Friday, August 12, 2005

It could have been worse

I’m not fond of the headline, Lutherans reject “sexually active” gay clergy:

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - Leaders of the 5-million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America narrowly rejected on Friday the ordination of sexually active gay and lesbian clergy during a biennial national assembly in Florida.

Assembly members voted 503 to 490 against a provision that would have accepted gays and lesbians who are in “life-long, committed and faithful” relationships into the clergy.

The vote maintains the church’s current policy of ordaining unmarried clergy only if they are celibate.

And they voted down same sex “unions:”

On a second hot-button issue, the assembly by a 2-1 margin passed a resolution—criticized by many as ambiguous—addressing the blessing of gay and lesbian unions.

Interpreted by some as allowing same-sex unions and by others as maintaining the status quo, the resolution keeps the denomination’s stand against official church blessings of gay and lesbian unions.

But the resolution also gives some assurance to local parishes and clergy that they will not be penalized for performing blessing ceremonies, stating that the church will “trust in and continue dialogue with pastors and congregations who are in ministry with gay and lesbian persons.”

The vote was 670 for the resolution and 323 against. An early attempt to more explicitly approve same-sex unions failed by a nearly identical vote, 665-334.

TiVo downloads

It’s official:

Add TiVo Inc. to the list of companies trying to wed the Internet to television. The digital recording company will soon allow customers to download TV shows to their set-top boxes via the Internet - even before the shows air on TV.

TiVo has struck a deal with the Independent Film Channel to transmit several of the cable channel’s shows through a broadband connection as part of a trial program. Participating customers will begin receiving the shows next week, said TiVo spokesman Elliot Sloane.

My TiVo is shut down for the first time in years while we do the floors! Endgadget has screenshots.

Google doing evil?

Busy with work and floors, I’m a little late to this story. As a regular commenter on Google, I feel compelled to say…

I’m a fan of Google’s technology, and, like other bloggers, I’m disappointed by their CNET boycott over a story (which I missed at the time) that made public personal information about Google CEO Eric Schmidt. None of the information found in 30 minutes of Google searching by the CNet reporter was so obviously objectionable to me.

But then, apparently unlike Schmidt, I’m generally OK with the fact that so much about us is made public through Google’s technology. I don’t hold it against or blame Google for it; if not them it would have been some other company and I like their do no evil philosophy.

I do think we need a conversation on the repercussions of those technologies. The average user has no awareness of the implications of the tools they’re using, tools implemented by Google. Google should embrace efforts at informing and educating the public about these issues.

Google’s Jason Shellen sees an obvious difference between public data and publicizing data and thinks CNet went beyond “the bounds of common decency or good sense.” Martin Stabe thinks not:

The point is that Google has rendered that distinction trivial. That’s the whole point of the article that started all this!

I’m inclined to agree with Shellen that there’s a distinction to be made, and it’s not inherently trivial, but how to make one and on what basis? Shellen didn’t come close to fleshing that out for me. What I’d like to see is a public discussion that leads to a better understanding.

The CNet story was a step in that direction.

Drum on Peak Oil

Kevin Drum has written a good bit about Peak Oil. Today he adds this:

Despite all the blogging I’ve done about peak oil, I’ve been a little surprised at the continuing steady rise of oil prices over the past few months. After all, with only a couple of exceptions, even the most pessimistic peak oil folks don’t think world oil production is going to peak for several more years, which means there’s not much reason for short term price spikes. So what’s the explanation?

It’s possible that it’s due to nothing more than normal short term market fluctuations. However, the chart on the right suggests the answer is more fundamental: demand is now exceeding supply… Oil production will almost certainly surpass 84 million barrels per day as new fields come online in the future, but demand is going to increase right along with it. Thus, unless there’s a global economic shock of some kind, it’s likely that demand is now permanently equal to supply. There’s no spare capacity left, and there never will be again.

The graphic comes from CNN Money’s story reporting that oil has surged to $66 a barrel.