Monthly Archive for September, 2010

The Pope at Westminster Abbey

Published on September 18, 2010 in religion.

Damien Thompson on Pope Benedict XVI’s historic visit to Westminster Abbey:

Even Catholics who would never be so crude as to say “the Abbey belongs to us, not to you” sensed that history was being re-balanced in some way. They realised that the Pope had as much right to sit in that sanctuary as the Archbishop of Canterbury who, to be fair, showed the Holy Father a degree of respect that implied that he, at least, recognises the spiritual primacy of the See of Peter even if he rejects some of its teachings.

Tags: , , , , , , . Closed

Fake ghost pictures way before Photoshop

Published on September 16, 2010 in tech.

Gizmodo on William Hope’s use of double exposure to create fake ghost images:

The results were spooky. Even knowing that they are fake, I look at them and feel the chills today. Imagine how it was back then. Even very smart people, like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, bought into it. When Hope was exposed as a scam artist by the Society for Psychical Research, the writer defended him.

Cool, but indeed, very spooky.

Tags: , , , . Closed

The Future of the Catholic Priesthood: Vampire Hunting?

Published on September 10, 2010 in movies and religion.

What do you do when vampires turn out to be demonic monsters and not overly-serious teens?  Call in a secret priestly order trained in destroying those pesky little blood suckers, of course.  That’s the central story the upcoming movie “Priest.”

You put all of this in a post-apocalyptic world controlled by the stereotypical fun-hating Church, add a rogue priest, and you have have all the makings for Hollywood gold!  Oh, and there is good news for those of you seeking women’s ordination, too.  Turns out that a massive demonic outbreak changes the Vatican’s mind on that matter.

(Via Creative Minority Report)

Tags: , , , . Closed

Apple Opens App Store to Third-Party Development Tools

Published on September 9, 2010 in tech.

Via MacRumors:

Apple today announced that it is making several changes to its App Store developer policies and procedures, with one of the most significant changes being an easing of its earlier move to ban third-party compilers such as Adobe’s Flash-to-iPhone compiler it had built into Flash Professional CS5. Under the new policies, such third-party tools will be permitted as long as the apps generated by them do not download any code.

This is a good move that potentially opens app store development to a much larger community and should help get regulators off of Apple’s back.  I’m excited to see some of the potential tools that could arise, but I am still skeptical as to how Apple will handle this loss in control of the app development process.

Notes

Tags: , , , . Closed
Stop SOPA