Intelligent Design Not Fit for Classroom

Today a U.S. District Judge rendered the teachings of Intelligent Design unsuitable inappropriate for classrooms in America.

It’s odd for anyone to even consider teaching what clearly belongs to theology and religion in the realm of science. NPR (again) did a very well researched story on the subject matter. And of course, not that I have anything against people of religious faith, but I think politics, religion and everything else should just leave science alone. How sad is it that it took a court to decide what’s science and what’s not. And furthermore, IF the court ruled in favor of the creationists (or the pro-intelligent design camp), where will American scientific creativity and curiosity go? Isn’t exploring the unknown a crucial key to driving technological and scientific advances? By having Intelligent Design in the science curriculum, it’s basically just saying that some things are impossible to find out, and that’s attributed to the Intelligent Design.

Just leave science alone!

Awesome Animes

I finally got to see Appleseed last night (Thanks, Jason!). The whole time I felt like I was watching a hybrid anime of the original Ghost in the Shell, The Matrix and Robotech. I didn’t quite enjoy it as much as I thought I would. I think I enjoyed Ghost in the Sell 2 more than I did Appleseed mainly because of the quality of graphics in Ghost in the Shell 2 (I had trouble following the subtitle while comprehending the rather complicated issues the movie was dealing with).

Nontheless, Appleseed was a pretty cool movie with decent plot lines. I wished the motion capture was more “anime-like”. A lot of it looked “captured” and almost too realistic for the anime-feel of the movie. Jason mentioned something about the toon shade renderer used in the movie, but I didn’t notice anything aweful, just some bad hue choices in a few scenes.

A few days ago I also saw Howl’s Moving Castle with Grace. I think Hayao Miyazaki definitely makes Grace chuckle more than most of the anime directors I like. As much as she enjoyed Howl’s Moving Castle, I think she still prefers Spirited Away and, of course, Totoro. I hope that guy never dies and keeps making more films.

Now I gotta watch Steamboy to satisfy my 2005 anime wishes. Damn it I wish I had money then I can just buy them!

Let the Good Times Roll

We had a good time with Jason and Alicia again tonight. And this time we got to see a picture of Jason that’s totally unrecognizable.

Bryan, for some reason, was not comfortable with them tonight though. He’s seen them before, but he would just blast out crying whenever he sees them being too close to him. That doesn’t really happen when Michelle or Chee-hoi were here. Maybe that was why he cried so hard last time. Maybe Bryan is more used to the plain Asian facial features; their bolder features make his sensitive eyes hurt… Hah hah…

I also got to take out my teapot set today. I have only used that thing maybe 10 times the entire time I’ve owned the set. I oughta use the damn set more often. They cost me a fortune to have them brought over from Taiwan (thanks to J.J.).

It started raining heavily as Jason and Alicia were leaving. I love rain… so long as I don’t have to be soaked in it. I find the dripping sound on the ground soothing. This is the only time I like water (and drinking it, showering in it and toilet flushing with it), other than that, I am with my cats on this one — water sucks… getting wet sucks even more.

Reclaim Memory from Firefox

I still keep an eye on the browsers, even though now I have 1GB of RAM installed, for their memory leaks. Firefox and Safari are nortorious for leaking memory when too many tabs are open for too long. But thanks to this blog, there’s now a way to reclaim unused memory space back from Firefox:

If you minimize Firefox, it will (automagically) reclaim memory that it’s no longer using.

IT WORKS! Firefox was using 180+MB of RAM even though only 3 tabs were open at the time. By simply minimizing the window, the memory usage went down to just above 110MB. Nuts.

But seriously, a browser that requires 100+MB of RAM to run is just crazy. When Firefox is first launched, it only takes about 85MB of RAM. It creeps up as more and more tabs are opened/closed… etc. And the longer you run Firefox in one shot straight, the more memory it will take up over time. The same issue applies to Safari. But at least now there’s a work around for Firefox.

Damn you, Apple Safari team.

Apple Could Become More Valuable than Microsoft

Um, right… But thanks anyway, Murdza.

Excerpt from this article:

Cody Willard is the manager of a hedge fund and the author of the Telecom Connection, an investment newsletter. He is also a headliner on TheStreet.com, writes for Razor Magazine, VON Magazine and the Financial Times, is a frequent featured guest on CNBC and has been quoted in many publications, including the New York Post and the Hollywood Reporter.

Willard writes for TheStreet.com, “with Apple having blown by Oracle in market cap already, I wonder how much longer before it catches Cisco. Then Intel. Then Microsoft? Let me go ahead and be the one to throw it out there first: I wouldn’t be shocked to see Apple more valuable than Microsoft sometime in 2007. What a mind-blowing thing to think to ponder.”

“Apple’s market cap has gone from $6 billion to $60 billion in the past two and a half years. Can it keep running? If the company delivers the growth it looks like it will: heck yes it can keep running. I’m sticking with it, although I have trimmed the exposure in the past few weeks, as I’ve noted on the site.”

Some stats according to MacDaily News:

Apple’s market value is currently $59,888,758,930, thanks to recent profit-taking. Dell’s, for one example we’re keeping a very close eye on in relation to Apple for obvious reasons, is currently $78,182,273,298. Microsoft’s current market value stands at $287,850,410,220.

Underdogs can always dream of being the top dog.

Memory Upgrade

Finally got those 2 sticks of 512MB RAM I ordered from Small Dog Electronics in Vermont. I have had my PowerBook for over three years and it’s worked flawlessly (can’t say that about a 3-year-old PC running Windows). But ever since the upgrade to Mac OSX Tiger, it’s been a bit sluggish running a few “big” apps simultaneously.

Having more memory is a beautiful thing.

“I” want a memory upgrade.