Alleycat Recap

Last night was the Halloween Eve Alleycat. It started late — 8:30pm — so we were riding under the moon and streetlights the entire time. It started at The Mr. Roboto Project in Wilkinsburg, and ended in Oakland. The format was a set order checkpoint race, taking us on a nice tour of the east […]

Single Issue Voters

The Japery has an interesting column about the Christian tendancy toward single issue voting. I really only want to comment on the last paragraph: Abortion, properly understood by pagans and religionists alike, pertains to end of life “issues,” like euthanasia; genetic meddling on all kinds of life; the proper limits of the state; economic and […]

Freedom And Decency

My church’s little “cultural issues” discussion group has picked the readings for our next get together, and I thought I’d use this space as my notebook for my thoughts. Freedom and Decency — David Hart (from First Things) Hart, and Eastern Orthodox theologian, sets out to define whether or not we, as Christians, are engaged […]

More on Religion and Politics From Slate (Or, Why I like Slate)

Why are religious conservatives still the squeaky wheels? Great points brought forth in this article. Thanks to the Christian Right, if you say you’re a Christian, you’re branded as a close-minded political conservative, which, for a lot of us, just isn’t the case. But don’t just blame the Religious Right and the, ahem, left-leaning media […]

Geeky

I haven’t been very geeky in this space lately, and my current job isn’t always technically challenging, but today I discovered that you can use C# within an XSL template. The stylesheet was being applied to a DataSet that had been converted directly to XML, and I needed to manipulate a date field (and I […]

Bush’s Anti-Intellectual Faith

Slate has a interesting article on whether or not George Bush is the right posterboy for evangelical Christians. A couple of key passages: By most accounts, the president’s basic intellectual make-up was formed long before his faith conversion. If Bush is incurious, it’s not God’s fault. That is, don’t excuse Bush’s ignorance (which he will […]

Convenience

Salon suddenly has a new posterboy for their pro-Kerry campaign, Eminem. Thanks to an anti-Bush song and video, the rapper is suddenly a favorite son of the magazine, which has called him to task in the past for his misogynist, homophobic lyrics. But hey, all that’s forgiven now, because the man’s a democrat. I’ve grown […]

Climbing Photos

jen on the white eyebrow robert on a white eyebrow variation the variation again oh, how the mighty have fallen! jen and i toproping(!) at the cirque.

Back from the New — Updated

We got back from our five day trip to the New River Gorge last night. It was good to be back there — the place where we’ve spent a good portion of lives from 1993-2002. We saw a lot of old friends, and made a few new ones, and made a pact to go there […]

Vacation

After a false start last week (thanks to Seb’s cold), we’re heading to the New River Gorge later today for five days of climbing and relaxing. The weather is looking much better than last weekend so maybe the change in plans isn’t all bad. We’re looking forward to seeing some friends we haven’t seen in […]