aesmael

I wonder very much about continuing these. If I did not, then I would say nothing of most of what I read, and give it less thought than if I attempted to find words for each. If I did not, I would read more, and quicker. I cannot quite shake the feeling that posting these is a pointless mechanical activity, a task continued because it was once set.

These links do not form an entirely honest record. There are items I have read and not noted because I did not wish to give the tacit approval of a link and did not know how to express or form criticism of the content in question.

The reason the majority of these are from shared items is, of course, that I have resolved to first become current with those before reading material of my own subscription.

About.com: Agnosticism / Atheism

1. Bias and Vested Interest: Interpreting Facts Unreasonably [Well, yes. I strive to avoid this but on good days do not pretend I achieve it.]

Dispatches from the Culture Wars

1. Even More Political Chutzpah [I suspect most people do not investigate such claims - I know I tend not to, and rely on information provided by those who do.]

Google Reader shared items

1. Mysterious White Rock Fingers on Mars [via gentle_gamer. Mars may not be my favourite planet (which is? none, really, the overexposure of Mars or any other location seen as a prospect for life grates on me) but areology is fascinating!]
2. Because I can't help but make a LIAR out of myself [via soltice. I agree with this post. That photo is far too pretty for me to quite believe. Really, flower-filled meadows? Wild grass is brown, not green, and never contains flowers. This sort of scene is about as fantastical to me as the elves and snow I read of in stories.]
3. Inflation Theory Takes a Little Kick in the Pants [via soltice. The people commenting (at least at first) do not seem have understood what they read - the main claim is that a previously thought clear test for inflation has been found to produced by other sources too, and thus detection of this gravitational radiation cannot easily be taken as confirmation of the theory.]
4. Industry execs sound IPv6 alarm - is the sky really falling? [via soltice. Mm. I tend to be wary of people saying we have plenty of time to deal with a foreseen problem. Often, it seems solving it takes longer than projected.]
5. HP Mini-Note gets unboxed, causes extreme jealousy [via soltice. Presumably this computer is a big deal.]
6. Let's all pack up and move to Great Britain [via soltice. Odd seeing posts from feeds I have subscribed to shared by other people, and not reading them more directly. this comment sort of seems on the nose to me:
   
   "Us Brits aren't precisely an areligious lot - most of us have some sort of faith, but it's so vague and noncommittal that it passes for atheism.
   
   You know the kind of thing - "I believe there's something comforting out there but I don't know what it is and whatever it is I'm not going to let it affect my life. It's just nice to believe sometimes."
   
   So, when Brits say they're afraid of "religion", what they're really afraid of is passionate religion. And seeing as Anglicanism is by definition almost never passionate, they're afraid of other religions being passionate. And in practice that means...Islam.
   
   When my countryfolk talk about the evils of religion, they're talking about mosques, the Quran and ramadan. But what they're thinking about is bombs.
   
   So you see we're not so elightened after all."]
   
   Pam's House Blend
   
   1. NYT article on convention bloggers features Pam's House Blend
   
   
   theinferior4+1
   
   1. Border Crossings

Forget the preamble ramble. I want to be reading again. So I am. These are the things I am reading today accompanied by brief reactions. Look how far behind we are!

a denizen's entertainment

1. Geeky, philosophical and scientific things... [Still love the zombie movie. Not interested in reading the environment link again, but recall both agreeing and disagreeing with parts. Now, the paper on the hypothetical weakless universe? That was so fascinating I did not read it last time, wanting to save it for when I could better appreciate it. It looks to me like the purpose of this simulation was to probe the anthropic principle. Which is a tricky thing to phrase and apparently rather contentious, but the experiment appears to demonstrate that whatever factors constrain the laws of this universe to be what they are, at least in the case of the weak nuclear force it is not that were things different there would be no observers to observe this. It seems I misunderstood from the abstract, but what they did is no less fascinating. Please, do take a read of it yourself - it is fascinating and reinforces just how much I want to get back into astronomy.]

Everything Jake
Unlike most times I do this while reading through a comic, I am not going to link to individual strips to give reactions. I want to save talking about this comic until I am caught up.

Google Reader shared items

1. Accordian-style USB drive actually solves a problem [via soltice. Not really clear on how it solves the problem of loseable caps.]
2. I have no words :O [via gentle_gamer. Way back last time I was reading and using Reader, shared some posts I intended later to write on. Seems then gentle_gamer found lost_angelwings's blog interesting enough to inspect from this. And the links here linked, bizarre comic indeed. Manga girl Jesus.]
3. What is Darwin? [via soltice. Interesting. Content took me a bit to find though.]
   

Paradise Lost

1. Introduction [This looks very much in reference to the poem's contents. I will read it after the poem, when I have hopefully some context for this.]

Not really so much for a day, but more than none and I feel okay about it. Got distracted by being happy, which is a pretty decent distraction.