If there’s anything I hate just as much as people trying to shove religion down someone’s throat, or people who are closed-minded to other ways of living one’s life, it’s people who are closed-minded to the fact that people may have a faith…which I suppose is a subset of the second thing I hate.

On one of the forums I help run, there was recently a debate over whether God exists. As always, these things never come to a conclusion, usually go in circles forty times over, and end up going rotten with the one or two people who get into a fight, although this one did not. Now, this entry isn’t about what I think about the issue (if you’re that curious, I’m somewhere between agnostic and athiest), but about the way people respond to the issue.

Usually, on one extreme, you have the full-fledged bible-thumping believers who make it their mission to preach everywhere they can. Then you have the people who don’t believe, never have believed, never will believe, and scorn those who do believe. Finally, you have everyone else somewhere in the middle. The person in question was somewhere closer to the latter extreme. He called those who believed “fools.” Now, I understand it’s his opinion, but I don’t think anyone who believes in God or attends church should be scorned as such. Doing so is just as bad as a bible-thumper telling someone they’ll rot in hell unless they accept Jesus Christ as their savior.

Luckily, most people are not like either extreme. They’ll respect someone’s choice to follow or not follow a faith. However, people who preach and/or scorn people for their beliefs bugs the living daylights out of me. Debate is good. Scorn is not, and only leads to problems further down the road. I was happy to see that the topic in question lasted without many problems, a first for that type of discussion on that forum.

Remember, tolerance and healthy debate. Not scorn.

Posted by by Michael in Rambling, Religion at 10: 00 PM | Add to del.icio.us | No Comments »

I’m listening to the DJ Dan Live Podcast tonight. I’ll attempt to provide as much of an up-to-date summary of what’s going on, for those who can’t get a spot in the audience on iTunes or WMP.

12:53AM - Hanso is under house arrest, Mittlewerk is responsible for everything, and Rachel is Hanso’s daughter. The end? Only time will tell. But, one thing it is the end of…the end of the night for me. Time for bed.

12:32AM - Holy crap. Thomas Mittlewerk just blew up The Hanso Foundation building! Rachel gave us instructions to go to abc.com and view her final video, and with that, Dan signed off.

12:18AM - OMG!!!!!! Rachel!

12:10AM - Dan has been having some problems getting calls to air. He’s suggested everything from technical difficulties to The Hanso Foundations for reasons the calls are failing.

11:59PM - Dan feels that the Valenzetti Equation should be shared with the whole world, and that The Hanso Foundation should let the public see Gary Troup’s book.

11:44PM - The announcer, Johnny, just summarized TLE in about two minutes. 183 licks to get to the tootsie roll center of a tootsie pop. Dan will clearly have a mental breakdown if Rachel was The Man.

11:41PM - CONSPIRASPIES UNITE!

11:33PM - Top five mind-control substances in Apollo bars: 5)Lymon 4)Zantham Gum 3)Parsley 2)Donut Extract 1)Season 1 of MASH

11:29PM - Never knew how much of a jerk he is. Shut down three people so far.

11:24PM - Marvin the Martian? He claims he knows about TLE. And now Dan is about to take calls.

11:18PM - After discussing the virtues of roaches, Dan is going on a philosophical rant about whether or not Lost, Hanso, and himself are real.

11:07PM - Nothing we didn’t know, but Dan just confirmed Rachel Blake’s participation in the show.

11:05PM - He’s on!

11:02PM - Nothing Yet. A few minutes ago, some guy said they’re working out technical problems. Will update again when he gets on.

Posted by by Michael in Websites at 11: 00 PM | Add to del.icio.us | No Comments »

I have added two more chapters from my NationStates.net related story, “The New Regime.” This marks the end of the chapters I wrote earlier. I will continue to write some more as time goes on, and I hope to complete the story by early next year.

Stay tuned for more Dymersion Creative fun, as I continue the story of regime change in a small island country, and the actions of actors trying to bring back their old country, and other actors trying to maintain the new system.

Also, I’ll be posting some scripts I wrote for my scriptwriting class. Nothing Shakespearean of course, but hopefully I’ll keep progressing.

Posted by by Michael in Dymersion at 8: 06 PM | Add to del.icio.us | No Comments »

I have again taken the Political Compas survey. From the last time I took it, I’ve apparently moved slightly further left economically, and have gotten slightly more authoritarian. Here are the two graphs:

Funny how these things can change. If you want to find out where you stand, and because franky, the whole Liberal-Conservative line kind of sucks to study a person, take the survey at the Political Compass website.

Posted by by Michael in Personal Life at 10: 16 PM | Add to del.icio.us | No Comments »

Well, in order to try and combat the spam problem. I’ve signed up for Akismet, the anti-spam service from the same guys who gave us WordPress. I’m hoping it’ll work better than MT’s system. So far, so good, but only time will tell. So, if you submit a comment, and it doesn’t get approved after a day or two, shoot me an email.

Also, time for the stats update! Not much change since last time, it’d appear. But, I was baffled at this search term: “statute of limitations on statutory rape - IL” What exactly on my blog has anything to do with that? If you know, please, let me know. The oddest network location of this week is, “Crest Foods Co.” More people surfing on the job? Tsk tsk. Ok, I’m no angel.

Anyway, time for bed.

Posted by by Michael in Dymersion at 2: 06 AM | Add to del.icio.us | No Comments »

Sorry, I’m watching/laughing/partially agreeing with O’Reilly right now.

Today’s Dymersion is about a small piece of old news, that of the controversy over the Facebook mini-feeds. Now, while I agree that the feeds just make finding information all that easier, and Facebook has some responsibility to let people opt-out or remove themselves from the information, some of the things I saw during the period were just disgraceful. Campaigns taking what should be a good cause, and using it to complain about things that just don’t make sense.

Look, the fact is that most information on Facebook is opt-out. You don’t HAVE to provide almost any of the information on there. Likewise, you don’t HAVE to accept anybody as a friend. Heck, you can even set what’s called a “Limited Profile,” and let certain people see less information than your closest friends. Trying to blame Facebook for the information you can control is ignorant. They have two responsibilities in my eyes: 1) Not sharing your information without permission (see below) and 2) Not making that information easier to find than had been already possible.

Like I just said, Facebook has a responsibility not to share information with third parties without permission. So, I was a little angry when I learned of this “developers” program have me opted-in with even asking me. I never got any notice of it, or any screen asking me to opt-out if I didn’t want it. Now, while I understand these are not advertisers, once they have this information, they can do pretty much whatever they want with it. That is ridiculous.

However, other than that, only you can control what people see. Facebook can’t do that for you. What they can do is make sure the information is as difficult as possible to get, without making it too inconvenient. I considered the mini-feed too convenient. Otherwise, it’s up to you.

Posted by by Michael in Websites at 8: 55 PM | Add to del.icio.us | No Comments »

Time for a small update about the site. As of this entry, I have now made 91 of them, plus one on Dymersion Creative (see my next later today). While I am proud of the progress I have made, I am not too happy about the intervals between entries, so I’ll be aiming to do a little better in that area. I want to eventually get to at least one entry a day.

From an administrative perspective, it seems that the amount of spam I’ve been getting has picked up. You haven’t seen this spam, since I do not automatically approve comments from unauthenticated users. Now, I’m not sure why this has happened, but it seems to have increased since I discovered Sphere. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. I’m consider installing the Askimet plugin for MT. I have never used it, but I hear it does a good job. I’m just hoping that it won’t delete any legit comments. So, if you’re not an authenticated user, and your comment doesn’t show up after a few days, pop me an email (the address will soon be changing due to stupidity on my part), or just leave another comment. However, I highly recommend you use either your website address (if you have one), your LiveJournal account (if you have one of them), or sign up for TypeKey. Your comment will get on the entry much faster.

I haven’t checked Analytics in a while, and I would do so now, but I must get to sleep. I’ll have a real entry for you all later today. Good night!

Posted by by Michael in Dymersion at 2: 10 AM | Add to del.icio.us | No Comments »

On 9/11/01, nearly 3,000 people were murdered at the hands of people with a twisted view of the world. I was in study hall that day, studying for an English class vocabulary test, when another teacher came in to the room and spoke briefly to the study hall monitor. The monitor then turned on the TV, and I watched the coverage in shock and disbelief. I seem to remember not doing too well on my test. I then spent most of the rest of the day watching the coverage on TV.

It is people like these terrorists who have absolutely no concern for the lives of human beings. Every time they send out some taped message, they claim to be doing it for Allah, or for the Muslim people, but that is a lie. The terrorists would use their own people as shields if they has to. I’m not religious, but for lack of a better term, these people have no souls. To that extent, while I support the war on terror in purpose, but I think more effort needs to be focused on finding the likes of Osama. While this would not be a major blow to terrorism (someone would just step up to lead al-Queda), but he must face justice, if he has not done so already (due to bombings). But until we know for sure, that search must not end.

While I don’t think we should dwell on this day forever, we should never forget the people, and we should not forget that day. Never forget 9/11.

Posted by by Michael in Independence Week at 10: 43 PM | Add to del.icio.us | No Comments »

I am back up at school now, and among other classes, I’m taking one called “Culture and National Security.” For our first reading assignment, the professor gave us a text copy of an interview from a television show called Think Tank with Ben Watterberg. The episode, entitled “When Cultures Collide” features an interview with Samuel Huntington, known for his theory that post-Cold War conflicts would no longer feature nation-states, but rather civilizations. The basic thesis is that no longer will two or more nation-states, say the United States and Russia, battle for ideological dominance in the world, but rather that this fight will return to clashes rooted in antiquity, say Christianity against Islam, or Western values against the value system from other parts of the world.

I like to think that Huntington’s theory is starting to prove true. Yes, the current conflicts of our time officially have been the U.S. (and its allies) against Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and to a small extent, Cuba (though we don’t actively engage them in conflict anymore), but for most of these conflicts, I think it represents something deeper. The Korea and Cuba conflicts are still ideological for the most part, but what about that of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran? Here we have three countries where the norms and traditions are very foreign to somebody who lives in a Western nation. There are traditions and laws that somebody coming from the Americas or Europe might consider old fashioned, sexist, racist, or just plain barbaric. The fact that many do not understand the differences and why they exist already place a barrier between us and them, without creating any physical conflict at all. Likewise, people in the predominantly-Muslim nations may view our culture as something they do not understand.
Continue reading »

Posted by by Michael in Politics, Religion, Society at 12: 30 AM | Add to del.icio.us | No Comments »

I know it’s been almost a month since I announced that I was working on it, but it’s finally here! The brand new section of Dymersion, Dymersion Creative, is open for your reading pleasure. As I’ve said previously, Dymersion Creative will be the arm of this website where I place works I consider creative in nature. You know, stories, art work (though I’m crap at art), highly creative photos, and maybe one day some video work. Eventually, and to make it is easier to tell whether or not Creative is updated, I’ll attempt to make it update here on the main blog. I think MT’s new feed widget feature should do the trick nicely.

In my first entry about Creative, I mentioned an experiment I’d like to try. It’s not up yet, but it will be there soon. Still trying to figure out the best way to set it up. Probably I’ll do it under a different subdomain, because, while it is technically a Creative work, it is a little different in nature. You’ll see.
Everyone have a good night, and be sure to read the first entry up on Creative. It’s a nice little story I’ve been working on, related to my participation in the online game NationStates.

Posted by by Michael in Dymersion at 12: 52 AM | Add to del.icio.us | No Comments »