Michael Boyle's weblog
: I am sitting here working on my slides for my class tomorrow night and the mid-term exam questions I’m handing out, and it struck me that I didn’t remember the last time I’d rebooted. So I opened my trusty Terminal and checked:
10:16PM up 18 days, 3:30, 2 users, load averages: 0.93, 0.54, 0.50
To me, that’s a major feature of X – it’s just there, not in my face with problems all the time.
the great photo that Ed posted at calebos.org today. Canadian heros indeed! FYI, I worked at Concordia near where that photo was taken for 4 years in the mid-90s. My old stomping grounds.
on the MP3 format: “Five years of the record industry ignoring the problem, then trying to stifle and silence it, and it is easily the most popular method of listening to music on a computer. Five years of combating piracy by the RIAA and the ‘virus’ has spread to everyone and everything.” An excellent thought prompted by the recent NYT article.
that the record companies were just fighting for the downtrodden musician when they took Napster to court: Record Labels’ Answer to Napster Still Has Artists Feeling Bypassed. Like I said at the time, record companies could make a lot more money using Napster than fighting it. But alas, we shall never know, I don’t think.
early this morning and took an interesting test: Battleground God. The basic idea is that it tests the consistency of your beliefs in god and such. As a long-time atheist, but one who has studied religion in various forms, I was particularly interested in seeing this thing in action.
I ended up being judged to be very consistent with my views, but I got one “direct hit” – meaning that I was badly inconsistent in one opinion. The site said,
Earlier you said that it is justifiable to base one’s beliefs about the external world on a firm, inner conviction even when there is no external evidence for the truth of this conviction. But now you do not accept that the rapist Peter Sutcliffe was justified in doing just that. The example of the rapist has exposed that you do not in fact agree that any belief is justified just because one is convinced of its truth. So you need to revise your opinion here. The intellectual sniper has scored a bull’s-eye!
This is wrong – similar to what Tom found, the site has judged something inconsistent incorrectly. In saying that it is justifiable to base beliefs on a firm inner conviction, it does not follow that any firm inner conviction is therefore justifiable or acceptible. I base my beliefs about the world on firm inner convictions but also upon other things, such what I feel “society” or my community finds acceptible. For me, it is the constant dialogue between my existing inner convictions and the demands of the wider world that determines my morality, not only firm inner convictions, unconnected to anything else.
