I always hated those I'm with stupid things until now.

Link

LA Times religous reporter loses faith

Very interesting piece written by the religious affairs correspondent of the LA times on his journey to faith and his subsequent disillusionment and ultimate rejection of religion.

As a serious Christian, I had cringed at some of the coverage in the mainstream media. Faith frequently was treated like a circus, even a freak show. I wanted to report objectively and respectfully about how belief shapes people's lives. Along the way, I believed, my own faith would grow deeper and sturdier. But during the eight years I covered religion, something very different happened. -------- One of the stars of TBN and a major fundraiser is the self-proclaimed faith healer Benny Hinn. I attended one of his two-day "Miracle Crusades" at what was then the Pond of Anaheim. The arena was packed with sick people looking for a cure. My heart broke for the hundreds of people around me in wheelchairs or in the final stages of terminal diseases, believing that if God deemed their faith strong enough, they would be healed that night. Hinn tells his audiences that a generous cash gift to his ministry will be seen by God as a sign of true faith. This has worked well for the televangelist, who lives in an oceanfront mansion in Dana Point, drives luxury cars, flies in private jets and stays in the best hotels. At the crusade, I met Jordie Gibson, 21, who had flown from Calgary, Canada, to Anaheim because he believed that God, through Hinn, could get his kidneys to work again. He was thrilled to tell me that he had stopped getting dialysis because Hinn had said people are cured only when they "step out in faith." The decision enraged his doctors, but made perfect sense to Gibson. Despite risking his life as a show of faith, he wasn't cured in Anaheim. He returned to Canada and went back on dialysis. The crowd was filled with desperate believers like Gibson. I tried unsuccessfully to get several prominent mainstream pastors who appeared on TBN to comment on the prosperity gospel, Hinn's "faith healing" or the Crouches' lifestyle.

LINK

Google Killing paid video and screwed those that used it.

Hopefully this is yet another sign that the fiasco of DRM is coming to an end. Google is shutting down its paid for video services. which if it were a conventional store and you had bought something from it would be fine. However, with DRM it means that anything you purchased from the Google Video store sill stop working. Google are offering Google checkout vouchers to compensate users, but I do wonder how many people who bought videos were under the impression that they would stop working at any time Google chose to turn off the service. With Universal now offering some of its catalogue as unrestricted mp3's, though not through itunes, this may be a turning point in the media industry's obsession with DRM. Link

Happy Birthday Lego

L ego is 75 years old. Happy Birthday! without doubt my favourite and most enduring toy of my childhood.

Parties were due to take place around the world Friday for Danish toy firm Lego as its 5,000 global employees prepared to celebrate the company's 75th birthday. Master carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen started the company on August 10, 1932 in his studio in the town of Billund in Jutland. The headquarters of the global toy giant are still located in Billund. Christiansen created the word "Lego" in 1934 from the Danish words "leg godt" (play well).

Dawkins on new age therapies

Richard Dawkins will be turning his fierce rationalist gaze on new age therapies, and I can't wait. To be shown on channel 4 this month the two part series titled, The Enemies of Reason, will cover angel therapy, kinesiology and homeopathy amongst others. According to the Telegraph the UK spends £1.6billion a year on alternative therapies much of which appears to be no more than modern snake oil salesmen.

He did his best not to look surprised as she continued: "I'm aware of your father stood right behind you. "On a spiritual level he wasn't the most openest man with his thoughts and his feelings. Ummm, I kind of want to say that I do love you and I do care – but that wouldn't have been his character." (Or that of many middle-class father figures of his generation, a sceptic might have said.) But Dawkins let her continue. "I'm aware that you don't have you dad's photograph out" – it was true, he didn't – "so I'm a little bit concerned why. So I'm going to ask you: why don't you have it out?" Dawkins had a bombshell ready: "Well, he might be aware that I don't have it out because he comes to the house about once a week." "Oh, he's still here," she said, adding after a few seconds: "I don't feel it's working." "Is that because you thought my father is dead and discovered that he's still alive?" "No, nothing to do with that. I don't know." She commented later: "As a clairvoyant you're only as good as the client."

Link

Compulsory Viewing

If I could do stand up comedy this would be it. Marcus Brigstocke a regular on the Now Show, gives his thoughts on religion, and its genius. P.S. 500th Post on starshun.com

On to Yellowstone

After a beautiful drive up US287 to Dubois, Wyoming we are bout to set off on the final leg of our journey to Yellowstone and finally Portland. Fantastic blue skies here this morning should be a great if long day!

Earth Works Expo, UPDATED

UPDATE: The organiser of the Expo has posted a long response to this post in the comments, and is worth a read. I stand by my comments which were my personal experience of the show and reflect my disappointment. They do not represent the opinion of GreenPrint in general. The GreenPrint team are at the Earth Works Expo in Denver Colorado, and we are bored silly. I could hardly imagine a worse organised expo I have been to. The horror starts with the building that the whole thing is housed in. The Denver Merchandise Mart is a vast 1960's block with no windows, dreadful grey suspended ceilings and the sort of carpet that if you looked at it long enough would start to cause hallucinations. Its located in the middle of the sort of urban wasteland that America is so well known for. A three lane road on each side separates the building from such exciting retail opportunities as a drive through McDonalds and True Treadmills. Unfortunately for the exhibitors this is the least of the problems, the admission fee for a day at this expo is $19. That combined with the dreadful location has all but insured that no one actually comes. I would be surprised if there have been more than five hundred paying attendees. Most of the people walking around are fellow exhibitors similarly bored desperately looking for something interesting or some sign of hope. We were of course told in advance by the organisers that they were expecting 10,000 people, a number so fanciful that could not be reached without significant chemical stimulation. I have so far managed not to argue with the people selling electro-smog prevention products that are "proven" to work. Proven to work against what, I would like to ask? I haven't been particularly tempted to join up with the interfaith group against global warming. This despite the use of acoustic guitar and singing in their seminar on belief and climate change. I know I am a cold hearted atheist. On the plus side the disaster has given us the opportunity to get out of here early and head up through Montana to Yellowstone national park and back to Portland by a slightly longer but far more beautiful route.

Colorado trip

The trip to Colorado was relatively uneventful except for the continuously awful fast food that has left me feeling lethargic and possibly even jaundiced. The highlight of the trip was finding a pace to stay in the fantastic Rock Springs, WY. We had driven through till 2am in order to get to the highly recommended town of Rock Springs, only to find that a town with a population of 6000 and more than 15 hotels did not have a single room free. After roaming the various pale flourescent lobbies of the Comfort/quality/holiday inn we discovered that the much loved Haliburton and BP had block booked all the rooms for some nearby oil project. After a long debate of what we should do next, the eventual outcome of which is that we would keep driving. I went to buy enough red bull to kill said animal and caffeine myself up for a long night drive. At this point an off the cuff comment was our salvation. I made some flippant remark to the cashier about the availability of rooms in Rock Springs, at which point Dora the cashier, leaped into action, or more realistically thumbed into action. Rifling through the phone book with rarely seen vigor, dialing the phone with an agility of a much younger woman until she had found us a room at the Economy Village Inn. Giving our profuse thanks and wondering what we were now going to do with a 6 pack of redbull we followed the fluorescent highlighted line across the map Dora had provided to the salubrious accommodations of the Economy Village. It turns out the economy was somewhat a misnomer, at $100 per room there was yet another debate as to our course of action. I felt like Alexander faced with the Gordian knot or probably more appropriately a cat herder. Eventually we managed to get one room with a sufficient number of beds for the whole company, four. The cabin here is very cute, in a way that I hate, but is no doubt charming to those who enjoy dried fruit baskets indifferent art/photos and rusticy stuff. The best part of the place is the wonderful retro technology, I get to use a VHS last night to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark. You have to rewind the tape and then its fuzzy and every now and again you get these amazing lines going up the screen. It took me back to my youth! The sleeping accommodation here also leaves a little ot be desired. I dont really fit in the bunk bed, and the ceilings are at a dangerously low level for one of my stature, I ended up trying unsuccessfully to sleep on the couch last night. I think we may ned to renegotiate the sleeping situation again, my deepest cunning will be required. For some reason the wifi at the cabin hates my laptop, so I have just walked three and a half miles in the heat of the Colorado summer in order to find that jsut about every cafe in town is wifi free.

Road Trip

The GreenPrint office is headed to Denver Colorado for the Earth Works Expo . We are hiring a large no doubt soft and awful American car and embarking on a 1300 mile road trip, across Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and finally Colorado. I will be taking my camera and laptop and try and do some documenting of the trip on the way. It will be fantastic to see some of the biggest open spaces in this huge country. Interesting side note some of the hire car companies wouldn't hire us a car if we drove through Wyoming. It's so big and empty that they would have real issues getting the car back if there were any problems.

I have had this argument far too often

This beautifully illustrates the futility of it.

How not to move a dead whale

Fantastic video footage of exactly how not to get rid of a whale on your beach. I particularly like the gentlemen interviewed about how much dynamite they should use.

I am a published photographer

Thanks to the power of the internets and the genius idea that is creative commons licensing, one of my photos now part of a travel guide. The photo of Brooklyn park is nothing special but it does show the park off nicely you can check it out over at schmap. Link

Is your laser printer spying on you?

OK its not exactly spying on you but it is probably printing a unique invisible code into every colour page that contains information that can be used to track and identify the printer. This was done apparently as a secret deal between the United States Secret Service and printer manufacturers. There is no law that requires this, some manufacturers are open about this in their documentation and others don't mention it at all. None of them have revealed how it works or what information is contained. No law requires this invasion of privacy and it does have implications for anonymous speech, a crucial element of any civil society. You can find out more over at seeing yellow

TSA finds liquid ignores bomb

In a recent test by federal inspectors Albany airport security staff failed to detect the components of a fake bomb but did confiscate the bottle of water in the same bag. Is the war on Liquids distracting inspectors or are they just not very good at this. In an earlier inspection at Newark, they failed 20 of 22 tests. Every-time I take off my shoes and belt get yelled at for having a laptop, I am reminded that these are the guys that miss the real bombs 80% of the time, great.

In one test, TSA inspectors hid the components of a fake bomb in carry-on luggage that also contained a bottle of water. Passengers are prohibited from carrying containers holding more than three ounces of liquids, gels or aerosols through airport checkpoints. The screeners at Albany International confiscated the water bottle but missed the bomb. In all, the inspectors slipped four banned items through the main checkpoint during the test, sources said.

Link via Boing Boing

Water Weapons Compared

You don't want to turn up to the water fight with the wrong tools. Slate takes a look at which water weapon you should be packing this summer.

Me in the Simpsons

This is my best effort at a what I would look like if I were a Simpsons character. you can build your own on the Simpsons Movie website. If anyone wants me to post their creation here, chuck me an email with the image and I will add it to the post. It would be cool to get all my friends as Simsponesque characters. Matt Humbaugh Dr Norman Vasu, in his usual salubrious surroundings. http://www.simpsonsmovie.com/

Portland Breakfasts

Breakfast in portland seems to be an institution. The number of places that are packed to overspilling on a weekend between ten and two is amazing. From neighbourhood diners to classy pearl district bistro's all your breakfast needs are taken care of. My local is Sanborns an excellent place that only does breakfast and lunch, serves great Mimosa's and an eclectic selection of breakfast plates. Super friendly staff and good coffee certainly help erode the hangover on a beautiful summer morning. Other great Portland breakfast places include Mothers, Bertie Loo's and Genie's. All this talk of breakfast is making me hungry, so its time to eat.

Fantastic passionate talk from Hans Rosling at TED

A great presentation titled New insights on poverty and life around the world. Hans uses fantastic data visualisation and a concise witty style to really make his point. A presenter that I am quite envious of. Well worth watching right through to the end.

In a follow-up to his now-legendary TED2006 presentation, Hans Rosling demonstrates how developing countries are pulling themselves out of poverty. He shows us the next generation of his Trendalyzer software -- which analyzes and displays data in amazingly accessible ways, allowing people to see patterns previously hidden behind mountains of stats. (Ten days later, he announced a deal with Google to acquire the software.) He also demos Dollar Street, a program that lets you peer in the windows of typical families worldwide living at different income levels. Be sure to watch straight through to the (literally) jaw-dropping finale.

Link

London car bombs perpetrated by Doctors

The most disturbing thing to emerge from the attempted car bombings in London is the fact that several of the perpetrators appear to have been doctors. For people who have dedicated a good part of their adult lives to treating the sick and wounded to turn their efforts to maiming and injuring the very people they treat is hard to believe. Did they walk out of the hospital after a day of helping people and think that blowing up nail bombs in central london somehow aligned with their lives. Only something as ridiculous and dangerous as the notion of a greater God that the answer to could give that scenario even the remotest credence. On a separate note it seems that fortunately the bomb design was incredibly poor. Seemingly created by people who had watched too many movies and not studied enough chemistry. From the publicly available information and the debate on the internet it appears that the best case scenario for the terrorists would have been a large fireball with little explosive power. There was no oxidiser, meaning that there would be no explosion. This is really simple A-Level chemistry, surely doctors are smarter than that. Was there some other motive or were these guys really the Beavis and Butthead clowns they are being portrayed as in the more enlightened security blogs. More from a doctor, from Bruce Schneier, and Danger Room