My Happy Medium

The following is an unedited conversation I had today.

Paul Almeida says (10:51 AM):
have you played SC2 yet?
Danny says (10:51 AM):
yes u n00b
Paul Almeida says (10:52 AM):
is it fun/
?
Danny says (10:52 AM):
okay
hard to learn at the moment
Paul Almeida says (10:52 AM):
isn’t it just piont and click?
Danny says (10:53 AM):
hahahahahaahaahahaahahhaahahhah

“Isin’t it just point and click?” SC2 cannot be reduced to simple pointing and clicking.

Oversimplification of the century. lulz

EDIT: Understatement is maybe incorrect so I’ve changed it slightly.

That is all.

eh

Finally managed to sleep in for once, I was getting awful tired of waking up at 10 when I get home at 4am~6am… me want to sleep more

I think I have to nominate this as best web site of the internet.

Ha Ha

And if you disagree Nelson Muntz will kick your ass.

CityNews has an article about the upcoming Atheist Bus campaign in Toronto that I thought was interesting.  (side note: I read about this weeks ago in the Globe and Mail, but guess what?  Their site requires you pay for their articles so I can’t even quote it if I wanted to, which is too bad because they had a good quote from a Muslim leader in the community.)

For the most part, I’m happy not just with the campaign, but with the reaction of the various religious leaders in the city.

Neil MacCarthy, Archdiocese of Toronto, believes they may serve a purpose.

“If it evokes a discussion around religion and discussions around issues of faith, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as long as it’s done respectfully.”

This guy gets it, he understands that people have different views and he can respect them.  While MacCarthy didn’t state whether he was offended or not, another leader certainly stated they were offended but again, more respect:

“[There's] freedom of speech and people can advertise whatever they want. There is always a certain point where it crosses what is appropriate for advertising in general, but there’s freedom of speech and people can do what they like” [Rabbi Reuven Tradburks] explains.

“I think on another level, personally, to see an ad that promotes or encourages people to adopt a view which rejects God in their life and therefore you can do whatever you want that’s personally offending to me. I don’t like to see that, and it bothers me to see it.”

Well Rabbi Tradburks, here’s a big hello and welcome to my world!  I have a feeling I am exposed to more religious messages than Tradburks is exposed to atheistic messages and its refreshing to see respect coming from across the aisle even if it makes them a bit uncomfortable.  I don’t like a lot of religious ads and while I am not offended by them I do not like to see them but I tolerate them.  I do take offense however at his implication that atheists are some sort of hedonistic heathens.  Just because we do not believe in retribution from a higher power in the afterlife does not mean we do not observe and adhere to the Golden Rule – to do unto others as you would have them do unto you – just as Tradburks did by respecting our free speech.  That atheist are just like any other people is so self-evident that its not even worth expounding on.  We are all atheists, I just believe in one less god than you do and when you understand why you dismiss all the other gods you will understand why I dismiss yours. (<– a combination of a couple of quotes)

As for the campaign itself, I am not enthralled by them, but like I said, I am happy with them.  I think its good to remind everyone that atheist exist and that we deserve our rights just as much as any other.  Atheists are very under represented in society and are subjected to subtle prejudices and discrimination like any other minority group; but Canadians are a polite respectful people so there isin’t much for an atheist to complain about and I am thankful for it.

On the matter of taking offense, this is certainly prickly.  The City News phone poll found that “4020 respondents said ‘Yes’ they were offended by the ads, while 2543 respondents said ‘No’ they weren’t.”  This surprised me because I had higher expectations for Torontonians, the subtle hypocrisy is plain when one reverses the roles.  I’d love to see the results of the opposite question was asked if whether one finds it offensive to see a religious message, I am willing to be most atheist would not find them offensive barring any obvious hateful campaign.  Indeed, the atheist bus campaign is not hateful, it is simply opinionated.

To end this post I’ll quote Bill Maher (who probably got it from some one else)

One must remember that offense cannot be given, but rather it can only be taken.

So live and let live; and ignore the trolls.  Obvious trolls are obvious.

Read this a long time ago but came across it again and it was every bit as infuriating and touching as it was the first time.

When the Anti-Choice Choose

Some choice bits:

From a clinic director in a mid-western state: “One of the most remarkable cases was a woman who came [from another part of the state] and said she was the Right-to-Life president in her county. ‘But,’ she said, she ‘had become pregnant and had to have an abortion.’”

“I never dreamed, in my wildest nightmares, that there would ever be a situation where I personally would choose such an act. Of course, we would each like to think that our reasons for a termination are the exception to the rule. But the bottom line is that you people spend your lives, reputations, careers and energy fighting for, maintaining, and providing an option that I needed, while I spent my energy lambasting you. Yet you still allowed me to make use of your services even though I had been one of your enemies. You treated us as kindly and warmly as you did all of your patients and never once pointed an ‘I told you so’ finger in our direction. I got the impression that you cared equally about each woman in the facility and what each woman was going through, regardless of her reasons for choosing the procedure. I have never met a group of purely non-judgmental people like yourselves.”

Watched an interesting Bill Moyer Report on right wing trash/talk radio today; I liked the last bit of the clip.

Rage on the Radio

Watching that report however, I was reminded a story from folklore about the tribal elder telling his grandson about the battle the old man was waging within himself, he said:

My son, it is between two wolves, one is an evil wolf: anger, envy, sorrow, greed, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lies, false pride, superiority and ego.

The other is the good wolf: joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.

The boy took this in for a few minutes and then asked “Which wolf won?”.

His grandfather answered “The one I feed.”

Scalia, if you can’t even admit that Bush v. Gore was political, then you’re full of shit. You’re an intelligent guy but when you use that intelligence to dodge and reframe questions as a means to deflect such obviously true criticisms, it makes you a complete fuckwad.

If this seems random, this is just my response to his apperance on 60 minutes last night.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

ARGG, I hate it when apps implement “Ctrl + Tab” as a circular queue instead of a stack.

All applications use Ctrl + Tab to bring focus to the previously used tab, this recent trend of implementing Ctrl + Tab bringing focus to the (sequentially) next tab is retarded like Simple Jack.  What the hell is the point of it?  It completely fucks the work flow for so many common use cases.  I wish people would nip this stupid trend in the bud already.  

I should drag the guy/gal who made this stupid decision into the bathroom and drown them…

As an aside: IE has the same stupid ass behaviour for a while now, but IE has always sucked so there’s no point in complaining about them.

I have to say I completely agree with this Daniel fellow, he pretty much sums up what I was thinking when reading Joel’s post long ago.  Admitedly, I’m not uber coder like Joel but Daniel’s article is simply more convincing.

Bad advice on exceptions from Joel

One thing to realize is that no mater what solution you choose to deal with errors, this doesn’t change the nature of your problem: you still have to deal with them in the right context. And this is the big challenge, dealing with exceptions (or error codes) in the right context.

Sounds about right to me!