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elfsThere really should be an icon for the mood 'conscious.'
Man, what a week. Work's been relatively boring as I managed to hit my deadline last Friday while the kernel team pushed back a week, meaning I've been spending most of my time this week dealing with trivial, aesthetic bugs. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.
At least the food's been good-- Sunday I made a great chili-- tons of onions and garlic, rinsed the beans in a colander (it's the juices in the cans that cause most intestinal distress), lean beef, some beef broth to compensate for the liquid lost. Kouryou-chan gave it a thumbs-up. I added cumin to add that "taste of high school" suggestion that, these days, is both hip and ironic, because it actually tastes better, especially when I substitute sherry for vinegar at the end for tartness. Monday, I made the usual: ravioli and home-made pasta sauce, the recipie for which I've posted earlier. Tuesday, Omaha made a delicious salmon with cranberry chutney topping... [sigh]. Life is good.
Kouryou-chan also drew her first discernable picture this week. I helped her through the steps... "a dot, here. A triangle, there. A curve, there," but in the end it was entirely her pencil on a blank sheet of paper that drew what is recognizably a teddy bear's head. Circles, lines, triangles-- anyone can learn to draw, so long as they can learn to see proportions consistently. And that just takes practice.
Also, my wrists have been more or less behaved. Wrote nearly 2,000 words yesterday in two different stories, each of which is interesting, but each in a different way: one is to get inside the head of a character who's dead but resurrected every day-- as if the day before never happened. The other is trying to write a first-contact story from the point of view of the contactees, who are humans "adapted" to their environment. I go see a physician today about the wrists.
I'm thinking about doing NanoWrimo again this year. I know that it was a disaster last year, but, y'know, hope springs eternal. I know I can do it. The question remains, will I have anything worth reviewing once I've written it?
First, while we're all looking at Judge Moore Three-Ring Circus, officials in Tarrant County, Texas, have to contend with a woman who claims that the statue of a sleeping panther on the front lawn of the courthouse be removed because it's pagan symbolism "... with sinister connotations." She recommends that it be replaced with a plaque with a "a few choice legal edicts, like 'thou shalt not steal,' and 'thou shalt not commit adultery.'"
Uh-huh.
Meanwhile, on the other end of the world, an atheist is Salem County, PA, wants the same rights as religious parents have: the right to object to school uniforms. She claims that religious parents can refuse to use school uniforms "as a matter of conscience," and since she herself objects to the militarism of uniforms on the same grounds her child shouldn't have to wear them.
An interesting idea. It probably won't go anywhere, but a nice try nonetheless.
In an article in The Independent, Maxine Frith, the "social affairs correspondent," writes about how "The myth of Viagra" has ruined lives and relationships by highlighting problems within those relationships. Many men are refusing to get refills because they realize that impotence is a good excuse for "not being interested," while others are leaving their partners upon realizing that, sexually, they're just not attracted to their partners anymore.
Well, duh. For everyone who grouses about it, I have one question: Did you read the fucking literature in the first place? It doesn't make you love your partner more, it only makes it possible to get an erection if you're aroused by your partner in the first place. This fact is repeated endlessly, everywhere in the literature of Viagra.
And when it comes to Judge Moore, I've got to say that the rhetoric on both sides has gotten a bit... interesting.
Let's get one thing straight: Moore hasn't got a legal or moral leg to stand on. If what he wanted was a responsible, scholarly debate about the Ten Commandments's role in public life, he could have initiated one with his fellow judges. That's perfectly within his right as Supereme Court Justice. He could even have made it court business. But no, Moore chose, like some thief in the night, to install the monument while the court building was closed. He didn't want a debate, he wanted confrontation. Moore also has no moral standing with respect to a civil rights debate: he is the Supreme Justice of his state, with inordinate amounts of power. He is not the put-upon minority he claims he is when he associates his role' with Martin Luther King's. If, as a private citizen, Moore tried to put the monument back, he'd actually have a better legal standing with respect to civil disobedience as described by King. Moore's greatest problem is his inability to serve two masters-- to one of whom, the judiciary, he swore an oath to uphold the law of the land.
Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center apparently went to the rally in support of Moore yesterday. Among those in the crowd were a veritable who's-who of racist and Christian Identity leaders. Go look at the slideshow on Yahoo News. For all of the black gospel chuches in Alabama, I can't find a single black face in those photos.
But as I was reading Hans Zweiger's editorial about Moore, I realized that there really isn't much to be said. There is no compromising with Moore's followers.
Zweiger writes that the First Amendment does not give one freedom from religion and says, "no person has the right to escape the presence of Almighty God." Y'know, Hans, if there is a god she has every power to make her presence known. Moore's Rock does not have that power; it is a wholly material object, it's only function is to create confrontation within the secular sphere. And how is the worship of that rock not idolatry? How is it not a graven image?
I don't particularly care what the commandments say. When folks on the right raise the question, they always ask, "What's wrong with the Ten Commandments?" Well, aside from the obvious problem with the tenth ("... thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's slave..." is a tacit acknowledgement, by God apparently, of the reality and acceptability of slavery, no matter Hans's pithy "nobody has the right to enslave another"), there's nothing paticularly objectionable about the commandments. What's objectionable is that they are the words of one religion, injected into the public sphere for the sole purpose of creating a conflict. Moore acts as if Christianity is the only game in town-- it is not. He acts as if Christianity trumps the secularism of the Constitution-- it does not.
The circus is over.
Man, what a week. Work's been relatively boring as I managed to hit my deadline last Friday while the kernel team pushed back a week, meaning I've been spending most of my time this week dealing with trivial, aesthetic bugs. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.
At least the food's been good-- Sunday I made a great chili-- tons of onions and garlic, rinsed the beans in a colander (it's the juices in the cans that cause most intestinal distress), lean beef, some beef broth to compensate for the liquid lost. Kouryou-chan gave it a thumbs-up. I added cumin to add that "taste of high school" suggestion that, these days, is both hip and ironic, because it actually tastes better, especially when I substitute sherry for vinegar at the end for tartness. Monday, I made the usual: ravioli and home-made pasta sauce, the recipie for which I've posted earlier. Tuesday, Omaha made a delicious salmon with cranberry chutney topping... [sigh]. Life is good.
Kouryou-chan also drew her first discernable picture this week. I helped her through the steps... "a dot, here. A triangle, there. A curve, there," but in the end it was entirely her pencil on a blank sheet of paper that drew what is recognizably a teddy bear's head. Circles, lines, triangles-- anyone can learn to draw, so long as they can learn to see proportions consistently. And that just takes practice.
Also, my wrists have been more or less behaved. Wrote nearly 2,000 words yesterday in two different stories, each of which is interesting, but each in a different way: one is to get inside the head of a character who's dead but resurrected every day-- as if the day before never happened. The other is trying to write a first-contact story from the point of view of the contactees, who are humans "adapted" to their environment. I go see a physician today about the wrists.
I'm thinking about doing NanoWrimo again this year. I know that it was a disaster last year, but, y'know, hope springs eternal. I know I can do it. The question remains, will I have anything worth reviewing once I've written it?
First, while we're all looking at Judge Moore Three-Ring Circus, officials in Tarrant County, Texas, have to contend with a woman who claims that the statue of a sleeping panther on the front lawn of the courthouse be removed because it's pagan symbolism "... with sinister connotations." She recommends that it be replaced with a plaque with a "a few choice legal edicts, like 'thou shalt not steal,' and 'thou shalt not commit adultery.'"
Uh-huh.
Meanwhile, on the other end of the world, an atheist is Salem County, PA, wants the same rights as religious parents have: the right to object to school uniforms. She claims that religious parents can refuse to use school uniforms "as a matter of conscience," and since she herself objects to the militarism of uniforms on the same grounds her child shouldn't have to wear them.
An interesting idea. It probably won't go anywhere, but a nice try nonetheless.
In an article in The Independent, Maxine Frith, the "social affairs correspondent," writes about how "The myth of Viagra" has ruined lives and relationships by highlighting problems within those relationships. Many men are refusing to get refills because they realize that impotence is a good excuse for "not being interested," while others are leaving their partners upon realizing that, sexually, they're just not attracted to their partners anymore.
Well, duh. For everyone who grouses about it, I have one question: Did you read the fucking literature in the first place? It doesn't make you love your partner more, it only makes it possible to get an erection if you're aroused by your partner in the first place. This fact is repeated endlessly, everywhere in the literature of Viagra.
And when it comes to Judge Moore, I've got to say that the rhetoric on both sides has gotten a bit... interesting.
Let's get one thing straight: Moore hasn't got a legal or moral leg to stand on. If what he wanted was a responsible, scholarly debate about the Ten Commandments's role in public life, he could have initiated one with his fellow judges. That's perfectly within his right as Supereme Court Justice. He could even have made it court business. But no, Moore chose, like some thief in the night, to install the monument while the court building was closed. He didn't want a debate, he wanted confrontation. Moore also has no moral standing with respect to a civil rights debate: he is the Supreme Justice of his state, with inordinate amounts of power. He is not the put-upon minority he claims he is when he associates his role' with Martin Luther King's. If, as a private citizen, Moore tried to put the monument back, he'd actually have a better legal standing with respect to civil disobedience as described by King. Moore's greatest problem is his inability to serve two masters-- to one of whom, the judiciary, he swore an oath to uphold the law of the land.
Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center apparently went to the rally in support of Moore yesterday. Among those in the crowd were a veritable who's-who of racist and Christian Identity leaders. Go look at the slideshow on Yahoo News. For all of the black gospel chuches in Alabama, I can't find a single black face in those photos.
But as I was reading Hans Zweiger's editorial about Moore, I realized that there really isn't much to be said. There is no compromising with Moore's followers.
Zweiger writes that the First Amendment does not give one freedom from religion and says, "no person has the right to escape the presence of Almighty God." Y'know, Hans, if there is a god she has every power to make her presence known. Moore's Rock does not have that power; it is a wholly material object, it's only function is to create confrontation within the secular sphere. And how is the worship of that rock not idolatry? How is it not a graven image?
I don't particularly care what the commandments say. When folks on the right raise the question, they always ask, "What's wrong with the Ten Commandments?" Well, aside from the obvious problem with the tenth ("... thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's slave..." is a tacit acknowledgement, by God apparently, of the reality and acceptability of slavery, no matter Hans's pithy "nobody has the right to enslave another"), there's nothing paticularly objectionable about the commandments. What's objectionable is that they are the words of one religion, injected into the public sphere for the sole purpose of creating a conflict. Moore acts as if Christianity is the only game in town-- it is not. He acts as if Christianity trumps the secularism of the Constitution-- it does not.
The circus is over.
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property
Date: 2003-08-28 05:48 am (UTC)Re: property
Date: 2003-08-28 07:31 am (UTC)However, Zwegier's essay made no mention of Locke. In fact, the direct quote is as I said it above, relating the phrase 'life, liberty, and property' directly to the Bill of Rights (and directly to God, who appears nowhere in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights). It is impossible to suppose except as I did, the Zweiger is engaged in a rather blatant and pathetic attempt to openly re-write the texts our government is founded on to better suit his ideology.
Moreover, since it is well-known that those who had significant hands in crafting both the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were greatly familiar with Locke and great admirers of his work, it seems unlikely that they were unfamiliar with his formulation (as you cite it) of 'life, liberty, and property'. However, they did not choose to use that formulation themselves in their own great work. Indeed, it is difficult to read their decision to themselves change the formulation to the now-classic 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' was an active decision to change the emphasis of their work and the philosophy it expressed.
That Zweiger feels the need to change the phrasing back suggests strongly that he feels he knows better than Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and the rest. Do forgive me for my skepticism on that matter.
adden. - A quick googling confirms quite easily that Locke is the source of 'life, liberty, and property'
Re: property
Date: 2003-08-28 09:05 am (UTC)Furthermore, if i remember my civics, it is not the Bill of Rights but that masterful bit of rhetoric the Declaration of Independence which makes reference to "life, liberty, and [the pursuit of happiness]" and which was supposedly directly inspired by John Locke's Second Treatise on Government (or whatever it was called.)
While I do not have the Locke with me now, it occurs to me that life/liberty/property were the 'natural rights' that Locke does spend some respectable amount of time attributing to God, for reasons that make sense given the time and context in which he was writing. This attribution to God of unalienable rights was indeed carried over by the founding fathers into much of the rhetorical and legal documentation surrounding the American Revolution. There was a certain interest in establishing a sort of 'divine right of the republic' -- I know that's an awful way to put it, but it's very late and I don't feel like putting this off until later. The idea I'm getting at is that while divine monarchy was clearly on its way out, it was still a reality of the day, and the rebelling colonists needed to establish clear moral validity for their actions. That meant rhetoric delineating violations of God-given rights on the part of George 3.
The relevance of God to natural rights, and to fundamental political rights in the United States in the 21st century is apparently an issue that is open to some public debate (as we can see from the stupid article under current discussion, and some of Elf's other newslinks that alternate making me diappointed and angry).
I have now read Mr Zeiger's essay. It appears he has NOT actually confused the Declaration and the Constitution. Instead, it seems he is simply making a direct reference to Locke's exposition of the social contract. Consider this statement: "The genius of the constitutional Bill of Rights is that it respects the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property granted by God. Instead of granting or creating rights, the Bill of Rights plainly asserts that government lacks certain rights." I am not a constitutional lawyer, but I believe it to be factually correct in all respects, save possibly that inalienable rights originate from (and only from) God. And I will not opine on that matter, or on the question of wherein lies the actual 'genius' of the Bill of Rights.
I will quibble with his language: rather say ". . .plainly asserts that government lacks the power to interdict certain fundamental (i.e. unalienable) rights."
The tour of the commandments is, well, whatever. His citation of an 1838 Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling denying the religious protections of the First Amendment to athiests is, in my view, evidence that his conception of natural rights is stuck in the distant past.
Finally, but by no means of little importance, check his bio: "Hans Zeiger is a Seattle Times columnist and conservative activist. As an 18-year old Eagle Scout, he is president of the Scout Honor Coalition."
"Is" could be a typo, but does that not say 'Hans Zeiger is an 18 year old kid with an internship'? I think we've been taking this guy just a little too seriously.
Cheers