Correlation

I also enjoyed the image hover text from the original page "Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'."

Gratitude for Grace

Interesting article it's about how we rarely feel or show gratitude to God for anything we have especially if we feel we "earned" it ourselves.

…I got out a pen to add some things to the store list. I do this about five times every day. But this time, as I wrote “bread” and “black beans” on my little pad of paper, it hit me: I am doing something really, really amazing here. Out of the blue, I suddenly saw writing items on my grocery list in a completely different light: I realized what an incredibly — almost unimaginable — luxury it is to be able to simply write down what I want to feed my children, and be able to go get it. Quickly. Easily. Cheaply.

Another interesting quote

When we pray the petition in the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread,” we aren’t (usually) asking for God to “miraculously” drop manna and quail from the sky. But we are asking that he graciously rewards our labors with the material needs for our existence. Jennifer’s reflections on the blessings represented by the ability to write up grocery lists reminds us that we ought to be grateful to God even for what we think we earn.

http://blog.acton.org/archives/8910-gratitude-for-grace.html

Firefox crashed

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Kids Science exam answers

Funny/dumb email forward from my Aunt.

Kids Science exam answers

If you need a good laugh, try reading through these children's science exam answers

Q: Name the four seasons.
A: Salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar.

Q: Explain one of the processes by which water can be made
safe to drink.
A: Flirtation makes water safe to drink because it removes
large pollutants
like grit, sand, dead sheep and canoeists.

Q: How is dew formed?
A: The sun shines down on the leaves and makes them
perspire.

Q: How can you delay milk turning sour?
A: Keep it in the cow.

Q: What causes the tides in the oceans?
A: The tides are a fight between the Earth and the Moon.
All water tends to flow towards the moon, because there is no water on the
moon, and nature hates a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins in this fight.

Q: What are steroids?
A: Things for keeping carpets still on the stairs.

Q: What happens to your body as you age?
A: When you get old, so do your bowels and you get intercontinental.

Q: What happens to a boy when he reaches puberty?
A: He says good-bye to his boyhood and looks forward to his adultery

Q: Name a major disease associated with cigarettes.
A: Premature death.

Q: How are the main parts of the body categorized? ( e.g., abdomen)
A: The body is consisted into three parts -- the brainium, the borax and the
abdominal cavity. The brainium contains the brain; the borax contains the
heart and lungs, and the abdominal cavity contains the five bowels A, E, I, O,
and U.

Q: What is the fibula?
A: A small lie.

Q: What does 'varicose' mean? (I do love this
one...)
A: Nearby.

Q: Give the meaning of the term 'Caesarian Section.'
A: The Caesarian Section is a district in Rome

Q: What does the word 'benign' mean?'
A: Benign is what you will be after you be eight.

____________________________________
Kids Are Quick

TEACHER: Maria, go to the map and find North America
MARIA: Here it is.
TEACHER: Correct. Now class, who discovered America ?
CLASS: Maria.

____________________________________
TEACHER: John, why are you doing your math multiplication on the floor?
JOHN: You told me to do it without using tables.
__________ ________________________________

TEACHER: Glenn, how do you spell 'crocodile?'
GLEN: K-R-O-K-O-D-I-A-L'
TEACHER: No, that's wrong
GLEN: ! Maybe it is wrong, but you asked me how I spell it.
____________________________________________

TEACHER: Donald, what is the chemical formula for water?
DONALD: H I J K L M N O.
TEACHER: What are you talking about?
DONALD: Yesterday you said it's H to O.
__________________________________

TEACHER: Winnie, name one important thing we have today that we didn't have
ten years ago.
WINNIE: Me!
__________________________________________

TEACHER: Glen, why do you always get so dirty?
GLEN: Well, I'm a lot closer to the ground than you are.
_______________________________________

TEACHER: Millie, give me a sentence starting with 'I.'
MILLIE: I is..
TEACHER: No, Millie..... Always say, 'I am.'
MILLIE: All right... 'I am the ninth letter of
the alphabet.
_________________________________

TEACHER: George Washington not only chopped down his
father's cherry tree,
but also admitted it. Now, Louie, do you know why his
father didn't punish him?
LOUIS: Because George still had the axe in his hand.
______________________________________

TEACHER: Now, Simon, tell me frankly, do you say prayers
before eating?
SIMON: No sir, I don't have to, my Mom is a good cook.

TEACHER: Clyde , your composition on 'My Dog' is exactly the same as your
brother's. Did you copy his?
CLYDE : No, sir. It's the same dog.
___________________________________

TEACHER: Harold, what do you call a person who keeps on talking when people
are no longer interested?
HAROLD: A teacher.

John Lennon or Harry Potter

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Burning an online video to DVD

Or burning any video to a video dvd.

A friend of a friend wants to know how to do this as part of a class project. Here you go...

Get any video file from the internet. The higher the resolution the better, because it will be scaled up to the size of a tv screen, where it might look very blocky if its a tiny (or even normal youtube video).

You can put a youtube link into this page (http://www.techcrunch.com/get-youtube-movie/) to download a youtube file. Add the extension .flv to the file before saving it. But if you forget it doesn't save the file with a file extension by default so sometimes its tricky to find in programs later, so make sure you always look for all files and not just specific file types in open dialogs.

My researched turned up the open source apps for this are DVD Flick for Windows, and DVD Styler for Linux and Windows. I tested with DVD Flick on windows.

List of features from the webpage.

• Burn near any video file to DVD
• Support for over 45 file formats
• Support for over 60 video codecs
• Support for over 40 audio codecs
• Easily add a menu
• Add your own subtitles
• Easy to use interface
• Burn your project to disc after encoding
• Completely free without any adware, spyware or limitations

Download and install from this link
http://www.dvdflick.net/download

Run the app, select Add Title in the upper right corner.

Select "All files" in the bottom of the file dialog, then find your video file you want to encode.

Click Ok.

Use a DVD-R if possible because its most universal for video, but a DVD+R will probably work on anything newer, and video CD may work as well.

Set up your DVD burning options by clicking on project settings dialog.

Under general chose the target size which fits the format you are using DVD-R/+R, video cd, etc.

Under the video tab choose the NTSC format for the US.

Under the burning choose your DVD Burner. (I had too choose create ISO because it Parallels doesn't support DVD burners on the Mac, then I copied the .iso file to the mac to burn. When you do this the iso file is under "My documents" \dvd\something.iso).

Click Accept.

Now click Create DVD at the top of the screen.

Click OK on the warning dialogs to re-encode.

Wait a long time.

Put your DVD in a DVD player and play.

Consensus

To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.

Margaret Thatcher

Devil's Advocate

Interesting web site. This site makes "simple" issues into much more complicated ones. It asks you questions on hot political topics such as NAFTA and off shore oil drilling then presents up to 4 articles they've written telling you why your view is wrong (no matter whether you are for or against the item listed they've written articles showing the opposite view.)

http://www.kqed.org/w/youdecide/

Nerd Handbook

It'd be funny if if weren't so true.

http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/11/11/the_nerd_handbook.html

Multi-tasking quote

Multitasking is the art of distracting yourself from two things you’d rather not be doing by doing them simultaneously.

comment by Eideteker in this Metafilter thread on multitasking:
and then stolen by me from from the 43 Folders site.

Non Lincoln Quote

This quote is often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, including in a former president's speech. It wasn't written by Lincoln, but its still good writing.

http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/cannot.htm

You cannot bring prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
You cannot further brotherhood of men by inciting class hatred.
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

GI Joe

more song chart memes

Weebles at Graphjam

more song chart memes

Undelete Utilities

I helped recover some lost files this weekend for some friends.

• A DVD-R Disk - Corrupted as additional files where added to it.
• The files where being copied from a USB Pen drive - it also was corrupted
• The original files where cut and paste onto the pen drive, so they were in effect "deleted" from the source drive

These where the utilities which seemed to work best.

Photorec for getting to the Pen Drive Contents - Free (I possibly could have just ran a check disk in windows initially, but I wanted to start with some specialized software first). No GUI just text based but it worked.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

IsoBuster for getting to the DVD-R Contents - $29 (Very nice software. No other software I tested worked at all for this - free or commercial.)
http://www.isobuster.com/isobuster.php

Recuva - For Recovering Large Numbers of deleted files by directory or file type off of the second hard drive - Free (Other programs didn't let you select the file type, or the folder).
http://www.recuva.com/

We also removed the IDE hard drive from the system where the files had been deleted, put it in a external USB IDE Hard Drive enclosure, so we were not writing/booting off of it. Then I attached it to my laptop computer and ran the recovery software from there. This is quick/easy way to attempt various software recovery techniques without degrading the lost files more.


This is the list of software I was testing with http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/datarecovery.shtml

Modern Thinker's Creed

I can't find a link to the original but this is all over the internet. I heard it quoted from Ravi's talk on "Why I'm not an atheist". In his closing remarks he was quoting an opinion piece in a secular paper which was a satire/sarcastic look at society without a moral foundation (ie this is not a real creed ;-).

Modern Thinker's Creed
Steve Turner, English journalist


Here is the creed for the modern thinker.


We believe in Marx, Freud and Darwin.

We believe everything is okay, as long as you don’t hurt anyone to the best of your definition of hurt and to the best of your knowledge.

We believe in sex before, during and after marriage.

We believe in the therapy of sin.

We believe that adultery is fun.

We believe that sodomy is okay.

We believe that taboos are taboo.

We believe that everything is getting better despite evidence to the contrary.

The evidence must be investigated and you can prove anything with evidence.

We believe there is something in horoscopes, UFO’s, and bent spoons.

Jesus was a good man just like Buddha, Mohammad and ourselves.

He was a good moral teacher, although we think basically his good morals were really bad.

We believe that all religions are the basically the same, at least the ones we read were.

They all believe in love and goodness.

They only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God and salvation.

We believe that after death comes nothing because when you ask the dead what happens they say nothing.

If death is not the end, and if the dead have lied, then it’s compulsively heaven for all except perhaps Hitler, Stalin and Chingis Khan.

We believe in Masters and Johnson.

What is selected is average, what’s average is normal, and what’s normal is good.

We believe in total disarmament.

We believe there are direct links between warfare and bloodshed.

Americans should beat their guns into tractors and the Russians would be sure to follow.

We believe that man is essentially good - it’s only his behavior that lets him down.

This is the fault of society; society’s the fault of conditions; and conditions are the fault of society.

We believe that each man must find the truth that is right for him and reality will adapt accordingly; the universe will readjust and history will alter.

We believe that there is no absolute truth, except the truth that there is no absolute truth.

We believe in the rejection of creeds and the flowering of individual thought.


If Chance be the Father of all flesh, disaster is His rainbow in the sky.
And when you hear: “State of Emergency,” “Sniper Kills Ten,” “Troops on Rampage,” “Youths go Looting,” “Bomb Blasts School,” it is but the sound of man worshipping his maker.

Christian Apologetics

I know several of my friends like "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis and have been listening to the audio version of the book. If you like the philosophical take on Christianity, but are also interested in a more modern (and less dry) style, listen to Ravi Zacharias podcast "Let My People Think"

http://www.rzim.org/radio/

Recent entries in podcast

Why Sit Here Until We Die? (Part 1 of 2) 26:00 1/26/2008 The northern kingdom of Israel was in a dark, desperate situation as they faced a horrible famine and threatening enemies. Even the king had lost hope. But as we'll see today, God is in the business of providing hope when all hope seems lost. And often

Why Sit Here Until We Die? (Part 2 of 2) 26:00 2/2/2008 The northern kingdom of Israel was in a dark, desperate situation as they faced a horrible famine and threatening enemies. Even the king had lost hope. But as we'll see today, God is in the business of providing hope when all hope seems lost. And often

Cultural Relativism & the Emasculation of Truth (Part 1 of 2) 26:00 2/9/2008 Does truth really matter? Does it even make a difference if truth exists or not? The denial of truth is not a new concept. On today's program, Ravi will revisit the question that Pilate asked 2000 years ago, arguing that the answer is vitally important

Cultural Relativism & the Emasculation of Truth (Part 2 of 2) 25:58 2/16/2008 Does truth really matter? Does it even make a difference if truth exists or not? The denial of truth is not a new concept. On today's program, Ravi will revisit the question that Pilate asked 2000 years ago, arguing that the answer is vitally important

Creedal Affirmation in Search of Commitment (Part 1 of 2) 26:00 2/23/2008 Without a doubt, the legitimacy of the message of Jesus Christ hinges on the fact that it is actually true. But how does a Christian communicate this all-important truth to a world that doesn't believe that truth even exists in the first place? Today, R

Creedal Affirmation in Search of Commitment (Part 2 of 2) 26:00 2/29/2008 Without a doubt, the legitimacy of the message of Jesus Christ hinges on the fact that it is actually true. But how does a Christian communicate this all-important truth to a world that doesn't believe that truth even exists in the first place? Today, R

Invested Dignity, Reflective Glory (Part 1 of 2) 26:00 3/8/2008 Circumstances in the world around us sometimes make us wonder if life is just random, with no ultimate point. And yet, there is so much in the world that speaks of a design and a purpose. But what exactly is that purpose? That's our topic this week wit

Invested Dignity, Reflective Glory (Part 2 of 2) 26:00 3/15/2008 Circumstances in the world around us sometimes make us wonder if life is just random, with no ultimate point. And yet, there is so much in the world that speaks of a design and a purpose. But what exactly is that purpose? That's our topic this week wit
`
Absolute Truth in Relative Terms II (Part 1 of 2) 26:00 3/22/2008 We all face temptation. It's a part of living as a human being, and amazingly, Jesus was no exception. So what were the primary temptations that Jesus faced? How did Jesus respond to these temptations? What can we learn from His temptation experience in t

Absolute Truth in Relative Terms II (Part 2 of 2) 26:00 3/29/2008 We all face temptation. It's a part of living as a human being, and amazingly, Jesus was no exception. So what were the primary temptations that Jesus faced? How did Jesus respond to these temptations? What can we learn from His temptation experience in t

Though the Fig Tree Does Not Bud (Part 2 of 2) 26:00 1/19/2008 The issue of violence -- where does it fit within a Christian worldview? What does the existence of violence tell us about the world? What does God himself think about violence? Well, we're not the first ones to be asking these questions. The prophet

Though the Fig Tree Does Not Bud (Part 1 of 2) 26:00 1/12/2008 The issue of violence -- where does it fit within a Christian worldview? What does the existence of violence tell us about the world? What does God himself think about violence? Well, we're not the first ones to be asking these questions. The prophet

Raised to Run (Part 2 of 2) 25:59 1/5/2008 On our broadcast today, we'll look at the life of Jacob to see the power that childhood experiences have on the course of our lives, and how we find restoration in spite of the past. Ravi reminds us that with all of the stuff that our children receive fr

Amish Country

My dad took this picture. If you look closely you can see the web URL and phone number on the sign.

The equation cracked me up the most.

Not Funny But Very True