As a Buddhist monk my concern extends to all members of the human family and, indeed, to all sentient beings who suffer. I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their own happiness or satisfaction.

- His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, Oslo, December 1989

I believe there is an important distinction to be made between religion and spirituality. Religion I take to be concerned with belief in the claims to salvation of one faith tradition or another--an aspect of which is acceptance of some form of meta-physical or philosophical reality, including perhaps an idea of heaven or hell. Connected with this are religious teachings or dogma, ritual, prayers and so on. Spirituality I take to be concerned with those qualities of the human spirit--such as love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony, which bring happiness to both self and others.

- His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Did you know that the cell phone industry is about to launch a 411 directory of cell phone numbers? Our numbers could be included, whether we want it or not. That's because the cell phone companies themselves are writing the rules for how and when numbers are made public. They'll also decide if we have to pay more to keep our numbers private.

Join me in telling Congress that we want to keep control over our cell phone numbers and we don't want to be charged more to keep our numbers private.

Click the link below now to tell your Congressional representatives to give you control over your cell phone number.

http://www.EscapeCellHell.org

- Candorville by Darrin Bell - 07/24/2004

I spent a lot of this weekend teaching myself cascading style sheets. In fact the blog now uses one.

I am having problems with Opera though. For some reason it is not fully reading the css file. At this point I have no idea why. Some of the classes for paragraphs work but others don't. Also, the body classes are not showing up. Thus, no background image nor Comic Sans font. I have no idea why other that Opera just doesn't read them yet.

I am unsure if Netscape can read the site properly or not.

As of July 25, 2004, Bernard Hinault is no longer the Tour de France's most-wins master. Hinault -- along with fellow five-time winners Jaques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx and Miguel Indurain -- has been supplanted by the six-win-and-counting performance of American Lance Armstrong. How's Hinault handling it? In an exclusive interview, The Badger tells all.

Bernard, what memories will you keep from this Tour de France?

Great memories. Armstrong, of course, who ruled this race. Virenque as well, who secured a seventh polka-dot jersey -- another never-done-before feat. I'll also remember the resurgence of a younger generation. The future of the sport, and in particular [Thomas] Voeckler, who put on great show.

Was Armstrong too strong or were his rivals too weak?

It's tough to say. Who's too strong, who's weaker than they should be? It's difficult to calculate. There's no tool for measuring the differences mathematically. The bottom line is that Armstrong dominated the race. And he did it with panache, winning stages and proving that he's the boss of the peloton.

Outside of Armstrong, did the final podium surprise you?

Yes, absolutely. No one thought Kloden was capable of finishing second at the Tour de France. The same goes for Basso. Now, we have to hope that both these riders -- plus all those who were sub-par this year -- stay in top form for 2005. We need a good show next year.

There are those who say that even if Armstrong has now won six Tours de France, he can't be compared with you or Eddy Merckx. All he does is the Tour, while you raced everything from February to October...

It's impossible to compare the two eras. The riders are different, roads are different, it's not the same technology nor the same training techniques. How can you compare the era of Merckx to the modern day? It's impossible. Armstrong is the king of his era, like Merckx was the king of his era and Anquetil before him.

Will Armstrong be back in 2005, and if so, who can beat him?

I think he'll be back at the Tour next year. At least I hope he'll be back. Right now, it's difficult to peg his adversaries. There are a few up-and-coming prospects: Cunego in Italy, Valverde in Spain. Kloden will have gained confidence, as will Basso. And maybe Ullrich will re-find his physical peak. There are a lot of pretenders to Armstrong's throne.

Was the 2004 Tour de France lacking in suspense? Did you find it boring?

If you were bored at this race it means you don't like cycling. Me, I'm never bored because there's always something interesting going on. Everyday there's something that reminds me why I love this sport.

Eurosport - Interview by Stefano Bernabino - 26/07/2004

From Berlin comes word of the arrest last week of - well, we'll call him Karl. His crime: being involved in a minor traffic accident in which he was driving without a license. Normally, this wouldn't raise eyebrows. After all, police in the German capital deal with far more serious offenses every day. Still, Karl's case is noteworthy because for years he has been earning his living as ... a driving instructor. He flunked his first road test in 1961 and never went back because "I was too afraid to try again." He has since schooled more than 1,000 people in the fine points of operating a motor vehicle. No word on whether they'll have to be retaught.

In which cities do people enjoy the greatest affinity with the printed word? Jack Miller, chancellor of the University of Wisonsin-Whitewater, attempts to answer that question with his second annual list of America's Most Literate Cities. To reach his conclusions, Miller weighs census data, newspaper circulation rates, magazine publishing activity, educational attainment levels, library resources, and the prevalence of booksellers. The cities of 200,000 or more people with the greatest proppensity for reading, based on these and other factors:

1. Minneapolis
2. Seattle
3. Pittsburgh
4. Madison, Wis.
5. Cincinnati
6. Washington
7. Denver
8. Boston
9. Portland, Ore.
10. San Francisco

A cartoon by Mark Fiore. - Treaties, Shmeaties! What good are nukes if we don't use them?

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/fiore/2004/08/08_200.html

Bob has updated Thingamablog to version 1.0b1!

I installed it this morning and like the features it has. One of my favorites is that all the blog databases are available in one window. No more having to open new databases everytime you want to work on one blog or another.

Thanks Bob!

What if the entire world could vote in our presidential election?

Who would win the Kerry vs. Bush election?

You probably already guessed the outcome...

http://www.betavote.com/

With the Olympics back in Greece, birthplace of both the ancient and modern Games, a profusion of books, magazines, Internet sites, and radio-TV accounts has bombarded the public with Olympic history. Many regurgitate the same basic facts (with slight variations), including that 311 athletes representing 14 countries competed in the 1896 Athens Olympics, compared to more than 10,000 from 202 countries participating this year. Oddly, a full roster of the nations at those inaugural modern Games isn't easy to find - except in a new book, "The Olympics: Athens to Athens, 1896-2004," published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. The 14 nations that sent athletes in 1896 (in alphabetical order as they were known at the time):

• Australia
• Austria-Hungary
• Bulgaria
• Chile
• Denmark
• Egypt
• France
• Germany
• Great Britain
• Greece
• Italy
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• US

- Non Sequitur by Wiley - 08/24/2004

With another academic year just around the corner, a new Royal Bank of Scotland survey of 2,163 college students - in this case in Britain - has found that they spend three times as much money annually on adult beverages as they do on books: $1.8 billion, compared to $600 million.

I installed SP2 a week ago and didn't like the fact that I had to have Automatic Update Service turned on for WindowsUpdate to work. When Microsoft updated that site they only way it works if a few services I don't have turned on are turned on (and I don't like having to restart my machine in the default hardware profile just to check for updates).

I have found a work around to get to the old update site. Use this link to go to the old catalog page (which the new site doesn't refer to anymore!) and then you can use the link towards the bottom to go to the old windows update site.

This way you can have your OS scanned and see if there are any updates that need to be applied. You can then head back to the catalog and download them and apply them when you feel they are not going to mess up windows to badly ;).

http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/catalog/en/default.asp

- The Boondocks by Aaron McGruder

As free human beings we can use our unique intelligence to try to understand ourselves and our world. But if we are prevented from using our creative potential, we are deprived of one of the basic characteristics of a human being.

- His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Just what we have all been waiting for, a self cooling aluminum can!

Tempratech has developed a can that cools the contents by a minimum of 30° in 3 minutes.

The Instant Cool Can (I.C. Can™) uses a 100% safe and environmentally friendly self-chilling process that cools by using brilliantly simple water evaporation.

I*C*CAN

Check out this parody of Light My Fire for Linspire.

http://media.linspire.com/RunLinspireSong/RunLinspire.swf