Here is a list of 500+ Atheist vs Christian debates if anyone is feeling they are missing out on this one. And you might find it interesting to note that actually, though the list is posted on an Atheist site, the Christian side "wins" most of these debates. The reason isn't necessarily that they Christian side is right, but that the Christian side generally has the better public debating skills: they dominate and frame the questions.

In fact there's a bit of an obsession out in Atheist-land at beating one guy: William Lane Craig, who is considered technically by many to be the top Christian debater... and arguably has never "lost" (sorry I really have to put that last word in quotes), as the linked Atheist site describes, despite going up against some serious popular intellectual heavyweights such as Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. Famously, Dawkins recently backed out of a debate with him.

It's worth noting here, for anyone interested, this blog which does a pretty nice job of reviewing and rating many of these debates from an Agnostic perspective.

These debates generally are not specifically on evolution, but virtually all of them include it to greater and lesser degrees.

I got an old G1 online for less than $100 (including shipping). It is a bit slow, but still quite functional, unless you want to be running processor intensive games like Angry Birds. I have around 100 apps installed that run fine. The thing is jail broken, and has a cyanogen mod installed (SparksMod currently). And I actually use it for my primary mobile phone -- with no data plan (because I refuse to be gouged any further by our Canadian oligopolies)... wifi is good enough for me. And I'm loving the 4 row physical keyboard.

I've heard nothing but bad about Mugabe over the years -- and I have non-white inlaws from there. However, I don't really know all that much about the place. But reading over the Wikipedia Mugabe page I found the section on "Social Programs" especially interesting. From the indicators reported there, things seem to have improved radically in terms of literacy, infant mortality, and life expectancy during the first 10 years of his leadership. After that the IMF imposed it's usual austerity program on them, in exchange for cash... and things seem to have gone downhill from there. Of course this is just wikipedia... so who knows... but it's interesting to consider that besides the complicated and violent political and ethnic internal problems, that the external influence of the IMF may have (yet again) be also a villain here.

My kids (3 and 5) love, love, love, love, love TuxPaint... they run it on Linux, but I see it's available for Windows as well. They also deeply love StarFall -- which just requires a web browser and flash.

I was also afraid to switching my mom to Linux, but finally after yet-another-windows-disaster I finally snapped... set her up with Kubuntu. I have to say, it was pretty painful for a while. Lots of "but I used to because to do this-like-this" pain. Especially around area of really simple stuff which is actually pretty frustrating on many linux desktops: - drag web pages from firefox to desktop - setting wallpaper - downloading photos from digital camera But anyhow, things have settled down. She still has constant problems. But now I can fix them so much more easily! It's not a hair-pulling mysterious inexplicable balls of pain. It's definitely worth it switching relatives to Linux if you support their computers. And when they complain that some stupid windows program they are missing, just tell them to go back to windows if they want but you won't be touching their computers anymore... And also "remember all the problems you had on windows?" Amazingly they quickly forget the horrors they experienced on windows fairly quickly, and need to be reminded.... Bottom line. Most people just *hate* change. Force them to change somehow. It *will* be painful. But it's totally worth it in the long run for sooooooo many reasons.

I started on Google Reader, and actually moved to Bloglines. The "beta" interface had some nice features that Google Reader didn't have at the time. And it was nice to have a break from Google. Casting around for an alternative, I stumbled into NetVibes. At first it doesn't look like a replacement for the type of site that Google Reader or Bloglines are, but after playing around with it for a bit, I found it actually is pretty decent. You can import your .opml file (via the big green "add content" button which took me ages to find!) and it throws all your folders up as "tabs" on your "dashboard". It has decent organization (drag and drop, mostly) and you can toggle from the default block-style mode (widget view) to plain list display (reader view). NetVibes pretty much entirely avoids mentioning "RSS", obviously aimed at a more oblivious public... which may be a good thing. But really it's quite a decent online RSS reader for the rest of us who know what RSS is all about.

The "western world", of course, is so much more civilized, launching "wars" on pathetic middle eastern countries based on pretexts of lies and killing thousands or millions people --- most of which are civilians. Actions which it is my understanding the enlightened Hitchens, for all his amusingly ironic vitriol, comes down in support of also... Just saying, the western world's generally seeming freer speech doesn't seem to actually limit the carnage and destruction it wreaks in so many ways in the world, when it comes to violence.

Even though Kubuntu (I am a user of it) does have some rough edges, I'd stick with it. It is a lot better than it used to be.

The main reason I'd suggest sticking with it though is just familiarity. You can switch back and forth between GNOME and KDE pretty effortlessly running the same distro.

That being said, I hate to discourage exploration! Download live CD's for every distro that sounds interesting! Try them all! (-: Maybe you will like one better... after all, with Linux even switching an entire distro isn't all that big of a deal (if you have time), as long as you save your home directory somewhere safe...

The reason I use Kubuntu on every desktop I can, rather than other more interesting distros (or FreeBSD), is mainly because I see it as the only distro that has any chance of gaining general acceptance in my place of work as a windows replacement. Hence, I put up with some of the choices of Canonical which annoy me, for the sake of hoping to have a better and saner over-all environment in our office someday... KDE tends to impress visually everyone who sees it.

That being said, I actually do love KDE even though I barely use any of its components these days, and it's just mostly a lovely looking desktop. The main KDE app I use is Konsole (which is awesome)! One way to look at it is bloat: another way is that KDE is an amazingly engineered environment, which I really appreciate the design of under the hood. There's just loads of technically interesting goodness in it. I often half hope that one day I'll crack open KDevelop and start hacking on it at lower levels. But I never have time for that.

And I always keep Fluxbox handy for a backup environment if something goes wrong terribly with KDE... but this is very rarely used anymore.

I have been playing GTA San Andreas again, as I recently discovered it runs nearly perfectly under WINE. And it is still a truly awesome game.

I must admit though that now when I'm out on the street, I can't help but want to jump into every car I see and do some crazy burn outs, smash into a few things, and then abandon it in flames.

So far I have resisted. But it's only a matter of time...

A few days ago I had the annoying cops after me in a smashed up car. Cycle cop was on my tail, nailing me with his submachine gun. So annoying! Engine smoking, I just needed to hit the ramp at the end of a parking lot and jump through the hovering star, clear a few lanes of traffic, and the heat would be reduced a little at least.

Noooooo! As I'm launching off the ramp my engine bursts into flames. I hit the star, but I'm airborne and I'm going to "die"! Bail! Bail! Wacking the buttons madly. I'm sailing over a busy two-lane northbound road. My door opens, and my body flings itself out. In an amazing stroke of luck, I land on a passing car which carries me north, as I spin around in time to see my flaming vehicle, now rapidly descending, explode shortly before smashing into the pavement. This sets off a chain reaction in the nearby traffic of exploding cars. Meanwhile I'm rushing away on the roof of another car, like the insane surfer that I know deep down in my heart that I am, the cops no longer quite so interested in my whereabouts.

It all went so gloriously smoothly. I have to admit that I'm not sure I could pull it off quite so nicely in real life... but on the other hand, it didn't seem that hard. I didn't even know I could bail from a car in mid-air like that until I tried. Maybe I think I can't do these things so well in real life just because I haven't tried?

I have kids, alas too young yet to introduce me to the more modern world of video game carnage. But it is some days the only thing that seems worth waiting for in life...

If only I can hold off my urges until then. Then me and the boy, we can probably without too much trouble, kick this entire planet's ass into the sun!

Prepare yourself for solar pwnage, n00bs. I'll teach you about global warming ...

Your KDE4 dismissal is rather out of date by this point. KDE 4.3 is quite amazing, and 4.4 now coming out adds even more polish UI niceness. Yes, UI is hard, and KDE 4.0 was a misfire while taking some big bold steps. It's no pale copy. It's grown up, and is quite breath-taking on many levels.