OneMind

Week 4 of the NFL season shapes up as perhaps a tad easier than previous weeks to begin seeing who some of the reliable picks are and who to stay far a way from. I need to start getting 10 or more right each of these 14-game weeks to have a shot at hitting my 62.5% season goal. Right now, I’m at 56.5%.

Here are my picks for this week:

• Falcons descend on Cards
• Cowboys rope Titans
• Colts stampede Jets
• Texans outdraw Dolphins
• Vikings plunder Bills
• Panthers sneak by Saints
• Chargers by a nose over Ravens
• 49ers stun Chiefs
• Rams batter Lions
• Browns (yeesh, what does a “brown” do?) beat Raiders
• Jaguars maul Redskins
• Patriots out-snarl Bengals
• Bears surprise Seahoawks
• Eagles land on Packers

I ran across this blog entry this morning in my weekend Web browsing. At first, I thought it was interesting even though the writer, Dave Wolf, didn’t really bring anything new to the forefront in writing it.

Then I realized that he works for Cynergy, a company that makes a living creating RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) primarily using Adobe Flex and Java tools. Taken in that light, the blog entry is understandably self-serving and annoyingly limited in its scope.

If you care, I have a lot more to say. Just click on the “Read More” link.

AJAX is, as he says, DHTML dressed up, but Wolf’s complaints about its browser implementation issues and its learning curve complexity are badly out-dated. There are scads of great JavaScript libraries on the market now — including a well-supported one from Yahoo — that all but eliminate the cross-browser issues. That’s because Yahoo and other makers of AJAX libraries have abstracted out the browser-dependent stuff into libraries you simply include in your Web pages and then code to as a middle layer between your app and the browser’s rendering engine.

The alternative to AJAX for creating RIAs is to rely on the nearly ubiquitous deployment of the Flash Player in Web browsers by creating your interfaces and user experiences in Flash. Adobe’s Flex is one tool for doing this kind of development work, but it is pricey. An open source product called Laszlo was the pioneer in this area and is by all accounts nearly as capable as Flex. (By the way, Laszlo generates Flash from JavaScript and XML files and is in the process of being designed so it will also generate DHTML as an option.)

One problem with Flash-based solutions is the little word “nearly” that always precedes “ubiquitous.” It turns out that is a bit of an overstatement. Flash players for the increasingly important Linux environment are far behind the Windows and Mac platforms. In fact, Linux users are stuck at Flash 7, with most modern Flash-based sites insisting on Flash 8 or even Flash 9. Adobe has indicated Flash 9 for Linux won’t be out before 2007. So while all of the major browsers on Linux support DHTML and AJAX transparently, they don’t all work well or easily with Flash files.

I think RIAs are incredibly important. They are a wave of the future (note, that I did not say THE wave of the future). A great many very cool apps are running over the Net via browser interfaces these days and presenting the user with a very smooth, professional user experience that is unattainable in straight HTML or even in DHTML without the addition of the ability to update portions of a page selectively.

Wolf is giving a keynote at this week’s AJAXWorld in Santa Clara. Apparently he plans to focus on his company’s proprietary tools and approaches for creating RIAs. That’s too bad, but given that Cynergy is a platinum sponsor, not surprising. Beware any conference where the keynotes are largely or exclusively drawn from the ranks of top sponsors. They almost always devolve to product pitches.

Rumors have it that Apple Computer and Wal-Mart are talking about some form of partnership or joint venture around the movie business. If that happens — if one of my favorite companies (in which I’m a shareholder) and my least favorite (including Microsoft) get together — I’m going to have to seriously reconsider my commitment to Apple Computer on every level.

Wal-Mart is a disgusting company with socially Neanderthal management and philosophy that is a cancer on the body economic of this country in more ways than I can even count, let alone recount. I won’t shop at their stores. I won’t do anything at all to give them one ounce of my support.

Hey, Steve. There are far better fits from a moral-ethical perspective than getting into bed with this slime. Tell them to go fly a kite. IF you don’t, you may create another Linux desktop user!

I got 9 of 14 games right in Week 3 of the NFL season, for a 64.3% score. That’s a tad better than my season goal of 62.5% but for the year, I’m 26-20, which gives me a 56.5% total, not very good.

Of the five players in our friendly pool, I’m fourth, only one game ahead of my wife, whose method of picking winners is, at best, unscientific.

Check out this intriguing article in Cosmos magazine. It seems scientists have somewhat accidentally discovered that a part of our brain is responsible for creating a “shadow body” that may in turn be behind the frequently reported feeling of being followed or watched.

When the the left temporoparietal junction of your brain is electrically stimulated, it may produce a sensation of another body outside your body-space that seems to be aware of your body’s movements and sensations. This same region of the brain has previously been suspected of being responsible for the notion of self and other.

I suspect there’s a mind-body connection here that goes deeper than a single region of the brain but I find the discovery intriguing.

At the beginning of the season, my prediction for the San Francisco Giants this year was third place and somewhere near .500. Looks like I’ll be right on, much to my chagrin.

I expect the G-men to be eliminated from playoff contention officially tomorrow.

Then they can dump Felipe Alou, unload some of the aging lumber and stock up with hot young players to make a two- to four-year run at the pennant again.

There’s a disturbing trend in the U.S., which is apparently just beginning to catch up with Asia and Europe in terms of advertisers sending text messages to consumers on their cell phones. It’s not bad enough I have to delete hundreds of unsolicited commercial emails from my email box every day; now they want me to pay for these stinking things as well. I’ve already started receiving them, so far only from my cell provider (Verizon) and only about offers to expand my text messaging capability.

No, thanks. Not interested. Even if they figured out a way to make the ads free for me to receive (which at the present they are not), the disruption caused by an incoming text message at inconvenient times is enough to make this disruptive practice insidious and completely unacceptable.

I guarantee you I will boycott any company that has the temerity to send me an unsolicited text message, irrespective of whether we have an existing business relationship. This seems to me to be a good place to draw the line.

Having picked only nine of last week’s 16 games correctly and therefore sporting a pathetic 53.1% record for the two-week-old NFL season, I need a good week this time around.

Too bad there are so many games that are too close to call.

Here are my picks anyway.

• Panthers maul Bucs
• Vikings ransack Bears
• Bengals de-fang Steelers
• Lions roar over Packers
• Colts trample Jaguars
• Bills stampede past Jets
• Dolphins out-flip Titans
• Redskins surround Texans
• Ravens dive-bomb Browns
• Seahawks soar past Giants
• Eagles claw 49ers
• Cardinals dump on Rams (Why are there so many teams with bird nicknames?)
• Patriots out-gun Broncos
• Saints march over Falcons

It’s big news these days that All Saints Church in Pasadena, CA, and the IRS are at loggerheads over a sermon delivered there on Oct. 31, 2004, just before the Presidential election. The IRS is re-assessing whether the church’s tax-exempt status ought to be revoked because Rev. George Regas delivered a highly political sermon on that date.

I admit that my first knee-jerk reaction was to rush to the aid of the church. It is, after all, a liberal institution of long standing and widespread reputation. In addition, I’ve never had any particular love for the IRS or, for that matter, for this nation’s regressive and unfair system of taxation.

But before I jumped into the fray and defended All Saints, I thought it might be a good idea to read the homily in question. What I read disturbed me, alright, but not in the direction I’d anticipated.

(Please read on for more details if this interests you.)

As a political and religious liberal, I stand foursquare in support of the absolute right of churches to take moral stands on issues that seem to be only political. A budget is a moral document. Almost all major legislation is strongly moral in nature. For the religious community at either end of the spectrum or in the middle to be afraid to speak its beliefs on such issues would deprive us as a nation of a needed viewpoint.

But from that same liberal perspective, I am strongly supportive of the absolute separation of church and state. And so I find myself opposed to the idea that a church leader ought to be able, from the pulpit of a tax-exempt churth, to endorse a candidate of any political party or instruct (or suggest) to his or her congregants how to vote in a particular election.

It seems to me that Rev. Regas — whose views I would clearly endorse and applaud — may have overstepped the bounds of tax exemption on this occasion. It’s not 100% clear; that’s an issue for the courts. But it is also not 100% clear that this is purely about a right-wing administration persecuting a left-wing church.

At the beginning of his sermon, Regas says that he has no intent of telling people how to vote in the imminent election. And sprinkled throughout his sermon are criticisms of both Bush and Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry, so there is at least the appearance of balance, of even-handedness. But in his clarion calls to action, there can be no doubt whatsoever that Regas was urging his listeners to vote for Kerry and against Bush.

Though the media focus has been on the anti-war message in the sermon, this example of Regas’ speech on the subject of poverty — which he used as a springboard (and an appropriate one) to discuss reproductive rights — brings clearly to the discussion the way Regas left things with his listeners:

Conservative politicians with the blessing of the Religious Right have strongly advocated the dismantling of social programs that provide a decent life for children once they enter this world. The ultimate test of a society is the kind of world it creates for its children. And what we have allowed to happen to children in America is a moral scandal and breaks the heart of God. No matter what rhetoric is used, any public policy that makes a child’s life more miserable is an abomination before God.

On November 2nd vote all your values. Bring a sensitive conscience to that ballot box.

There can be no doubt that he is saying, “And if you do bring that sensitive conscience to that ballot box, you cannot possibly vote for those conservative politicians.” That comes, I think, dangerously close to an endorsement of Kerry.

You can read the talk for yourself. It’s not very long. Go to , the church’s Web site, scroll down and click on the link to Regas’ talk to download a PDF of its contents.

I don’t think this is an open-and-shut case for either side. But I am concerned about two things.

First, it does seem to me that Rev. Regas came dangerously close to breaking the tax law here if in fact he didn’t do so. His sermon was divisive in nature and would have been read by anyone with knowledge of the situation as an endrosement of Kerry. That’s not legal or smart.

Second, why doesn’t the IRS also go after, with equal zeal, right-wing churches that encouraged their members in much stronger and clearer terms to vote for Bush and against Kerry? Why, e.g., did it not persecute the Catholic church prelate who said that he would deny Kerry communion because of his stand on abortion?

At the end of the day, this is more complicated that it looks at first glance. I hope you’ll take time to go past that first glance.

How often have you heard it repeated? American troops went into Iraq with a severe shortage of up-to-date body armor to protect them in combat. That is apparently true. But both Republicans (who started it in 2004) and Democrats (who, according to FactCheck.org, are perpetuating the lie today) have lied in accusing members of the opposition of standing in the way of the solution.

The Bush Regime repeatedly accused Sen. John Kerry of voting against legislation that would have provided funding for the proper body armor for our troops in Iraq. It wasn’t true then and it isn’t true today. The FactCheck.org piece points out that the shortage of body armor wasn’t caused by any Congressional action or inaction. It was a classic military supply line snafu. Since it happened on the watch of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld, if anyone could be said to be “to blame,” it might be them or their underlings. But I’m not even sure ethat would be fair or accurate.

I’m a little ticked at FactCheck.org, one of my favorite sources of clarification on this kind of crap, for putting it to the Dems harder than they have in the past to the GOP, but I can’t disagree with the basic position. The Democratic Party might be able to win by stooping to the same boldfaced lying the Republican Right has used for a decade or more now, but I’m not sure that wouldn’t be a Pyrrhic victory.