tales of an ordinary girl

One of my favorite musicians is Emiliana Torrini. The tone of her voice is beautiful no matter what she's singing. She has a new album out that I haven't purchased yet, but I plan to download it from Amazon soon.

Anyway, she was interviewed about the album in the videos below.

I still haven't played Portal, but I keep seeing videos and musical tributes about it, so I take this as a hint that I should. Of course the real reason is that everyone says it's a good game. Anyway, here's another video taken from the "ending song" in the game.

Astronomy
Ring of Fire



The Milky Way Over Mauna Kea



A Partial Eclipse Over Manila Bay



Games
Popular WoW automation tool infringes Blizzard's copyright
Blizzard's claims for copyright infringement were worrisome to many of us following the case. The company's argument was that Donnelly's program made a copy of the game in a computer's RAM in order to circumvent WoW's anti-cheat protection; because Glider violates the End User Legal Agreement, players are no longer allowed to copy the game into RAM, thus leading to copyright-infringement. This idea seemed majorly flawed, as it could severely hamstring the rights of any computer user, since any program being used will copy portions of itself into RAM. Public Knowledge, an advocacy group that fights to scale back copyright law, even got involved in the case by filing an amicus brief that argued this copyright theory was far too broad and potentially dangerous, an argument that Judge Campbell rejected.

Music
Tim Minchin's Storm



Recipe
Perfect Sushi Rice
Sushi has an interesting beginning: people in China (funny, since sushi is a Japanese dish) used to cure large pieces of fish in between two flat layers of vinegar-soaked rice. They’d create a flat layer of rice, pour a vinegar solution over it, then lay a single layer of fish all over the rice. Then they’d top it with another vinegar-soaked layer of rice and let it cure for a length of time as a means of preserving it. When the fish was ready, they’d discard the rice and keep the fish. I guess somewhere along the way, someone got the munchies early, grabbed a big mouthful of the fish and rice, and decided it was a treat in itself.

Religion
Haggard Revisited
The church wanted to squelch the fact that Haggard was a practicing homosexual for several years, while he was one of the primary leaders of the evangelical movement in America. Instead, they tried to spin Haggard’s scandal as a single “wild streak” of aberration during a short span of time. Why? Because these facts cast an even greater uncertainty upon the basic principles of Christianity. If the greatest, most faithful among them could not for years cast off his evil nature—how could anyone? Or, could the top leaders of Christianity be mere charlatans? These are questions they don’t want people to ask. They are not profitable.

This ugly fact splays wide the festering wound they continue to inflict upon homosexuals with their obviously flawed doctrine. Even while one of their very elect is a hard-coded homosexual, they lie and wiggle to preserve the message that no, he is a heterosexual who was merely attacked by Satan with unnatural desires. This causes homosexual Christians to hate themselves, and heaps more shame upon “the guilty,” who will, in turn, require the church’s exhonoration services.

Was High School Girl Possessed In Class?
Students at a Mississippi high school said a fellow student spoke in tongues and made grave predictions for her classmates for three days.

Some of those predictions included when students would die.

Pelahatchie High School students called reporters from TV station WAPT, convinced that an evil spirit had taken over Lashundra Clanton.

You'll remember a few weeks ago I did the Alphabetized Meme stolen from Venjanz.

Kendric emailed his list to me and also a list sorting only by song name. So here's my list by song name. I think Ridger might have also done the same as well.

#: 93 Million Miles - 30 Seconds to Mars
A: Abandoned Masquerade - Diana Krall
B: Baby Blue - Emilinia Torrini
C: C*********k - Roy Zimmerman
D: Daddy - Jewel
E: Ease Back - Amos Lee
F: F-Stop Blues - Jack Johnson
G: Galaxy of Emptiness - Beth Orton
H: H. - Tool
I: I'd Love You - Sonya Kitchell
J: Jack and The Ripper - Michael Kamen And The Los Angeles Rock And Roll Ensemble Featuring Buckethead
K: Karma Police - Radiohead
L: L'Organiste / 7 Pièces en mi bémol majeur et mi bémol mineur - 1. Andantino poco Allegretto - Andres Segovia
M: M1 A1 - Gorrillaz
N: Naked If I Want To - Cat Power
O: O' Sailor - Fiona Apple
P: The Package - A Perfect Circle
Q: Queer - Garbage
R: R-Evolve - 30 Seconds to Mars
S: Sabbath Bloody Sabbath - The Cardigans
T: T.B.D. - Live
U: Ugly Side - Blue October
V: Valerie - Dario Marianelli
W: Wachet Auf From Cantata No 140 - Billy McLaughlin
X: X-Girlfriend - Bush
Y: Yeah - Kelly Clarkson
Z: Zombie Eaters - Faith No More

I have about six posts in my head that I haven't been able to get out in writing. But, I'll be back to blogging soon. In the meantime I heard Zoe Keating on Radio Lab a couple of weeks ago (on my way to Dragon Con as a matter of fact). I hope you enjoy this piece.

I stole this meme from Venjanz.

Organize your music file alphabetically by artist then track, and name the first song that's at the top of the list for every letter (or number, see my list below) by artist and song name. Just for fun.*

*Since I have iTunes all of my files are in sub-folders of sub-folders, so I just used iTunes to organize this.

#: 22 - Everything With You (Lonely Remix)
A: Abra Moore - I Do
B: Band of Horses - No One's Gonna to Love You
C: Calla - It Dawned On Me
D: Danny Heines - Sun And Water
E: The Eagles - Witchy Woman
F: Faith No More - From Out of Nowhere
G: Garbage - Bad Boyfriend
H: Herbie Hancock - Maiden Voyage (Edited Version)
I: Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek
J: Jacco Vleugel - Theme
K: Kae - Epiphany
L: Lauren Christy - Walk This Earth Alone
M: Madeline Peyroux - I'm Alright
N: Nanci Griffith - The Flyer
O: Oasis - Wonderwall
P: Page & Plant - No Quarter
Q: Queensryche - Real World
R: R Star - Back of Your Car
S: Sara Bareilles - Love Song
T: Tara MacLean - Divided
U: U2 - Crumbs From Your Table
V: Vanessa Carlton - A Thousand Miles
W: The Wallflowers - Angel On My Bike (Live)
X: None
Y: None
Z: Zombina & The Skeletones - Leave My Brain Alone

Right now I'm sleeping, at least I am as this is posted. I'm off today and I plan to have a long day of doing not much of anything. So, enjoy this piece if you can get past the shaky camera hands. UPDATE: A much less shaky version now...

Boob Song - Priscilla Ahn

I used to be a Coke girl, but in the last year or so I switched to Pepsi. Mostly because Diet Coke is disgusting and Diet Pepsi is bearable.

Anyway, that really doesn't have much to do with this post except that I've been collecting Pepsi points because it means I can get music from Amazon for free. Originally I thought I'd be able to get one of the newer albums or songs I've been wanting, but the stable of free songs and albums is mostly at least a year old.

But I did come across The New Pornographer's Challenger album and so I got that with 60 of my points. And here's one song that I enjoy from the album. I've read it's about a going to court and that seems to fit, but I'm not really sure if that's anything more than a rumor.

The New Pornographers - My Rights Versus Yours

Venjanz sent this to me. The internet references are pretty neat and I like the song too.

Weezer - Pork and Beans

Drip Drop, Tear Drop - The Cardigans

Nanci Griffith - Its A Hard Life



Inspired by SI

I stole this meme from The Ridger.

Step 1: Put your MP3 player or whatever on random.
Step 2: Post the first line from the first 25 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song.
Step 3: Post and let everyone you know guess what song and artist the lines come from.
Step 4: Strike through when someone gets them right. I'll put it in italics if the title has been gotten, but not the artist.
Step 5: Looking them up on Google or any other search engine is CHEATING.


1. When you beat on that drum
2. I was thinking that I might fly today
3. He's bitter and twisted
4. Swept away
5. Everything changed.
6. I knew you wanted to tell me
7. My tea's gone cold, I'm wondering why
8. Bouncing off of clouds we were
9. Tempt me, I am invincible
10. You don't know, so don't say you do
11. In my hour of need
12. Childhood living is easy to do
13. Hold out your heart and on it let the sun shine down
14. When I think back on all the crap I've learned in high school
15. Life, it seems, will fade away
16. When I was a young boy I tried to listen
17. Yeah, you've got a pretty face
18. I can't do it
19. Want to get it all behind me
20. I was staring out the window
21. With a strut into the room
22. Said to myself "I´ll go up"
23. Did you believe them
24. Suede
25. And if I die today I'll be the happy phantom

Lately I've been receiving emails asking for link love on my site or reviews of music or books or comments on my posts. Some of these are a kind of interesting, so I thought I'd share.

After reading Ute's post on the rules of marriage I received information about a new artist named Charlotte Sometimes and a link to one of her videos. The two immediately clicked, although I think they're only related superficially. Read Ute's post and then watch this video and see if you don't think so too.



A couple of years wrote a post about a license plate that I thought was funny. A very nice local wrote to let me know that the plate still exists and sent me proof. Thanks!



I received an email from Dreamr about my American Idol - Shout to the Lord post.

I am very familiar with that song and we go to a Baptist church. I think it was awesome that they sang it. My only complaint is they changed Jesus to shepherd the first night. Any time Jesus' name can get out there is fine with me, as His word will never return void. Why should people be offended, we live in AMERICA, you know the America that is supposed to be a Christian country. If I was in Iran I would expect to hear musllim songs. I am so tired of being politically correct. If you don't like it, you can always go back to where you came from. Just my thoughts, Dreamr

Um, Dreamr, I come from Illinios. If I went back I don't think that would solve your problem. See, America wasn't founded as a Christian nation. Besides, I didn't say that I wanted the song to be banned or anything. I found it odd is all and of course I thought it was kind of silly to be singing it on a pop idol show.

Thinking about it some more I suppose it did give me the impression that the charity event was supposed to be in some way "religious" as if the only way humans can be charitable is to be religious. But that might be my own sensitivity to the issue coloring my perception.

Mostly I had no idea at the time the song was so popular. I suppose that explains why they sang it. I went to churches that met in houses, basements, a hotel, and even an office building when I was growing up. We didn't sing traditional Christian hymns and much of the music that we sang was written by members of the church. It wasn't until a couple of people commented on my post that I realized that this song was popular outside of the small churches I attended.

Oh and I'm not moving back to Illinois. So you can just learn to deal with someone who has a different opinion than you, especially when you're coming to my blog to read my thoughts. That's the real philosophy that America was founded on, you know.

Garbage - Sex Is Not the Enemy



Charlotte Martin - The Dance (Live)
This certainly isn't my favorite song and the video's shakey camera makes it difficult to watch, but her voice shines through and the sound is actually better than most of the live video out there, so I hope you enjoy anyway. Look here and here for more professional, non-embeddable videos.

I'm not yet ready with my next post on PTL, so I thought I'd give you some music as an intermission. Enjoy!

Fiona Apple - River, stay away from my door

Fiona Apple - Across the Universe


Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine


And live

I'm off of work today for Good Friday. Yes, they even give it off for atheists like me. So, instead of doing anything serious on the web I'm going to meet some friends across town for lunch.

Have a great weekend, everyone. But first, here's a slightly different pace when it comes to music for me. I've always loved the way acoustic guitar sounds. I could listen to it for hours, especially when it's like this:

Andres Segovia - Asturias


Ana Vidovic - Asturias



And thanks to encephalophone, who probably doesn't understand my fascination. :)

White Houses - Vanessa Carlton



Carolina on My Mind - James Taylor

And sunset on Thursday

Edit: Here you go aprilbapryll

Norel Pref at Media Salad brings us Ethnic Physics.

(via encephalophone)

Happy Uno de Marzo minus Uno! Happy Leap Day!

I'm keeping my spirits up that Spring will come eventually.



More real posting later...

Atheism
Defending the Atheist Movement
Others acknowledge that there is some sort of movement but reject it for a variety of reasons. The most common reason, one I've seen again and again, is the attempts by some atheists to distinguish between "real atheists" and those posing as atheists for some inexplicable reason. Of course, this almost always ends up being about tactics. Some are criticized for being too "militant" and others for not being "strong" enough. As someone who is regular criticized for being both, I'd have to agree that this sort of thing is not helpful.

Games
British bank blocking automated WoW payments
"We have...blocked the majority of Visa/Mastercard transactions we receive from there in order to combat this. We do not believe the fraud is anything to do with Blizzard themselves, their sites or the integrity of their billing systems, rather it is site users utilising stolen credit card details to pay for subscriptions," a Halifax representative explained. The rep went on to point out that "if a customer does want to subscribe to a game site operated by Blizzard, using a Halifax or Bank of Scotland credit card, we can arrange for the payments to be processed for them if they contact us."

Amazon looking to offer games via digital download
It looks as though Amazon is looking to join the likes of GameTap and Steam by offering digital downloads for games. Via a job posting on Gamasutra, we have learned that the online retailer is looking for someone to join the company's "Software and Video Games Digital Technology Team," which "is responsible for digital distribution of software and video game products from the Amazon web site, including the newly launched Amazon Software Download store.

International
The Pursuit of Happiness
Why the Danes are considered the happiest people on earth.

Where have the Sparrows gone?
India didn’t have this problem earlier, but now it’s becoming acute because of rapid industrialisation. China has an even more acute problem…I did not see a single bird in all the four cities of China that we visited last year. In India we do see birds in the cities, but they are mostly the sturdy crows and pigeons. Smaller birds like Mynas and sparrows are rarely seen.

Language


Politics


It’s a matter of trust
A month or so ago, Mike Huckabee said something to the effect that all signs pointed to Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction (WMD), that it was easy to use the tool of hindsight to point fingers of blame, but that it was unfair to do so. Far better it would be, he suggested, to forget about the past and look to the future. Now that we are in Iraq, what will we do?

I don’t trust anyone who says forget about the past. If not by history, if not by experience, then how, pray tell, can we humans learn from, and avoid errors in judgment in the future?

Religion
Bart Ehrman, Questioning Religion on Why We Suffer
In an earlier book, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, I have indicated that my strong commitment to the Bible began to wane the more I studied it. I began to realize that rather than being an inerrant revelation from God, inspired in its very words (the view I had at Moody Bible Institute), the Bible was a very human book with all the marks of having come from human hands: discrepancies, contradictions, errors, and different perspectives of different authors living at different times in different countries and writing for different reasons to different audiences with different needs. But the problems of the Bible are not what led me to leave the faith. These problems simply showed me that my evangelical beliefs about the Bible could not hold up, in my opinion, to critical scrutiny. I continued to be a Christian—a completely committed Christian—for many years after I left the evangelical fold.

The Aura of Infallibility
It may be that there are people who became believers after dispassionately examining a variety of world religions, deciding which one was best supported by the evidence, and choosing to join that one. It may be that there are such people; I've never met them. Instead, the vast majority of believers of my acquaintance had their beliefs chosen for them at a very early age, and were taught to follow those beliefs without skepticism or doubt. (My college friend John, whom I wrote about in 2006 in "A Seriously Warped Moral Compass", told me with pride that he became a Christian at the age of five.) A relatively smaller number converted later in life, but again, I find that in the overwhelming majority of cases that decision was made for reasons other than a critical comparison of the options.

Is There a Catholic Doctor in the House?
It seems that both husband and wife, described as “two area Catholic doctors” — uh-oh! — have decided that there’s alarming medical evidence supporting their view that swallowable birth-control is bad, bad, bad for women. The ironclad proof supporting their opinion has, unfortunately, been swept under the carpet. In a sneaky disregard for scientific data, our overly permissive society has insisted for years that everybody should be free to have sex willy-nilly with one another, regardless of gender, age, or species.

Talking animals with more sense
A little further on, they do hit on a more legitimate reason, if it were true: the argument that the illustrations of the book are hateful stereotypes, of the sort that Germany has good reason to be sensitive about: you know, the old anti-semitic caricatures of Jews as hook-nosed and greedy. If they'd taken that ugly shortcut, yeah, I'd agree — it would be just more hate literature. However, they include several images from the book, and they don't look like that: the rabbi looks like any of the ordinary orthodox Jews you'd see walking around New York, so it's a bit of a stretch.

Maybe it's badly written. Maybe other illustrations are more overtly hateful. Just don't try to tell me it's a bad book because it makes ridiculous religions look ridiculous.

Science
BLG-109: A Distant Version of our own Solar System
How common are planetary systems like our own? Perhaps quite common, as the first system of planets like our own Solar System has been discovered using a newly adapted technique that, so far, has probed only six planetary systems. The technique, called gravitational microlensing, looks for telling brightness changes in measured starlight when a foreground star with planets chances almost directly in front of a more distant star. The distant star's light is slightly deflected in predictable ways by the gravity of the closer system. Recently a detailed analysis of microlensing system OGLE-2006-BLG-109 has related brightness variations to two planets that are similar to Jupiter and Saturn of our own Solar System. This discovery carries the tantalizing implication that interior planets, possibly including Earth-like planets, might also be common. Pictured above is an artistic conception of how the BLG-109 planetary system might look.

Eclipsed Moonlight


Sexism
Female Circumcision aka Genital Mutilation
Here’s a slideshow about “female circumcision“, courtesy of the New York Times.

Please excuse me for posting twice today, but this one is short and not for the faint of heart. To be honest, I skimmed over the pages in Infidel about Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s genital mutilation and I am afraid to watch this slide show.

They're your responsibility now
There are so many things wrong with that mindset I can't tell where to start. It's the belief that women are somehow lesser than children - if those children are male. It's the equation of a forty-something woman to a six-year-old girl. It's the infantilizing of women, which results in their being unable to take responsibility for themselves. It's the attitude satirized in Shrek the Third, when Fiona tells the princesses they need to get themselves out of captivity and they "assume the position" to wait for the princes to show up.

Sexuality
Come on baby, won't you show some class? (more on primate sexuality)
Modern contraceptives have largely divorced sex from reproduction, and as a result the romantic/sexual aspect of our culture has changed in a fascinating way. For the long-term, most people (male and female) naturally want to be in a long-term committed relationship -- this is closely related to the human trait of feeling "in love." Humans are remarkably adaptable, and contraceptive use has caused males' romantic/sexual responses in our modern culture to evolve to some degree, but not as much as one might expect. Here's what I mean: A typical man is viscerally horrified at the thought of his mate being with another man sexually -- even though these days it's less likely to lead to raising another male's offspring. On the other hand, the preference for virginal, inexperienced females (as long-term mates) has proven far more malleable, to the point where many modern men actually prefer to marry a sexually experienced woman (see virginity: once an asset, now a liability).

Sociology


On Illness, Bodies, and This Weird Free Will Thing
What I am saying is this: Whatever free will is, it seems to not be a simple matter of either/or, a light switch that's either on or off. (See the excellent On the Possibility of Perfect Humanity at Daylight Atheism for more on this.) Things happen in our lives that can limit or expand our freedom, that can broaden or diminish the choices that are available to us. Some of these are things that we can do something about; some of them really, really aren't. And I think those of us who have a lot of choices need to remember to have compassion for people who don't have as many.