By an amazing twist of fate, both Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on February 12, 1809. Some celebrate this day as “Darwin Day” (and some churches got in on the act a day early by hosting “Evolution Sunday” services). I prefer to celebrate Lincoln’s birthday, instead.

Whatever the merits of Darwin’s theory of evolution as a scientific theory, its application (some would say misapplication) to human relations as “Social Darwinism” have been highly toxic, leading to eugenics, abortion and sterilization (as a means of removing “harmful genes” from humanity), and even the Holocaust.

Lincoln’s battle against a nation “half slave and half free” (June 16, 1858 “House Divided” campaign speech), on the other hand, was an early blow in the long battle to recognize all peoples of any color as truly human. Even before becoming president and signing the Emancipation Proclamation, he defended the Declaration of Independence’s statement “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” vigorously (July 10, 1858 speech at Chicago).

Who has inspired more good actions and a better humanity? Darwin or Lincoln? In my mind, it isn’t even close.

(H/T to PowerLine)

Jack Bauer’s back (on Fox’s 24), and by an amazing coincidence, so am I! I don’t have an excuse as good as Jack’s for my long absence from blogdom: saying “I was being held hostage by Windows Vista betas and release candidates” doesn’t have nearly the cachet of a Jack Bauer involuntary “vacation,” but no matter: the long wait (for both 24 and Windows Vista) is almost over.

I’ve written for my favorite hard-core mod-happy technology magazine, Maximum PC, several times over the last few years, and I’m happy to announce that they’ve tapped me again to write a piece called The Vista Starter’s Guide for an upcoming issue (could it have anything to do with my forthcoming book Maximum PC Guide to Windows Vista Exposed?).

Keep an eye out for a special edition of the mag with two chapters from the book.

If the only blog tools you’re using are your favorite web browser and your blogging host’s default editor, you’re working a lot harder than you need to.

Ian Soper (The Nameless Church and iansoper.com just introduced me to a new browser, Flock, which is the first web browser optimized for blogging, photo sharing, and other social networking tasks.

Flock makes it this easy to blog about a web page:

1. Open the web page in Flock
2. Right-click on the page
3. Select Blog This
4. Flock opens its integrated blog editor and adds a hyperlink.

Flock can do much, much more: check it out.

Blogged with Flock

Posting’s been light in April, thanks to a combination of going to a book fair in Boonville, wrapping up final corrections on Upgrading and Repairing Networks, 5th Edition, coping with a cranky Windows Vista beta (does ‘beta’ mean ‘crashprone’ in Latin?) for an upcoming book, and coming down with a customized high-temperature version of ‘what everybody’s catching.’

Thankfully, I survived April, and had a wonderful time at Barnes & Noble Evansville’s first annual Author Fest. I sold a few books, talked to a lot of other authors (a big shout-out in particular to Bloomington’s own Quentin Dodd, author of two hiliarious YA sci-fi novels, including Beatnik Rutabagas from Beyond the Stars, and The Princess of Neptune), and showed off my latest book, Upgrading and Repairing Servers (about which I’ll be posting more later).