A couple of weekends ago I attended one of the IEET's conferences in California on the topic of Religion and Transhumanism. While I was there I took notes during the speakers' presentations, and I promised some people that I'd put them online at my earliest convenience. Here they are, in the best order I can conceive of and with whatever links I can dig up to elucidate my somewhat cryptic chickenscratch. Please note that I took notes on things I don't necessarily agree with, and that I advise you to follow some of the links before jumping to conclusions …

You can't blink without running into a news article about Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center (slashdotted at the time of this writing) and his scheme to burn a bunch of copies of the Q'uran, the holy book of the path of Islam outside of his church in Gainesville, Florida this Saturday (11 September 2010). It's on again, it's off again, and even the pastor of the church that punted him like Jeff Reed stood against him.

Then word got around that there was something better to do than get all steamed up over it... Greetings, salutations, and …

I'm proud to day that the wedding of Elwing and Irregular Expression went amazingly well, and with no major hitches to speak of. Congratulations, you two.

After my last post from Elwing's place on Saturday afternoon, I loaded the TARDIS up for the trip back to the Strong Mansion in Maryland as the best... what would you call the female counterpart of a Best Man, anyway? Best Woman? Best Friend? Google's copy of The Groom's Guide says that Best Lady is appropriate, so that's what I'll use henceforth. Resuming, Sarah, the Best Lady, helped Brian (who was unfortunately still quite …