Stuff! 09/10/10
A couple of hilarious videos and interesting articles, especially one on a new type of phishing attack – well worth the time to read.
Worse Speech Ever?
Minerva, Ohio councilman Phil Davison (who has a Master’s Degree in Communication) gives a speech no one will soon forget.
Seagal and Van Damme in True Impact!
Action icons in the ultimate power flick!
Lashing Out at God in Prayer
It’s fashionable these days to teach that it’s OK to lash out at God in prayer the way Job or Abraham did. RC Sproul addresses this idea and shows us how those outbursts aren’t meant to be followed as models of Christian prayer.
Canada unveils new speed bump: optical illusion of a child
A rather worrying deterrent don’t you think?
Tabnabbing: A New Type of Phishing Attack
“Most phishing attacks depend on an original deception. If you detect that you are at the wrong URL, or that something is amiss on a page, the chase is up. You’ve escaped the attackers. In fact, the time that wary people are most wary is exactly when they first navigate to a site.
What we don’t expect is that a page we’ve been looking at will change behind our backs, when we aren’t looking. That’ll catch us by surprise.”
Stuff! 09/04/10
I haven’t posted some “Stuff!” in quite a while. I was derailed and lost momentum. Which is not good when blogging; you’ll be on a roll then all of a sudden, boom, you’re on the wayside watching the internet speed off without you. Oh well. Today I’m back on the train and the wind is blowing in my hair. Enjoy the links!
How Netflix Pays Its People
Interesting scheme indeed: “…Operating under the idea that its engineers and professionals should be treated as adults, Netflix allows salaried employees to take as much vacation as they’d like.”
PhD Illustrated
The power of a great visual illustration.
Web Photos That Reveal Secrets, Like Where You Live
“Security experts and privacy advocates have recently begun warning about the potential dangers of geotags, which are embedded in photos and videos taken with GPS-equipped smartphones and digital cameras. Because the location data is not visible to the casual viewer, the concern is that many people may not realize it is there; and they could be compromising their privacy, if not their safety, when they post geotagged media online.”
Iris Scanners Create the Most Secure City in the World. Welcome, Big Brother
“In the future, whether it’s entering your home, opening your car, entering your workspace, getting a pharmacy prescription refilled, or having your medical records pulled up, everything will come off that unique key that is your iris.”
Climategate Recalls Attacks on Darwin Doubt
“The public has been intimidated into thinking that “non-experts” have no right to question “consensus” views in science. But the scandal in at the University of East Anglia suggests that this consensus on climate may not be based on solid evidence.”
A Marriage Tail
One of the clearest explanations of why gay-marriage is not really marriage.
The Origins of ABC
Absolutely fascinating history of typography and the origin of our alphabet.
Chapel Library Christian Resource
A wealth of “Christ-centered materials from prior centuries worldwide.”
12 Alternative Uses for Coffee Filters
A very helpful list!
Stuff! 05/22/10
This is the first in what I hope to be a regular series of posts compiled mostly of stuff I’ve encountered online throughout the week, both religious and secular in nature. The title: “Stuff!” Of course.
Fed Up With Facebook? Delete it, and Here’s How
“In the blink of an eye, Mark Zuckerberg has gone from boy wonder to Big Brother, from Mozart to Mao. The man and his machine have suffered a populist fall precipitous enough to make even Tiger Woods wince with empathy. All this calamity, of course, begs the obvious question: “How did things go so horribly wrong?”
“The model of adolescent faith is not the kid who can avoid the bad, but the kid who stares down the darkness in herself and in her world by seeking God in just such places. The model of adolescent faith is not shiny, happy kids, but honest kids, that in joy confess a God who works in backwards ways, in ways where the first are last, and the suffering are embraced, where all who taste death are promised God’s very presence. They are not good kids that avoid all that is bad, but faithful kids that go into the world to seek God in the real, in the reality of existence, which is both beautiful and horrible.”
“Contemporary worship suffers from an emotional bias. It is disproportionately upbeat. I am not necessarily talking about the tempo of the music, although this bias is sometimes reflected in the tempo. I am talking about its emotional tone. The culture of evangelical worship has little tolerance for grief in the assembly.”
London unveils creepy-looking mascots for 2012 Olympics
“Olympic mascots have always been the object of scorn (remember Izzy?), but these two, uh, things take the absurdity to a whole new level. There’s a complicated backstory to the characters which was written by a children’s author. It explains why the mascots have one eye (it’s a camera lens to see the world) and yellow lights on tops of their heads (an homage to London taxicabs), but fails to tell the tale of why they look like early rejects from a Pixar movie.”
Seattle’s Best Coffee Stirs Up Heated Opinions
“Seattle’s Best Coffee revealed a redesigned logo this week. Unfortunately, its ambiguous look brings to mind a lot more than just a cup of joe.”
How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell
While we’re still on the subject of design, here’s one take on the web design process that I’m sure every web developer can relate to. Hilarious and sobering.
Ian McKellen – Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
What would we do without the internet?
If Team Pyro did the Daily Show, it’d probably look like something like this.
Nike knows how to make commercials. But its latest World Cup ad has got to be one of its best ever. Helmed by Alejandro Inarritu (director of “21 Grams” and “Babel”) the nifty video is peppered with humorous visions of the future, skillful soccer plays, and hilarious cameos. An instant classic.
Me
Writer, designer, father of two, husband of one. Armchair theologian. Inconsistent blogger and photographer. Still, I try.Tweets
