Solipsism Gradient

Kevin Smith’s Centricle has posted version 1.2 of his Ruler favelet that allows checking coordinates and measure items in both Safari and Internet Explorer (Mac).

Extremely convenient… be sure to look around Kevin’s site for more useful stuff.

Posted by AccordionGuy:
You’re welcome, Rainer!

Joey “AccordionGuy” deVilla has reposted most of the original Top Ten Things About New Girl article, which caused all the Blogs save lives commentary. Thanks, Joey!

Noted programmer/consultant Michael Crawford posted Part 1 of Living with Schizoaffective Disorder. It’s a long detailed article, and worth reading. Thanks, Michael!

For my part, I’ve never had to contend with anything more severe than slight depression and/or programmer’s block; having a borderline case of the Geek Syndrome led to a difficult childhood but a great profession. However, I’ve helped friends with severe depression. This sort of article is badly needed to help people cope with brain chemistry-related disorders, which seem to be on the increase worldwide.

David Weinberger thinks this explains it all:

According to a Harris Poll:

…half of all adults believe in ghosts, almost a third believe in astrology, and more than a quarter believe in reincarnation – that they were themselves reincarnated from other people. Majorities of about two-thirds of all adults believe in hell and the devil, but hardly anybody expects that they will go to hell themselves.

One very strange (at least to me) result of the Harris poll is that significantly more democrats than republicans believe in astrology, but more republicans than democrats believe in hell and the devil.

At the same time, Tom Coates expresses his amazement about American Fundamentalism:

…the idea that challenges to theories like “evolution” can circumvent the entire academic peer-review and testing process by way of the courts – inspired by people who want to find ways to equate the world with their religious beliefs… Well, it’s scandalous! Totally, utterly scandalous!

The Guardian is running an article in its new Life section today on exactly this subject: The Battle for American Science. It’s this article that part-inspired me to write about this subject today…

I could list dozens of other links about the “creationism” thing, which seems to be a uniquely American delusion. I’m looking forward to reading the comments to all these posts…

…as for me, I believe that being superstitious brings bad luck…

blogalization [colin] wrote:

By the way, come by Blogalization and see if you would be interested in participating or passing along the word.

Thanks, Colin; I just registered, and look forward to puzzling out something to contribute. (Comment for other readers: Colin’s Hairy Eyeball is very good reading…)

Posted by blogalization [colin]:
It was another Berkeley metaphorist, folklorist Alan Dundes, who noted that American football is rife with metaphors of sadistic sodomy, such as “penetrating the end zone” of the opponent. I think that analysis was slightly tongue-in-cheek. In the present case, I have to agree that Lakoff’s rhetoric in the first part of the essay was a bit too recondite to influence anyone — as he recognizes. But starting with the sentence, “Awareness matters,” he starts making a lot of sense to me.

By the way, come by Blogalization and see if you would be interested in participating or passing along the word.

John Gruber translates the Quark XPress 6 press release into English:

…

Quark has not yet announced pricing or an anticipated ship date for QuarkXPress 6.

QuarkXPress 6 will be expensive and late.