Kevin Basil

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Update: More fuel for the fire.

Motorola E815 – Features, Specs, and User Reviews – Mobiledia

You can’t transfer ringtones or wallpapers to the phone. Again, the phone could do this, but Verizion won’t let you[,] to make you use “Get it Now” (aka “Pay me Now”). To add insult to injury, Verizion’s selection of mp3 ringtones and wallpapers is weak, and you can’t even preview most of the wallpapers without paying a fee. You also can’t use a PC to review and buy ringtones and wallpapers (much more convenient than using your cellphone) and have them sent to your phone. Oh yes, and if your phone dies or is lost or stolen, you’ll have to pay for them all again. Worst of all is Verizion’s pathetic excuse for why it won’t allow you to add your own ringtones and wallpapers. The real reason is greed. We all have our own musical tastes, and wallpaper preferences, but Verizon insists we pay for the privilege of sharing their taste.

This summarizes my current anger at Verizon. I purchased the phone described above at full price for exactly the feature that’s been disabled. Now, had I purchased a new service plan and a discounted phone, I would not feel so bad. Having paid the full $300US, I feel like my personal property has been intentionally broken. I am angry enough at the entire system of cellular phones and service, that I would almost be willing to engage a class action lawsuit.

I have a $300 phone and 5.5 days worth of music on my computer, nearly all of which I paid for. Do you think I want to pay $1.95 to $2.95 per ring tone?

It may be time to bring fone phreaking into the 21st century.

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One should never enter a bookstore without expecting the possibility that Yet Another Book That MUST BE BOUGHT will be waiting inside. A few nights ago, I walked into a corporate, chain bookstore that shall remain nameless (so that I can still face my former coworkers at Joseph-Beth Booksellers). A table of Narnia and Lewis books did not surprise me. A much-anticipated film adaptation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the first book in the Chronicles of Narnia, is due for release December 9.

Even though it was a merchandising table, I was hoping against hope to see something by Kathryn Lindskoog, perhaps The Lion of Judah in Never-Never Land, which provides a clef for the theological allegories of the books, or perhaps The Lewis Hoax, which presents a compelling case against the literary executor of Lewis’ estate. Neither book have I read, but I long ago added them to the queue of Books I Must Read Someday. Unfortunately, both titles remain out of print.

While browsing this table of Narnia merchandising, I came across The Chronicles of Narnia and Philosophy and noticed that one of the editors is Jerry Walls, a professor of Philosophy of Religion at Asbury Seminary. This certainly piqued my interest. Looking inside, I found an essay on Narnia and time by Michael and Adam Peterson.

Mike was my advisor and professor at Asbury College nearly ten years ago as I was studying philosophy there. It’s no exaggeration to say that his classes are the reason I switched majors from music to philosophy. His son Adam is currently an instructor at the college, as well.

Needless to say, I just had to buy it. Now, finding time to read it; that’s a different beast entirely.

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Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt

The Orthodox Way (the blog hosted by Conciliar Press) has a really insightful review of Anne Rice’s new novel about the young Lord.

One way we might measure Anne Rice’s achievement is to assess whether she has successfully depicted a human Jesus with a genuinely natural will, but not a gnomic [think “conflicted” —B.] will. Maybe it’s easier to understand what St Maximus means by paraphrasing gnomic will as an opinionated will. Modern men and women are forced to have opinions on nearly every object under the sun, yet St Maximus insists that Jesus didn’t have any opinions. Jesus didn’t have to deliberate when facing milestones in His life. He simply chose the will of His Father.

Our problem is, we post/moderns can’t imagine a truly human Jesus without a gnomic will. Yet it’s part of the dogmatic history of the Eastern Orthodox Church which we owe to St Maximus the Confessor when we insist that Jesus Christ possesses two natural wills, one divine and one human, but not a gnomic will.

I may pick this one up. The struggle of the gnomic, “conflicted” will really gnaws at me, so this review has really piqued my interest.

Hat tip: Fr. Joseph Huneycutt

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US scientist quits top stem-cell team over ethics – Yahoo! News

The facts can’t lie.

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How do I convert between Unix and Mac OS text files?

I’m mostly blogging this so I can remember where to find this stuff in the future. Thanks to lsald on ##mac (irc.freenode.net) for pointing it out.

If you open a file saved in TextEdit.app in a command-line text editor like vi, the line feed characters are all wrong. The file ends up as one huge line with a bunch of blue “^M” characters. The link above gives several command-line options for switching the offending characters out for Unix-style line feeds (and back again, if you were silly enough to want that).

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Evolution in the bible, says Vatican – The Other Side – Breaking News 24/7 – NEWS.com.au

A good article, until the last paragraph:

His statements were interpreted in Italy as a rejection of the “intelligent design” view, which says the universe is so complex that some higher being must have designed every detail.

Where do they get the monkeys who write these things?

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Recently, Dmitri challenged his readers to identify their guilty pleasures. Here’s one of mine.

I find the photograph to the right to be one of the most alluring images I’ve seen. Ever. There is something about modesty and head coverings that is very attractive. I can’t put my finger on it.

I do not dispense advice about whether women should cover their heads, a traditional practice for Christian women, for the same reason that I don’t tell parents how to discipline their children. (And women will probably never ask me for said advice for the same reason that parents do not ask me for parenting tips — namely, that I have no parenting experience.) However, I shall likely never be wooed to the position that head coverings should be universally put aside, simply because I think they’re so hot.

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So, the blog is back, and I’ve just returned from a trip to Norfolk, Virginia. I’ll probably expand on both momentarily. For now, it’s 0130 (that’s 1:30 am in US civil time), and I’m too tired to write much of anything interesting or coherent.

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