I don’t. And some­times I can’t stand peo­ple who’re proudly pro­claim­ing their faith in pub­lic. More often than not those peo­ple seem very, very for­eign to me. It’s not only that I’m an agnos­tic. No. To each his own. I won’t inter­fere in that free­dom of expres­sion. Nonethe­less, it’s intrigu­ing how many peo­ple don’t really believe. They say so, yes, but ulti­mately they don’t. They just need some­thing to blame for their own faults. Even more so, they want to believe in what they believe they’re believ­ing in but they can’t. Deep inside they know that it’s no use blam­ing oth­ers for their own faults. It’s a tragedy.

I under­stand, no, I know that there is much to be gained if one truly believes in some­thing, be it a deity, a con­cept or a human. True belief makes things real and that’s why it is so dan­ger­ous to us humans. From time to time, reli­gious fanat­ics show us what it means to believe. Some may think they’re a bad exam­ple, picked to show only the down­side of it. Well, there’s a say­ing: “The road to Hell is paved with good inten­tions.”. How many times have peo­ple hurt oth­ers when they only had good inten­tions in mind? After­wards, all you hear is a mut­tered sorry or some­thing like “How was I sup­posed to know?”.

True faith has its good sides too. It fills peo­ple with hope, it gives a mean­ing to their life. Faith sat­is­fies peo­ple in more than one area. It makes peo­ple happy and con­tent. I’m not even scratch­ing the sur­face here but I think you know what I mean. If you expe­ri­ence such an epiphany for your­self you know. And that’s exactly where the dan­ger lurks. Uncon­di­tional faith is a two edged sword because it doesn’t need con­fir­ma­tion. Some peo­ple don’t want to think for them­selves. They rather believe in the teach­ings of some preach­ers with­out ques­tion­ing, becom­ing sim­ple tools to be used by those respon­si­ble for this indoctrination.

The aver­age Joe is prone to become a vic­tim because he’s almost never con­tent with what he has. One has to assess sit­u­a­tions and actively think instead of only tak­ing them in. I couldn’t think of mak­ing a liv­ing by apply­ing the “wis­dom” of holy teach­ings to my daily life as so many oth­ers do. Thus, no faith is to blame but peo­ple are. Humans have choices. They choose how to per­ceive their envi­ron­ment, things they see and hear. I don’t think a post-religious world would be a bet­ter place to live in if peo­ple stay the same.

Just two days ago the online trailer for the sixth sea­son of 24 went live at the 24 site. On Jan­u­ary 14 Jack Bauer returns with a four-hour sea­son pre­miere on two nights. In the trailer a wave of ter­ror attacks sends the US into a state of emer­gency and CTU gets Bauer back from the Chi­nese. Accord­ing to his looks he didn’t quite enjoy his time over­seas but that was to be expected, wasn’t it? He seems pretty weak and beaten down. Well, check it out for your­self. By the way, Sea­son 5 is expected to be released on DVD on Decem­ber 5. Be sure you’re not gonna miss it. You’ll find a short pre­quel to Sea­son 6 there.

Now, what’s going on with Jack? Will we see another sea­son? Based on the trailer, Jack Bauer will be asked to sac­ri­fice him­self for the US to sur­vive. This time is all about Bauer sav­ing his own ass, or so it seems. There’s quite a chance he’s gonna die in the end, sav­ing the day a last time. I really hope that won’t hap­pen. I’d like to see a sev­enth sea­son but in the end there are only two fac­tors affect­ing this choice: rat­ings and bud­get. Hope­fully, it’s not over yet. On the other hand, Fox has already ordered a new show which is to be done by the 24 people …

That’s all there is to it. Well, not quite. There’s a 24 fea­ture film sched­uled for 2008. Frankly, I can’t see how they’re gonna make a film with this real-time con­cept. We sim­ply have to wait and see for our­selves, I guess.

Why should you upgrade? Let’s see. They claim to have improved tabbed brows­ing which is true. Most of the new fea­tures were already avail­able to Tab Mix Plus users. How­ever, it’s a step in the right direc­tion which is always wel­comed. You’ll also find a built-in spell check­ing sim­i­lar to the spell check­ing in MS prod­ucts and inte­grated phish­ing pro­tec­tion. There’s an improved Add-ons Man­ager uni­fy­ing exten­sions and themes into one inter­face and a brand new Search Engine Man­ager. Finally, there’s a ses­sion restore fea­ture as well as Live Titles and it uses less mem­ory than its pre­de­ces­sor. Over­all the browser has changed its look and feel but remains still prac­ti­cal for every­day use.

If you don’t mind that some of your exten­sions may not be com­pat­i­ble this time get a copy and see for your­self. You’ll find exten­sions and plug-ins at the usual place – that is to say right over here. If you’re look­ing for a build for the Win­dows x64 plat­form this is the place to go. A 64-bit enabled build with the final release should be avail­able soon. I have already posted some infor­ma­tion on good exten­sions so have a look at them first. Luck­ily, Tab Mix Plus, which is my favorite exten­sion, is already avail­able for Fire­fox 2, among oth­ers, of course. Well, it’s only a dev-build but I don’t mind since it still works like a charm.

Even though I’ve seen most episodes of the Dark Angel series and lots of movies fea­tur­ing her, Jes­sica Alba hasn’t lost her charm. She’s one of the most beau­ti­ful women I know and I always enjoy her easy smile. Sadly, I’ll never gonna get to know her per­son­ally. Well, that’s OK con­sid­er­ing that I don’t really have an excel­lent com­mand of the Eng­lish lan­guage and that I wouldn’t know what to talk with her. Unfor­tu­nately, that doesn’t quench my desire to know more of her than I do now.

Every time I see her in Sin City or Fan­tas­tic Four – I’ve grown up with this comic series – I’d like to get to know her. Ha, I can almost hear you think­ing “Whatta freak!” or “Wow this guy is obses­sive!”. I can assure you, I’m not obses­sive and I wouldn’t threaten her in any way. Nor do I feel like I’m in love with her. That’d be quite an achieve­ment in self-deceit and quite a cheat on my girl­friend I’m absolutely happy with. No, it’s just that I’d like to know her as a per­son which is also known as plain inter­est in peo­ple. You know, TV and mag­a­zines try to trans­form celebri­ties into more than they really are. They try to exploit every­thing just to get a top sell­ing story and, ulti­mately, more read­ers and view­ers respectively.

With­out a doubt there are many celebri­ties I’d like to get to know but she’ll always be my first choice among them. I absolutely love that she doesn’t want to do nudity which def­i­nitely doesn’t make her a bad actress. This is too easy a way for actresses to get their fame up and build a career (By the way, ain’t it funny that one can’t assert the same for actors? Well, noth­ing is ever easy.). Yeah, I’d really like to hear some of her opin­ions on dif­fer­ent mat­ters. That’d make a more rounded pic­ture than I’ll ever get by gath­er­ing facts some­where in the net.

All the best, Jes­sica. You’re already held in high esteem and you’re ambi­tious. You’re act­ing abilites have yet to be really tested but I’m con­fi­dent that you’ll rise to the chal­lenge. Just take your time. Don’t rush things and all will be well for both you and your audience.

Coin­ci­den­tally, I stum­bled over an inter­est­ing blog using the infa­mous ‘Next Blog’ but­ton. It’s worth not­ing that there are some ass­holes at work putting redi­rects to this site on the auto­mat­i­cally gen­er­ated blogs. Of course, the already entered key­word is Via­gra. Hell, is there noth­ing the peo­ple at blogger.com can do? At least make it impos­si­ble to cre­ate blogs with the use of programs.

Any­way, I came along this blog where a nice enough look­ing woman asserts some­thing like “If you wanna be a suc­cess­ful blog­ger, you’d bet­ter be sexy. If you can’t post a sexy pic­ture of your­self you should fall back on a cer­tain level of irony or invent new words.”. Well, hm. Now I’m curi­ous. What is the use of blog­ging? Is there a truth hid­den away some­where? Didn’t I real­ize it’s all about bitchin’ around and attract­ing scores of readers?

I couldn’t care less. I’m exert­ing my right of free­dom of expres­sion and I’m doing it to get rid of all these thoughts in my head. It’s like a vent, if you wanna have it so. I’m inter­ested in other people’s opin­ions, that’s true. The more the bet­ter but that doesn’t mean that I’ve to change my ways. That would defeat the very pur­pose of this blog and I’d become a pet of others.

Mad­ness? This. Is. Sparta!

Before the rise of Athens Sparta unar­guably had the best army in ancient Greece. Both city-states let their rivalry result in a great series of con­flicts nowa­days known as Pelo­pon­nesian War. How­ever, Sparta’s glory was hard won in the famous Bat­tle of Ther­mopy­lae, 480 BC. This bat­tle is well remem­bered and many an offi­cer has learned about it in tac­tics lessons in mil­i­tary acad­e­mies around the world. Some of us may have already heard about it in his­tory classes, though.

Well, at this bat­tle an alliance of city-states fought against the mas­sive army of Xerxes I. A small force led by King Leonidas of Sparta blocked the only road pos­si­ble for the great Per­sian army and hold them suc­cess­fully back for two days. On the third day of bat­tle, though, a Greek shep­herd named Ephialtes betrayed his brethren and revealed a hid­den moun­tain path to the Per­sians. The path led behind the Greek lines and so King Leonidas dis­missed the remain­der of his army and stayed behind with 300 sol­diers of the Spar­tan royal guard and about 700 Thes­pi­ans. There also were some hun­dred The­bans hold as hostage who had had to stay behind too.

In this con­text it has to be known that the brav­ery dis­played by the Thes­pi­ans was indeed a very impres­sive effort. As opposed to the Spar­tans who were trained from birth to fight and give their lives in com­bat as Spar­tan law dic­tated, the Thes­pi­ans were no more than citizen-soldiers. Now, this mixed bag of sol­diers fought bravely to buy the rest of the Greek army some time to retreat and reform. This heroic bat­tle is said to haven been exces­sively bru­tal down to fights at close quar­ters with bare hands, teeth and nails.

After the num­bers of the Greeks had dimin­ished they retreated to a small hill in the nar­row­est part of the pass. Dur­ing this retreat the remain­ing The­bans sur­ren­dered to the Per­sian army leav­ing the rest of the Spar­tans and Thes­pi­ans to fight the enemy. After King Leonidas was killed the Spar­tans fought even more fanat­i­cally than before to defend his body. In this final stand the Per­sians suf­fered heavy losses, so that the Per­sian army killed the last of the Spar­tans with heavy flights of arrows to avoid los­ing more men. It is said that the Per­sian losses were way over 20.000 dead and some esti­mates stand at more than twice that number …

Now, there will be a film adap­ta­tion of Frank Miller’s graphic novel 300. Frank Miller took some lib­er­ties in this nar­ra­tive and applied an art style this project that is very sim­i­lar to Sin City. Over the last weeks dif­fer­ent trail­ers and teasers have made their appear­ances in the web and know I’m going to add to it too. I’m quite excited and I can hardly wait for the movie to be released on March 2007.

Link­age: IMDB | Trailer: Apple, Yahoo, YouTube