but I simply had to post this because when I saw it I had two distinct thoughts that I wanted to share. A guy in England, who is from Nigeria, is creating a Manga bible. In it he portrays “Christ [as] a hard guy, seeking revolution and revolt, a tough guy.”

Immediately two things came to mind. The first and most animal response was: I must have this. The second and much more thoughtful reflection was that I don’t feel this is a technically correct or helpful view. Christ was lowly and humble, patient, loving, kind, unassuming, and peaceful. Nowhere in the actual physical life of Christ is he violent or revolutionary. He would even say things like give to Ceasar what is Ceasars. Telling the oppressed Jewish community that they should peacefully cooperate with the government and instead of focusing on the physical world and it perishable riches, they should concentrate on achieving spiritual goals that store up treasures in heaven. On the other hand in Revelations we are shown a violent, perfectly judgemental Christ. But he isn’t at war with man or man’s rulers. He is clearly at war with Satan and Satan minions. In that sense I would say the manga author is right on. When Christ came to save, he was at perfect peace with His creations, wanting only to give His life so that we could re-unite with Him in spirit and in truth. At the same time He was at perfect peace with man He was in the midst of an all out, take no prisoners war with an enemy who for centuries held the human race in utter depravity and captivity.

But like I said, as soon as I can find this thing, I’m going to try and get me a copy.

As it turns out Islamic culture (largely it seems, uneducated extremists) is having another spat with the rest of the world. This time it’s over images of Mohammed in WikiPedia. I won’t go into it anymore than this: there seems to be a fundamental misuderstanding of freedom within the culture of Islam. Because you are free to censor images of your key prophet doesn’t mean you should. Claiming that people who, in the name of scholarship, insult you by including these images is laughable. Claiming that these same people should be more sensitive of your culture is rediculous. On a world stage Islam needs to learn something that Christians have know since Piss Christ and before even that: NOTHING IS SACRED, GET OVER IT.

And for some more wikidrama, check the register noted a cult oriented conflict of interest. If you read through the COI complaint it was resolved that he was not at fault because there weren’t any edit wars over it. I read it more as, the article is a whitewash, but no one really cares enough to make a section of criticisms. Sigh.

Finally on a lighter and much less controversial note, I leave you with a new read I’ve found this year. It’s the art of manliness and it’s not too great for manly tips as it seems geared to a much younger crowd (and I’m not that old… yet). But it is very light and easy to read with some good laughs and sometimes an insight or two.

And while I’m on the topic of the government of the people, I HOPE YOU PEOPLE VOTED TODAY. Whining on and on about how you aren’t properly represented. I know state and local elections are a lot more confusingly gray as opposed to the highly media-cized presidential popularity contests, but seriously if you care so much about your government and your rights start at the local level. You’ll thank me.

From the psycho teen angst department, I read this today in the headlines. I’m just gonna go out and say it here, that kid needs to be checked in. Look I know we all get dis-associative at times, but this is a little ridiculous. Plus his mom at least seems likable based on what I read in the article. And to the mom who took him to the hotel room: ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Ok, telling his mom was the right thing to do, but helping him get into that situation in the first place. I’m betting that if that hadn’t have been a cop, you could be an accessory at worst and at best you’d find yourself wading in a pool of your friend’s blood. You get the gold star for the day.

Also, unless I’m mistaken, FOX or some idiot scientist/numerologist/statistician/whatever needs to check the math on this one. While it certainly is an interesting useless factoid, 1 in 10 IS TOTALLY DIFFERENT FROM 407 out of 7634.

I must do this because I’m bored. Some kid in VA won the right to have an anti-abortion club in her school.  Now look I’m all about not killing babies, but some of these religious fanatics (I’m one of them… on some issues), need to get it in their skull that just as much as they have the right to an anti-abortion club, some smart-aleck’s gonna have the right to a pro-baby killing club. That’s the way free-speech swings and if you don’t like it, TOO BAD.

The airline industry sucks. I don’t know why it’s still around. Oh wait, yes, it’s coming back to me… consumers are idiots. Between the FAA’s ridiculous regulations and people practically dying while they’re trapped for hours in a plane taxiing around a totally inefficient runway system, the airlines are trying to take away your little peanut snacks. But apparently they’re getting better at leaving on time. Woooooo you also get a gold star for the day. I hope you airline moguls are happy.

I give up. I’m so burnt out on being negative and edgy that I just can’t go on. Here’s the rest of my links for this post sans-witty commentary.

Moron the farm bill – excuse me… More on the farm bill.

Radiohead goes out on good faith and the cheap punks take advantage of them. I said I was done commenting, well I lied. Now I download albums, I’ll be the first to admit it (as long as the moochers over at the RIAA aren’t knocking at my door). But seriously, what did you think would happen. Most of the people on the torrent networks are LEACHERS. And I’ll reasonably bet that the 60% or so who didn’t pay for the album are the punks that don’t share on the torrent networks.

And now for some software.

Visuwords – I really like this. Particularly because it’s like a thesaurus, but better.

Mofuse – This looks interesting, especially if you’re big into accessibility/mobility. I used to have my blogs compatible with the iPhone and some Mobiles at one point.

And finally, of interest to some in my close circle: This dude lived in Trappe.

Graspr? I guess if you would like to grasp how to do something like build a house or cook a certain meal – via social video blogging.  I’m not really big on teaching people how to do stuff, even though I should since I did get a Masters in Instructional Design. I guess I considering teaching more work than fun. At any rate, I’m thinking about putting together some tutorials on Reason and Ableton Live. You can look for them here. (I can’t wait to use the new Thor module in Reason!)

So on to the real business of things. I do haiku chats on tumblr. I don’t title them, I number them using roman numerals. This is where our story today begins. Roman numerals. I was just looking around about ordering stuff (you know how many I’s before X) and down at the bottom I saw two things that catch my attention. The first was LXX or the Septuagint (LXX=70)  and the second thing I saw was pandigital numbers. I was more interested in some of the links from the Septuagint – being a biblical reference.

Basically a pandigital number is a number that contains all of the digits of a base counting system. So in base 10 1234567890 is a pandigital number. They don’t show cases for other base counting (like hexadecimal, base 16 – used with computers… commonly color references on the webernet).

The Septuagint refers to the 72 (rounded down to look nice as LXX ) scholars who translated the Hebrew old testament into Greek. In the third paragraph I checked out the links to two books not in the Protestant bible I’m used to, just to see what they’re about.

Maccabees is a set of books about a Jewish family that rebelled against the government around the first or second century BC (interesting note, this date is BC, not the usual BCE according to Wikipedia… more on that some other time). I looked briefly at the article on 1 Maccabees and the summary of the contents is very interesting. But also very interesting for me personally was the toolbar on the side that listed old testament books and what sects include them in their religious texts.

Ben Sira, the Book of Wisdom, Daniel, and Esther were other books that I briefly looked at. I was interested to read the histories of Ben Sira and the Book of Wisdom simply to see how they were used in the early church and the removed from the Canon later on. Esther was just some interesting history about Persia. But the Daniel article particularly intrigued me because of the NPOV. Granted biblical topics can be pretty touchy, but books of the bible typically have pretty good, solid sourcing referenced. I took a brief look at the talk page. Not much to see here as far as I’m concerned. Just some squabbling over dates. And their writing is probably overly wordy and not very interesting.

The End.

If you’re going to get a new cellphone, you may want to check out exPhone to find good directions on how to donate or recycle your old cellphone.

Also in the cellphone sphere of the webernet, check out cellswaper. You can sign-on and swap around your annoying contract to either get a shorter one or get rid of your old one.

Freak out about oil? Freak out about water? Just freak out because humans will destroy the earth? I dunno, but here’s a couple articles about 1) running out of water and 2) stop drinking bottled water.

A really boring article about yawning.

Hilarious blog entry about Iranian news reporting that 1)the US (implied) is using squirrels to spy on Iran and 2) that

Maybe, Imam will use UFOs to attack his enemies.

Now, I’m not saying this is a valid source (note the massive attack of popup ads), but it is at least entertaining.

I’ve probably blogged about this before but, the open sourced cellphone has begun selling developer editions for 300$ or so. I’ll be keeping my eye on this over the next couple of years. I’m not sure but as far as I know this is the first example of a commercially available opensourced hardware/software object.

while i’m still skeptical about carbon output issues, makemesustainable is a neat take on social webbing that let’s you calculate your carbon footprint and take practical steps to reduce it.

I wonder what was going through this poor girls head. I wonder if the guy isn’t exaggerating the story, because I’m pretty sure his examples above are farcical.

An interesting list of 35 “historical” facts that are pretty rarely known. I was tricked into checking out this site thinking that it was one of those “alternative histories of the US.” You know, critical of how the settlers and the early (to current?) American Government treated the Native Americans and others “not like us.” Bummer.

Who really decides who gets to be the next president? It sure as hell isn’t the American People. In this case some Iowa Tax Relief organization and a Christian Right organization have decided that they don’t want the people of Iowa or America to hear what Ron Paul has to say. Corporate censorship? Maybe not exactly, but something like it.

Cultural lesson for the Chinese enthusiast. My friend at work says they also burn

not just money, we burn other stuff like, house, passport, maids, food, etc….

But, she says it’s not really a party for her family. They gather at a gravesite with the family and have a nice picnic.

Are we really this ignorant of the international scientific community? I mean… WHY HASN’T REST OF THE WORLD SUBMITTED TO OUR AUTHORITY!

Another government switching to Open Source. I just hope this doesn’t lead to the abuse of a system that really can benefit people.

ABC News (reputable?) is reporting on a video from a Pakistani reporter showing a “graduation” of suicide bombers who will go out into the world and wreak havoc on the world (as some would assume). !@#$%^#@#$%^&* is all i can think to say about that.

Don’t steal social security numbers. Don’t accidentally give them away either.

From one of my random “car” subscriptions: How to Buy a used Car. (Girlfriend, you better read this!

a fun little flash game teaching kids – and politicians – how to gerrymander. maybe some kid will have the sense to make a libertarian district or fifty.

i like british news, it’s witty and informative, and specifically not american news. so when they say their people have a problem with liver disease, that doesn’t include me right? i did a quick tally of drinks this week:

• Monday: beer at guitar hero night ~ 1 drink
• Tuesday: Dinner with Sarah ~ 2 drinks
• Wednesday: I really don’t remember what I did on wed. but I’m pretty sure I didn’t drink anything ~ 0 drinks
• Thursday: Bowling ~ 1 drink
• Friday: Father’s Day ~ 2 drinks
• Saturday: Sarah’s parents were in town ~ 4 drinks
• Sunday: apres driving range nightcap ~ 2 drinks

So tally tally tally and bam! 12 drinks in a week. Am I damaging my liver. I don’t know. Does anyone know?

and finally, quite possibly more interestingly, Isaac Newton throws in his opinion on the end of days. note that the title of the article says that the world will definitely end in 2060 according to Mr. Newton. THAT’S NOT WHAT HIS LETTER SAYS AT ALL YOU TARDS. their own article clearly states

“It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner,” Newton wrote. However, he added, “This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail.”

I guess all that matters is that you get people to read your stupid site. GREAT JORB. meh.

From some publication on the Left Coast in LA, word is out that Mr. Wizard died yesterday. I hate admitting this, but for some reason when I watched this on NICK as a kid, I always thought Mr. Wizard was Patrick Stewart. TRAVESTY OF TRAVESTIES.

Next up, from the pages of make!

Surreal Wallpaper! Queue jokes about eating shrooms without all the hassle. But I’m intrigued. Maybe I’ll find a great little room of my own just for putting up this paper.

In early alpha, Wii Media Center X. I’m pretty excited to toy around with this one so I can stop using my XBOX for media. But that’s Bias, since the XBOX hates on my network at home.

A spanish blog noticed a small picture “hidden” on the Windows Vista Business CD. Conspiracy? I think so. God I despise M$, not that this really has anything to do with them. I just thought I’d let you know.

And now from the top lists of Reddit

Straight dope’s response to: Can you open the hatch of a commercial airliner in midflight? BUT WHAT ABOUT IN THE MOVIES?

I would include a more in depth explanation of my beliefs, but I don’t think that this blog is the correct venue for this. Suffice to say that I completely disagree with the idea of “God Said Pi=3” and another article on the same topic, sited by the other. Why don’t you site the Missler/Numerology explanation of the original Hebrew manuscripts that was given in the comments section? And finally in answer to Mr. Dutch’s Question: Your humility. In your presentation of pi, you pridefully assume that you know more than God. This hubris causes you to assume that your interpretation of the Word of God is absolute and final. And with that I will always disagree.

And back to our regular programming. I hope google really isn’t evil. Now that they are moving into universities their market will expand a great deal, as will their access to more information. While I applaud the business of their movements, I am still concerned.

Ninja? In Italy? Who is Russian? Oh the cultural hilarity that ensues.

And now, my new RSS subscription filed under fun: The Fake Steve Jobs Blog!

Next up on the DIY massacre are SLAP BRACELETS. That’s right those insane pieces of metal that they banned from elementary school because of rumors of slit wrists. Oh man, do I love/hate the 80′s. Also, dear brother, notice that the name of the article submitter is the name of one of your favorite 80′s songs.

And finally for the audiophile/yard sale addict in us all – the speaker/headset in an old phone receiver. a must for any dj or musician that’s bored with typical instruments… or just likes to goof around.

Next up is a great entry on Belorussian movie posters. I love Belarus. Nuff said.

A new translation of the bible! IN LEGOS! (Ok so not really a translation, but you know, whatever) Actually I think I saw this some time ago floating out there in space, but I just recently clicked through to it on some blog or another, so I thought I might share it with the crew. Now study up!

And from the factoid department comes the coldest place in north america. Along with a really spiffy picture of a guy and his frozen beard/companion