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Scheduled to be released on the 500th anniversary of
Martin Luther's posting of the 95 theses is Mitch Pacwa's The Reformation Project video
series.
Pacwa was recently on Catholic Answers to discuss the project. He's looking to do a ten part
series on the Reformation from a Roman Catholic perspective.
The host of the interview introduced Pacwa by
noting the the topic of the Reformation "always lurks in the background of Catholic Answers
live." Indeed he's correct. Catholic Answers exists to call Protestants back to the Roman
church. What they're doing is trying to undo the Reformation.
Pacwa is concerned that the popular media will hype the upcoming Reformation anniversary by
presenting a false view of the Roman Catholic Church. His ten part series will be an attempt to
show that the Roman church of the Reformation isn't quite as bad as is popularly portrayed. They
weren't a powerful juggernaut, nor was there "universal corruption among the clergy"
(mp3 clip). "Universal" corruption is a strong
description. I would settle for widespread corruption. That can't be denied.
The most fascinating part of the interview was when a caller asked "In a nutshell, what did
cause the Reformation?" (mp3 clip). Pacwa
began his response by addressing Luther "the person" as a factor. Every time I've thought I've
heard every calumny against Luther, all I have to do is listen to a Roman Catholic discuss Luther.
Pacwa notes "Luther was racked with guilt." That's true enough. What was this guilt from?
Pacwa explains "he apparently had killed somebody in a duel." To deal with the guilt of
murder and "a legalism within his own personality" caused him to begin "looking at
doctrine differently than it had been under the various Catholics prior." This lead to
justification by faith alone by grace alone.
I've read many charges against Luther, but that he killed someone in a duel is one I don't recall,
at all. Perhaps it's a new Reformation factoid I'm not aware of? For instance, a few months ago I
read a news report that Luther didn't enter the monastery after a thunderstorm vow made to Saint
Anne. Rather, he was trying to escape an arranged marriage (I've looked around for further
information on this, and came up with nothing). But as to murder in a duel, that's news to me. It
has been alleged that Luther's
father was a murderer. It's also been asserted that a reason Luther entered the monastery was
grief experienced by the sudden loss of a close friend. This friend was either stabbed in a quarrel
or duel. Perhaps Pacwa meant this, or perhaps he'll argue Luther killed this friend. Well, Pacwa's
got a few years to work all this out. If anyone can verify Pacwa's claim, please write me.
The other fascinating part of Pacwa's answer was that the Reformation was also caused by Luther's
denial of free will. For those of us who are Reformed, this answer comes as no shock.
Here, Pacwa has hit the nail on the head. If one begins with notion of total depravity,
the means of grace will be far different from the system devised by Romanism. I'm hopeful that
Pacwa will bring this point out with force. This is the reason why those who typically have the
best answers to Roman Catholic claims are the Reformed.
I'm not sure if Pacwa's Reformation series will have any impact on the 500th anniversary of the
Reformation. Typically, the media doesn't go looking for documentaries produced from a religious
perspective. His series will probably only impact Roman Catholics. My hope is that Mitch Pacwa
doesn't repeat charges against Luther and the Reformation from hundred year old sources. He's an
educated person, so the possibility of accuracy is well within his means.
Courtesy of YouTube user MindElation, the clip below has been doing the rounds, but it’s
worth a Friday viewing. The footage shows a US TV reporter losing his cool while presenting a live
report – which his anchor later attributes to a technology failure. As the description says:
“Every newscaster has similar things happen, but [...]
Avec Bad Romance, Lady Gaga avait placé la barre haut dans le délire. Mais elle a
fait encore mieux pour son dernier clip, Telephone. Simplement ha-llu-ci-nant !
We've had very little to judge Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP by the past few
months other than a few screenshots, a
short clip, and the promise that very talented people are involved in the iPhone project --
developer Capybara Games (Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes), singer-songwriter Jim
Guthrie, and pixelartist/animator Craig "Superbrothers" Adams (Alpinist).
Hearing S:S&S announced as the winner of IGF Mobile's Achievement In Art award made
it worse, as a group of judges got to see what all the fuss was about while the rest of us could
only guess what the rest of game looked like. Thankfully, we can now see more of
S:S&S, as the group released two gameplay clips from the much-anticipated title.
The above video really shows off shows the game's atmosphere with Superbrothers's brilliant
scenes and Guthrie's sublime music as S:S&S's hero explores the first area, meets a
minstrel, and chases a bear. The video after the break shows how S:S&S handles
combat, turning the handset to a vertical positioning for a Punch Out!!-style battle.
This game can't come out soon enough!
Minute Mode - La vidéo très attendue des deux divas est enfin en ligne. Analyse en
images de ce nouveau festival d'extravagances vestimentaires qui promet de faire du
bruit.
BUZZ. La reine incontestée du Biz’art joue les bad girls avec Beyoncé dans
un clip tarentinesque de près de dix minutes où elle n’hésite pas
à dévoiler ses fantasmes lesbiens... Regardez.
Toshiba is a huge company, but it’s not necessarily known as a maker
of
robots. Their “Wheelie” for indoor use is an autonomous, 2-wheeled robot, which
is still in prototype stage and somehow reminiscent of a Segway in its basic design.
Technical details are scare right now, but the main purpose of the robot is to one day help
families out with daily chores, for example by serving food. For that you need to place plates
and glasses on top of the little guy’s head and he will do the rest by himself. And the way
Wheelie can balance out differences in height is pretty impressive (skip to 1.50 in the video
below).
Le voici enfin! Le clip évènement "Telephone", de Lady GaGa et Beyoncé, vient
d'être dévoilé. Le nouveau single extrait de "The Fame Monster", s'annonce
déjà comme un tube : découvrez le ...
Faisant suite à son single "Dans ma rue", qui aura permis à Féfé, l'un
des membres du Saïan Supa Crew, de faire un joli chemin du côté de l'Airplay et
du Top, l'artiste dévoile le clip de son successeur, "VPC (Vilain petit canard)" : ...
Il faudra que quelqu'un le dise aux Black Eyed Peas : c'est comme ça qu'on réalise
son clip/court-métrage de dix minutes. On recrute Jonas Akerlund, le réalisateur
entre autres du légendaire clip de " Smack My Bitch Up " de Prodigy. On lui dit "pi... Lire la suite | commentaire
<b> A voir -</b> Pierre
Sarkozy apparaît en guest-star dans le clip de Lazlo Jones "Download Me, I'm Free". Il a
accepté de jouer le rôle d'un producteur très bling-bling. Pierre
Sarkozy se la joue bling-bling dans un clip
Palm just showed
us the Unreal Engine 3 running on webOS, which apparently took a couple weeks to port over to the
platform using that fancy new PDK. It runs at a
pretty smooth clip, with just a tiny bit of artifacting in our enemy's death animation. As an added
bit of wow factor, Palm has it currently setup to demonstrate the game at 1 fps when in card view.
Like most touchscreen shooters, this doesn't really solve the problem of simulating dual analog
sticks, but it's still a fun and good looking engine for a mobile device. We're still unaware of
any games that have been built for the mobile engine, which has now been shown for iPhone,
Tegra 2, and
will be headed to the iPad as well, but we have to assume we'll be seeing some before too long.
Check out the webOS video after the break.
Brain scans identify which short film clip volunteers were remembering, which could help
researchers better understand memory recording patterns and, ultimately, dementia.
"Jamais Brigitte n'ouvrira La
Madrague à Loana", s'insurge le mari de Brigitte Bardot, jeudi, dans Var Matin, suite aux
déclarations de la chanteuse, selon lesquelles la célèbre actrice lui aurait
donné l'autorisation de tourner son dernier clip dans sa propriété de
Saint-Tropez, le week-end dernier. "C'est un malentendu", réplique son producteur.
Loana "fait partie de ces people qui sont des inutilités"
Paul Yanez is back: The developer of many rogue and fabulous media players,
including the MyMediaPlayer application that brought Hulu to the desktop until being shut down by
the video site, has been tapped by Movieclips.com to develop its new Flash video player, the company just announced.
The new player, which is already live at Movieclips.com, makes it possible to select choice
moments of clips hosted by Movieclips.com and embed them on third-party web sites. The player
also preserves the original aspect ratio of every film.
Flash developer Yanez got famous in the online video world when he turned Joost into a
proof-of-concept web app in the summer of 2007. He made headlines again a year later with an
Air-based desktop player for Hulu, which was quickly rendered useless by a Hulu
upgrade. Yanez responded with an upgrade of his own, but MyMediaPlayer2 went dark
just four hours after TechCrunch wrote up it up as Hulu’s “unofficial desktop
app.”
Movieclips.com features over 12,000 clips from various Hollywood movies. The company aims to be
something like a Hulu for choice snippets from blockbusters and cinematic classics alike, and it
was able to secure rights from a number of big Hollywood studios to do so. Each clip on
Movieclips is published with closed caption and other metadata, making it possible to find famous
quotes from specific films, and the site recently published an
API that opened up some of this functionality to third-party developers.
Pour son nouveau clip, Oxmo Puccino s’est offert un casting qui en ferait rêver plus
d'un : les acteurs Vincent Cassel et Ludivine Sagnier. Rien que ça.
Alizée, de retour en bacs le 29 mars prochain avec son nouvel et quatrième album
studio, "Une enfant du siècle", dévoile actuellement sur le Web, les premières
photos du tournage de son clip "Les collines (Never Leave You)", mais aussi des ...
When iTunes web preview pages first appeared for songs and albums the industry was abuzz with the
possibility that iTunes could be migrating to the cloud. iTunes preview has so far had little
impact on how we use purchased media content, but it has had a huge impact on how we find iTunes
media content on the web, especially with iPhone apps. The iTunes web preview pages are an
enormous draw for search engines and consistently rank high in the results when searching for the
names of apps.
A Quick History of iTunes Web Preview
Previously, web links to iTunes content opened a redirect page (hosted on phobos.apple.com) that
asked you to wait “One Moment Please” while the iTunes application was launched. This
page only had a thumbnail of the cover and sparsely listed just the title and publisher.
iTunes web preview first appeared on
November 13, 2009 with full pages including descriptive text (hosted on itunes.apple.com). Audio
clip previews were added on January 7, 2010. These pages still launch the iTunes application, but
also include the full description, select customer reviews, and links to related content. Preview
pages for iPhone apps were published on
February 4 and podcasts were added March 1. TV Show and Movies still have the old style pages
that just launch the iTunes application.
In hindsight, the launch of iTunes 9 on September 9, 2009 with store pages rendered completely in
WebKit using HTML was a sign of things to come.
iTunes Web Preview has SEO Mojo
These web preview pages have exposed text content to Google and other search engines that can now
crawl and index these pages. To measure the impact this has had on search results, I did a short
study on the Top 100 Paid Apps in the iTunes App Store. I chose to track the relative ranking in
Google search results of the iTunes preview page and the app’s homepage when searching on
the app name.
For this study, I only looked at the search results for the app name. While keywords would
have been interesting to track, they are not publicly available. The keywords that publishers
submit to Apple are hidden content in the iTunes App Store and are not included in the web
preview page. I dropped special characters that appeared unlikely to actually be typed into a
search (trademark and copyright symbols, for example).
In almost all results, iTunes appeared in the first 10 results on Google. In fact, the median
result was #4. In some cases, the pages were only launched only a month ago, so
that’s impressive. iTunes appeared above the app homepage for 68 of the Top 100 Apps.
In about 2/3 of the apps, the iTunes preview page ranked higher in search results. There is a
marked difference between these two sets of apps.
For all 100 apps, the median rank of the developer’s homepage (as published in iTunes) in
Google search results was #17. Developers should take note here
because a rank of 17 means that your app’s homepage is pushed off to the much less visited
second page of results.
For those cases where the homepage appeared before iTunes, the median search result rank was
#1. The iTunes preview page median result was #5. When we look
at the other set, where iTunes appeared above the homepage, the median iTunes result was
#3 and the median homepage result was #71.
We can see here that homepages that rank well for searches on the app name have a pretty good
chance of capturing customers who are looking for that app. However, if the homepage is not doing
well for a search on the app name, it is far more likely that the customer will end up at the
iTunes store, or perhaps a review site.
Some Surprises
While I was not surprised to see the iTunes preview pages come in at the #1 result for App Store
specific titles like “Space Miner: Space Ore Bust,” I did not expect to see the
iTunes page fall near the top with some older brands that predate the App Store.
“Frogger,” “Skee-Ball,” and “SpinArt” — single word
titles — all show iTunes at #6. Tetris, Scrabble, Rock Band and Final
Fantasy have the iTunes preview page holding a spot between #13 and
#15. “Playboy” — another single word term that I would have
thought to have lots of search results — shows the iTunes page for the app at
#7.
Why Do iTunes Preview Pages Rank So High? iTunes preview pages rank well in
Google search results because they are very search engine friendly for app names. The URL, page
title, meta description, meta keywords, and the H1 tag are all loaded with the app name. These
pages also have lots of incoming links from every blog entry, review, and so on that uses the
iTunes link. I suspect that the Playboy app comes in at #7 because of all the recent news and
opinion articles that link to the app as an example of a big publisher that escaped the iTunes sexy
app purge. The old phobos.apple.com links are 301 redirected (permanently moved) to the new preview
page which helps transfer all the links directed to the old page to the new preview page as well.
It is interesting to note that the iTunes preview page uses the “nofollow” attribute
for links to the app’s homepage, so the PageRank of the preview page does not convey any
benefit to the developer’s site . The Upside to iTunes Preview Ranking High for App
Names The advantage to publishers in having the iTunes preview rank high in search results
for an app name is clear. It gets customers who are searching for their app to the one place where
they can download your app and pay money for the privilege to do so. But there may be times when a
publisher would want someone searching for their app to get to their own site first. What
is the Impact of Ranking Below the iTunes Preview Page? There is no easy answer to
questions about what this all means for App developers. However, let me point out one key advantage
of ranking higher than the iTunes preview page — developers can influence what shoppers learn
about their company and their app outside of the iTunes App Store. Also if they come to the
publisher’s site first and then go to iTunes, the publisher has a chance to see what brought
them there. The iTunes Store does not provide any information about individual customers or even
reporting on keyword searches that lead to apps. David Barnard of App
Cubby sees a positive side in the iTunes App Store climbing in the search results. It’s a
better user experience for potential customers to land on a preview page. I’m also happy to
see Apple working the SEO angle on behalf of developers (something myself and many fellow
developers have little experience in). It does concern me that developers do not have access to
analytics on these preview pages (or anything in the App Store for that matter). With iTunes
preview pages ranking so high in search results, I get an even smaller window into my potential
customer base. But I do appreciate Apple’s efforts to help users discover and
purchase apps and the long term impact that has on my pocketbook. Use URL-safe Characters
in App Titles One finding from this quick study is that apps with a special character like
the trademark or copyright symbol in the name, do not get the app name in the URL of the iTunes
because the algorithm to generate the URL must not be able to deal with these characters. In these
case, the URL contains the app id only. There are nine apps with this issue in the Top 100 Paid
Apps list. Of those nine, the median ranking of the iTunes preview page is #8,
well below the #3 ranking of sites that do have the name in the URL. Homepages for
this set of apps dropped in the results significantly. The best homepage result of
this set was #15 by “Need for Speed Undercover” but six of the nine
homepages did not appear in the first 100 results from Google. In the case of “Brothers in
Arms 2: Global Front” the iTunes link is in the #1 spot, but the specially
created web site for the iPhone game, brothersinarmsiphone.com, does not even appear in Google
search results. I do not think that we can say that the non-safe characters in the title are the
cause of the low ranking for these homepages, but perhaps the inattention to SEO practices in the
App Store are linked to a lack of effort to optimize the homepage as well. Developers should pay
more attention to SEO to make sure that customers looking for their app can find their site.
What Does It All Mean?
There are two issues that most developers should look for right away. The first is the non-safe
characters issue mentioned above. The second is to look closely at the app description.
Previously, the app description was not indexed for iTunes searches. Only the name and hidden
keywords are used for searching inside iTunes. However, the description text is being indexed by
Google now. It would benefit publishers to spend more attention on crafting the right message in
the app description to reach those searching on the web.
Apple’s move to go with HTML content in the app store and the new preview pages for the App
Store and other content have had a clear effect on where iTunes content appears in web searches.
More web traffic is going to go straight to the iTunes Store as this trend continues but
developers can take a few steps to make sure that customers find the info that they have prepared
for shoppers on their own web sites.
While a completely different type of film, Michael Winterbottom's The Killer Inside Me received about as
much attention at the Sundance Film Festival as Lars von Trier's Antichrist. Apparently,
there are some incredibly brutal scenes that involve violence against women. With the hype, and an
incredible cast - Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba, Elias Koteas, Kate Hudson, Bill Pullman, Ned Beatty
and even Simon Baker - IFC Films snatched up the rights to the sucker with plans on releasing it
this summer. Until then, check out a pretty boring clip. I'm sure the goods are forthcoming.
Published in 1952, "The Killer Inside Me" concerns a deputy sheriff in a West Texas town whose kind
Everyman demeanor masks his true dark self. He is slowly revealed as a psychotic killer.
For those of you who are recuperating in a wheelchair to get about, how about adding some zest to
your ordinary adventures with the wUnderglow
Wheelchair Light? After all, it not only enhances night-time visibility but provides a fun
“underglow” effect similar to those colored light tubes as found on the underside of
some rice rockets. A white micro-light is there to light your way, while multi-colored strobing
micro-lights make room for added visibility and an “underglow”. A 360-degree
rotatable clip allows you to point light in any direction, and batteries are easily replaced. A
single wUnderglow Wheelchair Light kit will cost $25. Tech Cult – We cover
the latest tech news, but always with a funny twist.
[ wUnderglow
Wheelchair Light copyright by Coolest Gadgets
]
On his Fox News show, Sean Hannity became the latest Fox News personality to defend Glenn Beck's
statement that President Obama is "a racist," joining News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch and Fox
News president Roger Ailes. Discussing Beck's comments, Hannity stated, "When the president hangs
out with Jeremiah Wright for 20 years, I'm -- can one conclude that there are issues with the
president?"
Beck: Obama is a "racist"
Beck: Obama a "racist" who has "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the
white culture." On the July 28, 2009, edition of Fox & Friends,
Beck discussed remarks Obama had made about the controversial arrest of Harvard professor Henry
Louis Gates and declared that in his response to the arrest, Obama "exposed himself as a guy"
with "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture." Beck added that Obama is a
"racist." Fox News senior vice president of programming Bill Shine stated later that day that Beck "expressed a
personal opinion which represented his own views, not those of the Fox News Channel. And as with
all commentators in the cable news arena, he is given the freedom to express his opinions."
Hannity latest Fox News personality to defend Beck's comments
Hannity defends Beck: "Can one conclude that there are issues with the president, black
liberation theology?" On the March 9 edition his Fox News' show, Hannity discussed Dan
Rather's
comment that Obama "couldn't sell watermelons if you gave him the state troopers to flag down
the traffic." Hannity stated that Beck has "never said anything over the top, like what Dan
Rather said." After guest Penny Lee brought up that Beck "called the president of the United
States, almost -- referred to him as a racist," Hannity defended Beck, saying: "But wait a
minute. Wait, hang on a second. When the president hangs out with Jeremiah Wright for 20 years,
I'm -- can one conclude that there are issues with the president, black liberation theology?"
Murdoch on Beck's claim that Obama is "racist": "[H]e was
right." In a November 6, 2009, interview
with Sky News Australia political editor David Speers, Murdoch declared that while Beck "perhaps
shouldn't have" said it, Beck was "right." From the interview:
SPEERS: Glenn Beck, who you mentioned, has called Barack Obama a racist, and he helped organize a
protest against him. Others on Fox have likened him --
MURDOCH: Yeah.
SPEERS: -- to Stalin. Is that defensible?
MURDOCH: No, no, no, not Stalin, I don't think. I don't know who that -- not one of our people.
On the racist thing, that caused a [unintelligible]. But he did make a very racist comment,
about, you know, blacks and whites and so on, and which he said in his campaign he would be
completely above. And, you know, that was something which perhaps shouldn't have been said about
the president, but if you actually assess what he was talking about, he was right.
News Corp. spokesman Gary Ginsberg subsequently stated that Murdoch "does not at all, for a
minute, think the president is a racist." Politico's Michael Calderone reported
that Ginsberg said it's "not the case" that Murdoch shares Beck's view, "but did not comment
further."
After questioned byMedia
Matters, Murdoch appears to deny claiming that Obama made a
"racist" comment. On November 19, 2009, Media Matters for
America staff member Ben Fishel
asked Murdoch if he "could be more clear about what racist comments the president allegedly
made." Murdoch said: "I denied that absolutely. ... I don't believe he's a racist." Murdoch did
not respond when further pressed to explain his remarks.
Ailes claims Beck said "one unfortunate thing," and "he apologized for"
it. During the January 31
edition of ABC's This Week, Ailes discussed Beck's comments and stated, "I
don't -- I think he speaks English. I don't know, but I mean, I don't misinterpret any of his
words. He did say one unfortunate thing, which he apologized for, but that happens in live
television." Ailes did not specify which of Beck's assertions he was referring to, but assuming
that Ailes was referring to Beck's claim that Obama is "a racist," the claim that Beck
"apologized" for the remark is false. In fact, Beck asserted that "it is a serious question" and
apologized only for "the way it was phrased," noting that "living in a soundbite world [is]
really a nasty place to live." From the September 22, 2009, edition of @KatieCouric:
COURIC: You stand behind your assertion that in your view, President Obama is a racist?
BECK: I believe that Americans should ask themselves tough questions.
BECK [video clip]: This guy is, I believe, a racist.
COURIC: Are you sorry you said that at all?
BECK: I'm sorry the way it was phrased, because I think everybody has to -- living in a soundbite
world -- really a nasty place to live. And it is a serious question that I think needs serious
discussion.
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chatguy2010
Palm just showed
us the Unreal Engine 3 running on webOS, which apparently took a couple weeks to port over to the
platform using that fancy new 
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