Since I can't get any John13 over at the Labs, I'll take it from 1142.net:

John was a horrible thing with the skin of a beautiful young girl. He lived beneath a pile of 4 year old computers, that were discarded as junk by a privilaged and ignorant populace. Hunted, and feared, John shunned the company of others, and only emerged from his cyber dam to drink from the watercooler and to eat the food abandoned in the company's mini fridge. Despite their hatered for him, john worked very hard behind the scenes to please the users, but his work was not appreciated. "This machine crashed twice today!" women would scream as the struck him with barbed poles. Bloodied, John would drag himself back to his dark hole. The next day, a server in a far away land died, and the users came to John's lair. They shook the walls, and cried "What have you done! This is all your fault!" John sat in the dark, his beautiful skin, torn and pasty from lack of sunlight. Once it was calm, he would fix everything, everyone would love him. They would talk about current events, and maybe even go out to lunch! It was then he noticed the green smoke pouring in, THEY WERE POISONING HIM! He tore madly at walls, but he was too late and there was no escape. He did manage to pull one machine loose, and the structure collased on top of him.

The next day, God was walking in the garden with his angels. "Go to earth" he commanded "and bring me the rarest thing you can find!" the angels obeyed, and they returned a few hours later with a Segway. "I meant the pure heart of John Thirteen, but this is pretty cool!" said God, who spent the next 45 minutes playing with his new toy before he stuck it in the corner where it was only pulled out every couple of months to show visitors.
THE END.

Whoa. I found a link to String Theory over on Steve's Web Page. I always have liked string theory.

I'm thinking about William Holman Hunt today.

Huge Blue's Clues Joe-for-Steve thread over at MeFi with all kinds of links. This one's for you, Christine.

I really, totally believe that I would have been a great replacement for Steve. It makes me a little sad to see they picked someone else.

Now here's a nice link I haven't seen anywhere else (before I swiped it from thewebtoday): Spin's Top 40 Working Musicians. I confess, I have a lot of work to do to catch up with the ones I'm interested in.

I don't know what to make of this Alexa/Amazon/Google hybrid. I'm both attracted and repelled. I guess I like Amazon, but I don't want the whole web to be Amazon. I'll show you mine.

Observation: the Daypop Top 40 and MetaFilter cover a lot of the same things.

This might seem obvious to you. Still, it really came home to me yesterday. I checked out MeFi after a pretty long hiatus and clicked through on only one link on the whole front page. I'd seen most of them that I was interested in on Daypop, and in more condensed form.

If you're interested in this whole MetaFilter thing, Steven has a long post about the clustering of weblogs. Then discussion broke out on MeFi.

As for me, I was part of the 1142 cluster for a while. I still link to those folks, but I couldn't hang with the pace of interaction over there.

Dallas Willard is the best contemporary thinker I know of. How's that for an accolade? I just got his new book, Renovation of the Heart, in the mail and it listed his website, which I had no idea existed. In case you don't know Willard, in addition to being an ordained Southern Baptist minister, has a PhD in philosophy and teaches at USC. A taste: Thrill to Dallas (logically) tearing Richard Dawkins (the evolution evangelist) limb from limb.

Weird news of the night: did you know there is going to be a Crocodile Hunter movie? I was just looking for Mission:Impossible 3.

In case you've been wondering about the scarcity of posting, I've been travelling more than usual, once on business to McAllen TX and now to Iowa for vacation with family.

How could I pass up the Belief-O-Matic that Scott posted? Our results were very similar, probably because we both value similar social things, like the Quakers do. I actually came out a little less Protestant than Scott. Funny. I wonder which question made that distinction.

It's coincident that I'm reading the autobiography of George Fox, the founder of the Quakers (on my Palm). I honestly don't think that colored my answers. I think they're pretty representative of where I am all the time.

Rare Megamouth Shark Found on S.African Beach

What they worked on this time up: shuttle to Alpha.

We watched Heist (Gene Hackman, Danny DeVito, Delroy Lindo) the other night. It was really good. David Mamet wrote and directed. He also wrote and directed The Winslow Boy, which we enjoyed as well. I didn't recognize Rebecca Pidgeon as having been in both. Then I noticed she'd been in a lot of his movies. Then I noticed they're married.

Tiger Woods must be an alien.

How else do you explain such focus, such dominance?

Bryan and I figured it out this morning. You read it here first.

Seen on a bumper sticker recently:

I used up all of my sickdays
so I called in dead.

I thought that was pretty funny.

Researchers find 3,600-mile ant supercolony

The Learning Channel has something on Eden and where it might have been located. Interesting. Looks pretty legit. So does the main scholar's Old Testament timeline.

Just a guess: The Bush Administration is not really committed to brokering peace in Palestine/Israel. Their next foreign policy agenda item is Iraq. They won't be sidetracked. So they're doing the minimum possible from an International opinion standpoint. This is not mudslinging. It's my guess at realpolitik.

The Mobile Transporter

Its purpose is to move the station's giant robot arm, a kind of construction crane with a computer brain, from one work site to another as construction continues on the orbiting outpost.

More on BlogRoots: I've got about three referals from BlogRoots searches. Clicking on the links, I learned something. The dude in the middle is Bausch (per).

Speculation on what it's going to be. For myself, I don't know.

Of course, the fact that I am in the forefront of this coverage will o

Tiger Woods is a pure machine. But you knew that.

Did you see Matt's working on a new project (scroll down to right side sidebar) : BlogRoots. Looks like him and Meg and ? (Jason?).

The Ultrabar looks good, especially highlighting on the page (without going to the Google cached copy) and search on the page. I'm going to try it.

Eek. It kept crashing my browsers before I could ever even use it. And I've got a relatively stud machine at work. Abort!

Ideas for expanding Google's power base.

You've seen it before. You know where to get it. But anyway...

BBC: In depth: Israel and the Palestinians. I found the timeline and maps particularly helpful.

See also The Question of Palestine, especially the issues.

Two articles I read today:

Marginalizing Arafat is Not Going to Bring Peace

'When Israel ends the Occupation and implements UN resolutions, as well as deal with their Palestinian counterparts as true equals, peace just might be achieved. Until then, the bloodshed will sadly continue.'

An Israeli's View from Arafat's Compound - particularly lists Israeli violations of International Law.

Huzza! I got linked in Italian!

Set your wayback machine for roller skating and Pat Benatar: go play some BattleZone.

Very strong words about Hamas from Eric.

I was talking with someone the other day about Israel and Palestine. The only potential answer I see is to set up borders and a Palestinian government and have it all regulated by peacekeeping UN troops. Both governments would have to conform to International Law. With some reasonable rule of law established, terrorism could begun to be fought. The Palestinians and Israeli governments would have to cooperate with this. The terrorist attacks would certainly continue. Some Israelis would probably retaliate. Many Palestinians won't rest until Israel is destroyed. Many Israelis won't rest until Palestine is destroyed.

Top 10 April Fools Day Hoaxes of All Time

Disturbing search that brought someone to my site: pictures of my girlfriend in Leia slave costume. I think the search originated in Polish. Go figure. I'm not clicking through.

Looks like I didn't miss much not watching the game last night.

But I was wrong about the final pool standings. I forgot that my brother, Kyle, picked Maryland to the final. Because of the way I had the rounds weighted, it bumped him into 3rd, and me back down to 4th, and Christine to 5th. So there you have it - truth in reporting.

Alternative authors' versions of Lord of the Rings. How could I resist? (via Higgy)

Happy Easter.

Easter is essential to Christianity in its historic expression. It strains the term to call oneself a Christian and not believe in the resurrection of Christ.

Christine posted some stories from our Easter.

You should go over to Eric's and at least read the beginning of the Wasteland. If you can afford to invest the time, read on.