Category: Of Random Interest

And The Moral of the Story Is

THE eminent Russian physicist Andrei Linde once found himself on a long flight seated beside a businessman nose-deep in A Brief History of Time.

Without having been introduced and before the usual small talk, they struck up a conversation about it.

What do you think of it? Linde asked.

Fascinating, said the businessman. I cant put it down.

Oh, thats interesting, the scientist replied. I found it quite heavy going in places and didnt fully understand some parts.

At which point the businessman closed the book on his lap, leaned across with a compassionate smile, and said, Let me explain.…

Stories like this keep me from saying everything I think…

source (the above excerpt is actually a conflation of two sources, the first was from Sunday On Scotland, but I can’t find a link that works. Anyway, their opening sentence was much better than the second source I found so I kept it)

Baccalaureate

I should have linked to Jim Wallis’ baccalaureate speech at Stanford much earlier…

Cool Clothing

Prophetik makes some pretty cool shirts.

College Folk and The Assemblies of God

This from the head of Chi Alpha: According to the 2003 ACMR Report AG churches report there are 245,912 adherents that are 18–24 years old that attend our church. This represents 9% of all AG adherents.

By way of comparison, 18–24 year olds comprise 14% of the California state population (I was unable to quickly find the equivalent national statistic).

You Know You’re From Louisiana

I got one of those forwards from a friend (Brandt Noel) this morning. He never forwards me stuff, so I decided to take a look at it. I liked it!

In abridged version, here’s a Louisiana primer:

  1. There are 5,000 types of snakes, and 4,998 live in Louisiana. 
  2. Squirrels will eat anything. And folks in Louisiana will eat squirrel. 
  3. If it grows, it sticks; if it crawls, it bites. 
  4. It is not a shopping cart, it is a buggy. 
  5. “Fixinto” is one word. 
  6. There ain’t no such thing as “lunch.” There’s “dinner” and then
    there’s “supper.”!
  7. Sweet tea is appropriate for all meals, and you start drinking it when you’re two. 
  8. “Jeet?” is actually a phrase meaning “Did you eat?” 

And you know you’re from LA (Louisiana, that is) if:

  1. You measure distance in minutes. 
  2. You use “fix” as a verb. Example: I am fixing to go to the store. 
  3. You “axe” people questions. Example: I got somethin’ to axe you ’bout.
  4. You only own four spices: salt, Tony’s, Tabasco and ketchup. 
  5. The local papers cover national and international news on one page
    and six pages for local gossip and sports. 
  6. You think that the first day deer season is a national holiday. 
  7. You find 100 degrees Fahrenheit “a little warm.” 
  8. You know all four seasons: almost summer, summer, still summer,
    and Christmas. 
  9. You describe the first cool snap (below 70 degrees) as good gumbo weather. 
  10. A carbonated soft drink isn’t a soda, cola, or pop…it’s a Coke, regardless of brand or flavor. Example: “What kinna coke you want?”
  11. Fried Catfish is the other white meat. 
  12. You laugh out loud when you visit friends from other states and they complain about the humidity.

He Wrote What?

Anthony Scoma just told me about a book/author collision so improbable that I had to check it out for myself: Pentecostal Gifts and Ministries in a Postmodern Era by James K. Bridges.

Anthony assures me that contributors include Maurice Lednicky and Opal Reddin.
Continue reading “He Wrote What?”

Lust After William and Mary’s Commencement Speaker

William and Mary had an off-the charts commencement speaker. Not to dump on a Supreme Court Justice, but I have to say Stanford lost out by comparison.

Need Help Procrastinating?

Finals are nearly upon us. On the other hand, it’s a holiday weekend. Go ahead, take the geek test and kill some time…

Scripturizer in PHP

UPDATE 12/23/2004: I’ve moved my version of the code to the new WP Plugins repository, so you can download it at http://dev.wp-plugins.org/file/scripturizer/trunk/scripturizer.php

UPDATE: plans are afoot to merge the three existing codebases (Dean’s, Scott Yang’s, and this one) into a single Sourceforge project. (UPDATE 12/23/2004: nothing has really come of that–we’re all a little busy and haven’t really worked to make it happen. Oh well…)

Not realizing that Mean Dean was porting Scripturizer to PHP, I went ahead and did it so that I could begin using it on this WordPress site. At about the same time Scott Yang made one, so there are two versions out there. Sorry about that.

I originally wasn’t going to package it for release, but it turns out that I had to do it to actually use it on my site :), and so I figured I might as well put it in the public version to make it easy for anyone else to use. Also, figuring out how to use add_action was nonobvious (at least when I first did this–I believe the documentation has improved considerably), so I wanted to provide a clear example.

It extends the functionality of the original and also changes the data permanently in the user’s database (as opposed to Scott’s, which filters it on the fly). You can set mine to do that (see the source code), but Scott’s will work that way out of the box. Which you prefer is up to you. Mine is more efficient, his affects all the archives without making you manually edit anything.

Usage: just copy the source code to a file named scripturize.php in your wp-content/plugins folder. Go to your administration panel, click on Plugins, and activate it. Then just refer to the Bible in your posts. If you don’t want a Bible reference hyperlinked, be sure to enclose it in preformatting tags, like so: 

<pre>John 3:16</pre>

Changes from Dean’s original:

  • You can specify a translation you want to link to by putting the standard abbreviation after the reference like so: John 3:16, NIV or 2 Cor 5:20 (NET). This one is huge, for me.
  • Added New English Translation. I like this translation for several reasons, but mostly for its philosophical underpinnings.
  • Made syntax a little more permissive. For instance, you can now specify a reference by saying Gen. 12:1 or Gen 12:1 (period/no period).
  • Made syntax a little less permissive as regards whitespace. Just write things normally and everything will work fine (I changed this to correct some errors I was seeing wherein the link would run into the blank space after the reference).
  • The regular expressions handle linking a little bit differently. It does something more useful when confronted with a crazy reference like Rom 1:3, 5–8, 10,12 that the online Bibles don’t know what to do with.
  • As I mentioned, by default it will actually change your post as stored in your database. Forever. Irreversibly. With no backup. Just be aware of that.
  • You can now specify a default translation. It is initially set to the NIV, because I assume that’s what most people will want.

Please Report Bugs In Bug Tracker
I’d really like to know if you catch any bugs. I use this plugin myself, so bugs directly affect me! 🙂

There is a bug tracker set up at http://dev.wp-plugins.org/newticket, so please report any problems there. 

transitioning to new content management software

I’m migrating the site from Movable Type to WordPress, so please pardon any temporary funkiness. I’m also trying to reformat things to distinguish useful content from fun content using a cool technique I ran across free charade movie download .