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Category: culture

07/27/08 11:56 - 73ºF - ID#45162

Ignosticism

Ah, a new word (to me): ignosticism. I am not sure how I've missed that so far in my life, considering how much I've thought and researched about this sort of stuff. I am more accurately ignostic. God doesn't matter to me, and my strong atheistic streak seems to flow from ignostic roots.

Pondering the recent discussions about what it means to have faith as a Christian, I've admittedly been more concerned about what it means to have faith as Jim, so let me summarize my thoughts so far, as discovered over the course of 30 or so years.

I have faith that I am a human being, that this life is real, and that anything before or after it is too nebulous to worry to much about, in a personal sense. I didn't mind not existing before I was born, so I aim to be cheerful when faced with my deathbed.

I have faith that human beings can learn from their mistakes. And more specifically, that I have been and will be able to learn from my own mistakes. My many, many mistakes.

More importantly, I have faith that human beings can learn from the mistakes of other human beings. This is the key to human culture. I don't think a culture needs a God to look to to get stuff right, human beings are capable of introspection and examination on their own.

I believe that we are tied to the past, and future tied to the present, but that being tied to this continuum is not a form of bondage, but of progression. Culturally, before and after my life is of a lot of importance to me (as opposed to personally, as above).

The foundations of my beliefs are as minimal as I can make them: buy into existing, into consciousness, into trial and error, and into broad human culture. Anything beyond those 4 pillars is extraneous, and everything I have ever managed to make better within myself is based on those simple statements. I've tried to brutally reduce the dependencies in that chain and that's as far as I've been able to cut. For consistency's sake if I could find a simpler way to state it I'd cut more out.

This faith is based on personal experience, but it's also personal experience that I can observe mirrored in the lives of other people. It's faith based on as much sense and definition as I can give the terms involved.

I've known lots of people who've lost or never had belief in God and they seem better off for it. Some seem worse, too, true.

The people I know who believe in learning from trial and error and not repeating their own mistakes would not be the same people if they give that up or didn't have it.

That's why I believe what I do and consider it essential, and could care less about God. When people can't agree on what the word God means, much less what 'he wants', it's a giant sink for me to spend time to even consider it (and I've personally spent much time considering).

We've got millennia of rich human history of to learn from, and that's plenty to keep me busy.
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Location: Buffalo, NY


07/21/08 05:18 - 74ºF - ID#45091

Rails Dev Job

By chance, should there be any lurking Rails developers on this site, please send me an email if you're looking for work (fulltime position with benefits, local to WNY only).

jim/at/jimlindley/dot/com
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07/19/08 12:33 - ID#45072 pmobl

Smart

Leaning a giant ladder up against power / cable lines, eh?

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Category: me

07/17/08 07:06 - 81ºF - ID#45054

Haircut

Getting pretty enough to hang out with designers this weekend :)
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Category: culture

07/16/08 06:30 - 81ºF - ID#45039

That's How I Roll

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Location: Buffalo, NY


Category: design

07/15/08 11:10 - 69ºF - ID#45025

TypeCon 2008 This Weekend

Sorry Paul, I just realized my typography convention is this weekend, and so I definitely can't go to WEMF :(

But it does bring up an interesting question: how does one properly ask to get an autograph from a typographic celebrity? Does "Do you mind letterpressing my chest?" sound to forward?

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Location: Buffalo, NY


Category: technology

07/12/08 02:54 - 83ºF - ID#44980

Shazam!

There's an app for the iphone that will listen to music and then identify it for you. It's super cool and so accurate.



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Also the iPhone 2.0 calculator is improved, and includes scientific calculator mode:

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07/12/08 01:08 - ID#44979 pmobl

iPhone 3g


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Category: photoshop

07/11/08 09:59 - 71ºF - ID#44935

LOLIRANIANS

So, a few days ago Iran got busted for distributing altered photos that made it look like they were launching more missiles then they actually had. (See below before and after and the original story )

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Well, today's launches went MUCH better:

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Image source:

Yay!
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Category: internets

07/11/08 01:51 - 75ºF - ID#44929

Fail Whale 2.0

MobileMe fail cloud:

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Twitter Fail Whale (original)

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Permalink: Fail_Whale_2_0.html
Words: 12
Location: Buffalo, NY


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