The culture around us is dying: Supplemental

The previous post is linked: here.

Over the past few years, different states’ highway agencies have, according to apparent federal guidelines, been introducing changes to road signs with the aim of making them easier to read or understand (and with the cost of your tax dollars).  So, are these new road signs absolutely easier to read or understand?  Nope.  For instance, the Clearview font with its combination of majuscule and miniscule letters simply is not easier to read than road signs that use only capital letters; for there is a difference between all-caps in a road sign and all-caps in an indemnity section of a service agreement that you read on a computer screen.  This is yet another example of what the movers and shakers of our society do today: they possess a horrible tendency to make changes that are nothing less than wasteful, counterproductive and foolish.

Tomorrow’s movers and shakers are today’s  high school students.  I understand that teenagers are not as wise, smart, and sophisticated as they think they are; I understand that better than most since I was an introspective, observant semi-contrarian even in junior high.  Still, the actions of the first group of students in the following news item are ridiculous by any standard; hat tip to a certain trucker: Furor at Catholic high school after nun presents Church teaching on homosexuality | LifeSiteNews.com

The silver lining of this cloud is the separation of the tares from the wheat, as it were.

OkCupid: Save the Date

On 3 April 2014 Reuters ran the story that, well, «"Mozilla's new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples," the message said. "We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid."»

So let’s all check back with the staff of OkCupid in five years, after the movement for equal rights of those wanting group marriages or marriages with siblings or with inhuman entities has gained ground and become as strident as the Gay Lobby is.  Should it be discovered that OkCupid is equally old-fashioned and hateful in their dealings with the hyper-celebrated social groups of the next zeitgeist, some of us will remember OkCupid’s hypocrisy and what they did to Mozilla back in 2014.

And now that you are done reading this blog post, go out and find yet another Web browser--besides either IE, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or any other popular one--to use because one thing is certain: there are one or two employees who developed those browsers yet are sexist in their use of insults and slurs; the same people are also unwittingly prejudicial and/or needlessly insulting in their thoughts and dealings with conservatives, Republicans, Southerners, country folk, gun owners, Christians, Muslims, Jews, and really practically any other social group.  (I could pull contemporary anecdotes to support what I am saying here.)  Go ahead and think about drawing up a new Constitution for the United States while you’re at it; freedom of speech per the First Amendment derives from a document written by racist slave owners anyhow.

The culture around us is dying.

People around us are clearly and without exaggeration becoming increasingly dumber.

Why do I say this?  First it was one particular newspaper that one day I refused to read any longer because of its recurrent and frequent typos.  Now it’s reputable news organizations that cannot type correctly (Reuters comes to mind) and government agencies that misspell words in electronic transcriptions of legal documents (NYS and NJ local government likewise come to mind).  In fact, notice that I just used the contraction “it’s,” which is not the possessive pronoun “its” and has no apostrophe, regardless of the fact that even some English teachers apparently do not know about when they type messages in public forums and conflate the words in question.

The failure of English teachers is not limited to the written expression of their own thoughts.  At first, within my lifetime, large grammatical mistakes on the part of students and former students of English teachers were limited to predictable sets like their/there/they’re and it’s/its, or pseudo-corrective whom for subjective who, or the very foolish “between you and I” for “between me and you,” et cetera.  People among us were imbeciles, but at least you could more or less understand what they were saying.

However, people have since then graduated from the level of imbeciles to morons* and now they have trouble in even attempting to form a grammatical sentence when they type online or via text.  After all, who in the world actually says “Do it safe to go there after dark?” or “We can’t even deleted old questions now” in real life? Yet bizarre sentences like these keep showing up in people’s writing; these things also are almost as simultaneously infuriating and depressing as someone’s once trying to correct me by insisting that “I’ve drunk” is ungrammatical while “I’ve drank” is suddenly both the only way anyone talks and the only way you were taught to talk in English class in grade school.  (Yeah, didn’t you know?  Past participles no longer exist and they really never existed to begin with.)

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Another part of the equation, or another proof that people around are becoming apes, is the continuing trend of each “New and Improved!” version of a computer program or a website to suck more than its previous version.  I’ll come back to the point in a moment, but first let me shift gears slightly to talk about a certain Bible website which had gross typographical errors in several verses there.  These errors were ones in which spaces did not separate two distinct words: something which is entirely unacceptable.  These errors were not very few in number, and eventually I used an email address provided by the website such that I could tell them about the errors there.  Those errors would not have been present in the first place if we lived in a world where people still knew what the phrase “quality control” meant or believed in ensuring that every work of theirs was a quality work.  Remember this.**

Now let’s go back to the subject of “New and Improved!” versions of computer programs and websites.  Any time a website that you frequent emails you or otherwise tells you that a new version of that website will soon be introduced, you know it’s going to suck.  No one reading this is a spring chicken or a sucker who was born yesterday; as you know, new versions of software always move two steps back for every one step forward as numerous helpful features in one version of the website--and of various computer programs--are removed in the next version.

Why was the prone command from Star Wars: Battlefront (not the remake but the real one) absent in Battlefront II?  Answer: allegedly it was too easy to accidentally put your character into the prone position.  Why was the ability to freely place icons in any desired arrangement absent in Windows 7 though it is present in Windows XP?  Answer: allegedly it was too easy to place icons in the wrong place.  I am told that these are the reasons given by members of respective software companies for removing functionality from their software: all of us are idiots, and they will continue to treat us as such.  Of course, in reality not everyone is an idiot, and a result of these companies’ decisions is actually more work for some of us who use their software. 

Were new generations of Yahoo! Mail and Gmail really new and improved?  No.  They were dumbed-down products which required some of us to guess just what the heck this unintuitive icon (with no written description) means or just what the heck to click on this other unintuitive icon (with no written description) will do if I press the mouse button over it.  Yep: more work for the user, just so Yahoo! and Google would have a trendy, hip, contemporary user-interface.

Yahoo! Answers: are there more than 10% of its veteran users that actually prefer its new format over the previous one?  Nope.  Ask any other veteran user and they will tell you that the latest big overhaul at Yahoo! Answers sucks, which it does.  And why is the new format so lousy?  You guessed it: fewer features and more work that the user must now do.  After all, let no one claim that it is a matter of learning curves or old habits, for it is undeniable that to get from one section of that website to another now requires more steps than it previously did.

In fact, Yahoo! Answers today just got worse, as if that were possible.  They’ve now obscured people’s names when they pose a question and purposely hide some of the details of the extended form of the question: they make you click on “show more” to keep reading, which means more work for the user.  (Ironically, another change was the removal of the community vote, which will have the effect of de-incentiving the hard work that is often needed for a quality answer at that website.  In other words, the website’s developers have shot themselves and their business in the foot as veteran users have already said good-bye that site.)

Following the Google Maps fiasco of late, which I have not mentioned yet, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  For Google is no exception to the list of websites that do nothing but to introduce new format after new format that creates more work for the user.  Flickr, which is a part of the Yahoo! network, would be another example of this in how its copycat new format makes it unweildly and how its “infinity scrolling” script disallows a quick, easy delimitation of search results per page--the delimitation being something which is necessary and superior if you want to keep your computer’s hardware resources free or want to walk away from and later resume a search over the course of minutes, hours, or a large number of search results.  Yet it is the issues of Google Maps and Yahoo! that most demonstrate website companies’ disdain for their customers.  Google knows perfectly well that its new Google Maps version--with predictably fewer features and an increased burden on computer resources--is hated and Yahoo! knows perfectly well that people hate the changes that they have made.  Yet these companies collectively do not care that they offend their customers in these ways: in effect, it’s that simple.

Google does not care that its new version of Google Maps is garbage, until people abandon them for their competition in sufficient numbers.  Nokia Maps, which is the backbone of Bing Maps, meanwhile apparently does not care that their attempts at providing the customer with more information results in the customer’s receiving less information: when state borders look just like roads and road details are obscured by 3-D building models on maps that are supposed to be simple, flat street maps, one is dealing with a map that is too clever by half.

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Yet that is where the culture is today.  Both “The customer is always right” and “The customer is always the customer” have been replaced by “Follow all the latest trends in software and hardware design and shift the work burden from yourself to others, even if customers hate the results.”  In other words, the business world today couldn’t care less about whether their products are of high quality.***

And the quality of people’s writing nowadays: equally indicative of a lack of respect for second parties in the process of social interaction.  People lost the ability to type sentences that are coherent and understandable because they first lowered their IQ though serial misspellings and hyper-abbreviation in their texting, and in their comments in Internet comboxes, and so on.  They would never think to use such poor writing if they got to speak with a known dignitary or “hero” like “Pope Francis” or Barack Obama, but everyone else--including you and me--are just everyday, ordinary scum who do not deserve any effort when it comes to someone’s typing a message to them.  In retrospect, perhaps it was only a matter of time before the inability to spell gave way to the inability to speak.

Finally, and in keeping the title of this post in mind, remember that nowhere above have I said anything about the usual topics or the most obvious matters in discussions of culture wars.  All told, there are a number of indications that the next fifty years in the U.S. will be interesting times--translation: dangerous, unstable times.

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* Know that both of these are words, along with “idiot,” are outdated terms from psychology that speak to the level of cognitive functions that a person has.

** Then again, take my statement with a grain of salt.  I know firsthand that even QC departments are capable of letting things slip through the cracks and of bypassing one firewall after another.
*** Actually, it is probably the higher echelons of the business world--those at the top of corporate and leadership hierarchy--who are most responsible for stupid, customer-alienating changes to designs and software.  People in ivory towers or what-not often lack an important knowledge of what is going on in the real world or in most people’s lives and experiences; they possess financial knowledge, but not all the practical knowledge that is needed to successfully micromanage possible changes to software design.

[03/17/2014]

7 Do's and Don't's of Welcoming Guests to Your Congregation

Melody Maxwell has some good thoughts here on some ways to welcome and not welcome folks who are new to your church.

As an introvert, and someone who does not appreciate new things nearly as much as others, it is important to be considerate of folks like that who may feel that way as a guest.

Here are the bullet points and my short comments.

1) Do have knowledgeable greeters and clear signage.
This can be frustrating being in a new building and have no idea where to go and what your inner church lingo means...especially if you have a clever/catchy/relevant name for a specific ministry. 
Is it a place I want to go, or is it only for the really young, really old, widowed, or toddlers? If there are still places/ministries, that people don't know what they are or who might be interested, after seeing it or hearing about it once or twice, maybe the sign or description needs to be more clear.
2) Don't automatically sign me up for your mailing list.
This is fair.
3) Do you have a website with updated information?
An easy to navigate updated website seems very important in these new times. Especially if we want folks to look and see if a church's beliefs are lined up with Scripture, as well as things as simple as what ministries are available. Teaming this with number 1 above can be helpful. Basically, clear communication for the uninitiated.
4) Don't make me stand out?
I used to cringe at the whole, "if you are a visitor raise your hand, or stand, so we can point it out" thing. I would never raise my hand, and it is possible, in some cases, I would not return if I had gone there alone.
5) Do encourage church members to be friendly.
Some people are naturally better at this. It seems silly to have to point this out, but my disposition is to stay in my own head, so it is helpful to be reminded. Just like we never outgrow the Gospel, we never outgrow the reminder to be friendly toward people who are not our friends.
6) Don't be pushy.
I think people are more sensitive to this than in the past, but most folks bristle at the car salesman pitch, so don't be one in church. Seems fair.
7) Do realize this may be hard for me.
One reason I am a church member is that I am not interested in joining a new church and all that being the "new kid in school" entails. Again, some folks like this, but I think their are many folks who don't. 

I thought the post was a good one to remind us of things we mostly know, but it can be good to remember.

Re: The Grammys and the Myth of Marriage Equality

HT: to whom you ought to know, by now:

The Grammys and the Myth of Marriage Equality

One comment: it is amazing how the pro-“marriage equality” crowd tends to have no concept of reductio ad absurdum when it comes to this pet issue of theirs.  For we have already seen both that sexual deviants are now calling for marriage equality of their own and that if the logic behind the gay variety of “marriage equality” is merely taken to its logical conclusion--what propositions are implied or entailed by it--then these other sexual deviants really should be allowed to marry as they will: marriages of thruples, siblings, first cousins, etc.  Bear in mind that the people who scoff at the slippery slope arguments are probably some of the same people who refer to “homophobic” beliefs or ideas as “toxic,” with the idea being that one’s merely having certain beliefs or teachings will surely lead to anti-gay violence, slurs, or denial of “rights.”

Re: Jesus and Same Sex Marriage | Joe Dallas Online

For anyone who missed this clever post from Joe Dallas: Jesus and Same Sex Marriage | Joe Dallas Online.

Citation corrections are provided over at Triablogue: http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2013/06/jesuss-teachings-on-marriage-in-light.html.

Another reason that we lose

Originally I was wanting to post something entirely different yet related to the Southern Baptist Convention just the same.  Chores and fatigue have prevented this for a long time now, but I will make an effort to say the following, however: Christians and social conservatives are not that bright.

We’re not that bright: first in terms of intellect, but now also in terms of positive cultural influence à la Matthew 5.13-16.  The Southern Baptist Convention in 1997 showed that it had heart when it began to fight the Disney empire and just as other Christians began to come up with every conceivable lame “excuse” for supporting the SBC’s boycott of things Disney.  This time around, on the other hand, the same organization which once was capable of noble action against social evils has shown that whatever wisdom it once had may have gone out the door in the natural flow of organizations’ shedding and gaining parts as members join, step down, die, become senile, etc.

From Southern Baptists condemn Boy Scouts over admission of gays | Fox News (06/12/2013):

HOUSTON –  The nation's largest Protestant denomination stopped short of calling for its member churches to boycott the Boy Scouts, but voiced strong opposition to acceptance of gay scouts - with a top church leader predicting at the annual gathering of Southern Baptists that a "mass exodus" of youths from the program that has been a rite of passage for more than a century.

The move by the Southern Baptist Convention came at its annual, four-day meeting in Houston, and three weeks after the Boy Scouts of America voted to allow gay youth to join.  With more than two-thirds of Boy Scout troops sponsored by religious organizations, and Baptists being the nation's largest protestant denomination, the resolution could have a crippling effect on the Boy Scouts.

"There will be a mass exodus over time," said Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee. “Churches are finally going to have to come to realize – there is a point when you say, ‘sorry, no more.’"

Let us juxtapose this with the following snippet from Baptist Press - Page, Land send letters opposing Scout proposal - News with a Christian Perspective posted on 05/17/2013:

"For over a century," Page wrote, "Scouting has helped our youth develop character and leadership skills forever impacting their lives. I am distressed by the recent proposed resolution which would introduce the subject of sex and sexual orientation into the program of the Boy Scouts. For one hundred and three years Scouting has been a safe haven from such topics rightfully reserved for parents. Such an introduction is inconsistent with the principles found in Scouting's sacred Oath and Law."

For starters, if you decimate the Boy Scouts by keeping your children out of it, you have now taken away the said means of developing character and leadership skills in the youth.

Secondly, a person who is openly gay need only be someone who is being honest about what feelings or attractions he has; it is hardly as if everyone who is a homosexual is someone who wears his “identity” on his sleeve or goes about broadcasting his sexual orientation to everyone around him.  Someone who is merely being honest their particular mental disorder--and yes, I will call it that--is not someone who categorically should be denied the opportunity to have character and leadership skills instilled within him.

Thirdly, the “safe haven” objection seems perfectly naive in considering what amount of the U.S. population is homosexual, how many members of that subpopulation would be interested in joining the Boy Scouts, and how many youngers already know that homosexuality exists.  Homosexuality is mentioned time and again in your copy of the Bible, you know.

Fourthly, what will be gained if you take your kids out of the Boy Scouts and attempt to set up conservative alternatives to the Boy Scouts?  Attempts at Christian isolation from the culture tend to create cultural ghettoes, something well-exemplified by CCM, where the only reason untalented people are getting record contracts is to fill a void in a niche market, or Christian cinema where half the movies of that genre would probably end up on Mystery Science Theater 3000 if that show were still on the air.  Sorry, but Christians do not in every instance have all the talent, money and resources necessary to put together a grade A organization or product; attempt a Boy Scouts of America alternative if you must, but please do not bother if only a few people will invest in such a project.

But again, what will be gained if you take your kids out of the Boy Scouts and attempt to set up conservative alternatives to the Boy Scouts?  Do the Scriptures not have something to say about believers’ being “salt and light”?  And do the Scriptures not have something to say about winning people with actions as opposed to mere words?  If there are kids in the BSA who are believers and if there are kids there who are not, then by isolating the believers from the unbelievers an opportunity is missed to show unregenerate people exactly how gracious and selfless a person should be toward his fellow man and how this behavior is borne of an understanding of the teachings of Christ.

Finally, some problems will naturally blow over or fade away if no further fuel is added to the fire.  The sort of attention that some social conservatives don’t want homosexuality and homosexuals to receive is something what would not exist if people would not create news stories by doing exactly the sort of thing for which the Southern Baptist Convention is currently in the news.  In fact, any further legal gains that the Gay Lobby makes could conceivably, over the course of time, come to be as forgotten and ignored as laws of various states which in our own day still outlawed sodomy or adultery.  And despite how debased Western culture has become in its ethically minimalist attitude toward homosexuality, guess what: there are still hate crimes (which I do not condone in any way) being committed against homosexuals, including the recent Madison Square Garden attacks in liberal, home-of-the-Stonewall-Inn New York City.  The point is that people such as members of the SBC need to stop the knee-jerk reactions to cultural occurrences around them and instead calm their nerves so they can think clearly.

Then again, if the reader thinks it is I who am in error here, then my first point is still proven; the fact that people can be disagreeing over the issues means that something has gone wrong somewhere down the line.

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Addendum: It is amazing what a little bit of further reading and research can reveal; lo, there may still be hope for Southern Baptist Convention: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/12/us-usa-boyscouts-baptists-idUSBRE95B0NO20130612.  The reaction of the Mormon hierarchy on this issue, meanwhile, is interesting.

The Wrong Side of History

(Note: I don’t necessarily endorse any the websites behind the hyperlinks that follow.  The last source at the close of this post also is not for the squeamish, but it is also a poignant reminder of exactly what it is that we are talking about here and how the Scriptures could treat homosexuality as being something less than perfect.  Caveat emptor, and all apologies if two hundred other bloggers have already made the same point that I make below.)

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“The Wrong Side of History” is a phrase that was used repeatedly in 2012: one of those phrases that people suddenly pick up on and end up using ad nauseum.  In the broadcast and information media it was used most often in favor of efforts to legalize same-sex marriage, as it were.  For example, in the month of May the phrase was in vogue after Amendment One was passed in the Tar Heel State.  It was followed by Shepard Smith’s infamous usage of the same phrase during one of Smith’s many broadcasts on Fox News Channel where the man cannot keep his opinion to himself.

So there it is: people who oppose the legalization of same-sex marriage (as if such a phrase were not oxymoronic) are on the wrong side of history.  Translation: Everybody else has already run and jumped off the cliff, so why don’t you conservatives get with the program already and do the same?  Alternate translation: Humanity only grows wiser and wiser with the passing of time and with every new era; so you will be proven in the future to be unwise or to be barbarians.

Okay, I’ll play Shepard Smith’s game.  I would really hate to be on the wrong side of history; I really would.  And because I do not want to be on the wrong side of history, I hereby announce that I will not do anything to esteem or dignify homosexuality; in fact, this means that I may also find myself actively opposing so-called same-sex marriage on the grounds of benevolence vis-à-vis biblical teaching about sexuality.  After all, people talk so much about history, but have they already forgotten the history of the Western world when it comes to homosexuality?  To quote Wikipedia:

It was expected and socially acceptable for a freeborn Roman man to want sex with both female and male partners, as long as he took the penetrative role.

However, we later read in the same entry:

Attitudes toward same-sex behavior changed as Christianity became more prominent in the Empire. The modern perception of Roman sexual decadence can be traced to early Christian polemic.^[192] Apart from measures to protect the liberty of citizens, the prosecution of homosexual acts as a general crime began in the 3rd century of the Christian era when male prostitution was banned by Philip the Arab. A series of laws regulating homosexual acts were promulgated during the social crisis of the 3rd century, from the statutory rape of minors to gay marriage.^[193]

By the end of the 4th century, passive homosexual acts under the Christian Empire were punishable by burning.^[194] "Death by sword" was the punishment for a "man coupling like a woman" under the Theodosian Code.^[195] It can be argued, however, that legislation under Christian rule was an extension of traditional Roman views on appropriate gender roles, and not an abrupt shift based on Christian theology. It is in the 6th century, under Justinian, that legal and moral discourse on homosexuality becomes distinctly Christian:^[196] all same-sex acts, passive or active, no matter who the partners, were declared contrary to nature and punishable by death.^[197] Homosexual behaviors were pointed to as causes for God's wrath following a series of disasters around 542 and 559.^[198]

Oh, but it’s Wikipedia.  Can’t trust anything they say, right?  To the contrary; the pendulum of history swings in both directions.

Stats and Declining Attendance in Churches

Consider the following post, including its comments: Triablogue: Rod Dreher on Declining Attendance in American Churches

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In the meantime, the post links to the webpage of American Grace: How Religion Divides Us and Unites Us.  The book apparently presents a copious and interesting list of statistics, yet the information either within the book or in its review is to be taken with a grain of salt.  An example:

…What really distinguishes rank-and-file Tea Party supporters from other Americans and even other Republicans, is their desire to bring more God into government.

This is not true.  Members of the Tea Party movement are conservatives; Republicans are not absolutely conservatives, hence the acronym “RINO.”  Another example:

Republicans are far more hostile toward Muslims than are Democrats.

This is misleading.  It looks like a global assessment of the groups mentioned there: as if virtually all Republicans are hostile toward virtually all Muslims.  How many Republicans do you know are on the Internet calling for all American Muslims to be deported to Canada?  How many mosques or homes in Deaborn, MI have been firebombed by Republicans who just can’t stand to have Muslims in the United States anymore?  Meanwhile, another example of questionability:

Religious Americans are better neighbors than secular Americans. They volunteer at much higher rates for both religious and secular causes, give more money to religious and secular charities, and are roughly twice as engaged in their communities as comparable secular Americans. And they do more everyday good deeds: they're more likely to donate blood, help someone find a job, give money to a homeless person, or even let a stranger cut in front of them. The reason for this is not their theology, but the friendships they make through their congregations. Having religious friends is more important than simply having friends and being religious yourself. In other words, religious networks are "supercharged" in their effect on neighborliness.

Nope.  Religion, spirituality, theology, or even the divine works of regeneration and sanctification per Christian theology absolutely do not ever make a person more charitable or kind toward others: not in cases of holding doors for strangers, not in cases volunteering in places where people do not live, etc.  No, this is not the fruit of theology or works of God but is all due to desires to become someone’s BFF.  Continuing:

One downside of religion's effect on public life is that religious Americans are consistently less tolerant of dissent and less supportive of civil liberties than secular Americans. Secular Americans are more tolerant of fundamentalists than religious Americans are tolerant of atheists.

What the heck were the authors of this book or its reviewer thinking at this point?  Who in this country does not tolerate dissent but the people who want to bury Kirk Cameron and Chick-Fil-A’s president for those two’s candor and personal beliefs regarding homosexuality?  And at which ports or harbors can I find the ships that religious Americans are preparing to round up this country’s atheists and ship them off to Cuba or Russia?  Continuing:

Religious Americans, especially evangelicals, are more likely to have friends of a lower social class than are secular Americans. On the other hand, religious Americans are also less likely than their secular counterparts to favor public policies to address poverty and inequality.

Allow me to translate the second sentence for the reader: On the other hand, religious Americans are also less likely than their secular counterparts to favor public policies that attempt to eliminate poverty through welfare and through liberal economic theory and practices.  More:

African Americans are the second-most religious group in America (just behind Mormons)….

Wait a minute: aren’t Mormons religious by definition?  Finally:

In spite of these differences in how religions are perceived, Americans have a remarkably high level of religious tolerance. Eighty-nine percent of Americans – including 83 percent of evangelical Christians – believe that a person who is not of their religion can go to heaven.

The word “religion” in this case almost certainly is broadly used to connote, perhaps among other things, denominational differences within Christianity.  Otherwise this claim simply is not credible.  Try finding 8 evangelicals out the next 10 that you find who will tell you that it’s possible that a Muslim, Hindu, or wiccan as such will enter the kingdom of heaven: you won’t succeed if you try.  Then again, if you do find these eight people then one thing is clear: it will become necessary within the next thirty years to reintroduce or introduce Christianity to the western world.

A Litigious Society

Went to read this story--Judge blocks FDNY hiring, says test is invalid--and then I saw these in the Top Stories box to the right of the page:

Federal judge strikes down Calif. gay marriage ban

Missouri vote puts health care back in crosshairs

Group sues to stop mosque near NYC's ground zero

All we need now is another news story about Obama’s Kenyan heritage or a second story about secession from the Union, and the pattern will be complete.

New HIV Infections Increasing Among Gays - Infectious Disease - FOXNews.com

"New HIV infections are increasing among homosexuals, drug users and prostitutes who don't seek help because of laws that criminalize these practices, the head of the U.N. AIDS agency said Monday."

I'm not sure I buy that. Maybe it is because they are incresingly engaging in highly dangerous and unhealthy behavior. As sad as it is, these folks are getting a very hard lesson in consequences for their behavior.

How about bank robbers being shot is increasing because of laws that prohibit bank robbery? Or more people are in jail because of these mean laws that criminalize any particular behavior?

New HIV Infections Increasing Among Gays - Infectious Disease - FOXNews.com

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Custody Case Highlights Artificiality of Same Sex Marriage

This is a great article that illustrates some of the potential difficulties that come as a result of same-sex marriage and what happens to the kids when it doesn't work out.

The story in a nutshell: Two lesbians "marry", they have a baby "together", the one who gave birth becomes a Christian, denounces the gay lifestyle when the child was around 1 yr old, they break up. The still gay woman, after many years of not seeing the baby (in part because the stright woman didn't want to raise her child in the gay scene), sues for custody, gets it, and the straight woman takes off with the now 7-yr old.

Here's the main problem: The woman now granted custody has no tie to the child. She is not the birth mother, but the rejected girlfriend- but she is allowed to take this child from the birth mother...

The worst part of the case is the creation of a new position of entitlement awarded to Janet Jenkins on the basis of gay sex alone. If shed been a non-romantic room-mate of the little girls mother, or even a dear old auntie who helped with the infants care, its hard to imagine the courts would have granted her custody years later.

One of the most common arguments by gay marriage advocates involves the insistence that the expansion of matrimonial rights will merely enlarge marital opportunities, with no impact at all on existing couples or the institution itself. The Miller-Jenkins case shows the absurdity of this contention and demonstrates the way that redefining marriage inevitably changes parenthood as well, turning the most fundamental, natural, elemental human relationship of mother-and-child into an officially sanctioned fiction altogether dependent on governmental fiat.

CROWDER: "Lonewolf Diaries: Brad Pitt Leading the Anti-Christian Charge"

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/scrowder/2009/08/18/lonewolf-diaries-brad-pitt-leading-the-anti-christian-charge/

Not that it'll help in the long run.

Quote of the Day- Revolutionary Truth

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

George Orwell
English essayist, novelist, & satirist (1903 - 1950)

--Sounds a little like the time we are living in now. Orwell often had a way of "seeing" into the future it seemed. Or humans have a way of messing up the same old way over and over again.

Global warming?- You dare look at all the facts and point it out, you are labeled a denier.

Abortion?- You dare want women to see the whole truth before they 'choose' to kill the baby, you are trying to tell women what to do with their own bodies.

Same-sex marriage?- You dare say that marriage is something in particular-same as for thousands of years; that a child does best with a mother AND a father and you are the extremist.

Religion?- You dare say that your religion is true; you are definitely a nut (regardless of the reasons you may have for holding your view)

Any other examples?

D.

Movie Commentary: "The Moment After 2"

"The Moment After" entry at IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0240732/

"The Moment After 2" entry at IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0466899/

The first installment was pleasantly respectable by general cinematic standards. (For what it's worth, it meanwhile deserved nothing greater than maybe 2.5 of 4 stars, or 6/10 stars.) On the other hand, the second is yet another movie sequel that does not live up to the standards of its predecessor.

To be sure, the Llewellyns do display some knowledge of the importance of having on hand the combination of a good director, decent actors, and a screenplay with usable dialogue. Nonetheless, if one dares to spend the time and resources necessary for putting together a movie sequel, for begging for money to put together a movie sequel, and for taking the risk of ruining an otherwise decent (and erstwhile singular) film series, it behooves him first to do some simple quality control before moving ahead with the project: ask some honest Christian or especially non-Christian film makers or film buffs for their opinion of your script.

As I write this it's Memorial Day weekend, so you all should have time to conduct this little experiment if need be. Hop in the car, and drive out to the middle of the wilderness between Palmdale and El Mirage, or drive out to the middle of the wilderness between Silver Lakes and Lenwood. Guess what: while you're still on the way there, you'll notice that you can already see what's out there, from 20 miles away. Yet for some reason, this fact is completely lost on the Llewellyns (whom I don't know but thank for the first Moment After film nevertheless) from start to finish--you cannot hide from the evil minions of the New World Order gummint in the low lands around Palmdale. The bunches of short creosote bushes of the area are not to be mistaken for thick sylvans or forests where a person really could hide from people trying to find him.

Secondly, and in following the last point, if you can send a mole out to infiltrate the bands of Xians who are hiding the deserts of LA County, you can just as easily find them yourself, even with the naked eye. You know the saying: "Location, location, location!" This movie would have been better shot in the middle of Missouri, Pennsylvania, or North Carolina. However, since those locations are far removed from California, why not instead shoot the film in the forest areas of California, especially the areas where the Endor scenes of Return of the Jedi were filmed and where a person really could hide?

The film makers would probably respond in saying that concerns of location were precisely why the film took place in the desert: the idea is one of nomadic, roving bands of survivors who can't very easily move about with trucks and supplies in the middle of the Ozarks in Arkansas or Missouri. I'll concede that point. However, as soon as one sits down to watch The Moment After 2 the premise of the movie has a strong, immanently preposterous feel to it, and this illustrates that not all ideas are good ones to begin with. Barring the concerns of the use of satellite photography, aerial photography, and the unaided eye, if you can send Baker out to infiltrate the renegade Xians you can just as easily find them yourself and not go through all the trouble of searching for these folks day and night to no avail.

Things such as these make this film difficult to watch. Granted: the cheese factor generally works on "Christian movies" which are less ambitious and have less of an assumption of being a high quality production. However, the flaws of this film cannot be overlooked; they're just too glaring to ignore. But, to end this commentary of sorts on a positive note, let the record show that ours is an era of movie remakes and reboots: who's to say that there won't some day be "The Moment After 2: Reloaded" with all the improvements you'd expect from a title like that? Maybe Mr. T could even make a cameo appearance in the film! :D

Sober Chinese Hookers: Your Tax Dollars at Work

Here is a great use of our tax dollars for sure. Can't even make this stuff up. Hat Tip: Hot Air

The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAA), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will pay $2.6 million in U.S. tax dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly on the job.

Dr. Xiaoming Li, the researcher conducting the program, is director of the Prevention Research Center at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit.

The grant, made last November, refers to prostitutes as “female sex workers”–or FSW–and their handlers as “gatekeepers.”

“Therefore, in this application, we propose to develop, implement, and evaluate a venue-based alcohol use and HIV risk reduction intervention focusing on both environmental and individual factors among venue-based FSWs in China,” says the abstract.

Almost three million dollars to teach Chinese hookers how to hold their liquor? In the middle of a recession? This can’t be real; it’s a “too good to check” item, right? Wrong, although CNS discounts the high-minded motive behind the study:

A $2.6 million grant will help a Wayne State University School of Medicine researcher establish and evaluate whether an alcohol and HIV intervention center can assist in reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS among sex workers in China. …

“The global literature indicates an important role of alcohol use, especially problem drinking (abuse), in facilitating HIV/AIDS transmission in commercial sex venues where elevated alcohol use/abuse and sexual risk behaviors frequently co-occur,” Dr. Li said. “We expect that the intervention will improve protective normative beliefs and institutional support regarding alcohol use and HIV protection.”

It’s still a multimillion-dollar study that essentially teaches Chinese hookers to sober up when plying their trade, the better to prevent the spread of disease. That may be a good idea for a project for the Chinese government to fund — and cynics can point out that the Chinese are funding our budget deficits, so it may all be moot anyway — but the NIH might want to study those effects here in the US instead. After all, if the American taxpayer is funding the study, how about preventing disease amplification here rather than in Guangxi?

AOMIN: "How to Lose a War"

While we await the return of Bright's Ideas:

http://aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=3285

It seems there was a time when only Nazis burned books.

Another Reason To Dislike ACLU

ACLU Urges California District to Let Kids Leave School for Medical Treatment Without Parental Consent

The ACLU is threatening to sue a California school district after it changed a
policy to require teenagers get parental consent to leave campus for
confidential medical services.

The Vista Unified School District board voted unanimously Thursday to change its existing policy that allowed students to be excused for confidential appointments — including abortions — without notifying parents, according to the North County Times.

The ACLU of San Diego County and the National Center for Youth Law claim the new policy violates state law, KPBS reported.

According to lawyers, California allows young people to leave school without parental consent to deal with sexual, mental, substance abuse or reproductive health issues, the station reported.

But school trustees say that depends on how the law is interpreted.

Several parents addressed the board saying under no circumstances would they want their children leaving school without their knowledge, especially to seek medical procedures that could include an abortion, the Times reported.

---I would be very upset (to say the least) if my child left the school for a medical procedure I didn't know about. Even getting a tooth out.

Others expressed concern over students who face parental abuse.

"Often the kids would rather die than tell their parents," local pediatrician John Rott
said. "I think the effect on our most vulnerable children will be a negative one."

---No kidding!! What child wants to tell their parents they are pregnant under the best circumstances (ie..non married circumstances). Being embarassed or ashamed is far different than being abused. How many parents actually abuse their children once they find out they are pregnant? I'm sure it happens, but very rarely is my guess.

ACLU's David Blair Loy told KPBS that Vista is opening itself up to lawsuits and
the civil rights group will consider one if the district keeps the policy.

“Any public entity, school district, city government that is actively
breaking the law or enacts a policy that violates the law is open to litigation
to strike down the policy,” Blair said.

Video: Rubik's Cube Insanity

I could never solve these without taking the stickers off or completely disassembling the innards. Enjoy.

Onion: Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Children?

Are Violent Video Games Adequately Preparing Children For The Apocalypse?

This is pretty funny.

D.