BrianJarrett.com

Trent, wearing the latest in baby headgear…

I might be crazy but I think Trent might just have a little bit of me in him:

Me in 1974

Trent in 2008

Here are some new pictures of the boys, best of buds. 

Orson and Trent, May 19, 2008

Trent and Orson - May 24, 2008

Arthur C. Clarke was my favorite science fiction writer and I own virtually all of his fiction. He was a strong influence on my logical and reasonable approach to understanding the world and provided me with countless hours of enjoyment and mental stimulation. Some of my favorite of his books are probably Rendezvous With Rama, The Songs of Distant Earth, The City and the Stars, A Fall of Moondust, and The Fountains of Paradise.

Clarke once said, “The greatest tragedy in mankind’s entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.” This, I believe, is probably the most profound statement he ever uttered.  It supports the crux of my arguments concerning the so-called “necessity” of religion.

An atheist and humanist, a scientist and thinker, Clarke showed me what we have the potential to be if we employ education, reason, and open-mindedness. In a world permeated with sinister fundamentalist extremists bent on dragging the rest of the world down into a new dark age, Clarke’s example of human potential is a guiding light. Although he never knew me he taught me a lot and I hope that one day he’ll teach my children and their children as well.

Back in the old days (1996) when I could barely do a “File->Save As” and get a file successfully saved to a disk I created two little pieces of art with Microsoft Paint on a Windows 95 machine. I ran across those today and thought I’d throw them out here. One is an ocean scene and the other is my rendition of Mars (probably as seen from Phobos). I think they’re kinda humorous (in their simplicity) and, probably more importantly, remind me of a very different time in my life.

I actually drew these on my best friend Dave’s computer when we lived together on Eastwood Avenue in South Charleston, West Virginia. Dave worked at AT&T and was pretty highly paid by West Virginia standards. I had a very low paying job at McJunkin Corporation but was going to school in the evenings. Dave, making fat cash, was able to afford a Pentium I 133 HP computer so I was mooching from him since I couldn’t afford one. This was in the days when AOL was …read more »

Ben Stein is back for more, this time again blaming the Holocaust on Darwin and accusing science of murder. Here’s a tidbit from his interview with TBN founder Paul Crouch:

Stein: Love of God, compassion, and empathy leads you to a very glorious place; and science leads you to killing people.

Crouch: Good word, good word.

Sound too stupid and irresponsible to be true? See for yourself:

I do find it odd that Ben was on TBN, a Christian network, since the Jews killed Jesus and all. Maybe what they have in common are their extremist, fundamentalist viewpoints. Fundamentalist Christianity hates science as we’ve seen from the persecution of Galileo to the preposterous idea that Darwin is responsible for the holocaust. If science differs from scripture, they reason, then scripture wins out, regardless of the facts. At least the Catholic church is behaving just a little better lately but it’s primarily because they don’t hold the power they once held. If they did I’d wager we’d see a significant rise in witch burnings and heretic killings. The Dark Ages 2.0, so to speak, but that’s my opinion.

Even the Anti-Defamation League doesn’t want to be associated with this lunacy. They’ve issued an official statement denouncing the association of Darwin to the Holocaust as presented by Stein in his film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. From the ADL’s site:

The film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed misappropriates the Holocaust and its imagery as a part of its political effort to discredit the scientific community which rejects so-called intelligent design theory.

Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler’s genocidal madness.

Using the Holocaust in order to tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution is outrageous and trivializes the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry.

I have two schools of thought on how to handle delusional and potentially dangerous people like …read more »

Recently I’ve started making real use of portable applications running from my thumbdrive. There are a lot of portable apps available but I’ve also had to search for some of them. I thought I’d use this page to showcase the portable apps I use in hopes that it’ll make your search easier by organizing them all in one place.

Many of the portable apps I use on my thumbdrive come from PortableApps.com. They also have a really nice start menu that, once installed on your thumbdrive, will allow easy access to your portable apps. What’s also nice is that it’ll work with any .exe so it’s not restricted solely to apps from PortableApps.com. I have several apps I’ve downloaded from elsewhere but have easy access to via the PortableApps start menu.

These are the same apps I use on my home computer so I’m getting the same …read more »

I read an article while I was waiting to get my hair cut a couple weeks ago in AARP magazine that featured a survey of the religious opinions of people over the age of 50. They took 50 people and asked them basic questions about their belief in an afterlife, God, etc. Not surprisingly most of the people interviewed said they believed in God (more women than men did actually) but one interviewee surprised me a bit. This guy said that he did not believe in an afterlife although he went to Catholic church every Sunday and went through all the motions anyway. On the surface he looked just like everyone else but inside he was very, very different. Not surprisingly he did not provide his name for fear of reprisals, not uncommon to non-believers.

This guy was using Pascal’s Wager, which essentially says this: I’m not sure I believe but I’m going to pretend I do just in case. If I’m wrong nothing’s lost; I’m going to die anyway. But if I’m right then I have a wonderful afterlife to look forward to. Some have mentioned …read more »

Trent Reznor is giving way the new Nine Inch Nails album if you didn’t already hear about it. From the site:

(thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years - this one’s on me)

Very cool. We downloaded it and so far I like it. I loved the last album (Year Zero). Trent Reznor is so cool I should name one of my kids after him. Oh wait, looks like I already did!

Here are some shots of the new windows (and front storm door and garage entry door).