This is hilarious (and slightly...sad):

via BoingBoing, via Godlorica.

United States Patent Application
20050212207

Abstract
A game board apparatus having a game board horizontally divided into two sectors representing heaven and hell. The start position is at the bottom of the hell and the finish winning position is situated at the top of the heaven. The players use playing pieces to traverse spaces in the heaven and hell sectors, the amount of advancement being dictated by indicia provided on decks of question cards and answer cards.

The idea is wild enough, but the best part are the question cards which decide which direction you go on the board:

Would you make a deal with Satan?
Yes: Remain on spot. No: Advance 5 spaces.

Do you lie?
Yes: Remain on the spot. No: Advance 10 spaces.

Are you a drug user?
Yes: Go back 4 spaces. No: Advance 4 spaces.

Do you like pornography?
Yes: Go back 4 spaces. No: Advance 8 spaces.

Do you believe money is more important than your personal salvation?
Yes: Go back 11 spaces. No: Advance 11 spaces.

Do you follow God's word?
Yes: Advance 7 spaces. No: Go back to hell or satan green star.

It goes ON and ON like that - 80 questions in all. I am laughing so hard right now it hurts.

OK, and here's the REAL irony of it all: Question 8 of the "Hell Cards":

Do you think being a good person will keep you from going to hell?
Yes: Go back 3 spaces. No: Advance 7 spaces.

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Edit:

I just can't get over this. After reading for a few more minutes, here are a couple more of my favorite questions and their consequences:

Are you an atheist or communist?
Yes: Go back to start. No: Advance to next heaven blue star.

Would you sell your country's defense secrets?
Yes: Go back to start. No: Advance 6 spaces.

If cutting off any part of your body would give a satanic power, would you do it?
Yes: Go back to start. No: Advance 7 spaces.

To go a little deeper on this...
I noticed something - the game functions according to what most people view religion as - do something good, get closer to heaven/Nirvana/paradise - do something bad, get further away.
In fact, you could have some type of version of this board game for virtually every religion out there!

Islam:

Have you ever been to Mekka?
Yes: Advance 4 spaces. No: Go back 5 spaces.

Do you pray daily?
Yes: Advance 4 spaces. No: Go back 5 spaces.

Do you observe the Ramadan fast?
Yes: Advance 4 spaces. No: Go back 5 spaces.

Hinduism:

Do you lie?
Yes: Go back 3 karma. No: Advance 2 karma.

Do you eat meat?
Yes: Go back 1 karma. No: Advance 1 karma.

Do you tithe one tenth of your income to God?
Yes: Advance 2 karma. No: Go back 2 karma.

Buddhism:

Do you steal?
Yes: Go back 3 spaces. No: Advance 3 spaces.

Do you lie?
Yes: Go back 3 spaces. No: Advance 2 spaces.

Do you have sex outside of marriage?
Yes: Go back 3 spaces. No: Advance 3 spaces.

Judaism:

Do you keep the Sabbath?
Yes: Advance 3 spaces. No: Go back 3 spaces.

Do you commit adultery?
Yes: Go back 2 spaces. No: Advance 3 spaces.

The ironic thing is that Christianity is supposed to transcend this "game", not join in, adding stupid rules like "Thou shalt not sell thy country's defense secrets." The principle being: Christianity is about a relationship, not about rules!

The author of this board game seems to have heard about this somewhere (see the question on "being a good person"), but he completely misses the point, making even that principle part of the game! Whoa.

You want scary? Here's scary for ya:

How U.S. Fell Under the Spell of 'Curveball' - Los Angeles Times

Funny quote of the month:

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

- Winston Churchill

Methinks my socialist friend Zakcq will like that quote. ;)

OK, so this is officially the coolest thing I have seen this year. Just to warn you, you probably won't get that excited about it, but I think it's friggin' AWESOME.

NumberSpiral.com - really hard to explain without pictures (and the images are copyright so I can't post them here). Basically, he makes a number spiral by starting with 0 at the middle , then rolling the numbers around it like a ribbon, keeping square numbers next to each other. Zooming way out you can see cool patterns regarding prime numbers and other stuff.

The beauty of math sometimes blows me away. :)

Heard this interesting quote from J.K. Rowling:

"Yes, I am [a Christian]," she says. "Which seems to offend the religious right far worse than if I said I thought there was no God. Every time I've been asked if I believe in God, I've said yes, because I do, but no one ever really has gone any more deeply into it than that, and I have to say that does suit me, because if I talk too freely about that I think the intelligent reader, whether 10 or 60, will be able to guess what's coming in the books."

Found here.

OK, forget the whole "is she a Christian or not", I'm thinking about the book content - this kind of confirms my theory about book seven that Dumbledore is coming back from the dead. Resurrection, the Phoenix, etc. etc. (highlight to read). :)

Found at: The Klingon programmer

Top 20 things likely to be overheard if you had a Klingon Programmer:

1. Defensive programming? Never! Klingon programs are always on the offense. Yes, offensive programming is what we do best.
2. Specifications are for the weak and timid!
3. This machine is GAGH! I need dual Pentium processors if I am to do battle with this code!
4. You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the original Klingon.
5. Indentation?! - I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!
6. What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases'. Our software 'escapes' leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake.
7. Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' - they have 'arguments' -- and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.
8. Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak. Bugs are good for building character in the user.
9. I have challenged the entire ISO-9000 quality assurance team to a Bat-Leth contest on the holodeck. They will not concern us again.
10. A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment his code!
11. By filing this bug report you have challenged the honor of my family. Prepare to die!
12. You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!
13. Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
14. Our competitors are without honor!
15. Python? That is for children. A Klingon Warrior uses only machine code, keyed in on the front panel switches in raw binary.
16. Klingon programs don't do accountancy. For that, you need a Ferengi.
17. Klingon multitasking systems do not support "time-sharing". When a Klingon program wants to run, it challenges the scheduler in hand-to-hand combat and owns the machine.
18. Perhaps it IS a good day to die! I say we ship it!
19. My program has just dumped Stova Core!
20. Behold, the keyboard of Kalis! The greatest Klingon code warrior that ever lived!

And yet another excellent article from "The Escapist":

The Escapist - When Gamers Breed

Donna and Jack can use games as effective parenting tools because they know and play the games. "George was behind the benchmarks for kindergarten in letter recognition and associated sounds," Donna remembers. "So over spring break he'd sit behind me and I'd use the World of Warcraft in-game page function to send him letters and phonics combos. (I have logs that go 'B' - 'f' - 'J' - 'TH.') He was so excited, and he'd yell 'em out. After he could call out the letters really well, I let him sit on my lap and call out mobs I'd go after. He would have to spell the names of the monster before I'd shoot at it. We got killed a lot early on - WoW mobs have big fantasy names, weird unfamiliar letter combinations - but he got faster and faster. George's teacher was very impressed with the progress we made over spring break - which is entirely due to the WoW pager function."

Very cool.

Deep thought for the day...

On Saturday we were talking about the value of the church, looking at verses like Ephesians 1:22, "and he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church..." or Acts 20:28, "Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood."

I realized that the act of Christ being the payment for our sins defined our value to be of equal value to Christ himself. Let that sink in for a moment.

When someone pays a certain amount for something, they declare it to be of that value for them. For example, someone paid $26,000 for a piece of virtual real estate in a computer game last year. By doing that, that hard drive space on which that real estate exists became that valuable...to that person. Now, that's a relative thing. There's no way I (or probably you) would ever pay that amount of money for something virtual, but for that person, it was worth it.

Now here's the really cool part: Since God is the ultimate, absolute authority of the universe, when he declares us to be as valuable as his own Son, he thereby is objectively declaring our value to be that of his own Son.
What is subjective to God is objective to us, since God is absolute!

BTW, this is why there are verses like "to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus..." - God is placing us on the same level as Christ himself when it comes to value.

Now for a few caveats - naturally, we are not God, nor ever will be. We are not the Firstborn, nor the Head, nor "above all else".

But we are the Body - and the Body is as valuable as the Head! And that rocks my world. :)

Any thoughts?

OK, this is too cool: You know those magnetic poetry things where the words are little magnets so you can rearrange them and make little poems and stuff? Well, someone programmed an AJAX version of that so that anyone visiting the site can rearrange the little magnetic words, and (every 4 seconds) everyone else can see the change automatically!!!
I am in the midst of learning AJAX - it's a really cool new Web technology that Google made popular with Google Maps.

Anyways, here's that link: Go henceforth and make thee poetry.
Magnetic AJAX - Version 1.7

Siedler with a river

Siedler with a river
Originally uploaded by epaga.

We played Siedler yesterday with a combination of a couple cool variants which I found here.
One of them caused there to be a river dividing the island. Another allowed you to have an army which could block others' resources if you had enough Knights.

Anyways, it was a blast, except that I lost. :-(

Just noticed something funny on GMail - at the top of the screen, they always have one-line interesting links (funny quotes, news stories, etc.). Well, go into your spam folder, and their one-liner links are various recipes using spam, like:

Spam Primavera - Toss with linguini, serve immediately
Spam Breakfast Burritos - Bake 5-10 minutes, serve with salsa
Ginger Spam Salad - Serves 1, refrigerate overnight

Yes, sometimes (actually rather often), Google makes me laugh.

Don't know how many of you heard about the decision in Kansas to start teaching Intelligent Design (ID hereafter) as an alternative theory, in addition to evolution (read the CNN article here), but I thought it was pretty amazing that in the entire Technorati blogosphere regarding that article out there, there isn't one blog post I could find that thought that decision was at all a good thing. Everyone was busy ridiculing everyone from Americans or Kansans to Bush. :)

I thought I'd try and process the whole thing as well (warning, this could get long, and it's pretty unedited):
I think are tons of misunderstandings when it comes to ID and that decision.

For example:

"Kansas now has to teach ID as fact"

That's not true - they now are ALLOWED to teach that Intelligent Design exists as one possible explanation. They're still NOT allowed to teach ID as fact (which is a very good thing, since it really is not "scientific fact", it's a proposed explanation).

"ID is basically the cave man's explanation of things you can't understand - you see a lightning bolt - that must have been Zeus. You see an incredibly complex cell - must have been God."

The problem is that exactly that step is taken by evolutionists as well, they just don't see it. You see an incredibly complex cell - that must have been Evolution. I'm capitalizing that word since at that point in their logic it becomes more than a scientific theory, it transcends science and shows their presupposition of materialism. Evolutionists would say "Stick to Ockham's razor" which says you always should pick the most simple solution to a question if all else is equal. The problem is - what's "simpler" - supernatural creation or random sudden appearance? Who decides what's simpler? Well, YOU do!

"ID is basically about bringing religion into science, leave religion out of the science classroom"

It is NOT about religion- you're not saying a thing about who "the Designer" is, how many designers there are, whether it/he/she/they still exist(s), or even whether the Designer is good or evil. Sure, most if not all ID proponents are Christians, but that doesn't mean the theory itself is religious. Don't toss the theory out the window just because you don't like the people who put forward the theory or their world view (Same goes for Christians regarding evolution and evolutionists, BTW).

"ID is unscientific because it is neither verifiable nor disprovable."

First off - a theory doesn't need to be verifiable in order to be a scientific theory, it needs to be disprovable. And ID is easily disprovable - take as many of the same cells as you want and let them randomly mutate as many times as you want - if you can observe just one cell develop a flagellum (basically a motor with which some one-celled creatures can move about) on its own, you've disproven ID.
I see more of a problem trying to disprove the theory of evolution: How would you even go about it, since the answer would always be "Well it happened over a course of millions of years, so of course you can't disprove it with that experiment here and now without taking millions of years yourself."

So there ya go, a few (quite random) thoughts on misunderstandings about ID.

A couple of VERY humorous, satirical (and critical) looks at ID are the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Intelligent Falling.

I really think it's important that as Christians we don't go running around claiming ID is the ONLY way to view things, because those two links show what our reputation is in the world. Remember that believing the literal interpretation of Genesis is not a condition for a relationship with God. ;)

I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this whole deal.

Wow, it's been forever since I last posted. Yikes.

Anyways, on Monday, Stephi and I saw "The Merchant of Venice" with Al Pacino. Wow, what a thought-provoking, weird Shakespeare flick - at least in the interpretation of the movie (which by the way only used the "original dialog"), everyone but the Jewish lender (played by Al Pacino) seems to be more or less Anti-semitic (one of the "hero figures" spits at the Jew at the beginning of the movie), and the Jew himself craves revenge and is not exactly Mr. Nice Guy either. However, there's this brilliant dialog piece where the Jewish lender (supposedly the villain!) very eloquently speaks out against the Anti-Semitism of his age:

He hath disgrac'd me, and hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses, mocked my gains, scorned my Nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies, and what's the reason? I am a Jew: Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

I think that was a pretty much revolutionary thought for your average Joe Blowe ;) in Shakespeare's time.

So the Jewish lender's problem is he needs to learn mercy, everyone else needs to learn tolerance. Problem is, at the end, noone really seems to have learned anything.

Anyhow, very strange, but I'd recommend it if you're into deep stuff. ;) Here's the Wikipedia entry on the play.