Interhash 2006 Photos

I went to the World Interhash in Chiang Mai, Thailand last October. Over 6000 hashers from around the world in one place with unlimited beer and official sanction from the Thai government. Imagine the insanity, if you dare.

There's an album of pictures from my trip up here:

InterhashThailand2006

As usual, I didn't take enough pictures and few of them include me, but there's some nice shots. You can find galleries posted by other attendees here.

Sorry for the delay in posting.

Prodigy + Apache = Video Mashup Madness

So freaking awesome!

"Marmaduke is an Asshole"

Joe Mathlete has come to that conclusion in his blog, Joe Mathlete Explains Today's Marmaduke.

It's a little bit of dada comics criticism to brighten your day.

Why I'll be sending my kids to Dartmouth

God Debate: Sam Harris vs. Rick Warren

Newsweek setup a sit-down debate between Sam Harris, outspoken atheist and author of Letter to a Christian Nation, and Rick Warren, evangelist and pastor at the Saddleback Church. As Bruce Godfrey pointed out, Harris can be quite a jerk sometimes, but there's little of that in evidence here.

Excerpt:

JON MEACHAM: Rick, since you're the home team, we'll start with Sam. Sam, is there a God in the sense that most Americans think of him?
SAM HARRIS: There's no evidence for such a God, and it's instructive to notice that we're all atheists with respect to Zeus and the thousands of other dead gods whom now nobody worships.

Rick, what is the evidence of the existence of the God of Abraham?
RICK WARREN: I see the fingerprints of God everywhere. I see them in culture. I see them in law. I see them in literature. I see them in nature. I see them in my own life. Trying to understand where God came from is like an ant trying to understand the Internet. Even the most brilliant scientist would agree that we only know a fraction of a percent of the knowledge of the universe.

HARRIS: Any scientist must concede that we don't fully understand the universe. But neither the Bible nor the Qur'an represents our best understanding of the universe. That is exquisitely clear.

WARREN: To you.

HARRIS: There is so much about us that is not in the Bible. Every specific science from cosmology to psychology to economics has surpassed and superseded what the Bible tells us is true about our world.

Read the whole thing and feel free to opine as to who won in the comments.

Terry Jones Speaks Out on British Captives in Iran

Terry Jones, film director and Python, has a lovely op-ed in the Guardian entitled "Call that humiliation?" that's worth a read.

I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this - allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world - have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God's sake, what's wrong with putting a bag over her head? That's what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it's hard to breathe. Then it's perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them and circulate them to the press because the captives can't be recognised and humiliated in the way these unfortunate British service people are.

Read the whole thing, it only gets better.