The Unbiased’s Bias
I can’t tell you how many ‘unbiased’ comments/reviews I have seen over the past months. First it was over PS3/Xbox360, then Linux/Windows/Mac, and finally Darwin/Design. These reviews are the ones to be ignored. I am working on a greasemonkey script to remove this type of things from yahoo movies and cnet. You should have seen one I read earlier! Somebody on C|Net was bashing one of the bloggers over how they were “biased [in their blog] against Microsoft”! Honestly, we are all biased. Just admit it. This is why there are Republicans and Democrats, Darwinists and Creationists, and OpenSource-junkies and Microsoft-junkies.
Why bother saying that you are ‘unbiased’? It is a sure flag that you can ignore what they say, because they are so biased they don’t see their bias. Jesus said, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in our own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” So I ask, “Why do you look at the small problem with your opponent and pay no attention to the huge problem with yourself?” I am very biased. I am very conservative Republican Creationist OpenSource-junky. So there, who will admit it next?
On the Matter of Dreams…
Last night I had the most frightening dream of my life. I won’t go into details. One thing I will tell, though is that dreams reveal aspects of ourselves we may not like to see. I ran. Despite the fact that those I know and love were in trouble (in my dream) I ran. Humiliating isn’t it? Because our dreams are subconscious, we see the truth about ourselves in them. Often this truth is not what we want to believe. We want to believe that we are, at our cores, noble beings. Unfortunately this is not true. At our cores we are evil, malicious creatures bent on obtaining power at any cost. Many of the greatest men and women of our time only did what they did to dissuade themselves of this fact. Of course I will get lots of flames for this one.
Drupal What?
This week I was surfing around, trying to find a web engine that would allow easy collaboration on projects. I wanted something themeable, customizeable, and, most importantly, free. I came up with Drupal (drupal.org). It won CNet’s webware award last year, so I decided to give it a try. I installed Drupal 6.2 (the latest Stable) and it worked like a charm. The only problem is that the ‘Project’ line of plugins only work up to 5.7 (the previous Stable), and while the Project team is working feverishly to get it update for 6.2, it isn’t there yet. So, I installed 5.7 and am now running it. It works really, really well. I highly recommend for any website, it has blog, forum, news, projects, and many more functionalities. While there aren’t as many modules for it as for WordPress, there are more variety. Anyway, I am going to be working on setting up my computer to be a web server over the next few days, so all my free time is going to go towards that.
The 2nd Computer Revolution
Tags: memristance, new, tech, desk, ender
Is Nothing New?
Well, last night I presented an Android game idea (for the Android Developers Challenge) to a couple of my friends. They said it was the worst rip-off they had every seen. But you should have heard their ideas. I can name at least 3 games for each of their ideas that has already done that. Nothing has done things the way mine would. (sorry no details on it, the release will be after the ADC is over)
But this brings up an important question: Is anything truly new? The answer: No. Why? No one ever makes anything completely new, they simply put together the pieces in a new way. Solomon the wise said:
“What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which one can say,
‘Look! This is something new’?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.”
- Ecclesiastes 1:9
We all just put the blocks together in different ways. Like all things on earth are made up of the same 112 elements, so we make ideas from the same building blocks. Mine is unique, not new. Uniqueness is when something is the only one like it. It doesn’t mean it’s completely new (as nothing can be).
My game will become a personal project at the very least, although I intend to swing my friends over to my side of the fence.
Tags: game, android, development, solomon, new, nothing, unique
Weird WordPress Problems
Over the last few days, I have been searching for the solution to a problem I had with a custom wordpress install. The category selector on the write page was severely messed up. Selecting a category was impossible. About five minutes ago, I had all but given up. But then I saw some plugin updates (NextGEN Gallery and FlashViewer) and updated them. The problem is gone now. I am at a loss because these plugins should in no way edit the write page. What’s the deal?
Well, at least the problem is gone
‘Til Death
Recently a friend of mine had two of his friends die in a matter of days. His comment to me was “How do I know I’m not next?”. It wasn’t that they died suspiciously or anything, both were killed by accidents. But it does make you think about death. We never really like to think about it, let alone talk about it. But what happens to us when we die? Is there just nothing? Or is there something after we die? Do we get reincarnated like Buddhism and Hinduism say? Or do we only have one life?
I believe that there is something after death, and depending on the person, it may or may not be good. For Christians like myself, I believe heaven is there. For everyone else, hell. I am not sure about the Jews. Those who keep the Judaic faith will probably go to heaven, but I am not sure about Jewish atheists.
Feel free to flame me. But this is what I believe. If you ask a Muslim the same question, he we say a Muslim who keeps the five pillars of Islam will go to heaven, and everyone else to hell. So it is not just me or people who are Christians who believe this way, it is most of the world’s population.
Tags: death, heaven, hell, christianity, islam
False IDs, anyone?
I was checking my feeds in Flock this afternoon when I noticed this:
Defend Your Virtual Life – Columns by PC Magazine
I had known about Intelius before, but I didn’t realize it was this bad! They must have bribed every internet business in the USA to get that much info! Maybe I’ll start using a couple different false IDs…
Expelled and Misused
This past Sunday I went to see Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed with some friends. It was an amazing movie, and clearly portrayed the discrimination against Intelligent Design proponents. Many have lost jobs and careers because lies are spread about them due to their opposition Darwinian Macro-evolution. This article is not discussing ID v Darwinism, creation v evolution, or any other variant of that debate. This article aims to make clear the discrimination against an intriguing film.
Expelled was not interesting just because of the lies and discrimination it exposed, but also because it was a well made film. Scenes from old movies and cartoons were spliced into the film to help illustrate the statements made by interviewees wielding PhDs in everything from neurobiology to physics to journalism. These clips artfullyhelped clarify what the scientist/journalist was saying when they used big, long, scientific terms.
Skillfully Ben Stein blocked those he interviewed into a corner where they had to state the truth about what really happened and what they believed to escape. He got ID proponents to admit that there was some truth in the evolutionary theory (more on that later), while making devout atheist Richard Dawkins reveal his prejudice against religion. What was his statement? That life could come about on earth through intelligent design as long as the designer was not God. The creationists admitted that evolution on a minor scale is possible, and indeed it happens. Darwinian Macro-Evolution, they claim, has odds stacked so high against it (as illustrated in Casino of Life cartoon) that is far easier to believe in and Intelligent Designer. Both Darwinists and ID upholders gave ground, but more was to come.
However, I am not going to give that more here. If you want that you need to go see the movie. This articles primary purpose is to show how Yahoo! Movies User Reviewing function has been misused. On Sunday I logged onto yahoo to give my review, and saw 200 reviews that gave it Fs. I read some. I was stunned. I was perplexed how anyone could have seen the movie and given it such an awful review. Then I saw it, they had simply read the website Expelled Exposed, which is maintained by the Smithsonian Institute and viciously lashes out at Expelled. None of the arguments given by Expelled Exposed are given any links or evidence to back them up, and so Smithsonian’s prejudice is revealed as well. I reported several of the F Reviews before writing my own. All were removed.
The next morning I looked again. The night before there had been over 3000 reviews. Now there were scarcely 1200. I can only assume the worst: That my reporting of 7 or 8 reviews sparked a fire that continued through the night, with a war raging on the web over who would get to tell about the movie. The Intelligent Design people won. At 9:00 PM EST last sunday, Expelled had an overall user rating of B+. At 8:00 AM EST last Monday, which is when I checked back, Expelled had an overall user rating of A.
I have reported many more falsified reviews since then. They are easy to pick out. They attack creationism or Intelligent Design instead of bad film-making, acting, or plot-line. If they had said the movie was made horribly, I wouldn’t report them because that is their opinion. Expelled was, nevertheless, a well made exposition about the removal of freedom of speech from Academia, not ID v Darwin, creation v evolution, or, as I said before, any other debate along those lines. Go see Expelled. It is an amazing movie. But go with an open mind, or, if you have to, ignore the fact that only ID proponents were fired for speaking about their beliefs and concentrate on the film making when writing your review. That is what I did for my review.
You can see my review on Yahoo! Movies here.
Now, for my personal opinion:
And to all of you who claim that ID is creationism and is thus not science, I would ask you to give me some explanation of how we can prove evolution. Or any evidence that we have for it.
Also, creationism is the believe that the Judeo-Christian God created the world. Intelligent Design is generic. If you believe that aliens made the first cell, put it on Earth and let it evolve, then you believe in ID.
Overall, feel free to ignore my personal opinion, I just wanted to let you know what I think.
Tags: expelled, bogus, reviews, misuse, yahoo, movies, protest
What is the purpose?
I have been pondering over the last few days what I want to do with this blog. I have reached a decision. This is not going to be a journal. I will write articles that tell, not what my opinion is, but what really is. That is not to say that I will be completely impartial and unbiased, as that is impossible. What I mean is that I will do my best to present truth. An article revealing and protesting the misuse of Yahoo! Movie Reviews will be up shortly. I hope that it will be enlightening and infuriated (because fools are quick to anger, but wise men think before they act).
