2003.08.28
Just wanted to thank you out of the blue, Kisrael. As an atheist , a few years ago I had an existential crisis. I found your site and I found exactly what I was seeking. Not coddling, but understanding. Your mortality for skeptics section is one of the most useful things i've ever found on the internet.That's really one of the nicest complements I've received in a long while. Also re: yesterday's comments, yeah, on closer inspection, that penguin slap is totally fake.
Toys of the Moment
It turns out yesterday's Zombie Simulator was part of a much more interesting project--Processing seems to be a way of simplifying the creation of java applets...so these things will still run in any browser but they won't require quite so much difficult programming. Many of the applets on the front page are quite interesting or beautiful...'Skyline' is especially cool.
I gotta fight to not get distracted from my Atari game programming, since "Processing" is undoubtedly easier...though I'm making some really good progress with the programming, it actually plays like a game now.
Commentary of the Moment
Slate.com has Christopher Hitchens really ripping into 'The Immorality of the Ten Commandments'. Pretty strong stuff for a mainstream website.
Package Copy of the Moment
For dietary reasons, Mo's been buying spelt bread lately. Her preferred brand is named "Ezekiel 4:9" and it quotes that verse on its side:
Take also unto thee WHEAT and BARLEY, and BEANS, and LENTILS, and MILLET, and SPELT and put them in one vessel, and make bread of it...(Though they leave out the next part, "...according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side; three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof" Lie upon they side? 390 Days?) Frankly, I think it's much more amusing to read this verse in Samuel L. Jackson's famous "Pulp Fiction" Ezekiel 25:17 quote. (a quote which, unlike the bread which leaves out the odd bit, adds a lot that isn't in that verse)