The 2nd annual Fat Triplets Pumpkin Carving Contest. It has a new home though at www.ratemypumpkin.com.

CHECK IT OUT.

We consider the site to still be in beta and if all 5 of our loyal readers test it out (and link to it on their blogs) we will be so grateful as it would be nice to have a good test run.

Scott

LINK

HT ysmarko

But what I am suggesting is this - secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their “personal morality” into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Scroll down for the answer.

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Barack Obama

The whole speech is excellent. You can read it HERE

HT BHT

ITS A WORK OF ART. REALLY.

Greg Mankiw recently posted part of an interview with an economist that I suspect won’t make it through congress anytime soon. Dr. Phelps isn’t just any old economist though. He just won the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Check it out.
Steve

BTW, Mankiw is the economist that gets the most credit for helping me discover my love of economics. He has a great blog.

PC World has collected a bunch of old vidoes off of YouTube and compiled them together into a history of PCs, as seen through commercials. It is really fascinating and you at least have to check out the 1984 Apple commercial. I remember seeing that the first time the ad ran during the superbowl.

CHECK IT OUT

Scott

I recently stumbled on Lulu.com, a website for self-publishing books, calendars and other media. Its a really cool concept and all their publishing assistance and services are free except the price to actually order the books and such.

Check out their FAQ

Scott

Michael in THIS POST over at Pooh’s Think is pondering the importance of cinema as the major source of story and narrative in our culture and then asks this question:

If anyone knows where I can find good movie ‘reviews’ (essays, commentaries, etc), please let me know. I have not been able to find any yet;

Well Here’s my answer. There are only a few sources I use on a regular basis and these are them:

• DecentFilms.com - The primary reviewer is the Roman Catholic Steven Greydanus and I have always found his reviews helpful even if I don’t agree with him. He also has many excellent essays such as Horror, the Grotesque, and the Macabre: A Christian Appraisal and Harry Potter vs. Gandalf: Magic in J.K. Rowling, Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis
• I also often enjoy the reviews at Christianity Today
• Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times is probably the most popular critic on the planet and I read his reviews every Friday (although he has been on an extended Leave of Absence due to health problems and surgery.)
• Of course for a good summary of what all the critics are saying you can’t beat Rotten tomatoes.

Scott

Tonight on PBS, Bill Moyers will be exploring the growth of environmentalism among evangelicals. HERE is a link to the website with a short three minute trailer for the show. The site also has a great RESOURCE PAGE on evangelicals and environmentalism. I also discovered a great environmentalist website that seems to be less radical and more good-humored than most of the others. It’s called GRIST.

I plan on watching the show tonight. I hope you will, too.

Scott

My 9th grade son is currently reading for school the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

Its a book about censorship and book burning. So anyway I noticed on BoingBoing a post with the following title:

Man demands that book about book-burning be banned — during Banned Books Week

Yep! A man wants to ban Fahrenheit 451 because “It’s just all kinds of filth.”

That is hilarious. And ironic.

Scott

And then I said to you “Thanks, I really like your money, but FYI you can only sit in this chair On Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays. If you sit on it on Tuesday, the legs will break off and I’ll sue you.”

You’d be angry wouldn’t you? Thats what the music and movie distributors are doing to you every time you buy music or movies LEGALLY from a store or on a legal download site such as iTunes.

Intrinsic to the concept of a just business transaction is that in exchange for your money, you become the OWNER of that thing. As the owner of a thing, you have the right to do whatever you want with that thing. It’s your property. You own it. Except now, when that THING is nothing more than a bunch of bits, ones and zeros on some digital media, governments are allowing companies to take your money and then screw you and attempt to control what you are allowed to do with your property.

Today is the “Day Against DRM”. DRM stands for Digital Restrictions Management and it is the software that companies are embedding, often stealthily and illegally, into their distribution media to prevent what I can do with my legally-purchased works of art.

Here are a few facts:

• Copyright was historically developed to prevent a COMPETING COMPANY from stealing your work and benefitting from your creative endeavors. Until recently, it was never used to try to control what a legally paying customer could do with THEIR property.
• The only ones who aren’t being screwed by the music and movie distributors are the ones who are downloading pirated copies. In other words, companies are specifically screwing their best customers.
• Companies are SUING THEIR CUSTOMERS to enforce copyrights. For example, good people who have bought music legally are being sued by companies when they strip the DRM from their music.
• Companies are going after users who want to use small pieces of their copyrighted material for the purpose of criticism, commentary and education. They are going after people who want to take a work of art and from it create a distinct and separate work of art inspired from the original. Both of these uses are clearly protected under the principle of FAIR USE.
• Companies are using litigation as a prime business practice in support of their outdated business models. SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) litigation is used to coerce and intimidate users and customers from even considering using copyrighted material, even if that use would be wholly acceptable and legal under the concept of FAIR USE.
• Finally, you need to know that music and movie distribution companies are pushing Congress hard to tighten DRM restrictions and further curtail the rights of customers and consumers. Big Money is in this fight and we need to be wary and watchful to insure that our rights are not further eroded.

The problem here is NOT pirates and piracy. The problem is the broken and anti-competitive business models of the music and movie distribution companies. When they finally get it that the internet has substantially changed the way we obtain, consume and use the art we obtain online and then change their business models to reflect that recognition, then DRM will not be necessary. I believe that the large majority of people are very willing to pay a fair price for works of art that they love. They certainly want the artist to be paid for their efforts.

There are a few things I want to make clear. I buy my music from iTunes. I don’t copy illegally or otherwise pirate my music and movies. My iTunes music does have DRM embedded (and I wish it didn’t) but as far as it goes, I think the apple DRM is pretty fair. It allows me to burn CDs and use my music on multiple devices. For me at this juncture, it gaves me a good balance between 1) my desire to have control over my music and 2) my desire to make sure that the artist is fairly compensated for their work and 3) my desire to steer clear of litigation. That doesn’t change the fact that if I want to put my iTunes music on a non-ipod music player, I have to strip the DRM off first by burning the music to a cd. As the owner of my music, I shouldn’t have software embedded that keeps me from listening to the music on the device of my choice. (At least there is a workaround. For many DRM schemes, there are no workarounds).

All that is to say, The Day Against DRM is a really good idea.

Lots of links at BOINGBOING.
Lots of useful information at DRM.info.

Scott

Worth a watch.
HT to Phil Johnson of Team Pyro

When I first heard about this. I admit it made me feel kind of uncomfortable. After all, Al Franken is a know liberal gadfly who loves to poke fun at cherished conservative institutions and media. But I wondered if poking fuun at Bob Jones University wasn’t perhaps taking things a bit too far. I’m glad I read this though. He admits himself at feeling a bit of guilt over the whole episode.

I found the story to be both sad and funny at the same time. One interesting tale he tells is in the Bob Jones Literature about why you shouldn’t let your children choose their college.

On the BJU website is a letter telling parents that it is their “God-given responsibility” not to allow their children to choose their own college. The consequences of that are made clear in the vivid and terrifying stories of the “Three College Shipwrecks,” written by Bob Jones, Sr., the founder of the “university.”

The first two “shipwrecks,” known as “His Only Daughter” and “The Pride of His Mother,” come to alarmingly similar ends. In each, a promising, God-fearing student is allowed to go off to a secular university. After returning from their freshman years, both have lost their way, their faith shattered. The Only Daughter “rushed upstairs, stood in front of a mirror, took a gun, and blew out her brains.” Whereas the Pride of His Mother, having contracted “an unspeakable disease,” announces his intention to “buy a gun and blow out my brains.”

The third shipwreck, “The Son of an Aged Minister,” is less violent, though certainly just as tragic. He had been “a great boy, bright, clean, obedient, Christian.” Unfortunately, although the boy makes the life-saving decision to attend a Christian school, it isn’t BJU. “A skeptic had got in the Science Department” of the less-Christian Christian school, and when the boy returns home, he has lost his faith and becomes “a drunken, atheistic bum.”

So. Parents could save their kids from suicide, alcoholism, and the clap by forcing them to go to BJU. Excellent. This was our key. . . .”

This is taken from a chapter of Al Franken’s Book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. The whole Bob Jones chapter is at National Review Online and is a great read.

The main thought I got from this is - what we as christians must look like to the unbelieving world. I think we must look shallow, un-intelligent, and one-dimensional. Now I know that in fact we aren’t and I am not proposing that we seek to become worldly so that unbelievers will like us. But it does seem to me that since our calling is joy in Christ and our message is the gospel, that we could in fact be winsome and appealing to people, even if they reject our message. (In fairness to BJU, Al Franken admits they were incredibly nice people). I wonder if I come across that way with with the unbelievers I know?

Scott

He plays the Windows personal computer on the Mac commercials. He writes books about fake news and trivia. He’s an interesting guy.

Read the interview at Radar Online.

Scott

THE LINE RIDER

Scott