On the issue of abortion, many who are opposed to its legalization back up their position by stating, “life begins at conception.” This is incorrect because human gametes—sperm and ova—are also alive. Every time one of them dies, a potential human being has “died” as well. This, obviously, happens quite often. The only way to prevent this loss of life would be to ensure that every sperm fertilizes an ovum and every ovum is fertilized by a sperm.

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I was having trouble finding some good instructions on how to convert video so that it would be playable on the Wii via the Photo Channel, so I thought I’d post some instructions on how to now that I’ve figured it out myself.

First of all, you’ll need an SD card and an SD card reader. The larger the capacity of the SD card, the better, but I think the maximum that the Wii can use is 2 GB. Once you’ve got your SD card and SD card reader, you’ll need to download WinFF, a GUI for FFmpeg.

After downloading and installing WinFF, you’ll also need the preset for the Wii. First, download the preset. Then simply click Edit -> Presets -> Import and import the preset file you just downloaded.

After adding the preset, click Add in WinFF and locate the video you wish to play on your Wii. Once you’ve done that, click Convert and wait until the conversion has finished. Keep in mind I’ve only tested this once so far and only on Photo Channel 1.0 (as of December, 2007, new Wiis use Photo Channel 1.1 and you can “upgrade” if you choose to, but there is no MP3 support in 1.1). It worked pretty much flawlessly on my first try, but feel free to give me feedback.

I upgraded to Wordpress 2.5.1 today, and it was my first upgrade since I made this blog. I kind of needed to update it soon, so I thought now would be a good time since I had just upgraded my computer with Ubuntu 8.04 and my Spring vacation is about to end.

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Ubuntu 8.04, otherwise known as Hardy Heron, is going to be released tomorrow. I thought I’d post some Ubuntu related stuff to celebrate the occasion.

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I was just looking through a bunch of my childhood books and I was somewhat surprised to find a book entitled What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs? by John Morris, the president of the Institute for Creation Research, Ken Ham, the president of Answers in Genesis, and Jonathan Chong.

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On March 15, I was reading about MassResistance, a group that’s opposed to homosexuality, and I happened to come across an article on its founder, Brian Camenker, on Wikipedia. The article was just a tiny bit biased at the time you might say, so I added some templates that flagged the article so others would know it needed improvement in order to comply with Wikipedia’s quality standards. I then created the article for MassResistance itself as I thought it was odd that the founder had an article, and yet the organization did not. The first person to edit the article aside from myself was, to my surprise, Mr. Camenker. His edits weren’t exactly neutral. He even removed a link to the website MassResistance Watch, probably because he’s afraid of criticism. Of course, he doesn’t allow comments on the MassResistance Blog.

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On Pharyngula, I found this video: “Biblically Correct” Tour Guides For Jesus!!. The video speaks for itself. People’s beliefs are all too often determined by what they want to believe instead of by what they have reason to believe. This is especially true for those people who follow more “conservative” forms of Christianity or other religions. The curator in that video is an exception as he was, ironically, raised to be a Creationist.

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About a month ago, I saw a video about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s view that parts of Sharia law should be legally recognized by the UK’s government and just a few days ago, I read an article titled “Animal-sacrifice case highlights tensions over religious practices” both of which I came across on Pharyngula.

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As per suggestion of GDad of Cranial Hyperossification, I’m creating this “blog meme.”

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Ever since elementary school, excluding Freshman year of high school, we’ve had the pacer test, and ever since elementary school I’ve noticed it was sexist and ageist. Girls have a lower expectation than boys do, as do people who haven’t had their birthday yet that school year, and therefore are a few months younger than their peers. There are some arguments in favor of this discrimination that I’m going to address.

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