This is for the people who believe in God, and believe in the power of prayer. The next time you have the urge to pray for someone I want you to try something. I want you to offer something to them. I want you to make a pact with God regarding your life and the life of the…
Archives for July 2008
Indulgence as God
I was getting into the elevator today, running back and forth between managing a long-term vendor project and keeping things under control with my other “regular work”, when I was struck by a thought: This is all a huge waste of time. I have so many things I want to read about. So many things I want to…
An Nmap Scan of the iPhone 2.0 Software
So, nmap 4.60 is accurately identifying the [iPhone 2.0] software as an “Apple iPhone mobile phone or iPod Touch audio player”. And that’s by using its single open TCP port — 62078. Other Interesting Information First, it’s reporting my last reboot as being Fri Oct 27 22:04:38 2006, which is highly incorrect. Even more interestingly, nmap is claiming…
10 Things Everyone Should Know About the Middle East
Most people–especially in the West–know very little about the Middle East and the people that live there. This lack of knowledge hurts our ability to understand, and engage in intelligent discussion about, current events. For example, frighteningly few know the difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and most think the words “Arab” and “Muslim” are pretty much interchangeable.…
How to Include WordPress Components in Your Custom Web Pages
Ever wanted to take a piece of WordPress functionality and put it in a non-WordPress portion of your website? Like, for example, pulling your WordPress Sidebar and dropping it into a custom page of yours? Well, here’s how to make it work. The Wrong Way Many have tried doing this simple include below and have met with failure.…
Why I Carry A Gun: A Personal Anecdote
People often ask me why I choose to carry a concealed weapon. When I respond that there is real crime being committed all around us, and that I refuse to forfeit my chances when confronted with it, the answer is usually the same. That’s just sensationalism. It’s very safe in America. The times in which you would ever…
China is Turning Africa Into a Colony: This is Something We Should Be Talking About
It’s no secret that most native Chinese see Africans, and blacks in general, as inferior. The dynamics of that sentiment are numerous and I won’t go into them, but China itself seems to be building policy around that general concept. The approach seems to be, “Africa isn’t doing anything with all that land, so we will. Nobody there…
The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon
The Baader-Meinhof pheonomenon is kind of like Deja Vu in the sense that it’s something weird that many people have unexpectedly and can’t readily explain. From the Damn Interesting Article: Baader-Meinhof is the phenomenon where one happens upon some obscure piece of information– often an unfamiliar word or name– and soon afterwards encounters the same subject again, often…
Thoughts on Freedom, Equality and Socialism
Perhaps it’s really the conservatives who believe most in equality. Is that why they get so upset when people speak of welfare programs? Because they assume everyone is like them in ability and that any failure must be a conscious choice? No, not most of them. That would be too easy. This doesn’t account for environmental disadvantages (or…
Feel > Features: Why the iPhone Dominates Devices That Do Far More
I made a prediction a couple months before the original iPhone came out that features would not be the deciding factor in whether or not the device was successful. I also refined that argument here. I think time has shown me to be right on this one. Here’s what I wrote in May of 2007: My point, which…
How to Help Keep Your iPhone 3G From Dropping Down to EDGE
Like many others I procured an iPhone 3G this weekend. I won’t go into overall comments here as I’m just addressing a single issue. I’ve been having trouble with dropping down to EDGE fairly often while right in the middle of a 3G-enabled area. If you’re having this problem here’s a possible work-around, which seems to have helped…
Initial iPhone 3G and Software 2.0 Experiences and Impressions
First of all, I mactard-zealot-camped at a local AT&T store (most spent in my car, though, not in my chair) from 8pm to 8am, and was first in line. Both I and my fiance were able to get the 3G phones (her 8GB, me 16GB), and we both got the black case. We spent about 40 minutes buying…
What Kind of Internet Speeds to Expect From Your iPhone 3G
I’ve been wondering what kind of speeds I should expect on my new iPhone 3G when I get it Friday. So I did some research and here’s what I came up with. Short Answer: Fast HSPA (AT&T’s 3G) currently has a theoretical maximum of around out at 14 Megabit/sec, but it looks like the “observed maximum” for the…
Why You Should Be Using Friendfeed
FriendFeed is a relatively new service designed to let you stay in contact with your friends in a more complete way than other services. Twitter is an excellent service because it allows one to microblog and push updates via sms, but this doesn’t show your friends everything you’re doing. Someone wanting to follow your blog posts, your picassa/flikr…
Using Your iPhone as Your Home Phone: The Ultimate VOIP Solution
I’ve been gathering requirements for my Asterisk-based home VOIP system and have just had an epiphany. I don’t need to buy any wireless VOIP phones to use with my Asterisk box; soon I’ll be able to just use my iPhone as my home phone! I was looking at the Aastra and Linksys options, for example, and preparing to…
Some Clarification on How I View Most Believers
I need to address something that’s come up in the last couple of months regarding my treatment of religion here on the site. A couple people have written me, either directly or via the comment functionality, to say that my treatment of religion seems too extreme. Their main point seems to be that some good people exist that…
I Am, As of Today, Thoroughly Enthralled With American History
I feel a surge of energy right now — a sense of excitement. The feeling comes from realizing how little I actually know about our country. Everything I know about our current political struggle exists in something of a historical vacuum, devoid of historical context. It’s repugnant, really. Well, perhaps not quite that bad, but close. History has…
My Respect for Christopher Hitchens Just Went Up Quite a Bit
One of my favorite writers is Christopher Hitchens. I came to know him through his latest book on religion, titled “God Is Not Great“. His writing in that book is purely spectacular; I’ve never seen anyone with such a firm mastery of English. Anyway, Hitchens is a character. He recently attained his American citizenship and is, and think…
Catholic Conventions Increase Brothel Traffic
Brothels in Sydney, Australia are preparing for a massive surge in business because tons of Catholics are about to come to town. They’re expecting double the demand of usual. A spokeswoman for the Bondi Junction house said: “The World Council of Churches, when they had their congress in Canberra back in the 1990s, that was the best business…