This beta interface does, however. (It’s still got a lot of quirks, but it’s overdue as it is, so I’d rather have it quirky than keep it a ‘secret’ project.)

In the mean time, there are three blogs here:

• Mister T
• n1zyy (me!)
• Rusty (unused…)
• Andrew (yay! That makes 4!)

Feel free to poke around, and if you’re interested in signing up / resuming an old blog, contact me! (mwaggy via gmail.com)

I also find it interesting that he was a Presbyterian minister. And it’s kind of an example of what I always thought the ‘perfect’ implementation of religion would be: it really doesn’t matter that he’s of a different religion. He’s not trying to convert me to his religion, nor is he attacking mine. I’m not sure he ever even talked about religion in ‘religious terms,’ and yet I think he did a great job as a minister. He might not have done as well in today’s climate, though… From the linked article:

<blockquote>Whenever he was asked to castigate non-Christians or gays for their differing beliefs, he would instead face them and say, with sincerity, “God loves you just the way you are.”</blockquote>

His Wikipedia article mentions that the Westboro Baptist Church “protested Rogers’ teaching about tolerance and acceptance” at his funeral.

And there’s no evidence that he was in the Vietnam War. (In fact, it looks like there’s evidence that he was doing other things at the time.)

• The US Government is fighting to keep meatpackers from checking more meat for mad cow
  
• The US Government set up a news station in the Middle East, more or less for spewing our propaganda. So far, so good.
  • It turns out that it began airing terrorist rants against Jews
  • Why? Because no one running the station speaks Arabic.
• Where are our Arabic translators?
  • Discharged from the military because they’re gay

(Thanks to Rusty for a lot of the links.)

It’s like a bad dream, that also just doesn’t quite make sense. But then you wake up and realize it’s all real.

I was thinking tonight, driving home, about two political issues that really bother me.

The first is abortion. I’ve had kind of mixed feelings about it, and still change my mind often on it. But, for the sake of discussion, let us assume that abortion is murdering babies in cold blood. Here’s why the issues surrounding abortion bug me so much:

• Abortion ended up being a big issue in the elections, and is the reason many people identify as Republicans. And yet, in a term and a half of a conservative Republican Administration, abortion is still legal in America. I came to an important realization about decision-making a while back: not doing something is doing something to maintain status quo. So, even though the Bush Administration is against abortion, I think that, if Gore won in 2000 and Kerry won in ’04, abortion would be exactly where it is under Bush today.
• If people consider abortion to be murdering babies, why do (some! definitely not all) of them concede that it’s permissible in cases of rape or when it endangers the mother’s health? I never got that position. Either you’re murdering babies or you’re not. Whether the child was the product of rape is entirely irrelevant. The mother’s health is a thornier issue:
  • Can you kill one person to save another?
  • If so, why is it always the baby, and not the mother, that we kill?
• A lot of people don’t even understand what Roe v. Wade actually says, and go around arguing that we should outlaw third-trimester abortions… Which Roe v. Wade does.
• Why is abortion a ‘casual’ issue of debate? While I hardly mean to incite a riot, I’ve never understood why those who think that abortion is murdering babies are okay with sitting around and just voting against it, and maybe holding up signs sometimes.

The second issue I don’t get is gay marriage. Again, I’m not trying to argue the issue itself, as much as show that the current ‘debates’ over the issue don’t make a lot of sense. Let’s assume, for the sake of discussion, that:

• Gay people choose to be gay.
• God really does hate homosexuals.

I still don’t see the case against gay marriage. How are you and I endangered by it? Sure, churches can refuse to perform same-sex weddings, but what is the basis for a law against it?

• Why am I only finding this article on news sites I’ve never heard of? (It’s on the White House’s site, so it’s real.)
• Assuming that there’s no wrongdoing here, why is this necessary? It sounds like it’s superceding another similar bill that requires Congressional oversight.
• Why has the White House declined to comment? That’s the part that scares me the most?

I think the most-recent-posts  plugin (?) is what I need. (There’s a link to an updated one.) It looks like it only gets titles, though, rather than displaying actual posts, which is what I need.  I’m pulling it out of this thread.

• Tic-Tac-Toe, played on a 2×2 grid, is utterly pointless.
• Tic-Tac-Toe, played on a 4×4 grid, is not too fun. 3×3 is probably a better size.
• What happens in Connect 4 if you allow each player to drop two pieces at a time? I haven’t tried, but I suspect it’d have a tremendous impact.
• Why is the Connect 4 grid 7×6? What if it were 4×4? 9×9? Is it, like Tic-Tac-Toe, already at the ‘optimal’ level?
  • Why is it asymmetrical?
• What if you allow ‘bouncing’ off the walls, such that a sideways “V” (etc.) counts as four ‘in a row’?
• Among very experienced players, does Connect 4 usually result in a draw?
• What if you play Uno, but only start with three cards? (I seem to recall that you get a very, very short game.)
• What if you play Uno, but start with eleven cards? (I seem to recall that the game goes on forever and isn’t much fun.)

• Users with the font Myriad Pro Light installed will find that the headers look very, very nice. I’m not 100% sure how I came to have this font, as it’s most popular on Macs, but, for those who have it, it’s really, really nice. For everyone else, the font displays the way it normally does, as a typical Sans-Serif header.
• Users with Office 2007 will notice that the edit box uses the ‘Consolas’ font, a nice fixed-width font that looks modern. Again, if it’s not installed, you should fall back seamlessly to the default.
• I typically use Aarvark (Firefox extension) only for isolating page elements for printing. Tonight I found that it was quite handy in figuring out what was what in terms of page elements, although I think this feature is also in…
• The Web Developer extension for Firefox, which was also incredibly helpful in troubleshooting the layout, and in things like temporarily disabling the cache after weird problems with old stuff coming back from the cache.