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James Dobson, host of the Focus on the Family radio show, is attacking Barack Obama for distorting the Biblical Scripture in his ‘Call to Renewal’ Keynote Address given June 28, 2006, and where Obama argues, “Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values.”

In this speech on religious tolerance, Obama makes the following statement concerning Religious differences:

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson’s, or Al Sharpton’s? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let’s read our bibles. Folks haven’t been reading their bibles.

Dobson takes issue with Obama making this reference to him, saying that Obama is “diminishing” him and has put him “under fire.” While Obama’s remarks seemed pretty innocuous to me, somehow Dobson reads this single statement as both equating him with Al Sharpton and as accusing Dobson of wanting to strip non-Christians of their human rights and expel them from America. Dobson is not only taking Obama’s remarks out of context to an absurdly dishonest extreme, he is also distorting Obama’s remarks, which are meant to unify everyone despite their religious differences, into something meant to split Americans apart on theological grounds.

Dobson and his host then turn to attacking Obama’s biblical references, criticizing him for saying the bible dictates “stoning your child if he strays from the faith.” The host clarifies that the bible dictates stoning a “beligerant drunkard son” in Deuteronomy 21, and then Dobson criticizes Obama for claiming the passage promotes stoning the son for leaving the faith, and argues “that’s not what the scripture says.”

But the scripture does say we should kill those who preach other faiths in Deuteronomy 13 and those who practice other faiths in Deuteronomy 17. Dobson is either being willfully deceptive or has not read his bible

“I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview,” Dobson argues, citing the following portion of Obama’s speech:

This brings me to my second point. Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

This sounds pretty straightforward. Obama is arguing that, because people have different religious backgrounds, we must make rational arguments based on an empirical understanding of reality that appeal to our common experience in that reality. Dobson is offended by this truism, and asks his audience to “stick with me” while he twists Obama’s words into something completely alien to what he actually said:

What the senator is saying there, in essence, is that I can’t seek to pass legislation, for example, that bans partial-birth abortion because there are people in the culture who don’t see that as a moral issue, and if I can’t get everyone to agree with me it is undemocratic to try to pass legislation that, uh, I find offensive to the scripture. Now that is a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution.

It’s also a fruitcake interpretation of Obama’s remarks.

Dobson, of course, sidesteps the core message in Obama’s speech, that there are many ways of interpreting the scriptures, and the religiously devout must find arguments universal to all people to promote their positions. There are many challenging questions for people of all faiths to consider in Obama’s words, but James Dobson chooses to hide from confronting the issues of religious unity in a world of cultural diversity, pretending not to hear those challenges.

Dobson’s dishonesty, misrepresenting Obama’s remarks and lying about the Biblical Scriptures, betray his political aims despite his attempts to obfuscate them behind a veil of Christianity. A world of people who can set aside their religious differences in favor of reasoning based on empirical understanding has no need for people like Dobson, who have made a career out of promoting an “us and them” xenophobic mentality in their followers.

Just as Dobson tells his followers that the Bible doesn’t say what’s written on its pages, but what he tells them is written, so he argues that Obama’s words don’t mean what they say, but what Dobson’s own political survival depends on his followers believing they mean.

I wish I went on quicker. That is–I wish a human head, or my head at all event, could take in a great deal more & a great deal more rapidly than is the case;–and if I had made up my own head, I would have portioned its wishes & ambition a little more to its capacity… In time, I will do all, I dare say. And if not, why, it don’t signify, & I shall have amused myself at least.
- Ada Lovelace, September 1840

Ada Lovelace Enchantress of Numbers

Ada Lovelace, formerly Ada Byron, Lord Byron’s daughter, wrote the world’s first computer program in 1843 for Charels Babbage’s Analytical Engine which was never finished. Babbage was so impressed with her intellect that he called her the “Enchantress of Numbers.”

Rear Admiral Grace “Amazing Grace” Hopper is considered by some to be the world’s second computer programmer for her work on Harvard’s Mark I computer, which dimmed the lights of Pennsylvania when she turned it on. The COBOL programming language, was based on her philosophy that programs could be written in a language closer to English rather than machine code. She may have also coined the term computer bug in 1947, when a moth got into the Mark II’s circuitry and shorted it out.

In 1946, the ENIAC, first all all-electronic digital computer, was introduced to the world. All six of the ENIAC’s programmers were women, referred to as “Computers” at the time.

In 2006, Frances E. Allen became the first woman to receive the Turing Award for contributions to the field of Artificial Intelligence. Mary Lou Jepsen was the Founder and Chief Technology Officer of the One Laptop Per Child. Where I work, in the Coast Guard’s Information Services Division, half of the programmers and database developers are women.

With so many pioneers and present-day leaders in the field of computer science, it’s a shame that the number of women seeking degrees in CS is plummeting because girls associate computer scientists with, “geeks, pocket protectors, isolated cubicles and a lifetime of staring into a screen writing computer code.”

Computer Science Bachelor’s Degrees by Gender

There is still a huge demand for Computer Scientists, and the “Median annual earnings of computer and information scientists employed in computer systems design and related services in May 2006 were $95,340.” Computer Science is one field where women came out with strong representation from the very beginning and continue making strong contributions to the field, but those gains will vanish if girls avoid a rewarding, well-paying career in Computer Science simply because they think it’s too geeky.

See Also:

Famous Women in computing

The Eniac Women Programers

If evolution is outlawed, only outlaws will evolve. - Jello Biafra

ideonexus’ DNA Via: baekdal

California has joined New York in taking stand against home DNA testing, issuing 13 cease and desist letters to companies offering home genetic tests. In addition to the companies being required to meet safety and testing standards (which nobody has an issue with), now consumers must provide a prescription from a doctor before a company can process a home DNA kit.

The only argument I’ve heard for why California and New York would want to restrict this service is that DNA is medical data. Only medical doctors know how to interpret DNA, and there are health hazards to people self-diagnosing based on such a complex wealth of information.

Newsweek has several comments supporting regulations such as these from Medical experts and Academics, which immediately sets off alarm bells in my mind. The experts and academics are arguing that they should be the only ones interpreting this data, and the rest of us need to pay them gobs and gobs of money for the service.

Gee, there’s nothing suspicious about that. Right?

Except that, according to the National Human Genome Research Institute’s
Promoting Safe and Effective Genetic Testing in the United States report, these “experts” are pretty clueless themselves:

Despite remarkable progress much remains unknown about the risks and benefits of genetic testing:

• No effective interventions are yet available to improve the outcome of most inherited diseases.
• Negative (normal) test results might not rule out future occurrence of disease.
• Positive test results might not mean the disease will inevitably develop.

It is primarily in the context of their unknown potential risks and benefits that the Task Force considers genetic testing.

So only an expert is allowed to interpret the results of our personal genome tests, but the experts don’t really know too much about them either. Of course they won’t know too much about them because the human genome is massively complex and new research emerges about its contents on a weekly basis.

Your doctor isn’t keeping up on that research, and your doctor is just one human being. Companies like 23andMe are keeping their customers up to date on the latest developments in their personal genome. California wants people to rely error-prone humans rather than allow them to do the research themselves.

Don’t mistake this for academic elitism, this is protectionism, pure and simple. Just like Pharmaceutical companies don’t want you to know that honey works better than cough syrup, doctors don’t want you understanding your own health. Informed patients might question their authority after all.

Wired’s Thomas Goetz objects to California’s unreasonable stance on the grounds that his DNA data is his data, no matter how complex, and that is an important issue in this debate. We require electricians, truck drivers, and teachers to meet certain certification standards because they have the power to harm others, but knowing my genome can only affect me.

California and New York are criminalizing information. We are talking about people being prevented from even knowing what’s in their genes without having that information filtered through a medical doctor. Imagine a world where only auto mechanics are allowed to look under the hood of your car, and owner’s manuals are prohibited to the public. That’s the world California and New York are working towards.

See also:

Top 10 Reasons that Regulators Should not Hinder Genetic Testing

John Coleman, weatherman for KUSI in San Diego, has an unintentionally hilarious rant posted, Global Warming and the Price of a Gallon of Gas, where he blames Global Warming Theorists for the high cost of oil and what he seems to think is the impending destruction of civilization because of it. Mind you, it’s not Global Warming that’s going to destroy civilization, it’s people believing it that’s going to doom us all.

Coleman wants us to know that he knows what he’s talking about:

I have dug through thousands of pages of research papers, including the voluminous documents published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I have worked my way through complicated math and complex theories.

Got that? This Global Warming stuff is complicated, and Coleman’s a total wonk on this topic what with all that reading and math and stuff that he’s done. He summarizes the AGW theorists’ positions quite nicely:

According to Mr. Gore the polar ice caps will collapse and melt and sea levels will rise 20 feet inundating the coastal cities making 100 million of us refugees. Vice President Gore tells us numerous Pacific islands will be totally submerged and uninhabitable. He tells us global warming will disrupt the circulation of the ocean waters, dramatically changing climates, throwing the world food supply into chaos. He tells us global warming will turn hurricanes into super storms, produce droughts, wipe out the polar bears and result in bleaching of coral reefs. He tells us tropical diseases will spread to mid latitudes and heat waves will kill tens of thousands. He preaches to us that we must change our lives and eliminate fossil fuels or face the dire consequences. The future of our civilization is in the balance.

Got that? Al Gore. Al Gore. Al Gore. Al Gore. Al Gore. Al Gore. Al Gore.

This is pretty embarrassing. Coleman claims to have read so much AGW research, but then proves in this paragraph that the only thing he’s read is Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. I didn’t read the book myself, but I’m pretty sure it had a lot of pages in it, and those page numbers can get pretty complicated for some people when we’re talking about numbers as big as 10⁴ power, but this doesn’t excuse the silliness of AGW skeptic’s tactic of claiming Al Gore is the end-all-be-all of AGW theory. I don’t recall Al Gore’s name being on any of the scientific papers. I don’t recall Al Gore owning the NASA Earth observation satellites. And Al Gore’s name definitely wasn’t on the IPCC reports.

So take note, whenever an AWG skeptic says “Al Gore,” what they’re telling you is, “I don’t believe in Global Warming because I can’t be bothered to read primary sources.” Then imagine them drooling on themselves and drawing doodles of bunny rabbits.

Carbon Dioxide “is not a pollutant. It is not smog. It is a naturally occurring invisible gas.” Coleman argues. It’s a byproduct of our respiration; therefore, it doesn’t matter how much of it is in our atmosphere. I would like Coleman to demonstrate his faith in this fact by placing himself in a room filled with nothing but CO₂ for 10 minutes. After he expires, we can discuss why his whole “it’s natural” argument is bogus. Remember: arsenic is natural.

Coleman also trots out the “controversy” surrounding the AGW consensus, citing that tired old Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine’s 31,000 signatures of “Scientists” who dispute AGW Theory. Although released on May 2008, this is actually the same list released in 1998, which was heavily debunked then and carries no more legitimacy now.

But what does all this have to do with the price of oil?

The battle against fossil fuels has controlled policy in this country for decades. It was the environmentalist’s prime force in blocking any drilling for oil in this country and the blocking the building of any new refineries, as well. So now the shortage they created has sent gasoline prices soaring.

This is important, because it’s possible that there is as much as 3.5 billion barrels of oil underneath the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve, 3.5 BILLION. That’s almost enough oil to supply America for a whopping half a year!!! And we evil environmentalists are keeping you from it. Why would we do that? Why would anyone want to deny Americans a few more years of driving our SUVs just so we can have healthy forests, clean beaches, and wildlife???

Dittoheads consider Coleman a credible source on this subject because he tried to talk other people into suing Al Gore (but not himself) and he’s the founder of the Weather Channel in 1983. They always emphasize this fact, Founder of the Weather Channel, never mind the fact he got a
kicked out of the enterprise, when, as he describes it, “The bad guys took it away from me, but they can’t steal the fact that it was my idea and I started it and ran it for the first year.”

In dittohead land, one skeptical meteorolgist is enough to overturn the G8, Brazil’s Academia Brasileira de Ciéncias, France’s Académie des Sciences, Italy’s Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Russia’s Academy of Sciences, the United State’s National Academy of Sciences, United States of America, the Royal Society of Canada, the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina, the Science Council of Japan, the Academy of Science of South Africa, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Science Academy, the Academia Mexicana de Ciencias, the Royal Society, United Kingdom, Malaysia’s Academy of Sciences, New Zealands, Academy Council of the Royal Society, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Australian Academy of Sciences, the Woods Hole Research Center, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Meteorological Society (AMS), the National Research Council, Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS), the Federal Climate Change Science Program, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the UN Project on Climate Variability and Predictability, the American Geophysical Union, the Geological Society of America, American Chemical Society, the American Association of State Climatologists, the US Geological Survey (USGS), the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS), the World Meteorological Organization, Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospherice Sciences, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Australian Meteorological And Oceanographic Society, the Pew Center on Climate Change, and 928 peer reviewed scientific journal papers.

But in dittohead land, it’s the people who don’t believe John Coleman who are acting on faith.

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. - Charels Darwin

Homo sapiens experience change throughout our lives, but when it comes to changes on the scale of our civilization or environment, we have the perspective of walking along the Earth’s surface, unaware of its curvature. Because our memories are recreations of events, rather than a recording, we experience landscape amnesia, recalling events from the past in the environment surrounding us today rather than the way it looked then.

They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. - Andy Warhol

Science tracks the long-term changes our short lifetimes cannot comprehend. Although Global Warming occurs at pace of such tiny increments, we cannot perceive the increase in temperature from year to year, science catalogues and documents such change. When the snows of Kilimanjaro vanish, science overcomes our brains’ tendency to forget this feature was ever there.

Snow Coverage on Mt. Kilimanjaro Credit: NASA

If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less. - U.S. General Eric Shinseki

Our brains have evolved to perceive the world one way. Science equips our minds to perceive it a more accurate way. We must embrace these cognitive advances that have rendered our innate biological state obsolete, lest we become irrelevant along with them.

And evolution’s method for dealing with irrelevance is extinction.

Space Aliens Grille & Bar Photo by dacotahsgirl

I am 99.9 percent certain that the video of an alien peeking through a window is a fabrication. I am aware of the experts who have examined the video and claim its authenticity, but, to my mind, this is like having experts certify Dittoheads have hearts, no matter how realistic the video, the content remains nonsense.

Why would someone something capable of traversing the vast chasms of space, distances in hundreds of lightyears, need to sneak up and peek through a window??? The aliens have mastered interstellar voyages, but never figured out how to put two convex lenses together to make a telescope? Here on Earth, engineers have developed technology that can see through walls, and yet ET has to stand on its tippy-toes to get a look at a human living room?

What possible scientific data are aliens getting from looking at a human living room anyway? Right now anyone within a 50 lightyear radius of Earth is watching our 1957 I Love Lucy episodes. They can see all the human living rooms they want by tuning into a few of our television broadcasts!

Why doesn’t this ET just plug into our Internet? There is nothing Klaatu is going to see with a real-life look at a human dwelling that they can’t get on YouTube. We should be looking for aliens hanging out in coffee shops, leaching off the free wi-fi, not snooping around our backyards like bug-eyed perverts.

If there are aliens observing us, they are doing so with satellites the size of microchips. They aren’t visiting in person, they are using nanobots, remote exploration, just as we use rovers to explore Mars.

And don’t even get me started on everything that’s wrong with the whole alien abduction for invasive medical experimentation silliness.

Mark your calendars! June 12 is Carbon Belch Day, brainchild brainfart of the GrassFire lobby, a day to flaunt your skepticism of Anthropogenic Global Warming theory by producing as much CO₂ as possible. It’s like “I’m With Stupid” multiplied by several thousand!!!

I am begging all AGW skeptics to PLEASE DO THIS! Please go ahead a prop your car up on cinderblocks and rev the engine all day! Go ahead and turn all the lights on in your house! Open your oven, turn it to 500 degrees and let it do battle with your air conditioner! Run hot water down all the sinks in your house all day long! Prove to us dumbass environmentalists just how stupid you think we really are!!!¹

But that’s not enough! You also need to eat LOTS AND LOTS OF HAMBURGER! In fact, eat nothing but hamburger all day long! Wash it down with milk! Prove how much you don’t believe in Global Warming by stuffing your face with all the milk and hamburger you can eat in a single 24 hour period!

While your stuffing your face with all that hamburger and milk, be sure to GO TO WAL-MART AND BUY LOTS AND LOTS OF CHEAP USELESS CRAP!!! Everything at Wal-Mart comes from China, so it takes tons of gas to ship it all the way overseas. So be sure to show us environmentalists just how ridiculous we are by buying extra irons, vacuum cleaners, radios, dvd players, cameras, action figures, lawn gnomes, electric toothbrushes, and other lead-covered cheap junk doomed to break within a year so you can experience the joys of buying it all over again for next year’s Toxic Fart Day! Just remember if you see a sign there that reads “Wet Floor,” it’s not giving you permission.

That’s right! Show us AGW alarmists the validity of your position with this outpouring of flatulence! The more incontinent your display the more seriously we’ll take your position!!! Please be sure to take photos and post them on the Internet proving your devotion to AGW skepticism so we can all admire you!

The person with the most lights on, hamburger eaten, and stuff from Wal Mart wins!!! Here’s wishing you a happy Fart Day!

¹ The electricity in your house only matters if you are powered by a coal power plant. If you use nuclear energy, you’ll need to buy a generator from Wal-Mart to increase your flatulence.

Awhile back I linked to this video of EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson refusing to explain to Congress why he will not do his job despite the Supreme Court mandating he take action on CO₂ pollution, and his refusal to allow Californians the right to take action on greenhouse emissions for themselves.

Three hearings later and he is still sitting there, refusing to answer any questions put to him. The most infuriating part of this is that #$%&ing smile he’s obviously trying to suppress as he knows he’s getting away with defecating on the American people:

Rush Limbaugh is right.

Rush is right when he says it would be better for Republicans to lose than vote for McCain, and Rush is right when he proposes Operation Chaos to help McCain win the general election.

Rush is right when he says he wants Hillary to win the nomination because she’ll be easier to beat than Obama, and Rush is right when he says he wants Obama to win the nomination because he’ll be easier to beat than Hillary.

Rush is right when he says war dissidents are patriotic, and Rush is right when he says war dissidents are unpatriotic.

Rush is right when he says Bill Clinton lacks a mandate for being elected without winning the popular vote, and Rush is right when he says George Bush has a mandate despite being elected without winning the popular vote.

Rush is right when he says drug users should be imprisoned, and Rush is right when he says he deserves leniency for his drug use.

Rush is Right when he supports Republicans through six years of failed policies, and Rush is right when he admits his support was nothing but lies.

Rush is right that Democrats use demoralizing and unfair rhetoric, and Rush is right when he says Chelsey Clinton is the “White House dog”.

Rush is Right!

On May 3, speaking to the issue of rising food prices, President Bush Jr cited developments in India, where the “middle class is larger than our entire population” and added, “when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up.”

This was a true statement, however one that was very incomplete, and Indian citizens’ feeling slighted over the remark was justified. Bush, myself, and other experts have regularly talked about India and China’s rising standards of living as driving up the price of natural resources, but there is an old development that we need to consider also.

While people in Haiti are eating flavored mud, I learned yesterday that American’s are throwing out 27 percent of our food. While the average Indian consumes 2,440 calories a day, the average American consumes 3,790. America has the highest rates of obesity, and obese people have the biggest impact on the environment. It’s not wholly their fault, as portion sizes have doubled and tripled over the last 20 years:

Today’s 20-ounce Coke has 2.5 servings

China and India have every right to our standard of living and their economic equality will ultimately benefit the world, but our world cannot support everyone living at our level of excess. It’s important that we all moderate our consumption.

Today I sat in on a meeting about USCG training and qualifications that went like this:

“Why doesn’t the application cover the J?”

“Because they program to the 3710.”

“So we need to submit a CG22 to change it.”

“Are we sure we only want the BA and DM updated?”

“We can follow the other quals with a DSS Report until this is all resolved with the OCS release in January.”

“We still have the MSO to consider.”

“That’s a new REQ, so we’ll need a new SCR submitted to the RM Team. If we get it in this morning we might get it on the CCB this afternoon.”

This is acronym speak is how real-world business people talk in just about every professional work envrionment I’ve ever been a part of. So when you grammar-nazis begrieve us Netizens our LOLs, OMGs, WYSIWYGs, WTFs, SNAFUs and the like for destroying the english language, you are just being silly.

Sincerely,

ry

Hillary Clinton, when recently asked if she could name one economist who thought her “Gas Tax Holiday” was a good idea, responded:

I’m not going to put my lot in with economists… We’ve got to get out of this mind-set where somehow elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans.

Now, I’ve got my problems with economists. Economics is a field that I think too-closely resembles weather prediction, a complex system prone to the effects of chaos theory; however, I would never dismiss economists for working so hard to at least try and know what they are talking about.

Given the choice between Al Gore and George Bush, voters went with Bush because he was someone they could have a beer with (despite the fact that he is a teetotaler and recovering alcoholic). Dittoheads despised Gore because he was educated and wasn’t ashamed of it. We can see what going with our drinking buddy as leader of the free world has gotten us.

Barack Obama is often attacked as an elitist (See also here, here, here, here, and here). It’s an easy charge to make for some people. Obama was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, graduated with a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard, and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School.

He has an impeccable academic background for the position for which he is currently serving as a Senator and the one he is applying for: President of the United States. He is extremely qualified for protecting our Constitutional rights and upholding the rule of law; however, in America, a large portion of our population see this as a defect, and would prefer to have a lovable doofus lacking even a high school understanding of our constitution to run the free world (in)competently.

Imagine this irrational position applied to other situations. When, if in need of heart surgery, Americans choose doctors with less qualifications but were lovable doofuses. If, when we need technical support, we went to the bar and found someone “down to Earth” enough to service our computer, car, or home, rather than someone certified in an area of expertise.

It’s absurd that we factor this criteria into choosing the person who will manage the governmental policies that will affect all of our lives.

When American’s go to the doctor, they want an elitist, someone who’s spent nearly a decade studying the human body. When we choose a lawyer, we’re looking for an elitist, someone who’s spent nearly a decade studying law to pass the bar exam. When we look for computer programmers, engineers, academic institutions, economists, scientists, or any other field requiring specialization and years of intense intellectual training, we want an elitist to fill that role.

If a candidate is well-educated, mature, and has demonstrated an effective leadership style, then I can overlook the fact that they don’t enjoy watching a bunch of rednecks make four left turns for four hours, hanging-out in smoke-filled bars, or show any proficiency for hunting, bowling, golf, or any other activity unrelated to making America run smoothly. I want an egghead running my country, a policy wonk who keeps abreast of current events so that I don’t have to worry as much. I’ve been worrying too much these last eight years.

Stephen Colbert satirized it best on his show The Colbert Report, when interviewing Susan Jacoby about her book The Age of American Unreason:

My sister and I had some difficulty getting into the MoMa because the street was closed so the Pope could come down one of the adjacent roads. Luckily, my sister showed me how to get past the police barricade (you wait until their dealing with someone else and walk past them). Of course, a friend who we were meeting at the MoMa made it there another way, she got off at the subway stop that opened onto the closed road. : )

When we got out of the exhibit, it just happened to be time for the Pope to travel past, so we hung out and I tried to snap a photo. This is the best I could do:

Rare Pope sighting

I think this is supposed to be like seeing a rock star for some people, or like seeing Neil deGrasse Tyson for me. Once Mr. Pope had passed on by, I noticed a bit of irony in the address we were standing at to see him:

I’m going to hell

: )

Microsoft has come up with a novel solution to the issue of security in Windows Vista. The basic principle is don’t let the user do anything. You see, if users are prevented from any productivity whatsoever, they can’t screw things up right?

Take for instance User Account Control. This is a new “feature” (note the scarequotes), which asks the user for permission every time they try to do something:

Vista also disables screenshots when this dialog appears, so I had to get this photo with my digital camera.

It works like this: When you double click on Firefox, you get this pop-up stating that it appears Firefox is trying to run. Do you wish to allow it? You click OK. You try to share a folder, and you get this pop-up stating that it appears something is trying to share a folder. Do you wish to allow it? You click OK. You double click an MP3 and get a warning that Windows Media Player is trying to run. You click OK.

Turning off this “feature” walks you through the depraved sadism that must exist in the minds of Microsoft Developers. I could really feel their contempt for me as a user when I first went to the Windows Security Center and found User Account Control listed there, set to “ON,” with no way to modify it.

There was, however, an unhelpful link below this meaningless status indicator reading, “How does User Account Control help protect my computer?”

How indeed. The help topic unhelpfully explained that User Account Control protects my computer by making me click “OK” every time I want to do something.

Truly fascinating, but as Benjamin Franklin wisely cautioned, “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” So despite the immense security clicking all these “OK” buttons was affording me, I decided I would trade security for freedom and efficiency by turning them off.

The help topic on this “feature” had nothing to say about how to do that.

So, of course, I consulted that great oracle of how to’s for usurping Microsoft’s bureaucracy, Google, and found this article, which directed me to “User Accounts and Family Safety.” Where I was able to disable the feature, after, of course, being informed that something was trying to disable User Account Control and clicking OK.

Now every time I start Windows Vista, I get a helpful alert message warning me that User Account Control is turned off.

Windows Vista is extremely pretty though.