A Preacher’s Credo: Eliminate the Negative, Accentuate Prosperity
A NYT article that might be of interest. I find it astounding that a religion based on someone’s death–the symbolic divestiture of all wealth–can be evolve into this prosperity rubbish. Go here for the full article.
Todd
March 30, 2006 By RALPH BLUMENTHAL HOUSTON, March 29 — Last Sunday morning, as usual, the ever-smiling preacher, best-selling author and religious broadcaster Joel Osteen took the stage at Lakewood Church, formerly known as the Compaq Center, the 16,000-seat home of the Houston Rockets basketball team.
“You know what, I’ve never done it for the money,” he said in an interview after Sunday’s service, which he led with his glamorous wife and co-pastor, Victoria. “I’ve never asked for money on television.” But opening oneself to God’s favors was a blessing, he said. “I believe it’s God rewarding you.”
Lem Dies
I’ve only read his THE FUTUROLOGICAL CONGRESS, but that was enough for me to recognize Lem as a fabulously inventive writer. The Tarkovsky film is quite good as well. But very long. I’ve yet to see the Soderbergh version.
Polish author Stanislaw Lem, most famous for science fiction works including Solaris, has died aged 84, after suffering from heart disease. 
He sold more than 27 million copies of his works, translated into about 40 languages, and a number were filmed. His 1961 novel Solaris was made into a movie by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky in 1971 and again by American Steven Soderbergh in 2002.Soderbergh’s version starred George Clooney and Natascha McElhone.
Lem was born in 1921 in Lviv in Ukraine and studied medicine there before World War II. He moved to Krakow in 1946. He concentrated on science fiction writing, a genre regarded by the Polish socialist government as fairly harmless in terms of censorship. However, his first major novel, Hospital of the Transfiguration, went unpublished for eight years until the ideological thaw that followed Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s death in 1956. Other key works included The Cyberiad in 1965. After the collapse of communism in eastern Europe, Lem turned to writing reports on future trends, including computer crime and the ethical problems of the internet.
Literary honour for Baghdad blogger
THE 18th-century man of letters Samuel Johnson famously remarked that a woman’s preaching was like a dog walking on its hind legs. “It is not done well,†he told James Boswell. “But you are surprised to find it done at all.â€So he would be doubly shocked to learn that a contender for a £30,000 book prize in his name is not only female, but a diarist who publishes her writing on a device known as the internet.
Baghdad Burning is a visceral first-hand account of how the war has destroyed the lives of ordinary Iraqi citizens. The author, a 20-something university graduate who writes under the pseudonym Riverbend, chronicles the “three years of occupation and bloodshed†the city has endured and calls for the withdrawal of US troops. (Read on …)
Homer’s D’Ohdyssey
It is perhaps a sign of how far I have fallen from my days as a serious student of Literature that when I read the headline, Scenes From Homer Found in Cyprus ‘Warrior Tomb,’ I immediately think that the article is Simpsons-related.
The Passion of CS Lewis
Just read this on the NY Review of Books. I think it nicely summarizes some of the more obvious problems with the Narnia books. The article also deals somewhat with the nature of Aslan which I think is crucial when it comes to understanding what God asks from us. Aslan does look a lot like what I would call a worldly, ie, reductive power figure. There is, in other words, no paradox, no confusion in God’s being, that would allow us freedom and possibility. Its theology for sunday school, not serious readers.
Hollywood’s Crowd Control Problem
Read this NYT story, especially the final paragraph for an interesting critique of iPoddification…
Election Strategy From the Inside Out
In today’s NYT. I would love to see this one, though, somehow, I doubt it will make it to NW Ohio. Then there is netflix…
Todd
Election Strategy From the Inside Out
Here, associates of James Carville’s consultancy firm GCS, including the pollster Jeremy Rosner, the advertising consultant Tad Devine and Mr. Carville himself (in typical hyper-to-the-point-of-lunacy form), set their sights on winning Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada a second presidency during Bolivia’s 2002 elections. (He previously served from 1993 to 1997.)
At first, the goal seems unattainable, especially considering he wasn’t all that popular the first time around, not to mention that Bolivia was on the brink of a violent political uprising. Undaunted, the GCS consultants work their magic as if it were a game, shrewdly devising ways to sell a new and improved Mr. Sánchez de Lozada to the public. Endorsements and smear campaigns are conceived for television, general brainstorming sessions and focus groups are held, and the impact each has is thoroughly analyzed. The unrestricted access we are given to these discussions that would normally take place behind closed doors is astounding, even if the “victory” ultimately gained for Mr. Sánchez de Lozada is truly unsettling. Perhaps the only thing left to be desired from this momentous documentary is a reference to the size of the consultants’ paycheck — or their consciences.
Our Brand Is Crisis
Opens today in Manhattan.
Produced and directed by Rachel Boynton; in English and Spanish, with English subtitles; directors of photography, Tom Hurwitz, Michael Anderson, Christine Burrill and Jerry Risius; edited by Ms. Boynton and Jennifer L. Robinson; music by Marcelo Zarvos; released by Koch Lorber. At the Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of Avenue of the Americas, South Village. Running time: 87 minutes. This film is not rated.
Why I love Apples (even though I have had to replace two [2] hard drives in the last month)
Apple’s ode to hackers
Developers embed poetic warning deep in OS X software
SAN JOSE, California (AP) — Apple Computer Inc. has resorted to a poetic broadside in the inevitable cat-and-mouse game between hackers and high-tech companies.
The maker of Macintosh computers had anticipated that hackers would try to crack its new OS X operating system built to work on Intel Corp.’s chips and run pirated versions on non-Apple computers. So, Apple developers embedded a warning deep in the software — in the form of a poem.
Indeed, a hacker encountered the poem recently, and a copy of it has been circulating on Mac-user Web sites this week.
Apple confirmed Thursday it has included such a warning in its Intel-based computers since it started selling them in January.
The embedded poem reads: “Your karma check for today: There once was a user that whined/his existing OS was so blind/he’d do better to pirate/an OS that ran great/but found his hardware declined./Please don’t steal Mac OS!/Really, that’s way uncool./(C) Apple Computer, Inc.”
Apple also put in a separate hidden message, “Don’t Steal Mac OS X.kext,” in another spot for would-be hackers.
“We can confirm that this text is built into our products,” Apple issued in a statement. “Hopefully it, and many other legal warnings, will remind people that they should not steal Mac OS X.”
Hot to Outwit the World’s Internet Censors
With strategies ranging from automated keyword filtering and Web site blocking to Internet traffic surveillance, the Chinese government is unmatched in its ability to censor and monitor its citizens online.
Of course, no system is perfect.
The OpenNet Initiative (www.opennet.net), an international human rights project linking researchers from the University of Toronto, Harvard Law School and Cambridge University, tracks Internet censorship and the techniques used to evade it. To surf the Web in China and elsewhere without censorship and in marginal safety, said John Palfrey, a Harvard law professor and a member of the initiative, the primary tool is an old standby: the proxy server.
A proxy server is simply a generic computer through which people who want to be anonymous drive Web traffic before it reaches their own machines. This helps dissociate a computer address from the Web sites its user has visited.
It’s not perfect. You never know, for instance, how trustworthy any proxy really is, and servers go up and down unpredictably. But people regularly use proxy servers for all kind of reasons — from the political to the pornographic.
Every day in China, Mr. Palfrey said, an underground economy of proxy server addresses comes alive — usually connecting to servers made available by volunteers around the globe. These addresses are passed along and traded, using elaborately coded language, on electronic bulletin board systems or chat channels.
Elsewhere on the Web, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (www.eff.org) helps maintain Tor, a communications network that helps make Internet communications anonymous, and it appears to be accessible from within China. Peacefire.org offers a program called The Circumventor that lets anyone turn a Windows-based machine into a proxy, allowing others to use it to circumvent local Internet restrictions.
Even two small commercial companies, Dynamic Internet Technology and UltraReach Internet, offer software or Web services that try to poke holes in China’s “great firewall.”
Of course, these precious few leaks are most likely little consolation for the dozens of Chinese citizens languishing in prison for saying or doing the wrong thing online. And they are all the more reason that human rights workers keep discussions of circumvention tactics short — and vague.
“I don’t ever want to make it any harder for people,” Mr. Palfrey said.
The Bloggies
Voting is now open for the sixth annual Webblog Awards, also known as the Bloggies. I’d suggest Post Secret as deserving of a vote for Weblog of the Year; it’s nominated in several other categories as well. Also, WordPress itself has a nomination for best Weblog application.