Anyone who’s even thought of calling themselves an atheist has probably heard of Pascal’s Wager.  It isn’t a very convincing argument, but it’s one that gets dragged out time and again.

So it’s great to see Greta Christina rip it apart.

Yesterday was beautiful.  Up around 37°, warm, sunny, everything was melting…  Wonderful day to spend some time with your significant other.

We had dinner reservations.  Went out and had a delicious Italian dinner.  Then we stopped at Starbucks and wasted some time sipping coffee and eating pastries.  Very nice evening.

Then we went out to the car and headed for home…  And it was snowing and windy.  Big, fluffy, light flakes that were blowing all over the place.  Snow drifts.  Heavy wind.  Limited visibility.

We only got about 2 inches or so, but the drifts are huge in some areas.

And it got cold last night.  All that melted snow turned to slush and then into ice.  My car was completely encased this morning.  Had a hard time just getting the door open, and then I had to scrape it all off just so I could peek out of the windows.

The thermometer in my car said it was 2°F this morning…  But that doesn’t take the wind into account.  That wind was absolutely painful.  My fingers went numb in no time.  My hair literally froze.  My face was stinging and my eyes were watering.

At least it’s supposed to warm up again after today…

Wonder if this will cause as much outrage as Penny Arcade’s nearly identical joke did?

Oh, wait, no dickwolves…  They’ll be fine.

Somewhere in America, there’s a gradeschool teacher screaming in abject horror right about now.

A religion I can get behind!  (Although PZ doesn’t approve…)

Sexual Intelligence | America’s War On Sex:  Second Edition

Slashdot | Putting up with Consolitis

Perhaps the most obvious indicator of consolitis, a poor control scheme can single-handedly ruin the PC version of a game and should become apparent after a short time spent playing. Generally this has to do with auto-aim in a shooter or not being able to navigate menus with the mouse. Also, not enough hotkeys in an RPG — that one’s really annoying. … Possibly the most disastrous outcome of an industry-wide shift to console-oriented development is that technological innovation will be greatly slowed. Though a $500+ video card is considered top of the line, a $250 one will now play pretty much any game at the highest settings with no problem. (Maybe that’s what everyone wanted?) Pretty soon, however, graphics chip makers won’t be able to sustain their rate of growth because the software is so far behind, which will be bad for gamers on consoles as well as PC.

Definitely a very real problem.

I don’t think anybody minds being able to play AAA titles with a midrange video card…  But the assumption is that everybody is running on a console of some sort, and this drives some fundamental decisions that just don’t work on the PC.

Graphics wind up getting capped at HDTV resolutions, and PC gamers are unable to take advantage of their much higher resolution monitors.

Inventory systems get removed or dumbed-down to accommodate console gamers that lack a mouse.

Control systems are simplified until they work well on a gamepad – often involving some kind of chording or the use of an analog stick that can be simultaneously depressed.  And PC gamers wind up being unable to bind controls to arbitrary keys or mouse buttons, or wind up having to use awkward controls that just don’t work right on a keyboard and mouse.

Save systems are designed around the limitations of a console, usually meaning that you can only save at certain places.  Or maybe you can’t manually save at all and you have to wait for a checkpoint to be triggered.

Game mechanics break when you can suddenly turn through a full 360-degrees almost instantly, instead of slowly rotating at whatever speed the game designers intended.  Or maybe they’ve still got some kind of aim-assistance code, that is now completely un-necessary with the precision of a mouse pointer.