The day after interviewing Barack Obama and John McCain on the stage in his church, Rick Warren said this:

"I could not vote for an atheist because an atheist says, 'I don't need God,' " Warren said. "They're saying, 'I'm totally self-sufficient by [myself].' And nobody is self-sufficient to be president by themselves. It's too big a job."
LA Times

As for as I'm concerned, anyone is free to vote or not vote for someone based on any criteria. Our Constitution forbids any official religious test for office, but individuals can take religion under consideration if they think it's important. However, I have some problems with the way Warren justified his statement.

First, atheists don't say "I don't need God." We say that there is no such thing as God. We also don't say "I hate God," "I'm running from God," "I love to sin" or "I'm angry at religious people." I cannot hate or run from something that doesn't exist. The fact that Warren said this shows that he either doesn't understand atheism or refuses to take it seriously.

Second, he's right that the president needs help, but shouldn't that help come from knowledgeable human advisors? I think that a good president should listen to advice from trusted staff, trained experts, public opinion and even political rivals.

Third, how, exactly, does God help a person govern? Does he send intra-office memos? Does he call the president on a private line? Does he attend cabinet meetings? Does he speak to the president in dreams? How does it work? Wouldn't it be better if our president sought and took the advice of humans rather than trying to puzzle out the will of a silent God?

Fourth, for the last seven years we've had a president who claimed to be called and guided by God. I don't think that's going very well. In fact, I think that the delusion of God's favor has made President Bush especially arrogant and reckless. Because he thinks God is on his side, he is capable of ignoring good advice and going it alone. An atheist president would understand better than anyone that all we have is each other, and that we should take care of the earth, the only home we have.

Me of Little Faith by Lewis Black

At work it's pretty much official that summer is over this week. Our last short Friday, one more week, and then classes begin here on campus. It's so warm out, though, and my life really doesn't get affected by the calendar that students in our traditional program go by, so I'm thinking it'll probably feel like summer to me for another month, at least.

I decided to use my final Friday afternoon to do a double-feature at the movies. It didn't matter what was playing, so long as I wasn't at home on my final short Friday afternoon! So I went to see Henry Poole is Here and Transsiberian - two completely different movies! I went home for a little bit of rest before the family got together and went out to eat at Roman Cucina to celebrate my sister's birthday. I decided to be different and didn't order my usual meal. After the wonderful bruschetta, I had the special of the night: risotto with crab meat, portabello mushrooms, and a creamy tomato sauce. It looked like kitty puke, but tasted wonderful. We went home and had cake and ice cream while Jenny opened her non-gifts (all money).

Saturday, I got up early to drop off Pip at the vet. Poor Pipper. Since I was up, I decided to go walking in the park. It was a beautiful morning, and I'm listening to the Two Towers right now, and while I was surrounded by trees, I listened to the part where Merry and Pippin meet the Ents and hear of their history. It was too perfect. I enjoyed myself so much I was there for almost two hours. I went home and read some of Atlas Shrugged until I got sleepy, and then took a nap. Pip was ready for pickup a few hours later. When I got there, all the nurses were laughing about our cat's temper. They had me try to get him out of the cage, but when they removed the towel from over his cage (that's a bad sign in itself), there was some foul beast sitting in the cage instead of my cat! Seriously, he was piiiiiissed. He drew some of my blood, and eventually the nurse was able to get him in his cat carrier. And of course, as soon as I got him home, he got right out of the carrier and was the most loving and adorable cat I've ever known. He's so weird. I got out the Wii Fit and spent about an hour on it until it was time to pick Ric up from the train station. He and Rob went to a beer festival in San Diego. We spent the rest of the night around the house. I got all caught up with the Olympics.

Sunday we went to church, got a bite at Jack in the Box, and spent the afternoon at home. I read some LOTR, watched some Olympics, painted the upstairs bathroom ceiling, read more LOTR, read more Atlas Shrugged, and was finally incredibly bored. Ric and I went to get money from the bank, and then I went grocery shopping a day early. I love the music they play at the grocery store late at night. It's so 80s and early 90s. I spent the rest of the night catching up with blogs and doing a little bit of work work while we watched some of Dodgeball. We topped the night off with The Soup, which is becoming our usual Sunday night tradition. It somehow makes the idea of work in the morning less painful.

Up this week: The Arizona family is in town! I'll probably be spending most nights visiting with my sister-in-law and nephews, who are spending their nights at my in-laws' house.

On Friday I was overjoyed to see that my Xbox had arrived. I'm very impressed with the service and the turnaround time from Microsoft. Friday night I hung out with Justin, Jon and Grace to celebrate Grace and Justin's birthday and I finally got my LAN cable from Jon. It wasn't Jon's fault at all but I've been a tad lazy about it and pretty darn busy. So now I finally have internet on my desktop. I had been wanting to set up Xbox Media Center for a long time and now I finally could.

Before I really got going with setting up Media Center I got hooked into Bionic Commando: Rearmed. I loved Bionic Commando when I was a kid and this takes the old game and somehow makes it even more awesome. The game looks great and the new features are a lot of fun. It's well worth the 800 Microsoft Points.

Once I pried myself away from my grappling hook adventures I set up the Media Center Extender on the Xbox. It was a really simple setup process and once I got it going I started listening to my music collection which was pretty cool. Then I browsed through some of the online content options which included all three seasons of Arrested Development as well as content from TVTonic. TVTonic, in addition to its own internet video channels, allows you to add any video podcast feed you want. It also included exclusive Olympics feeds. The coverage is really great and in addition to a basic highlights channel they have channels for many different sports. I subscribed to the Basketball feed and watched a couple of the games in their entirety. I also checked out the whole Opening Ceremonies. Everything looks great on my TV.

The one minor problem with Media Center Extender is that unlike the Xbox itself, it can't stream Divx files. There are some programs and hacks out there to allow playback through the Extender but I tried one and couldn't get it to work. Instead I just set up Media Sharing on Windows Media Player and watched a couple TV shows through the Dashboard. The Divx files looked pretty amazing on my TV and there was no stuttering or anything like that. I'm very impressed.

Since I got a free month of Netflix as part of a settlement from something that happened with them awhile back I'm going to hop back on the Netflix train. While Microsoft did announce that you will be able get your Watch Instantly library through the dashboard sometime this fall, you don't have to wait until then. You don't have to buy a Roku either. All you need to do is download vmcNetflix and follow these instructions.

Now that I've got all this stuff going, my 360 has become an all-in-one entertainment solution. I certainly won't miss cable TV. It's kind of amazing to think how far home entertainment, broadband internet, and console gaming have come that all this can be possible.