Today is Christmas! (OK, technically yesterday was Christmas, but forget that.) I hope you all had a very merry one, and for those who esteem all days equally, I hope you enjoyed a good day off of work.
It's now time for me to brag about my family's generosity, which was much abundant this year. A few highlights. My parents got me a new cell phone, which I've been wanting for ages. This one is one of those flippy-phones and it has the whole Space Communicator/speakerphone mode that I think is really cool. They also got me a Creative Zen Touch, which would sound really weird for a professing Christian to say if he weren't referring to his iPod-esque new MP3 player. Then my brothers got me a book by the Blogosphere's own James Lileks called Interior Desecrators and a DVD with the first hundred Strong Bad emails from Homestar Runner on it. Ooh, and my parents also got me a Memory Stick with 512MB of memory on it as well as a license to PocketDVD Studio which will allow me to copy DVD's that I own to a file that my Clie will be able to read. It's pretty cool.
All in all, a lot of very nice presents from some very nice people. (Thanks guys!)
Now, while I should be going to bed right now, I'll actually be staying up just a little while to copy a few more CDs onto my MP3 player. (Just 5 more, and I think I'll have every religious CD in our extensive religious CD collection loaded into the thing.) So, good night for now, and, once again, Merry Christmas!
Dean Esmay has an excellent, but lengthy, post comparing the levels of vitriol on the right and the left. He mentions in passing that the only bloggers he publicly criticizes are the Daily Kos and the Drudge Report. Now, while I don't read the Drudge Report, my daddy does, and Drudge has a Sunday-evening radio show on our local conservative radio station, so I thought he was probably pretty good. But, on the other hand, I tend to respect Dean's opinions, which are usually well-thought-out, even if I don't agree with them.
So, to Google I went, seeking more information about Drudge. I found a column by John S. Ashton, who was a Kerry supporter and whose tone doesn't exactly indicate a fairness to the right-leaning points of view. I'm inclined to take his opinions with a grain of salt, but he opens his column with a referenced quote from a court decision involving Drudge:
“Drudge is not a reporter, a journalist or a newsgatherer. He is, as he himself admits, simply a purveyor of gossip. See Complaint, Exs. 6, 8. His argument that he should benefit from the "news gathering exception" to subsection (a)(4) of the long-arm statute merits no serious consideration.”
This is not speculation or commentary from any political type. This is the legal opinion of a judge who presided over a defamation suit in which Drudge was involved a few years ago. (SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL and JACQUELINE JORDAN BLUMENTHAL, Plaintiffs, v. MATT DRUDGE and AMERICA ONLINE, INC., Defendants., Civil Action No. 97-1968 (PFL), UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, 992 F. Supp. 44; 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5606; 26 Media L. Rep. 1717; 12 Comm. Reg. (P & F) 367, April 22, 1998, Decided, April 22, 1998, Filed)
The suit was filed because on August 10, 1997, Drudge ran the following hateful smear against Blumenthal, who had just been given a political appointment by then-President Clinton:
“The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that top GOP operatives who feel there is a double-standard of only reporting republican shame believe they are holding an ace card: New White House recruit Sidney Blumenthal has a spousal abuse past that has been effectively covered up.
“The accusations are explosive.” That lead in look familiar? The exact type he used when issuing his recent dishonest smears against General Wesley Clark or his current claims against Senator John Kerry? Drudge continued: “There are court records of Blumenthal's violence against his wife, one influential republican, who demanded [**2] anonymity, tells the DRUDGE REPORT…
Wow, court records, huh? It must have been easy for Drudge to defend himself then, huh? Certainly he didn’t back down, since there were “court records” to support his smearing claim, right?
Well, actually, Drudge had to retract the story and, according to a report by the Washington Post, apologize. As the legal proceedings report:
“After receiving a letter from plaintiffs' counsel on Monday, August 11, 1997, Complaint, Ex. 6, defendant Drudge retracted the story through a special edition of the Drudge Report posted on his web site and e-mailed to his subscribers. Drudge Decl. I PP 17-19. At approximately 2:00 a.m. on Tuesday, August 12, 1997, Drudge e-mailed the retraction to AOL which posted it on the AOL service. Drudge Decl. I P 19; AOL Mem. at l2. n5 Defendant Drudge later publicly apologized to the Blumenthals. Drudge Decl. I P 20; Complaint, Ex. 6 (Howard Kurz (sic), Blumenthals Get Apology, Plan Lawsuit: Web Site Retracts Story on Clinton Aide, Washington Post, August 11, 1997, at A 11).”
And, now that I think about it, I do recall hearing some story from Drudge during the campaigns about Kerry being involved in some sort of affair, which turned out to be false.
So, if I do decide to start reading Drudge, I should probably take it with a hefty grain of salt. Sort of the National Enquirer.
Huh... A glance at the ol' calendar on the sidebar informs me that I haven't exactly been posting very consistently lately. That's understandable: Two weeks ago I was trying to get my semester's final projects done. The next week I had finals up through Thursday. Friday I did some Christmas shopping--which is a pastime I loathe above most others; I like giving gifts, and especially when I find good ones, but it's the time-consuming finding process that I really don't like. Saturday I spent most of the day (noon-11 pm) working, and Sunday I had regular church stuff.
Highlights of today:
My brother finally got his driver's license. This makes me very happy, as I will no longer be called on to retrieve him from basketball practice or from church functions.
Did some Christmas shopping, and ran into a couple of acquaintances from high school and a friend of Jason's. Pleasantries were exchanged.
Went to a Sunday School Christmas party tonight. Lots of fun. We had one of those "white elephant" gift exchanges; I received a giant PEZ dispenser decorated with the head of Woodstock from the Charlie Brown comic strips on the top. If you pull Woodstock's head back, not only will it dispense an entire roll of PEZ candy, but it also plays the little theme song. It's cool. Other notable gifts: A keychain from Korea, a roll of toilet paper, a pen that delivered electic shocks to anyone who attempted to use it, and a beer stein from Germany. (Yes, a Sunday School Christmas party.)
A new Decemberween Homestar Runner cartoon is up. Go see it! You know you want to.
Um... That's about it. Tomorrow's agenda: Finish Christmas shopping already! And maybe write a blog post that's full of witty insight into politics or religion or something. Or not. We'll see.
And I don't have to worry about homework and tests for at least the next 3 or 4 weeks.
And Christmas is coming.
Yay!
Oh, and next semester, I managed to work it out so that I only have classes on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. None on Tuesday/Thursday. So, I won't have to come to BJ on those days at all. That at least four hours saved each week from no longer having to travel back and forth and not having to go to chapel. And I save gas money.
And I was able to get into a class they told me was closed, Entrepreneurship, thanks to a conversation with my new favorite teacher and with the Dean of the School of Business Administration.
And I'm in the class with at least one, and maybe two, good friends that I met this semester.
Only one thing could possibly make less excited:
Going to an elementary school Christmas program
Here comes another attention-grabbing judge from Alabama. Not Roy Moore this time, but Ashley McKathan, who decided to embroider the Ten Commandments to his robe. I'm guessing he's seen the relative popularity that Roy Moore has had, and has decided to follow in his footsteps.
Since when to judges get to decorate their robes anyway? The position of a judge is supposed to be marked with formality and decorum. If we let this go, how long until we see tattered denim robes, or maybe judges wearing those huge rapper chains? Oh! How about political buttons? The ninth circuit could have worn Kerry-Edwards buttons?
And that ignores the entire separation of church and state thing. Look, I know that people like to point out that the words "Separation of Church and State" don't appear in the Constitution, but it's A) the accepted interpretation of the law and B) a good idea. The government doesn't need to be showing favor to any religion. (That includes Christianity, and Islam, and Judaism, and Mormonism, and Buddhism, and so on.)
Imagine that you're a Muslim, and that you're on trial for murdering a Baptist pastor and his family. (Let's also imagine that you're innocent.) Now, Judge Designer Ward-Robe comes out, sporting his gold Ten Commandments. Do you really feel like you're going to be getting a fair trial?
Anyways: I'm reasonably certain this activist judge is just after a little of the same Roy Moore fame, which means I probably shouldn't be talking about him. I'm just not looking forward to hearing about this guy talked about as a hero for the next several weeks in church.
It's finals season! I had 3 today; they seemed to go pretty well. I do need to get an A on my next exam if I'm going to keep my A in the class. So, one quick post before I go study:
On my way to and from school, I often listen to the Russ and Lisa show on WORD, the local talk-radio station. Occasionally it's entertaining, and they report the traffic regularly.
Anyways, Russ has gotten on this kick about the phrase "Happy Holidays." Apparently, it bugs him when people say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." He's spent at least two full hours of the show ranting on this topic, taking calls from others ranting on the subject, and generally raising cane.
Could there possibly be any more pointless thing to get angry about?
So some people say "Happy Holidays." Maybe they looked at the calendar and noticed that Hannukah and even Kwanza, the made-up holiday both fall in the same month as Christmas. Therefore, unless you know the person, you have little to no idea which holiday, if any and assuming not more than one, they celebrate. So, store owners say "Season's Greetings" and "Happy Holidays" to be more sensitive to their customers.
They aren't trying to strip Christ out of Christmas. Which is what Russ and others like him who keep talking about "Jesus is the reason for the season" and "the True Meaning of Christmas (tm)" are really worried about.
Of course, since Christmas began as the Roman Saturnalia, I guess we could say Saturn is the reason for the season.
Look, just be happy. Regardless of the holiday, this is supposed to be season of goodwill and peace. Don't make the greeting marking the season a point of contention.
"Bob Jones III Tries to Launch a Domestic Holy War"?
So, apparently columnist Deborah Mathis has just now figured out that Dr. Bob wrote a letter to President Bush the day after the election. I opened the editorial page of my newspaper (always a mistake) to find a column she wrote about it yesterday, entitled "Bob Jones III Tries to Launch A Domestic Holy War."
[O]ne of President Bush's supporters and friends in the evangelical community had insulted liberals with a most heinous indictment.
"Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil," wrote Bob Jones III, president of South Carolina's Bob Jones University. "You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ." (Emphasis [Mathis']).
Like untold numbers of liberal Christians everywhere, my children were livid....
Proudly liberal, they were appalled by the audacity - and the illegitimacy - of Jones' comment. They, after all, are praying, church-going, faithful and conscientious. The grandchildren of a minister on their mother's side and a deacon on their father's. Sunday School veterans and Vacation Bible School alums. The daughters and son of a diehard believer. Young people ever mindful of a higher power - moreover, led and comforted by it.
So far, Mathis makes a legitimate point. Dr. Bob's comment was unfair. It's wrong and divisive to demonize all liberals by calling them despisers of Christ, when quite frankly that is not the truth.
One of the things I've learned since discovering the blogosphere is that liberals actually have moral bases for many of their conclusions, just like conservatives do. For example, welfare and other entitlement programs, which conservatives decry as being wasteful and a violation of the "if any man will not work, neither should he eat" principle of Scripture, liberals see as acts of Christian charity. (Personally, I think the government is not the right vehicle for charitable giving, but that's another discussion all together.) The environmentalist movement and the animal rights movement carry their moral overtones, and the list goes on.
Just like conservative Christians, liberal Christians determine their political beliefs from the Bible and their own logical thinking. To say that a liberal political position necessarily equals an atheistic, God-despising religious position is poorly-reasoned and incendiary rhetoric. (There are many fine qualities that are exhibited by the Jones dynasty, but tact is not among them.)
Unfortunately, however, Mathis' piece goes on from that point to reveal an awfully hypocritical flaw in Mathis' position. The next two quotes are out of order, rearranged for emphasis:
"'How is what he said any different from what the Islamic extremists say about Muslims who don't think God wants them to kill people who don't think like them?'
"'Actually, it's not. Both are claiming righteousness and supremacy and are passing judgment and condemning. That's the kind of vanity and sanctimony that gives religion a bad name.'"
"'The man has issues....Bob Jones has no credibility among real believers... Real believers understand that God is not a bigot and doesn't put up with bigotry."
Apparently Mathis' judgment that BJIII is a bigoted extremist with no credibility doesn't count as passing judgment.
Once again, of course, the old interracial dating ban is the culprit. Yes, of course BJU dropped the ban under pressure during the 2000 primary campaign, as Mathis notes elsewhere in the piece. Of course, if BJU had not dropped the ban, then it would still be branded as a racist institution. Apparently the only way to prove that BJU isn't a racist institution is to go back in time and drop the ban earlier.
Someone really ought to figure out a way to do that. Because I'm seriously tired of hearing about how racist an institution BJU is. I go there, and I know better.
Anyways, both Jones and Mathis have problems with assuming the motivations of the opposing side. As my stats teacher is fond of saying, "I don't do divination." In general, you don't know the thinking process that leads another person to take any particular position. Be careful when saying you do.
Acts of Volition has a great conversation going on about some of the best extensions for FireFox.
Let me back up a step: In case you didn't know, FireFox is one of the best, most critically acclaimed web browsers in existence. Quality-wise, it blows Internet Explorer right out of the water. It has several cool features that IE doesn't, such as a built-in, high-quality pop up blocker, the ability to look at several webpages in one window using "tabs," and, most importantly of all, immunity to most kinds of spyware. Really, you need to at least *try* it. You can download it here. It's great software, and it's *FREE*.
Now, one of the other cool features that it has is that it supports "Extensions," which are extra features that aren't built into the browser, but that some third-party creates and that you can install. For example, I have AdBlock, an extension that lets me right click on a banner advertisement and prevent it from *EVER* *LOADING* *AGAIN* on the website that I'm looking at. (Actually, this works for any image or flash dialog.) My mom finds this to be very useful, as she finds those flashing banners to be very irritating to the eye. So she just gets rid of them.
Anyways, the Acts of Volition site lists several great extensions that I hadn't encountered before. So, I thought I'd list and describe all the great extensions that I have installed now. Just open up the extended entry, and we'll get started.
UPDATE: There's a few more extensions listed at Mounty's Corner.
These are listed in the order they appear in my "Extensions" Dialog:
Tabbrowser Extensions: Adds all kinds of features that *should* have been in FireFox in the first place. You can change tab colors, drag tabs around to change the order, double click on an empty part of the tab bar to create a new, empty tab, and do all kinds of cool stuff.
AdBlock: As I mentioned before, this lets you block any particular image or set of images (using the wildcard *) or flash plugins. You can either hide them, or you can do what I do: remove them so that they never load, saving you the time of loading something you never wanted to see in the first place.
BugMeNot: Don't you really, really hate getting a link to a news article and being forced to submit to a free registration process before reading the article? I do. So, I use BugMeNot: Just right-click on the password field and click "BugMeNot," and the program will look up a name and password from BugMeNot.com. Voila! You can now read the article without the hassle of lying to the newspaper publisher about you age and household income.
Copy Plain Text: Does what it says: Highlight some text on a webpage, right click, and click "Copy Plain Text." Now you have just the text you wanted, and not the hyperlinks, colors, or fonts from the original webpage. This is handy for pasting text into Word.
SwitchProxy Tool: This is handy for BJU students who use a different proxy server (or no proxy server) when using the Internet off-campus: You can save different proxy server settings and switch between them. So, when I'm on campus, I right-click on a webpage and switch to BJU Proxy; when I'm at home, I switch to my Proxomitron proxy filter, which I use as a profanity filter.
Context Search: Highlight some text, then right-click on it. You can now choose to search Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Creative Commons, Amazon, or eBay for the highlighted text. I actually don't use this much, preferring to go to the web address bar at the top of the screen and type in "google [search term]" or "ebay [search term]" so that I use some Quick Search bookmarks.
Reload Every: Automatically reload a webpage every so often, such as every minute, every half-hour, or whatever. Handy when you're expecting a webpage to be updated soon.
WeatherFox/ForecastFox: Puts a weather forecast in the browser. I have mine set to put a 3-day weather forecast in the top-right hand corner of FireFox, just beside the page-loading indicator.
Now, stuff I found via the link at the top of the page:
McSearch Preview: Enhances Google by putting screenshots of the search results next to the text links. (It gets the screenshots from some site called Alexa.) The site I linked shows what it looks like. It's pretty cool.
CuteMenus: Puts various icons next to the built-in components of FireFox, making them easier to find. Another one of those that should have been included with FireFox in the first place.
Linky: Lets you download a big group of links all at once. Say there's a site like GameSpy that has a bunch of screenshots you want to see, but you've got to click on a bunch of thumbnails. Before: Click on each one, then click back, click on the next thumbnail, etc. After: Load them all at the same time in different tabs and scroll through the tabs (Ctrl-PgUp and PgDn)
Web Developer: Lets you do all kinds of helpful things when developing a website. Very feature rich; I haven't really begun exploring it yet. One example: You can have it resize the browser to simulate a 800x600 monitor, so you can make sure that everything still looks good for people who need to buy new monitors.
Lastly: The powerful Download Manager Tweak: I use this to move FireFox's download manager from its own window to a sidebar, like the BookMarks and History sidebars. Much, much, much cleaner-looking and less irritating. Very nice.
That's all for now; if I find anything else particularly good, I'll let you know.
As you (probably) know, was "Going for Guiness" tonight, as our local NBC affiliate put it. (This, to me, conjures up images of taps in the Dining Common dispensing Guiness. Is that wrong? Probably. Oh, you didn't know Guiness, the book of world records, and Guiness, the Irish beer company, were one and the same? Well, now you know.)
So, one of the student organizers of the thing emails me today, asking me not to guess how many people actually showed up until after Christmas, so that we can maintain our new record for a while. ::shrug:: Sure. Why not? Since I didn't go, your guess is as good as mine as far as attendees go. I'm going to say 600,000 people showed up. Beat *THAT* Berkeley!
He also sent me a cool little sticker that I've placed over on the sidebar to the left. It indicates that I'm a BJU blogger. (No, really, it does!) Beneath it is a list that includes his blog and several other blogs maintained by BJU students. Except for the one run by the BJU PR guy, Jonathan Pait. I'd also like to congratulate Mounty on keeping me up at least an hour later than usual. :-)
