Why don't bros solve this problem?

Yesterday, I commented on how I'd tried the latest round of HMDs and discovered that none of them were quite to my liking. A friend of mine today mentioned that while she was on the metro the woman next to her was openly writing what could only be considered trade secrets or intellectual property. "Exactly my point," I said. "Why haven't the tech bros of silicon valley solved this problem?"

This one seems weird to me. Venture capitalists have thrown millions (even billions!) into developing next-stage head mounted displays without, I believe, actually solving a real problem: truly private interactions with the traditional keyboard-driven computer. The BT-300 was close, but it has no HDMI interface; the Avegant Glyph is basically like watching television; you wouldn't want to write code on the thing. (Who knows what the Avegant Suite will be? Right now it's at 720p and barely a prototype.) Seriously, all I want is a second screen that nobody else can see that doesn't also make me look like a refugee from the Borg.

I mean, take a look at the Suite again. That's $140 million dollars of technology for a multilayered optical solution. All I want is a simple bifocal S-OLED 1280x720 RGB display with a goddamn HDMI connector. This technology is already four years old. Is it so much to ask?

Hot take: I'd say that the reason bros haven't solved the problem is because there's a mismatch between what tech bros want and what real people want. The legendary corporate buses of San Francisco shield their riders from anyone who might not be privy to confidential information, and the ones who might pay for the development of such technology probably don't take metro anyway.

In the meantime, I may end up buying a pair of Miracast dongles (they're cheap, less than $30) and seeing if I can get it to work with my laptop.

Ah, Pagan America

@elfsternberg Yes, He gave it away, personally. He didn't put a sword to a doctor's throat and command "heal him!"

— Calvin Dodge (@caldodge) March 4, 2017

Jesus would disagree with Calvin.

Before we get to what Jesus was really saying, I have to say that by this logic, the police officer is "forced at swordpoint" to guard the peace of your community; the fireman is "forced at swordpoint" to rush into your burning home and rescue your children; the municipal construction worker is "forced at swordpoint" to create the roads by which you get to and from work, and by which your goods get to market; the people who forged the Internet we're currently using were "forced at swordpoint" to come up with redundant, self-healing network hardware and software protocols.

Towns, cities, states and nations all have, to different degrees, the responsibility to see those public collective needs that we cannot manage alone or through private collective action. As a nation, we came together to defeat many major diseases. As a nation, we came together to defeat the Nazis. As a nation, we came together and defeated the Russians. As a nation, we came together and went to the moon. We used to grumble about taxes, but we understood that with them we bought peace, civil protection, municipal roads and bridges, and yes, we even bought public health.

The fact that so many in our country have become convinced that this collective action is somehow "socialist" is mind-boggling to me. Every nation, ever state does something to ensure that its people are happy and productive.

Which brings us to what Jesus said. In Mark 14:7, as Rep. Roger Marshall (R-KS) quoted, Jesus says, "For you will always have the poor with you, and you can do good for them whenever you want."

Now, I'm not Christian. I was raised as a Jew, but I know exactly what Jesus was saying there. So did the apostles he was talking to. They were Jews who had watched the pharisees pervert the temple and turn it into a bank. They were religious enough to be revolted by their corruption, and turned to a radical Rabbi. And sometimes he had to rebuke them. When Jesus tells them, "The poor you shall have with you always," he is quoting Moses. And they knew it.

And what did Moses say?

"The poor you shall have with you always, therefore the Lord God commands you to be openhanded to the poor and needy in your land.

If any are poor in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God has given you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them. Show no ill-will toward the needy among your fellow countrymen. Give genorously and do so without a gruding heart."

The rest of Deuteronomy makes it clear that this is not a personal commandment. This is an organizational principle of Moses' administration (and yes, Moses had an administration. It had a bureaucracy. Numbers talks about how it runs.) This how the State of Israel is to be set up. These are responsibilities by the nation to its people. Deuteronomy 14:22 is really freaking clear on this: if your harvest this year is great, you're supposed to give every increase to the state.

Yes, yes, if you have more than your neighbor, build a longer table, not a bigger wall. And yet, your reach is limited. Philanthropy is grey and unlovely; you pick and chose who gets your generosity, and by choosing you exclude others, condemn them. As God and Moses said, only the state is committed to the well-being of all the people. The United States Constitution literally constitutes the US on behalf of "the general welfare... of the people of these United States." Not on behalf of your local church, or some national group that represents your religious beliefs, or your ethnic beliefs, or whatever other arbitrary category that you treasure over others. All people. Whites, blacks, natives, men, women, Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists.

Deuteronomy 15 ends with a sad repeat: "And still, the poor you shall have with you always." Moses knows the people of Israel will fail. Jesus knew that a few centuries later, both Israel and Rome had failed. When the apostles object to his spending money on soap and oil, Jesus quotes Moses at them to rebuke their short-sightedness. "You can feed the poor for a day, sure. But without a true revival, without a wholesale transformation of the spirit from one that loves your neighbors more than it loves money, you will have fed them for a day. Tomorrow, they will be hungry again, and you will have accomplished very little."

I don't know what has happened to the country I love that it has become so cruel, so stingy, so vicious. Its spirit of generosity is blighted and ill. We say we're generous, but we aren't; we are lost of grace and favor. Countries that have better health outcomes through state-run healthcare still manage to have more private per-capita giving than the United States. We are fifth in our generosity and aren't even in the top forty healthiest countries.

It's not my place to question Calvin's conscience or the relationship between his soul and God. But the God of the Old Testament was painfully clear about what he wanted. God told Ezekial that the sin of Sodom was that it had wealth and power, and yet its citizens refused to help the poor and needy. God commanded Moses, and Moses said it was the duty of Israel: See to the justice due the migrant, the orphan, and the widow. Educate the child, heal the sick, relieve the distressed, and when necessary, bury the dead.

Moses and Jesus both anticipated we would fail. Buddha, Muhammad, Zoroaster, they all say more or less the same thing. The fact that we're limited, vain, and selfish beyond any hope doesn't mean we should wallow in it.