It’s been awhile since I let loose one of my rants about something trivial that yet bugs me, so here’s one.

I hate surprise parties.

I must admit that the appeal of surprise parties completely eludes me and I am getting to dislike them even more as I get older. Maybe it is because they are an acquired taste and since they were unheard of in Sri Lanka when I was growing up (at least I don’t recall ever hearing about one, let alone attending any), I just didn’t learn to like them. And yet in the US people seem to really like them.

The whole thing about sneaking in early and then hiding and waiting until the guest of honor arrives and then jumping out and shouting in unison “surprise!” strikes me as childish.
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An odd situation has occurred. A comment has been posted containing explicitly sexual words. I personally am not bothered by language that some find offensive but I do warn people when some of the things I link to contain such language so that those who do can avoid it.

The commenter clearly disliked what I wrote in the post The rise of racism and religion in Israel.

While I delete suspected spam without any qualms, I allow all genuine comments. This particular comment does not look like spam (it includes my name and does not contain any links to sites) but does not make any substantive point and consists of a purely personal attack on me. I did not want to delete it because people have a right to dislike me or disagree with me and say so.

I have decided that if necessary, I will censor particular words in comments using the common practice of replacing selected letters with hyphens. Those of you who are angered by a post and do want to use such language in comments can spare me some trouble by putting in your own hyphens.

India defeated Sri Lanka in a closely fought final game.

Sri Lanka batted first and scored 274 runs off their allotted fifty overs, losing six wickets in the process. India batted well in response, scoring 277 with 10 deliveries to spare, losing only four wickets along the way. Throughout their run chase India maintained the required scoring rate and always looked steady and confident.

It was a well-played game by both teams and India were the deserved winners.

So now it is on to the next World Cup to be played in 2015 in Australia and New Zealand.

The New York Times has created an interactive map based on the census data released last week. It is a good example of using technology to bring dry data to life.

You can spend a lot of time on it seeing how patterns are changing in the US.

A former preacher turned atheist, Loftus has published two books Why I Became an Atheist and The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails (winner of the 2011 About.com Reader’s Choice Award). His blog is ranked in the top 5 atheist/theist blogs on the internet today. He has three master’s degrees in the Philosophy of Religion and is a graduate of the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

His talk is on Saturday, March 26, 2011 in Wickenden Hall, room 322 on the CWRU campus. The talk is sponsored by the CWRU chapter of the Center for Inquiry.

All are welcome and refreshments will be available.

Wickenden Hall is on the Case quad. It is likely that the parking lot 1A right behind Wickenden (entering from northbound MLK Drive) will be open. If you park there, go up the outdoor steps and Wickenden Hall is the building on your immediate right.. The visitors parking lot between Crawford Hall and Amasa Stone chapel (which you enter from Euclid Avenue) will be open.

A former preacher turned atheist, Loftus has published two books Why I Became an Atheist and The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails (winner of the 2011 About.com Reader’s Choice Award). His blog is ranked in the top 5 atheist/theist blogs on the internet today. He has three master’s degrees in the Philosophy of Religion and is a graduate of the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

His talk is at 6:00 pm on Saturday, March 26, 2011 in Wickenden Hall, room 322 on the CWRU campus. The talk is sponsored by the CWRU chapter of the Center for Inquiry.

All are welcome and refreshments will be available.

Wickenden Hall is on the Case quad. It is likely that the parking lot 1A right behind Wickenden (entering from northbound MLK Drive) will be open. If you park there, go up the steps and Wickenden Hall is the building on your immediate right.

(Note; Loftus will also be speaking on Thursday, March 24 at 7:00 p to the Northeast Ohio Center for Inquiry. More details can be found here.)

Although I use a Mac computer and much prefer its operating system to the Windows alternative, I am not really a fan in that I do not run out and buy the latest Mac gadget unless it has really useful functionality. I do not, for example, have an iPhone. I do have an iPod touch because it is functional. It fits in my pocket and enables to carry around my calendar and address book and sync the former with others in my office. If I am in a Wi-Fi hotspot I can check the internet, though I find the small screen wearying to look at for any length of time.

So when the iPad came out, it was not clear to me what additional functionality it provided. It seemed like a big iPod touch and why would I need that when I had a laptop? It is true that it is smaller than a laptop and so would be easier to carry around to meetings, but it was not clear to me that that was a sufficient advantage to invest in one. As far as I was concerned, it seemed like a solution to a non-existent problem.

But my university’s technology department had a few iPads that they were passing around for people to check out to see if they had any ideas about how to use it at work and in teaching so I had one to play with for a few weeks.

My experience with the iPad has been interesting. Initially it was frustrating because I expected it to do everything a laptop did. In particular, I use my computer to write a lot even while reading. For example, I frequently want to jot down notes and ideas that occur to me while reading and the laptop enables me to go back and forth between reading and writing easily. The iPad? Not so much. You had to close one application to open the other and although it was quick, it was still awkward. The touch screen keyboard is big and easy to use but the keyboard being at the same angle of view as the screen made it awkward for me.

I realized that I was asking the iPad to do what it was not primarily intended to do. The iPad is great for receiving information but not so good for input. Once I let go of that expectation and worked with its strengths, it was better. I began to use it primarily as a reading device, to surf the web and read documents and that improved my experience.

One of the things that I was curious about was whether I would enjoy reading books on an e-reader. I had tried it with one of the earlier versions of the Kindle and had not liked it. I decided to give it another shot with iPad. There were five books that came with the iPad that was loaned to me. I had read four before but the fifth (The Count of Monte Cristo) was one that I had wanted to read for a long time, so clearly the anonymous person who had loaded these books onto the iPad was a kindred soul. This book is very long, over a 1,000 pages, and I figured it would be a good test of my ability to enjoy using an e-reader.

It is in reading this book that I have come to like the features of the iPad. The book features are easy on the eye and intuitive. The ability to search the book for events and characters that occurred before (important in long epic novels with lots of characters and complicated plot twists) and the built in dictionary and search features that link to Google or Wikipedia (again useful for a book set in another time and place and originally in another language so that there are many unusual words) are all nice to have. The Count of Monte Cristo has a complicated plot with many characters who take on different names and identities over time and whose stories intertwine. Characters whom one had encountered early on suddenly pop up much later. The ability to search the book made it much easier to keep track of things. I wish I had had it when I read other epic novels like War and Peace or Anna Karenina.

The deficiencies in the iPad as a book reader are the same as I had with the Kindle. One is that while you can change the font size, the size of the illustrations cannot be changed, which makes that feature irrelevant for technical books with lots of intricate figures. The other is that to give citations to things in books, you need to have the page number of a specific print edition. The books on the iPad have page counters but they are internal and vary with the chosen font size. Maybe there are ways to overcome these features that I am not aware of.

One big advantage is that with the iPad, you have immediate and free access to a vast array of classical literature that is now out of copyright. So with the purchase of this device, you had immediate access to all the old books you ever wanted to read without having to track them down. For someone like me who, when it comes to fiction, prefers to read the classics more than contemporary authors, this is a huge benefit.

I also played with some of the games that were on the iPad, including Angry Birds which I had heard so much about. They were ok but I am not a big fan of games and so soon got bored.

I found that I ended up using the iPad most in the last couple of hours at night in bed, reading the book and surfing the web before sleeping. It is much easier to use in bed than a laptop and the big backlit screen makes it easy on the eyes.

So my verdict is that the iPad is primarily an entertainment device and secondarily a work device because of the limited input capability, while the laptop is primarily a work device and secondarily an entertainment device.

Will I get an iPad, especially now that the new iPad2 is out? I’ve not decided but am thinking about it. Have any readers of this blog used an iPad? I’d be curious to hear your reactions.

Here is some video footage of people who barely escaped the waters of the tsunami and, incredibly, kept their video camera running while they clambered to safety and then observed a rescue.

Usually after a catastrophe like what occurred in Japan there are a lot of human interest stories of people mourning lost loved ones, frantically search for the missing, selfless heroism and generosity, with the occasional good news of someone surviving in the wreckage and being rescued after being given up for lost.

In this case, although we had a double catastrophe of an earthquake followed by a tsunami, the focus on the fate of the nuclear reactors has eclipsed almost everything else. While this is understandable, there are some stories that I feel should have received wider coverage. One is the absence of widespread looting, or any looting at all, in the wake of the disaster. The other is the absence of price gouging by merchants. In fact, many merchants are reducing prices in order to help out the survivors. The third is the orderly and neighborly way that people are behaving to ensure that resources are shared amongst everyone.

All these things reflect well on the capacity of human beings to think of others and the greater good even in times of dire stress and on the Japanese people and culture in particular, and are deserving of greater recognition.

The BBC has posted new video of the moment when the water struck land.