I really should be working, just wanted to shoot this out to y'all: The web version of the Wii's Mii Editor. For all of you who don't have a Wii (yet...), this shows you what fun you're missing out on. Oh and here's my pitiful try at a storm trooper. And here's...mii.

Scott Adams, the Dilbert author, has a quite readable blog with some pretty off-the-wall humor. Today, his idea is to outsource the U.S. government to India. Fun stuff.

I know you have many questions about this excellent idea. Allow me to anticipate them and answer them.

Q. What the hell do Indians know about America?

A. More than you. The Indians who graduated from the Indian
Institute of Technology are among the smartest people on the planet.
And whatever they don’t already know, they can learn while you’re
watching American Idol. Yeah, it hurts. But it’s true.

Just wanted to say I'm glad the Supreme Court decided you don't have a constitutional right to do the following to a five month old fetus/baby/infant:

Once the cervix is sufficiently dilated, the doctor uses an ultrasound and forceps to grasp the fetus' leg. The fetus is turned to a breech position, if necessary, and the doctor pulls one or both legs out of the birth canal, causing what is referred to by some people as the 'partial birth' of the fetus. The doctor subsequently extracts the rest of the fetus, usually without the aid of forceps, leaving only the head still inside the birth canal. An incision is made at the base of the skull and a suction catheter is inserted into the cut. The brain tissue is removed, which causes the skull to collapse and allows the fetus to pass more easily through the birth canal. The placenta is removed and the uterine wall is vacuum aspirated using a suction curette.



(Quoted from the Wikipedia article on Intact dilation and extraction (aka Partial Birth), emphasis mine)

Quote of the Day

Moses Hadas

from Quotes of the Day

"This book fills a much-needed gap."

I'm currently preparing the message for this weekend on Ephesians 3:1-13, and for the first time I can remember, I struck upon an individual word in the German translation which just rocks and is way better than the English word. It's in verse 8. In English it says

To me – less than the least of all the saints – this grace was given, to proclaim to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ

What I love about the German translation of this verse is the word for "unfathomable". It's "unausforschlich". "Forschen" is to discover or study. Because of the "aus" prefix, the word means "impossible to discover completely", but it has the clear connotation that it IS possible to keep discovering: Otherwise it would be "unforschbar". This fits quite well to the actual Greek word "anexichniastos": Now I ain't no expert, but it seems to me "an" fits the prefix "un", "ex" fits the prefix "aus".

"Unfathomable", though of course coming close, just doesn't have this beautiful connotation for me of beckoning me to search deeper because there will always be more to discover.

Happy Easter!


A friend of mine just sent this to me, and I cracked up. It's apparently from reverendfun.com, so make sure to go visit that site and buy stuff in order to relieve my conscience of this blatant copyright infringement. ;-)

Stephi and I watched "Children of Men" last night, and I'm still mulling over it and thinking it through, which almost always is the deciding factor of whether or not I like a movie or not, actually: If a movie makes me think, regardless of what its message is, I like it.

Children of Men made me think, but it also drew me into its world and stole my breath, especially with its three LONG action shots which are each single takes. It's hard to describe what it feels like to watch a single car chase scene where the camera not once cuts to a different perspective, but the whole scene is a 4 minute long, fluid, intense piece. But the shot that was most incredible was the 9 minute long - yes, 9 minute long - take of Clive Owen making his way through a war zone, into a building where bombs and shells are exploding everywhere, up some stairs with refugees everywhere, then back out through the war zone and into a building. The whole thing is intense and you just don't get a second's rest, because the camera never gives you that rest: It's a single continuous shot. At first I thought this had to be multiple shots and they simply used CGI to stitch them together, but then I read this article. They actually prepared and practiced the choreography and explosions for that 10 minute scene for 12 of their 14 allotted shooting days at that spot, then would try to shoot the whole thing in one take - any time anything went wrong, they had to reset everything and it took 5 hours, and then they'd try again. And they actually made it on their last try! Just amazing stuff...now I'm just really disappointed and confused at why in the world Pan's Labyrinth (an excellent movie itself BTW) got the cinematography Oscar over Children of Men. What in the world? Children of Men is in a league of its own when it comes to cinematography, it should have been a no-brainer.

I found that war zone scene on YouTube by the way...

NOTE #1: PLEASE don't watch this if you haven't seen the movie and think you may yet. The whole movie is set up in a way that it builds up to this incredible 10-minute climax. To watch this scene by itself pretty much ruins the effect. I link this only for those who've already seen the movie or think they won't anyways.

NOTE #2: This scene is quite intense and violent (like the rest of the movie), so don't watch this if you're not comfortable with intense scenes.

OK, here it is.

The symbolism behind Children of Men is also very interesting, here's an excerpt from the excellent Wikipedia article on the movie:

According to Cuarón, the title of P.D. James' book (The Children of Men) is a Catholic allegory derived from a passage of scripture in the Bible.[33] (Psalm 90(89):3 of the KJV: "Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men."[34]) James refers to her story as a "Christian fable"[20] while Cuarón describes it as "almost like a look at Christianity": "I didn't want to shy away from the spiritual archetypes," Cuarón told Filmmaker Magazine. "But I wasn't interested in dealing with Dogma."[6] The audience swims through an ocean of Christian symbolism, where British terrorists named "Fishes" protect the rights of fugees.[35] Opening on Christmas Day in the United States, critics compared the characters of Theo and Kee with Joseph and Mary, calling the film a "modern-day [36]Nativity story".[37] To highlight these spiritual themes, Cuarón commissioned a 15-minute piece by British composer John Tavener, an Orthodox Christian whose work resonates with the themes of "motherhood, birth, rebirth, and redemption in the eyes of God." Calling his score a "musical and spiritual reaction to Alfonso's film", snippets of Tavener's "Fragments of a Prayer" contain lyrics in Latin, German and Sanskrit sung by a mezzo-soprano. Words like "mata" (mother), "pahi mam" (protect me), "avatara" (saviour), and "alleluia" appear throughout the film.

Now, on the one hand, the movie is incredibly depressing and dark - the world basically has no future whatsoever since everyone is infertile. But this is not a "Sin City" where hope is not to be found anywhere whatsoever, rather the movie centers on the hope of humanity in the miraculously pregnant girl Kee who is protected by the main character Theo (whose name means God). And to be honest, this resonates with me a lot.

So, all in all, I give this movie a 14. For those who don't know my rating system (it's been quite a while since I've rated a movie), that means I think it's worth 14 Euros to see this movie.

You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. - Anne Lamott

Found this on Ariel's blog.

Geek Glory

Woohoo! I just got some geek glory by being mentioned on the Lifehacker blog! I helped fix 2 little bugs in a script they had, so they updated the script and...get this...mentioned my alias!



Bring on the geek glory, baby. Although it's nothing in comparison to Mike's gushing being quoted on the Scrybe main page (look for mrcaron). Because of this, he's unfortunately way much cooler than me, in a geek sense of course. But hey, being mentioned on Lifehacker is a definite step toward catching up with him.



BTW, more on Scrybe coming soon in a separate post...

Just wanted to share this Greasemonkey script I found for all you Google addicts out there: Here is a great Greasemonkey script which (collapsably) embeds Google Reader into your GMail. Totally awesome. All you need is Firefox, Greasemonkey installed, then you install the script, and you're done.

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