How many times have you proposed using some kind of software solution to a particular problem, only to be informed that

We already have a system we can use for that.

or maybe

We don’t want to duplicate effort.

or even the most heinous of declarations

We don’t want to add yet another solution to the mix.

? What?

Okay, I understand that many organizations have deeply ingrained workflows and a borderline-pathological aversion to change, but just hear me out for a second: we live in a world with a veritable Canadian Tire of software tools at our disposal [for those who need clarification, the preceding sentence was supposed to be a hyperbolic analogy to illustrate the profundity of targeted tools available for tackling specific problems]. In fact, this set of tools has grown so expansive that there are now tools designed just to tool-ify other tools (i.e. “workflow-as-a-service” platforms and what not)!

So why, in the midst of this glorious renaissance of targeted applications, do we continue to leech our problems until they finally wither and die of their own accord? I’ve said this before, and I’ll probably keep on saying it over and over again until someone finally puts me out of my misery, but: I’d rather have 10 good solutions to 10 problems, than 1 crappy solution to 20.

Yes, we can use this bug-tracking software as a wiki. But should we? Yes, we can use this spreadsheet to track feature requests. But should we? While we’re at it, why don’t we just consolidate everything down to a bunch of bescribbled napkins? It’d be a lot easier, and it seems like the natural progression of pressing every problem through the lowest common denominator of collaborative functionality.

Maybe I’ve just become jaded and crotchety at the ripe old age of 25, but adding another bookmark to your browser toolbar doesn’t seem like such a big deal. In the grand scheme of risk analysis, an additive solution that’s self-contained, yet extensible, looks like a win-win solution to me.

(ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻

</rant>

At least it’s nice to know that my opinion of Apple marketing hasn’t changed too drastically over the years. I’m a software engineer, Jony; I’m pretty sure there’s no “magic” involved. Probably no blow jobs, either.

URI: http://mvgrafx.net/tom/api/quotes/
Method: GET
Params:

• id — the ID of the quote you wish to retrieve, e.g. 1556
• order — one of either “asc” (ascending order, oldest first) or “desc” (descending order, newest first)
• nick — filters by conversation participants, e.g. tom (note: does not include “ventriloquism”)
• limit — limits the number of quotes returned to N, where N is an integer greater than zero, e.g. 10

It’s not really funny or poignant, but I do like the cut-and-paste style art (insofar as anything I’ve ever drawn could be termed “art”).

There’s a good mix here of witty, entertaining, and genuinely heartfelt storytelling on all sorts of different topics but, as you might infer from the title, atheism is a major theme. I think I agree with Penn on many of the particulars, if not most, but one I have trouble with is his opinion on proselytism. Penn’s a lot more eloquent than I am, so I’ll let him elucidate his position via block quote:

The party line for atheists is that they don’t mind religious people hanging around in polite society as long as they don’t proselytize. It’s okay for one to believe bugnutty shit as long as one shuts the fuck up about it. I don’t agree. Proselytizing is annoying, but not proselytizing is immoral.

That seems like a bit of a stretch, doesn’t it? I mean, where’s Penn coming from, here? What atheist bible is he getting his commandments from? As it turns out, he’s got a pretty straightforward justification for trashing the non-proselytizers on both sides of the theism aisle.

The idea is, if you believe in something as earth-shatteringly important as eternal life, and you see someone who’s throwing that option away, how can you let that person make the biggest mistake of their entire (and suddenly very brief) existence and still call yourself a good person? The analogy used in the book is a train, but he makes the same point with a truck on one of his video blogs.

I can pretty much follow how that works for theists, but I have a problem with the idea that the atheists should be proselytizing too. And that problem for me is pretty simple: what’s at stake here?

That’s a question a lot of actors have to ask themselves when looking at a scene, and I think it applies here too. What’s at stake for the characters involved? If I’m the poor sucker about to get reamed by the train of eternal damnation, then yeah, I can see why it would be immoral for someone to stand by the wayside and watch me get turned into a grease spot on the tracks of infinity. But what are the stakes on the other side of the coin? Why do I care that someone’s about to get hit by the truck of… blissful ignorance? Here’s what Penn has to say:

Atheists are also morally obligated to tell the truth as we see it. We should preach and proselytize too. We need to help believers. Someone who believes in god is wasting big parts of his or her life, holding back science and love, and giving “moral” support to dangerous extremists. If you believe in something, you must share it; it’s one of the ways we all learn about truth.

I like the sentiment, it’s very poetic, but it’s also sounds like bullshit. I find it hard to believe that the average cafeteria Catholic is wasting “big parts of his or her life” by believing in god. If that is the case, he or she has a lot more problems than being a theist, like OCD or schizophrenia, to name a few.

Holding back science is a valid concern – one need only look at the recent stem cell debates, or even the Catholic church’s stance on contraception. But these are the results of the lobbying bodies of institutions, not the thoughts and feelings of individuals, and if we’re not arguing that individuals are willfully imperiling themselves, then I’m not sure we can apply the train argument on this point either.

Religion and love is in the same category for me as science. I don’t know any Catholic gay couples, but I’m sure they exist, and I’m sure they have no problem putting their love for each other over the demands of the Vatican. Proselytizing atheists are not going to do any good here.

Overall, it seems to me that Penn’s motivation for encouraging atheists to proselytize stems from the hope of vanquishing religion, as opposed to real concern for one’s fellow man, and I’m just not sure that’s a bandwagon I can get behind. Penn, if you’re out there, please come and tell me I’m wrong!

@tomheinan You’re wrong.Time and truth is precious, it can’t be shrugged.

— Penn Jillette (@pennjillette) February 2, 2012

So, a ten minute drive and six hundred dollars later [brief aside: today I paid for my entire insurance deductible and it's only the second week of January. This means I am now obligated to engage in near-constant high-risk behaviour for the next eleven and a half months to make sure I get my money's worth], I’m sitting in a dark, cold waiting room with a nurse, an elderly couple, and what appear to be three successive generations of the same mousey woman [another brief aside: I can't seem to find consensus on whether or not "mousey" is a derogatory term. I don't mean it to be, but I can't think of another word that better describes "person who strongly resembles a mouse"].

Warning: angry magnets.

My thoughts wander back to the tiny shards of metal holding my intestines closed in lieu of an amenable appendix. I hope those little staples aren’t feeling particularly ferrous today—I suspect death by evisceration from the inside out is even more painful than it is slow.

In the midst of my contemplations, my turn arrives, and I proceed through the iron curtain and into a small preparation room. The nurse asks me if I’ve had an MRI before, and if I’m claustrophobic (negative on both counts). My clothing is deemed acceptable, despite its variously-metallic festoonery, but my phone and credit cards have to stay outside, lest they be demagnetized.

At last, the time is nigh! I am settled onto a sleek white board swathed in blankets. The technician places a sort of strange, smooth plastic crown on my head, and then I am fed into the machine like a torpedo. The crown has a mirror on it, so I can see my awesome Chuck Taylors (and not much else). Concentric circles of futuristic technology whir rhythmically around my head. It occurs to me briefly that the machine sounds not unlike being lowered head-first into the depths of an inkjet printer.

Over the course of the next ten minutes, I remain completely motionless, while the machine does its job (which, I assume, involves Vita-Rays in some capacity). Then, it’s over, as quickly as it had begun. I’m released from the confines of the machine and allowed to depart on my merry way.

Before I left the imaging facility, though, I asked for a copy of the disc with the scans on it. I’ve turned two of the more interesting segments into short animations, which you can see here and here. There it is, the sum total of my humble existence contained within a few pounds of grey matter…

The video above and photos below are the only remaining documentation of our journey. We all got out with our lives (barely), but we do not encourage anyone to visit the town—the weather is perpetually bad, the air is toxic, the ground is unstable, and everything else is… more than a bit off.

Anyways, Happy New Year! Be safe!