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Addiction, thy new name is Acid.

Sonic Foundry's Acid Style 3.0, that is. I picked this up yesterday, along with a few sets of prerecorded loops.

My first effort can be heard here.

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Thought to ponder for the day:

At what point does someone become a genuinely bad person rather than a victim of their environment?

This question kind of gets under your skin, doesn't it? Unless you're the optimistic (and fortunate) sort of person who doesn't believe there is such a thing as a "bad person."

I'm tempted to say that, as in the obscenity vs. art debate, 'I know it when I see it.' But that really just means it's subjective, doesn't it?

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A couple of times, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has written on Beliefnet about homosexuality in the Bible -- declaring that it is a religious sin, and not a moral or ethical sin -- making it just as sinful as, say, eating shellfish.

Basically what this means is that it is not inherently wrong, it is just something that Jews, as they observe the rules and laws of their religious teachings, are supposed to avoid.

This has some interesting ramifications. For example, it may have the effect of making Reform Judaism more tolerant of gays and lesbians in general, but LESS tolerant of gays and lesbians who are practicing Jews.

Secondly, one is tempted to ask what benefit one has from adhering to codes or laws that one knows are "religious" vs. ethical -- IOW if they serve mainly to identify the Jewish community, isn't this an arbitrary and stylized distinction that has little inherent meaning?

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According to Mohammad ElBaradei, the forged documents supposedly from Niger now embarassing the White House were such poor forgeries that anyone could have demonstrated so by doing a few queries on Google.

So, that tells us what qualifies as "darn good" intelligence.