hardware, it could force the issue through the legal system, he says.


It would be ironic if Apple were forced to ship OSX for PCs by court order.

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

News of the Wierd

Apparently Britney Spears is famous for more than creating a really bad reality show -- she's also the celebrity most frequently used for spreading viruses. So when you get that email with a link to "Britney and Kevin Making Out!!!", just pass it by. Either way, you don't want to see it.

Saturday, June 11, 2005

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Saw "Mr and Mrs. Smith" last night with Jeff and Somala. We all thought it was entertaining. They had a fun time with the concept of a stale marriage between two secret agents, and they have some amusing suburban-spy humor as well. The movie is mostly light-hearted except for the last ten minutes or so, which feel more like they were lifted wholesale from a John Woo movie.

I was entertained, although at $10 for a movie now, I feel that I certainly should be... Forget renting, it's now cheaper to buy a movie than it is to see it (with a date) in the theater.

Friday, June 10, 2005

Buying Off a Generation

An interesting article in Time about the youth of Iran. The ruling mullahs have effectively bought off the overwhemingly young (median age: 24) population by allowing them social freedoms while denying them political ones.

Bad Boys, Bad Boys

Just finished watching my own private episode of "Cops". I was awaked from a dead sleep to the sounds of "Wee-oo-wee-oo-wee-ooo! Screeeeech! CRUNCH!" and part of my brain goes, "This must be good, time to get up."

I go to the front of my house, and right in front of Mio's I see a white Astro minivan has nosed itself into the building, and four or five cops are standing around it pointing their guns at the van and yelling variously in English and Spanish. The impressive part was that it can't have taken more than about ten seconds for me to wake up and walk to the front of the house, so all four cruisers must have been right behind him...

The two guys in the van wisely exited without incident and were quickly stuffed in the back of cruisers, so the excitement was short-lived. Now the problem is that I'm awake and it's going to be tough to get back to sleep.

Thursday, June 09, 2005

Interview with Eqbal Ahmed

Mark was on my case recently for not posting anything for the last two months or so, so I decided to throw up something news-worthy. As for other developments, much of what I'm doing I'm not ready to talk about yet, and when I am, it will be here.

I just read an inteview with Eqbal Ahmed about types and causes of terrorism. This came about after some discussion with a Pakistani friend of mine regarding causes of terrorism. This is a particularly personal topic for him, since he and his family are subject to an Unusual Degree of Scrutiny whenever they fly.

The other thing that's come up recently (more tech related) is that Apple announced that future Macs will have Intel processors in them. I was kind of dissapointed by this, not because I think it's a bad move for Apple, but because it means that once they've completed the switch, there will no longer be any competition for desktop processors. Intel and Intel-clones will control the entire desktop market, and I think it's a sad day when competition in any market dies.