The Raymond Babbit Award
To Ray Allen, the subject of a mesmerizing Jackie MacMullan piece about his monotonous routines and borderline obsessive/compulsive habits. (In retrospect, it’s a shame the Knicks didn’t trade for him last summer just for comedy’s sake — I could see a rattled Ray taking a leave of absence in January after Isiah Thomas moved the team’s shootaround for the fifth time that week.) You could make a case the Celtics have two crazy people on their team — Allen and Garnett — who would be thrown into a mental institution if they behaved in a grocery store like they did during the average NBA playoff game.

(By the way, that would be a funny “SNL” skit — TCIKG intensely shopping at a Whole Foods, grabbing the last box of Fruit Loops from the shelf and pounding his chest, woofing orders at the deli guy and chest-bumping him after a particular good cut of American cheese, then getting in a customer’s face who made the mistake of bringing 14 items into the “13 items or less” aisle. I continue to believe cameras should be following Garnett at all times.)

Yup, I said it.  I love spyware.  Well, not in general, but when I heard via Lifehacker that I could get a free copy of Windows Vista Ultimate in exchange for installing a feedback program on my desktop, I jumped at the chance.  For three months I had to run this feedback data collection program on a computer.  At the conclusion of the three months, I would be shipped a free copy of Vista Ultimate.

I did not really care about the data collection because I only use my desktop for a media server now-a-days, so there was nothing about usage habits they could really collect.  I’ll let someone look at my computing habits and settings on a computer I don’t use for three months in exchange for a 200+ dollar software license.

My package shipped today.

With the playoffs starting, I see quite a few new commercials. This one is the best by far:

For anyone that might be having trouble resuming your computer from sleep mode with Vista after updating to SP1, make sure you have all of the latest drivers for your computer.  My HP dv2620us laptop would crash when it resumed from into sleep mode after I installed SP1.  The problem fixed itself after I updated the audio driver via windows update.  It was an optional update, so I had to go in manually and select it.

In addition to this, I had to update my BIOS. For my notebook, a HP dv2620us laptop, I had to go to HP’s driver page for my particular model. Listed halfway down the page was the BIOS update file.

After updating those things - poof - everything works like a charm.

Playoffs begin in 20 minutes.  I am loving.  Its where amazing happens.

My buddy Jake sent me this post from the Xbox 360 Fanboy blog: Guess what? Mortal Kombat VS DC Universe!.

First reaction: W00T!

Second reaction: Finishing moves:

• Batman - disappear
• Superman - Laser lobotomy
• Green Lantern - Inscription in a slowly contracting green ball.

Third Reaction: Isn’t Batman and Superman (and the JLA’s) whole spiel centered around not killing? Doesn’t that throw a wrentch into their inclusion into a came called MORTAL KOMBAT?

And now for something moderately different:

My buddy Jake sent me this article from Wired magazine about how high speed cameras are helping scientists with their research. The coolest thing from the article? The following video clip showing a water balloon being popped:

If that is not t3h sw33tn355, it is awfully close.

We, as Christians, are among the world’s best at sweeping, dismissive judgments. All one needs to do is subscribe to the Worldview Weekend newsletter to see that. This is not a new trend, however, as evidenced by the following quote by Epiphanius:

Passing this judgment [on them is like passing judgment] on a toothless lizard full of madness, I will go on to the next things, beloved, calling upon God to help our inadequacy and to enable us to fulfill our promise [i.e. to write this book] (Medicine Box, 49)

As dismissive judgments go, likening your opponent to a “toothless lizard full of madness” is pretty sweet. In this case the lizards in need of dentures were the Quintillians and they were dismissed because of their allowance of women as clergy and prophetesses.

I keep wondering how Luke 6:37 fits into all of this, if not in the 4th century, then in the current postmodern context in which we find ourselves.

Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn others, or it will all come back against you. Forgive others, and you will be forgiven.

Here’s the rub: how can I actually not judge and still maintain myself?

I consider myself to be a collection of definitions.  I am 6′1” tall.  I like basketball; I hate baseball.  I follow Christ.  I determine that which I am. Well, the things that I can choose - I can’t choose to be a white male, for instance.  I determine this by means of judgment.  I judge for myself that baseball is three minutes of action crammed into three hours.  I determine that math is a good way to use numbers.  I determine that there is nothing sweeter than a drop step or a juke+spin+hook-shot in basketball.  How am I not to judge, which is a command from the One that I follow when judgments necessarily make up an individual?  In other places in the Bible, we are commanded to test the spirits, to determine what is right.  How do we reconcile this?

As best as I can understand it, there is a distinguishment between moral and factual judgments.  We are to make so-called factual judgments about matters and hold them over and above the judgments of others.  On the other hand, we are to refrain from making moral judgments about people and their positions.

While this seems almost self-explanatory, I know I often need reminding of this.  Just look through the archives of masstheolgoy.com, hundiejo.com, or brendoman.com as evidence of this.

What do you do with Luke 6:37?

This is just going to be a series of quotes from the awesome Simmons NBA MVP breakdown, Part I

449. Zach Randolph
Any time the same player is widely credited for one team’s resurgence (simply because he left), another team’s ongoing demise (simply because he showed up) and the firing of a third team’s GM (Milwaukee’s Larry Harris, who made the fatal mistake of trying to convince his owner that the Bucks should trade for him), that should have been enough for him to cruise to the LVP Award. Zach, I’m sorry. I don’t know what else you could have done short of stabbing Nate Robinson during a timeout.

372. Jermaine O’Neal
Ever since O’Neal punched out Turtle during the Artest Melee, he morphed into C-Webb 2.0. Check out his past four seasons: 122 missed games (and counting), declining stats each season and one of the most damaging contracts in the league. Is it too late to set him up with Tyra Banks? By the way, if you had to rank the most destructive moments to an NBA franchise in the past 30 years in terms of immediate damage and long-term ramifications, the Artest Melee ranks just below Lenny Bias’ coke overdose and the Bowie/Jordan pick at this point.

85. Vince Carter
I mailed in this paragraph in his honor.

133. Luol Deng/Ben Gordon/Emeka Okafor (tie)
“On second thought … um … I WILL take that extension!”

314. Tim Thomas
I guess the question is this: Is there an NBA forward alive who couldn’t play 31 minutes a game, score 12 points, notch five rebounds and three assists, miss 70 percent of his 3-pointers and allow his guy to score at will? If baseball has VORP (value over replacement player), then basketball should have VOTT (value over Tim Thomas). And that’s not even half the story. During a Lakers-Clips game last week, the Postmaster General (that’s my nickname for him) spent a large chunk of the third quarter jogging between the two 3-point lines without ever crossing either line, almost like he wagered a teammate that he could play an entire quarter without going within 24 feet of either basket. It might have been the most riveting moment of the Clippers’ season. He’s such a dog that PETA might protest this paragraph.

Report: China led world executions in 2007 - 377 minimum killings by the state.  Us?  We rank 5th with 45. Texas had 26.

China ‘now top carbon polluter’ - WE’RE #2!, WE’RE #2! WE’RE #2!, WE’RE #2!

Super Mario Galaxy mod reaches for the stars

Scale model of Scrooge McDuck’s money bin - Now, if I can only get my Ma’ to bake be a cake with some tools in it, so I can bust outta this joint.