Stem Cell Debate

Since President Obama lifted the ban on federal funding for embryonic research this past week, the country has been bubbling with opinions on both sides of the debate. Today in the NY Times I read an insightful article, this quote gets at the heart of the real issues here.

No one can read that article [ on European nations debate about possible punishments for violent sex offenders ] and imagine that this is simply a scientific question, to be resolved by medical scientists on their own terms, rather than one that is profoundly moral and political. Is that any less true when it comes to not only human embryonic stem cell research but also a host of other ethically fraught, knotty scientific questions now challenging American?

I think it's crucial that in all this clatter going on about the issue that we don't relegate to just a scientific decision and label those who wish to discuss the moral issues as anti-science. Science is never conducted in a vacuum and whatever we as a country decide on this matter is a consequence of moral and ethical decisions. We cannot ignore this fact.

Previously

Post-Dawkins

In The Selfish Gene Delusion Nicholas Beale talks about how Richard Dawkins has had a significant impact in the way that modern society views the alleged clash between science and religion. He goes on to claim that Dawkins' retirement from his professorship at Oxford University may spell the beginning of a positive chapter in the debate. I hope, and expect, that the Obama era, and the retirement of Dawkins, will mark a move to a more constructive phase of the dialogue between science and rel ⇒ read more

added 02/26/2009. tagged as politics, speech, dialogue, obama.

Presentation Tips

Courtesy of Edward R. Tufte. Some very decent presentation tips that would come in handy anytime you have to talk in front of a group of people.

added 02/25/2009. tagged as presentation, advice, tufte, speaking.

Axl vs. Frank: More time doesn't mean a better product...

True words. Something I need to apply to my projects: just get them out there. Less perfectionism.

added 02/25/2009. tagged as producing.

People are subject to trifling likes and...

A great quote that ends with: "As our preferences get fractioned finer and finer like this, the range of what we can tolerate narrows to a slit—in everything, because this is a habit of the mind." That's not the sort of person I want to be.

added 02/25/2009. tagged as psychology, preferences, traveling, open-minded.

YouTube - George Street

A video about the impact of a man's life.

added 01/18/2009. tagged as evangelism, australia.

xmpphp

A very cool PHP library for connecting to XMPP. AND IT WORKS!!

added 01/12/2009. tagged as php, programming, networking, chat, xmpp.

How we use IRC at Last.fm | Richard Jones, Esq.

There's some really cool ways to use IRC that solves a lot of problems that tools like Campfire by 37signals attempts to solve. IRC is free, open source, highly-configurable and there's tons of tools out there already for working with it. Save money and d

added 01/09/2009. tagged as irc, chat, group, 37signals, campfire.

spy :: visualizes the conversations on Twitter, Friendfeed, Flickr, Blogs and more.

Search for a term of a city or community near you and see what the twitter-sphere is saying. It's scary!!

added 01/09/2009. tagged as google, javascript, twitter, blogs, app-engine.

Habari Project

A promising, simple-looking, javascript-heavy blogging software written in PHP 5.

added 12/27/2008. tagged as php, php5, blog, software.

jQuery.timepickr.js

A plugin that makes it super-easy to choose times.

added 11/17/2008. tagged as javascript, interface, ajax, jquery, plugin.

MPR: 'Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower'

A great show that does more for hard-facts current events in the middle east than most that I've heard in the last month or two. The strength of the show is Robert Baer's grasp of the middle east and what is happening there right now.

added 11/12/2008. tagged as politics, middle, east.

Subtraction 7.1 Beta: A Cloud and a Prayer

An insightful article about how we need to be engaged in thinking about how reliant we are on the internet for large parts of our lives -- and make appropriate changes to insure the security of our data.

added 10/17/2008. tagged as security, backup.

Redirecting subdomains to directories in apache. by Stuart Colville

Informative and accurate article.

added 10/08/2008. tagged as htaccess, apache, mod_rewrite.

exljbris :: Free Quality Font Foundry

A really cool font foundry that I came across. The fonts are great quality, but free - It's a win-win.

added 09/22/2008. tagged as typography, art, design, fonts.

GMail Shortcuts

As many already know, I love the keyboard shortcuts in GMail. If you haven't started using them, you need to get on that train! What excites me today is that I discovered some new, undocumented, shortcuts. When navigating my email with one hand, I happened to press shift in addition to "o" to open a message. I was surprised when it opens it in a new window. However, the most exciting piece is that this behavior extends to composing mail as well. So the two new undocumented (now documented) short ⇒ read more

added 09/17/2008. tagged as email, web, gmail, shortcuts.

presidential campaigns sound like a bunch of fourth graders

I couldn't agree more about the political scene in America these days. How many other people also feel this way?

added 09/12/2008. tagged as politics.

Platforms and Priorities

It looks like Google Chrome is on it's way to a Mac near you (eventually).

added 09/09/2008. tagged as software, mac, google.

pixer.us :: online photo editor

a pretty slick online editor for complete stand alone use -- no install necessary.

added 09/01/2008. tagged as photography, editor.

10 Tips for Optimizing MySQL Queries (That don’t suck) | 20bits

Some very good ideas about optimizing queries for MySQL.

added 08/21/2008. tagged as mysql, programming, optimization, database.