Miscellany

(Source)

In light of the whole Susan G. Komen/Planned Parenthood PR fiasco.

It's hard to say exactly what is going on here. News headlines boiled down to "Komen to defund Planned Parenthood" and "Komen reverses decision", but neither is strictly true, from what I can tell. As the founder of the Susan G. Komen foundation said in an interview, they never defunded PP, and PP still has several grants from them. Of course, the pro-choice crowd immediately launched in hysterics, claiming that the Komen foundation must hate women, hacking the SGK website, etc. etc. Not one of them appears to be at all interested in what or why SGK is doing what it's doing: they simply changed their grant policy to try and give money to direct providers of cancer screenings, rather than referrers. Since Planned Parenthood does not do mammograms, or really any cancer screening aside from what you can do at home by yourself, SGK simply decided there was better use of its money.

To put that in words that even liberals can understand, SGK "defunded" (for certain values of defunded) PP because PP is not very good at providing cancer screenings.

Komen's "reversal" appears to be a rephrasing of their original policy shift. At this point, it is unclear what exactly is going on, other than PP is trying to bully SGK in some sort of mafia shakedown ("Nice charity, you got there. Would be a shame of somethin' were to happen to it"). Canonist Ed Peters (how do I get a title like that? I mean, aside from studying Canon Law) summed up what was going on pretty well. Of course, they have the media to assist them on the shakedown, and Get Religion has an excellent piece on the atrocious reporting of the story.

Perhaps the most humorous example of the media folly was MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell who, in an interview with SGK founder Nancy Brinker asked how a bipartisan organization such as SGK could deign to hire a pro-life Republican. 

Read more »

8/979 Postiversary!

So I haven't quite written another 500 posts in the last four years. So sue me. But while we're celebrating this blog's 8th anniversary and 979th post, why don't we look at some of the best articles of the last four years?

Top 10h posts, Nov. 21 2007 – Nov. 20 2011

10. Belland Family, Inc. Announces First Expansion to Popular "Family Life" Simulator
F. "The Banalization of Sexuality"
E. Play Like a Pirate Day
D. Babby Vs. Death Star
C. Infrequently User Units of Measurement
B. Catechebulary
A. The RESPONSIBILITY of Self Defense (had to get one from Tom in there)
9. Hey! It's that Guy!
8. Once, While in a Late Night Fog
7. The Nine Most Important Words Ever Spoken
6. Beate Joannes Paulus Magnus, Ora Pro Nobis!
5. Happy Monday
4. Quaestiones
3. Offering of Indulgences: An Operations Research Approach
2. The Six-Toed Wonder
1. A Very Different Raid Night

(Others I liked that didn't make the top 10h: Magic Jacket, F.U. News Mailbag, March 18th, 2008, The Simple Emperor's Daybook, FLASH: A Woman is Pregnant!, A Moral Quandry, First Pictures of the Little One, Along the Lines of "Me on the Dating Scene", A Handy Comparison, Blizzard Story-Writing Cheat Sheet, It's Just Too Easy, Shopping for a Delli Sandwich, Cosplay Twenty-Ten, Goodnight, Sleep Tight, Don't Let Order Sixty-Six Bite, Blogging in the Olden Days, Living History)

So, four more years, and I'm still around. It's interesting to see how much my life has changed since then, let alone since I started this blog. I wonder how it will change in four more. To think that Damien will just be starting first grade....

LinkDump

First, two recent John C. Wright posts:

The Argument of Antimonogamy.

Disloyalty to the Void.

Now, my response to his second piece.

And his response to my response.

What do you think? Is Mr. Wright right, and there's a place for fuming and thunder? Or am I right and we should chose words carefully so that others are more inclined to listen to us?

And what's the answer to his question: "In the case given above, where Bukkake and BDSM and prostitution are portrayed as normal — what is the correct tone to set? That of Socrates, honest, detached, ironic, polite? or that of John the Baptist, who warned of the wrath to come?"

This May Be the First Time I've Ever Agreed with a Clinton

"Obviously, she’s not happy with dealing with a president who can’t decide if today is Tuesday or Wednesday"

Full article

Of course, Obama can't decide if it's Tuesday or Wednesday on a Sunday.

And for a limited time only, two links for the price of one!

Idiot of the Day/Week/Month

On Wednesday, church founder Robert H. Schuller said he strongly disapproved of the covenant [which states that Crystal Cathedral ministries preaches chastity] because it goes against what he has built his church upon.

"I have a reputation worldwide of being tolerant of all people and their views," he told the Orange County Register. "I'm too well-educated to criticize a certain religion or group of people for what they believe in [further evidence for Dennis Prager's maxim that the more time you spend in college, the dumber you get]. It's called freedom."

Full article

(So what, exactly did he build his church upon? A wise man builds his church on the Rock.)

Reminds me a of a certain adjunct community college professor.

I will not tolerate intolerance!

iConfess I'm Shocked

So my friend's iPhone app has been doing quite well, apparently.

It's now the top paid app in the "Lifestyles" section of the app store.

And it's also in the top 25 purchased apps in the app store.



It started small, with the Catholic blogosphere.

Thomas Peters at American Papist praised it.
Mark Shea called it "very cool."
Father Z called it "useful but flawed."
Father Roderick tweeted about it.
Even Father Barron recommended it.
Early on in the viral outbreak, Patrick himself appeared for an interview on one of SQPN's podcasts.

Then it got big.

ABC: Confession App: Catholic Church Sanctions New iPhone App.

CNN: New app helps Catholics confess on the go.
Fox: Church Approves 'Confession' App for iPhone.
CNBC: Bless me iPhone for I have sinned.
New York Times: Forgive Me, Father, for I Have Linked.

Time Magazine: Smartphone Sins: Catholic Bishop Approves iPhone Confession App.

Associated Press: New iPhone, iPad app helps you keep track of sins.

USA Today: U.S. Catholic Church blesses iPhone app for confession.

The Guardian: Bless me, Apple, for I have sinned.

NPR: Confessing Sin in the Age of the iPhone.

HuffPo: Confession App Sanctioned By Catholic Church.

PC Magazine: Hail Mary! Catholic Church Blesses iPhone App.

(I'm tired of linking. Find the rest yourself)

It was also covered on segments on Fox News, CNN, and the Today Show (I don't have the clips). Apparently Conan made a joke about it on his show. Something about butt-dialing God.

Even Perez Hilton mentions it.

Some of the coverage was good:
AP: Religion Tech: Confessing Sins on Your iPhone.

Other, well, not so much, prompting Get Religion to correct The Times (of London).

Then it got... really big.

Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, commented on it, saying it is not a replacement for confessing to a priest. Of course, Patrick already new that and never intended that it would be used as a substitute, only as an assistance.

This caused a fair amount of confusion as several news outlets announced that the Vatican "excommunicated" the app. Seriously.

HuffPo: Vatican Bans Confession Via iPhone App.
Reuters (via LA Times): New iPhone app helps Catholics through confession.
The Telegraph: Vatican bans iPhone 'God app'.

Of course, you can't say the phrase "One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic" in an empty room without stirring up controversy. The range of criticism showed the Chesterton effect in full force. Complaints in the comments sections on the blogs and news articles ranged from "the Catholic Church is so silly for offering this backwards and outdated rite. Why, a Catholic can commit the most outrageous sin and simply confess to a priest to receive absolution! It makes wrong-doing so easily forgiven as to encourage it!" to "the Catholic Church is so silly for offering this quaint and un-biblical rite. Why, anyone can receive forgiveness by simply offering contrition directly to God! Involving a priest simply adds needless complexity to obtaining redemption to the point of encouraging people not to seek it!" to "the Catholic Church is so silly for offering this wrong-headed and hurtful rite. Why, telling people to confess their sins to a priest makes them feel guilty and shameful about ordinary behavior! The guilt-complex it creates is responsible for driving gay teens to suicide!"

(In case you don't believe me on that last one, this HuffPo piece makes a connection between Pat's app and teen suicide. For reals.)

Despite my earlier protestations, I did end up buying the app today. The personalized examination of conscience is good. This is what it gave me when I entered my name.

Perhaps a little too good

/Random

News in Briefs
News reported while wearing underwear.


Local Teen Arrested; Authorities Investigate Possible Sarah Palin Connection

Laguna Niguel, CA—A local teenager has been arrested for shoplifting from several stores in a Laguna Niguel shopping center. According to authorities, shopkeepers had suspected the 16-year-old male for some time, but after one store owner managed to catch the suspected thief on security camera, police were able to act to arrest the boy. According to the sheriff's office, they are also investigating a possible connection to former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. During the recent midterm elections, Ms. Palin spoke frequently of the need to "take back" the house and her "kleptomaniacal rhetoric" may have spurred the boy to becoming a thief.


Link of the Day/Week/Month

John C. Wright’s Patented One Session Lesson in the Mechanics of Fiction

Far and away, the best introduction to fiction writing I've read.


Boring (Short) Political Rant
I'm going to try to post fewer of these and get back to my roots of humor, satire, and cat/baby pictures. I realized that all of my readers, save one, already agree with me. Of those that agree, they're all smarter than me anyways, so nothing I say will be particularly insightful. And the one dissenter will be unpersuaded by anything I have to say.


On the Repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell


Were it not for the comment from Robert J. Wizard, a frequent and usually sensible commenter on John C. Wright's journal, that it's impossible for most men to go more than a year without masturbating, I would have a rather hard time understanding the opposition to DADT. I've always known that the sexual revolutionaries think chastity is unnecessary, or even perhaps evil. But what I hadn't clued into yet was that, at least subconsciously, they actually think it's impossible. So from this perspective, a policy like DADT, where gays are admitted to the military so long as they don't indulge their disordered desires, is akin to asking them not to breathe.

Once I realized this, I saw the mentality all over, from the opposition to abstinence-only education ("they're gonna do it anyways; might as well teach them to do it safely") to the hatred towards the Church's opposition to condoms in fighting AIDS (the Church sees the choice not to be promiscuous as safer than the choice to be promiscuous, but using condoms; the revolutionaries see the choice as using or not using condoms when being promiscuous).

But of course, this is neither here nor there. Just as the gay-rights advocates never ask what the purpose of marriage is when assuming it to be a right (to me, gay marriage seems kind of like a tampon for men), they also miss the point of the military. "The military's job," as Rush Limbaugh would say, "is to kill people and break things." The only real question is will allowing openly gay people to serve in the military help or hinder that job?

Too Funny Not to Link

MS Paint-style pictures of dogs and a funny story.

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/11/dogs-dont-understand-basic-concepts.html

Don't be drinkin' nuthin'. You have been warned.

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Does anyone remember the point of marriage? Is there a point to marriage? I really can't remember anymore. I think it's "do what feels good".

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/family-and-relationships/love-objects/article1259075/

So we have a woman who married the Eiffel Tower, a woman who married an amusement park ride, a guy who's dating a sound board, and a woman in a relationship with an archery bow.

Nothing wrong with any of it right? I mean, if sexuality is about what makes us happy, we can't object to this anymore than we can object to someone attracted to a member of his sex (I find it interesting how many of the arguments in the article mirror those made by homosexuality advocates).

Perhaps the LGBT community should be called the LGBTNPBO community? Of course, many of them probably don't want to be grouped with those other weirdos, which leads to the hilarious claim of "my sexual perversion isn't as weird as your sexual perversion" which would also be a great bumper sticker.

So if, fifty years ago, I wanted to write a SF story about how bizarre the future was, and I wrote about how in fifty years people married inanimate objects, would it be dismissed as completely implausible? And if some people still somehow found it even remotely within the realm of consideration, how could I alienate even those readers with wild and far flung imaginations?

Ah, I know!

A Taiwanese woman marries herself!

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69L3H720101022

(And spends $5675 on it, too!) Surely this is too far fetched for even the mind-bending and imaginative world of speculative fiction.

But what could possibly be wrong with this? What makes her marriage any less valid than yours?

I actually feel sorry for the woman. "Hell," Fr. McHugh would say, "is an eternity of saying 'me'."

(H/T Mike Flynn)

Sandbox

How to tell when you've written a flexible game:


Yo dawg, I heard you like computers, so I put a computer in your game so you can compute while you game.

When your game's physics engine supports building an ALU. This means that, theoretically, you could write the game within itself.

Learn more about the Minecraft phenomenon here:
Wikipedia.
Penny Arcade: Mine All Mine, Part 1 and Part 2.
Experienced Points: Mine All Minecraft.
Minecraft developer forming his own studio.
Minecraft allows you to set fire to your house.

Other things built in Minecraft:
A rollercoaster;
A giant waterslide;
Doom E1M1;
Notre Dame cathedral;
The Reichstag;
The Empire State Building;
A 1x1 scale model of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D);
The Earth (not full scale, although theoretically the game's engine would allow it);

I haven't actually played the game yet. I'm kind of scared to try it.

LinkDump

"A group proposes to build a religious establishment on their own property near a site associated with great pain and significance for some people. These people, rightly or wrongly, associate that religion with the many deaths that were caused and so raise a great ruckus in protest against the said establishment. For their part, the religious establishment pleas that they intend to pray for all who died there, including their own co-religionists. But this plea is dismissed," writes philosopher, statistician, physicist, historian, SF author extraordinaire, and all-around cool guy Mike Flynn.

"I pause while you assume the proper attitude," he continues.

"I write, of course, of the Polish sisters who wanted to establish a convent near Auschwitz, which created a great outcry that it was insensitive to Jewish concerns. The Pope intervened and told the sisters to place their convent elsewhere, since if they remained intransigent they would do more harm than good. That they had a right to do what they planned did not mean it was right to do it."

We haven't discussed the ground-zero mosque in this space, and I am curious what my readers think. Me, personally? I am in favor of it, so long as they build a chapel to Our Lady of Victory right next door.

Read more »

WW(i)N.

"Babies Living on Board Titanic!"

"Now Damien, you behave, or I'll send you to live with your older siblings at the bottom of the ocean."

Also, including one of my all-time favorites:

"Face on Mars Is Trying to Talk."

Friday LinkDump.

I officially have too many web socializing services. With two blogs, twitter, and fazebōōk (as Fr. Roderick says), I'm never sure where I should post a link that I came across. Do I tweet it? Link it on Facebook? Post it here? All of the above? Then what of those poor people who follow me on Twitter, are friends on Facebook, and subscribe to this blog's RSS? Do I just force them to suffer through the same content 3 times?

My general philosophy is that I created my twitter feed for a) Damien's birth and b) to replace the headlines on this blog. The old system involved me directly editing the page code, and once I deleted a headline, it was forever lost to the mists of time. Twitter was supposed to just be a replacement for that, so I prefer not to put links there.

The Other Blog is supposed to be purely literary issues, so it's not exactly the best forum for funny ThemTubes vids. And I've been trying to get away from the lower forms of blogging on this space, and only most, insightful, informative, or funny (original) things here (which is why I haven't posted anything of late). That sort of leaves Facebook, but since most of you losers who read this aren't FB friends of mine, you're not able to indulge in my fine and high quality links (I said that with a straight face!). And I don't think most of my old friends from college are too terribly interested in the random things I come across on the intertubes.

So what do you think. Should I go ahead and post stupid links to odd things I find here? I have this mental image of people seeing that FU-News has been updated in their RSS then getting here and seeing just a link and thinking "aw, I was expecting an insightful, informative, and funny post about how to apply operations research to create a Cross Sums puzzle for Condo Shopping Space Pirates that speak in Olde Englishe." (Actually, that's not true, I also have this mental image of half my readership not caring less about Space Pirates... hence the Other Blog.)

Well, anyways, I need to post something, lest I forget how, so while I'm writing an informative, insightful, and funny post (I've got one coming, I swear!), here are, in order, the five lowest forms of blogging.

Fifth Lowest Form of Blogging: Link (with comment).

(Also, obligatory John C. Wright reference.)

On the Misery of Modern Women.

QFT: "Feminism is the daydream of a sexual predator come true." (That could never be construed as offensive in any ways, could it? Of course not! (Can anything Mr. Wright says ever not be taken to offend?))

Reminds me of Mom's saying: "feminism is the best thing to happen for men."

John Wright does, of course, clarify that he's not talking about simple equal rights: "Feminism, in its modern form, has little or nothing to do with Suffragettes, or those who sought legal equality between the sexes. It has everything to do with Marxism as it applies to sex. Marx analyzes all human relationships as power struggles between collectives, which always are assumed to enjoy a perfect unity of interests."

And in that quote, he perfectly put into words an idea that had been floating around at the back of my mind, but had never been able to express. In my conversations with my feminist co-worker, there was always something present—if not overtly at least subtly, in the background—in her world view, and the larger feminist world view that always just seemed wrong to me: that feminism is, at its heart, a Marxist power struggle.

After reading Wright's post, it made me note all the other places I'd seen this idea, such as in my Sociology text book in college (which was largely Marxist). It suddenly struck me that there's my problem with modern, third-wave, whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it pseudo-feminism. True Feminism shouldn't be looking for a power struggle. True Feminism shouldn't see taking the power men have as the desirable goal, the final outcome, and that therefore women need to shed the shackles of femininity and become like men. True Feminism ought to be, as Feminists for Life puts it, about seeking dignity and equality for all persons. Femininity is part of women's dignity and casting it to the wayside does not serve their purpose.

So what is the great triumph of the modern feminist movement if they have not even won happiness for women? What does it profit women to gain the entire world, but to be miserable? As Dennis Prager would say, Happiness is a Serious Problem.

Fourth Lowest Form of Blogging: Baby Pictures!

(Baby feet pictures, actually.)

Dino feet!

We've got zee lions, only in Kenya!

Third Lowest Form of Blogging: Un-commented links.

O Come, O Come, Liturgical Blue.

(Be sure to listen to the song.)

QUAERITUR: What rubrics to follow at Mass in case of gunfire?

Key quote: "I believe there is a little known rubric which calls for the deacon and subdeacon (who in any event should be packing) to take out, reverently, their 9mm and return fire. As I read it, they are to recite the Maledictory Psalms while firing. At the change of a clip/magazine, they may bow, or duck."

Second Lowest Form of Blogging: YouTube vids.

(Gotta bunch for you here)

(From Word On Fire)

Fr. Barron has a series on YouTube that I have recently become a follower of, where he comments on all sorts of topics from modern culture. Check it out. Some of his good ones include:

Protestantism and Authority.

The Vatican Investigation of American Nuns.

Comments on District 9.

Senator Edward Kennedy.

Answering the Skeptics (this one's good; relates to John Wright's post).

Comments on Angels and Demons.

Why is there so much disorder in the universe?

On "The Audacity of Hope".

Hallelujah Chorus as sung by monks with a vow of silence.

(H/T Everyone on the Internet. If you had not seen this previously, congratulations, you are officially the last person to the party.)

Lowest Form of Blogging: Lolcats!

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Haha! Siblings have made my life easier!

Instead of, y'know, actually having to post about the baptism, I can just link to it.

My work here is done.

(Honestly, though, I'm going to try to update BabyFeed™ with newer pictures.... Soon™.)

QFT.

"Here is the paradox: The modern attitude toward guns is that they are scary and dangerous and no one should use them. The modern attitude toward the fairer sex is that it is a bigotry akin to racism to suggest that women tend to be smaller and weaker than men physically, and that, psychologically, men are far more likely to be violent toward women than women toward men .To suggest that men should protect their womenfolk from other men is "sexist" (whatever that newspeak nonword is supposed to mean). And at the same time, it is modern dogma that all difference of power between men and women in society is due to rape or the threat of rape, and that all members of the phallusocracy are rapists, or whatnot. And at the same time, the modern attitude is against hanging rapists, or sending them to the electric chair. (By modern here, I mean 'Leftist')

"Now, if I am not mistaken, each one of these dogmas is a direct or indirect contradiction of the next. 

"A woman who claimed equality with men, and armed herself, and served a term in the military, would be acting in a self-consistent fashion. A woman who claimed to be old-fashioned, and wanted her brothers or her husband to protect her in time of combat, who was afraid of guns and relied on the men around her to avenge insults against her, again, would be acting in a self-consistent fashion. But a women who, in the name of equality, thought it was condescending for men to protect her, but who also thought protecting herself with a firearm was too violent, scary or immoral to countenance, she is merely setting herself up to be an easy victim."

From, of course, the ever-brilliant John C. Wright. He also, in the same article, states in his usual eloquent fashion what I have been trying to put into words for a while.

"The whole sexual revolution promised the fairer sex that as a matter of equality, of equal stature with men, they should act like harlots, have sex out of marriage, approve of pornography, and kill any of their own children in the womb whose life might prove inconvenient to them. This strips away the normal protections society evolved to shield women from male sexual predation, or even unwanted attentions, it put women in situations where it was easier to rape them -- getting a college girl into your dorm room, where there is no witness to say whether she actually said 'no' or not is much easier these days. You would be scorned as a prude, or as something more sinister, for even suggesting that nubile young women should be chaperoned, or dormitories have curfews, or colleges not be co-ed. 

"In the name of freedom and free speech, we are drenched with pornography, hammered with it, and no message of chastity is ever uttered anywhere a young man's ear might lightly brush against it. At the same time, young ladies are told that true freedom, true liberation, not to mention being cool, consist of dressing like a streetwalker and having several lovers at once. I can point to a number of music videos carrying that message. So men are much more willing and able to exploit, abuse, and abandon women than ever before in history, and women, paradoxically, are meant to regard their newfound defenselessness as a type of freedom. Ushering back in old standards of reserve and chastity under the color of laws against sexual "harassment" in the workplace make, for obvious reasons, a poor substitute.

"Female equality has somehow been redefined from giving women the vote and the right to own property, to urging women to be as licentious and sexually-aggressive as men, without pointing out that the cost-benefit ratio should something go wrong (such as a pregnancy) simply cannot be made the same between men and women. Don Juan as a deadbeat dad can walk away from the mothers of his bastard children with relatively little emotional scarring. A single mother cannot walk away from the child in her womb. She can commit the crime of Medea, and murder the babe, perhaps, but that carries scars of its own which Don Juan need not bear."

And let the claim that there is no emotional scar that accompanies abortion, or that the guilt of it is something artificial, created by men who scare and guilt-trip women into regretting abortion be forever exposed for the bald-faced lie that it is.

Also, the story that the esteemed Mr. Wright, Esq. links is a good read. Makes me wonder why I haven't gone out and bought a gun, if that poor girl was able to buck up the courage!

Too funny not to link.

Porn for Women!

(Go ahead. No really. Don't be afraid to click it.)

The comments were particularly amusing. Especially:

"Is that all we are to you? Domestic objects? I'm deeply offended."

and

"Those poor exploited men, driven to posing in such demeaning fashion, just for money. It breaks my heart. Let's take up a collection and get them some drinking money. They're going to need it."

Link dump.

Firstly, this site is awesome for anyone looking for some music to play.

Secondly, this Pandora radio station is awesome if you want something to listen to while reading Space Pirates.

Lastly, this is just plain awesome.

Friday Monday LinkDump.

Oh... my... word....

Ever play Line Rider? If so, this will be all the more impressive.
(These two were also interesting.)

The Air Force is retiring the F-117. I did not know this. Oh, well. It was a successful aircraft. Only one combat loss in how many thousands of sorties?

Giant Killer Robot Attacks Space Station. News at 10.
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

Friday LinkDump.

Chinese Swan Lake.
The good stuff starts about 2 minutes in. That guy must be built like an Abrams to be able to do some of those lifts. I would never even have dreamed of attempting anything like that.

Finally, a social networking site for me (crudity warning).

XKCD Parody.

LinkDump.

The histomap of evolution.
Ok, so they were off on the age of the Earth by, oh, 5.5 billion years, but give them a break. It was published in 1932.

Key quote: "Evolution does not, as so many assume, teach that man is descended from an ape or monkey. Modern evolutionists teach only that man and the apes had a common ancestor of whose characteristics they know little and who may have approached in structure and appearance modern man more than modern ape. Neither does evolution pretend to explain the origin of life, or that the development of man has been entirely mechanical or accidental.... The Histomap merely summarizes the more generally accepted views, recognition of which engenders a philosophy of life capable of inspiring a faith of the highest order." (Emphasis mine.)

When did the theory of evolution change to "Evolution teaches that the development of all life is entirely accidental and mechanical, and recognition of these views prohibits a faith in any higher order"?

Mathematics in Futurama. Ok, half the page is in Spanish, but the other half is still interesting. I think much of that was written by Dr. Sarah Greenwald, professor of mathematics at Appalachian State University. At least, I think so because most of that appears in the special feature "Mind-bending Futurama math lecture by Professor Sarah Greenwald (Teachers: use it for exciting and educational classroom viewing!)" on the Bender's Big Score DVD. That feature alone makes the DVD worth getting, especially since the episode itself isn't all that funny.

It's also worth noting that there was a similar article in Math Horizons a few years back about math in The Simpons. I have a suspicion it was written by the same person.

Pixar Easter Eggs.

Interesting article on atomic clocks. I thought it was interesting how they had to recalibrate the clock because they moved it to a different floor and the gravitational force of the Earth was different.