Jack of All Blogs » Spirituality

The Magic of the Pope

Andrew G.R. — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:03:11 +0000

The pope came to New York City, The pope left New York City. And the city that never sleeps is exactly as it was 72 hours ago. However, there were several moments of magic. The pope pulled off several feats that I never thought possible.

He Reversed Traffic. Who knew that one human being could be important enough to shut down vehicular traffic on Fifth Avenue for over a mile?

He Drives a Glass Car. No one questioned how many miles per gallon the pope mobile gets. I always though that Segways were silly looking. I challenge you to find me a sillier-looking vehicle.

He Looks Like Liberace. Is it just me that sees a resemblance between His Pontiffness and a certain 70s/80s ivory tickler?

He Likes Lace. I’ve been to mass and have never seen so many men wearing intricate lace clothing. And fur. Heck, maybe he IS Liberace.

For 81 years of age, the man is a walking marvel. He’s fit, lucid and a true messenger of good will. Thankfully, he is also speaking out against the abhorrent actions of a handful of child-molesting priests.

What the media fails to realize, however, is that only 25% o the U.S. practices Roman Catholicism. In short, many people simply don’t care. The top stories have been dominated for days. All I want is the five-day forecast.

If we’re going to be honest, the pope is a mane that represents a religious contingency that won’t acknowledge homosexuals, is anti-abortion, and against divorce and the death penalty.

I have to wonder, out of that 25%, who’s left to care?

Facebook, Your Friendly Spambox

waldorf — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 22:44:44 +0000

Little by little I noticed that the once so-popular and hyped Facebook platform has turned in to a perfect spam box, spam with friendly greetings of… your friends.

Day after day my mailbox is flooded with spam messages, clickthrough messages, every time requiring me to visit the FB website. Sometimes just to read a message or discover that someone has added a picture. Basically the same thing I would have discovered anyway, when trying to follow my friend. That is whenever I log in. Daily actually.

And when I log in… then I am greeted by another spam box, the requests.
A little more than 24 hours of facebox absence generated this nice list, as seen in the screenshot at the right. This list obliging me to go on and on with my rant, because the screenshot is more than 700 pixel high. 700+ Pixels of useless spam, cyberwaste waiting to be added to the list of 32 applications I already have installed. And don’t use except for 4 or 5.

A never-ending list of applications, because most of time someone has been ~~flirting~~ cybervirtually flirting, more than just poke, and I HAVE TO add the application to see what they gossiped about me or check if they gave me a slippery banana or a wet nipple growing in my garden to produce endless bread for the rest of my life as a pirate bitten by zombies who lost the battle against the ninjas.

Not to forget the many notifications landing in my so conventional mailbox, because XXX wants me to add a slideshow to my facebox profile… just because she is too damn lazy to click the link to my flickr account in my facebook profile. *sigh*

Luckily facebox can be rather satisfying, ego-galaxy-stroking even, too… because right now I am… see the second screenshot.
If only they would have spammed me to let me know that!

Facebook, I’m done with you… you’re nothing more than a better looking, but worse, MySpace.

Do You Happy Holidays

Franky — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 16:39:39 +0000

The Season is reaching his climax, that is when you are Christian. The world is trying to fight for political correctness and get everyone to wish Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas.
Do you wish your readers Happy Holidays? Or do you also think of the readers who celebrate no religious days in these weeks? Which is blogically most correct?
Do you take the risk to be considered rude by your readers because you have NO wishes this month?

According to Wikipedia Christianity and Judaism represent even not 35% of the Earth’s population. Does this mean you might offend more than 65% of your readers with your Holiday Wishes?

I have chosen not to wish anyone anything on any of my blogs these weeks. The reason is not because I don’t respect those who celebrate these weeks, but merely because I don’t celebrate anything. My New Year has started some weeks ago already when I accepted a job offer, and the Birth of Jesus is not listed in any religious books I have read.

The Holiday Season doesn’t offend me in se, but then again it does offend me. Offend me because when I run errands I have problems to find the articles I usually buy. I must pay attention not to bump into a Santa at every grocery store and my favorite drinks have become more expensive or are only sold in a limited Edt. packing.

Because most of my colleagues are Christian and have taken a week off, I was kind off obliged to take a week off as well because I need my colleagues to work.

When I surf the blogosphere, I have to read many, many wishes. Some personal blogs are covered with Christmas. But at the same time many of them remind me to be politically correct and wish Happy Holidays.

What about me? And you?
Or are you one out of 3?
Cool.
I am part of the other 2 and don’t celebrate anything.
I am part of the majority.

And wish you a great time, awesome parties and all the best for life. Even without holidays.

I hope there will be peace on Earth all year long and not only 24 hours.
And I hope you will never be pushed to make a new start in your life. I hope your life is enjoyable and everything goes well for you.

No matter what calendar you use and no matter when you choose to celebrate. I party all year long!

Lets party together!

Tiger In the Tale

Mosey — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 03:02:57 +0000

Quimby‘s tiger was released from his soul over Paid Text Links Ads and Google‘s policy on them. Or my post about it…whatever. Ah well…paid or unpaid links, Matt Cutts slobbering and Google worshipping aside, surely we can find something more approriate to release our soul‘s energy over?

I dunno…where shall we start? Global Warming…Starvation in Africa…War in the Middle East. You name it. There’s a whole host of issues, that we as responsible, reasonable and educated people (hopefully) need to discuss and search our souls over. Or not. Maybe you are on an internal journey, seeking enlightenment. But splitting hairs over Search Engine policies towards paid text links is a tangent of an abstract issue, at best, and while it’s definitely worth discussing, it’s about as unspiritual as you can get. It doesn’t matter what, if any, your God (or faith) of choice is, but none of them would encourage you to link your soul (pun intended!) to such a trivial matter.

Of course, my tongue is firmly in cheek here! It is great that those who write and contribute on JOAB can openly disagree. What a boring world it would be if we all did agree. And Quimby made some good points: one that sticks to mind is that most of us who work in developing websites are often way too obsessed with Google‘s power and the pagerank it gives to a website.

And ironically, since my post last week wondering whether Google was updating, Matt Cutts (more slobbering here, Quimby.…) has, for the first time ever, recently posted a clarification on Google‘s policy towards pagerank. To quote a couple of segments relevant to our own questions at JOAB-:

If you don’t care about PageRank and your site is doing well, that’s fine by me.

I believe that I’ve said before that PageRank is computed continuously; there are machines that take inputs to the PageRank algorithm at Google and compute the resulting PageRanks. So at any given time, a url in Google’s system has up-to-date PageRank as a result of running the computation with the inputs to the algorithm.

I’m not sure if I’ve given the official word on a PageRank export before. It’s not a big event here at Google. Frankly, I didn’t even know we’d done our 3-4 month-ish push of this data. When I saw people talking about it online, I went to check and see whether it was a real push or not.

So while you may be happy to see that the Google Toolbar shows a little more PageRank for a given page, it’s not as if that causes a change in search results at that point. So you won’t see any search engine result page (SERP) changes as a result of this PageRank export–those changes have been gradually baking in since the last PageRank export.

Quimby….let’s call this one even….

The Consolations Of Philosophy

Mosey — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 15:15:09 +0000

If you are like me- then you spend way too much time in front of your comp. You have probably let some other part of your life slip- maybe your health or your relationships. A lack of balance usually comes hand in hand with a lack of perspective. Personally I justify it as “temporary” and that I’m doing it “because I have to“, i.e: for the money.

Hmmm. Maybe that’s a load of codswallop. Maybe I can earn less money and have more fun. Maybe I could be happier as a person with a more rounded life if I stopped worrying so much about money. I hate letting anyone down, but just sometimes the darned emails can wait….

Good old Benjamin Franklin reputedly changed the word “profit” to “happiness“, as in “the pursuit of….” while drawing up The Constitution. Point being- money does not bring happiness.

It’s not just a cliché told by the rich to the poor, it’s the truth. For those of you who have not had the chance to witness the irony of seeing rich people you know personally- utterly miserable, or the smiley, innocent disposition of people in the Third World who are dirt poor, there is an excellent illustration of this concept by an old school chum of mine, Alain De Botton, in his book “The Consolations Of Philosophy“. Below, is part of his reflection on the teachings of Epicurus.

1. Identify a project for happiness.

In order to be happy on holiday, I must live in a villa

2. Imagine that the project may be false. Look for exceptions to the supposed link between the desired object and happiness. Could one possess the desired object but not be happy? Could one be happy but not have the desired object?

Could I spend money on a villa and still not be happy?

Could I be happy on holiday and not spend as much money as on a villa?

3. If an exception is found, the desired object cannot be a necessary and sufficient cause of happiness.

It is possible to have a miserable time in a villa if, for example, I feel friendless and isolated?

It is possible for me to be happy in a tent if, for example, I am with someone I love and feel appreciated by?

4. In order to be accurate about producing happiness, the initial
project must be nuanced to take the exception into account.

In so far as I can be happy in an expensive villa, this depends on being with someone I love and feel appreciated by.

I can be happy without spending money on a villa, as long as I am with someone I love and feel appreciated by.

5. True needs may now seem very different from the confused initial desire.

Happiness depends more on the possession of a congenial companion than a well-decorated villa.

Epicurus himself sums it up best:

The possession of the greatest riches does not resolve the agitation of the soul nor give birth to remarkable joy