Category: tech

Talk about software, hardware, electronics, and a myriad of other sex-repellent topics.

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i’m no nike shill

I just liked the colors, that's all.
Home from work, 6:30pm. Off with the shoes and shirt and pants, on with the fuzzy slippers, t-shirt, and sweats. Around 8:30pm I decide to run. For some reason, having an iPod makes me want to run – more time to listen to music on that little gem of modern technology. The hard drive takes my puny strides without missing a beat; I hate running, but I’m trying to do it three times a week – maybe Keaton won’t have to look quite as far back as my high school pictures to ask, “Daddy, you were skinny?” I don’t think I’ll ever get off on running like those people on the sneaker commercials seem to, but if it’ll keep me from an early, artery-clogged, grave whatever… I’ll give it a shot.

Well, not to tread over and over and over again on the same theme – but I really am having trouble keeping the “appropriate” focus on work these days. It’s a mixture of some form of “senioritis,” the inevitable winding-down that overcomes most people when they know a big break from the grind is coming, and a general sense of work seeming less-than-important. I find my mind distracted by all things baby. Thing is, we’re now pretty much ready, nursery-wise, for Lil’ Chino’s arrival. The room’s painted, the crib, changing-table-dresser thing, and glider/rocker are all set up, waiting. Out registries are, for the most part, depleted – for which I consider us to be very lucky, babies are not cheap to welcome home. But, I catch myself letting work pile up, slip, and fall off… I sit in front of the screen and work on things of little importance, but things that keep me engaged. Writing Visual Basic for scripts for Excel… sure, it’s valuable – but it’s nowhere near as high as the things on the priorities list I’m shirking while doing it. Right now, nothing’s more important than this fetus.

Y’know, funny things happen when you look at your budget under a microscope as part of a simulated-Chino re-budgeting analysis. Thing like discovering that you spend $35 a month on Starbucks coffee at work, and that’s just one a morning each morning. That’s too much to spend on coffee, methinks. So, you head to the local-economy-ruining Wal Mart and buy a buy of Verona for $6, then you spend 5min each night telling the coffee maker you got in college to make you a fresh brimming mug right before you leave for work. Throw that in a travel mug, kiss the morning ritual of “going down for coffee” goodbye, and save $30 a month. Sure, $30 may seem petty… but it’s funny how making simple trades like that can add up if you really need them to. Me, I’m not going to mind the extra $30 one bit. $30 a month on dang coffee!! Stupid Starbucks.

Time to link you up a bit. If you’re a music nut like me, you’ll surely appreciate this outstanding blog I recently discovered: coolfer. With a keen eye and ear for industry news and other music-related info, it reminds me of my days working retail and reading Billboard or ICE weekly – solid music news on a daily basis. Also, snagged from a God-blog I read from time to time, I found this quick “God plausibility” test kinda cool. You’re presented with a list of checkboxes and told to mark as many or as few attributes which the God you believe in has. Then, a team of “metaphysical engineers” tell you how plausible your conception of God is based on the combination you choose. Frivolous, but kinda neat. My God? 0.9; plausible.

I shaved my beard. Just when it was getting nice and shaggy. I also left a sweat-towel from last week’s inaugural gym visits in my truck over the weekend, now the whole thing reeks of football locker room. Goodnight my friends.

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iTunes is crap

Mmm...
I have a massively boring entry all about iPods. I considered not even posting it, or double posting it along with a more respectable entry (I wrote both Thursday and Friday last week, but was up late playing iPod each night and just forwent posting). Well, you’ve been warned… tech-babble ahead.

“The Timetable,” or, “Looking that horse in its mouth”: Sharaun wins iPod in radio call-in contest, tells me it’s a gift to me. She picks it up the same day, and it’s awesome, black and 30 gigs. I’m up late loading songs on it, it’s filled to capacity by 1am. The next day, I put it on Ebay, where it sells in under 5hrs for $275. Next afternoon, I use the leveraged Ebay cash to pickup a 60GB instead. Sharaun’s OK with it, after I explain. I stay up late loading songs on it, and am satisfied with the canon at around 50GB and 2am. That brings us up to date.

Saturday morning (not too early, we slept late) I set about installing my new Alpine-to-iPod interface thing (Alpine’s KCA-420i) in the Ford. Turns out the deck came out with zero effort, and the proprietary Alpine AiNet interface was just plug-and-go. I cleaned out the glove box, mounted the unit inside with velcro and ran the wires from behind the deck. Under 15min of work and the thing was discretely installed and I was browsing my iPod with the Alpine deck’s analog wheel, scrolling through artists like I was on the iPod (albeit slower than running through the list on the iPod itself). Sound is line-quality and the unit charges the iPod while it’s plugged in. I was initially impressed, and happy.

However, one trip downtown in the evening for dinner, and the unit’s drawbacks became pretty apparent: All the iPod’s controls are disabled when it’s plugged into the deck, forcing you to control it through the deck. It’s frustrating to have to learn the Alpine deck’s way of emulating the iPod’s controls (and, it’s dog-slow refreshing the on-screen text). What’s worse, the interface only supports a maximum of 255 albums or songs per playlist. Wanna listen to Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy? Press ‘3’, ‘FUNC’, ‘3’ and then use the rotary wheel to scroll to ‘L’ (allow ~3min scrolling time, no joke). Then you advance song by song until you get to song #1 on the album you’re after. The process is slow, ridiculous, and conducive to running off the road for staring at the deck. Anyway, who doesn’t have more than 255 albums on a dang 60GB iPod?

So, I took back the KCA-420i and returned it for a AiNet-to-RCA adapter and 3mm-to-RCA cable. This way, I can control the iPod from its brilliantly simple click wheel, with awesome speed and ease, and I still get line sound. The drawbacks?: No ID3 info displayed on the head unit – something I can live without. Also, no charging while plugged in – also not a huge deal since there plenty of cheap cigarette lighter iPod chargers. So, it’s not as neat of a wiring scheme, but it’s overall better since you can use the iPod’s user-friendly interface and controls manage tunes. And, don’t forget the whole thing is less than half the price of the 420i.

In other iPod news, also on Saturday night the thing decided to completely flake out. Under every video sub-menu, (movies/music videos/etc.) my entire song list would show up – with the videos mixed right in. And, if I scrolled to and tried to play an actual video (all of which played fine previously) I’d get nothing but audio, just as if it were a song.

To preface the following, I need to mention that I’ve been using the 3rd-party iPod management software, EphPod, to load songs. I like the interface better than iTunes, and it seemed more “PC” and less “Mac” to me… so I felt more at home using it. However, as it stands now, you can only use iTunes to load video content – so I was switching back and forth between the two apps to load songs and videos. OK, read on.

The whole “video” part of the iPod and, especially, iTunes is kinda buggy to me. I had noticed, when first trying to get some test videos on, that iTunes seemed to add them as songs instead of videos. For that matter, adding videos is completely unintuitive. How the eff are you supposed to figure out how to get them on? I settled for dragging them to the iPod icon and dropping, seemed to work, although iTunes still said “updating songs” as the video copied over. Unplugging the iPod, the videos were under “movies,” and seemed to play OK – but the whole deal was flaky; sometimes the videos were there, sometimes they weren’t. I don’t know if this is EphPod’s doing, but I suspected as much.

Plugging it into iTunes, I got the message: iTunes cannot read the contents of the iPod. Use the iPod software updater application to restore the iPod to factory settings. Great; WTF? Running the iPod Updater would, of course, wipe all ~50GBs of music I painstakingly added just one evening prior, and it takes a damn-long time to comb through my >60GB library on disk picking-and-choosing which ones get to go on the ‘Pod. Close iTunes, fire up EphPod – all my music is there and checks out fine. Being new to this, I’m freaking out; I don’t want to lose all my music. I try a few things in EphPod: verifying the database (removed some songs whose “file size didn’t match,” whatever that means) and deleting the existing videos that had added as songs. Still getting the “cannot read” error from iTunes. Fire up EphPod again, and for some random reason decide to try and “delete all playlists,” done. I also followed some instructions on the net and renamed my active iTunesDB file to iTunesDB.old and made the .backup file the active one. Just to be safe, I also hard-reset the thing several times.

Back to iTunes, I can now see my iPod again… so one of the tricks above must’ve worked. Great! However, all the “play counts” are now set to insanely high values (most of them at 16794634, some even higher). WTF? So, I select all my songs and right-click “reset play count.” This seems to work, but every song’s “last played” value is still set to some random date in 1970… crazy; at least I can access the iPod at all using iTunes. After fiddling around some more, I narrowed the error down to a repeatable situation: if I’d added videos using iTunes, then loaded my database into EphPod and messed around before saving, the video list would get all screwy and full of songs – and iTunes would complain it couldn’t read the iPod. The solution was also always the same: load the thing in EphPod and “delete all playlists.” This enabled iTunes to again access the iPod, and loading a single video through iTunes would fix the video-showing-songs problem. Crazy.

Interestingly enough, I’d seen an article on Digg the other day entitled iPod Update Causing Major Headache for Some Video Owners, which mentioned that the v1.1 firmware was hosing some video iPods (60GB models in particular). In the Digg comments, someone posted a link to a utility that can be used to “downgrade the iPod firmware to the previous v1.0 – without losing your data. Thankfully, I didn’t have to go that route – as the palylist trick above fixed everything for me.

Still, video functionality seems flaky, and I’ve decided that I hate iTunes as a application in general. It’s bloated, loaded with BS like QuickTime, and is completely convoluted and hard to use.

And, in my last iPod-related topic, since getting the iPod and obsessing over loading it with tunes (oh, the joys of tag-cleanup), I’ve been sharply re-focused on finishing my Great Digital Migration project. I finally went through and cleaned up my master project spreadsheet, making a concise list of what discs still need to be archived. Doing so was a bit of a surprise, as I realized I’m actually farther along than I’d been thinking – basically having only live, various artists, and bootlegs left to rip (all the nasty items that won’t auto-tag and require manual work). In addition to finishing up the ripping, I’ve been trawling the music scene for new and exciting items. One of the new techniques I’ve developed is searching on the keyword “remaster,” which turns up all the newest “deluxe,” “expanded,” and “remastered” editions of classic albums. Usually, you can stumble across some great albums that’ve received the expanded treatment, and grab better sounding copies of stuff you may have or maybe even score some previously unreleased tracks.

That’s it folks, one big iPod entry. I have some more “charismatic” stuff canned from last week – y’know, the baby bit and all that – which I’ll be rolling out Tuesday and Wednesday.

Until then, love ya.

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slicing stratosphere

Somewhere up there...
Slicing stratosphere on the way home, another tight connection so fingers crossed that the luggage meets us there. Today would be the day my travel-size baby powder runs out, sticky unpowdered balls for an eight hour cross-country trek, what could be better? Laptop’s got enough battery to last the entire flight, but I’ll get tired of it before then. Debating even opening it, don’t really have anything to write, but I wanted to listen to the Andrew Bird album that I’ve been singing all morning. Had a good time in Florida, always do. Will be glad to get back home though, if for nothing more than to try and get tied into the work thing for a short seven weeks before Lil’ Chino arrives.

Speaking of babies, which, when am I not, lately… that little girl is on her way, is coming. I see it occupy more of Sharaun’s thoughts day by day – bringing it also to the front of mine. We start our parenting classes the week after we get back, once a week for six weeks – Tuesday nights for a couple hours. There, I’m supposing we’ll learn to be parents. Picking up skills like shooshing and swaddling and tummy-timing. I’m excited, actually, to go to the classes… even though they’re not free, or anything. I’m sure we’ll learn a thing or two about a thing or two, and that can’t be bad. But, deep down, I’ve talked previously about how I think this thing is just “meant” to work… being that we’ve made it from caveman to here, y’know.

Man these kind of entries are boring: “This is what we did, this is what we’re doing, blah, blah, baby, blah.” It’s easy to complain about the junior-high journal style of writing, but harder to actually do something original; so you don’t, you shoot for just writing instead, and leave lofty goals of creativity for rare moments of inspiration rather than the norm. Plodding on then, faults well known.

Sharaun got me a great little book for Christmas, 101 Things A Good Dad Should Know. It’s got lots of neat little tidbits of knowledge that all dads should have stowed away. Of course, how to throw a curveball and swing a bat are in there… sigh. Not that our daughter will be pitching curveballs that much, but her mom did play softball. What’s the fear, you ask? People, I have no skills; can’t swing a bat, can’t throw a ball. OK, so I can do both, so can a monkey, but I don’t do either correctly. Never did learn, was always laughed at when I tried, so never put much into it. In the book, there’s and illustration of the good dad, we’ll call him Dad Gallant, hanging a tennis ball from a garage rafter for swinging practice. Me, we’ll call me Dad Goofus, I hang a tennis ball from the garage rafter to know precisely how far to pull in the car. I don’t want to be Dad Goofus. Sure, I can teach you how to find the North Star, complete the square, and balance a checkbook – but I’m a wreck on the field. You’ll still love me, right?

I’ve finally decided I’m getting an iPod. I’ve wanted one now for nigh on two years, but so far had been holding off for a larger capacity future model. Yesterday, I just up and decided I’m getting one – perhaps my last vanity purchase before Lil’ Chino gets here. I want the 60GB model, could care less for the video on that tiny screen, but I won’t mind having it, y’know, just in case. While my collection is twice over 60GB and always growing, I think I can pare it down to a good “purist” base that will be nice to have in a pocket. I always rationalize large purchases with some kind of “plus and minus” model where I comb through the last couple months finances for expenses that could’ve been. When I “find” money that could’ve been spent but wasn’t, I then feel better about unexpected cash outflux. In this case, our skymile-funded trip home for Christmas is the plus to my iPod minus. Sane, right?

Before I go, a couple recent disappointments, one expected, one not. Got dragged to a movie with Sharaun and an old friend of ours the other night, The Family Stone. Please, for the love of Jesus y’all, don’t go see this steaming pile. It was, honestly, one of the worst things I’ve seen in a loooong while. At least the old friend sprung for tickets, so I wasn’t lighter in the wallet for the slop. I hadn’t expected much, but I was shocked and awed and how little I got. Second, finally got the Test Icicles album I’ve been wanting since their 1st single did so well. It blows. Don’t waste your money, you’re better off buying this brilliant Andrew Bird record and falling asleep in the sun.

‘Night.

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death is, for the heart, food

She's sprung a leak!
Weeks straight without and missed day and I have to go and ruin it on my birthday. Today on the blog: technology and music; which may be a bad idea seeing as my frivolous posts seem to be most popular – the “me agin the bees” entry a few days back garnered the most comments an entry’s seen in a while. Still, a whopping four comment’s ain’t exactly inspired discourse. Today in real life: more plane-time as Sharaun and I wing it back down south to California and I prepare for three days of work and unpacked suitcases before we take flight Saturday for a week and a half excursion to Florida for Christ’s birthday.

Since I made the transition from IE to Firefox several months ago, I’ve really come to love it. The browser is just better in my opinion, “sleeker” or something. What I really love though, are the extensions that let me do nearly anything I want on top of what FF already does. Lately, I also solved a long-time frustration of mine through the use of Firefox and some additional open-source software. Using the awesome SiteBar server-side application and Firefox’s SiteBar Client extension, I’ve moved my bookmarks from a file on whatever computer I use the most to a file saved on my server – accessible from any computer and always up-to-date. Ever since my early days on Mosaic, I’ve tried to maintain bookmarks on different computers. Now, however, my bookmarks stay on my server and I can get to them anywhere – from any browser (although FF with SiteBar Client is ideal). So, anyway, just another cool reason (aside from real tabs) to take a look at FireFox. I heard IE is moving to true tabbed browsing (not that MSN Toolbar window hack thing) and user customizable extensions also, but Firefox has it now, so I’m devoted for the time being.

Man, talk about a great couple weeks for new music! It’s like Santa Clause dropped down the binaries chimney first of them all. The new Strokes album finally leaks in full instead of dribbling out track by track, The Islands‘ (a post-Unicorns effort) debut album leaks, the new Mogwai album leaks, and an album I didn’t even know I was highly anticipating, the self-titled debut from She Wants Revenge, also leaks – not to mention Ptichfork’s newest fawn-overs, Love is All. Honestly, I don’t know which one to listen to first, second, third. It’s like on The Simpsons when Lisa’s grammar-correcting robot, Linguo, encounters the mobsters and his head a’splodes from the Mafioso-grammar overload. I want to listen to the all at once or something, because they all sound so good. In this sentence, I was going to say something like “… the Islands album sounds particularly good …,” but, after some more ear-time for all three, they all sound particularly good. Time to draft “the best of 2006” I suppose, never too early.

Without trying to sound like a TV addict (it’s gonna be hard, considering the subject), one thing I’ve enjoyed about international travel lately is the ability to download shows I follow for immediate consumption. It’s something I’d never considered before, I either just missed out or caught up on TiVo upon returning. But, with the internet of today – most popular shows are available for full download online within hours of their airing. While I was in India last week, I downloaded several of my faves and cached them away on my laptop’s harddrive for the long journey home. In addition to providing entertainment, I love the quizzical looks I get from fellow travelers on the plane when I fire up last night’s episode of Lost, complete with ABC logo in the lower right corner. With the fat pipes of today, you can grab a show in a time about equal to its running time (a lot faster if you’re privy to a speedier connection) – so it’s a no-brainer to just NZB everything you want the night before you leave for tomorrow’s enjoyment. Ahh… the digital age.

Finally, with a little behind-the-scenes action: The title of today’s blog came from a dream I woke up from one night in India – I liked it, so I used it (maybe it came from the malaria pills). Goodnight.

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bathrooms the size of coffins

Applies to the tech tag, or something.
You’ll have to excuse the terse entries this week – daily writing is competing with travel arrangements and the probably-getting-too-much-love “best of 2005” entry. On the bright side, I think I’m still on track to publish that next week, so it won’t be sucking all my resources. Be ready, it’s bound to include luminary passages of prose unparalleled by any other “best of 2005” list; oh, and it has little pictures of album covers, too. Seriously, wait for it.

In preparation for my trip this weekend, and ultimately to my dismay, I sat down today to review my flight plans. I knew the trip to India wasn’t just a hop, skip, and jump – but I guess I wasn’t really aware of just how abysmal it really was. I began adding up the time: four hours to Chicago, wait an hour and a half for eight more to Frankfurt, wait two and a half more in the terminal for another eight and a half in the air before landing in Bangalore. All told it’s twenty-five hours of travel, not counting the time getting to the airport and awaiting the initial flight. The way back is worse, courtesy of mean headwinds and a tacked on trip to visit my folks in Oregon: twenty-eight hours. That’s a lot of flying and sitting and pooping in bathrooms the size of coffins.

Ever since I decided to kill our landline phone, my DirecTV TiVo has been nagging me daily with a warning that it’s not made its daily call in X days. Back when I was researching adding an extra hard drive to my TiVo, I remember reading about a way to hack the thing to work wirelessly – and in the process enable all sorts of cool features like extracting recorded programs to your PC for archive purposes. Back then, I was paranoid enough about just adding another drive to increase my recording capacity – I didn’t want to brick my beloved TiVo – so I stuck to just the drive upgrade. However, the daily call nagging got me interested again and I began hunting down information on hacking my box to enable all the cool features that standalone TiVos have: networking, USB, recording extraction, and thankfully – no daily call nag.

So, I proceeded to scour forums and pages on hacking my particular box and software version. Turns out it’s dead-simple, or at least it seems to be from the various guides out there. I was super impressed with the ease of the hard drive upgrade – the hackers are extremely industrious and have spent their own time making their labor-of-love tools really user-friendly and pretty idiot-proof for someone with a modicum of PC skillz. So, I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised when I found a detailed website showing exactly how to do exactly what I wanted to do to my TiVo in a few relatively simple steps. I downloaded the utilities I need, bookmarked the step-by-step instructions, and plan to call my TiVo-hacking alumni buddy Erik over when I get back from India to actually take apart the beast.

I am curious about what happens when DirecTV rolls out it’s next software upgrade to the box, but considering that it took them years to rollout 6.2 I guess it’s not a huge concern. I also briefly considered upgrading to the new R15 model of DirecTV DVR – which no longer requires a “daily call” – but was somewhat dissuaded when I found out it’s not based on TiVo software but the same guts that run the Dish DVR. Dish’s DVR may be good, but since I’m so accustomed to TiVo, and I already have a working box I enjoy – I figured I may as well try my hand at hacking what I’ve got. Either way, the R15 is a $100 upgrade even if I do somehow manage to brick my current box – and I have an old vanilla receiver I can hookup in the meantime should the worst happen. So, like you care, I’ll keep you updated on the progress.

That’s it then folks, I think that’ll cap off the week; not sure I’ll be writing anything for Friday as I’ll likely be busy Thursday night packing and readying for the big trip. So, if no Friday, I’ll catch ya all in India. Peace out.

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a snowy day

Novice.
Before I say anything else (which likely won’t be much tonight), I just wanted to make sure I thank all of my commenters for doing just that, commenting. Nearly every time I read a comment, I have to restrain myself from commenting back – which, to me, is a close to a cardinal sin for a blogger (self-commenting, that is). So, don’t take my lack of response as a lack of caring… you’re a big part of what keeps me writing and I loves you all. Now to the same-old-same-old.

Today, we rolled up to Tahoe so Sharaun’s mom could get her first glimpse of falling snow. We were successful, to say the least – as we had to turn around shortly past the summit because the snow was so heavy. The roads were white and I was having flashbacks to our last stranded-in-a-blizzard experience coming home from Oregon last year. So, I pulled a dicey u-turn on a windy mountain road and headed back down – stopping shortly near a nice snowy field for the 1st-time standards of snowball fights and snowangels. And, since you’re reading this, we made it back down the mountain alive and with only one loss-of-control slip-sliding event. Her folks leave tomorrow, seems like it went by so fast. Her brother, and mine, are sticking around until the end of the week. In fact, my brother and I head to the airport at the same time Friday – him returning to duty and me taking wing to Bangalore.

And, speaking of India, thanks for the all encouragement regarding my trip. I’m still not looking forward to the work bit at all, not at all. I will indeed take lots of pictures, and try to enjoy things as much as possible. But man, packing… I have to pack for both India and Oregon, since I fly in from India on the 9th, pick up my bags, check them on another airline, and then get on a plane bound for Portland. I know, I complain to much – I should think of it in terms of getting a “freeish” vacation to an exotic country and getting to spend my birthday with my folks, wife, and unborn daughter. But, if I did that, I wouldn’t have any paragraphs to fill this page with… would I?

And, before I go – Tyler (Sharaun’s brother) and I have been playing the Pac Man machine like it’s going out of style this week. In fact, I think I’ve played it more this week than the entire time since I built it. Tyler was the first to do some internet research and memorize the four main level patterns that enable you to play forever if your reflexes are fast enough. Watching him destroy me every game made me also want to learn the patterns, and now we’re both completely addicted to running up the high score. Tyler shattered the long-standing ~39000 score with an amazing ~100000+ effort tonight – and I just thought I’d mention that.

I really have nothing to say. Nothing. Goodnight.

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sometimes you just write

Add it up, add it up.
Friday y’all. Friday and I don’t have to wake up tomorrow. But now, Thursday night, it’s getting late and I have only the Lindsay Lohan and World of Warcraft paragraphs done (read on, you’ll see what I mean) – and if that’s all I can muster, you’ll never read this. I have no real original content tonight, just links and link commentary.

My new Maxim came with a free 14 day trial of WoW, and I am so tempted to install it and give it a shot. So many people I know are obsessed with it, and it does seem to be right up my alley. See, these are the things my sedentary lifestyle allows me to think over: whether or not to install a free game and invest some sitting-on-my-ass time in running around in it. I’m no gamer, but I have a feeling I could become addicted to a large fantasyish MMPORG like WoW or EverQuest. And… why I’m writing about this, I have no idea. Let’s move on then.

Found an interesting link today while doing random browsing of del.icio.us, a free online book (in PDF format) written by Scott Adams of Dilbert fame. But, this is no comic strip, just what Adams calls “… a 132-page thought experiment wrapped in a fictional story,” and recommends that, “For maximum enjoyment, share God’s Debris with a smart friend and then discuss it while enjoying a tasty beverage.” So, I figured I’ve got plenty of smart friends, and the premise of the book does sound interesting: Imagine that you meet a very old man who—you eventually realize—knows literally everything. Imagine that he explains for you the great mysteries of life—quantum physics, evolution, God, gravity, light, psychic phenomenon, and probability—in a way so simple, so novel, and so compelling that it all fits together and makes perfect sense. What does it feel like to suddenly understand everything? Compelling, no?

I’m about 40 pages into it and already it’s struck several chords with me, Divine omniscience vs. human free will, the odds of choosing the “right” religion, what exactly quantifies “belief,” etc. The narrative style reminds me a lot of Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael, actually. To temp you even more into reading, should you be the temptable type, an excerpt I particularly liked:

“Let’s say that you and I decide to travel separately to the same place. You have a map that is blue and I have a map that is green. Neither map shows all the possible routes, but both maps show an acceptable—yet different—route to the destination. If we both take our trips and return safely, we would spread the word of our successful maps to others. I would say, with complete conviction, that my green map was perfect, and I might warn people to avoid any other sort of map. You would feel the same conviction about your blue map.

“Religions are like different maps whose routes all lead to the collective good of society. Some maps take their followers over rugged terrain. Other maps have easier paths. Some of the travelers of each route will be assigned the job of being the protectors and interpreters of the map. They will teach the young to respect it and be suspicious of other maps.”

“Okay,” I said, “but who made the maps in the first place?”

“The maps were made by the people who went first and didn’t die. The maps that survive are the ones that work,” he said.

“Are you saying that all the religions work? What about all the people who have been killed in religious wars?”

“You can’t judge the value of a thing by looking only at costs. In many countries, more people die from hospital errors than religious wars, but no one accuses hospitals of being evil. Religious people are happier, they live longer, have fewer accidents, and stay out of trouble compared to nonreligious people. From society’s viewpoint, religion works.”

Scott Adams, God’s Debris

And we all blog about the same things in the end, don’t we?

Finally, while I’m not a big pop-culture fan, I did get a chuckle out of Stereogum’s relating of the Lindsay Lohan / Jason Lewis thing (although, I must admit I didn’t even know there was a “Jason Lewis” to impersonate). I think I like it more for the 007 famous-people-infiltrating aspects than I do for any vicarious thrill from this guy’s brush with Ms. Lohan. You can read it, and then when you’re done you’ll feel like my blog today was full of good stuff – it’s the power of linking.

I thought you were gonna start a blog, pussy.

Give up Dave, you obviously have nothing to say. Goodnight.