Apple seems to be working with the Huge Chain Starbucks to come up with some easy-ordering-mojo.

I like the way they’re thinkin’, that looks like it’d be a pretty sexy application; semi-practical too for the executive on the run.

Remember watching really cool space graphics on TV and thinkin’ it would be cool to see those yourself? Apparently the operators of the Hubble Space Telescope got to live out that fantasy, or so says Slashdot

Einstein Duble brings us news that astronomers using the Hubble Telescope have discovered an extremely rare double Einstein Ring. Occasionally, galaxies or other bright objects are located in such a way that they are behind another galaxy when viewed from Earth. When light from the further galaxy passes a sufficiently massive closer galaxy, the path of the light is bent inward from all sides, creating a “ring” effect. In this case, not one, but two galaxies are directly behind the foreground galaxy, so the gravitational lens produces two distinct rings. Quoting Presscue: “The distribution of dark matter in the foreground galaxies that is warping space to create the gravitational lens can be precisely mapped. In addition, the geometry of the two Einstein rings allowed the team to measure the mass of the middle galaxy precisely to be a value of 1 billion solar masses. The team reports that this is the first measurement of the mass of a dwarf galaxy at cosmological distance (redshift of z=0.6).”

You know, some people preach ‘acceptance’ as if you -have- to accept someone for what they are because they have the right to be that person.

It’s true, they do, and we should, so long as it doesn’t affect us personally.

The problem is where to draw the line. You may start drawing the line at ‘accepting’ homosexuals today. Which is fine. I’m all for gay rights. Woo!

But then, tomorrow, someone else starts pushing that line a little further. Today, it is homosexuals. Tomorrow, it’s polygamist marriages. Then it’s beastiality. Then it’s pedophilia. Then it’s rape. Then it’s murder.

History has seen people push the line for thousands of years, but only in the past 500 have we really seen just how far the line will stretch. It used to be that women couldn’t own land. Now they’re equals to men, (As they should be. Don’t go thinkin’ I hate ladies.)

Pretty soon there’s going to be no discernible line at all. When do you start to absolutely draw the line and not make exceptions?

The idea that, ‘Society is right,’ has been a flawed concept for quite some time. Society has been shown to sway to the whims of minorities for years. (Look at the Women’s Rights movement, for example.)

Demanding ‘acceptance’ of another person’s lifestyle might be the very thing that has led to the breakdown in society we have today. It is also counter-productive to ‘demand’ or ‘want’ everyone to be accepting of someone else’s lifestyle or choices. If you preach ‘acceptance’, you aren’t practicing it. Instead, you’re trying to force someone else to look at the world the same way you do. You’re not accepting that they have their own views and opinions on the world, based on their own experiences.

Acceptance is hard to pull off, and even harder when you’re trying to force people to accept something, because then you’re a hypocrite.