Al Gore’s 2008 President Bid: The Movie (aka An Inconvenient Truth) talks about the impending global disaster caused by excessive Carbon Monoxide in the air. He cited increased insurance claims for natural disaster as evidence of this occurring as we speak. Well not so fast:

Census Bureau figures suggest that between new houses built and rising prices, the total value of owner-occupied housing in the United States increased about 45 percent from 1990 to 2000. The Ceres study says weather-related property losses increased about 40 percent from 1990 to 2000. Hmmm, those numbers seem awfully similar

You gotta love Gregg Easterbrook, titanic god living among men.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie; I left happy and curious. He brings up many assertions (which I took for granted as facts) that I was unaware of and need answering. Chief among them: the amount of carbon dioxide in the air is increasing (dramatically). More carbon-dioxide means higher temperatures. This is a problem.

One of Erick’s Blog’s strongest opinions is that our education system is in shambles, preparing us for a world that no longer exists. The best example of this is the number of essays, and their length, a student will write that no one will ever read.

“I wrote a paragraph of text and there it was,” recalled Ms. Walsh. “You write all these pages for college and no one ever sees it, and you write for Wikipedia and the whole world sees it, instantly.”

We designed the essay system for a world that no longer exists, a world where publishing was expensive, finding content to read was hard, and there was plenty of time to digest the full flavor of a thought. The result? Crime & Punishment; long, beautifully hand-written letters; the Origin of Species; and, yes, your 10 page paper on the growth of unions during the 19th and 20th centuries.

It is time to move on.

The NYTimes reports that Wikipedia now locks down some entries. This is a little heavy handed and ignores all the advances in source control technology in the computer science field.

The better solution is to declare entries “stable” or “finished until future notice”. Any changes to these articles are not displayed on the main page. Instead they raise a flag for the editorial board to review or reject those changes. If they are accepted, then the “stable” article is updated to reflect the new changes. People wanting to read “risky” articles could set their preferences to do so, and the wiki would display a caution banner at the top.

This is very similar to how open-source development happens in the computing world. Look up the RELEASE, STABLE and CURRENT builds of a Linux distro.

Christians should not care about the ten commandments. Jesus corrected Moses and said that only six of the commandments were worth following:

And Jesus said, “You shall not murder; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother. Also, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 19:17-19, New Revised Standard Version. A parallel telling of the Six Commandments exchange is found at Mark 10:17-23.)

Jesus places importance on the six concerning morality, and ditches the four concerning organized religion. Greg Easterbrook is kind enough to remind us that this fact is so often overlooked because the four he ignores concern organized religion:

“You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make yourself an idol. You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God. Remember the Sabbath Day, and keep it holy.” (Compression of Exodus 20:3-8, NRSV

So Jesus emphasises the Six commandments concerning morality, but places little weight on the other four concerning a duty towards organized religion.

No wonder organized branches of Christianity ignore this! Easterbrook tells us that “these verses seem to say that denominations are not particularly important, and what denomination wants to call attention to that?” Touche! Does this kind of behavior… seem familiar?

I got Oblivion this week. I like it so far. It is fun to sneak around. In terms of weight, the game plays more like Quake 1 than Quake 2. That is a bad thing. Outside scenes are amazing though!

I was trying to explain the difference between “sort of” and “kind of”. This was very difficult to do. The phrases are nearly identical. However, they are not entirely identical; we would not use both of them if they were.

The best I could come up with is the following: “sort of” implies a brotherly (or sibling) relationship; “kind of” implies a parental (or hierarchical) relationship. So when comparing a pear and apple, we would say, “an Asian pear is sort of an apple”. When talking about Tomatoes we say, “tomatoes are kind of a fruit”. All apples and pears are fruit, but not all fruit are apples or pears. A fruit is either an apple a pear, or some other fruit. Likewise, tomatoes are neither apples, pears or (classically speaking) fruit. They might be both tomatoes and fruit, but they are definitely not both apples and tomatoes.

So a tomato is kind of a fruit but sort of an apple.

What is interesting is how we would use this. If I am explaining shogi to an American, whether I say it is sort of like chess or kind of like chess hints at how I think about the game. Using sort of implies that it is more distinct; kind of implies more that it is a derivative of chess.

So with this all being said, Spaghetti is kind of like Ramen. Mochi is sort of like Mozzarella cheese. And Lasagna is just amazing.

Protestantism began with Martin Luther in Germany. It is not a coincidence that they also happened to have a language that shared little with Latin, the language of the Bible, compared with French, Spanish or even English.

The Pope was all powerful during that time, and ruled over almost the entirety of Europe, essentially in the same manner the emperor ruled over Japan. All of Europe was Christian at this time; entering Heaven when one dies was one of the most important aspects of Life. The Pope, and the Roman Catholic Church maintained a large part of their control over society in this fashion.

Everyone wanted to get into heaven; attending Church was the way to ensure this. The Church interpreted the whimsical nature of God and taught its followers how to live life according to His wishes. The people gave a modest portion of their earnings and wealth to the Church in exchange. Over time, this made the Church incredibly wealthy, and the Church had much invested in maintaining (if not advancing) this relationship with its followers.

One of the ways the Church maintained this relationship was through its interpretation of the Bible. The Bible was the word of God, the way God taught us how to live. But the Bible was written in Latin. However few–especially low class, uneducated, farming–people spoke Latin in their daily lives. The majority of Christians needed the help of the Church to learn and understand its teaching. Priests read passages from the Bible in Latin. Then, in more personal sessions, they would talk with people about its meaning and lessons in the native language they could understand.

This was only a small problem in countries that spoke Latin-based languages: France, Italy, Spain. Their languages were close enough to the original language the Good Book was based upon that anyone interested enough could learn Latin (so as to read the Bible) easily enough.

However, Germanic languages are not based upon Latin; the hurdles are substantially greater. People from these parts of the world were at a big disadvantage if all religious discourse took place in Latin. Wealth and strength concentrated in areas speaking Latin-based languages as a result. Italy and France were stronger and wealthier than England and Germany. In fact, Germany was a pretty minor player during these years.

So it is hardly surprising that Germany would be the first country to demand (or at least receive so enthusiastically) a translation of the Bible in their native language. Although the German that Martin Luther used almost certainly had great differences from the German a person reading it would speak, it was a vast improvement. Suddenly a wealth of people could access the Bible in a direct-way they never could previously.

It is also unsurprising that the Roman Catholic Church would view this development so unfavorably. A person who can read the Bible himself, can find his own way into Heaven; the help of the Church was no longer necessary. And if the Church was no longer necessary, neither was giving them all that money. A German bible seriously diminished the Church’s leverage and control over German Christians.

And their fears proved right. Germany broke from the Catholic church in dramatic fashion. They consolidated their power and challenged the Catholic church with great empires three times that conquered the bulk of Catholic lands in Europe. They might still hold those lands today were it not for the English (and Americans), another Germanic-speaking country (people) that split from the Church and became powerful enough to challenge its supremacy.

A few centuries ago all of the “civilized” world fell under the Pope’s domain. Today, every McDonald’s sign, BMW and cup of Tea is a testament to the United States, Germany and England. Their collective protestant cultural-footprint dwarfs the once great Pope’s.

This surfer is riding an impressive wave.

I have little patience for Rush Limbaugh’s pandering:

Any good day for America and the US military and the war effort is a bad day for liberalism

The death of murderous terrorists in Iraq is a glorious day for liberalism. Glorious because one less leader will be spending his waking hours killing Americans and promoting inter-ethnic fighting. The champions of free thinking, free speaking, free organizing, free educating now have one less enemy in Iraq. This cannot be anything but a good thing.

Extra super cute kitten battling Apple FrontRow.