I Got a Dell

I suppose I should count myself lucky that I got nigh on 8 years out of my Compaq. Looking back, I don't know what I was thinking buying a computer with 256 MB of memory. A couple of years ago, I added an additional 256 MB, but when I installed my Rosetta Stone language program, I killed the Presario. Now I have a Dell with 3 GB and new Office software. Yeehah! Things are fast again.

I need a computer for work as well as screwing around, and I would like to have a fast one for both business and pleasure. I seem to have gotten my wish with this Dell Studio machine.

Rosetta Stone actually has a voice recognition feature that didn't work on the Presario. Who knew? My only anxiety with the new machine is Windows Vista.

Well, I did my patriotic duty and consumed. Let's see if it doesn't ripple through the economy and turn it around.

Women's Work

In an interesting post at Shakesville about unpaid carework by young women http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/02/unfair-burdens.html Shaker M points out that women's carework often involves difficult to quantify services like remembering birthdays and such like. Mrs Vache Folle is in charge of this in our household, and I suppose I should appreciate it. But. to be honest, I just don't care enough about birthdays to keep track of them. If Mrs VF stopped doing it, I definitely would not pick up the slack. We'd just be birthday forgetters if it were up to me.

The other carework described in the post can probably not be dispensed with, but I reckon the sexes could meet each other halfway. Men could help out more, and women could lower their standards.

What I'm Sacrificing for Lent

Probably nothing. Pre-Lent Vache will almost certainly resolve to lay off the alcohol, eschew gluttony and sloth, and be an all around better and healthier person. Lenten Vache will have other ideas. Pre-Lent Vache is a lot like morning Vache, full of promise and resolution, and Lenten Vache will be like evening Vache who reckons morning Vache can stuff it. In fact, says evening Vache, he reckons that the best time to hit the gym would be early in the morning after a night of winebibbing. We'll just see about that, says morning Vache.

Is Our Pastor Agnostic?

Yesterday was the last of the "Doubt" series of sermons. It was supposed to be about seeing clues for the existence of God in nature, but so much time was taken up with extra music for the departing Music Director's last service that the preacher cut it short (he is loathe to do that). I don't know what the longer version was like, but this one was pretty good. The preacher went all Calvin on us and reminded us that we believe because we were predestined to belief, that our belief is a gift from God. We're lucky to believe, he said.

Right on. I'd take it even further. There's no way to persuade anyone of our beliefs, and they are not susceptible to proof. We tend to see God's hand in the wonders of the universe and the findings of science because we already believe. If we didn't believe, looking at nature wouldn't persuade us. And the universe doesn't tell us much so far about God and His plans. Rather, we tend to see facts about the world as confirmations of things we already believe.

I'm agnostic because I acknowledge that my Christian beliefs aren't provable. Although the preacher probably wouldn't out himself as an agnostic, he's probably a Christian agnostic, too.

Ancestors of Quality

When I reconstruct my family history, I'm going to go about it a little differently this time. I'm going to be a lot more skeptical of other people's research especially if it points to connections with people of quality.

You have to go back over seven generations in my family tree to find anyone even close to being an aristocrat. My ancestor Thomas Dillard was a Virginia planter and a Colonel of militia. He was a vestryman of the church and a respectable gentleman all around. He pulled up stakes in the 1780s and moved to what would become Tennessee. He died there, and I had the misfortune to be descended from one of his minor sons. The older children were already set up in life and did well. The minors? Not so much. My branch of the family descended into the yeomanry and at last into the working class thanks, in part, to some ill timed premature deaths.

I used to get excited to find people of quality in my ancestry, but now I take more delight in finding that I am the scion of slack jawed yokeldom for the most part. This enables me to feel less ashamed of my ancestors as slavekeepers and Indian murderers and evildoers, as the quality were apt to be when you really think about it.

I have royal ancestors as it turns out. Who doesn't? My royal connections were mostly bastards, and that takes some of the sting out of being descended from the leaders of various criminal syndicates in the Middle Ages. With luck, some of my royal connections will turn out to be fables.

Lost Family History

For over ten years, I have been meticulously recording genealogical data on Family Tree Maker software. Yesterday, when I went to open it to find something out for a distant cousin, I discovered that it was missing. There was still a file Family Tree Maker but it was empty. No data, no program, nothing. I can't figure out what happened, and I wish I had backed the damned thing up in the last five years.

It's Not Socialism if a Republican Does It

My Republican conspecifics at the office have come full circle. I have heard them many times remark that Jimmy Carter messed up the economy and that Ronald Reagan fixed it. Now, however, they are saying that the federal government has no impact on the economy. Bush and the GOP didn't screw up the economy,see, and Obama can't do anything to fix it. This is totally different from the Carter/Reagan scenario somehow.

I lived through the Carter and Reagan years, and I was under the impression that Reagan stimulated the economy with tax cuts and deficit spending. And Reagan is the Republican God. The current stimulus has fewer tax cuts, and way fewer perks for the "supply side" (rich people), but it's basically the same trick as far as I can tell.

Of course, it may well be that the recession in the Carter and Reagan years would have fixed itself and that the Reagan stimulus didn't do anything to help. If that's the case now for Republicans, I reckon the apotheosis of Reagan should be rescinded.

Fleischer's of Kingston

I drove all the way to Kingston (a little over 50 miles) to check out Fleischer's, a butcher shop that carries only free range, grass fed meats from local farms. I bought $250 worth of pork (not the other white meat kind, but dark and marbled pork like grandpaw used to raise), beef, chicken, and lamb. The beef came in steaks, ground, and in stew chunks. The pork came in loin, chops, sausage and kielbasa. The supply I laid in should last about three weeks. The butcher said he'd be glad to deliver my order if it was $250 or more, and I might just take him up on that except that Kingston is nice to visit, and I like to see the meat before I buy it.

Fleischer's has everything you could want, and they have a device that freezes your meat instantly if you want it frozen. The service was great, and the shop was clean. I haven't tasted the meat yet, but I'm pretty sure it will be fabulous.

Strange Sermon

Our pastor preached on Sunday in response to the assertion "You can't take the Bible literally". I was interested to find out whether he would admit that, in many cases, you can't take the Bible literally. A lot of it is poetry, allegory, metaphor and what have you and was never meant to be taken literally. If Jesus said "I am the door", he didn't really mean he was a door. He was, rather, like a door in some way. The prophets' visions are mostly allegorical.

The preacher didn't really address the question. He argued that Scripture was reliable in three ways (historically, personally and purposefully) and used the Gospel of Luke as an example. Luke is clearly historical in nature and not merely legendary, and the preacher seemed to imply that this meant everything in Luke was, therefore, true and that since Luke was true, the rest of the Bible was true. Or maybe he didn't mean to imply these things at all. The literalists in the congregation would have no argument with the sermon, and the non-literalists among us could accept the sermon as well as long as we didn't push the issue. It was kind of pointless except for the admonition for Christians to stay in the deep end of the pool and not to get wrapped up in small differences of opinion.

I don't care if other people are literalists mainly because it shouldn't have any practical impact on how we live our lives or treat one another. Authoritarians tend to be literalists in my experience but there is no reason that a literalist has to be an authoritarian. What difference does it make, for example, whether Jonah was ever really inside a great fish? Or if someone really believes in the Deluge? As long as they love God and their conspecifics, there's no issue as far as I'm concerned.

I once had a discussion with a literalist at church in which I proposed that I had the authority to interpret Scripture in accordance with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, whereas he argued that such a stance would permit too much freedom and undermine authority. I suspected that he didn't really believe in the Holy Spirit. I really believe in the Holy Spirit, that it dwells within me, and that it is responsible for transforming my life and guiding me in my spiritual journey. I trust in the power of the Spirit more than in any authority.

The best part of the sermon was a mangled John Calvin quote: "If you build a man a fire, you warm him for an evening. If you set a man on fire, you warm him for the rest of his life." The bass behind me muttered: "About 15 minutes, I'd say."

Early Birds

I don't know if it signifies, but I have had a number of spring and summer birds already at the feeder. Cowbirds showed up a couple of weeks ago instead of mid-March as has been usual. This weekend, I had a goldfinch, redwinged blackbirds, and a common grackle weeks before usual.

I choose to delude myself that these visitations are signs of an early spring.

Rebranding the Religious Right

I heard that the religious right doesn't want to be called that any longer. They prefer to be called "socially conservative evangelicals". Religious right has taken on a pejorative connotation and is associated with fascism.

It was the conduct and rhetoric of the religious right that disgraced the name. Rebranding isn't going to help. "Socially Conservative Evangelicals" will in short order suffer the same pejoration and associations with fascism and craziness. This is because the SCEs are fascists and nutcases.

I reckon they should embrace their fascism and run with it. A little truth in advertising is in order. I would go with "Christofascist". Or they might pick up on the neologism "Christianist" to describe themselves.

Losing a Teacher

Our polymath choir director is leaving at the end of the month to do something else. I am very sorry to see her go as it is a joy to make music with her, but I affirm her discernment of how the Spirit is moving her. She aims to peform more widely, and this will be a blessing to anyone privileged to hear her.

I haven't heard anything about a search to replace her, and I suspect that we won't have a choir director until next fall at the earliest. We muddled through during the incumbent's sabbatical with volunteers from the choir, and that was OK for our regular church services. I don't reckon we'll be doing a complicated recital for Good Friday this year or anything special for Easter. That's a disappointment for me since I especially liked the challenging pieces that we did for special occasions.

I don't see how we can get anyone in the incumbent's league to replace her. She was patient, good humored and kind. She was an incredible teacher who got performances out of us that were far beyond what you'd expect given our level of talent. I was lucky to have sung and played for her.

The choir is what keeps me involved with church. It's my principal activity and contribution to the church. If it falls apart, I would be tempted to find another church with a decent choir.

Republics Always Devolve Into Dictatorships, Except When They Don't

Mrs Vache Folle got me the DVD set of "I, Claudius" for my birthday, and I watched the whole thing already. I also watched the first season of "Rome" again and started reading both Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" and Suetonius's "Twelve Emperors". My bathroom book is Meacham's bio of Andrew Jackson "American Lion".

Is it just me or do the deaths of the Roman and American republics look a lot alike? In each case, a strong executive harnessed the popular will and overrode the institutions set up as checks and balances. A bonus question: Were the Praetorian Guard and the Legions better at selecting the executive than the American electorate (setting aside Caligula and GW Bush)?

Chuck Todd is a Dumbass

Because it was on every channel, I caught a little of President Obama's press conference the other day. Unfortunately, I caught the part where Chuck Todd, apparently an economic illiterate, asked the president why he wanted to stimulate consumer spending when consumer spending got us into our economic fix in the first place. The president acknowledged that Americans' savings rate had been low but pointed out that the present crisis was not one in which we could be overly concerned about the savings rate. In my view, Todd's perspective would be analogous to denying a patient a transfusion because he had been careless with his blood in the past.

Demand fuels the economy. The stimulus is designed, in theory, to increase overall demand in the economy with government spending until indvidual consumer demand increases. Individuals are cutting back on spending because they are worried about their jobs, because their wealth in the form of real estate and other investments has diminished, or because they are jobless. The economy slows down, and thrift is imposed on us by our circumstances. The personal savings rate is way up, but this is not a good thing in the current context.

Why weren't Americans thriftier during the last twenty years? One reason, in my view, is that the income of workers did not keep up with inflation, so there was less left over after the bills were paid. Others who might have had more savings saw their wealth in the form of realty and stocks rise precipitously such that they did not feel the need to set as much aside. I don't really see the relatively low savings rate as some kind of moral failure on the part of the American people.

Stuff I'm Quitting

I'm boycotting Kellogg's because of their mistreatment of Michael Phelps. So he smokes pot? What of it? Doesn't his pot smoking make his achievements all the more remarkable? By dropping their sponsorship of Phelps, Kellogg's is essentially admitting that it was the pot and not their nutritious cereals which propelled Phelps to glory. I urge everyone to boycott Kellogg's and to let them know what we think of their sanctimonius prattery.

I'm quitting beef that isn't free range and grass fed or pork that isn't free range and feeding on mace. I aim to increase my ratio of Omega 3s to Omega 6s, and to do this I must avoid factory farmed meat. It's going to be inconvenient, but I'm just not going to support factory farming with my consumer dollars any longer. In the interim, I'm eating more fish, lamb and duck.

I'm still off the TV news and glad of it. The only news I watch now is Telemundo, and that's just because I'm trying to learn Spanish. Once I start to understand it, I'll quit that, too.

Week in Review

I got home early on Friday and found two red foxes exploring the back yard. One of them was practically on the deck and seemed interested in one of Jasper's toys that had been buried in the snow. I tried to take a picture of him through a window, but he spotted me and ran over to the western gate and fled into the woods. His conspecific hung around for a while. It was only when he reached the west gate that I felt it was safe to let Jasper out. Stupid fox freaked out and ran all the way across the yard and nearly got himself cornered. Jasper chased it for over five minutes before it got away. Lucky for Jasper, I reckon.

I was home early because I was tuckered out from a trip to Chicago that ended the day before. I was on US Airways, the employers of the heroic Sully, and I found that, because I had given myself more than enough margin for error and had avoided checking a bag, the trip wasn't all that crappy. It was cheap because US Air charges for everything. Check a bag? $15. Want an in flight soda pop? $2. PIllow and blanket? Ka ching! It was still free to use the lavatory (for now).

I stayed at the Omni in dowtown Chicago and was impressed with the service. Everyone was eerily solicitous and competent, and my suite was very comfortable. I had to eat out with the lawyers on the first night, but they turned out to be very good company. That was a bonus.

I turned 51 on Saturday, middle aged given that I expect to attain 150. Everyone agrees that 51 is a cute age. Both my parents called me on my birthday for the first time ever. For Dad it was a coincidence since he doesn't keep up with birthdays. I don't like to make a fuss over them myself. I mean I'm glad I cheated death and all, but that's something to celebrate every day.

It was also my favorite holiday last week, Ground Hog Day or Imbolc. I favor the day because it means that winter is half over.

Capital Gains

Some of my conspecifics at lunch were touting a capital gains tax cut or elimination as a good way to stimulate the economy. Folks who weren't selling their capital assets would be motivated to do so. Who would buy them and with what money was not part of the equation, nor was how encouraging the sale of assets, most depreciated significantly and not subject to tax on a sale, would help the faltering economy. That''s because it wouldn't. It's just a scheme to get more tax benefits for the better off at the expense of the wage earner.

The bailouts, what with their being spent on bonuses and junkets, aren't necessarily leading to the flow of credit, but they are least convincing people that rich people are not morally superior while the idea of supply side economics is based on the erroneous assumption that they are. Put money in the hands of those wealth builders and job creators, not those stupid consumers, and you'll see the economy take off in the right direction, so the supply side mantra goes. In truth, consumers are the real wealth builders and job creators, so you've got to get money into their hands. Consumption is the engine of the economy.

Tee way the arrogant bankers and financiers are going, I'm thinking of investing in guillotine manufacturers.

A Loving God and Hell

The sermon yesterday was about hell, a topic almost never brought up in our church. After all, it's not a fear of hell that informs our church, but the Holy Spirit. What happens when we die is not the emphasis except at funerals. The preacher rightly pointed out that Jesus spoke of hell a few times, using the words Gehenna, the local garbage dump and Hades, the realm of the dead. In the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, the rich man suffers and Lazarus, poor in life, is comforted. The rich man's life was founded on his wealth, and its loss meant that in Hades he was nothing. Abraham was in Hades, too, as indeed were all the dead.

The preacher remarked that the people in hell are beloved of God and forgiven their transgressions but that their choices in life put them in a place of separation from God. My take on heaven and hell is that we all end up in the same place but that folks who are self centered and proud won't like it there for some reason.

One bit of the sermon that I took issue with was when the preacher said that God doesn't send anyone to hell but that he respects our choice. That doesn't sound very Calvinistic to me. Them as end up in hell were ordained to be there from the beginning of the age. In what sense did they have a choice?

The whole narrative of fall and redemption makes less and less sense to me every day. I'm beginning to think that a better narrative is to think of mankind as becoming sentient and in need of God's intervention. Before sentience, we were as innocent as the other wild beasts. After sentience, we wanted looking after.

Categories of Knowledge

There are the known unknowns and then there are the unknown unknowns, it has been famously said. There are also the known knowns that aren't so and the unknown knowns that we know about but haven't noticed that we know them. The known knowns that are so make up the smallest category of knowledge. The unknown unknowns is the largest.

Then there's the unknowable. There are some things (most things in the universe) that we are too stupid to grasp. We can't even conceive of questions to ask about them let alone comprehend the answers. God is mostly unknowable. What we think we know about God is mostly wrong or just plain inadequate to describe God. Our metaphors don't really work. Pulling Leviathan out of the water with a fish hook is not a big deal for God as impressive at it was for Job. God knows we're stupid, so it shouldn't be held against us.

Animation in Commercials

The Lectric Shave commercial features whiskers with faces. They wake up when the Lectric Shave is applied and, as the fall away into the hopper, one of them remarks "That was close." What happens to those sentient whiskers once they are freed from the face? Do their lives go on in the trash can or the septic tank? They didn't seem unhappy about being shaved.

Mucinex has animated boogers in its commercials. They are depicted as moving in to a person's nose from outside and taking up residence until banished by Mucinex. This is so wrong. Boogers are products of the body. They don't move in from outside. They are a reaction to a germ or allergen and perfrom a vital function. The animated boogers in the commercial are depicted as fat cigar smoking lowlifes rather than the heros that they really are.

There's a product that fights toenail fungus that features in its commercials an animated toenail fungus that looks like a tiny Gollum. Fungi are not animals, so this is not a very instructive representation of the problem. It makes you feel a little bad about killing the toenail fungi. One of the possible side effects of the product is sudden death, so I'll just live with toenail fungus.

There's an allergy medicine (Pollinex?)with an animated honeybee with a vaguely Spanish accent. I can live with the concept of a talking bee, but the damned thing has teeth. How the hell does a bee sip nectar with a dental arcade? That's when it falls apart for me. And it doesn't have compound eyes, either. Sheesh.

I like the animated bears that pitch toilet paper that won't stick to your ass. Aside from ass wiping and talking, these bears seem fairly bearlike.

Slumdog Millionaire

We saw Slumdog Millionaire on Saturday night, and I found it to be one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. I loved the way the story of Jamal and Salim Malik, growing up in the slums of Mumbai, was told. Jamal is a contestant on Who Wants to be a Millionaire and is about to win 20 million rupees. Because he's an uneducated "Slumdog", he is supected of cheating and interrogated aggressively by the police. He relates each of the answers that he has gotten in the game to events in his life, and these are shown in flashback. The child actors are extraordinary.

Go see it. It's Dickensian but not as maudlin.

One State, Two State

M. Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, has an op-ed in the NY Times in which he makes a case for a "one state solution" to the confict between Palestinians and Israelis: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/opinion/22qaddafi.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

I don't see anything in the essay that I can argue with, and I have long believed that there is no good reason for the territory that comprises Israel and Palestine to be separated into distinct polities. As its stands now, the situation is tantamount to apartheid. A single political system would provide a mechanism for the management of conflict and the sharing of power. Of course, advocates for a Jewish state would argue that sharing the state with Gentiles would render the state something other than a Jewish state. That's certainly true, but I for one do not see the necessity for a Jewish state. A homeland, yes. State, not so much, especially when the maintenance of that state entails the disenfrachisement of so many Palestinians.

In the alternative, I would support the "two state solution" if it were implemented in good faith and without regard to the Jewish settlements that have sprung up in Palestinian territory to undermine the peace process. Let the settlers be content with living as subjects of the new Palestinian state if they insist on living in the Palestinian territory.

My personal preferred solution is a single state under a Christian monarch, the King of Jerusalem, the heir to which throne is Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II.

Unlucky Romans

Steve Scott has covered this as well as anyone http://fromthepew.blogspot.com/search/label/Re-Thinking%20Romans%2013, but I feel a need to rant about Romans 13 and other Biblical references to obeying authority. In my opinion, the authors of these texts were giving good advice to the early churches: Don't stand out as overtly seditious or as scofflaws. This made a lot of sense when persecution was a real possibility. It also made the movement unattractive to seekers who would fear to be associated with a gang of lawbreakers.

Beyond that, I reckon too much is read into the texts. They are qualified as holding that God ordains authorities to punish evil and reward good, and we all know that authorities go way beyond that mandate and even do the opposite. I suspect that this language was put in letters in case they were intercepted and that this was a kind of code for advising the assembly to avoid trouble and to appear to be loyal to rulers and, in fact, to pray for rulers and accept it if by chance they did something right. Any other reading seems absurd to me.

What is meant by authority, anyway? If Caesar conquers my country by the sword and exercises power over me, does he likewise have authority as from God? If we are never to rebel against authority, was not the founding of the United States via treason and rebellion a sin? And what of the simple subject of the crown in that rebellion? With whom was he to side? At what point is he supposed to recognize a new authority even when it is conceived in rebellion? Were the conspirators in the Underground Railroad sinners against God? What happens when one authority opposes another as in a war? Is God fighting God? Were the martyrs of the early church defying God when they defied Caesar?

I reckon the authors of these texts were stating nothing but the obvious when they observed that all authority comes from God. Since everything that happens from the beginning of time was foreordained, political events and figures were also foreordained just like plagues and hurricanes and mass extinctions. I reckon that the early Christians would have understood that but that outsiders would not have. Caesar's agents would have been able to report that Christians acknowledge Caesar's authority as Divinely Ordained. Caesar, having no discernment, might take comfort in that and, being a self important douche, would consider that it meant he was singled out. Of course, there was no pleasing Caesar, and it wasn't enough to declare him God's gift; you had to recognize him as God incarnate.

Read so as to avoid absurd implications, these texts are still good advice to Christians. Acquiesce in the requirements of rulers and avoid trouble as much as you can. It is error to read these texts as requiring blind obedience, let alone wholehearted acceptance and participation in the acts of governments.

Unity

Last night, some of us from the choir and the chorale sang at an ecumenical service of unity at a nondenominational church around the corner from ours. The host church had an espresso bar where most churches have a fellowship hall. They also had a pretty gnarly praise band.

We were the only traditional choir, and we performed a song written by our music director based on MLK's famous "I Have a Dream" speech. Five pastors spoke and led prayers. One of them was tasked with leading a prayer for the officials of East Fishkill. He led off by reading from Romans 13. I reckon the purpose was to demonstrate that praying for local officials was appropriate since "all authority" is mentioned. Still, it disturbed me to have this read out at length, and I dreaded what was to come. Another pastr led a prayer for New York State officials. A passage from a letter ascribed to Peter was read as directing Christians to respect authority as God given to punish eveil and reward good. The Catholic priest led a prayer for the officals of the United States. All these prayers were for the officals to be granted wisdom and to work justice and to do right. There was, I ws grateful, no authoritarian undertone.

One of our associate pastors, the one who has the prophetic gift, gave the sermon. He spoke of unity as the body of Christ workin in the world and seeking the Kingdom. His text was from Matthew "Seek Ye First the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness..." He decried our tendency to get together in our "Holy huddles" and focus mainly on how we worship and how we take care of ourselves. He preached a vision of a Hopewell Junction where all the churches of the vicinity came together to meet the needs of the community by building clinics, serving as tutors in schools, feeding the hungry and ministering to the poor and vulnerable, and sharing our gifts with the world not just within the walls of our churches. He talked of Jesus among us, alive today and ruling His Kingdom right here and now through His church.

It was uplifting. I was inspired to get out and help my fellow man. The feeling will pass all too soon if past experience is a guide. I pray that it won't.

Backwards Blogging the Inauguration

I liked President Obama's speech. It was inspiring, provocative, and not too long. The man's charming, eloquent, intelligent, and adult.

Do you reckon GW Bush was smart enough to know that he was getting dissed big time?

Chief Justice Roberts seemed pretty flustered by the stepstool that was provided to him to keep him from looking like a munchkin. He declined to stand on it and then flubbed the oath. Who will be the first wingnut to claim that the Obama presidency is illegitimate because the oath was not done properly?

I didn't catch the whole thing, but I didn't hear Rick Warren say anything especially crazy in his invocation. Of course, he was probably thinking crazy thoughts the whole time.

Space

Forget everything I wrote in the last post about how to stimulate the economy. I've decided we need to put every dime into the space program. We have got to get cracking on the colonization of space before it's too late. It's insane to stake the fate of humanity on this one planet when we know that it's going to be destroyed at some point.

Any day, an asteroid could slam into the planet. Or the Earth could spew up massive quantities of gas and magma in supervolcanos and drive us to extinction. We might end up like Venus. I don't want to live on Venus, do you? Not unless we fix it.

Eventually, the moon is going to fly away from Earth's orbit, and then the planet will lose its stability unless we come up with some handy dandy planet stabilizer. At some point, the sun is going to burn out, and then how comfortable will Earth be? Not very, if my calculations are correct, and I think they are.

Did you know that Andromeda and the Milky Way are on a collision course? That won't be pretty. Well, it might be pretty, but it's bound to be destructive and not conducive to life.

I don't want our descendants (your descendants anyway since I don't have kids) to say "if only our ancestors had invested in the space program in 2009, we'd be a two planet species and could survive [apocalyptic scenario here], but at least we have some nice bridges."

We can't afford to procrastinate any longer. Everything depends on the space program. Everything.

Suggested Stimuli

Build a new Tappan Zee Bridge with ten lanes each way. It won't help me, except I won't have to listen to my conspecifics from Jersey bitch about their commute. Nobody held a gun to their heads and made them live across the Hudson. I make it a point wherever possible to live on the same side of the river that I work so as to avoid choke points like bridges and tunnels. Mrs Vache Folle once had a job on the other side of the Potomac in Virginia, but she commuted against traffic and took the subway most of the time.

It's high time for a National Clown College to take its place alongside the other service academies.

Pave the Taconic State Parkway with a substance that will not disintegrate after every snowstorm leaving enormous wheel killing potholes. It's the 21st century for crying out loud; let's come up with some good paving material. And you know the drain grates on the edge of the road? How about we make those flush with the rest of the road. And do the roadwork outside the rush hours for a change or let us know ahead of time that you'll be tying up the road so we can take alternate routes.

Let's make high speed internet and cell phone access available everywhere in America. No dead zones!

Extend the NY subways into neighboring jurisdictions such as Westchester and Nassau and over into Jersey. Take the monorail in Seattle and extend it to Portland and Vancouver. Monorails for every city while we're at it. You know the trolley systems that once existed in many towns but were torn up? Rebuild them! Let that trolley in Seattle go all the way to Issaquah and Everett.

Let's put all the power and telephone lines and cables underground so we can make historic movies without worrying about power lines in the background.

New schools would be nice. A lot of towns have been using "temporary" structures for decades. Let's give them fancy new digs with separate cafeterias and auditoriums. No child should have to suffer the indignity of eating in or attending an assembly in a "cafetorium" as I did at Dug Gap Elementary.

Let's buy everyone a high powered rifle and train them in its use and maintenance.

Defense of Marriage

As a person of faith, marriage means a lot more to me than how it is defined by the state. It has a spiritual and personal dimension over which the state has no authority and in which the state should have no interest. The state does not legitimize my marriage; rather, it demeans it by conflating its concept of marriage with the totality of Marriage as experienced by couples.

The state imposes burdens and grants benefits to married couples under its licensing scheme that are unavailable to unmarried couples or that are difficult for unmarried couples to achieve through private arrangements. Why does the state confer these benefits on married people? What state interest, if any, is furthered by the licensing scheme and the exercise of jurisdiction over marriage? Based on the arguments of would be defenders of traditional marriage, I imagine that the state reckons that it should promote and reward relatively stable domestic arrangements. These are supposed to be conducive to the public order, the rearing of well adjusted and healthy children, and the welfare of the participants. Married people are said to prosper.

Conceding for the sake of argument that this is a legitimate state interest, why would the state limit the benefits and burdens of marriage to heterosexual couples? Wouldn't any couple (or polygamous group for that matter) benefit from stable domestic arrangements just as much as heterosexual couples, especially if they are rearing children? Wouldn't the interests of the state be served just as much by conferring the benefits and burdens of state sanctioned marriage on anyone who seeks them without regard to gender or sexual activity?

Suppose a brother and his widowed sister want to live together and raise her children together. Allowing them to form a civil union, despite the nonsexual nature of their relationship, would be a benefit to them and would advance the interests of the state. Suppose two friends of the same sex decide to pool their resources and establish a household on a long term basis. How would denying them the chance to form a civil union further the aims of the state?

Whether the proposed couple is sexually active should be a matter of indifference to the state. Stable domestic arrangements aren't really about sex, as anyone who has been married for a long time can attest.

I would like to see the state get out of the business of regulating domestic arrangements altogether, but short of that I would like to see the term "marriage" replaced by "civil union" or some such thing as Sunstein and Thaler suggest in Nudge. That way, churches can be free to define marriage any way they like, and the state can treat all its subjects equally.

Good Riddance, GWB!

I'm looking forward to the departure of GW Bush with glee. I can't stand him. The sound of his voice is like fingernails on a chalk board. His chimplike face and idiot smirk make me want to hurl projectiles. I have less than zero respect for the lying sack of shit. I don't even respect his office. He has ended any consideration of respecting the presidency for all time. Once a GW Bush has been president, the whole concept is permanently debased. Instead of Hail to the Chief, we should play the Benny Hill theme music whenever a president appears.

Also, it will be a relief not to go to bed at night wondering what moronic thing GW Bush might decide on to get us all killed.

So far, GW Bush is the Douche of the Century.

Some reckon that history will vindicate him. I reckon that the most GW Bush should expect from history is the onset of a postapocalyptic dystopia which will suck so much that folks will look back on the Bush years as better than their hellish existence.

Big Hollywood

Tbogg takes the low hanging fruit that is Big Hollywood and lets it critique itself: http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2009/01/11/well-youll-make-a-rope-of-words-and-strangle-this-business/

Evidently, Big Hollywood is dedicated to the proposition that film moguls make movies based on something other than their desire to make money. These moguls have a moral duty to make "conservative" movies, if by conservative one means mindlessly nationalistic and devoted to depicting war as heroic and fun rather than ugly and difficult. Filmmakers should not depict soldiers as anything less than heroes sacrificing all for the state and reaping their glorious reward.

I reckon that there are lots of crappy movies with no moral ambiguity to confuse the "conservative" mind and that the gang at Big Hollywood should subscribe to NetFlix and gorge themselves on Chuck Norris movies. Or they could rent some propaganda films from WW2.

Maybe they could shop some scripts around and see if they can get their dream movies made. Here's the pitch: Conservative blogger is thrust into the International War on Terror and singlehandedly takes on the forces of the Caliphate. Along the way he rescues an entire harem of grateful scantily clad women enslaved by the evil terrorist ringleader, and they agree to have sex with him. Explosions and car chases abound. Lots of patriotic monologues not unlike conservative blog posts.

Better Air Travel

I wish, without much hope, that the stimulus plan for the US economy would result in a high speed passenger railroad system. I would take the train even if it took twice as long as a plane because flying has become such a hellish experience. Competition from trains might get the airlines to do better.

Speaking of planes, I learned on Ecopolis on the Science Channel this weekend that most of the noise of airliners comes from the air moving around the planes themselves. If the shape of airliners was changed to more of a flying wing, the noise would almost disappear, and more airports could be built without annoying people. This would improve air travel.

New Unjokes

Set up: How do you tell the bride at an Italian wedding?
Punchline: She's usually the one in a white dress up in front of the church.

Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Vache.
Vache who?
Vache Folle.

Set up: What's the difference between ignorance and apathy?
Punchline: Ignorance describes a state wherein one has no knowledge, whereas apathy indicates an absence of interest or concern.

A cow walks into a bar and orders a martini. The bartender says "We don't get many talking cows in here." The cow says nothing and leaves without paying.

A Frenchman, a German, and a Pole are on walkabout and arrange to spend the night in farmer's barn. The farmer warns them that they had better stay away from his beautiful daughter and that he'll be sleeping with one eye open and a shotgun at the ready. The Frenchman and the German decide that it would be foolhardy to mess with the farmer's daughter, but the Pole decides he'll give it a try. He sneaks up to the farmhouse and climbs in the window, whereupon the vigilant farmer shoots him dead.

Set up: What do you call a hundred lawyers on the bottom of Lake George?
Punchline: A mystery.

Old Testament Interpretation

I read the Old Testament differently from many of my coreligionists. I don't read it as an historical narrative at all. As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter whether any of the events described in the OT happened. In fact, I would be disappointed to learn that God ever sanctioned genocide or that some of the other disturbing events took place.

The Creation Story is simply a myth, and there is no reason to believe that creation happened as described. That doesn't make the story worthless, though. It just means it has to be understood differently and that you have to work to glean the wisdom from it. The same goes for the Tower of Babel and the Deluge. These things never happened. The stories are valuable, however, in that they reveal how the understanding of God emerged and developed over the centuries among the Jews. The reason that God seems so different in the early books and the later books is that the understanding of God matured over time. At first, God is just like every other deity. You have to placate him with barbecue or He'll smite you. He might smite you anyway. Only later is God concerned with justice and mercy.

Exodus probably didn't happen the way it is described in the Bible, either. I reckon some of the Jews who made up the tribes of Israel had come out of Egypt, and their story, with embellishments, was mythologically useful and served to legitimize the takeover of Palestine and support the national identity. There's good stuff in there; don't get me wrong. But you have to read it for what it really is and to understand it as myth, not as a history book.

The lists of rules and laws is interesting, but there's really no reason to believe that God transmitted this minutiae to the Jewish priests. That was just the customary law that developed among the Jews, and it should be taken for what it's worth. There's no good reason to believe that these laws and rules are appropriate for any society today. You can follow them if you want, but you should really have a better reason for doing so than that they were written down a long time ago and that the authors claimed that they came from God. If I told you that this blog post came from God, would you believe that?

The prophets were writing about their own times and circumstances, so there's no use looking for predictions about now or the near future. That doesn't mean the prophets aren't valuable. They're just valuable in other ways.

Psalms are fabulous poems and should be read as the poet's devotions. The proverbs are just a bunch of sayings that are or or less wise. Some suggest that the righteous always prosper and that the wicked get their comeuppance, but we all know that's just not true. The concept of God in such writings was unsophisticated: if you follow all these rules, only good will come to you. Ecclesiastes is better.

Some would argue that my way of looking at the OT makes for too much freedom of interpretation and diminishes the authority of Scripture. I'll grant the latter, but I don't think you can have too much freedom. I trust the Holy Ghost to guide the reader.

More on Israel

My opinions about Israel have been developed over many years and are pretty well informed. They are quite a bit more complex than it is possible to express in the usual discourse about the subject. ME: "I disapprove of Israeli policy X." INTERLOCUTOR: "Antisemite!"

Some of my conspecifics seem to be of the view that Israel is infallible, and it is not really possible to discuss Israeli policies or activities except to praise them. I am perplexed by this view, and I can't figure out what has informed such an opinion. On the other hand, some reckon Israel can do nothing right, and this is equally perplexing.

Here are the core principles that I have developed in thinking about the conflict in Palestine:

1. God loves both the Jews and the Arabs, and both categories of people are entitled to the same consideration.

2. Peace is good, and violence is bad.

3. Violence in the name of a state is not morally distinguishable from violence by non-state actors.

I am at a loss to figure out what it is about these principles that is antisemitic or why they are so difficult to discuss.

New Testament Interpretation

My take on the New Testament is considerably different to that of many of my co-religionists. I like to think of the books in the New Testament as having a historical context. There were a number of texts in circulation in the early centuries of Christianity, and a committee of Bishops took on the task on deciding which of them to include in the official canon of the official Church and which to exclude. One of the principles used in deciding was "apostolic authority". If a text purported to come from an apostle, it carried more weight than anything written by someone of lesser status or later in time. Another principle was that the text had to jive with the views of the bishops and to support their authority.

The earliest texts, according to scholars, are the letters of Paul, considered an apostle by virtue of his encounter with the Risen Lord on the road to Damascus. There are fourteen such letters, and seven of them are considered pseudopauline and written by someone else altogether, in part because they are so inconsistent with the genuine articles. Paul probably wrote a lot more letters, but these did not survive. Paul was writing to particular churches about particular problems, and I doubt that it ever entered his mind that his letters would one day be taken as holy scripture. He'd have been a lot more careful about what he wrote if he thought he was drafting the Bible. I take Paul's letters, the real ones, as authoritative in the sense that they reflect the views of an important figure who knew Jesus and the other apostles. I don't consider them to have been dictated to Paul by God or to be infallible or inerrant.

I take the other letters by Peter et al in the same way, although I doubt that Peter was the author of the letters attributed to him.

The Gospels and Acts are dated later, John the latest of all. They don't agree in certain details, but I don't reckon that they are meant to be read as historical narratives. The themes and the sayings of Jesus are what matters. Whether Jesus ascended on Easter or 40 days later doesn't much matter. Whether he was born in Bethlehem and visited by the Magi is of no consequence. The Gospels certainly weren't dictated by God, and they should be read with an open mind and an open heart.

Revelations is of little use and probably does more harm than good by being included in the canon. The prophet was writing about his own times in a kind of apocalyptic code.

Ultimately, we each must listen to the Spirit and work hard to discern how to read and use the New Testament.

Sometimes, I wonder when preachers speak of the "Word of God" if they are not conflating the "Word", the Logos with the Bible. In what sense is the Bible God's Word? As far as I can tell, it's the word of human authors who were more or less inspired or discerning, and this does not make it any less important as a source of wisdom.

Socks

I have three kinds of socks: about ten pairs of identical black dress socks, about ten pairs of identical white athletic socks, and three pairs of khaki warm socks. This system allows me to forego worries about mismatched socks or sniglets. It's genius. Mrs Vache Folle resisted this idea for many years but now has seen the light. She maintains a variety of socks to this day but does not seem to mind going to the effort to keep them matched and to select the right sock for every occasion. That's her prerogative. I can't be bothered.

When socks go missing, I've learned that they have likely attached themselves via static charge to other items of clothing. I check myself in the mirror to ascertain whether there might be a sock clinging to my shirt or sweater.

Lies My Parents Told Me and Some Truths

Lies:

Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. All nonexistent. All entirely gratuitous lies, except for Santa who was sometimes used to extort a few weeks of goodness in December.

Everyone in America is Equal and Can Do Anything They Set Their MInds To. Growing up in the South, I unconsciously added "as long as you're white" to this proposition. I hung on to that one into adulthood. That lie made me feel bad that I never amounted to anything when, truth be told, I did pretty well for cracker spawn. Come to think of it, I probably wouldn't have tried as hard as I did if I hadn't been lied to about my prospects.

A Job Well Done is its Own Reward. Having been stiffed on a few well done jobs, I can tell you that this is definitely not true. Payment for a job well done is the reward. And if you do the job badly and still get paid, that's sometimes even better.

This is Going to Hurt Me More than it Hurts You. Really? Now that I'm an adult and have been really pissed off at some kids whom I mostly love, I can tell that there must be some real satisfaction in flogging them.

The Policeman is Your Friend. This one I figured out pretty early was bollocks. When I became a policeman, I learned just how unfriendly cops really are.

Truths:

Always Whittle Away from Yourself.

College Football Championship

Which college football team is truly the best? There's really no way of knowing for sure unless they play each other, and there's too many for that. All you can really say is which team is the best in its conference, and if two conference champs go head to head in a bowl, the winner is the best in both conferences. That's good enough for me what with not giving a rat's ass about college football.

Some advocate a playofff system, but I reckon that would take away the pleasure of arguing endlessly about the merits of teams and conferences. As it stands now, each of us is the arbiter of championship and none may gainsay us.

A simple way of deciding championship would be to have the SEC and Big 10 champs play in a bowl each year, the winner being crowned champion of the universe. Everybody knows deep down that the SEC and the Big Ten (or wjatever number it is now) are the only real football playing conferences. I'm not saying there aren't some decent teams in the other conferences, but they have weaker opponents. The Big East and the ACC are pitiful imitations of football conferences.

I am told that some colleges out west field football teams and play each other. One of them, whose mascot is a popular condom brand, even defeated Penn State in a bowl. In time, they may develop a real football tradition.

One True Religion

Our church is having a Wednesday night series of discussions of thorny theological issues. Our pastor calls it "Doubt Night".

The first meeting is supposed to focus on whether there is one true religion. I know the answer to that one. Yes, there is one true religion; it's my religion, and any deviation from my point of view is a deviation from the truth. Of course, I can't prove that my religion is the one true religion, and I have to admit that there is a possibility that I may be mistaken about some things or everything. In fact, the one true religion might not have been discovered yet by anyone. And what is meant by "true"?

I've been thinking a lot about the afterlife lately, mainly because I've been reading a book about Resurrection and what Jews and early Christians believed about thje afterlife. In the first century, there was a widespread belief that the spirits of the dead resided in a place akin to Hades, a joyless abode from which none returned and where there was neither punishment or reward or hope of any kind. The Pharisees had a novel idea that the righteous would be bodily raised at the end of time and their spirits reunited with their bodies. Other sects didn't agree and like Jews of yore reckoned that the present life was all we had. Worship God now, for there is no worship in the land of the dead. Eat and drink and take pleasure in your toil.

I don't know what to make of Christian references to the raising of the dead and to the notion of the afterlife. I have difficulty reconciling the relative importance of an ephemeral earthly life with an eternal afterlife. Is there something about earthly life that is missing from the afterlife? There's evidently no marriage and presumably no sex. Maybe we look back at our miserable time on earth with longing and nostalgia. Maybe there is no afterlife for most of us or any of us. Maybe all the blessings of heaven (absence of toil or pain and what have you) are the blessings of the grave.

Of course, one solution to the "problem" is the Holy Ghost. Those in whom the Holy Ghost dwells will not readily be tempted to focus on the sweet bye and bye and to forget to work for the Kingdom and the betterment of the world in this life.

A Solution for Darfur

What is wanted in Darfur is a benevolent warlord, a defender of the people who will rule them kindly and stand against the criminal syndicate that controls Sudan. Apparently, there's some oil to be exploited, so there might be an economic base to support a warlord and his army of retainers in the long run, especially if those who cry out for military action in Darfur will foot the bill for the initial conquest of the region. A few benefit concerts might go a long way toward funding the crusade to save Darfur.

As I see it, a well equipped division of soldiers of fortune and caring crusaders could secure the safety of the refugees from Darfur, occupy and secure their former homes, repatriate the displaced, and secure the entire region of Darfur against further attacks. A smaller force could continue to defend it and maintain internal order after the Republic of Darfur breaks away from Sudan. Thereafter, the principal concern would be the suppression of any competiing would be warlords within Darfur.

Darfur is poor, and its denizens are not capable of defending themselves from their government. Peacekeeping in that land will require a permanent security apparatus, and the mercenary king might just be the solution.

Shame on Israel

Israel's response in Gaza seems grossly disproportionate to me. As I see it, Israel has two ways to go with the Palestinian problem: (1) do justice to the Palestinians, or (2) wipe them out or drive them away. It looks as if Israel is taking the latter course. Under cover of widespread and inflated fears of Islamic extremism and terrorism and American fundie Christian's lusting for apocalypse today, the Israeli government reckons it can do just about anything it wants to its Palestinian subjects.

It seems to me that Israel's overtures for peace have not been made in good faith. Settlements continue to encroach on the occupied lands, and Israel keeps demanding that Palestinians acknowledge Israel's "right to exist", whatever the hell that means. It appears to mean that the Palestinians must acquiesce in the existence of the state of Israel in the exact form it is today with all its policies and aims and agendas unchanged. The best way to manifest this acknowledgement and probably the only way Irael would accept it would be for Palestinians just to go ahead and kill themselves.

House and Feeder

So far in calendar year 2009, I have observed 14 species of birds on the feeders. I have been using a mix of songbird and woodpecker blends and have been spreading some cracked corn on the ground. The corn is meant to distract the deer that have been noshing on my shrubbery since the snows began to fall.

Yesterday, Mrs Vache Folle and I changed the two flourescent light fixtures in the kitchen, Mrs VF never liked them, and one of them broke when we were cleaning bugs out of it. My ineptitude in anything "handy" coupled with the jury rigging that the previous lights had been subjected to meant two hours to hang the damn lights. There were no boxes in the ceiling, just wires, and the anchors for the old lights were not in the right places for the new fixtures. The main problem was how tiresom it was to hold the fixtures up and installing anchors overhead.

Speaking of handiness, the kitchen sink has had a leak for a few weeks, and we have had to empty a bucket several times a day. Our neighbor the plumber was a no show, and we haven't gotten around to getting another plumber. I know that I don't even want to try to fix the damned thing myself, and I feel emasculated by my uselessness. At long last, a handyman has been found and is to come on Tuesday. We are making a list of handy stuff for him to take care of. He is the husband of Mrs VF's hairdresser, and he wants this kind of work.

Roomies

My circumstances were such that I had a lot of roommates and housemates when I was a student. At the University of Georgia, I was unable to get a dorm room and had to scrounge for off campus digs. My first habitat was a double wide trailer in a trailer park outside of Athens with Al, a pre-vet student from Brooklyn, and Jeff the Hobbit, a perpetually stoned, hairy little man from Calhoun who was obsessed with Dungeons and Dragons and who never seemed to leave the trailer. He did on one occasion come with Al and me to a porno.

As the trailer park turned out to be too far from campus for a carless student, I next roomed with a certain Travis H. from Atlanta, a minor Coca Cola heir, in an old lady's garage that had been converted into a guest house. This was very close to campus and on the campus bus route. Travis and his best friend Hector were party animals, and I accompanied them on a few of their forays into the Athens night life, not a few of which ended up in brawls. I would have happily stayed with Travis, but a dorm room opened up and I wanted to have the dorm experience.

My roomie in the dorm was Ralph, a huge ER Burroughs fan (a plus) and the president of the Campus Crusade for Christ (not such a plus). I had been immersed in religious fanatacism in high school and did not intend to get back into the subculture in college, so I was a hard case for Ralph. And since I didn't drink, smoke, do drugs, or screw, I was an enigma to Ralph and his minions. Knowing the jargon helped me mess with their minds. I joined the Episcopal Student Union to get them off my case. So Ralph and I were just amiable room sharers and never developed a social relationship.

When I transferred to American University, I lived in a triple because I had to watch every penny. The first semester, I had Curt B., son of a prof at Penn State and an Elton John fan, and Guy B,. a melancholy literature majot transferred from Towson State. I never realy got to know Curt, but Guy became my fast friend. He walsked around all semseter with a copy of Vanity Fair, the novel, and enaged in a futile courtship of an inaccessible girl who lived on the ground floor of Lett's Hall. He wrote bad poems and mooned about. He drank like a fish and very nearly flunked out of school despite being highly intelligent. I knew from unrequited love, having engaged in a pattern of chasing girls who clealry weren't interested in me in high school, so I endeavored to mentor him.

Neither Curt nor Guy were interested in staying in a triple (and maybe they didn't like living with me) and moved out at the end of the semester into doubles, Guy with a mutual friend Mr Mike down the hall. I had the room to myself for several weeks in the beginning of the Spring Semester, and then Kassra and Mehran, Iranian dudes, moved in. Kassra supported the Islamic Revolution (not enough to participate in it, apparently) but was a peerless partier. Mehran supported the Shah and was more moderate in his sinning. We had some heated discussions that semester. I went with K and M to the St Tropez disco in Georgetown a few times and marvelled at their ability to pick up women with the English phrases I had taught them. I taught them to talk like the Czech brothers from the Akroyd/Martin skit on SNL. "That's your funeral!" always cracked me up. I helped them get into East Tennessee State when they finished their ESL program at AU, and I'm sure they enjoyed living in the rural south during the Iranian hostage crisis the following year.

So ended my undergraduate career of cohabitation.

Konservatives I Have Known

I've known a few different kinds of "conservatives" in my day. My kinsmen were what I regard as true conservatives, fans of Barry Goldwater and minding your own damned business. As a lad, I'd run around under the opaque cloud of cigar smoke and listen to their political discourse. They really didn't know what to make of hippies.

Later in college, I ran across the species collegus republicanus and its mutant form the YAFfer. These were perpetually dateless boys (and some precious few godawful girls) who had turned their rejection by society into misanthropy and their datelessness into misogyny in particular. They were the ones defending apartheid when the rest of us were criticizing it. They purported to promote draconian measures to resolve all manner of social ills and reckoned that their hard, and frequently criminal positions were signs of their ehnanced virility.

This strategy failed to get them laid, and many of them resorted to condemning sex altogether and to railing against feminism. They supposed that their social retardation and unattractiveness had nothing to do with their weekends spent in Risk and D&D marathons. They were as big a bunch of douches as I have ever encountered in my life.

Now some of these same wankers pass for "public intellectuals" in some circles, what with the intellectual pond of the right wing being so shallow. Some of them got to make policy in the last eight years, and we all saw how that turned out.

The third kind of conservative was the right wing fundamentalist religious nutzoid. The ones I knew couldn't really articulate their political ideology because they were just mindlessly following some leader or another who had told them that party A was aligned with God in a cosmic struggle. I never met any of the leaders, but I reckon that they are just trying to make a living by duping the feebleminded. Preachers have been doing that for centuries, so it's hardly surprising that some would find a niche in politics.

I don't regard the college republican or religious nut varieties as true conservatives. They're not out to conserve anything and, in fact, are pretty radical. They want to turn back centuries of classical liberalism and modernity to establish an authoritarian state. What's conservative about that?

Resolved

I'm making only one resolution for the New Year: to approach physical and spiritual perfection.

Actually, I'm not so ambitious. I just want to cut down on the degree to which I engage in the seven deadlies and to spend more time time doing enriching things rather than liming as much as possible. I don't aim to give up liming altogether, mind you, just to expand my horizons.

In reducing the seven deadlies, I am going to focus on the ones that seem to be my favorites: sloth and gluttony.

The aforementioned enrichment program goes to sloth to some degree, but I would also like to be more productive around the house. When I see I formation of dog hair that resembles a tumbleweed roll by, I would like to be the kind of person that decides to vacuum. Also, Mrs Vache Folle does way more than her fair share of domestic chores, and I want to be a better husband and pitch in more. Perhaps that will encourage her to be more willingly helpful with my outdoor chores and get me in her better graces. I should exercise the dogs more than I do. They enjoy getting out, and they are way less annoying when they are tired. I aim to go to the gym more frequently, possibly every day, but to moderate my routine so that I'm not constantly hurting myself. I want it to be fun, possibly even more fun than sloth itself.

As for gluttony, I'm not going on any crazy diet or resolving to lose some unrealistic amount of weight each week. Rather, I aim to eat only really good food and to avoid eating crap that I stuff into myself for the sake of eating. I aim to cook more and to use better ingredients and to strive to make my eating habits reflect my moral and political values. It will be harder to eat, mind you, but more rewarding and less fattening because I will have to be careful about where my food comes from and how it's made and by whom. I will explore the vegetable kingdom as a source of nutrition more than I have in the past. I will imbibe less alcohol and the empty calories contained therein.

In the enrichment department, there are a couple of things I would like to work on. I have always wished that I could play a musical instrument but have never actually tried to learn to play one since the 5th grade when I gave up on the clarinet. I do know how to play the recorder, albeit badly, and I resolve to work on playing it better. I have already learned in the last couple of weeks to get into a higher octave for several notes and can play in three keys (no more than one accidental, please). I have been reading up on music theory and have been enjoying sitting down with the recorder to practice now and again. By year end, I'd like to be able to play readily all the notes, including accidentals, in the full range of the instrument and to play readily in more keys (maybe up to three accidentals). I reckon that would be doable without becoming a chore.

I have also always wanted to be bilingual and not just in Standard English/Cracker. So I aim to study French which I studied for two years already in university. By year end, I'd like to be able to read a newspaper in French and to speak it well enough to rent a hotel room and find the bathroom in Montreal. Doable? I hope so, because I'm not going to go crazy with effort on this one, just enough that it's fun.

I would like to work on my social phobia, also related to sloth, and to get out more. I aim to volunteer with my church's Community Maintenance Program which meets monthly to work on needy folks' homes. I know I can't do much in the way of building, but surely they need some unskilled labor to haul away refuse and such like. If that works out, I would consider joining one of the small groups at church and even volunteering for more activities.

I wonder how soon I will fail in all these endeavors and how much self loathing this will entail.

Grace Alone

I was flipping through the radio dials when I caught part of a sermon about the afterlife and hell. The preacher distinguished between Hades where the spirits of the dead hang out until Judgment Day and hell, where the resurrected bodies of the dead, reunited with their spirits, suffer eternal torment. The preacher made fun of folks like me who are skeptical about such a hell, and he argued that the existence of hell is not a reflection on God because nobody "had to go there".

I grew up with this kind of perspective and encounter it often. Think about what this preacher is saying. He reckons that God is subject to some higher power than Himself who has imposed the whole heaven and hell, sin and redemption scheme on Him. God is all merciful and doesn't want to condemn anyone to eternal torment, but He doesn't have any choice. He had to sacrifice his Son to redeem anyone because there was no other way, and even then it didn't work for everybody. That way, hell and evil are not God's fault, so you can't make any inferences about God from the existence of hell and evil. On the other hand, you might consider that God, being omnipotent and all, set up the scheme and has chosen to be bound to it in which case it is pretty problematic. Of course, the unnamed higher power poses a problem as far as I am concerned.

Them as end up in hell had a choice according to this preacher and others like him. All they had to do was "receive" Jesus as their savior to be spared from hell and to get a ticket to heaven. At first I thought the preacher was one of those folks who reckon that just saying or even thinking a formulaic prayer like the one in the back of the "Four Spiritual Laws" tract would do the trick whether you believed it or not. The prayer is magic, you see, so as long as you don't say or think it too incorrectly you're ok.

But then the preacher qualified it by requiring the lost soul to receive Jesus "with sincerity". That's all they have to do, and if they don't do it they have nobody but themselves to blame for eternal damnation. Apparently, the preacher is under the impression that anyone can will themselves to maintain any belief sincerely. Unless it's enough to want sincerely to believe, and I don't know many who would fall into this category, the preacher's cosmic perspective limits salvation to them as truly believe in Jesus. Unbelievers cannot receive Him with sincerity, can they? But belief, including belief in fantastically irrational and incredible religious propositions, is involuntary. Accordingly, belief in Jesus sufficient to permit an effective receiving of his grace is not within the power of any human being to attain by an act of will. The believer believes because he believes, and that belief is informed by the circumstances of the believer's life and his biography, not by his own volition. It makes no sense to hold anyone accountable for their beliefs.

Another implication of the preacher's perspective is that the grace of God is inadequate to save without an additional action on the part of the human to be saved, in this case an action that the human is incapable of performing by an act of free will. Them as don't believe deserve what they get even though it's not their fault that they did not believe.

Religion is not necessarily supposed to make any kind of sense, but this preacher's utterances make a mockery of the principle of internal logical consistency. Here's what I believe, and I reckon it's way more logical given the underlying metaphysical assumptions that I'm working with. God can reward or punish anyone He pleases, and there's nothing any of us can do to compel Him to reward us. There's no magic incantation and no degree of righteous thought and deed that will entitle any of us to anything from God. What we already have is a wonderful gift, and even if we live our ephemeral lives and disappear in death forever, God has been gracious. He didn't have to make us, and He didn't have to make us sentient. God will "save" such of us as it pleases Him to "save", and He will do so for His own reasons notwithstanding anything we do or believe. He has given me the gift of belief in Jesus Christ, for which I am grateful and for which I can take no credit or honor, for I did not choose to believe. This gift is infinitely valuable whether or not it is a prerequisite to paradise, and it allows me to be part of the unfolding of the Kingdom.

As for hell, I am a skeptic. But if there be a hell filled with folks in eternal torment, I reckon that they "deserve" to be there no more nor less than I will "deserve" to be there. Hell will exist and be populated in furtherance of the designs of God and for His pleasure, and none of us will have any entitlement to escape it except by the grace of God and nothing but the grace of God. If I manage to avoid hell, I trust that I will (a) be made to understand its purpose, or (b) kept in the dark about its existence, or (c) not.

Custody and Visitation Reform

My friend is going through a divorce, and he worries that the judicial system will screw him when it comes to time with his children. From experience as a divorce lawyer and as an advocate for children in divorces, I have found that men tend to seek less time with their children and to give way to their former wives in the parenting department. Those who actively seek more involvement with their children usually get it in the absence of unfitness. I have known quite a few women who worked to limit the fathers' acess to the children and grew to regret it within a few months. The fathers, many of whom never paid much attention to the kids anyway, now have it made and can be the fun parent every other weekend or so, while the mothers are stuck with all the work of parenting.
Now and then a parent will really get the shaft and end up on the business end of a grossly unfair custody and visitation ruling.

I would like to see significant reform of the procedures for awarding custody and visitation. I would like to see reform based on a number of principles:

1. Some folks' inability to sort out their parenting issues should not become society's problem, and public facilities, eg courts, should not be tied up with minutiae.

2. Custody and visitation issues should not be part of the process of bargaining over property. These should be distinct issues with the best interests of the children as the primary factor.

3. Courts are not really competent to decide custody and visitation issues, and rulings are in effect arbitrary. Accordingly, courts should not be called upon to resolve these issues without expert resources and then only in extreme cases.

One way of reforming the system that would hit on a number of these principles would be to establish a default parenting arrangement that would apply in all cases where the parents cannot agree to deviate from it. Parents would be free to design a mutually agreed upon custody and visitation program without court approval, but any matter on which the parties could not agree would be governed by the default. The default provisions would be rebuttable in court only on a positive showing that their application would threaten the health or safety of the child. Such a system would minimize court involvement and would promote negotiated arrangements. It should also limit the leverage either parent might have to influence other aspects of the divorce settlement by bargaining over access to children.

Why I Criticize Christianist Authoritarians

For me the desired end state, the Kingdom of Heaven as it were, will be a society without any form of coercive government. I am probably not going to live to see it. Nobody alive today will live to see it. It will happen though, and the seemingly futile actions and arguments of people like me may help to usher in the age if only by keeping the idea alive and problematizing rather than fetishizing the state. I believe that the anarchistic utopia requires a profound transformation of humankind and that this will be accomplished through the working of the Holy Ghost in the disciples of Jesus Christ.

One of the greatest obstacles to this movement is authoritarianism disguised as Christianity. Christianists preach that the Kingdom of Heaven announced by Jesus, thr Prince of Peace, must be established by the state, an instrument of pure violence and that the state, in the hands of the Christianists, will produce a world without sin. Other Christianists preach that the world is about to end anyway, so forget about improvements on earth and encourage states to take the necessary steps to hasten the day of destruction. They quench the Spirit. They would re-enslave mankind that Jesus emancipated.

And they are especially dangerous because they coopt and distort the language of the Gospel. They slander God and demean the name "Christian". They are in an unholy alliance with those who would rule by the sword. For a price, they will grant the divine imprimatur to tyrants as if it were theirs to grant.

May their time be brief.

An Incoherent Riff on What JL Wilson Said

JL Wilson has another of his thoughtful posts: http://independentcountry.blogspot.com/2008/12/left-libertarianism-revisited.html

Apparently, he has been kicked off the left libertarian island because of his opinions on gay marriage (opposes on nonbigoted grounds), immigration (advocates restrictions on nonracist grounds), and regulation of imports (favors in some circumstances). I suspect that he has found himself labelled a bigot, a racist and a protectionist from time to time. I doubt very much that Wilson is any of these things.

I consider myself a lefty anarchist, and I disagree with Wilson on some things. I agree with him that marriage and the state shouldn't have anything to do with each other, and I'd just as soon see the state get out of the business of regulating personal relationships. But I disagree with Wilson about expanding marriage to include other kinds of couples because I reckon that, if you're going to have marriage, it should be fair and available to everyone without discrimination. As it stands, marriage is worse as an institution in my opinion because it prefers some couples over others for no good reason. For my part, I would favor one of the following alternatives: (1) abolish marriage, or (2) extend marriage rights to same sex couples.

As for immigration controls, I'm not particularly consistent in my views. I'm not happy with what happened to my country in the abstract in the aftermath of an influx of Irish folks in the wake of the Potato Famine or the entry of lots of exotic peoples through Ellis Island, but I've never had a problem with an actual immigrant I've met . I'd like to see the state disappear and hence the need for immigration controls, but as long as we have a state I'd prefer that it manage immigration humanely, fairly and on the basis of rational policy considerations. If laws are enacted, let them be administered fairly and consistently instead of capriciously.

If we're going to regulate my neighbors' business activities for the purpose of safety and health or other policy considerations other than favoring local enterprise, is it fair to give his foreign competitors a pass on such regulations? I think not. Maybe that makes me "protectionist" in the eyes of some, but I think of protectionism as restricting imports mainly to protect domestic businesses from competition. Maybe it's a a finer line than I believe. Certainly, requiring foreigners to meet many of the same standards that domestic businesses have to meet will have the effect of protecting the domestics from competition to some degree, but standing pat on libertarian principles in such a case would mean advocating an unfair advantage for the foreign enterprise.

Let's face it. The end of the state is not going to happen in our lifetimes. It may not happen for eons. The minimal state isn't about to happen any time soon either. The state, our enemy, is stronger than ever and is really just getting started. Whatever policies we advocate as libertarians, we should keep in mind that they will be enacted (in our dreams) in the context of the state and not in an abstract stateless ideal.

Wilson is right that our enemy is the state. He is wrong, however, that right wing nutzoids are not our true enemies. They are very much our enemies, and they aim to use the state to impose their will on the rest of us. The state is a tool.

Four Days of TV and Medication

I got hit with an upper respiratory ailment on Christmas and have been lying about in my pajamas for three days now. Mrs Vache Folle went to visit her kinfolk, so I've been wallowing in self pity and watching lots of TV. On Boxing Day, there was a House marathon. It's amazing what those genius doctors can do with those rare diseases. Of course, no such genius doctors work around here, so if I have anything unusual wrong with me (or a lot of usual things as well) I'm a goner.

Yesterday, I watched Band of Brothers, the whole damned series. That was a quality program, let me tell you. Whenever I watch it, I think of my mother's four brothers who served in WW2. NOne of them was a paratrooper, but they were all in the war for three or more years. One uncle served as an infantryman in North Africa, Sicily, Normandy and then some. He was in three invasions.

There was also a Highlander marathon. That's a mistake since every episode is pretty much the same. Duncan runs into immortal and flashbacks to earlier encounter. They engage in threats and insults until the head chopping scene at about 10 minutes before the hour.

Some movies also got the marathon treatment. A Christmas Story is the only one I remember. Sadly, Christmas Carol is not shown nearly enough, and I didn't see the amazing Alistair Sims version at all this year. I had to make do with Patrick Stewart as Scrooge. I reckon I'll have to buy the one I like.