My So-Called Life

We were talking about what it must be like to fly First Class internationally when it came flooding back: the one time my mom almost got to fly in the confines of the fabled compartment. She didn’t get to, of course because well, things like that didn’t happen to Mrs. Woodbridge and her boys.

Instead, a dark night of the soul flashback—how factors beyond our control created abandonment, regret, bitterness. But these were just the first steps on the descending staircase into the basement and as more events were recalled and dissected, far distances and time notwithstanding, I was once again a boy uncertain of his future.

Uncertainty ruled my every waking moment and, on the nights I could recall my dreams, it did them as well. And there’s nothing to affect one’s sense of safety than a mental enemy that could not be beaten or even held at bay long enough for rest. It was like trying to keep a dense creeping fog out of a drafty old house.

A drafty old house. Yes, that seems an apt metaphor of a childhood spent in near-constant tension trying to stop the gaps that were not of your own creation. Trying and failing to co-parent a brother three years younger because—for God’s sake—you were just a boy playing the part of a man-of-the-house. Such responsibility could and did tear people apart like fresh-baked bread. It almost did me.

Will You Still Love Me When I'm 65?

Double Toil and Trouble

We walked out of the meeting to hold one of our own, those impromptu get-together for those who want to continue talking because they felt they didn’t get enough of it during the meeting itself or to gossip about the people from the meeting.

As usual, it was “held” in the hallway as the other meeting attendees filed past us while shooting various looks ranging from barbed, squinty ones to tired, “I can’t believe these jerks still want to talk more”.

I don’t know why I wanted to take part, but one of the guys I knew and sort of liked had decided to stop and talk so I did, too. Stupid, I should have said my see-you-laters and been on my way.

After some preliminaries, which went as well as can be expected among friends, the we bit through the hard shell and got to the soft, chewy nougat center: when was friend and co going to be able to migrate their agency into the consolidated environment?

“Our environment is so complex, it’ll take us three years,” Friend Guy said.

“Three years?!” I cried incredulously.

“Oh yes. We’ve got all sorts of applications and we’re going to have the vendors come back in to reconfigure them. In addition, there are Solaris servers that cannot be migrated …” he droned on.

Given what I knew about Friend Guy, he was a batty combination of technician who knew just enough to understand the generalities of the technology we used but not enough to prevent a drowning death. In other words, he was a Windows systems administrator.

I had usually just shrugged the old shoulders and moved the subject on to other, safer topics. You see, Friend Guy is a loud son-of-a-bitch with a God-granted baritone that could stop a charging rhino. He epitomized the adage about the man with the microphone always wins, only he needed no microphone.

Today however, I decided to dust off my SCUBA equipment and go for a deep dive. Like an alligator who latches on to the leg of the wildebeest and drags it down in the water, log-rolling all the way, I’d gotten tired of the bluster and wanted to hear that dying gurgle.

“I doubt it would take 3 years, Friend Guy. I mean, we aren’t talking about the Wizarding World of Harry Potter here. This is tried-and-true stuff. The protocols we use for authentication are all well-known; and besides …” I started.

“No, no, man. You have no idea, it’s very complex.” He bellowed.

“No, it’s not,” I asserted. “This is the same thing Tax said when they were initially migrating. As it turned out, it took us less than two months to get them on board. They, too, had originally thought it would take years.”

No way was I going to let go of my grip on that yummy wildebeest leg. Doubling down, I dove deeper.

“Here’s the thing, it’s all standardized protocols that we know about and unless you guys are doing something completely untoward, we can handle. And by untoward, I mean Banyan Vines, or some shit like that.”

“No, but we’re using SAMBA” he said, still bellowing although the strong wind had died down to a stiff breeze.

“SAMBA is still a protocol we understand how use, Friend Guy. It’s not that complex.” I plod on, determined to persevere.

“Yeah, but on Solaris?”

A glint had appeared in his eye, the kind of glint a man who was about to put the sword to the neck of a vanquished enemy in the arena would have in his eye. A smile began to break the edges of his lips as they prepared to form a smirk.

“Solaris? Please. You forget I was a UNIX administrator before I started working here, right? In fact, by using SAMBA on Solaris, you’re actually reducing the security of your Active Directory.” I said as I trained my alligator eyes on his panicked wildebeest eyes.

I continued.

“By the way, who told you it would take three years? The vendors? Because you know that vendors would love nothing more than to drag out the so-called reconfiguration so they can charge you heaven and earth for shit that’s easy to do.”

“No, it wasn’t the vendors. It was my boss,” he said, with a little less enthusiasm.

“Your boss?”

“Yeah.”

“Is your boss a programmer?”

“No, he’s been in IT for a long time and has done a lot of these kinds of migrations and he knows how they …”

Oh now, this was too much. What an  utterly ridiculous thing to say and, being in the no-nonsense river of death, I decided to apply the coup de grâce.

“Oh come on, that’s a fallacy, Friend Guy. Just because someone’s been in IT a long time doesn’t mean he knows anything about this particular migra—” I began.

“OH, AND  YOU THINK YOU KNOW EVERYTHING! PLEASE. I’M OUTTA HERE.”

Caught flat-footed for a second, it dawned on me he was attempting the old Ninja vanishing trick, only it wasn’t with smoke bombs, but the blistering hot air of bluster.

“Oh no,” I thought, “you’re not getting away that easy.”

“Are you running away?” I said to his retreating back, raising and holding a plastered smile on my face.

He turned back for a split second and shot me a look that told me he was no longer Friend Guy, just Guy and continued shuffling away in a cloud of more bluster.

Oh well, you win some, you win some.

London, 1993

I traveled by myself to Great Britain in the summer of 1993 because I desperately needed a break from school. I had very little money as I’d spent almost everything on the plane ticket, which meant I had nowhere to stay.

Luckily, a few weeks before I left, a Nigerian friend of mine studying for his doctorate in Electrical Engineering told me he had friends with whom I could stay while in the UK. What I didn’t know was that these friends of his were members of the rather strange Christian cult. What a summer!

Anyway, I bought a few books while in London, one of which was 100 Poems on the Underground, a book of poems which had appeared on the subway trains. As I spent some part of today cleaning up my office I found it on my shelf, dusty and marked with post-its marking poems I liked—in 1993. Here’s one:

I Saw a Jolly Hunter

I saw a jolly hunter
With a jolly gun
Walking in the country
In the jolly sun.

In the jolly meadow
Sat a jolly hare.
Saw the jolly hunter.
Took jolly care.

Hunter jolly eager —
Sight of jolly prey.
Forgot gun pointing
Wrong jolly way.

Jolly hunter jolly head
Over heels gone.
Jolly old safety catch
Not jolly on.

Bang went the jolly gun.
Hunter jolly dead.
Jolly hare got clean away.
Jolly good, I said.

CHARLES CAUSLEY (b. 1917)

I can’t believe I thought this poem was worthy of a 1993-era post-it. I hope Causley's jolly dead, the prick.

Blut Und Eisen

… translates to ‘blood and iron,’ from a speech by German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck:

Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided - that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849 - but by iron and blood.

Bismarck was an interesting fellow, to be sure. His ideas about governance, welfare, and even education are still to this day keeping an eye on modernity like a gargoyle in a cathedral.

But that’s a topic for another day. In this post, I want to write about something I’ve always dabbled with then dropped under varying circumstances: weightlifting. Literal blood and iron.

Back in ought-one (2001, you pikers) I lost my job when the so-called ‘dot com’ bubble burst and stayed unemployed for a while. I decided, fat bastard that I was, to join a gym while I worked as a consultant on the side. Right about then, my wife’s friend had a boyfriend who was the Strength and Conditioning trainer for the FAU sports teams. Keith was a powerlifter and trained me in a state-of-the-art gym at the school. The (painful) salad days, as I like to call it.

He was brutal, and I loved every minute of every iota of pain inflicted. I pushed, pulled, spun, turned, and manhandled an immense amount of cold steel. Well the steel actually wasn’t cold, but it always sounds better for steel to be cold. Moving on. I got to be in reasonably good shape until the bastard had the bad form to get married and move away to Pennsylvania.

I tried to carry on as best I could, but the welcoming, soft, swinging underarms of pain-free laziness beckoned and I wish I could say I had the fortitude to resist, but as anyone who knows me can attest, I can resist anything but temptation. And so it was up the pounds ladder I once again climbed with not a little difficulty.

That was a while and several pounds ago until I became a papa and the shit just got real. I believe the imperative to lose fat, gain muscle, live longer just sort of combines with the recent ‘upping’ of life’s stakes, don’t you? What’s more, I hear it told that bouncing grandchildren on one’s knees are great, especially the part at the end when the snotty bastards sweethearts go back to mommy and daddy so I can go home and fucking read in peace.

So it’s once more unto the breach dear friends, once more. This time it’s personal. And stuff.

So it is has come to pass that for the last 2 months, I’ve been speaking the language of (cold) steel, moving iron from here to there. Strange new words now cross my lips like front squats, step ups, cable wood chops and epiglottal grunts aplenty, accompanied by clenched teeth and sore muscles.

Apart from the downsides to visiting the gym, it’s been great getting back (don’t tell my muscles, they ache. Terribly.) Even 3000 miles and years between my Florida and Idaho gyms, the same dead-eyed dipshits look at me past droopy eyelids and the blondebots are still spending forever training their “NO” muscles, as Phung calls them:

The old guys who’ve been given the news by their physicians: either start now or start never shuffle in and half-heartedly poke at dumbbells and elliptical machines. The wrinkly bones (or is it bony wrinkles) of middle-aged try-hard women who could afford to let themselves go a bit and still no one would give a shit, spend every wasting moment prying open the steadily closing grip of The Destructor and failing. Make hay, bitches.

And then the upper body behemoths who hate lower-body exercises as much as they did elementary Geometry. These heavy browed cousins of Paranthropus boisei waste time on hack squats and fucking Smith Machines, while the empty and solitary squat rack looks at them, shaking its head.
They’re all there and for three hours a week, I wouldn’t wish to be anywhere else.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow

Another rivulet of snot tried to forage a new path down my top lip, to meet its demise in the fluffy prison of a guarding Kleenex.

Being awoken at 4.30am by another sniveling Woodbridge (fils, not mere) then incapable of re-entering slumber is a touch of hell, especially when combined with the biochemical riots underway in the various and sundry avenues of my sinuses. So I decided to stay home, work will wait.

Shuffling around house and home in a house coat, it suddenly struck me that my whole life has been one of the pursuit of happiness, happiness being never less than a fingertip away from a sure capture. Sometimes (much) farther, but never closer, it taunted in a way that seemed to say that it actually did want to get caught, but alas, it couldn’t. Some unknown Natural Law was firmly in place, disallowing fraternization between yours truly and itself.

Surrounded by a nasal cacophony representing my body’s interminable war against microbes, happiness seemed farther definitely than a fingertip’s length away right now. A-tchoos crescendoed, heralding I hoped, the triumphant cry of a successful repelling of some detachment of miniscule attackers along a vital part of the city’s walls. Give it to them good, boys!

Yet though the din and haze of biological warfare, I cast about for a time when I could maybe, perhaps conclude that I was happy and like figures appearing out of an Oregon Coast fog, I could just make them out here and there: running down the guy who’d beaten everyone on the soccer field and dispossessing him of the ball to the eternal gratitude of the goalkeeper. The first time I stepped into the cockpit of a Boeing 747 in flight (thank you, British Caledonian of late memory). The stinging tears as my Southwest Airlines flight pushed back from the Boise airport carrying, not my girlfriend and me as I’d wished, but only me. Walking down the long, long green carpeted hospital hallway carrying a Flip video camera as I padded my way towards room 319 two years ago to meet for the first time ever, my son and heir.

The pursuit of happiness is the only guaranteed part of the happiness hunting business. One always runs after, seeks out, but never finds happiness in the present or the future. One always remembers happiness, always remembers being happy this or that time. It seems happiness always has its hand in ours even as we think it doesn’t.

Exercise

I’m in for it!

My job consists of sitting. The only exercise I get is from my fingers picking at various keys none of which are more than two inches from each other (exercise idea: keyboards with more than two inches between the keys). That and walking. And oh yes, eating.

To read the literature, this sedentariness is killing me faster than if my wife were to start spiking my coffee with small doses of carpet cleaner. As a new father, this won’t do, of course. But there’s the rub: the only time I can possibly hit the gym and stop the company which owns said gym from royally helping me rip myself off, I’d need to get underway by 5am. Which means a 4.45am wake up. Which means a 9pm sleep time if I’m going to be of any use the next day, which means ad nauseam.

I trust you see my ‘quadrilemma.’ So, it’s die slow faster, or die fast slower, or die fast faster, or die slow slower. Or something. And while I’m figuring all this out, there’s food—as in consuming less, but better. It seems you can’t out-exercise a bad diet. Curses! So there’s that as well.

Strangely, in High School, I was a jock of sorts. I ran the 100m sprint (badly), the 400m (badly), threw Shot Put (badly), the Javelin (badly) and played Soccer (NOT badly). Arriving on American shores, not unlike Cortes, seems to have been a bad move for your humble correspondent (for the arteries in my case, and for the Indians, in Cortes’) because I immediately started sitting—for school, for church, for watching sports—instead of playing—for, well just about everything. America is the Seating Capital of the World. We sit better than any Goddamned People in the Universe, a boast I can make unless they discover The Milky Sit.

The other question I must answer before it’s too late (ie. I die, in case you’d forgotten what this was all about) is what kind of exercise I should half-kill myself doing. I hate being a human being because [a] nothing is easy, and [b] everything is a paradox. So, to get better, I have to work at self-inflicting pain and now I’m trying to decide exactly what version of pain I should be enduring so I can take even more pain in the future.

I’ve read (which I do a lot of) that getting the heart and other stalwarts of the cardio-vascular system to work better is indeed better. So it’s cardio. But I don’t like cardio and I’ve read (some more) that lifting weights, in addition to building muscle which helps “burn” fat—even though the only burning taking place is the cozy campfire in your lungs—also is “cardio-protective.” I’d rather something that was “death-protective,” but surely I ask for too much, aye, what?

I think what I’ll do is to start a cardio program for the next four weeks then switch to moving masses of iron inches first this way then that. My only regret is I should have decided this before the onset of Old Man Winter because absolutely nothing sucks (sorry Professor Mondo) more than walking from the car to the gym wearing gym clothes at 5am on February mornings in Boise, Global Warming Climate Change notwithstanding.

Wish me luck.

The Project

Several years ago, I was the lead designer, architect, and all-round champion of a big project. Everyday I went in prepared for battle with skeptics and naysayers of every stripe. Were it not for my blind devotion to what I knew was right and true, I would have given up—almost did, many times—and turned over the hospital to the inmates. Every day since, however, my design’s been proven to be the right one, by constant practice and testing.

Skeptics, I can take. Blind naysayers, on the other hand, happy to impede progress for various—almost always petty—reasons are the bane of my existence. I can’t stand these people and unfortunately, there were more of these than the former.

As the project neared completion despite its many man-made potholes, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the “CEO” would be handing out certificates of appreciation at a lunch ceremony to project team members. I felt we’d deserved praise especially knowing we wouldn’t be getting any raises—also, free food tastes great, doesn’t it?

With the appropriate paeans to teamwork, something called “shared vision,” and hard work over, the time to dispense that certificate arrived and I found I was excited. Sure, it wasn’t worth the paper it’s printed on, but I like framing shitty certificates, it’s a character flaw.

My name was called, I walked up, shook hands with the Big Guy, had my picture taken, got a nice “thank you for your service” (so this is what servicemen feel like) and walked back to my now cold—and as it turned out—rather crappy spaghetti, a silly smile of satisfaction pasted on the puss. What happened next almost detached my brain’s left hemisphere.

The number one hellspawn, the master of disaster, the naysayer-in-chief, Lord Voldermort himself. Yes, his name followed mine. I hadn’t even seen him in the “banquet hall,” which is what this restaurant called a never-used outhouse attachment to their building. And yet, here he was, walking the same path toward the same Big Guy, getting the same inconsequential “thank you for your service,” same camera flash capturing the moment for the company newsletter, the jaunt back to his lair chair, my smile pasted on his incubus face!

If it were up to this guy, we wouldn’t be here. He’d tried everything short of walking in with an AK47 and shooting up the place. He’d hemmed and hawed. He’d raised objections at such a furious pace, they seemed to meld into a raging stream of endless German profanity. By the second day he was on the project, he’d stopped extending anyone the courtesy of a “hello” preferring a vampiric scowl and toothy snarl.

The most painful part of the project for me wasn’t the many, yellow hours spent devising and conceiving solutions to all the varied technical problems that inevitably attended a project of this size. It wasn’t dealing with the personalities of all the geeks of varying corpulence welded into too-small seats around too many conference tables. It wasn’t the interminable meetings. It wasn’t answering the same interminable questions hurled by people who thought they’d stymie this know-it-all this time! It wasn’t formulating answers to those questions so they’d make sense even to my embryo of a son (at the time) only to see the answer make hardly a dent on their high-tensile-steel armored, Rhino’s backside brains. It wasn’t even dealing with Mr. Personality, Demon Hellion with diarrhea mouth.

No.

The most painful part of this entire thing was that I’d been the one who suggested Dickhead for the team. Yes ladies, I’d been asked who I wanted on the team and recalling a time in the distant past when he seemed nice—I’d taken his talkativeness as a sign of a lively brain, not realizing maggot-infested decay can have the same effect—I wrote his name down and welcomed myself into hell.

And there he was, his goat hoofs cladding past my table, cradling the same certificate I’d just got for doing nothing at all. He’d stopped “working” on the team after two weeks, choosing rather to disappear back into Cesspit Valhalla where the very best assholes are forged. The horns on his head glowed with what I knew he thought was pride, if such a virtuous feeling is allowed to exist in the pure darkness that is his heart.

My hands grew heavy as the slaggy, ersatz gold lettering on the certificate proclaiming the everlasting thanks of a grateful nation to one Frederic Woodbridge, III and his descendants now and forevermore, faded into a puke-green patina. This worthless piece of paper was now well and truly worthless. If they saw fit to slide one of these things across to the one person who had actively worked to sabotage the project, there was no standard, no judgment, nothing. It was utter meaninglessness. Crap. Vapid. Air-filled. Inconsequential. Trifling. Shallow. Weak. Paltry. Putid. Wretched. Magno conatu magnas nugas.

The certificate spent almost a year in the trunk of my car, after which I tossed it onto the top shelf of a bookcase in my study and there it remains still, the paper personification of a black hole.

Good Motto

My Country ‘Tis Of Thee

If you don’t know this by reading my rants, I am an unabashed patriot. I love the United States because I know what it is to live elsewhere. Not just any elsewhere, but Africa ferchrissakes!

In other words, I subscribe to the catch-phrase “My country, right or wrong,” but as one of my few favorite Englishmen John Derbyshire (“Daarbysher”) writes,

most people forget the second half, which goes: “If right, to keep her right; if wrong, to put her right.”

I didn’t know this, but now that I do, I’m re-upping my subscription!

Something I Read Today

In Classical Education and the Home School by Douglas Wilson et al:

“The education of children for God is the most important business done on earth. It is the one business for which the earth exists. To it all politics, all war, all literature, all money-making, ought to be subordinated; and ever parent ought to feel, every hour of the day, that, next to making his own calling and election sure, this is the end for which he is kept alive by God—this is his task on earth.” — R.L. Dabney, On Secular Education

Well. It seems I’ve got work to do.

A Vision

Reading Twitter has become one of my favorite pastimes. It is rather wonderful just how much information it is possible to impart even under the limit of 140 characters.

This morning, one of my regular posters, @fedupjeff who, as you may be able to tell from his moniker, is fed up, posted a link to a DailyCaller interview of Reid Buckley. Reid is the brother of the late William F. Buckley, Jr. and has written a new book titled The Idiocy of Assent in which he expresses some rather troubling thoughts on the future of the conservative movement in particular and of the United States in general.

Here’s a snippet of an answer about the dark future for conservatives whom he calls a “base that is bit by bit disappearing”:

Number one, the American public is almost incredibly ignorant [about] the founding of the Republic. Number two, there is a paganization in our culture. And number three, we have to absorb a whole bunch of Hispanics and also Asians, who in all their history, going back before the middle ages, have never experienced free government or the notion of a republic. That takes a huge change in their native reflexes, and it requires acculturation which is not done by the immigration services.

My wife was born in Spain, raised in Spain, she’s now an American citizen. And I can tell you, the instructions she got to become an American citizen were incredibly superficial — none of the major philosophical questions that brought up our republic.

She doesn’t really have much understanding of the structure of the government. And why should she? Nobody is really giving that kind of instruction any more.

H’m. As one who arrived on the shores of the United States more than a decade ago, I can attest to this fact. I was lucky enough to have been born an American by birth, and it was all too easy for me to take the road much travelled and affix my lips to the American teat while ignoring the rich philosophical history that created this exemplary singular nation.

In fact, I did start down that path until—as I’ve written about in the past—I read Shelby Steele’s wonderful book. This is not the way many Americans, especially those born here see America today and much the poorer we are and will be for it!

Where Have All My Heroes Gone?

Scott Berkun’s books have been a favorite from the first one published. I particular enjoyed reading the latest, “Confessions of a Public Speaker.” What I liked about them most was the clear, common sense and funny approach to his subject.

In addition, reading his essays especially #53 “How to detect bullshit”, replete as it is with references to logically refuting “bad” thinking, I was impressed and put him on my list of intellectual heroes. Here was a guy with a steely-eyed grasp of things, someone I could aspire to be like.

Until I locked horns with the human being and that house of cards came tumbling.

It started when Berkun posted a video about Freedom and The Mosque:

I replied:

Quote: “However the point I was trying to use OKC to make is a valid one. Just because Fred and Sally commit do something horrible “in the name” of X, Y or Z does not mean we discount or reject the interests of American citizens who believe in X, Y or Z.”

Hello Scott. I really enjoyed your ‘Confessions of a public speaker’, by the way.

However, yet again I meet someone who doesn’t understand the tenets of a religion bent on the abject subjugation of ALL those who don’t agree with those tenets. If Fred and Sally do something horrible BECAUSE X, Y, or Z specifically permits it, it is right, nay ABSOLUTELY vital to our (American) interests and safety to look askance at AND YES, REJECT, those who profess to hold X, Y, or Z beliefs.

Islam is not a religion of peace or love. It permits and COMMANDS its adherents to overthrow BY FORCE any government other than one based on Islamic law. That any Muslim doesn’t throw on the suits of armor and go fighting for Islam against the American form of government is because that Muslim has willfully forgotten or chosen not to propagate those tenets of that religion.

Unlike many, I have lived in a country under the jackboot of Sharia law. It is not fun, it is not free, and it most certainly is not fair. Were it left to those who believe in the same principles as those building this whatever in NY, you couldn’t do a third of the things you do today with your time and effort.

If you value your very freedom to like or not like things that make you angry, as you put it, it is your very duty to oppose Islam. Read Nomad by Ayaan Ali Hirsi, see what this religion promotes, protects, and pursues.

Your point (#5) about the Bill of Rights is inappropriate. Congress–the United States government–is not making or passing any laws restricting the building of whatever they’re calling it. People, private citizens, free to say what they want, are raising a hue and cry about this. I’m sure you’ll permit them the same rights to free speech that you have used here.

Then he replied:

> However, yet again I meet someone who doesn’t
> understand the tenets of a religion bent on the
> abject subjugation of ALL those who don’t agree
> with those tenets.

1. There is no religion on this world completely unified in its beliefs. All religions, including Christians, are heavily factionalized. Christians have Protestants, Catholics, Unitarians, Mormons, Jehovah’s witnesses and people who call themselves Christians who don’t align neatly with any group. It’s also notable how much factions tend to hate each other, including Christian factions that have gone to war over their differences. Some groups will always be more militant and fundamentalist than others. Any argument that hinges on lumping 100% of people of a faith, or nation, into a singular simple mindset is very hard to agree with.

> Islam is not a religion of peace or love. It
> permits and COMMANDS its adherents to overthrow
> BY FORCE any government other than one based
> on Islamic law

I am not an expert on Islam. But I’ve read enough of the Quoran, and the Christian Bible, to know they are both filled with love and hate. There is plenty of smiting of infidels in Christian scripture and in Christian history. You can extract from most sacred book calls for love or calls for violence, if you look hard enough for what you want to find.

> Were it left to those who believe in the
> same principles as those building this
> whatever in NY, you couldn’t do a third
> of the things you do today with your time and effort.

I could say the same about the DMV. Or McDonalds. Or the Catholic church. There are many organizations who, if put in control of a nation, would enact stupid, draconian or backward ideals. But they are all allowed to own private property provided they break no laws and fit in with their community.

> If you value your very freedom to like or not
> like things that make you angry, as you put it,
> it is your very duty to oppose Islam. Read
> Nomad by Ayaan Ali Hirsi, see what this
> religion promotes, protects, and pursues.

It is my very freedom that makes it impossible for me to reject an entire system of belief. I want to be free to think whatever I want, and I realize I have accept other people’s freedom to do the same. Some people believe in UFOs. Some people believe I’m going to hell. As long as they mostly keep it to themselves, they can believe whatever they want. They have that right.

Have you looked for books about peace written by Muslims? Are you truly convinced not a single Muslim in the history of the world has ever advocate peace?

60 seconds on the web found this: Muslims for peace. http://www.muslimsforpeace.org/.

So if the people who made this website were to move in to Park 51, and you believed they were sincere, would it then be acceptable to you?

> Your point (#5) about the Bill of Rights is
> inappropriate. Congress–the United States
> government–is not making or passing any
> laws restricting the building of whatever
> they’re calling it. People, private citizens,
> free to say what they want, are raising a
> hue and cry about this. I’m sure you’ll
> permit them the same rights to free speech
> that you have used here.

How is it inappropriate to quote our bill of rights? It might be irrelevant, but I think it’s useful for people to know the law. Especially when we talk about fighting for the rights of Americans. The bill of rights defines those rights.

I certainly believe people have the right to protest.

But I have the right to explain why I think their protest is misguided, unfounded, poorly-informed and contradictory to their own beliefs about America. They are clearly angry, but they are directing that anger in a way I suspect they will regret when they talk to their grandchildren.

Just for fun – it’s ironic, but the WTC itself was protestedwhen it was proposed.

Uhoh—this is still “fun” as he ends his reply, but the road doesn’t look that bright. So I penned the following quick reply:

You say you’re no expert on Islam, but you know enough about the Qu’ran and the Bible to know they’re both filled with love and hate. All right, but here’s something you don’t seem to know and that’s forgivable since you’re no expert: there’s a major difference– whereas Christianity does not countenance violence, Islam does. Explicitly so, in fact.

Any Christian who takes up the sword to drive before himself or herself unbelievers is doing so in utter and complete disregard of all the rules and tenets of Christianity, regardless of sect. And by the way, just because there are Christian factions doesn’t mean anything. 100% of Islamic ideology advocates a certain way of living, factions or no.

Your freedom, granted under the auspices of a Judeo-Christian aegis by the way, does indeed afford you whatever you like to think, unlike what would be extant under Sharia Law. However, understand that I am not looking at Muslim discussions on the vagaries of Islam. I’m looking at the Qu’ran itself directly. There is very little wiggle-room for Muslims intent on just living peacably in a representative democracy: either you are working to formulate the Islamic Caliphate or you’re not. Any other nuanced translations or whatever else is in direct contradiction of the Hadith and the Qu’ran.

I use “inappropriate” appropriately. Your quoting the law is not germane, but hey, we live in a free country! :-)

So here I have taken up the bait, hook, line and sinker and suddenly gone into Christian defense mode. When did the discussion suddenly turn on Christianity? I thought we were discussing Islam?

His salvo was even more confusing:

Fred:

> Any Christian who takes up the sword to drive
> before himself or herself unbelievers is doing
> so in utter and complete disregard of all the
> rules and tenets of Christianity

By that definition the U.S. was founded on a disregard for those rules and tenets. Columbus had similar disregard. There were “unbelieving natives”, who we call Indians, that we killed and subjugated en masse for decades. The history of North and South America is littered with similiar disregard.

Taking moral high ground on the basis of any religion leads to these contradictions. All major religious histories are filled with violence and awfulness, as well as benevolence.

> 100% of Islamic ideology advocates a certain
> way of living, factions or no

I’ll say this for the last time. Any argument that claims 100% of any group numbering in the 100s of millions all believes the same thing is impossible to agree with.

Unless you can look at your own religion (e.g. Catholic vs. Unitarian), or nation (Republican vs. Democrat), and see it as 100% believing in anything, how can you sensibly apply that assumption to another religion or group?

If nothing else the fact that you and I, both Americans, disagree about the Bill of Rights, a few paragraphs of text, should suggest there might more range of belief and ideas among other faiths and nations than you assume.

I pointed you here, but you offered no comment:
http://www.muslimsforpeace.org/

There are similarities between the above initiative, and the group at Park 51:
http://www.cordobainitiative.org/

Hm. What’s that about how the US was founded? What?

Here, I thought, maybe I wasn’t clear … but I’ll keep it light and free, just in case:

Scott:

I don’t understand why you’re bringing up how the US was founded or what happened with Columbus. It’s not germane to my statements about the tenets of Christianity. Surely you see that.

It’s not my argument that 100% of Muslims ACT in a certain way. It is my argument that 100% of Islamic ideology fully supports the violent overthrow of any government not Islamic, fully supports the furtherance of their religion by violent means, fully supports the defense of that religion by violent means. That your muslimsforpeace.org refers to those Muslims who prefer not to take up the sword as their religion authorizes means nothing more than those particular folks are peaceful people, period.

The moral equivalence hypotheses people fling out at the slightest provocation is lazy thinking and stops us from seeing things as they are: the fact is, in an Islamic society TODAY, women are chattel, there’s no freedom of religion, there is no room for discordant thinking, there is death for homosexuals, there is death for (female) adulterers, etc, etc., etc. ALL THESE are EXPLICITLY allowed by the Qu’ran.

I’ll repeat:

ALL THESE ATROCITIES are EXPLICITLY ALLOWED FOR, and in some cases, COMMANDED by the Qu’ran.

The sad reality is, much as I’d laud those Muslims who choose the path of peace, they’re doing so by turning a blind eye to the very tenets of their religion. The vast majority of Muslims act in direct accordance with the dictates of their faith which includes violence and terror. I will ALWAYS be opposed to such a line of thinking.

And by the way, while you and I disagree about the Bill of Rights, the fact remains you’re wrong, I’m right. :-p

To which, my hero, Mr. Berkun becomes pissy:

> I don’t understand why you’re bringing up how
> the US was founded or what happened with Columbus.
> It’s not germane to my statements about the tenets of
> Christianity. Surely you see that.

All I see is your comfort in double standards of convenience. If you tell me “any Christian who takes up the sword to drive out unbelievers is incomplete disregard of all the rules of Christianity” then you make Christians germane. Our history as Americans and Europeans is chock full of atrocities and horrors committed in the name of god, with support from our churches.

> ALL THESE ATROCITIES are EXPLICITLY ALLOWED FOR,
> and in some cases, COMMANDED by the Qu’ran.

You can justify nearly anything from any book of scripture if you look hard enough for it.

The Crusades, The Spanish Inquisition, dozens of wars in europe, the near genocides in North/South America, were all justified or funded by the church, rallied with quotes from scripture, and seen as holy missions.

If you want me to see how evil the followers of Islam are, I might consider it if you acknowledged how much evil is in the history (and perhaps present) of Christian and other faiths.

> The sad reality is, much as I’d laud those Muslims
> who choose the path of peace, they’re doing so
> blind eye to the very tenets of their religion.

Ok – this is where I call bullshit.

You have not lauded anyone on this long thread. You have not said a single positive thing about “those Muslims”, or acknowledged “those Muslims” will occupy this building. Honestly, I don’t think you’d laud them at all.

You’ve harshly criticized a billion people on grounds your own history is guilty of, without any Christian remorse or compassion.

As has been my point, the specific group of people choosing to build this particular place, have the right and deserve the benefit of the doubt to create this place and to be judged on what they actually do there, rather than what our fears imagine they might. You have an opportunity to laud them by supporting their right to reside there.

If you want to continue to disparage and entire religion please go elsewhere. It’s a pointless debate to have in this forum.

Oh boy. Well, we’ll chalk this one up to the “Interrant” and call it good. Doesn’t seem we’ll be drinking buddies anytime soon!

Scott:

You’re jumping all over the place like a Mexican bean, assigning words and meanings to things I’ve said and things I’ve never said. Here, e.g.:

I said: “I’d laud those Muslims…” as in, “I WOULD laud those Muslims”, I DIDN’T say “I HAVE lauded those Muslims,” yet you accuse but whatever …

I have never contested the RIGHT of those building the Ground Zero Mosque to build the mosque. Of course they do. The wisdom of doing so, however, is what I take umbrage at. If we did everything we had a RIGHT to do, we’d not long survive as a society much less as individuals. Japanese-Americans have a right to build a temple to the pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor right on private land next to Pearl Harbor, but they don’t. When Catholic authorities in Poland were planning to build an institution for nuns, years ago, and someone pointed out that it would be near the site of a concentration camp that carried out genocide, the Pope intervened to stop it.

He didn’t say that the Catholic Church had a legal right to build there, as it undoubtedly did. Instead, he respected the painful feelings of other people. And he certainly did not denounce those who called attention to the concentration camp.

–

I have never said evil has not been done in the name of Christianity; as a matter of fact, it has, but as we’re actually NOT talking about Christianity but Islam, that sorta makes sense, but apparently only to me. You keep insisting on pointing out the moral equivalence between Islam and Christianity when even your video doesn’t discuss Christianity or any other religion at all. Not Germane.

Here is what I HAVE said:

Islam is a religion that suppresses freedom (I notice you haven’t bothered to respond to those accusations). Islam is a religion which authorizes violence–another assertion you haven’t bothered to respond to.

Instead, you cry havoc and let loose the dogs of moral equivalence. Indignantly asking “… and what about you?” is not a valid defense of an action.

Continue erecting your straw men, Scott. Unfortunately, yet another hero of mine falls: after reading all your essays on clear thinking and logic, I’m quite amazed to get in what I thought was a friendly exchange of ideas only to see you devolve into a pitiful emotional display in defense of a religion that factually, you couldn’t bear to live under.

If you were intellectually honest, you’d see this. You’d read this. You’d post this. Then you’d respond without resorting to all those logical fallacies you think you have a handle on.

Too bad, I actually like Scott.

5, 4, 3, 2 …

I remember quite well when I witnessed my first public execution by firing squad: the man, named Anini—which means “penny” in the local Bini dialect because he was a short, small man—was led handcuffed to a stake in the middle of a parade ground. I’m not sure, but I think there was an attending priest who gave the condemned his last rites.

Watched by many hundreds of people only yards away and many more others on television, he was then bound to the stake and a black hood put over his head.

A squad of eight or so “mobile policemen” as they were and still are rather quizzically known were led by a fussy-looking officer (with a sword!) and arrayed out into a single line abreast about 30 feet in front of the trussed up fellow; he was bound so tightly he couldn’t move even his head.

The officer stood off to one side, raised his sword and counted down from five. After “one” he cried “fire!” simultaneously lowering that sword in an arc of silver under the afternoon sun. The thunderclap of several rifles broke the breezy, anticipatory silence causing the sweaty crowd of onlookers to divert their gaze away from the man to the squad and the now-billowing smoke from the rifle fire.

Those few who weren’t so distracted kept their watch on the man to see the binding ropes explode in tatters seemingly of their own accord, followed by blood blooms on the man’s clothes over his body as each bullet hit home and true.

The officer raised his sword again and brought it down to the accompaniment of another “fire!” followed by the inevitable blast and smoke. No one was watching the squad this time, all eyes affixed on the now-slumping figure at the stake. His head exploded in a spray of blood and brains and the bullets tore even more at the ropes loosening their grip and causing his body to double over.

The squad brought their rifles smartly down to their sides while the officer marched forward with a man in a white coat and a stethoscope around his neck. After the doctor had pronounced the man officially dead, an ambulance drove forward to receive the corpse as the remaining ropes—the only ones still remaining were those around the corpse’s lower body—were cut away.

I was eight years old.

I don’t know if I was too young to appreciate what I’d just seen, but the children around didn’t seem too bothered by what they’d just seen and neither was I for that matter—the show was, as they say, over. The man had been a multiple murderer, an armed robber who had terrorized the city for many months and this, we thought, was his just desserts.

Imagine my surprise when I heard that the state of Utah just carried out an execution by firing squad not too long ago. The seated, hooded condemned was shot at from 25-feet by a five-man rifle squad. One of them was shooting a blank so that, in the words of one article, “no one knows who fired the fatal shot” as if that mattered a whit.

In this case, the man had chosen this particular form of execution instead of by lethal injection.

Actually Made Me Sad

Bisja

Rest in peace, dear girl.

Sleep Advice

Teresa Strasser and Lynette Carolla have a great podcast called The Parent Experiment. This week, they have a “sleep expert” Kathy Sinclair, talking about sleeping babies.

Good stuff.

BTW: Happy Easter, everyone!

Freddie

Happy Birthday

Edythe Marjorie Azuka Woodbridge would have turned 65 today.

My son!

My son!, originally uploaded by ifconfig.

Today being the the anniversary of his third month of life, I remember his first day!