53R1A75

second post of the day. when it rains it pours.

but I simply had to post this because when I saw it I had two distinct thoughts that I wanted to share. A guy in England, who is from Nigeria, is creating a Manga bible. In it he portrays “Christ [as] a hard guy, seeking revolution and revolt, a tough guy.”

Immediately two things came to mind. The first and most animal response was: I must have this. The second and much more thoughtful reflection was that I don’t feel this is a technically correct or helpful view. Christ was lowly and humble, patient, loving, kind, unassuming, and peaceful. Nowhere in the actual physical life of Christ is he violent or revolutionary. He would even say things like give to Ceasar what is Ceasars. Telling the oppressed Jewish community that they should peacefully cooperate with the government and instead of focusing on the physical world and it perishable riches, they should concentrate on achieving spiritual goals that store up treasures in heaven. On the other hand in Revelations we are shown a violent, perfectly judgemental Christ. But he isn’t at war with man or man’s rulers. He is clearly at war with Satan and Satan minions. In that sense I would say the manga author is right on. When Christ came to save, he was at perfect peace with His creations, wanting only to give His life so that we could re-unite with Him in spirit and in truth. At the same time He was at perfect peace with man He was in the midst of an all out, take no prisoners war with an enemy who for centuries held the human race in utter depravity and captivity.

But like I said, as soon as I can find this thing, I’m going to try and get me a copy.

a little mixed bag of loving for everyone.

England is now going to include a clause in their athlete contract that prohibit any political speech or negative discussion of conditions or “situations” while in Beijing. Failure to comply will get them on a plane home, pronto. Just look at the ridiculous picture of the Football team “Heil Hitler-ing” and you get the idea of how ridiculous it is to put those kind of restrictions on people.

Also my personal friend Hugo Chavez is threatening to stop exporting oil. I would normally see this as a good thing since it would continue to put pressure on the automotive industry to become oil independent. I say normally because I then read an article in wired about how there are several new studies showing that the biofuels movement may not be so green after all. Add that to the really environmentally bad chemicals in batteries and you’re left with… oil!

Which then brings me to a recently formed, unvented gripe: Compact Fluorescent Bulbs. Now it seems like the fashionable thing to these days is to FORCE your subjects to use these environmental wonders. But I would like to ask, “at what expense?” They contain mercury which among other things is POISONOUS. So while you on the one hand save a lot of money on energy and also a lot of carbon output by power plants, you really aren’t doing anyone a favor by having mercury hang out with your children, just like you go totally insane when there’s lead in childrens’ toys (no pun intended). On the other hand there was a comparison graph of mercury output by CFL’s compared to regular bulbs powered by a coal plant. The CFL’S won. So all I can say is: if you want to save some coin, be a little easier on the environment, don’t mind some poison in your house, and don’t mind the nagging buzz sound from cheaper cfl’s, by all means, fill your house with the buggers. But mostly I don’t want some socialist enviro-fascist bureaucratic junky telling me that these are so awesome that they are the only light bulb I’m allowed to buy or sell.

Speaking about lead paint in kids toys, this netflix for kids toys startup does test their toys for lead. Making life easier for you Type A’s (what in the world does that mean anyways?).

a: check, b: check, c: check. houston, we’re ready for take off. good article on choosing a spouse. very concise and to the point, but still a very good read.

We never made a real kilt, just an improvised skirt pattern that I wear (and it looks really awesome). But this was a neat (albeit hard-to-read) article on how to fold a kilt. Now if I could just find a pattern for a real kilt.

And finally to wrap things up, some software to download! Now I know most of my loyal readers don’t do this, but anyways, if you’re playing warcraft and you need to launch firefox, but it hogs memory, you could switch to a less memory intensive browser like ie or opera. But i’m hardcore firefox so I found a little preloader program that keeps some of the settings and things loaded in memory so it talks a lot less time to boot up when i’m hardpressed for good info from thottbot. W00t.

wow, twice in one day. my brother linked to a really well made candidate picker by usa today.

my picks were: 1) Ron Paul (duhh), 2) Rudy G., and 3) Mitt Romney (why oh why did you quit?).

usa today’s reader’s picks were: 1) Mitt Romney (… T-T …), 2) Huckabee (I’ve got another name for this guy, it goes something like THEOCRATIC NITWIT), 3) Some guy who’s already out, but also an R.

So while this in no way is scientific (i’ve already gone through twice just so i could review the results after i accidentally closed the window), I would like to point out two things: THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS OBVIOUSLY DEVELOPMENTALLY CHALLENGED. They are so fixated on “a strong leader” with “an honorable military background” because our country “is in dire need of protection” they’ve totally lost sight of what “small government” should be and most importantly what “personal freedoms” are. Shame on them because they voted for a dunce who doesn’t even follow the platform. And two, MITT WHAT ARE YOU DOING? DON’T QUIT. You should instead beat Huckabee from an inch of his so called life so he can’t steal your hard-earned votes.

So you may ask, “who are you voting for?”

“Well,” I would reply, “I’m a registered Libertarian and since Pennsylvania has closed primaries and the LP isn’t actually having primaries,” I chuckle, “I won’t be voting until Nov. 5th or whenever that big election thingy is. And I, sure as Hell is as real as Heaven, will not be voting for McCain” As I stomp off in a huge rage of helplessness. Besides, based on the USA today Poll, I’m more like Billary and Osama Obama than I am McCain. I’ll prolly write in the LP candidate when push comes to shove (too bad the LP isn’t included in the USA Today Poll).

Well, I just published something I had written a month ago in defense of Ron Paul. It ended up being really long and boring so I quit writing it and saved it. Today I was inspired to write some drivel about some wikipedia events going on and just include my largely unoriginal thoughts.

As it turns out Islamic culture (largely it seems, uneducated extremists) is having another spat with the rest of the world. This time it’s over images of Mohammed in WikiPedia. I won’t go into it anymore than this: there seems to be a fundamental misuderstanding of freedom within the culture of Islam. Because you are free to censor images of your key prophet doesn’t mean you should. Claiming that people who, in the name of scholarship, insult you by including these images is laughable. Claiming that these same people should be more sensitive of your culture is rediculous. On a world stage Islam needs to learn something that Christians have know since Piss Christ and before even that: NOTHING IS SACRED, GET OVER IT.

And for some more wikidrama, check the register noted a cult oriented conflict of interest. If you read through the COI complaint it was resolved that he was not at fault because there weren’t any edit wars over it. I read it more as, the article is a whitewash, but no one really cares enough to make a section of criticisms. Sigh.

Finally on a lighter and much less controversial note, I leave you with a new read I’ve found this year. It’s the art of manliness and it’s not too great for manly tips as it seems geared to a much younger crowd (and I’m not that old… yet). But it is very light and easy to read with some good laughs and sometimes an insight or two.

Happy new year! Hope everyone had a wonderful time doing stuff, seeing things etc. I recently was sent a link to a break down of Ron Paul’s voting history and since I’m a supporter of the constitution and big fan, I wanted to take some time and analyze my thoughts regarding this article. It’s a huge article, so I may get bored and abandon it, but here goes.

Part I: On individual rights.
Subsection: “He opposes the right of women to be free to control their own reproductive systems if they happen to live in particular states or other countries, or if they work for the Peace Corps. ”

People, this is merely a matter of semantics. Which is more important? Should the government fund population control? NO. This has with it implications ranging from government making decisions of how many children you have to the contraversy of whether this is murder, thus making the government complicit in crime. While I’m for the woman’s right to choose (mostly simply government non-interference), what makes it necessary for the government to fund this? The idea that because the government doesn’t fund it, it is against it seems really quite absurd and is clearly an instance of “forcing the issue”. The keyword that seems to be interpreted as “pro-life” is “funding”. None of the bills say, “I’m taking away your rights”. They all say “To prohibit any Federal official from expending any Federal funds”. To interpret it any other way is simply myopic thinking.

Subsection: “He wants to erase the distinction in U.S. law between a zygote and a person”
I’m not a doctor. Are you? Is one cell that is part of human less human than the other cells of that body. Paul is a doctor. I’m not, and I’m not familiar with the scientific debate on this section. The abortion issue is also not black and white, but murder is murder. It is the governments job to protect it’s citizens from committing crimes against one another and to judge those who do. If society has problems killing their young, the government must make a clear decision on where it stands in relation to the issue. It must define whether or not a zygote constitutes a person, and therefore a citizen worthy of judicial protection. It seems to me that saying that human life begins at conception is a very rational idea and not radical or controversial at all. I would go so far as to say it’s common sense. And also the summary of the final resolution makes his issue almost laughable. YOU WOULDN’T WANT A BILL GUARANTEEING YOUR RIGHT TO LIFE? These kind of choices as to who lives and who doesn’t live must be quite trifling to you since it’s not your life in question. Seems a bit selfish, that’s all.

Subsection: “He would deny the use of the Federal court system — and even Federal precedent — to people discriminated against because of their religious beliefs or sexual orientation. This would also limit the cross-state recognition of same-sex marriages. Some of these bills he cynically calls this the “We the People Act”.”
Here I view the situation as this, on the one hand government protection of religion is a good thing, until it becomes discrimination against other religions. At which point the government must then protect all religions. It really doesn’t sound that bad, and it’s probably not. But really if the government is supposed to be separated from religion why should it protect it? Leave religion alone and let people worship the way they like. The second part of those resolutions listed were protections of speech and religious speech. I can’t figure out why the author thinks these are bad things… unless he doesn’t like some people’s opinions. Particularly as he mentions: same sex marriage. Government involvement in that specific arena is ludicrous to begin with, and any legislation to the left or the right simply encroaches on the choices a person can make about his or her lifestyle (besides, marriage is a largely religious institution, why is the government involved?). Based on the resolutions he mentions and the way he presents them, it is clear he only wants to protect some speech, as it relates to his agenda.

Subsection: “This includes limits on courts’ hearing cases related to abortion, and he has introduced bills specific to these kinds of cases. He also uses the deceptive term “partial-birth abortion”
It seems to me that this also only allows for less government involvement and more personal freedoms. If you want to have women to be able to freely choose whether they want to abort a child or not, why would the federal government need to have jurisdiction of those cases? Again, this is a situation where less government involvement would produce more personal freedom and privacy.

Subsection: “Even though he claims to be a “libertarian”, he opposes people’s freedom to burn or destroy their own copies of the design of the U.S. flag”
Forcing the issue. Despite many people’s ideas of free speech, there should not be any real reason to burn the US flag. It’s pretty. It’s also pretty symbolic of people who made it possible to be able to burn the flag. Don’t be irresponsible. Don’t burn the flag.

Part II: LAWS IMPROVING THE LOT OF THE WORKING CLASS

Subsection: “He has tried to repeal the Occupational Safety and Health Act”
This idea that the government is somehow obligated to protect workers is simply socialist and I do not, will not and cannot abide by it. On one hand I do agree that if the employer does not take the personal responsibility to protect it’s employees it has no business to complain when the government smacks it with costly regulation to protect the populace. On the other hand government regulations can be reduced to simple meddling and interfering with business. Also I would like to clarify between privately owned business and corporate status. Corporations have no place in America (recall the Boston tea party was against the East India Trading Company as much as it was against English rule and taxation). They should be strictly controlled and monitored, which they are not. But private, business owning and operating citizens should be left alone.

Subsection: “He would like to make it much easier to decertify labor unions”
Unions are disruptive to business. Again this is not black and white. If companies abuse workers so that they find it necessary to be in unions, then the companies deserve to have to deal with unions. I would actually disagree with Paul on this particular point. There should be resolutions to make it easier to decertify corporations who abuse consumers and workers. However a contiguous economy makes voters happy.

Subsection: “He opposes the Minimum Wage”
To this I have to callously say: Let the markets decide the wages. And repeat myself in saying that the minimum wage really should only exist as a punishment to abusive corporations. It should not exist as it seemingly does, which is to subsidize substandard laborers. This only raises costs to companies whose costs are then offset by the consumer.

So I’m only really about 1/4 through this guy’s post and I’m really just bored with it.