metadigital

I've seen a few films recently: Devil Wears Prada (Meryl Streep is always good, and Hathaway does an okay job in this teen ethical do-by-seeing drama); Walk the Line (again; it's a bit of a long haul, but Cash's lyrics and Phoenix and Witherspoon's singing is enough to save it ... sometimes it's difficult to tell if Phoenix or Cash is singing, which is high praise indeed), and today I went to the cinema and saw Shrek 3 (it's okay ... I don't know what I was expecting, but the end credits are arguably the best part of the film, which isn't a good thing) and then Die Hard 4.0. My friend warned me to suspend disbelief about the IT clich

I know, it's a trick question: half empty!

I like the residual debris.

I selected that one too.

Quo usque tandem abutere patientia nostra.

I selected all of them, because they are all correct, depending on the context.

Yes.

It was about half-an-hour too long, but I agree it was (written,) directed and filmed superbly. I also saw Pan's Labyrinth, which was brilliant: beautifully melancholy, and melancholically beautiful. Saw a couple of other films on the flights, including Happy Feet, which was decent.

The Surgeon of Crowthorne (Simon Winchester) and Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse).

XBox360 preview of Orangebox bundle with Half-Life 2:Episode 2.

just because they are bold doesn't mean they're more important. It's just easier to read that way. I'm looking much more forward to seeing RHCP than BB - espcially because I heard they are freakin' awesome live! But 'Bj

I just finished a recently compiled anthology of (not necessarily newly published) short stories, which I highly recommend:

That's my take, too.

Custom PC is a great source here in the UK for ideas and working examples of people creating cases from scratch (out of every material, from steel to wood to plastic) and the tools they use. I've been thinking about building something that is more conducive to cooling, myself, so that the electronics will run more efficiently.

mkreku is on holiday in Australia for a month or so.

The "I know it when I see it" line wasn't Scalia. It was Potter Stewart, in his concurrence to Jacobellis v. Ohio, in 1964. Ethical values, as steady states in a society, are inherent in people. (Hey, I got to talk about the origin of ethics! )

That's an interesting point, though I disagree with security by obscurity in principle. (These people will still be able to get the information, in the form of centrally-distributed training tapes, for example.) I was drawn to the illustration of not filling in one's tax return, as an attempt to secure one's fiduciary status, by obscurity.

Right, now I have a spare minute I shall make a couple of comments. Qwerty, you are, by your own admission, SPECIFICALLY AND DELIBERATELY excluding faulty premises, so that you may redefine the cosmological argument in such a manner so as to make it adhere to the strict rules of formal logic. This is a species of intellectual dishonesty, whether intentional or otherwise. So, YOU are guilty of (the FORMAL FALLACY of) faulty generalisation (probably half-truth). As well as using a narrow definition (faulty premises notwithstanding), you also denigrated my citations from the wikipedia and appealed to an authority (of sorts: JSTOR). I think it's worth spending a moment to explain this process, so I shall. The wikipedia is a (notionally) independent, third party knowledge base that is readily available to all. I agree that it is by no means definitive, though it certainly lists sources and gives a good starting point for research. Added to this you cited a restricted website; I had to access it through my university's online library (fortunately I had recently matriculated, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to). I searched for journals relating to "Aquinas" and "Cosmological Argument", though none were particularly relevant (though I could easily have not had total access or missed an article, to be sure), and none matched your details (though you didn't provide any identifying descriptions, like authors or published dates). Denigrating my sources as being "basic" (I had three sources, which is triple the amount you cited), an ad hominem fallacy to boot (why not update the wikipedia to bes less "basic"?), whilst not providing either a quote or a direct link is poor etiquette at best, and disingenuous at worst. Finally, and this is a general comment that was touched on by Cantousent, and I wanted to clarify some netiquette for everyone. Yes, I have been as guilty as anyone (if not more) of taking threads off-topic. The lexa non scripta, though, is that this is with the permission of the topic starter. Why? Because the topic starter implicitly has undertaken the duty (and pleasure / privilege) of monitoring the thread, replying to people and generally managing the discussion. To take someone's discussion off-topic is just rude. Start your own topic. Basically, it is cashing in on the audience of the topic; a type of attention-whoring (intentional or not), probably based on the fear that no-one would read the new topic. And the onus is on the topic-starter to monitor every reply. But here's the point: if Qwerty had started a topic about the formal logic deployed in theological proofs, I (and everyone else) would be able to read and contribute as and when appropriate, at our discretion and pleasure, instead of having to read through multiple off-topic replies (i.e. thanks for spamming). Quite frankly, Qwerty, owing to the discourtesy you demonstrated, as outlined above, I nearly wrote a line-by-line dissection of your entire posting history in this topic, with appropriate commentary. I refrained for a number of reasons (not least of which is that I have a lot of work to finish at the moment, and writing in-depth responses with appropriate links takes a lot of time and effort (though not everyone shows this courtesy)). I try very hard not to moderate unless it is absolutely necessary. I have never had to moderate one of my own topics, so far, and I would rather try to argue points cogently rather than resort to editing others' posts. Here's hoping that some lessons can be taken away from this.

Just finished Coupland's latest (notionally a sequel to Microserfs, though not really) novel jPod. He certainly has a talent to enumerate the various characteristics of geek culture and the mildy-autistic individuals who swim in it. It's not much more than an airport novel, though, and (apart from about three pages of excoriating analysis) is pretty silly. I think he's just resting on his laurels, and I came away feeling a little dirty.

Meaningless drivel.

So, a fictional aggregation of dualistic natural essences protects against an equally fictional supernatural power. And you said games were dead.

Because: the nature of logic is completely irrelevant to the topic of science and faith (start another topic); I can't tell if Qwerty is agreeing that Aquinas's Proof is fallacious or not, because every reply has a different voluminous reply about some obscure quodlibet, whatever the point is, it's wrong.

All the Civ games are available (re-released) as part of one of the latest Civ4 game bundles. Civ2 is my favourite, though I haven't played Civ4 past the tutorial, and it is about 2MB in disk space ..! Building the castle was always the best!