Tales of Ordinary Madness

These are too damn funny. No idea why I’m just discovering these guys now…

Here he/she is — the first public viewing of our new little peanut. I think he/she has my eyes.

So I’ve been slowly (that is VERY slowly) re-arranging my office to make some additional room for some additional computers. My goal is to create a security lab that will allow me in my spare time to work on my web assessment/penetration skills. My intention was to utilize either VMWare or Sun’s Virtual Box to give me some additional flexibility and hopefully keep my electric bill somewhere below the GDP of Micronesia (which in case you are wondering is about 232 million USD). Well while poking around today, I found this great article that covers Virtual Appliances, with a specific focus on those that would be of interest to the security professional. Now many of these would have nothing to do with my web application penetration testing, but they are still some pretty neat appliances. It’s worth a read:

Virtual appliances for the security professional

Okay, when you put it that way, I guess they just might be. Great job Redditors!

http://blog.reddit.com/2009/04/redditors-receive-homo-heros-honor-for.html

I knew I missed something when I was in the UK. I missed an opportunity to purchase a Certificate of Debaptism from the National Secular Society.

Debaptism Certificate

My good friend Sunil asked me the other day why I was so harsh on religion. If I remember the timing correctly he was responding primarliy to the “Crazy vs Religious” cartoon I posted below. Sam Harris summed it up for me very well in the video below, but I’d like to paraphrase. If I came to you and insisted that there was inside of me a giant invisible machine powered by invisible winged monkeys that generated the very energy that kept all of life going, you would dismiss me a crazy person. This is a totally rational response to what I have claimed. Unless I can provide some shred of evidence, I should be dismissed as a kook. However, religion is given a pass when it comes to rational thought. Challenge religion to produce any evidence of its claims and suddenly you are guilty of oppression and religious intolerance. Claiming that a man walked on water, or rose from the dead, or flew off into the sky on a winged horse, or parted the sea is no less crazy than my winged monkeys whodrive the giant love engine. As I’ve said before, how can we as an rational animal be expected to advance, when we insist on bringing the boogey man from the past along with us.

As long as religion continues to attempt to change laws or prevent archaic laws from being changed (like preventing two consenting adults from legally marrying), I will speak harshly of religion. As long as religion keeps attmepting to prevent birth control from being taught in schools or preventing condoms from being distributed to a contintent whose population is being decimated by AIDs, I will continue to speak harshly of religion.