brainrow

There’s a hoax email going around about an atheist who files a discrimination suit because religious people have all sorts of cool holidays and atheists don’t have any. The fictional judge says that atheists have April Fool’s Day, quoting Psalms: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.'”

John Wilkins thinks we may be onto something here:

Though this is legally and constitutionally false, and the judge would immediately be censured by a higher court, I actually think it has a germ of a good idea.

Let’s celebrate the foolishness of religious beliefs on April Fool’s Day. If you happen to be religious, celebrate the foolishness of all other religions that day. If you are agnostic, celebrate the foolishness of definite opinions about Gods. If you are Catholic, celebrate the foolishness of Protestants. If Protestant, of Catholics. Sunnis can celebrate the foolishness of Shiites, and vice versa. Mormons can celebrate the foolishness of all Christian religions, and everybody (I mean everybody) can celebrate the inane gawking train wreck stupidity of Scientology.

What a great idea! I know what I believe, and I’m certain that my beliefs are correct. For one day, each of us could revel shamelessly in our certainty, knowing that anyone who believes differently is some kind of idiot, at best.

Every other day of the year, while still feeling secure in our own beliefs, we’d have to accept other people and their right to their beliefs.

That could change everything.

The Scientific Indian paid a visit to the Albert Einstein Memorial in Washington, D.C..

The quotes engraved on the bench on which Einstein sits:

As long as I have any choice in the matter, I shall live only in a country where civil liberty, tolerance, and equality of all citizens before the law prevail.

Joy and amazement of the beauty and grandeur of this world of which man can just form a faint notion …

The right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true.

Einstein knew that the world is not pure. The United States he lived in was deeply flawed, but he knew there were places in the world far worse than this place. He knew he might not be free to choose where to live.

How do you suppose he would feel about today’s America?

Respectful Insolence insults chimpanzees.

I grew up mostly in Bellefontaine, Ohio, about sixty miles northwest of Columbus.

It was a quiet little town. We would get excited whenever Bellefontaine was mentioned on one of the Dayton or Columbus TV stations — that was the Big Time! — and frustrated if they pronounced it Bell-fon-TAYNE. We pronounced it Bell-FOUN-tin.

We were proud of our little town. We had the first concrete street in America — a test of whether concrete made sense as a paving material — and the shortest street in the world. (Wikipedia says the “shortest street” claim is in dispute.)

Bellefontaine is near the highest point in Ohio — which is also the highest point between the Allegheny and the Rocky Mountains. When I lived there, the two local radio stations were WOHP (Ohio’s Highest Point) and WTOO (Top Of Ohio), so you can tell we were proud of that, too.

The Bellefontaine Opera House opened in 1880, and when I was growing up I was told that, in its time, many prominent performers had played there, including the great W.C. Fields.

But maybe I got that last part wrong.

I just got this collection of W.C. Fields movies and watched The Old Fashioned Way. Except for an early train sequence, the whole movie is set in Bellefontaine, Ohio. Fields is The Great McGonigle, head of a theatrical troupe who perform at the Bellefontaine Opera House. I thought it might be a Bellefontaine in some other state, or a purely imaginary Bellefontaine, but the address on a letter delivered to McGonigle at the end of the movie removed all doubt.

What a surprise! What a thrill! I’m sitting on Top of Ohio! This is the Big Time!

I’m only sorry that, through the whole movie, everybody except one Pullman porter pronounced it Bell-fon-TAYNE.

Drat!

Strange partners:

News Corp. and NBC have announced a deal to create a new video distribution site, dubbed the “YouTube killer” by many. The companies have also formed partnerships with a number of big players, including Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Time Warner/AOL to supply content and provide distribution channels. The service, which currently does not have a name, will launch this summer with a number of TV shows and movie content.

News Corp. is the parent company of Fox News. NBC is one of the parents of MSNBC.

It will be interesting to see how often MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann will feature Bill O’Reilly or other Fox News hacks as “Worst Person in the World” now that their employers are partners. Will O’Reilly still threaten to send Fox Security after callers who mention Olbermann’s name?

The Dark Roasted Blend blog has us really wired:

The sign says, “Do not touch any of these wires.”

You know, I don’t feel quite so bad about the tangle of wires under my own desk right now. And yet — maybe I should just tidy that up a little bit.

How do nerds amuse themselves?

• They make up esoteric light bulb jokes.
• They watch videos of people moving big stones.
• They read — and write — Wookiepedia.
• They leave graffiti.
• They write blog posts about how nerds amuse themselves.

By far, the most popular post here on brainrow has been this one, with a funny YouTube video of a guy demonstrating speech recognition in Windows Vista. Well, too much of a good thing is never enough.

Computerworld has tracked down what they’re calling the top 10 funniest tech videos on YouTube. I don’t agree with every decision, but they’ve found some good stuff. Here’s their video #1:

You might not understand video #2 unless you watched the iPhone’s introduction at January’s Macworld Expo. (Apple customers are real fans.) Video #5, with comedian Wes Borg explaining tech support, is waaaay more true than you’d like to believe. The pranksters in video #7, messing with the demo machines at a trade show, may be just a little too proud of themselves.

Check them out.

Via Boing Boing, a doormat with a mixed message.

Via This Modern World: This video is clearly from a comedy show. I sure hope it’s all a joke. (Warning: strong language.)

Thrilling Wonder has some spectacular photos from a Russian commercial pilot called “Letchik Lekha.”

Via Lockergnome, we learn that there’s a British version of Apple’s PC/Mac TV ads. They’re similar to the U.S. ads, but different.

Via Editor & Publisher, some good news about the New York Times online:

The New York Times is opening up access permanently to TimesSelect to all students and faculty who have .edu e-mail addresses beginning on March 13.

“It’s part of our journalistic mission to get people talking on campuses,” says Vivian Schiller, senior vice president and general manager at NYTimes.com. “We wanted to open that up so that college students and professors can have a dialogue.” …

Schiller says the company has “no regrets” putting 22 columnists at the Times and its sister newspaper The International Herald Tribune, archives and other material behind a pay wall.

…

Those students who are current subscribers will receive pro-rated funds for their paid subscriptions. Schiller explains that students and faculty will have to register for the service but that it’s self-regulatory.

Bloggers lost a great resource when the Times made its columnists and some other materials available online only to paying customers. At least now students and faculty can read folks like Thomas Friedman, David Brooks, Nicholas Kristof, Bob Herbert, Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich and Paul Krugman. They’re pretty smart sometimes.

Thrilling Wonder has photos of wild weather:

Humbling stuff.

Via Omni Brain, an image from a blog called grow-a-brain:

I need this. I’ll build a little fence to keep my brain from running away. Ooop! Slippery devil!