Last week a real saint died.

Abbe Pierre, was the type of Christian who was in direct opposition to Fox News watching, Christian abortion that is the evangelical right. In other words, he was not the type of person who was more interested in protecting a particular brand of western suburban lifestyle from anyone different, rather than actually helping the unfortunate.

After saving the lives of thousands of Jews and political refugees, working with the French Resistance during WWII, he dedicated his life, as a Catholic priest, to helping the homeless, when he found a destitute, pregnant woman, lying on the mud floor of a shelter in Paris, with two dead children next to her.

He admitted breaking his vows on more than one occasion, saying that the hardest thing to resist was the tenderness of a woman. He survived both a plane crash and a shipwreck.

As an atheist, Abbe Pierre is something I can worship, a real human being.

A Mac user switches to Vista - MSNBC.com

The kicker comes right at the end - he switches back .

The Wow Starts Now? How about: The Yawn Dawns.

Daniel Tammet is simultaneously extraordinarily gifted and well balanced.

His blog is the best thing I’ve read in ages. There, I have learned, amongst other things, that the collective noun for collective nouns is a ‘peculiar’.

I’ve put the documentary about him posted on Smashing Telly it’s a must see.

Optimnem Blog: The Blog of Daniel Tammet

A pastor in the UK who mentally abused children, accusing them of witchcraft and praying for them to die, cannot be charged, after a 10 month investigation by police, since the law that covers child abuse does not cover mental abuse.

This is the same as the situtation in the US, and is a perfect illustration of why laws against mental abuse of children are needed, to challenge the excesses of extreme religion which specifically target children.

Telegraph | News | Child “witches” case dropped

Here’s an idea that has been bugging me for a while: what if the Tit for Tat game theory strategy is not successful in the real world, ever?

Here’s why - Tit for Tat works because it creates a (technically unstable) equilibrium. In models of reward/retribution between two players Tit for Tat is always the best option.

But we know that in the real world there are rarely two systems that are isolated, and grievances are normally propagated down generations when retribution is against a different individual that has been strereo-typed as having similar characteristics. This creates a potentially infinite cycle of violence, even when Tit for Tat is used as a strategy by every actor.

I believe this could be modeled very simply by creating a 3 party risk/reward game where a certain percentage of plays from a -> b would randomly affect party c (but the players would not know about this random variation). This is a better simulation of real-life and I believe would show that Tit for Tat does not work without a more altruistic dampening affect.

Tit for Tat - Game Theory .net

Perhaps this is old news, but I just received an email:

“Kevin Bacon Invites You to Join Six Degrees”

Seems they have actually hired the person at the center of the social networking meme. Which is actually pretty good, by email marketing standards.

Darrin sent in this graffiti gem:

“A few years ago, in the men’s room in Fanelli’s Tavern, downtown Manhattan:”

“(in large letters) I fucked your mother!”

“(below, in a smaller hand) Go home, Dad. You’re drunk.”

I watched a very disturbing film last night. It was a film about child abuse, about the kind of child abuse that leaves mental scars that take far longer to heal than physical abuse. And this abuse is both legal and widely encouraged, because there are many good people taken in by it.

We have a natural revulsion towards seeing children being forced to act like adults, in that most adult of traits, sexuality. At first I couldn’t understand what it was that bothered me most about the interviews with the children of fundamentalist evangelical Christians in the documentary, Jesus Camp then I realized.

They did not sound like children at all, but were spouting off rehearsed indoctrination with adult vocabulary, opinions and mannerisms.

Levi: At five I got saved…
Becky Fischer: Yeah?
Levi: …because I just wanted more of life.

This is like a line from a world weary reformed drunk in a film noir, not an innocent child.

Their innocence had been removed and they looked either somewhat cold and insincere, or were overcome with emotion, sobbing in a way that you wanted to help these poor kids escape this torture. Only occasionally did their real childish innocence and playfullness shine through.

And if anyone thinks I’m over-reacting, that indoctrinating a child to be an, M16 rifle carrying, fundamentalist Christian radical, is not like indoctrinating a child to be an AK47 rifle carrying, fundamentalist Muslim radical, for example. That this is not child abuse. Then consider this.

Jesus Camp is a film about pre-teen children at a religious summer camp, with no footage of anything that the children themselves weren’t exposed to and yet it carries a certificate 13 - it is not considered fit for young children.

Whatever you think of Starbucks, Chinese TV anchorman Rui Chenggang gets things hilariously wrong when trying to stop them opening in the frobidden city.

“Rui said the coffee shop should be as unwelcome in the Forbidden City as it would be at the Taj Mahal in India, the pyramids in Egypt or the Louvre Museum in Paris.”

There is in fact now a Starbucks in the Louvre, as I found out to my amusement a couple of weeks ago.

This makes it welcome in the Forbidden city by Rui’s criteria.

Starbucks is on uncertain ground in Beijing

Alexa currently shows a 90,000 % increase for Macrumorslive. Taking its rank from 1,264,571 to 3,023.

That kind of fluctuation makes a halloween costume store look like a year round business. It also shows quite how big the cult of Jobs has become.

Related Info for: macrumorslive.com/