It's only been a weekend and a day since my last update of shared items from Google Reader. Maybe I can get back to a daily schedule!
Education:
- Lifehacker ran through the Top 10 Tools for a Free Online Education. Many of them are very specific, but there's definitely some cool stuff out there.
- Campus computer labs are dying, morphing instead into wifi hotspots. As a former nearly-full-time resident of the CCLI at MTU, that's a little sad. I'm not sure we would have all ended up there for a wifi hotspot.
- Toddlers can't plan for the future much, even when told to do so; they need negative reinforcement showing them why such planning is necessary. In other words, they aren't ignoring your warnings because they're obstinate, it's because their brains don't work that way. Well, not just because they're obstinate.
Atheism:
- This sign at Beryl Baptist Church pretty much says it all. I did the link that way hoping to push Pharyngula up in searches for "Baptist church," because that would be both funny and useful.
- The UN is calling religion a pussy again, claiming it can't survive people making fun of it. Poor religion. So useless, so ridiculous, so unnecessary. I'm sorry, though; I'll continue to call a spade a spade, and a religion a harmful, steaming pile of bullshit.
Politics:
- Gates says no quick end to "don't ask, don't tell." Liberals see no quick end to thinking maybe keeping a Bush appointee was a bad idea.
Science:
- Playing certain types of videogames (specifically first-person shooters) improves vision. Damn. I generally hate those things.
Technology:
- My mecha is one step closer. Honda has developed my control system for it.
The Internets:
- Ah, browser user scripts. Is there anything you can't do? Lifehacker gave me two new things you can do: auto-hide message labels in gmail (for screens where they don't fit as well), and fix the mess that is the new Facebook. Don't believe it when Lifehacker says those things are "Firefox only." I think IE is the only browser left that doesn't support them, as long as you're using the beta Chrome 2... and even IE 8.1 is rumored to support them.
Random:
- Thanks to a camera phone, the end of the rainbow has been found and photographed. I'm pretty sure that SUV ran over the leprechaun and scattered his gold.
As always, leave your comments on these or anything else below.
2 comments:
re: "The UN is calling religion a pussy again, claiming it can't survive people making fun of it."
I hope they are right... and I hope they don't outlaw making fun of it. I usually try to be pretty law-abiding but I might quickly become a felon if it were illegal to denigrate religion.
But in the same vein, I have seen a big change in the general attitude toward religion in the last 50 years. Despite all of the recent born-again rabble rousing and 8 years of fundamentalist presidency, religion has way less hold on daily life today than it did when I was a young teen. I grew up with the 'blue laws'. No stores were open on Sunday morning except the drug store, and only the drug aisle there. A few restaurants opened after church for Sunday dinner but otherwise all commerce was shut down by religion. Now almost all business have Sunday hours and places like beaches and parks are full of people on Sunday morning. In the '50s and early '60s you wouldn't dare be seen in public anyplace but church or risk ostracization. These days I go to running races on Sunday mornings where thousands of runners show up. And they might even serve beer at the post-race party. The world is better for this.
I agree that it's better... but the move to make it a crime to make fun of religion is just crazy, and needs to be called out every time it comes up.
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