April 27, 2005
Someone needs some help with their arguments...
The author of this article (a Christian woman's rant about what's wrong with feminism) would do well to read this page (an index of logical fallacies), particularly this fallacy, this fallacy, this one, and indeed most of the rest of the index.
Any argument that uses the Christian Bible as its primary resource is appealing to an unsupported authority. Faith does not equal science, people.
Now, I don't claim to be an expert on logic; I tend to act on instinct first, and then follow up with the logic. But we have no physical proof that the Bible isn't just some work of fiction or, more likely, allegory written by random people. And I know at least enough not to base my arguments on a book of fiction.
Posted by becka at 01:46 PM | Comments (0)
February 08, 2005
Google does maps now?
I knew it was only a matter of time before Google started doing maps better than everyone else. Absolutely awesome. Detailed, easy to use, clear... Google keeps kicking ass.
Posted by becka at 01:15 PM | Comments (0)
January 07, 2005
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is my latest addiction. I went on an extensions rampage recently, installing every Firefox extension that even mildly appealed to me. StumbleUpon was one of them, and I'm damn thrilled with it. I got Aaron (my boyfriend) addicted too. It's a virus!
But seriously, it's quite fun. As a Firefox extension, it adds a little toolbar underneath the address bar. You fill out a bunch of information about yourself (pretty sure they don't sell it, but there's not much personal stuff anyway) and then press the little "Stumble" button; it takes you to random, user-suggested sites that fall into categories you selected, which you then review with thumbs-up or thumbs-down, training it to know what you like. So far something like 95% of the websites it has taken me to have been really appropriate for me. I've found some cool stuff that way; and it's also taken me to established favorites like The Onion, and Bitch.
It also kind of functions as a meeting/community type place of the Friendster genre, but I'm somewhat underwhelmed with that aspect of it. I don't need more places to meet people, personally, and it just introduces a whole competition aspect: who has the most friends? wooOOOoooOO. I understand the concept behind it; the more people you list as friends, the more appropriate your random website selections will be, because, of course, all of your opinions are exactly the same as those of your friends. But it just doesn't do it for me.
Aside from that, my only complaint about StumbleUpon may just be because I'm a dumbass, but it took me forever to figure out how to use it to its full(er) potential. It's not very straightforward, and I couldn't find explanations anywhere. However, that only matters if you want to get beyond the "click to see a random website, click to review it, click again to see another random website, repeat ad infinitum" phase. Which, if you ask me, isn't worth going beyond anyway. (Not that I'm not trying...)
So, in conclusion, if you're like me and tend to stare at your computer blankly on slow nights, willing it to bring you a new news story, updates in your friends' journals, or exciting emails, StumbleUpon may be for you.
You can ooh and awe at my reviews here. :P
Posted by becka at 02:32 PM | Comments (0)