The Associated Press

CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) — Evel Knievel, the red-white-and-blue-spangled motorcycle daredevil whose jumps over crazy obstacles including Greyhound buses, live sharks and Idaho’s Snake River Canyon made him an international icon in the 1970s, died Friday. He was 69.

Zip file includes OmniOutliner, PDF, and tab delimited versions.

>>Download “Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Keyboard Shortcuts”

>> Download OmniGraffle Wireframe Palette (modified)

The Omni Group makes tools that just beg to be used. One of my biggest fears about ever having to “work for the man” again is that I will have to go back to using the sadistic Windows/Visio/Office/etc. I am not a Mac freak at all but after using Windows stuff for 10 years in the corporate world, I must say that the Mac is a welcome reprieve.

I digress …

Anyway, here are a few good resources for getting the most out of your OmniGraffle experience.

• Lots of options (including Architecture/Interior Design) - http://graffletopia.com
• Personal Favorite Template - http://urlgreyhot.com/personal/resources/omnigraffle_web_design_template
  • "This web design template for OmniGraffle Professional provides the basic layout for a design deliverable including pages for project brief, personas, design concept or mood board, site architecture diagram (site map) and flowcharts or wireframes. The template is formatted for US Legal paper in landscape orientation."
• Personal Favorite Stencil - http://urlgreyhot.com/personal/resources/omnigraffle_wireframe_palette
  • A "very basic set of shapes for making wireframes (low-fidelity web page schematics) in OmniGraffle (Mac OS X)"
• Listing of other good stuff from the guy who did the previous two - http://urlgreyhot.com/personal/resources/overview

A big caveat here is that these might require the OmniGraffle Pro.

Long story short, protesting something via good-old-fashioned rioting is so passe. If rioting typically involves looting, what is going on beneath the guise of the bot-net attacks?

Hackers Take Down the Most Wired Country in Europe

This was not the first botnet strike ever, nor was it the largest. But never before had an entire country been targeted on almost every digital front all at once, and never before had a government itself fought back. “The attacks were aimed at the essential electronic infrastructure of the Republic of Estonia,” Aaviksoo tells me later. “All major commercial banks, telcos, media outlets, and name servers — the phone books of the Internet — felt the impact, and this affected the majority of the Estonian population. This was the first time that a botnet threatened the national security of an entire nation.”

When Kevin Herbert has a particularly intractable programming problem, or finds himself pondering a big career decision, he deploys a powerful mind expanding tool — LSD-25.

I will leave it at that.

Susan Anton, a New York University anthropologist and co-author of the Leakey work, said she expects anti-evolution proponents to seize on the new research, but said it would be a mistake to try to use the new work to show flaws in evolution theory.

“This is not questioning the idea at all of evolution; it is refining some of the specific points,” Anton said. “This is a great example of what science does and religion doesn’t do. It’s a continous self-testing process.”

Wired News - AP News

Why do we have “anti-evolution” and anti-”anti-evolution” at all?

Why were these two paragraphs even inserted into this, otherwise scientific, article?

Believe me, I am not defending the stance of some groups within the world of organized religion on many scientific topics but I am compelled to point out the fallacies in these statements.

“This is not questioning the idea at all of evolution; it is refining some of the specific points … “

Technically speaking, this is not a “fallacy” but it is a disconcerting stance. Isn’t this tantamount to saying “We already know the answer, we are just refining all of our arguments to prove it.” Hmm. Sounds a bit like assuming that “evolution is not right” and focusing on the arguments that support that assumption.

“This is a great example of what science does and religion doesn’t do. It’s a continous self-testing process.”

Where do I start with this one? My best response is this. Authentic religion is inherently a self-testing process. I am no scholar but my understanding of the Judeo-Christian God has been that He/She/It (whatever pronoun you require to respond intellectually) is all about the “self-testing process.” The entire Bible is a story of humanity’s attempt to understand who God is. Nothing confirms this more than the life and teaching of Jesus. Not healing on the Sabbath and all of those statements starting with “You have heard it said … but … ”

There will always be a layer of people frightened of change. They are, sometimes voluntarily, completely misinformed about the facts and the true implications of those facts. What group of people does not have that layer? It is found everywhere from high school bands to sports leagues to national political parties. That is part of being human. Moving past that layer is where you find those hungry for truth. These people realize that life is too precious to do it all wrong much less to spend it living a lie.

I suspect even Susan Anton realizes how hypocritical and narrow-minded she sounds. I know I have said much worse. I totally understand why she feels so bitter that she is compelled to lash out; her entire professional career puts her in the middle of the most annoying, belligerent, mis/informed people in the world. I just long for the day when everyone is honest enough to admit that we don’t know all of the answers and we are all looking for them together.

After I stumbled upon Demetri Martin, I realized how much I love comedy stuff. I was going to say that I realized how much I love to laugh but that sounds very pathetic.

Anyway, my best friend from high school just got a new LCD TV with a built-in HD tuner. Apparently, that means you can receive “On Demand” channels that are streaming past your house. So, if your neighbor rents BladeRunner, you will be able to see it. He was all excited about catching half of a movie one night. Now, he keeps searching for it to see if he can catch someone watching the other half.

My point here is that he discovered the “Flight of the Conchords” on HBO and passed on the good news. I don’t get HBO but I have watched it online and love it. Rumor has it that all four episodes can be found on something called “Torrent” or something like that.

Demetri Martin Video
A clip from the HBO site:

“Faith as Ultimate Concern” by Paul Tillich

Summary by Meghan Ramsay (QCC, 2004)

Source: SUNY Suffolk

According to Tillich, “faith is the state of being ultimately concerned.” The Ultimate Concern is that which demands complete surrender of the person who faithfully accepts the Ultimate. Additionally, faith in and surrender to the Ultimate promises total completion regardless of what must be sacrificed in the name of faith. Tillich argues that faith is a task for the believer’s complete being—for instance, it is an act of both the conscious and the unconscious. He refers to faith as a “total and centered act of the personal self, the act of unconditional, infinite and ultimate concern.” Tillich then goes on to examine the sources for faith. He asserts that faith arises out of man’s awareness that he is a part of the infinite yet he is not the owner of this infinity. Additionally, he points out that God cannot be an object of faith without also being the subject of man’s faith. God, asserts Tillich, is present as the subject and object of ultimate faith while at the same time is transcendent beyond both subject and object. Tillich warns that there are finite things that claim infinity, such as the nation or state. However, unlike God, believers can approach such finite things with “ordinary knowledge.” Since God is infinite and ultimate and faith in God is the ultimate concern, Tillich asserts that only symbolic language is sufficient to express faith and God. Thus, he outlines the definition of the term “symbol.” Like signs, symbols refer to that which is beyond themselves. For instance, a stop sign points to the command to stop the movement of a vehicle. Similarly letters refer to sounds and meanings. However, unlike signs, symbols play a part in that which they represent and cannot be easily replaced. For instance, a country’s flag not only represents the nation that it stands for but also is an active participant in portraying the country’s “power and dignity.” Thus, it cannot simply be replaced unless the character of the nation itself is also changed. Tillich also asserts that symbols allow us to experience other levels of reality that are normally off limits to us. For instance art creates a symbol for a plane that we cannot move toward by science alone. Additionally, symbols open aspects of our souls which allow us to experience awareness of ourselves that we were not conscious of prior to experiencing the symbol (such as the depths that we can reach by listening to the “melodies and rhythms in music”). Another characteristic of a symbol is that it cannot be manufactured. Symbols arise from the unconscious and must be accepted on that level before conscious acceptance. Finally, since symbols cannot be intentionally produced, they come about and cease to exist in due time. In essence, they are borne out of a need and they perish when they no longer generate a reaction within the group that originally used them for expressive purposes.

Tillich then goes on to assert that anything that achieves ultimate concern for man is elevated to the status of god. However, when things like a nation or success become elevated to the level of ultimacy, they are merely false or idolatrous symbols of ultimate concern. Tillich also discusses that myths are an integral part of our ultimate concern. While a myth must be recognized as a myth (much like how a symbol must be recognized as a symbol), Tillich argues that any attempt to remove the mythological from our consciousness will be unsuccessful because myths signify a collection of symbols which stand for our ultimate concern. One might be able to replace one myth with another, but s/he could never completely remove mythology from human consciousness. In fact, Tillich argues that even a “broken myth,” one which has been proven to be understood as a myth and has not been removed from or replaced within consciousness, cannot be replaced with a scientific substitute because myths are the symbolic language of faith. However, Tillich also warns that one cannot simply accept myths as literal truths because they then loose their symbolic meaning and rob God of his standing as the ultimate.