You know, being able to actually apply religious principals to one’s life wouldn’t be nearly as difficult if more people would hold attitudes like these.  In this article from the New York Times, the writer asserts that many Christians are increasingly wanting the church to “grow up” and realize that evolution and/or scientific thinking may just enhance religion, not condemn it.  I’ve tried for years to find a happy medium between the two, finally settling somewhere between nihilism and indifference.  But, if I were going to fall into a state of conviction again, this certainly seems to be the attitude to adopt.

The message is clear: religion itself needs to evolve to attend to the needs of the faithful in an increasingly changing, chaotic world, lest it go extinct in lieu of materialism (not a very attractive thought, in itself).

Perhaps it is true that the statement “We believe that among God’s good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought” is just as egotistical as the pre-enlightenment thinking that Group XYZ is God’s chosen people and His Glory wills us to conquer and slaughter the world in His name, for we are invincible, but it seems like it could work here.

I think I’ve finally got things set up and organized in my computer room with the new iMac.  I moved my computer desk into a different location, making the room flow better (which was a pain considering I now have a 10 gallon aquarium on it — poor fish are probably traumatized).  I’ve also adopted the Mac attitude of clutter-free with everything hidden away, and for the first time I’ve organized and neatly routed all of the cables underneath and behind the computer.  It’s amazing to look down and not see a spider’s web of cords and cables at my feet.

The last of the hardware to be migrated to the iMac was my old Creative Inspire 5.1 Speakers.  The iMac has kind of a weird headphone/optical digital combo audio output jack, so to use my surround sound I had to get Griffin Technology’s XPress Cable.  Everything plugged right in, and I don’t think my speakers have ever sounded so good.  Plus, the red fiber optic light is nifty!

So far, I’ve had very few problems out of Rosetta/non-Intel software.  I had some trouble with the label maker software that ships with my printer, and some trouble with the Tri-Select Backup software for my external drive which, as I found out later, isn’t even compatible with 10.4 (Tiger). Flip4Mac (WMV playback through Quicktime) also doesn’t install, but there’s a patch promised soon™. There are a few game issues, particularly X-Plane.  Turn the graphics settings down and it flies well enough until a Universal Binary is available.  In fact, all of these vendors are planning Universal Binaries of their software.  As with all things Mac, it’s just a waiting game.

All in all, I’m very comfortable with the Mac as my personal productivity and development station.