2004 January

Evolution Is Offensive, Your Honor

In an article on MSNBC, they state that Georgia wants to strike out the word “evolution” in schools to “biological changes over time.” I object, your honor, I surpassed puberty many years ago. It was horrifying, and the biological changes over me in time was similar to the black plague. One must really wonder, what is offensive about the word, “evolution?” Is it a curse now? I find it hard to believe that someone can swear at you with, “You evil evolution of a pig! Mongrels like you are an evolution to society!”

Now I know that a lot of people are getting their panties in a twist about the theory of Evolution and God (or insert your own deity here), but this is clearly overkill. Science is about truth, there’s no fiction in it. If science teaches us that a fossil is 12 million years old, then by golly it’s 12 million years old, no matter how blue in the face the Bible gets telling us otherwise. If man came from the seas as first a fish, then a monkey, then we need to find out why science tells us that, not why it proves the Bible wrong, or vice versa. The Bible is not a scientific tool, it’s a religious tool. It’s based on faith. Science and religion shouldn’t intermingle on a professional level, only on a personal level. A scientist can be a Christian, and I will applaud any that can be both, for it surely can’t be easy. I have a dear friend who is a microbiologist and a devout Christian, and the man is not only extremely smart, but a good person in every sense of the word. Striking out the word evolution won’t do anything good, it’ll just contribute to the ignorance of kids, and frankly we have enough kids who are ignorant to many facts in the world.

A Day In The Life

I’ve been extremely busy the past few days, hence the slow down of posts. Here’s a run down of what’s going on in my life:

• Made a huge batch of cajun boiled peanuts on the stove, smells very good. Crushed red pepper flakes, chopped scotch bonnets, crab boil mix, clove of garlic, chili powder. Yum. I’m ready for the Superbowl tomorrow, and also the Florida Gators basektball game today.
• Working on a design for a friend, or former stepbrother, who plays in a band. Will unveil when ready.
• May have first web design job with pay, we’ll see.
• Did a chat with Epic Games and NVIDIA on IRC, which lasted for 2 hours. The fruits of my labor can be seen here. Over 600 people joined the chat.
• Between all this, trying to update my dad’s website, which frankly isn’t something I’m proud of (design-wise nor content-wise). Very time-consuming, and yet he’s so demanding. What’s a son to do?
• When I do have any free time, I try to relax by playing Freelancer.

Gondor Accepted Into UN

In a surprising turn of events, the United Nations has accepted Gondor as a member of the UN. Although the news was met with applause, some questioned the decision:

“Some member states objected to the admission of Gondor on the grounds that it is not a real country. Annan brushed aside these concerns.

“Come on now,” he replied. “Neither is Luxembourg, but we let them in. Besides, after seeing the magnificent infrastructure in the capital, Minas Tirith, I have no doubt that Gondor’s dues, which will be based on its total GNP, will comprise a welcome addition to the U.N. budget.”

WordPress CSS Style Competition

Alexking.org is holding a WordPress CSS Style Competition, with 3 prizes being awarded to the top 3 styles submitted to the contest. Entries must be submitted by February 6th. I may try my hand at this, and see what I can come up with. I’ve just tried WordPress recently, and I really like it, so this will be a great opportunity for me to get more familiar with it.

New MyDoom Worm Spreading Fast

CNN has a news story up with details on the threat that the new MyDoom worm is posing to emails everywhere. If you’ve received an email with “The message cannot be represented in 7-bit ASCII encoding and has been sent as a binary attachment.” or something similar with an attachment, that is the MyDoom worm.

It seems that this worm’s primary goal is to launch an attack on the SCO Group (don’t be surprised if the site doesn’t come up.) SCO are largely in the limelight lately because they’re accusing Linux of using code they created, and a lot of “hackers” don’t like that. Hence the attack. Note to these wannabe “hackers”, innocent until proven guilty is plain common sense in America, and common sense is a God-given gift — use it.

How do you protect yourself from this attack? Simply do not open any attachments from anyone you don’t know. Even if you know that person, still run a virus check on that file to make sure that person didn’t fall for the worm and is unintentionally and unknowingly sending you the worm as well. It’s appalling how many people fall for lame stunts like this. As Emeril would say, use your knob, people!

Playing X2: The Threat

Over the weekend, I’ve been playing this new space simulator game called X2: The Threat. It is a beautiful game, sporting all the latest bells and whistles in 3D graphics, and it is as complex and complicated as a full-blown flight simulator. Every key on the keyboard has a function in the game. It took me about 2 hours studying the manual and about an hour of going through the training missions to figure the game out, but I think I got the hang of it.

The game is very open-ended, and you can become a pirate, hunting down ships for their cargo and trading them for profit. You can build power plants and produce resources to make money that way via trade. You can harvest asteroids and mine them for profit. You can even build an empire, complete with fleets of battleships. You can control every ship you own easily. Every ship in the game can be communicated with, asked for directions or other questions, and every space station can be docked into. As I said, the game is very complex, and takes a while to learn, but once figured out, it’s a blast to play.

The game requires a beefy system to play smoothly. Even on my high-end computer, it slows down in some spots, mostly due to the fantastic graphics, and lots of A.I. routines. This game is fantastic for those old school space simmers that enjoyed the old Elite game, or Privateer. Don’t get this game expecting a Freelancer or Freespace 2-type game. This one is a true sim, complete with Newtonian law of physics.

If you’d like, you can check out a screenshot I took of the game in the gallery.

The Passion Of The Christ Review

Update 02/25/04: For those of you coming in from Google, or other search engines, if you want more reviews, a lot are listed at Rotten Tomatoes.

Douglas Tennapel, famous for his works on Earthworm Jim (one of my all time favorites), The Neverhood, and more, has posted an in-depth review of the controversial, but certainly interesting film by Mel Gibson, The Passion Of The Christ. The movie isn’t finished yet, so he is providing his thoughts on a non-final release. The review contains a few spoilers, but they are pointed out beforehand, so you can skip over them. Here’s a bit from the review:

“The Christ pictures of recent can’t just tell the story. They seem to need to fix things, make Jesus not raise from the dead, make him the lover of Mary Magdalene, make him whatever. But Gibson leans on the simplicity of the original story. He’s not shackled to the scriptures, because he boldly throws in details here and there that blend with the original story. He’s respectful, but he’s not afraid. This is a movie that secular Hollywood could not make, but it’s also a movie that the Christian community could not make either.”

The page the review is on has an adult ad at the bottom depicting a woman in skimpy bikini. It stands out of place on a page where a guy is reviewing a movie based on Jesus. So if this movie turns out to be a success (and success can go two ways here), will we be flooded with religion movies by Hollywood, desperate to opt in on a new cash cow? Now that would be ironic.