Swap Blog

Sigmund, Carl and Alfred have two posts today that are truly well written and thought provoking. These posts deal with the areas of faith, religion, civilization, war, and society.

Both posts deal with issues that have arisen from the ongoing conversation at All Things Beautiful . The first post,
The Trinity, The Left, Free Will and Hate, deals with concepts like free will and forgiveness and looks at those issue both from religious and secular / government perspectives. The second post, All God All The Time, deals with the concepts of martyrdom, the motive behind wars / weapons / killing and murder. Very interesting concepts and SC &A’s points are worth a read and consideration regardless of your personal views on such issues and regardless of your base faith, or lack there of.

Give these posts a read and really think about what you think the core meaning of the concepts discussed should be, both personally and within society.

Hatemonger’s Quarterly awarded their “Academic Of The Month” today to Mona Baker of Umist.

Ms. Baker, a Egyptian, showed everyone what fairness in academia really looks when she removed two Israeli’s from editorial and academic boards based on the fact that she supporters the EU banning all support of Israel until Israel stops using for to respond to terrorist attacks from the Palestinians. Interesting move and tactic Biff, let’s see how that works out for her. Based on the comments on her own blog she as received some negative emails, even from other academics. To make the case even stronger even The Guardian finds this woman’s actions offensive. Interesting…. Full Post Here

[H/T to Weblog Tools Collection for this one]

Life Hacker had a post yesterday about how to ease your browsing experience in Firefox by using keyboard shortcuts, instead of the mouse. Full Post Here

The piece / guide says that it is more efficient for developers to work without taking their hands off the keyboard, and I will agree to a point. Personally I use keyboard shortcut and such A LOT, but there are some things that just seems so much more efficient and natural via the mouse. I am going to try these tips though and see if they change my mind over time.

It seems that the Mexican president is for some of the suggested border reforms that have been offered by Senator’s McCain and Kennedy, as well as the program that President Bush is pitching to allow temporary guest worker visas. Full Reuter’s Story Here

All you have to know is that if the Mexican president is for the changes, then they are bad for the US. Why would the president of ANY nation want their citizens to leave? No president that desired to improve or impact the world would. So, that means that the goal of President Fox is to send those that he and his nation are not willing or able to help to us where we can do it. That is right they can not support them so they are trying to push them to another nation that can take care of / provide work for them. That does not define team building or win win solutions where I come from.

Yes, I know that most of the illegals are hard working people, but based on personal experience I also know that they and their families consume a large amount of aid and government support as well. In addition, the issue of work ethic is not important to me. The issue is legality and security.

Bush talks of a temporary workers program, yet any thinking person knows that those temporary workers will just disappear into society when it is time for them to go back. Don’t believe me, watch. No one is going to come here, work a few years, and then head back to their home nation without a fight. We will here how their children are here (and until the 14th amendment is better understood and the idea that ANYONE that is born here is granted citizenship at breath one is defeated) and we will not get into separating families. We will also hear how they paid this tax or fee for this service and no by leaving they will not benefit from it (example - sales tax and license fees which they would pay supports local schools, training, roads, etc, by sending them back they do not have the benefit of those taxes).

Until you deal with stopping the run across the border you will not have any security in the US. There are already cases of people with terrorist links blending in, getting false ID’s, and trying to breech the border. Do you think that will change if temporary status is granted, or if we give citizenship (i.e. forgiving the past breaking of the law by immigrating illegally) to all that are already here.

I am and will always be for LEGAL immigration, but the idea that we are here to take everyone that wants in is just a false one to begin with. There is a unique American culture, and it combines the cultures of all that come here, but the idea that we need to change our culture and ways to suit and satisfy the wants and needs of those that are here illegally or that want to come illegally is just crazy.

The new Firefox - V1.5 - is out. Download it. Install it. Love it. Use it. Support It.

Ban IE

Understand that today Firefox is better then Internet Explorer V11 when it is released in 2010.

The Register Story Here

Well our “add some more themes” project is coming along, slower then we would have hoped due to holiday schedules, but we are moving forward none the less. Today we add a new theme to the blog - Benevolence. Hopefully a few out there will like it.

At this point we are hoping to finish up this theme project early to the middle of next week by completing the additioanl themes we have in the hopper. It may slip to the end of next week, but no further. Thanks for your patience and understanding as we try to balance all the things going on.

We are also closely following the development of Wordpress V2.o as we do not want to have to redo our work when it is released. That has meant checking a few more things before we release the themes.

Stay strong, be couragous and serve God in all things.

Smantix over at Six Meat Buffet has a excellent post that points out why it is time for the urban hero Tookie Williams (founder of the Crips, children’s book writer, and convicted murderer of four) to become the 1,001st (Virginia already has number 1,000 scheduled) person put to death since the death penalty was reinstated. Full Post Here

I don’t care if Snoop “Diggity” Dogg, Dre, Shazam, and Hong Kong Phooey himself all want Tookie to live out his days in prison, it is time for him to leave the earthly realm. The current argument is that his voice needs to be heard. Here is a clue guys - It has been heard for over 25 years longer then the voices of his victims. I do not care if he has cut ties with the gangs (which has always been questioned), written children’s books and gotten himself a education, it comes down to consciences for your actions.

Sure Tookie can be forgiven in Heaven, Tookie can have eternal life (we all can), but God’s eternal forgiveness does not remove the consciences of our earthly actions. Tookie was convicted of FOUR murders, it is likely he committed others that he was not charged or convicted of due to his street legacy, and the price for that is a death sentence. Run with the knife long enough it will cut you.

Arnold may be facing bad poll numbers but I hope he has enough internal strength left to stay the course on this one. Arnold show the world that California does not place notoriety and press coverage above doing the right thing.

Well that did not take long. A week after saying the XML format of Office 12 would be quasi open source standard Microsoft showed nothing has really changed in Redmond by releasing a covenant license that promises not to sue under certain guidelines, but which falls very short of a open source standard. The furthered that today by confirming that the document from last week was their open source attempt. Full story here

I have always said Microsoft should stick to OS’s. I would also add they eed to make a good OS not just a OK one, charge a fair price ( my diatribe on that topic here), and start innovating instead of coping, reacting and exaggerating. The Redmond Gang needs to get out of trying to run the rest of the computer world via their standards, their criteria, and their guidelines. More and more people and groups are stepping away from Internet Explorer ( Firefox), Office ( Open Office), Outlook ( Thunderbird) and SQL ( mySQL) for open source (and usually free or inexpensive) solutions that provide the same, or almost the same, services as Microsoft’s costly products. Wild Bill from Redmondville recently said Microsoft was going to have to reinvent itself to compete with these types of product and to deal with this issue. I guess that re-invention path just hit a big pot hole.