I don’t know if I will post anymore on this endeavor or not. Reading Genesis has put me off the whole ordeal for a while. Not only is it boring and repetitive, God is exceedingly murderous and His reasons for it make very little sense. I do have a copy of the King James Bible on my Sony Reader that I plan to read though at some point and I may post some observations.

As far as being opposed to the Bible goes, I am simply opposed to acceptance of claims without evidence or in spite of evidence no matter what the source. This includes belief in the supernatural, homeopathy, most of chiropractic, acupuncture, psychics, etc. These sorts of beliefs can lead to actions that are detrimental to the believer and society as a whole such as sectarian conflict. Both sides believe they are right with no objective evidence that either side is correct. Until someone provides compelling evidence that a supreme being(s) exist, worrying about whether the Bible, Qu’ran, or any other religious text is true seems to me to be missing the point.

You stay cool as well. Hopefully the cooler weather of autumn will appear soon. Enjoy the new school year.

If the purpose however is to really learn what Christianity is (not to find answers but just for pure learning) by all means don’t use any source but the good old Bible itself. There are annotated Bibles for believers as well, but I’ve never used them. I simply read, questioned, and studied. That way I know I’m not being influenced by someone’s agenda. Just by the story itself (and yes it is a story, but not a story tale). Just a thought!

I do think that if one is trying to strengthen their beliefs, then it only makes sense that we read about others’ arguments and observations so we know where each other is coming from. That’s the only way people can have an intelligent conversation if we know what the heck the other person is talking about.

Honestly, I’m a bit surprised that you haven’t read the Bible considering you seem pretty opposed to it. I know there can be a huge disconnect in what people say and do. Unfortunately there are really messed up people and really messed up ideas out there that people attach to Christianity. Like the VBS story that you posted on FB. Totally wrong and unbiblical, yet they do it as “Christians.” This completely foreign as we got a good dose of someone doing a horrid act on 9/11 in the name of Islam and Allah. Get my drift? Just because someone says they are this or that, or use this book or that book to justify their actions doesn’t make that religion or book wrong. We are all human: fallible, selfish beings at best and yes we do make poor interpretations sometimes and sometimes even believe lies that we are told. Interestingly enough, most people who call themselves Christians or say they believe in God have not read the Bible either. Catholics are especially notorious for this as it is the priest’s job to tell them all they need to know. Yeah right! Don’t even get me started on the so-called Catholic church! So if you follow through you will probably know more about the Bible than the crazy protesters we see on t.v. (see Fred Phelps and his “church”).

Let me know how the project goes and feel free to take me up on my challenge: no annotations, and no lego Bible Just Nick and his observations. But…. if it is for pure amusement or whatever, no hard feelings between us. You know me, we can always get along no matter what our differences are. This post just made me super curious is all.

If school doesn’t kick my butt too much I hope to see you again when we get down there for an extended stay (realistically sometime during winter break). Until then, stay cool! (both literally and figuratively).

You see, you talk about your duty to the English language. And to some extent I do agree – it is annoying when people can’t spell (and I’m sorry for any mistakes I’ve made). But at the same time, languages change. Languages have always changed. They evolve, just like anything else.

Earlier, we let them. We didn’t have a choice. These days we write the words down, decide what’s right and wrong, and if we want to change something we have to create a committee to deal with it, to decide whether it should be changed or not. For some reason we think that what we have here and now is the best it’s gonna get – whether it’s culture, customs or language – and we should protect it from ever changing.

I understand how it can annoy you, if you let it, but looking at it in a bigger perspective, everything always changes, and what might not be “grammatically correct according to those old men who once decided what is and isn’t grammatically correct (in fact, they determined the definition of the term “grammatically correct” in the first place)”, might have changed by now had they not decided to write the rules down a few hundred years ago.

This is a great idea.
I watched the first two shows my driend had DL and learned a lot of things about KDE.

Here my emerge –info and xorg.conf in case they might be helpful.

————emerge –info——————————————-
Portage 2.1.6.4 (default/linux/x86/2008.0, gcc-4.1.2, glibc-2.6.1-r0, 2.6.28-gentoo i686)
=================================================================
System uname: Linux-2.6.28-gentoo-i686-Intel-R-_Core-TM-2_Quad_CPU_Q6600_@_2.40GHz-with-glibc2.0
Timestamp of tree: Wed, 31 Dec 2008 02:10:01 +0000
app-shells/bash: 3.2_p33
dev-java/java-config: 1.3.7-r1, 2.1.6-r1
dev-lang/python: 2.5.2-r7
dev-util/cmake: 2.6.2
sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.11.1
sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.18.1-r2
sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.61-r2
sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10.2
sys-devel/binutils: 2.18-r3
sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.0-r4
sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.26
virtual/os-headers: 2.6.23-r3
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS=”x86″
CBUILD=”i686-pc-linux-gnu”
CFLAGS=”-O2 -march=i686 -pipe”
CHOST=”i686-pc-linux-gnu”
CONFIG_PROTECT=”/etc /usr/share/config”
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK=”/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/terminfo /etc/texmf/web2c /etc/udev/rules.d”
CXXFLAGS=”-O2 -march=i686 -pipe”
DISTDIR=”/usr/portage/distfiles”
FEATURES=”distlocks fixpackages protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-orphans userfetch”
GENTOO_MIRRORS=”http://gentoo.osuosl.org/ http://csociety-ftp.ecn.purdue.edu/pub/gentoo/ http://gentoo.chem.wisc.edu/gentoo/ http://cudlug.cudenver.edu/gentoo/ http://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ http://gentoo.netnitco.net”
LANG=”en_US.UTF-8″
LC_ALL=”en_US.UTF-8″
LDFLAGS=”-Wl,-O1″
LINGUAS=”en_US en”
MAKEOPTS=”-j5″
PKGDIR=”/usr/portage/packages”
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS=”–recursive –links –safe-links –perms –times –compress –force –whole-file –delete –stats –timeout=180 –exclude=/distfiles –exclude=/local –exclude=/packages”
PORTAGE_TMPDIR=”/var/tmp”
PORTDIR=”/usr/portage”
PORTDIR_OVERLAY=”/usr/portage/local/layman/sunrise /usr/portage/local/myoverlay”
SYNC=”rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage”
USE=”X aac acl alsa bash-completion berkdb bindist branding bzip2 cairo cdr cli cracklib crypt cups dbus dri dv dvd dvdr encode exif ffmpeg firefox fortran gdbm gif glitz gnutls gpm gtk2 hal iconv ieee1394 imagemagick imap inotify ipv6 isdnlog jpeg kde lame matroska mbox midi mmx mp3 mp4 mpeg mudflap ncurses nls nptl nptlonly offensive ogg opengl openmp pam pcre pdf perl png pppd python qt4 quicktime readline reflection samba scanner session smp spell spl sqlite sse ssl svg sysfs tcpd theora tiff truetype unicode usb vorbis x264 x86 xcomposite xine xorg xscreensaver xulrunner xvid zlib”
ALSA_CARDS=”ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1 emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci” ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS=”adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol” APACHE2_MODULES=”actions alias auth_basic auth_digest authn_anon authn_dbd authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock dbd deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers ident imagemap include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation proxy proxy_ajp proxy_balancer proxy_connect proxy_http rewrite setenvif so speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias” ELIBC=”glibc” INPUT_DEVICES=”keyboard mouse evdev joystick” KERNEL=”linux” LCD_DEVICES=”bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text” LINGUAS=”en_US en” USERLAND=”GNU” VIDEO_CARDS=”intel vesa”
Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS

——————–xorg.conf——————————————————
Section “ServerLayout”
Identifier “X.org Configured”
Screen 0 “Screen0″ 0 0
InputDevice “Mouse0″ “CorePointer”
InputDevice “Keyboard0″ “CoreKeyboard”
EndSection

Section “ServerFlags”
#Option “AIGLX” “on”
#Option “AllowMouseOpenFail” “on”
#Option “ZapWarning” “on”
EndSection

Section “Files”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/misc/”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/TTF/”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/OTF”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/Type1/”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/100dpi/”
FontPath “/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/”
EndSection

Section “Module”
Load “extmod”
Load “record”
Load “xtrap”
Load “glx”
Load “dri”
Load “dbe”
Load “GLcore”
Load “freetype”
Load “type1″
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Keyboard0″
Driver “kbd”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Mouse0″
Driver “mouse”
Option “Protocol” “auto”
Option “Device” “/dev/input/mice”
Option “ZAxisMapping” “4 5 6 7″
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
#DisplaySize 410 260 # mm
Identifier “Monitor0″
VendorName “DEL”
ModelName “DELL SE198WFP”
### Comment all HorizSync and VertRefresh values to use DDC:
#HorizSync 30.0 – 83.0
#VertRefresh 56.0 – 75.0
Option “DPMS”
EndSection

Section “Device”
### Available Driver options are:-
### Values: : integer, : float, : “True”/”False”,
### : “String”, : “ Hz/kHz/MHz”
### [arg]: arg optional
#Option “NoAccel” # []
#Option “SWcursor” # []
#Option “ColorKey” #
#Option “CacheLines” #
#Option “Dac6Bit” # []
#Option “DRI” # []
#Option “NoDDC” # []
#Option “ShowCache” # []
#Option “XvMCSurfaces” #
#Option “PageFlip” # []
#Option “AccelMethod” “exa”
#Option “RenderAccel” “true”
#Option “EnablePageFlip” “true”
#Option “MigrationHeuristic” “greedy”
#Option “ExaNoComposite” “false”

Section “Extensions”
#Option “Composite” “on”
EndSection

This is on a G33 motherboard, which uses Intel’s GMA 3100 video chipset. When the ‘intel’ driver is used in xorg.conf, it automatically looks for i915_dri.so. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA#GMA_3000)

I have a dell e1405, which uses Intel’s GMA 950 video chipset, and DRI, GLX, Composite, etc.. all work fine with all the latest ~amd64 xorg packages.