From The Morning News, How Many Names Hath God?" I found it pretty much hilarious… “Jimmy. The archangel Gabriel was summoned by the will of God. Gabriel bowed his head and replied, “How may I serve you, Jimmy? I mean, Lord?â€? Thus followed the awkwardest silence in the history of heaven.” and “Zagbrobbagaghra. Used by missionaries in those foreign lands where respect for a deity is earned by a fearsome-sounding, multi-syllabic name.

Dan Benjamin writes a centered, thoughtful piece on Rails, and the dangers of learning Ruby as a first language. My favorite bit is his description of PHP… " … PHP, which itself seems destined to the life of an over-implemented, omni-present scripting language embraced by new, overzealous programmers who create low-quality code they barely understand."

It doesn’t matter that this article about SUV ownership is satirical. What’s disturbing is that it could easily have been serious. “Think of it this way: I’m not destroying the planet, I’m saving the species. And when my older son turns 16 I will turn the keys over to him. I’ll feel much safer with my teenage son cruising around in a four-ton vehicle. Won’t you?”

Can you tell what’s missing from this Intel Mac Mini wannabe? Yup. OS X. Doesn’t matter what the box looks like if they don’t have the OS to go with it now does it?

And speaking of not caring, the new Segway models are here.

Chris Pirillo seems a tad annoyed that people refer to RSS feeds as “XML” feeds. This is a distinction that almost nobody will make—ever. Why? First, an RSS is feed is comprised of XML isn’t it? This, in my book-of-the-real-world, makes it an XML feed also. Second, no…one…cares. Half the people you meet still call IE “The Internet” ferchrissakes.

David Heinemeier Hansson writes about Ruby on Rails as “disruptive technology” “…Rails is able to deliver incredible improvements for the majority of projects that are currently being over-served by J2EE/.NET by sacrificing a whole herd of golden calves. The sacrifices are condemned by the high priest exactly because of their status as high priests, which means they work on the most complex projects and hence cast all decisions on technology in that context.

I’m totally bidding on this

What happens to Rotten Tomatoes now that Google is in the game

DFW Goes on about Television, postmodernism, meta-fiction and even more stuff that I don’t really understand. From this… “it’s too simple to just wring your hands and claim TV’s ruined readers. Because the U.S.’s television culture didn’t come out of a vacuum. What TV is extremely good at—and realize that this is “all it does”—is discerning what large numbers of people think they want, and supplying it. And since there’s always been a strong and distinctive American distaste for frustration and suffering, TV’s going to avoid these like the plague in favor of something anesthetic and easy.

Sorry to keep harping on this, but the following quote from this 43Folders post is worth repeating… “An email auto-check set for every minute means 60 potential distractions every hour, or almost 500 per day. Look back at a week of your emails and ask yourself: how many distractions was that really worth? How much crucial, instantly actionable email did I receive to make it worth shifting my attention over 2000 times?

Merlin, based on much chatter, offers Five fast email productivity tips. I think most folks would benefit from following any three of them.