Techcordance

Buzz

by Jennifer Leggio
By even writing this post I am breaking a promise to my friend Mack Collier. Earlier today I publicly promised to him on Twitter that I was going to wait a while before posting any opinions on Google Buzz until I got a firm grasp on how to use it. Yet, after only toying with it on and off for a handful of hours, there are a couple of issues I can’t help but call out now, primarily around the intrusiveness of the way this thing works. Mack, I am sorry.
If you haven’t tried it yet, Google Buzz integrates with your Gmail account (and other Google services) and turns it into a social experience. A “buzz” is a threaded conversation not unlike what FriendFeed tried to be (with pictures and video and blog links and more) and you can either post publicly (which shows up on your main Google profile) or selectively choose who in your friends list sees your buzz.

Athiest Delusions

Upon seeing the title Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (Yale University Press), I confess to having suspected it would follow the formula of other debunkings of the “Bright brigade,” decrying the illogic and inaccuracy of the New Atheists’ arguments. Instead, I found someone (in this case, theologian David Bentley Hart) taking a step back from the carnage of the current (pop) culture war to ask bigger questions about how we ended up here in the first place.
Hart, a visiting professor of theology at Providence College, begins by looking at the New Atheist phenomenon, lambasting Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett et al. for their carelessness with and rhetorical manipulation of philosophy, theology, and history. But that is quickly left behind; in the book’s second half, we begin to see the Orthodox theologian’s real intent: to offer a counter-narrative of religion’s role in human history.

Nominee

In a vivid display of President Obama’s diminished clout, the Senate’s newest Republican and two veteran Democrats Tuesday helped block Mr. Obama’s bid to fill a key labor post with a nominee they considered too cozy with unions.
With newly seated Sen. Scott Brown, Massachusetts Republican, voting to sustain the filibuster, Senate Democratic leaders failed to muster the 60 votes needed to force a vote on the nomination of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board, which resolves disputes between unions and management.