Tolkien's Inspiration for The Silmarillion

Tolkien found inspiration for The Silmarillion in the Bible, mythology, legend and lore, but also in the Dialogues of Plato, where Socrates discusses the soul at great length, comparing it to harmony, which to this Tolkien reader brings to mind the harmony created by Eru (the One God in Tolkien's theology) and his Ainur (archangels) before the making of the world. In The Silmarillion, Tolkien writes of this harmony forming both Middle Earth and foretelling the deeds thereupon, which is why prophecies are always fulfilled. The discordant notes introduced by the lone dissenting Ainur, Melkor (Tolkien's spin on Satan) do not succeed in destroying the harmony, but only alter the musical composition to create even more powerful music in the end.

In contrast to the silence of the Bible, Tolkien tackles head-on the one really essential question for a monotheist, "Why is there evil in the world?" The reason is art and beauty. That may not be a satisfying answer to most human beings, but why should a god view the world in the same way as a human being? Eru merely wants to create great music, perhaps due to pride, vanity or a delight in beauty. Tolkien explains evil as the black that offers contrast and greater poignancy to the white. The great god, Eru, is an artist first and a moralist second. Eru is concerned with creating great music, great art. He values beauty above righteousness or possibly equates the two. In Tolkien's works, the beautiful are good, and the evil are ugly, with few exceptions, one of them being Sauron when he lived among men. Eru is forever concerned about the endurance of his creation, Middle Earth, and its beauty and power. He is not as concerned with the fate of individuals or even of nations, although a handful of heroes have managed to catch his attention, or rather the attention of his lieutenants, on very rare occasions.

When reading the Old Testament, "Yahweh" seems to me a neglectful, vengeful father-figure, who allows temptations to arise and does nothing to reduce their influence. Nevertheless, he expects rather arbitrary rules to be obeyed precisely at all times, and when they aren't, exacts group punishment on all, the good, the bad and the innocent alike, and his punishments are cruel, like a tyrant's. In "The Silmarillion," Eru has far fewer rules, and no expectation of worship or devotion, not being a vain god. Therefore, I like Eru better than the classical god. However, with both Eru and Yahweh, one gets the sense of mankind being mere playthings, toys from which the greater being derives amusement or a sense of purpose. Men and elves are called "The Children of Eru," yet they are treated less like children than like toys. One protects children, but toys may be discarded or allowed to be damaged or destroyed at a whim, and Eru extends little protection from either Melkor or the ravages of nature and time. Yahweh, for his part, does not protect mankind from Satan, a shadowy figure that appears seldom in the Bible, I believe only in Genesis, when tempting Jesus in the desert, and in Revelations.

As a theology, "The Silmarillion" is far more satisfying than those derived from the Bible. I liked how Tolkien fleshed out the precise relationship between the central god and his opponent and explained most of what happens to people after they die. People have a strong desire to know what happens after death, but the Bible is silent on that issue other than to say one will be with God, whatever that means, and that could mean anything at all, and the nature of God is not clear either. The nature of Eru and his personality is much clearer and likeable, a more modern-thinking god, where Yahweh was a bloody tyrant that bashed people over the head when they did not agree with him. In "The Silmarillion," the archangels are all named and described, and the reasons for Melkor's dispute with them is better understood. The Bible leaves much room for speculation due to its ambiguities, with disastrous consequences for the Church, which attempted for centuries to eliminate "heresies" by violence. In Middle Earth, there is no room for any other religion, because Eru has made himself known through his lieutenants by direct intervention. There are living beings that have seen and dined with the archangels, and miracles happen in Middle Earth. The existence of Eru is never in dispute. Would that modern religions could make a similar claim! I think the absence of God and of miracles argues against the existence of either.

The most compelling connection between Plato's Dialogues and The Silmarillion can be found in Phaedo, my favorite portion of the Dialogues, where Socrates tells a charming tale to Simmias of the Earth, its geography, and of a special land where men live much longer than ordinary and possess supernatural powers of perception and endurance, and where gems are far more beautiful, and where the gods dwell in temples and let their wishes be known to men.

Vampire Dream

Today was Friday the Thirteenth, after all.

The night before, I went to bed late, around 0500, and had a nightmare that derived from "True Blood." Vampires were stalking my friends and I, and we were hiding out in different houses to escape, but somehow they would find us. I don't remember blood-drinking, a vampire-myth that I always found implausible, but they drained our life-force by painful touch. Each vampire had marked one of us for his own. In our absence, each vampire would starve, because they could only feed upon us and no one else. Starvation caused the vampire to lose their looks and become hideous, monstrous, savage-looking, which made them scarier. When they fed upon us, they recovered their looks. I remember the dreadful knocking on the door and then the door being opened and the monster coming in to find his prey and feed.

I awoke and found it most curious that I was dreaming about vampires, but then again, I had spent much of the night before playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, and my player-character happens to be a Demonspawn Necromancer that had mastered a spell known as Vampiric Draining. I achieved final victory with this character in "The Pits" scenario of Sprint.

Later in the day, I found myself alone in a big empty building that is supposedly haunted by a noisy ghost. My friends have sworn that they have seen and heard this ghost. Of course I am skeptical, but I kept my skepticism to myself, because I have learned that people who believe in ghosts do not like to hear the opinions of those that do not. It is the same with religion. No believer really wants to hear the opinions of an atheist, especially not in person. In social settings, my object is to get along with people, not to persuade them of my beliefs. This blog is like the vault for my private opinions and philosophy.

I was asked if I felt scared to be working in the haunted building all alone, and I replied I was not. I thought to myself that if I saw a ghost, it would be a very good thing, because it would serve as a refutation of my opinions, and I would welcome the evidence. I would not say that a ghost is proof of the afterlife, because it could be many other things, but I would like very much to see one, even if I would feel frightened. I am willing to feel frightened if the reward is seeing something far out of the ordinary that will give me new knowledge. There was a time in my life when I called upon deities and certain supernatural beings to reveal themselves to me in any fashion whatsoever, but they did not choose to trifle with me. A supernatural event might have led me to belief, but such did not come.

I did not hurry and was not timid when I worked tonight. But I did not see or hear a ghost nor anything out of the ordinary. I believe the human brain is very creative and imaginative, and sometimes I wonder about ghosts, and I am willing to meet one, but I never have, and so I do not believe in ghosts.

Grob is Over

I used to play the Grob (1. g4) often, when I was studying it, and was able to achieve many wins against higher-rated players with it, but I perceive that the opening has been over-analyzed. Too often do players have a ready response against it, and that I think makes a difficult opening nigh impossible.

I actually have achieved better results with the obscure and universally scorned Barne's Defense (1. f3) than with the Grob. A number of players waste time during the game pondering a sortie with their Queen against my kingside or actually performing it with dismal results.

While I appreciate that the Grob is difficult to play, it receives what seems to me fanatical and unreasoning hatred from some quarters. I have read "refutations" of the Grob many times that failed to persuade me. I maintain the opening is sound and cannot be refuted. As with other unpopular openings, a draw can be achieved if both players play precise moves. I have seen 1. g4 d5 2. h3 e5 3. Bg2 Nc6 set forth as being better for Black. I would counter with 4. c4 Be6 5. cxd5 Bxd5 6. Bxd5 Qxd5 7. Nf3 and now the position seems to me by a slight degree to favor White, which stands to gain a tempo with Nc3, unless Black opts to trade a bishop for a knight (recapture with dxc3, and Black gains a tempo via O-O-O, but White's King has a good post at c2, and I like White's chances).

Patrick O'Brian & Gore Vidal

I was amused to find a reference to Gore Vidal in O'Brian's "The Wine-Dark Sea" on p.157. A midshipman or petty officer named Vidal is described as chapelist, democratic or even republican in his views, in other words a left-winger, that is, for early 19th century England. There the resemblance begins and, perhaps, ends. This Vidal conspires to free an imprisoned Frenchman by the name of Dutourd, who seems to be a pacifist that wants to start a democratic, money-optional commune on a deserted island. The reference may pass unnoticed by anyone that hasn't read Gore Vidal. At first I wondered whether O'Brian intended a mild rebuke of Gore Vidal's political views, but upon reflection I think the author just meant to tip his cap to a fellow historical novelist. I can't assume that O'Brian's views were that much different than Gore Vidal's, other than on the subject of homosexuality, where O'Brian had difficulty.

Gore Vidal's literary criticism is remarkable in its profound silence upon O'Brian. I only found one sentence indicating Gore Vidal was even aware of O'Brian. I think Gore may have found O'Brian too abundant with minute facts and technical details, too objective, and lacking that strong point of view which Gore always invested in his own work. Gore had a profound distaste for war and did not like to read or write portrayals of war. By contrast, O'Brian's books drip with blood and gore.

The Silly Sisters

The Silly Sisters released two musical gems in "The Lass of Loch Royal" and "Geordie," both so excellent that I can't decide which is better. Sometimes I favor one, sometimes the other. For now, I prefer "Geordie." Everything about the two songs is superb. It is very strange that the songs and their performers are not better known.

Dennis Rodman

Rodman is a lightning rod, now that he's gone to North Korea and declared he's BFF's with the North Korean tyrant. As a target, he is too easy, and for a while I declined to blog about the issue, but it bothers me. I used to watch Braves baseball and used to root for Dennis Rodman when he was part of their team.

That the tyrant uses Rodman at certain moments as a distraction is clear. Recently, the tyrant murdered his ex-girlfriend and her friends, out of mere pique, and sent their families to prison camps. Just a few days after that story broke in the media, Rodman was invited to North Korea, and of course he accepted.

Rodman, for his part, seeks to use the tyrant to promote various business deals. Looking at his picture in the media, wearing a silver hat and sunglasses and sucking on a cigar, I am reminded of the "thug lifestyle" espoused by so many rappers, an ideology devoid of ethics or loyalty that justifies the pursuit of money and power at any price. What a boring and pointless existence to lead. I think that if I had been a fan of Rodman, I would no longer be one after he cozied up to the dictator. Such sycophancy is evil and casts a long, dark shadow over everything Rodman has ever done or ever will do. A thousand years from now, any chapter on the life of Rodman must include a section on his dealings with the bloody tyrant, the callousness shown to the tyrant's innocent victims, and the praise that Rodman lavished upon the violent dictatorship, all of which Rodman did of his own free will, even while being a millionaire and living in a free country. Rodman has marred his legacy forever.

There is a comparison to be made between Eric Snowden and Dennis Rodman, their contrasting motivations and possible outcomes, the benefits and drawbacks of wickedness versus acts of conscience. Some men do a selfless act for what they deem to be the greater good, even at considerable risk to themselves. Other men do a wicked deed for selfish gain at little or no risk to themselves. Is there an unseen advantage to selfless acts of good? Is there a God watching in the sky with a ledger, taking account of all the good deeds and evil ones and weighing them for later judgment of the soul? Perhaps that extravagant fantasy cannot hold water in the popular consciousness, but still there may be subtle and difficult to understand advantages of good. What is the purpose of life? What is the value of existence? Maybe being a catalyst for positive change is its own reward. Maybe the advantage accrues not to the individual, but to current and later generations. Good people may view themselves as expendable, and take comfort in the good works that they do and the good effects that are achieved by their sacrifices.

Gore No Fount of Wisdom

After watching a documentary on Gore Vidal last night, I was reminded of my late hero's unwise traffic with Timothy McVeigh. I think Gore was a whore for attention and lacked discretion in distinguishing good attention from bad attention. I think Gore gained nothing by that traffic and gave his ideological opponents a gift that keeps on giving. Perhaps Gore had grown decrepit in his old age and lost some of his judgement or perhaps his decisions were all in character. Killing a bunch of people should not be a means to get attention for a cause, or else civilization is truly dead. The terrorist committed an act of war, and there is not much to discuss about war. War is answered by war, violence begets violence and so on.

Viewing clips of Gore through the years, I agree with others in finding him foremost an entertainer, secondly a critic, and only last a philosopher. Many things that he said do ring true, but he exaggerated for dramatic effect, as writers like to do to stave off their nemesis, the reader's boredom. I think Gore could have chosen his battles more carefully, but then would Gore have still been Gore, and would anyone have ever heard of him at all? Perhaps he reckoned on accruing occasional setbacks in seeking the greater goal of achieving notoriety and success as an entertainer. I would not make the mistake of asserting that Gore was wise however. Clever, yes, very, and cunning as well. Perhaps he was wise in the sense that his personal life seemed surprisingly neat and solid. He never wanted for money, and his relationship with his partner endured to his death. He seemed quite content and lived to a ripe old age, enjoying the admiration of a legion of fans right to the end. In reading Gore, I think it is important to perceive that he exaggerates and sometimes takes extreme positions that seem far out on a limb because he is a performer, an entertainer that is doing his best to engage an audience that he may indeed hold in some secret contempt.

Realpolitik in Syria

I can't fathom Obama's readiness to bomb Syria other than through realpolitik. Chemical weapons are nasty, but the West used them in massive quantities in World War I.

The realpolitik is that over time, Syria has become a proxy war between Iran and Hezbollah on the one hand and Israel on the other. Defeating or diminishing Assad deals a blow to Hezbollah and Iran. Isolating terrorist Hezbollah is good in principle, but unanswered is who takes Assad's place.

There are uncalculated costs to war, the opium of our leaders. They dwell upon Syria, when they should be sorting out serious problems in the U.S. Perhaps that is the real reason they allow Syria to seize their attention. It is a perfect diversion, ideal in every way. Our leaders do not really want to bother with sorting out the wretched economy and other difficult problems. War is simple. The technical aspects are farmed out to military professionals. The leaders can strut about, playing the warlord, savoring their power, and watching the drama unfold on television from the comfort of their armchairs. Corporate America likes it, because demand for expensive armaments increases with every conflict. War diverts the masses from the wretched economy, climate change and the poor implementation of health care due to Republican obstructionism. Even if the war won't make Israel safer, there is hope that it will, and that helps sell the war. There is talk about setting an example for rogue states like Iran and North Korea. Unanswered is why the U.S. has to be the policeman of the world, a policeman who draws no salary and receives no gratitude and is resented for being a policeman.

I'm skeptical of this war, but pragmatic. If the deed is done, then let us hope the outcome is more like "Libya 2" rather than "Iraq 2". I suppose it is unrealistic to expect a nation to possess such enormous and expensive military power and not to use it. And it is true a large part of the fixed costs, such as destroyers and trained soldiers, have already been paid for, and the variable costs, munitions and so forth, are small by comparison. I wonder though what kind of aid package our leaders are going to feel obligated to lavish upon Syria after the war. Again the door to our treasury opens, and out flows the money that we borrowed from China, lavished upon a foreign nation and a foreign culture that has no notion of kinship to us nor allegiance to our ideals. The debt we incur through these foreign adventures will either be repaid by our children or, more likely, defaulted.

The sniping from other media around the world aimed at the U.S., claiming we've "lost the will to lead," or that Obama is diminished somehow by a vote against war, is pure poppycock, demolished in two minutes. The other countries are all too glad to let us pay all the bills, while they reap a benefit or at least get to watch the fireworks with amusement at no cost to themselves. They need to learn about paying for the costs of security, rather than mooching off the unpaid policeman of the world. Otherwise, they can learn about fighting wars by themselves with their own means.

I wish the politicians worked half as hard fixing the economy as they are beating the drums for war. Once again, our politicians are confused as to which nation they represent. They think they represent Syria. In reality, they are supposed to be working for America. Someone needs to remind them. The greatest threat this nation faces is the poor economy. Perhaps the politicians spend too much time in fantasy land and not enough time in the real world.

The DEA's Fishing Expeditions

Here's an interesting article about how AT&T feeds the DEA information concerning their customers. Remember that old yarn about how only terrorists would be targeted for warrantless surveillance? Now the target list includes suspected drug dealers--or anyone remotely related to them. No need for a warrant in today's America. We've abandoned that right. Technology has reduced the labor cost of law enforcement fishing expeditions to such an extent that little basis is needed to justify the cost in time or money. Just as spammers can reach out to millions at no cost, so can the government. An undercover identity on Facebook may be reused millions of times. If compromised, the name and location can be changed, and all the other information reused. Email text can be recycled, with minor alterations if needed. Artificial intelligence in software programs can eliminate much of the human involvement ordinarily needed in these operations. The government stoops to using the tactics and methods of spammers. So I think that that George Orwell's prophetic work, 1984, is closer to being a reality. Government and corporations work hand-in-hand to compile massive databases about people, while concealing their methods and their motives. Who really knows who is targeted and for what reasons? Who knows what is being planned for the future? Anyone that informs the public about the massive ongoing violations of citizen's rights is pursued to the ends of the Earth and faces the severe punishment reserved for murderers.

Can Humans Handle Marijuana? Let's Hope So!

Obama enjoyed smoking pot, but since he became a politician, his line has been that people should go to jail for smoking pot. He didn't go to jail, but he felt like other people should go to jail for doing what he did. But now he is backing down from his draconian position a little bit, seeing the direction that the political winds are blowing. Two states have legalized pot, and more are permitting medicinal use of pot, because pot has many medicinal benefits for the human body, unlike alcohol.

I was amused to read all the hand-wringing the Obama Administration has had over Washington and Colorado's decision to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. There were conference calls between the Attorney General and state officials, memorandums published, press conferences, meetings and deliberations. Goodness gracious! Such a big deal. One would think that they were proposing to make liquor and firearms legal, or something dangerous like that. Everyone should know that marijuana is a non-toxic and non-addictive herb that is used for medicinal purposes, recreational purposes, spiritual purposes, or sometimes all of the above.

Reuters refers to freedom advocates as "marijuana advocates," which is a misnomer. Many people support legalization, yet do not "advocate" anything. I support aspirin being legal, but I don't use aspirin. I support most anything being legal, so long as there is little possibility harm will come of it. But in some cases, such as firearms, we find that people want these things legal even if there is a certain degree of risk. With marijuana, there is very little risk. There is less risk with marijuana than there is with aspirin. Aspirin can kill easily. There are no cases of death by marijuana. Not one.

Now if freedom advocates are wrong, and the prohibitionists are correct, and marijuana should remain illegal, then the human race is doomed. If humans cannot handle a non-toxic and non-addictive herb, then there is no possible way they can handle liquor, firearms, and the list goes on. How can we possibly handle motor vehicles, credit, employment, conscription, war, childbirth, accidents, or natural disasters? Least of all can the nations of the world handle nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. There is no hope for humans at all, following the logic that flows from Prohibition. Thus, we must develop contingency plans and send humans into outer space, because the planet is doomed. Another idea would be to imprison every human being to make sure they don't encounter anything dangerous, such as aspirin or shampoo, either of which can be ingested and cause sickness or even death. The prisoners could then be fed and cleaned by robots, and robots can be designed to maintain the robots. The government has been making great strides in putting people in prison. Our nation has the highest percentage in prison of all the nations in the world. A large number of those people in prison were involved in some manner or another with the lucrative illegal drug trade.

For my part, I think there are too many laws and too many lawyers today. What we need are people in politics who understand how things work--scientists and engineers. There do not seem to be many politicians around that understand how things work and why they work. Politicians are more interested in power and using the law to further their own ends, which are based not upon reason and understanding, but upon personal ambition, misinformation and misunderstanding.

Syria

I'm not thrilled at the prospect of my country getting involved in Syria. In Syria, both sides are anti-American. I don't see that there is any advantage to be gained for the U.S. by getting involved. If the Syrian tyrant is removed from power or diminished, it is pretty clear that another anti-American despot will take over from him, more than likely an Islamist that wants to torture and kill infidels. One thing's for sure, there won't be any notion among the Syrians of gratitude or of repaying all the money we spend assisting them. The warlords spend money we don't have on wars we don't need. I don't see why the U.S. always has to foot the bill, especially when our economy is in shambles.

I don't know how many Americans remember the Afghan War of thirty years ago, when the U.S.S.R. invaded Afghanistan. President Reagan praised the Afghan resistance--the Taliban and Bin Laden--as "Freedom Fighters," and the C.I.A. spent money arming them. My father was so brainwashed by U.S. propaganda that he composed poems praising the "Freedom Fighters." My father doesn't like to talk about that anymore, but he used to recite his poetry with great passion and conviction. After the freedom fighters won, they installed Islamic Sharia law and gave sanctuary to anti-American terrorists. In retrospect, the communist regime that the Soviets tried to preserve was not that bad. It was certainly better than the Taliban by any measure one would care to apply. The communists gave rights to women, such as the right to be educated, something the Islamists will never abide. Not only did the U.S. spend billions putting the Taliban in power, they also spent more billions removing them from power. The gist of it all is that the warlords do not take any clues from history. They are completely incapable of learning from past mistakes, like Afghanistan and Viet Nam, or else they don't care about their country and just want to grab money from the taxpayers. War in modern America is just a way for the military to justify its oversized budget.

The CAPTCHA Insanity

Dear fellow bloggers, if you don't want comments on your blog, then just say so. I typed a fairly lengthy comment on one prominent Linux blog, only to be confounded by the blogger's spambot-trapping CAPTCHA. He's installed a virtual Fort Knox on his blog. I had to decipher not merely a distorted word, but also an out-of-focus picture with a three-digit number on it. In nine cases out of ten, I could not read either the word or the number. My vision is close to 20/20, but after a dozen failed attempts I conceded defeat. The blogger did not receive my comment and will never know that he turned away his reader. Contrast his policy with my own. I allow anonymous comments and have nothing more than the generic CAPTCHA. I'm not torturing people with cryptograms. Yeah, I receive a spam comment once in a blue moon, especially on that post I wrote about Namecheap (the worst web hosting company in existence today), but I delete them. If I notice an upsurge in spam, then I change my settings to hold new comments in the moderation queue, so that they are not published unless I approve them. That completely defeats spammers. And for the record, I do not censor people who disagree with me. I prefer to argue with them! I do censor profanity and vulgarity, because I don't think it's cute or clever, and that sort of thing can impact my search ranking on Google.

Please knock it off with the crypto CAPTCHA insanity!

Twenty Pounds

With age comes the retirement of the pleasures of youth and discovery of other pleasures, those more suited to age. I came to the conclusion today that I need to lose twenty pounds. It was like a revelation to me, a certainty that that was the right thing to do. I feel that my old ticker will be better off for it. Having given up alcohol, the next logical step is to abandon candy and sweet drinks. People give these things to me sometimes, especially at work. I have to learn to either say no or else dispose of the unwanted gifts discreetly.

Ah, rekonq!

For months, I have been experiencing an annoying problem with my laptop. I have Linux Mint 14 KDE installed on it. I'm a big fan of Ubuntu derivatives, because I've experienced what the competition has to offer. I only have a 1.8ghz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2 gigs RAM on this old laptop, but am able to do just about everything through the power of KDE. Some people say KDE is too bloated and slow, but I have not found this to be the case, with one exception. Blogger (this blog) does not like my laptop. I can read a post, usually. But if I try to write a post on my blog, then Firefox bogs down and eventually the system dies. Yes, the dreaded system crash where the computer is no longer responsive. Argh! What to do?

For a couple weeks now, I've been casting about for a replacement Linux distro. I thought maybe Open Suse, Mageia, PCLinuxOS, Manjaro, and the list goes on. And on. And on. A glance at Distro Watch boggles the mind. Why so many distros? Personally, I think many should merge, pool their talents rather than reinventing the wheel all the time. But that's another issue.

In the end, I decided I was looking at the problem the wrong way. The issue is not really with Linux Mint 14 or KDE. Granted, KDE is a little bit slower, especially during boot-time--it takes my slow laptop over a minute to boot. But that's no big deal. Once it's booted, everything is fine and dandy, again with the exception of Firefox on Blogger. Granted, my Firefox includes some heavy-duty add-ons, such as Flash, but I think that Blogger itself, which is run by Google, has some kind of memory-eating bug. Writing text on a blog almost completely devoid of graphics should not eat up the processor, not unless Google is doing about fifty things it shouldn't be doing. In my opinion, Google is the culprit here, not Firefox nor any of my add-ons. Probably Google wants to crash Firefox, to make their product Chrome look better.

Someone will have to pry this laptop from my cold, dead hands before Google Chrome gets installed on it. My solution, which I am verifying with this post, was to install rekonq, the forgotten web browser offered by KDE as a fast alternative to Firefox, Konqueror, et al. Now I can blog with no problem. Rekonq is easy to use and as fast as I want it to be. I am particularly glad that I can stay with Linux Mint KDE and not go through the pain of installing a brand new distro.

My only other beef with Ubuntu-derivatives centers around privacy concerns, but since I'm not a big shot or a secret agent, I don't think anybody is going to be too terribly interested in little old me. But definitely it is the case that Canonical has been getting too big for their britches. Putting ads on the freaking desktop is cheeky and makes me want to dump Ubuntu and try another distro. At the same time, I don't want to encounter a mountain of gotchas by using a distro that is not ready for prime time. There are a lot of distros listed on Distro Watch that are not ready for prime time. I sure hope that the other distro developers wake up and smell the coffee at long last. I don't see the reason that there are hundreds of distros hopping around, when they really need to merge and pool their efforts into solving problems. There is something to be said for teamwork and for not reinventing the wheel all the time.

Socrates and the Afterlife

Like many Greeks, Socrates believed in the afterlife, that is, that our individual consciousness will survive death, invisibly entering a realm outside of this world for a time before cycling back into a new human body. That must have been a great comfort to him while he was under sentence of death. I think he saw himself as a servant of the gods (my text says "God," but as his people were polytheist, I think the translator took liberties). He expected a reward of some kind or at least a better life after death, poor fellow. The belief has abiding appeal. There are many still today that do what they do because they think their reward will be great in Paradise. And it can be argued that in some cases this seems to be a beneficial illusion. That all illusions are harmful is a difficult argument with an uncertain outcome.

I can't say Socrates feels cheated now that he knows he was wrong, because he doesn't know anything, any more. He is ended. I don't accept the notion that individual consciousness survives death. I don't feel individual consciousness is all that special or deserving of preservation; it's just a complicated, beautiful machine, wondrous in its powers but temporal, fading and dying like a flower never to be seen again in this world. Beautiful things are created anew and destroyed all the time, everywhere. There is really no need in the scheme of things for human beings to be immortal. Reaching the top of the food chain has led to hubris among our people.

Socrates went around questioning people and tripping them up in logical arguments. He seems to have been a show-off and had no shortage of enemies. I don't find his arguments very persuasive, although he does raise good points. In the ancient world, I'm sure his arguments seemed strong, because there wasn't modern science or modern education around to refute them. He probably was a good speaker and a natural extrovert, to get so many followers. Although he disclaimed a desire for power or influence, I think his strongest desire was to appear wise and witty before these young men and to keep them interested. I think pride and his desire for attention and flattery were his downfall. He made political and social mistakes, apparently, because his enemies succeeded in persuading the citizens of Athens to condemn him to death. The sentence was surely unjust, which makes Socrates a martyr for freedom, specifically freedom of inquiry and perhaps freedom of speech.

The thought of science prolonging human life forever is not necessarily a comforting idea. The first people to consume the pills that grant immortality will probably be the worst people. They will seize the technology for their own and want a monopoly upon it, just as people seek sole possession of other treasures and powers.

Here's For Bradley Manning

CNN published a strong rebuttal to Manning's harsh sentence that persuaded me. I think our government employees have been hobnobbing with despots around the globe too much. They have forgotten what America is about. They do not remember what country they live in. They need to be reminded, but how?

Until the government begins acting like a republic again, all talk about gun control must be postponed. The government for a long time has been doing too many things in secret. The national security state seems intent upon installing all the relics and organs of a police state. I don't think that America is at a stage where the citizens should be disarmed in any way. I hate guns and the random senseless violence that they enable. But I am now opposed to gun control. If anything, I think citizens should be encouraged to purchase firearms.

Dangerous precedents have been set by our government. It is clear that the people in government like to do illegal things whenever they feel they can get away with it. The warlords have an intense, unquenchable desire to spy upon Americans. Even now that the public knows that the NSA is spying on us, the NSA still continues to spy on us. They have been treating the Bill of Rights like their personal toilet paper roll. The feelings of certain warlords were hurt by Bradley, so they stripped him naked and left him in a cell by himself for months to get their little revenge. Now their revenge runs full course: 35 years, forfeiture of pay, and a dishonorable discharge. If Bradley Manning gets 35 years, how many years in prison should the Bush Administration get for lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? How about Obama for letting the NSA spy on Americans? Moral rectitude is expected of a judge, and our Presidents are judges by virtue of their influence, and in extremis, their power of pardon.

I think it would be both decent and politically prudent in Obama to grant Manning a pardon at some time, perhaps a few months from now or on his last day in office.

Manning's gender identity--I hesitate to use the word "disorder," which I feel may be viewed as pejorative, although it is the psychological terminology--is just a big red herring in this case. I don't like it, because it adds a note of confusion and appears to be a sympathy play, although it also seems to be true. A question arises as to motive. Did Manning act due to his internal pressures or out of idealism? Is the one punishable, and the other deserving of leniency? Does motive matter? Motives matter in sentencing. The problem with the Manning case is that the trial received so little media attention. Again, too much secrecy. Therefore, Manning must be assumed to be the purest idealist that ever walked the Earth, on a par with Socrates. Otherwise, the government would not have cloaked the trial in secrecy, would not have tortured Manning and tried to break him, and would not have sentenced him to 35 years. The government has a lot to hide and wants to keep the soldier under control.

I have to admit that there is a part of me that would like to see Manning free, living as the woman he wants to be, and on a talk show--maybe twenty talk shows. I would watch at least the first one with avid interest. I'm sure that's what the government definitely does not want. And after all, is it right that Manning should be rewarded for breaking his oaths and disobeying his officers? Is it right that Manning should garner attention and sympathy for merely being transgender? There does seem something amiss about that.

I think there is a real danger of encouraging soldiers to disobey their commanding officers. There is a part of me that believes Manning may suffer an injustice for the greater good of setting an example, so that other soldiers don't reveal classified information. But then the problem arises that we are creating an army like the one in Nazi Germany, where soldiers committed atrocities because to defy an officer's order would be unthinkable. I think disobedience should have a limited amount of toleration, or else soldiers can be made into robot-like killing machines. Do we want a robotic army that never thinks for itself, that never questions an officer, that does whatever a warlord tells it to do? Is that necessary or desirable? Such was the case in the latter days of the Roman Empire, when the army ruled the roost and civilian authority was reduced to providing a rhetorical and symbolic cover for despotism. These are difficult moral questions, questions about policy and governance. I think that some disobedience is certainly to be expected, because there are moral values superior to oaths, superior to commands that may be issued by a commanding officer. Sometimes officers get things wrong, and on rare occasions they get things terribly wrong. Should a soldier have a conscience? I think yes. To the extent that Manning acted out of conscience and more importantly, did not cause harm to his country or his fellow soldiers, he deserves leniency.

Socrates

I like to read about the dialogues of Socrates, because he offers insight into ancient Greece, morality, and questions of our existence, but I never agree with him. His conclusions seem based upon false assumptions. He takes shortcuts in his reasoning. At the end of one of his arguments, I never feel satisfied. I don't feel he has answered all possible objections, not by a long shot. His uncritical followers always reply "Yes, Socrates," or "No, Socrates." I wish someone had been around to offer a rigorous rebuttal to his proofs. I would like to see how he would respond. I think if Socrates were resurrected and introduced to the modern world and especially modern science, his opinions would change.

FGM

I used initials for the title of this post, because the subject matter is gross. I don't normally blog about gross things, but I read something today that disturbed me. Someone wrote in an editorial that all we ever heard about in the West about Egypt concerned Cairo, but Cairo was not representative of Egypt, and that the West didn't understand how backward rural Egypt was. To illustrate this point, the writer pointed out that 96% of Egyptian women over the age of 45 (and 80% of teenage girls) have experienced female genital mutilation. I don't think there's any rational defence that can be made of FGM. How a population like Egypt's could ever nourish democracy, I don't know. Egypt might be ready for democracy a hundred years from now, but not today. If the Muslim Brotherhood had remained in power, I'm convinced we'd have another Iran in no time at all. Egypt remains mired in ignorance. The population does not know the difference between right and wrong, medicine and quackery, religion and superstition. I researched the topic further on Wikipedia and found that over a hundred million women have undergone FGM. It is true that Western doctors starting around the 19th century practiced FGM to address specific isolated cases, but the accounts are few and far between, and very far from the cultural norm. I think what Egypt needs is a dictatorship that is just benevolent enough to educate the population and introduce gradual reforms.

The Manning Trial

I have been following the Bradley Manning trial with interest. Based on what I've read in the media, I am of the opinion that perhaps Manning is guilty. He is a figure that excites sympathy, with his youth, small stature, gender identity issues and the grave charges he faced. We should admit that there is a degree of unreality to committing a supposed crime over the Internet. The psychological threshold is much less. One does not face another human being. This is why we have trolls and cyberbullies. Manning, in conducting his "espionage," didn't meet with any foreign agent. He never spoke to anyone, never got paid. He received no reward. For whatever reason, he flipped out, pressed the wrong buttons on his computer and transmitted a bunch of classified data electronically. It's a strange case. He was a part of the system. It's like he was a circuit board that failed and started sending data to the wrong register. Was it an act of conscience, a poor judgment call, a result of mental instability, or all of the above? At any rate, it's hard to conceive of Manning as deserving a lengthy prison sentence. But certainly the military can't permit an improper precedent to be set, whereby any soldier having a contrary viewpoint can take it upon themselves to disobey and what is far worse, to reveal classified information. That is a dangerous precedent indeed. What if Manning had done worse, and revealed information that got his fellow soldiers killed? On the other hand, as a citizen, I am rather pleased to have received a better view of what our government is really doing. I don't think it's right that the government does so many things in secret. Yes, secret action may be more effective, blah blah blah, but what place does undercover activity have in a government by the people, of the people and for the people? There is too much secrecy today. I think the less secrecy, the better. Dictatorships are what secrecy and spies are about. I think that sometimes the government wants to do things in secret because it knows that the people would not approve if they were to know, and that's wrong. Our leaders are human too, and sometimes they're wrong, which is why they require oversight by the people, and that oversight is more effective if it is informed.

Let's Hear it For Figuring Things Out

I like to search the net once in a blue moon for mentions of this blog. Most hits seem to be content scrapers and related scum that are simply trolling for visitors in order to generate ad revenue or whatever. Recently though, I found a post on Reddit with ten comments. An anonymous Ubuntu user is sweating over whether my Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup cheat script is some kind of malware. I thought to myself, give me a break. This paranoia is probably why the script is not more widely used. I don't know whether I should care or not. There's probably nothing I can do about that.

It is not like my cheat script is a compiled .exe with unknown commands, like most Windows cheats. It is plain text source code. Any text editor can read it. The commands are just plain old Linux script language written in a clear and consistent structured style. There is nothing hidden or complicated about it. Script syntax is widely documented on numerous sites, but I think even without documentation, someone good with computers could probably figure it out without much effort. But that's just the thing. People don't want to put forth any effort at all to understanding even a simple script. Not a soul in the Reddit crowd took five minutes to examine the script and understand what it does. Instead they spent those same five minutes writing homilies about the dangers of installing programs from unknown sources and telling the user to format his drive and reinstall Ubuntu, about the worst advice I've ever heard. Contrast their attitude with mine. I spent probably sixty hours working out all the details of the script, unpaid of course, just a labor of love on my part and a desire to rise to the challenge. I did not know anything about Linux scripts when I began, but learned by googling for the syntax I needed. Perhaps it is a worthless skill, after all. I know Linux scripting language now, but nobody cares really, and it won't lead to a job of any kind. No amount of computer skills will lead to a job. One needs to already have a job in order to get a job in today's lousy job market. There is no financial incentive to learn anything at all. Some of us will continue learning just for the sake of learning, because we like to learn. But we're a minority.

Well, after publishing this post, guess what I'm going to do? Run regen.sh, of course. I use it, certainly not every day, but whenever I want to play Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, which may be about once a month or so. I haven't needed to make any changes since January of 2013. And the only reason I reinstall my operating system is because I feel like it, not because some know-nothings on Reddit think it's the thing to do.

Let It Be

Emotions are a kind of short-circuit in the brain, a way of bypassing the usual logical reasoning process. I do think that people are logical, in general. I do not believe that humans are inherently irrational. But an emotion such as love, for instance, causes someone to overlook faults in the beloved. Perhaps that can be a good thing. Certainly it is for the beloved. I think logical reasoning has a lot going for it, though. Fear and anger are other ways of short-circuiting reason. These seem like primitive emotions. I dislike them in me when I sense them. There is something distasteful about fear or anger over things that may not really matter, actually, such as having someone hang up on you in the middle of a phone conversation, or receiving an insult. I would prefer to feel nothing at all, especially when the emotions are not necessary in our safe modern life. Perhaps in barbaric lands, fear and anger are useful to rouse a human to "fight or flight" in order to overcome an adversary. But in the civilized world, just how helpful are these emotions? Probably not that much on a day-to-day basis.

The way I learned to deal with these things is to let them be, but don't let them in the driver's seat. The trick is to refrain from any decision or speech while "under the influence" of an emotion, although surely there are exceptions when decisions are called for. One of my favorite lines from the Bible (or is it Shakespeare?) is "This, too, shall pass."

Everyone is going to feel some kind of emotion sometime, as it is a human trait. We are animals after all, curious and funny critters. Sometimes I observe that an animal such as the chimpanzee seems ridiculous in appearance or behavior, but then the thought occurs that perhaps I, too, seem ridiculous, if viewed from the perspective of an intelligent extraterrestrial. I find that as I get older, I do laugh at myself sometimes, and I don't always feel like I'm right. When I was young, in my teens, I almost always thought I was right. Then in my twenties, a little less, but usually I felt I was right. Now, sometimes I'm not so sure, and I listen more to other opinions and keep an open mind. I've observed that even the wisest people get things wrong sometimes, and often they get things part-right and part-wrong. Insufficient information and miscommunication are common problems.

Mr. Selfridge is a Unicorn

I love the show "Selfridge's." Mr. Selfridge is the boss of the department store, Selfridge's, in 1920's London. He's the rare boss, the hard to find boss, a unicorn. He's good-hearted, fair, firm, upright, honest, and with an intact and functioning conscience. It's wonderful to fantasize about working for a boss like that. I like to see him feeling guilty and trying to amend his misdeeds, because that means he intends good and realizes he made a mistake in judgement. We do perceive this world as through a glass darkly. In our hurried lives, sometimes the right path is not always clear. He's also handsome, charming, dynamic, and capable of changing his position when he realizes he's wrong. I haven't known many bosses that can do that trick, change their mind when they know they've made a mistake. Most will keep grinding away at their same mistakes over and over again, due to pride or complacency, instead of changing course in logical fashion.

I like the show because it depicts a company where the workers and the boss are on the same page and the people all come together somehow. There is teamwork and somehow the employer-employee relationship takes on a more familial tone. I think some jaded, cynical critics don't get the show because they can't relate with how appealing such a fantasy world is.

I love the theme music, as well. It evokes a bright sunny morning, full of hope and promise.

I do hope they don't go on and on about Mr. Selfridge's affairs with other women. I'm reminded of Tony Soprano and many other characters on television. Are no powerful men monogamous? I suppose monogamy bores the audience, while infidelity is rich in drama, considered the lifeblood of film. Or does film mirror reality? I wouldn't know.

The Folly of Volunteering

I need to tone down my enthusiasm. I often find that I link to a site, promote it in forums, recommend it to friends--all for free naturally--and then sometime later, the site changes policy and jabs a thorn in my side (userstyles), or deletes my account without warning (project honeypot), or goes down for good (the 'tree). I have no luck with my recommendations AT ALL. I have no luck with volunteering my time or talents. Usually when I volunteer, I wind up in the end feeling like a fool. I think the best thing to recommend is a dead author. That way, one will never be disappointed.

U.S. Health Care--Doctors Don't Care

I think U.S. health care is abominable. I know a friend with asthma. To get a rescue inhaler, in order to avoid death by suffocation, requires a doctor's prescription, for no rational or ethical reason. The doctors just got together and decided they needed money every so often from asthma patients in order to pay for their golf fees. The lower-cost clinics in the area refuse to make any appointments earlier than one month in advance, so asthma patients must either die by suffocation, or cough up $100 for a fancy doctor's visit, enriching the doctors at the cost of two days' salary for a worker. Typically, the doctor tries to push some fancy new drug that the pharmaceutical company has bribed him to push. Time is wasted, health is wasted, and in the end the result is the same, the rescue inhaler must be obtained in order to live. Life-saving Albuterol thus costs $5 per dose in America, when it is free in the U.K. That is because in America, there is a strong belief among some in Social Darwinism, that death and dying and suffering are useful tools to get rid of undesirables. Republicans use laws and legal procedures in order to kill the poor by depriving them of health care by any means possible. Doctors conspire along with Republicans to make a bad situation worse by maintaining an absolute monopoly on the distribution of life-saving medicines.

Bezos Takeover of the Washington Post

I'm not thrilled about Amazon's Jeff Bezos taking over the Washington Post. Amazon doesn't treat its warehouse workers well. For instance, Bezos cuts down on electricity costs by forbidding air conditioning at the warehouses. I would expect that Bezos will apply his slave philosophy to the Post, not just mistreating current and former Post employees but also eradicating any editorials, opinions or articles concerning worker's rights. I think Bezos is foremost a person who thinks very little of workers, only as a means to an end, and is focused only on making money and accumulating prestige for himself. I'm surprised that anyone would view his latest acquisition as anything other than a move designed to make money and accumulate prestige for Bezos. His philosophy begins and ends with his bank balance. I expect the Post is going to be muzzled when it comes to any enterprises related to Bezos or his allies, and it will become the attack dog concerning any rivals of Bezos.

Dante's Cove and The Lair

Dante's Cove and The Lair are two gay supernatural soap operas that should have wide appeal to gay audiences. Dante's Cove has a prominent lesbian thread in addition to the primary gay male storyline, but I'm not sure whether lesbians would be satisfied with playing second fiddle, as it were, since there are now television shows and movies that are exclusively about lesbians. I believe the hope was that Dante's Cove could appeal to gay men, lesbians, and to a lesser extent even straight people, but I think gay men are the primary audience, with some lesbian interest but possibly no attention from the straight crowd.

Although I haven't taken a survey of straight people, I can judge whether they'd like it by asking myself a simple question. Would I continue watching Dante's Cove if there was no gay action? The answer is no. I do continue to watch True Blood despite the lack of gay action in most seasons, but the writing and production values are better. I just don't feel Dante's Cove is good enough to capture the straight audience, but gay males? Yes, because the men are hot. Lesbians? Some might like it, because there are hot women and strong women, too. But I wonder whether lesbians might prefer "The 'L' Word" instead. At any rate, the plot is rather thick. I would have recommended less blood, no dungeons, and more art, beauty and conversation. How about witchcraft lite, genteel witchcraft, rather than old-fashioned cackling medieval witchery?

Be that as it may, I love Dante's Cove and regret that the fourth season was never to be. The actors and actresses are gorgeous, the writing acceptable, the plot a bit silly (okay, more than a bit silly), and the music and camera work excellent. Production values are all good, nothing wretched or obviously out of place or laughable that I detected. Dante's Cove has sex appeal, although sometimes the producers annoy the audience by switching from a hot scene to a scene of an elderly man or woman in distress. I realize that their intention is to maintain the plot, but the plot is rather silly, and taking it too seriously is, I feel, a mistake. The plot should have been changed if it interferes with the audience's enjoyment.

The Lair is just about exclusively gay male, with no bones thrown to the lesbian or straight crowd at all. I have forgotten some of the plot, as it was a long time ago I watched it, but it was good also. I feel that Dante's Cove is better, because I appreciate the presence of strong women, and overall I find a complicated system of witchcraft more interesting and less predictable than mere crude bloodthirsty vampirism.

Update: I rewatched season 2 of Dante's Cove and was reminded that the show actually improves a great deal as it progresses. Season 2 is twice as good as season 1. It was almost as if the show's producers foresaw my advice. They dumped the dungeons, staunched the blood-letting, and minimized the gross scenes. Now the show is entering into its own as a full-fledged gay soap opera, with a tantalizing supernatural twist, all set on the fantasy landscape of a tropical island. And the cast, of course, is gorgeous. Their acting is much better, too, I must say. Season 2 has moving scenes that actually make me feel emotion. I think the entire cast is strong in this show.

Patrick O'Brian Not Good with Gays

I'm on the sixteenth novel in Patrick O'Brian's twenty-book series concerning the adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey and Doctor Stephen Maturin. This is my second reading, and I've come to understand the work and the author better, I think. First of all, O'Brian is a very masculine writer. He dwells upon the technology of sailing with particular knowledge and insight. I could imagine him sailing a ship. Also, he minimizes the role of conversation. There isn't much talking in an O'Brian novel--his characters are almost all men, and his men tend to be terse and concise, a manly trait. The humor tends to remind me of The Three Stooges or at any rate, movies and television shows from his era. I really like the way that O'Brian paces his novel, having an instinctive grasp for what the reader wants to read. His style is unadorned, very readable, flowing into the mind without obstruction, and thick with period detail that gives the reader the distinct impression of experiencing the early 19th century. He tends to be impressionist, skipping episodes he finds boring or commonplace and reserving his attention for what he thinks the reader wants to know.

With his arsenal of factual knowledge, O'Brian seems a stickler for realism for the most part. The only times I've doubted his judgment has been when he used deux ex machina to pull one of his heroes out of the fire--for instance, when Stephen Maturin inherited a vast, unexpected sum of money making him wealthy enough to buy a frigate and much more. I dislike O'Brian's treatment of homosexuality, but it was relatively moderate for his generation. Unfortunately, O'Brian fell into the trap then common among novelists of making his villains, traitors in the British Admiralty, gay. This was very common in movies, television and fiction back in the 20th century, on up to 1990. Villains tended to be lesbian or gay, fitting right into common prejudices. I think O'Brian's case may be less forgiveable, because by his own admission, part of his success owed to his acceptance by his predecessor in historical novels, Mary Renault, who had a lesbian relationship for most of her adult life. She wrote glowing reviews and offered praise for his novels, and indeed one of the reasons I began reading O'Brian was because of Renault's recommendation. So I think he owed it to Mary to treat gays a little bit better than making them into villains. His treatment of women was scarcely better--none of the women in O'Brian's novels are very intelligent or capable of understanding anything of what the two heroes do. I think Diane would have been a good partner for Stephen Maturin's intelligence work, but he excluded her, I think because O'Brian didn't feel competent portraying the voices and deeds of women, just as he had precious little competence in portraying gays.

Eat at Home

I've never gotten sick eating at home. Eating out, I've gotten food poisoning, the flu, colds, and the list goes on and on, and my mother has too. The basic problem with most restaurants is that they can't or won't pay their people enough to stay home when ill. Sick leave is non-existent. And their people are so desperately poor that they can't afford to miss a day of work, even if they feel bad. When one is earning less than ten dollars an hour, with no job security, no benefits, no sick leave and no medical care, and a variable and complicated work schedule, just how high on the list of priorities is washing hands? I would imagine that hands are seldom if ever washed in the vast majority of cases, and that those who do wash hands probably don't do so in an effective manner. Washing hands is a more complicated procedure than would seem to those that have not had medical training. Of course, nurses and doctors know just how important it is to wash hands, but they, too, neglect to wash thoroughly enough to avoid the transmission of germs, and if doctors and nurses have difficulty managing hand-washing, then your average minimum-wage employee most certainly will.

Drinking alcohol will increase the probability of getting sick, not just during the meal but for many days after. Alcohol has a negative impact on the immune system along with every other system of the body. Restaurants serve alcohol merely because the profit margin is many times larger than for other food items, and drinkers tend to spend more and scrutinize the bill less.

Reform the Olympics

In part due to the possibility of cheating through the use of performance-enhancing drugs, but also for philosophical reasons, I think that the Olympics should be changed to be non-competitive. Each nation should contribute its best athletes, but the focus should change from defeating other nations to working with other nations to give the world the best, the most entertaining show. Nations should work together rather than competing against one another. If nations do not learn to work together, then our species will have a difficult time coping with climate change and the existence of weapons of mass destruction--nuclear, biological and chemical. I think the Olympics could be a learning experience. What the human race needs to learn most of all is cooperation. The idea of oneness has not yet permeated into the thought processes of very many people. I hear, read and see "us versus them" everywhere. What we need to be hearing is "us," and no "them," because we really are just alone on this fragile little planet, surrounded by dead planets. We have not found life anywhere else. And if we ever do find some form of life, in our continuing explorations of outer space, it is not likely to help us in an intelligent fashion. I think cooperation is key, and that the way to bring cooperation about is to practice it.

Homage to Ibuprofen

I have a secret. My favorite drug is ibuprofen. It makes me feel so good. As far as I'm concerned, the fountain of youth is ibuprofen. That and a competent, non-drowsy antihistamine are the primary drugs I would need on a desert island.

Religion, Liberalism and Progress

I've been on this earth a long time in human terms, and what surprised me the most was the acceptance of gay rights and indeed gay marriage during my lifetime. There has been quite a rise in consciousness from the 1970s. I can't help but feel that some kind of balance is being restored, that this is a natural process. The homophobic status quo was too far one way. There was no balance. Injustice was obvious to anyone with eyes to see. In a society where people can express themselves, gay rights were inevitable. The injustices were too numerous, too glaring, too easy to understand. It is not, after all, a complicated issue. It is not an issue that people can't relate with, either. However, I suspect the main catalyst for change in the area of gay rights were the rich. Homosexuality is a trait that arises without regard to economic status. So when gay consciousness awoke, due to the efforts of brave and creative poets, writers, artists and activists, and all gays began to feel a sense of loyalty and belonging to their group, the rich gays were already in a position to manipulate the levers of power to bring about change. If factions among the rich didn't want change, then I don't think change would have happened. Certainly there was very little movement for change among the so-called moral guardians in the church, mosque or synagogue. The priests were asleep, dreaming about God and talking in their sleep about God, not caring about the world, about society.

Back in the 1970s, our top fear was nuclear apocalypse. There was a feeling of hopelessness and inevitability about the coming nuclear exchange between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. Now our top fear is global economic meltdown and global climate catastrophe. There is also a feeling of hopelessness and inevitability about that as well. Maybe we will soldier on somehow through the problems of today and tomorrow. I don't know. I think it is possible that all three fears might become a reality--nuclear exchange, economic meltdown, and climate change. I think the basic problem of our species is that our advances in technology outstripped our advances in philosophy. Medieval religions are not well-equipped to handle modern issues of any kind. There is not a moral element in society other than liberalism that wants to tackle any important or difficult issues.

BART Strike?

I read recently that BART employees in San Francisco are thinking about a strike. I don't think they should strike. They have great benefits compared to anyone I know. They should be sending the city Thank-You cards every year and a fancy Christmas present as well. I would do their work for half what they make. It seems to me the only workers striking anymore are those that don't need to strike, because they already make so much money they don't know what to do with it.

Gold Proved by Fire

Stress brings out the best and worst in people. In the case of Anthony Weiner's campaign, the public has seen extraordinary behavior. I think he must be one of the biggest nincompoops in politics today. The morality of what his campaign does and says isn't even the biggest issue. The biggest issue is one of basic competence and intelligence. They don't have any. I don't know what the problem is with certain managers that have a little bit of power over subordinates, whether the power goes to their head or what, but insulting and belittling lower-ranked people such as interns looks bad. His campaign is a total no-go from the get-go. All I can say is, too bad he's a Democrat. We need him to join the Republican party.

Tipping the Velvet

"Tipping the Velvet" may be the best romantic movie ever made. I watched it again today for the third time and it made me cry. I think that Rachel Sterling is absolutely brilliant in it, couldn't possibly be better.

Applying for a Job

I applied for a job the other day online. The questions the employer asked me made me uncomfortable. Their web site required me to enter my SSN, driver's license number and date of birth. Am I stupid because I entered these things? Will I become the victim of identity theft in the future? Will they be able to trace all my online activities, including this blog? Will all my data be shared in a central database, so that any future applications I make can be fact-checked against this one? Will my data be sold to other companies? These kinds of questions freak me out. I don't think it's fair, but then again, I'm the one needing the job, and the company probably has tons of people applying. Supply and demand is not in the job-seeker's favor. There is so much less need for people these days due to all the labor-saving wrought by technology.

I gave them all the information they wanted to know, because I want the job. Maybe that's a decision I will later regret, much like my decision in the 1990s to invest my IRA in stocks rather than bonds, because "everybody knew" that stocks outperformed bonds over the long haul. Little did I know that the 6 - 8% interest rates then normal would look enticing well before 2013.

Lucky

I feel lucky in comparison to all the people one reads about in the media that are in difficult circumstances. However, reading history certainly offers perspective. I think that even as bad as the modern age gets, in many ways, or at least in most areas, things are better. When one compares, for instance, the British Navy of 1812 and the British Navy of 2013, I think there is a fine example. Flogging is done away with, and seamen are treated to a fairer trial, and nutrition and living conditions are over the top better. Our ancestors could not have dreamed of air conditioning or for that matter effective and easy indoor heating.

Egypt

I think where Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood miscalculated was in thinking they could run Egypt by themselves without anyone from the opposition. They should have bent over backwards to draw in people from all political parties, all power-brokers. Then if the army acted against them, they could present a united front. But now, the battle seems to be between the Brotherhood and the army. It's pretty horrible that the army is sending out sharpshooters to shoot people in the head. I think Egypt's revolution has just reversed itself, as revolutions so often do. A different set of players are going to have power, but the system remains unchanged, as was the case also in Iran after the Shah. After Iran's revolution, things only got worse. Between military despots and the Islamists, there doesn't seem to be much to choose from. Both will kill to get their way. I imagine the U.S. is backing the military merely because the military is easier to deal with.

Republicans Diminish the Postal Service

I read today that the Post Office has been pressured to curtail door-to-door delivery and even curbside service.

I knew, given enough time in office, the Republicans would harm the Postal Service. They hate the Postal Service, because it provides a service at low cost to ordinary working people, that is, those who are unimportant in the eyes of Republicans. Republicans hate anything that helps working people. I think the Republican idea of heaven is all workers dead, and the rich being served by robots and computers. That's the society we're moving toward, anyway.

Don't ever expect the Republicans to favor any cuts to the military, however. The military protects the rich and their interests.

Documentary on Women in the 17th Century

The BBC churns out high-quality documentaries on a regular basis. I like to learn about history, but I also like shows concerning wildlife or any kind of science. I like best those shows that have a strong narrator, who may be seen or may be off-camera. Recently, I watched a documentary about housewives and harlots in 17th century England. I felt this was a good topic, because shows seldom touch upon women in history, because most leaders, scientists, generals, etc. were men. The narrator was Dr. Lucy Worsley, apparently some sort of academic who speaks in a compelling way, one notices right away. She is female in a male-dominated profession, rather tomboyish, and my partner noticed that she speaks with a lisp, most unusual in television, although to me it seemed she had a German accent. When I first saw her, I thought she was ill-looking, but the more one watches her speak, the better she wears. She conveys a zest for the subject and an engaging manner of speaking, lisp or not. One admits her learning and poise, and then her beauty. Her material is well-written, although I noticed that she does tend to harp upon the same narrow topics, when a broader view might have been more appropriate. I felt like some material was being repeated, and wish that the show had been heavier on facts and lighter on interpretation, leaving interpretation to the audience, in the style of Werner Herzog.

Sex Scandals

I'm not impressed by sex stories about politicians in the media. Yeah, I know that they have sex. I don't think it is important whether a politico is sexting or having cybersex or hiring prostitutes or having an affair with an intern. That does not affect policy. It doesn't matter to us. That kind of thing should be between the official and his or her partner. On the other hand, it is disturbing to read about a politician accepting bribes or otherwise breaking the law. Boorish behavior, such as making unwanted comments to women, may be a concern.

I have not been impressed by the stories I have glanced at so far concerning Anthony Weiner. Nor was I particularly put out by the Lewinsky Affair of Clinton's Presidency. Who cares if the President has an affair with an intern? I don't. I also don't care whether Weiner makes use of his you-know-what with people over the Internet. That's not my bag in either case, but if that floats their boat, fine by me.

I was dismayed to read about San Diego's mayor making unwanted advances to women. That kind of thing is delicate. A man needs to be able to read the signs, the physical signs, before making that first move. A lot of guys have problems with that. I think it is due to lack of social awareness and lack of social skills. A politician who does this would seem an anomaly. He might not make a good politician. If he is already in politics, this kind of behavior may indicate poor effectiveness as a negotiator and manager.

U.S. Loses Face

The Attorney General felt he had to promise Russia that the U.S. would not torture or kill Snowden. That he has to do so, due to documented past episodes of torture and killing by the U.S., is a shame and points to the greyness of our nation's soul, floating somewhere between good and evil. It is also embarrassing due to Russia's own abominable record in human rights. Now Russia's elite has some small grounds to suppose their country is the moral equivalent of the U.S., which it is not. Russia is about ten times worse. The oppression of gays is only the tip of the iceberg in Russia. Russia is a kleptocracy.

I've been reading Walt Whitman's poetry and letters composed during and following the Civil War. Certainly the U.S. was far more wicked in the 1860s. Starvation and torture were common throughout Confederate prisons. The Southerners did not know any better than to starve, torture and kill captured soldiers. The South was completely immoral--slavery, rape, torture, starvation, treason. Over a century was required just to teach the Southerners basic morality, like don't enslave people, don't torture, don't kill. In comparison to back then, the modern era seems much milder.

Those who call Snowden a traitor do not understand what treason is. They do not understand what the United States is. I think that many of our politicians need to go back to elementary school and learn about the Revolution and what it was about, why the country was founded and the principles upon which it was founded. There are many in Washington, D.C. who have demonstrated an appalling poverty of principles.

Trey Bilings Show is Hidden Gem

Not too many people have seen a thirty-minute film called "The Trey Billings Show," but it is one of the best comedies around, and the star, David Drake, is completely incredible in it. With the help of camera tricks, he plays both a zany, self-absorbed talk show host and his interviewee, a fictitious famous actress fallen on hard times, appearing on the screen at the same time.

Bluehost is Incompetent

Bluehost is a web hosting service based in Utah. A subscriber to a hosting service expects to be able to view the access log. Bluehost, however, does not make complete access logs available to the customer unless the customer calls them on the telephone to request it. Bluehost's CPanel archive download manager is broken. Available to the customer is only a truncated, incomplete daily access log. Activity from two days ago is not available to the customer. Bluehost does not make the monthly log available for some unknown reason. I wonder what they are doing over at Bluehost that they are so concerned they need to cover it up?

Downloading the daily log, which is insufficient and only provides a brief glimpse of activity, results in a .gz file. Inside the .gz file is another .gz file. Bluehost zips each daily access log twice for no apparent reason. There is no technical advantage to doing so. It is simply a quirk on the part of Bluehost and yet another inconvenience to the customer.

In addition to all these shenanigans related to the access log, Bluehost also throttles shared hosting accounts. I have a site that is throttled every day without fail. "Throttling" is a process by which Bluehost deprives the site of cpu share, which slows the site down substantially, often to a crawl. The site being throttled is a low-traffic site that receives no more than 20 visitors per day. I have seen Bluehost throttle this site when it has received 3 visitors spread over a twenty-four period. I should add that the site is highly optimized, and its cpu demands are more modest than this blog's. Clearly Bluehost throttles sites not based upon activity, but for any reason whatsoever, just to handle a very large volume of customers, more than they should be handling.

I can't recommend Bluehost in good conscience any longer to anyone. They seem to be handling too many sites per server and cutting corners in order to deal with the load.

Elisabeth Moss is into Scientology

I was flabbergasted to learn my latest favorite actress, Elisabeth Moss, a star on Mad Men, belongs to the Church of Scientology, but then again, I have to ask myself, how many Catholic actresses are there, after all? Catholicism has proven weird too, and Islam has never been a walk in the park, either. Even Judaism looks downright peculiar at times. I guess my main beef with Scientology is that it seems obscure and mysterious, even cult-like. The story about evil Xonad, alien from outer space who lives in a spaceship and is trying to control our brains with negative theons, just seemed too funny to be a religion. I was hoping that Moss might be a mild Methodist or even an Episcopalian at worst, or atheist or agnostic at best. But she actually believes in Xonog or whoever it is floating around in that spaceship and beaming negative theons into our brains. I guess to look at the matter objectively is to admit that her theology is no weirder than the competing ones. I'm glad she at least made clear that she does not support or condone any of the homophobia in the Church of Scientology.

For the record, I feel that Elizabeth Moss is a bright star, and when she's in the picture, one can't keep one's eyes off her. Even when she is supposed to be ugly, due to dowdy clothes and indifferent make-up, she's really not.

Ted Nugent's Wrong Again

I was amused to read that Ted Nugent said Detroit's bankruptcy was "all the fault of the liberal Democrats," which implies Birmingham, Alabama is a liberal Democrat bastion. Jefferson County, which encompasses Birmingham, filed for bankruptcy in 2011, so I'm expecting Ted Nugent to make one of his famous utterances heard 'round the media. Except he won't say word one, and why? Because talking about Alabama doesn't fit into his agenda.

Detroit's bankruptcy is due to corruption and incompetence on the part of the politicians over the last fifty years. I think the United States as a whole may have to file for bankruptcy one day, although entire states may do so before that time. Politicians don't seem capable of understanding long-term obligations, or if they do, they don't care about the long-term ramifications. Their brains are extremely limited, yet their powers are not. Giving so much power to a lizard-like brain is like letting a toddler behind the wheel of an automobile. Of course there will be a crash.

On the right, we have politicians absolutely determined to spend every last cent we don't have on foreign wars we don't need. On the left, we have politicians absolutely determined to do right by American workers. Of course, both objectives cannot be achieved indefinitely. Either the wars must be curtailed or the workers given the shaft. Seems to me that the workers are getting the shaft. Pensions are up on the chopping block, which must please right-wingers like Ted Nugent. Anything that hurts the workers pleases the right wing. The main thing that the conservative Republicans care about is killing foreigners. The more bombs and bullets, the better in their view. Perhaps that is why they hate Obama so much, because he's dialing down the wars in the Middle East, whereas they want to expand them, maybe take on a couple extra countries as well just for good luck.

Dubai Debacle

I wonder if those in Dubai realize how bad this case in Dubai and cases like it makes their Sharia law look. Geez, four male witnesses to get a rape conviction? That will never happen. If it did happen, wouldn't the four witnesses themselves be culpable for not stopping the rape? I wonder how that law's justice can be defended by a modern educated mind. I suspect it can't be defended in any honest and compassionate way. The underlying rationale for the law, I suppose, is that women aren't intended to ever put themselves outside the protection of men, that they are intended to be wholly reliant upon their male protectors. This is a way of keeping women down, lower in status than men, and out of public life.

Rolling Stone's Big Dumb Move

Rolling Stone magazine has hit rock bottom with this decision to put the Boston Bomber on the cover. I can't imagine a stupider move, politically naive at best, but ghoulish at worst. I used to respect the magazine as a standard bearer of liberal values, but the magazine now seems value-less, really sleazy as a matter of fact. If I had a subscription, I'd cancel my subscription over this.

The cover reminds me of what I wrote earlier, that sometimes evil assumes a fair form, as in the case of Sauron as portrayed by The Simarillion, a great book about an alternative god with different angels and spiritual beings that give rise to mortal beings in a way that can't fail to remind one of our own theology. Tolkien placed no limits on his imagination. His book read somewhat like the backstory to Genesis. Many fantasy worlds make use of gods and goddesses, but Tolkien's system of theology seemed much more comprehensible and believable to me than the alternatives.

Depraved Business Criminals

Reading a recent case of food poisoning in India, apparently the result of a local store owner trying to make a profit on cheap cooking oil, reminds us of a fundamental fact. There is no limit to the depths of depravity of business criminals. They will sacrifice human life in order to make a few pennies profit.

Protesters in L.A. Miss the Point

Many of those behind the mayhem in L.A. seem like common criminals to me, but those legitimate protesters who feel that the Zimmerman case pivoted on race seem politically naive. Zimmerman is free because he had enough money to hire a good defence. The incompetence of the state attorney's office probably had something to do with the outcome as well. Florida's state attorney's office sounds like a bunch of nincompoops judging by that letter that their Managing Director wrote. Not that much money is ever required to hire enough brains to outwit the state. That is why poor people go to jail, and rich people write a check and go home.

Money Buys Impunity from the Law

Money is freedom, as Mr. Zimmerman and O.J. Simpson discovered. With enough money, one can get away with almost anything, including murder. For the poor, the slightest infraction results in heavy penalties. I think that is the lesson to be learned from the verdict. Morality and stringent adherence to every law and regulation is required of the poor, and vast armies of hired henchmen work night and day to detect and prosecute even the tiniest violation, real or perceived. No expenses are spared in apprehending those poor workers like Mr. Snowden that do something that displeases the powerful. Meanwhile, the rich do as they please, living like playboys, and even when they kill their playmates, as long as their playmates are poor, they often get away with it.

Florida Showing its Bare Butt to World (Again)

Florida can't seem to stop making a behind out of itself. The 2001 election was bad enough, but now the Zimmerman case just takes the cake. I don't know what to think about the case anymore, now that there are allegations of a cover-up in the state attorney's office. I tried wading through the six-page monstrosity penned by the Managing Director, but it was such a convoluted tale dripping with venom and pomposity, and my interest in the matter is so limited, that I confess I resorted to skimming before giving up. I really don't know who is in the right of the matter, not judging by the letter alone, which was boring, poorly written, difficult to understand, and angry. The art of letter-writing is in a sad state, I'm afraid.

If the whistleblower to whom the letter is addressed really got away with so many wicked deeds, then one wonders who is at fault for hiring him in the first place, and who is to blame for retaining him for such a long period of time, and who is to blame for permitting this damage to occur. The full-of-herself Managing Director fails to comprehend that the motives of a whistleblower are immaterial; his veracity is the only salient point. Truth and justice are of greater moment than petty personnel matters. The letter seems like a big shot venting their spleen for their own personal satisfaction, which is rather naive, because the letter has been entered into history and may be read by academics ten thousand years from now, if our civilization survives in some shape or form. I would shudder to think of such a relic representing me. I am sure it will provide fodder for many in the media and beyond.

Perhaps the Managing Director might have been genuinely provoked, perhaps she is in the right of things indeed, or perhaps the provocations are in her imagination, who am I to know? As the writer noted, none of us are qualified to have any opinions on anything because we don't have a law degree. We should just shut-up and let attorneys spoon-feed us and change our diapers and beat us when we get uppity. That sort of arrogance rubbed me the wrong way and turned me against the writer. Listen, if we the people cannot interpret the law, then the law is wrong, not the people. I don't like the professional arrogance of those who stand upon their expensive degrees as though their money grants them more intelligence than others.

She would have been better off writing a short dismissal notice of no more than two paragraphs or perhaps delivering the news in person. I may not be a big shot Director, but I at least know the value of conciseness and moreover the value of silence when circumstances demand it.

Garlic

I watched a superb old documentary about garlic made by Les Blank probably in the 1970s. Very good and well-worth watching. It is available on DVD. Some of the bright and happy young people in the film were of the so-called counter-culture, and perhaps because of that, were relatively deep in philosophy and history at least compared to today. One of the lines stuck with me for several days. I still ponder it when I am lying in bed at night. The film advocated Epicureanism in relation to eating garlic as a way of enhancing the pleasure of food, and to this end, placed text on the screen that read,

"When you're dead, you're done. Long live the living!"

It is not necessarily an atheist statement, but expressive of disbelief in the afterlife. I do agree with the sentiment. There seems no future in death at all. I find it very difficult to believe we possess any substance other than flesh and bone. I don't believe God plays coy with immortality, hiding it from us as some kind of test just to check whether we will believe in it because the Bible says so.

Of course, whether individual consciousness, that is, our own life, matters or not is purely a matter of perspective. I suppose the evolutionary purpose of our ego, which is so dominant in the human psychology, is to ensure we find great value in our individual consciousness and will do whatever is required to maintain and sustain it, even to the extent of conjuring up fantasies about surviving death in one form or another. An unhealthy ego may in turn lead to insufficient or ineffective maintenance--one may eat bad foods or use harmful substances or fail to perform all the little tasks that tend to prolong life. Yet I think a healthy ego may reject belief in the afterlife on the noble ground of reason. I believe truth matters. That is a judgment call on my part, a bias I have for reality. If a thing can not be so, then one should not believe in it.

Getting back to the film, I found it positively gushing about garlic, too enthusiastic by half, but that did not stop me from enjoying it. I do not believe that garlic can cure disease, although it does have antiseptic and antioxidant properties and makes a wonderful spice for all kinds of foods. I have always loved garlic and always will.

The Secret of Mummies

Mummies are not a popular species in Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, and looking at the aptitude chart explains why--they suck at everything. By far, they are the weakest species on paper. It would seem that the developers hate Mummies and wish to defeat whoever plays them.

However, like vampires, mummies do not need to eat, so they can remain on a level for as long as they like until their aptitudes improve or they find whatever it is they are looking for. Unlike vampires, mummies do not lose their undead powers due to lack of food, and they regenerate without food.

I prefer to play mummies for a simple reason. Eating is a bother. Not having to eat allows me to focus upon more interesting aspects of the game. In addition, not having food occupying inventory slots allows a mummy to carry more. I believe that the ideal worshipper of Nemelex Xobeh is a mummy for any number of reasons, but being able to carry more decks of cards is certainly a big one.

I suspect mummies and vampires are an essential rationale the devs have for generating out-of-depth (OOD) monsters, in order to provide a modicum of risk to those players that hang around the lower levels biding their time and building up their skill levels.

Blog Status

I updated my public .htaccess blacklist, in case anyone's interested. I assume someone is, because that post has received 11,000 hits, and they can't all be bots. My guess is that people are using it as a resource to check up on an IP address. I can tell you that from using it, the number of bots getting through declines by about 99%. Some will still get through, but the list grows over time due to my efforts, and those that get through, don't get through for long.

My efforts to monetize this blog via AdSense have fallen flat due to a technical error on AdSense's side. I left a message in their help forum but haven't received any answers. They do not permit ordinary mortals to contact them via email. So I will leave a post on my front page into perpetuity that points the finger at AdSense, which is broken, dead as a doorknob, kaput, game over on my site due to an AdSense bug. I imagine their developers are too busy drinking coffee and eating donuts to work on boring stuff like code.

I like working on code and am pretty good at it, but I am not allowed to do so anymore, because all the programming jobs were given to foreigners. I believe that politicians in Washington, D.C. right now are working on ways to eliminate even more jobs so that they will make a bunch of money on the stock market. The politicians are bribed, bought and paid for by corporations and don't care about America or, much less, American workers.

Trying Ads Again

I decided to try adverts again, because I put a lot of effort into the blog over the years, with a big wonky zero in the way of return. Many people come here and find the information they need to solve the problem at hand and then leave without so much as a thank you. Even if I only make five bucks a year, in ten years time, I'll at least be able to buy some bananas. I like bananas.

Well, it looks like Google Adsense is programmed by morons. Adsense sent me an email saying they put my account on hold until I update my tax info. I'm not permitted to update my tax info because my account balance is below $10. Thus, my sites are on hold forever or until Google hires intelligent programmers. I'm on hold forever.

Zimmerman: Malice Aforethought

The excessive focus on the voice recordings in the Zimmerman Case puzzle me. To me, the recordings are irrelevant. It doesn't matter to me whether the victim or the shooter were screaming. Perhaps both of them were. To me, the case seems cut and dry. A murderer stalked a man at night while carrying a loaded firearm. He shot this man dead, a man who he had no business confronting, a man not committing any crime, not trespassing, not doing anything wrong at all, a unarmed man whose only purpose was walking home from a convenience store. I think the jury can find for malice aforethought.

I don't know what's wrong with Florida that the police did not arrest Zimmerman on the scene for first-degree murder, but certainly the case has the stench of racism all over it.

I've been a pedestrian, just like the victim, walking on the side of the road in the middle of the night, minding my own business. I've had big ugly SUV's pull up beside me, honk their horns, act obnoxious, throw litter, throw rocks, squirt water pistols. Big ugly SUV's are the choice of cowards, and cowards like to carry guns, because they are afraid of everyone else and know that they could never win a fair fight. They need that gun for protection, because otherwise they would surely be beat soundly for behaving like the disgusting louts they are.

Maybe I'm not black, but there are many parallels between myself and the victim. The victim is Mr. Martin, by the way. He is dead, a young man who had his whole life ahead of him. Mr. Zimmerman is not the victim. Mr. Zimmerman is the murderer, the one with blood on his hands, the one who got all flustered because the young gentleman he stalked at night hit him a few times.

I think in this case the victim, Mr. Martin, needs to be given every benefit of the doubt. Since he is not here to speak for himself, every member of the jury must assume Mr. Martin behaved like an honorable gentleman. The moment he was murdered by Mr. Zimmerman, he became a saint. It is likely that Mr. Martin was highly provoked by Zimmerman, who has displayed on numerous occasions an appalling lack of basic social skills. Murdering a witness should not give the murderer the benefit of the doubt. Otherwise, every man that ever fights another will see to it that he kills his enemy, in order that only his version of events is ever heard by a jury.

The Post Office Spies on Americans

I wasn't really surprised to read this article in the New York Times about government spying, because of my recent experience. An undercover agent contacted me a few months ago and tried to entrap me using the U.S. Postal Service. She claimed she ran an organic grow operation out in California and wanted to send me a bunch of weed for free through the mail.

Well, I'm still blogging, aren't I? That means I didn't succumb, she didn't add to her quota, and those long tedious sales pitches she wrote me were for naught, although I suspect she copied and pasted a canned rap that she uses with everybody. She was probably corresponding with hundreds of people just like me. I wonder how many succumbed to her entrapment?

By the way, Facebook, Amazon, etcetera are all crawling with undercover agents using bogus profiles, and Facebook cooperates 100% with the spies. The spies target anyone that likes weed, for sure, and probably a lot of other groups as well. Are you one of the groups being targeted? Beware, the next friend request might just be the government trying to lay a felony charge on you.

Gay Marriage is Good for All

Sometimes I wonder about gay marriage, "what's in it for straight people?" A tangible benefit exists for heterosexuals:

1. To the best of our knowledge, homosexuality occurs in all families, throughout history, without regard to race, nationality, or culture.

2. Thus, every straight person may, through heterosexual intercourse, produce a homosexual offspring. This outcome can be viewed as a risk, an opportunity, or a possibility, depending upon one's attitude towards homosexuality.

3. The straight person who has a homosexual offspring will experience better financial, legal and social outcomes if that offspring can marry and receive all the benefits of marriage. The entire family is strengthened. Everybody wins with gay marriage. Nobody loses. All families will experience better outcomes throughout all future generations.

One's view on gay marriage pivots upon whether one has any notion of teamwork. If one believes that if any person in a team does better, the entire team is likely to do better, then gay marriage has more appeal.

On the other hand, if one's worldview is shaped by competition that requires winners and losers, then one may oppose gay marriage. There is a notion that if other people are miserable, even siblings and offspring, that makes one's own lot seem better by comparison. Some people want to think of themselves as the winners and everybody else as losers. They are willing even for their own families to be losers. What exactly do they win on a personal level? Nothing. But there is apparently some satisfaction to be found in keeping others unhappy and burdened by legal restrictions.

Are We Ready for Democracy?

I wonder sometimes whether we are ready for democracy as a species.

Is Egypt ready for democracy?

More to the point, is the U.S.?

I just read the comments section on a major news web site. The article concerned Mr. Snowden, who is deemed a traitor or a patriot or somewhere in-between, depending upon one's point of view. Comments generally were in favor of hanging, I do believe. Armchair executioners are in great abundance.

I think that many citizens still have the mindset of living under a monarchy. They remain, in spirit, loyal subjects of a monarch, just as things were a thousand years hence, and why should they not? Why should people not believe that fealty comes first? Those among our ancestors who believed otherwise were executed.

Is the world ready for democracy? Not really. Even Republican forms of government arrived too soon for our species. Our progress in evolution suits us for a monarchist form of government, and yet I can't help but feel that we should continue trying to make republican forms of government work, even if they are ill-suited to our primitive mentality. Perhaps with experience, with the progress of centuries, we may learn to make republics work better. Is the liberal philosophy correct? Should we believe in amelioration?

What was the Civil War About?

A real hero of the Civil War that I should have learned about in school was Strong Vincent, a Union colonel who, it is said, turned the tide at the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg. He died during the battle, but was remembered long after death, at least in the North.

Back when I was a boy, textbooks, encyclopedias, teachers, and even my grandmother idealized the wrong man, Robert E. Lee, general of the Confederacy. He was intelligent, but wicked, because he served evil, a similar case as Rommel in WW2. How many Germans now idealize Rommel? Not many, I would think.

The Civil War was about the Southern elite defending their right to enslave other human beings. That was all the war was ever about, and yet people deny it throughout the former Confederacy because they have been indoctrinated to do so. The rich plantation owners of the 1860s were determined at all costs to do harm unto others that they regarded as "inferior" by murdering, raping, torturing, confining, forcing into labor and selling their slaves. Had the landowners ever shown the least resolve to stop committing these atrocities, there would have been no war.

The Southern elite have for hundreds of years set themselves above minorities they regard as inferior, preserving their privileged status and keeping minorities down through legislation and force. This attitude is still in evidence today. Among the Southern elite, there persists a desire to keep others down--anyone regarded as "inferior"--due to a belief that somehow the misery of others makes their own lot seem better, if only by comparison.

Victory through Nonviolence

Gays won on the legal, political, and cultural battleground because they spoke the most reasonable words with the most moderate voice. Their dialogue was one of human rights and dignity. Their opponents varied, but never made a good impression upon me. There was never a time I listened to a homophobe and thought, "Gee, he might have something there." Instead, I always wondered what variety of mental disease these haters suffered from. All too often, homophobes were exposed as closeted homosexuals, which was extremely damaging to the anti-gay lobby, rather like tossing a fragmentation grenade into the officer's tent. The Wiccan law applies: when one points a finger at others, three are pointing back. Too clear was the hypocrisy, meanness and ignorance of homophobes. As for the gay activists, why, they were for the most part non-violent, even in the face of outrageous injustice. There is value in taking blows when others must witness it, because those who watch will wonder when they will be struck next, because violence has a way of spreading, of engulfing communities, turning against minorities first, and then everyone. So when Matthew Shepard was martyred by the brutal murderers, that was one of the turning points in the battle, when people of conscience could no longer accept the injustice, hypocrisy and wickedness. That was the point when many good people said, Enough. Because there are things in life of more value than popularity, material or power. There is a spiritual and moral dimension that transcends the world we live in and life itself. Spiritual force can be overwhelming, as many a cynic has discovered at a late hour.

Fixing a Broken Shutdown Shortcut

Kubuntu 13.04 offered some updates today that broke my shutdown shortcut. After a bit of poking around and trying various things, I found that this syntax fixes the problem:

sudo chmod u+s /sbin/shutdown

I don't notice any improvements from the updates. Devs, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And here's my corollary to that general rule: if you can't help yourself from fixin' what ain't broke, then don't break it.

At least I was able to fix their fix.