No I don’t mean a strong sining voice. Everyone (okay not everyone but a handful of geeks) keeps talking about Yahoo Pipes. I thinking about the possible E-Commerce possiblities.
Page 41 of 72
Here’s a thought worth consideration from Pascal –
The only thing that consoles us for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves, and which makes us insensibly ruin ourselves. Without this we should be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us on to seek a more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us, and leads us, gradually and without ever adverting to it, to death.
I never followed the life of Anna Nicole Smith, but news of her sudden death hits me with a deep sadness. In spite of any flaws or struggles magnified by the absurdity of a fame driven culture, a human person whose life seemed so tragic has died. Death mocks the arrogance of human accomplishment. So many of us strive and struggle and long for the things Ms. Smith enjoyed like wealth and fame.
Do these bring loving relationships? Can these repair the wounds of a broken heart? More often, they magnify the flaws and fragilities of the person. Regardless of IQ, wealth, power, and all human achievements, death wins. And the wonders of our majesty fade faster than the fresh grave grows grass.
My hope is in a love that cannot be stopped–even by death. The resurrecting love of Christ does not make me other-worldly, hoping for some escape from this miserable planet, but rather it reveals that vindication is real, justice is true and love really does conquor the absurdity of death. This love of Jesus reveals a pattern to me of self-giving love that lets go of everything and is free to embrace, to sacrifice, to trust. I rest in the love of living Savior and am free to love those around me. And I hope in a love that will ultimately renew this whole world.
As I reflect on the faithful love of Christ, my heart aches for the pain of Ms. Smith. Lord have mercy upon her. And Lord have mercy upon the aching souls starved for love wandering in the desert of life-sucking, relationship killing abundance.
My nephew Samuel treats us to video game theme song performances on the piano. I didn’t realize how big of a movement learning game theme songs was until I stumbled across this FanTent page (via sevenblock). Here’s a sample with the beat boxing flute player. Be sure to visit the fantent page to see a variety of fascinating performances.
Listen to your favorite phrases with an accent. Not sure why we need this tool, but hey it’s something to do.
Brian Leport directed me to an interesting page attempting to foster conversation about faith over at Newsweek and Washington Post. Hosted by Jon Meacham and Sally Quinn, this board invites a wide range of panelists to respond to various questions. Their responses are supposed to encourage a wide ranging discussion from Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Wiccans, atheists and others. The panelists include such luminaries at NT Wright, Adin Steinsaltz, Miroslav Volf, Martin E. Marty, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins.
I’m not sure you can have true conversation without a face to face encounter, but at least there is some discussion. And some of it is even civil. My real hope is that something like this could happen out in the office, the home, the market, the community. In other words, where people from differing backgrounds could talk, listen and actually face one another. Some of the internet bravado might disappear and few people might actually enter into a real person to person dialogue.
In attempt to draw the youth culture into the mystery of the Eucharist, one Church of England service will incorporate u2 songs into the liturgy for what some are calling a U2-charist.
Jeff Han spoke at TED last February and demonstrated this new multi-point touch application that could have some pretty cool ramifications in the next few years. Check it out.
NYT reports that the stone wall is coming down. After years of vowing never to allow music downloads with no copying restrictions, the major record labels are finally waking up to the digital age. Looks like there will be some major developments during the next few months and over the next couple years.
NYT today provided a master opt list to get your name away from all those pesky solicitors. Here are the highlights:
PHONE SOLICITATIONS To stop them, go to donotcall.gov. Or call toll free, (888)382-1222, from the number you are going to restrict. (home and cell phones; you need to register every five years).
JUNK MAIL Host by the DMA (Direct Marketing Association). Not a guarantee but maybe a help. Online form – www.the-dma.org/consumers/offmailinglist.html or mailing address – Mail Preference Service at P.O. Box 643, Carmel, N.Y. 10512. There is an online form at If you want to get more mail, there is also a place to sign up to get on the lists.
E-MAIL. No real good solution. You can try to make it harder for spammers to get your address in the first place by never posting your address in public forums. Spammers employ software to scrape the sites of anything with that @ symbol. Instead spell it out in a unique way like “the nameofthiscolumn at nytimes.com.”
CREDIT CARD OFFERS. Call (888) 567-8688, but be ready to give out some personal information like your Social Security number. Als0 www.optoutprescreen.com. You can do it for a period of five years or permanently.
OTHER OPT-OUTS Your personal information is accessible in less obvious ways. For instance, your computer tracks where you have visited online. DoubleClick, a company that collects data for online advertisers, offers a way to prevent your computer from giving it information at http://www.doubleclick.com/us/about-doubleclick/privacy/dart-adserving.asp.
But again, it is only a piecemeal solution. Other online advertising companies will still put “cookies” on your computer to collect the same data. So the next-best solution is to frequently run software that cleans out cookies. You can get Spyware Blaster, Spybot, or Ad-Aware at www.download.com free.
Your personal information, including parts of your Social security number, are available in publicly available data bases that you may never see. The most common ones offer a way to opt out of a listing. Nexis, one of the biggest, says you can opt out of its people-finding lists by going to www.lexisnexis.com/terms/privacy/data/remove.asp. Nexis does not make it easy because it requires that you prove you are a victim of identity theft before it will consider your application.
The Center for Democracy and Technology provides addresses and forms for other companies, like ChoicePoint, that do not let you opt out online (http://opt-out.cdt.org).
