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Well, I just published something I had written a month ago in defense of Ron Paul. It ended up being really long and boring so I quit writing it and saved it. Today I was inspired to write some drivel about some wikipedia events going on and just include my largely unoriginal thoughts.

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.

Two articles on the same topic, from the same associated press release with two very different titles. I don’t really care to speculate on what gives. All I’ll say is, source matters. And also, it’s pretty clear that 1) the government is totally clueless about what it does and 2) people are dumb enough to trust this government with things like their healthcare and their retirement. I’d get the links for all that, but I’m lazy and you’re smart: FIGURE IT OUT. the sad thing is that of all the things we shouldn’t trust the government to do, protecting us and our borders is one of the things we should trust them to do. guffaw, guffaw.

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.

Ahh yes, a site, and a huge wikiTrail.

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.