Jesus and politics have gotten twisted together to a critical level in the past few years: by excellent marketing efforts by people like Beck, social networking, and GOP marketing mastery from 1999 – 2006.

If Jesus spent most (or even half) of his time talking about politics, his message would have been lost in history with all the other pundits of his day. There were all manner of political leanings, parties, etc in in the politically turbulent Roman Empire, but how much time did he spend talking about them? Despite rampant politics, he rarely talked about it, except to say Caesar’s money has his image on it, so give it to him if he asks for it.

So from that stand point, money and politics mean almost nothing. All that matters is love and communion.

GOP marketing efforts, supported by Evangelical leaders, made it a Christian requirement to vote GOP. And social networking creates a group of people who have Status A: Jesus loves you all; Status B: Obama ruining the country; Status A: Hope is only in Jesus, Status B: We’re going socialist… this back and forth drives people away in droves.. because it creates a system where you must be right wing, republican, libertarian, tea party, or w/e as a Prerequisite to being a Christian.

A great example of this is a Facebook status I saw on election Day, 2009: “Just voted for McCain/Palin. I’m going to go home, turn on Fox News, and pray that God’s will be done.”

Radical politics and religion don’t mix. That’s why Jesus didn’t mix them. The majority of prolific social networkers should choose which line they want to take: religion or politics. The more that radical politics are discussed, the weaker the spiritual message becomes, and vice versa.

Hopefully this will be online soon, I’ll link it.. they are analyzing every step in the development of the algorithm, including what was (at the time) a break through synonym system:

As Google crawled and archived billions of documents and Web pages, it analyzed what words were close to each other. “Hot dog” would be found in searches that also contained “bread” and “mustard” and “baseball games” — not poached pooches. That helped the algorithm understand what “hot dog” — and millions of other terms — meant. “Today, if you type ‘Ghandi bio,’ we know that bio means biography,” Singhal says. “And if you type ‘bio warfare,’ it means biological. –From Wired

I was born in an alternate universe. However, it was so similar to this one that it is hard to tell the difference. I was shifted from that universe to this one on March 17, 2000.

After much research, I found that a certain Mr. Lawrence Brownington of Henley-on-Thames, which is in South Oxfordshire, England, poached 2 eggs and served them with buttered toast and coffee in my original universe on July 12, 1996.

In this universe, he poached 2 eggs but served them with unbuttered toast and coffee on that morning. Whenever I switched, I hadn’t noticed any significant differences between the two worlds. But now that it has been around a decade, those differences may be more apparent. I wouldn’t know: I haven’t been back.

I get asked all the time why I’m not using an Apple, since they are default for designers. It’s a hard question to answer quickly, so here is my answer to all of you that have asked, “You’re a designer, I though you guys used Macs?”

“Some do, the ones that aren’t sick of everything being locked into proprietary systems that can’t be altered, uncustomizable machines, frequent Photoshop crashes, MP3 players that only work with one piece of software, auto-assigned file formats on audio/video files that need special software to crack, inflated prices, common logic board meltdowns, charging customers to recover data from failed hard drives, suing everyone who has an Apple in their logo (I guess Apple OWNS Apples), a history of building the worst mouses the world has ever known (one button?), iTunes SUCKS.. and there’s no way around it, iTunes locks up my computer every time I plug an iPhone or iPod into it, stupidly expensive peripherals…

Let’s talk about the amount of RAM on a luxury computer: A luxury computer should not have 2 gigs of RAM. My PC from 2006 has 2 gigs of RAM. 4 should be the standard for an economy Apple. The $1500 to $2000 Apples should have 8.

Along with phones that have no desktop or desktop widgets, no multitasking, no copying pasting for 2 years, censored apps without clear censorship rules, CENSORED APPS, no clear reasoning given to App makers whose programs were removed, or action steps to get them re-approved, no official ‘underground’ unapproved app store, proprietary USB connectors (that are, of course, stupidly expensive), screwing artists and record companies by keeping most of the money from online sales of music, iPods and iPhones that can transfer music up from a computer but not down to a computer, no Flash on iPhones (No Flash on iPhones? Have you guys heard of the Internet?)

A general inability to understand that when I buy a little piece of hardware, i OWN it. They can’t reach out through the internet or cell networks and try to destroy it. I can do whatever I want with my property.

And I’m also running Vista right now. It’s not that bad. It crashes a lot less than Mac, especially running Photoshop.. which has a tendency to just “disappear” on Macs.

I’m hoping Google will stop worrying about turning their browser (Chrome) into an OS and take an OS that is evolving well (Android) and do something good with that.