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BeliefOMatic

The BeliefOMatic matches your stated beliefs with a corresponding set of beliefs.

Even if YOU don’t know what faith you are, Belief-O-Matic™ knows. Answer 20 questions about your concept of God, the afterlife, human nature, and more, and Belief-O-Matic will tell you what religion (if any) you practice or ought to consider practicing.

My top three were:

  1. Secular Humanism (100%)
  2. Unitarian Universalism (90%)
  3. Nontheist (85%)

I took it before and had a higher “Non-theist” score, but this time I answered some of the questions based on what I thought was right, instead of marking them all “not applicable”.

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ZeFrank’s Voice Draw Beta

ZeFrank’s voice drawing tool lets you draw using your voice. Low volume turns counter-clockwise, medium volume goes straight, and high volume turns clockwise.

This is my very first attempt:

Sound Drawing

Tempting as it is, I wouldn’t want to be recorded making this kind of image — one feels very silly during the process. Kudos for anyone that tries the Voice Draw Beta in a public space.

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Open Source Online University Coming Soon

Israeli entrepreneur, Shai Reshef, plans to combine the world’s open source educational material and create the world’s first free global university*.

“The open-source courseware is there, from universities that have put their courses online, available to the public, free,” Mr. Reshef said. “We know that online peer-to-peer teaching works. Putting it all together, we can make a free university for students all over the world, anyone who speaks English and has an Internet connection.”

Reshef plans on starting things small. Starting this fall, 300 students will enroll in bachelor’s degrees in business administration and computer science.

*Free as in open source, not free as in beer. However, it doesn’t look like it will be particularly expensive. From the article: “students would pay only nominal fees for enrollment ($15 to $50) and exams ($10 to $100), with students from poorer countries paying the lower fees and those from richer countries paying the higher ones.”

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Who was General Tso?

Q. What do you get when you mix Chinese Food with German food?
A. I don’t know, but an hour later you’re hungry for power.

What do you get when you mix Chinese food with other cultures? In this video, New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee talks about her quest to find the origins of familiar Chinese-American dishes—and some of the interesting consequences of mixing Chinese food with other countries’ cuisine. The results are humorous, fascinating, and mouth watering.

Click to play or watch Jennifer 8. Lee talk about Chinese Food at TED.

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Would You Remarry

WIFE: “What would you do if I died? Would you get married again?”
HUSBAND: “Definitely not!”
WIFE: “Why not — don’t you like being married?”
HUSBAND: “Of course I do.”
WIFE: “Then why wouldn’t you remarry?”
HUSBAND: “Okay, I’d get married again.”
WIFE: “You would? (with a hurtful look on her face).”
HUSBAND: (makes audible groan).
WIFE: “Would you sleep with her in our bed?”
HUSBAND: “Where else would we sleep?”
WIFE: “Would you replace my pictures with hers?”
HUSBAND: “That would seem like the proper thing to do.”
WIFE: “Would you let her use my golf clubs?”
HUSBAND: “Nope, she’s left-handed.” (via)

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NFB Online!

The National Film Board finally went online today. Canadian classics like The Log Driver’s Waltz, The Cat Came Back, and Neighbours are now in reach of the people they were created for, Canadians! (you other folks from around the world are welcome too).

They’ve included links to various social networking bookmark sites and enabled embedding. Here’s a 2008 movie by Murray Siple, Cart of Darkness, about “a group of homeless men in North Vancouver who’ve married their love of shopping-cart racing with their business of bottle picking.” (NSFW for language).

They still have some kinks to work out, like the embed code linked to the wrong video and it isn’t standards compliant by default (nobody else does that yet either) — but in general it looks like they’re on the right track.

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Stomp

Last night I attended Stomp in Calgary at the Jubilee Auditorium with Kelli and her parents. It was pretty amazing to see and hear the variety of rhythm and music composed from the sounds of brooms, chairs, PVC piping, and match boxes, just to name a few. The biggest surprise came when I began to realize it’s as much a visual narrative as it is about the sound.

Stomp in Calgary

Here is my sneaky snap shot that I took at the end of the show (photographs are discouraged). I assume it’s because flashes and LCD screens are distracting, so I made sure to turn both off.