Categories
General News

Going to the U.K. again!

europe2006_ukmap1.gifKelly and I just booked plane tickets to the U.K.! We fly out May 14th and return May 31st. Kelly was eager to go on another trip before she started back to school for her Master’s degree, and although I’m facing unemployment in my very near future, the tickets were the right price ($691 each, round trip) so we figured "what the heck!"

The plan is to start off in the Exeter area (in the south west of England) to visit our friends Joanna and David. Exeter is in Devon county, near Cornwall, and for those of you who know your Monty Python "Coronworl… ah yes know Coronworl very well. Went to school there, mother and father live there." (Cycling Tour sketch)

After that we’ll drive north through England to Edinburgh Scotland, taking our time along the way to visit Stonehenge, Bath, and who knows where else. Then, on the way back we’ll visit York and the surrounding area, ending back at London.

More details to come as the time draws near, but that’s the big news for now.

Categories
Humor Politics Science

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

noodledoodlewall.jpgCame across a funny site via a Wired News article that is a stab at those folks who push for teaching intelligent design in public school science classes. It’s about a new ‘scientific theory’ known as the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and the author of this ‘theory’ sent an open letter to the same public schools that implemented intelligent design into their classes, demanding that the FSM theory was just as valid and should be included in their curriculum. The whole thing is great satire, and people all over are getting into it (check out the photos of people ‘spreading the word’)

The funny part here, is that the kinds of logic the Church of the FSM use is the same that the pro-intelligent design folks use. Odd, un-connected pseudo-scientific claims that they use as proof of their theory.

One of the amusing ‘facts’ on the Church of the FSM website is the graph labeled ‘Global Average Temperature Vs. Number of Pirates’. It shows an inverse relationship between the number of pirates and global temperature, specifically, that while the number of pirates has decreased, the global temperature has increased. So, in order to stop global warming, we need more pirates! Yarrrr!

In the Wired News interview with Bobby Henderson, the creator of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Mr. Henderson writes "Our theory is as much science — in fact much more so — than what the ID (intelligent design) guys are proposing. And, if you are going to redefine science to include supernatural explanations, you have to allow them all. To include intelligent design in a science classroom you have to first expand the definition of science to include supernatural explanations, rather than only natural ones, as it is now."

Amen brother! Praise be His Noodly Appendage!

Mr. Henderson is in the process of writing a FSM ‘bible’, and all proceeds from the sales of this and of the t-shirts, mugs, and other items on his website will go to building a PIRATE SHIP! With it, he will travel and ‘evangelize’ about the Flying Spaghetti Monster. 🙂 Funny stuff.

Categories
General

Closing time…

Well, recieved some bummer news this week, guess I’ll be jobless in a little over a month. The company I’ve been working for the past few years has decided to close up shop. Stunned me, considering how busy I’ve been with all the work. Sucks now that I have a house to pay for. Would have been a lot easier to stomach a year ago.

Thinking of taking a month to regroup, figure out what I want to do. That is unless something really sweet happens to land in my lap between now and January 16th 2006.

Going to delay the publish date of this post until December 1 though (it’s mid-november now) since the news of the company closing is still a secret. 

I suspect however that one side-effect of this is that I’ll have more time to post, which if you look you’ll note my posts are erratic and very infrequent. emoticon

Categories
General

Cool name site

My friend Tim sent me an interesting site that gives stats in a spiffy Java graph of names from 1900 to 2003. Interesting to find my name’s popularity peaked about ten years after I was born, and is still twice as popular as it was when I was born. Cool!

Check out the NameVoyager here (babynamewizard.com)

*requires Java

Categories
Technology

Free VoIP with Skype

Apparently I’ve been living in a cave for the past year. I’d not heard of the free internet telephony application called Skype. What was previously a Windows-only application, they have now released versions for Mac, Linux and PocketPC. While you can’t call ordinary phones for free, they do offer a service called “SkypeOut” that works on purchased credits that will allow you to call a normal telephone. The fee is about $13.30 for 10 hours of global talk time. Pretty cool stuff.