You may recall that Bryan College, a Christian school in Dayton, Tennessee, was considering a change last month to its statement of faith that all faculty members have to sign. It would be revised to include a section regarding the origin of man.
“We believe that all humanity is descended from Adam and Eve. They are historical persons created by God in a special formative act, and not from previously existing life forms.”
In other words, you had to be a Creationist. No room for theistic evolution (much less how it actually happened).
Last week, the school’s board of trustees approved the revised statement, a decision that could result in the exodus of several faculty members.
Well, Ken Ham is still not satisfied because the school isn’t promoting Young Earth Creationism, just run-of-the-mill Creationism.
He’s upset because the bullshit has a slightly sweeter stench than he prefers.
To that end, he may have written the best thing I’ve read in a while. After quoting parts of the Bible mentioning Adam and Eve and the rest of the literal Genesis story, he says this:
… the above verses are enough for us to know with 100 percent certainty that Eve was created from Adam (and not through some previously existing animal), and that Adam was made from dust.
100% certainty.
He’s seriously using the argument that the Bible is true because the Bible says it’s true. That’s not just a joke atheists make about fundamentalists — he’s actually doing it.
It’s bad enough that Bryan College is making its professors sign a statement demanding that they close their minds to all available evidence. But it’s so much worse when someone even more out-of-touch with reality complains because the school hasn’t gone far enough in stopping critical thinking.
For - I haven't made Vinyl in a while, so it was fun to do her again! I love the expression that was chosen - I've never done a winking pony before (well, a mini, but not a big pony) and I'm really happy with the way it looks. Her glasses are magnetic.
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Here at Bacon Today, we’re big fans of the gyro sandwich. A great gyro is piled high with succulent lamb, beef or chicken on hearty pita bread. Our motto when it comes to gyros is, “the more meat, the better.” Add some tangy tzatziki sauce and you’re in gyro heaven. And of course as we are also big bacon fans, we decided to create a gyro with bacon instead of the traditional meat fillings. We coated meaty bacon slices with Greek seasonings and baked them to perfection. Then we stuffed them in pita bread and slathered on the tzatziki to create this “Gyro BLT.” Enjoy, bacon fans!
Gyro Pita BLT Ingredients
3 Gyro seasoned bacon strips, cooked, cut in half
1 Pita rounds
Red onion, to taste, thinly sliced,
Tomato, to taste, sliced
Lettuce, to taste, shredded
Tzatziki (make the day before)
Tzatziki Sauce:
16 ounces plain yogurt
1 medium cucumber, peeled, seeded, and finely chopped
Pinch kosher salt
4 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
1 Tablespoon chopped fresh dill
Tzatziki Sauce:
Place the yogurt in a tea towel or cheese cloth. Set over a bowl; cover and refrigerate for 2 hours or overnight.
Later, place the chopped cucumber in a tea towel, and squeeze to remove as much liquid as possible. Discard the liquid and add to the drained yogurt.
Mash the garlic cloves into a paste and combine with the salt, dill, olive oil, and vinegar. Refrigerate for at least an hour to let the flavors meld together. Store in the refrigerator in an airtight container for no more than one week.
The BLT:
Spread a heaping dollop of Tzatziki Sauce onto a pita, followed by a small handful of lettuce. Top with bacon strips, tomato, and onions. Serve with a side of tzatziki and rice pilaf, greek salad, or french fires.
What a great system you were. This artwork from Eliran Cohen reminds me so much of my experience with the Game Boy, absolutely immersed in whatever I was playing, no matter where I was.
My memories playing Game Boy remain vivid, and remembering them now, you couldn’t have them with a home console. Backtracking around Metroid II during a long, turbulent flight over the Pacific. Having my mind blown when I first started Final Fantasy Adventure in the back of my aunt’s Monte Carlo, when your hero gets thrown off the cliff. Jumping through Elec Man’s stage in Dr. Wily’s Revenge, in between eating chicken nuggets at a Chinese food restaurant while my mom gossiped with her friends.
I still return to Link’s Awakening every few years, spending an afternoon by a window. I’m always trying to recapture the days I’d explore Koholint Island, hiding under the dinner table, hidden so no one could bother me and break the immersion but peeking out just enough so the sun could still warm my skin. If I could still fit in them, I’d probably try playing games in a laundry hamper again, too.
Feel free to share your Game Boy memories and birthday wishes!
Verkhoyansk, Russia, has an average temperature of -50 degrees! How do they survive?
Verkhoyansk is a small town in Russia with a population of 1,311 people. The town's claim to fame is having exceptionally low climate temperatures during the winter. The average temperature during December, January, and February is a freezing -50 degrees Fahrenheit, and it's one of the only places in the world that has recorded temperatures of BELOW -76 degrees Fahrenheit for EVERY DAY in January! During these months, the sun rises at 2p.m. And sets at 3p.m.!
Not only is the town unlucky with its weather, but also with the local wildlife. In January 2012, a pack of 400 wolves attacked the town, killing 313 horses and over 16,000 reindeer. Locals had to patrol the area on snowmobiles until government officials could intervene!
We’re big gyro fans here at Bacon Today. And so we thought, why not make gyro-seasoned bacon? This bacon will be devoured by fans of gyros and fans of Greek and Mediterranean cooking. Sub fresh herbs if you have them. You can eat this bacon on its own, add it to a Greek salad, or make a Gyro Bacon Pita BLT.
1 package of thick-cut bacon
1.5 teaspoon garlic powder or 3 crushed garlic cloves
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1.5 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
In a small bowl, whisk together garlic, thyme, oregano, rosemary, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.
Line a edged baking sheet with foil. Lay out the bacon strips onto the sheet and coat each strip with the spice blend. Place the baking sheet in the oven. Heat oven to 375 degrees and cook for 17-20 minutes while the oven heats up. When the bacon is done cooking, take out the baking sheet and transfer the bacon strips to a paper towel-lined plate to drain excess oil.
Good to know that one can still make a decent computer for less money if they know how.
There's no debating that a souped-up gaming PC will outperform an Xbox One or PlayStation 4 any day of the week, but it'll also cost you a lot more at checkout. However, what about a gaming PC that isn't top of the line, say, one that was built for $550?
This is the question we put to the test: could we build a gaming PC from scratch that could provide a gameplay and visual experience on par with a next-gen console, for around the same price as a next-gen console? While the PlayStation 4 is substantially cheaper, we wanted to make this exercise as competitive as possible, and that meant allowing ourselves the luxury of a slightly higher budget. Our own Mark Walton and Peter Brown each built one machine; one based on Intel and Nvidia chipsets, and the other on AMD hardware. Then, we put them to the test to see if Mark and Peter used their budgets wisely or if they would have been better off buying a console for great graphics on a fixed budget. The text on this page covers the basics of our test, but be sure to check out the videos below for a more in-depth look at Mark's and Peter's process and results.
Rules and Goals
We aimed to stay within a budget of $550--roughly the most you can pay for an Xbox One in North America. In addition to acquiring the bare essentials for a PC--CPU, GPU, RAM, motherboard, power supply, computer case, and hard drive--each editor had to include the cost of a mouse, a keyboard, and a Windows license. No piracy or preexisting parts allowed!
The other goal was to build a machine that performs as well as or better than an Xbox One or PlayStation 4 in cross-platform games. The list of benchmark candidates included Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Battlefield 4, Thief, and Titanfall.
Mark Walton - AMD Gaming PC
Mark Walton's AMD PC
Gaming PCs live and die by the GPU and CPU. AMD's budget offerings are a far better value for the money than either Intel's or Nvidia's. For less than the price of the cheapest Ivy Bridge-based Core processor from Intel, you can pick up six-core chips from AMD that happily outperform it. The same goes for AMD's GPUs, which offer excellent performance for less than the Nvidia equivalent.
My plan was simple: stick as much money into the CPU and GPU as possible, and work with what's left--and if I could make the computer look half decent too, all the better.
Note: Click the links under "settings" to view the complete list of settings used during testing.
I was pleasantly surprised at just how well this system worked. All the games I tried hit frame rates 60fps, and--with the exception of Battlefield 4--did so at the highest settings. Rendering games 1080p60 is an achievable goal on a budget, then, as long as you're realistic about which games you'll be able to do it with, and at what settings. If you're after a bit more oomph and some peace of mind for future releases, though, spending a few extra bucks here and there will give you a big boost in performance.
More RAM is the obvious choice. It doesn't cost much to bump it up to 8GB, and the less time the PC has to spend thrashing the hard drive for a swap file the better. An extra $70 toward an R270 GPU would be a wise decision too. It's good value and overclocks extremely well, putting it firmly in the high-end GPU segment for just a fraction of the cost. There's also the option of an SSD for a more responsive feel, an aftermarket cooler for CPU overclocking, and a nicer-looking case, but they're not essential.
Peter Brown - Intel/Nvidia Gaming PC
Peter Brown's Intel/Nvidia PC
A budget of $550 is unusually small for a gaming PC, especially when the cost of an operating system is factored in. My strategy for this build was centered around a few key tactics.
First, I planned to keep the system's power draw as low as possible to save money on the cost of the power supply. I wanted to build small because smaller form factor cases and motherboards are usually cheaper overall unless they're particularly fancy. I also decided to use an unusually modest CPU. Intel makes excellent processors, but this quality isn't limited to the Core line. As long as I wasn't going to risk bottlenecking the GPU's performance, I looked for the simplest and cheapest option available. That way, I could focus on the linchpin of a gaming PC: the GPU. In this instance, I was aiming for Nvidia's Geforce GTX 750 Ti due to its great price/performance ratio.
Note: Click the links under "settings" to view the complete list of settings used during testing.
Like Mark, I was surprised how well my rig performed. I had faith that the GTX 750 Ti would hold up under light pressure, but given its partner in crime, the Pentium CPU, I presumed that I would have to dial down the in-game settings a bit more. In practice, all it took for most games to play near 60 frames per second at 1080p was to disable a few flourishes like ambient occlusion and aggressive anti-aliasing. With my $550 PC, I was able to handily outperform the Xbox One in every case, and the PlayStation 4 in most cases, which says a lot about the value of the PlayStation 4 given its lower $400 price point.
If I had had a larger budget, I would have sprung for a better CPU and a bit more RAM. My inexpensive Pentium CPU held up quite well considering that it cost only $80, but it was typically running at full speed with little to no remaining overhead. Unfortunately, given my skimpy power supply, there's little hope for tossing a better Nvidia GPU into this build down the road without other additional upgrades. In the end, with our meager budget, Mark's AMD focus gave him a slight advantage in terms of performance and upgradability.
Closing Thoughts
As it turns out, you can build a gaming PC for around the cost of an Xbox One that will outperform both next-gen consoles given the current stock of cross-platform games. You'll also enjoy a massive library that neither the PlayStation 4 nor the Xbox One will ever be able to match from a pure numbers standpoint. Plus, your PC is upgradable, and its functionality in non-gaming areas only adds to its value. AMD has an advantage when it comes to the balance of price and performance on the low end, but there's nothing stopping you from mixing and matching components from different manufacturers, which very well might be the best plan if you've got a larger budget to work with.
Keep in mind, too, that current cross-platform games on consoles perform best on a PlayStation 4, which currently sells for $100 less than an Xbox One. If you were to try to build a gaming PC for $400 to $450, our experience has taught us that you would end up with a machine that can't compete with either next-gen console. Though we both succeeded in our goal, $550 was proved quite limiting when it came to picking components.
If you had a budget of $550, which platform--PlayStation 4, Xbox One, or PC--would you choose? How would you build a gaming PC on a console-size budget? Let us know in the comments below.
- I haven't made Vinyl in a while, so it was fun to do her again! I love the expression that was chosen - I've never done a winking pony before (well, a mini, but not a big pony) and I'm really happy with the way it looks. Her glasses are magnetic.
