Do you know what this proves about liberals?

 This open laughing at the death of Rush Limbaugh:

It proves nothing about liberals, that's what.  I know when Limbaugh died there were plenty of charitable souls on the Left who broke out and danced on his grave.  That happens.  But it doesn't stand to reason that all liberals are therefore reprehensible zealots who rejoice in the death of any nonconformists.   It just goes to show you all groups have their bad apples. 

Just a public service announcement.  Especially since it's common to take this or that bad behavior on that moral petri dish of bad behavior called the Internet, and use it to smear entire demographic groups we don't like.

Amazing what you find on the Internet

I think my parents are the best parents you could ever have.  I'm sure that's a biased opinion, but it's mine.  I never believed they were perfect, nor believed they had to be.  It's enough that they tried to be good parents for our sake, rather than their own.  Still, they did have some quirks I wish they didn't.

One of the things they did, that if I could go back in time I'd slap them over, was a tendency to move.  I mean, move needlessly.  It wasn't because of jobs.  My Dad was a railroad engineer and seldom lived in the same town where he worked.   Nor was it for schools.  I grew up and stayed in the same school district for my whole life.

They just moved.  For reasons they never really articulated.  I think my Dad, who grew up dirt poor in the Depression, was just happy to have the money.  I think they tended to talk themselves into moving, and often sold their homes faster than they found ones they wanted.  That means they often settled for houses they didn't really want, which ended up leading them to - you guessed it - move.

When you're a kid, it's about the neighborhood.  Even if you go to the same school, it's the neighborhood that defines the friends, especially in such a small school and community.  Due to the constant moving, I was that kid who, already born to parents from out of town, never settled in with one set of friends.  Hence my tendency to be somewhat introspective and introverted (which has been interpreted by some as being a bit offish).

Nonetheless, one time my parents did it right.  We moved out of town to a small house that was really nothing.  My parents didn't like it, I couldn't stand it.  There were no kids around.  There was nothing to do.  It was just me finding ways to keep busy.  My sister, who was almost 9 years my senior, and who had little to do with me anyway, was in high school, driving, and going about her business.

So after barely a year, we moved again.  Because my Dad was such a handy man and inevitably fixed his houses up better than he found them, we usually sold them quickly.  This time, however, they decided to rent a house, allowing for more time to choose.  So we moved back into town in the summer of 1976.  A few months later, we found out we  were moving again.

This time it was to be the final move.  And when I saw it, I understood why.  What a house! An old "Queen Anne" style house, it sported a conical tower on one corner, more outside doors than you could use in a week, massive sliding doors separating the downstairs living areas, crystal chandeliers, a massive attic, a hidden storage room and - get this - an actual 'secret' passage linking a walk in pantry and one of the downstairs bedrooms.

I loved it.  For a while, it had been divided into a duplex and rented out.  That led to one of the rooms upstairs being converted into a full kitchen.  That became my bedroom, right next to the hidden storage room that was accessed by a concealed door in the closet.  An oak stairway with oak paneling circled upwards over two separate landings.

There were changes made.  First thing was the sealing up of the hidden passage.  My Mom didn't like the idea of some hidden place I could duck into.  The solid oak sliding doors were modified to work again (carpeting had made them unusable, so my Dad shimmied the bottom off so they would work again).  Of course we never used them, and I wasn't allowed to close them.  Finally, the hidden storage room was opened up and made more accessible and less 'mysterious.'  Again, my Mom's request.

The conical tower was cool.  On the bottom is was the extension to a small foyer next to the main front door leading to the outside sidewalk.  On the second floor, however, it was just part of the upstairs bathroom.  There was a large, built in, leaded glass china cabinet that my Mom liked, though under used.  All in all, it was a great house, and the most enjoyable home to grow up in - until 3 years later when my parents moved again.

Nonetheless, I have fond memories of this.  So it was with some pride that I saw, on a FB post, that this house had once been featured in a series on historic homes.  The series was done after we had left.  The house was built in 1903 (I remember the date was put in tiles on the winding sidewalk from the back kitchen door that cut through the yard and headed toward the main sidewalk).  It was built by a businessman named Campbell, and was actually known as "The Campbell House."  Somehow being in a house with an actual name makes it all the cooler.

I enjoyed my time there, and a growing number of neighborhood kids warmed up to me as they enjoyed the cavernous rooms (12' ceilings), round tower and rumor of hidden chambers.  Why my parents moved, I don't know.  They say once my sister moved out for the first time, it was too big for a family of three.  Personally I think it's because Dad wanted a large yard, something the house just didn't have.  He tried to get a couple old neighbor ladies to sell part of their yards, but to no avail.  I can't help but guess that had something to do with it.

Nonetheless, for a time we lived in 'The Campbell House', an early 20th century Queen Anne, and that's not bad.  Thanks be to the Internet.  It does serve some good purposes after all.

One bit of fun trivia.  A second furnace was at the top of the old stairs.  When it cranked on, it made a sound that sounded like footsteps.  I used to lay in bed and count, wondering if someone started at the basement and walked through the house, if they would reach me before the noise stopped and the furnace finally kicked on. 

It's Flag Day

If you search by Google, you could be forgiven for missing that fact.  Well done Bing!  For Flag Day itself, here's a little info.

Words can't express how much I love this story

That, kiddies, is why opening ideas to the Internet nowadays can be a risky thing.  For my money, they need to stand by the poll.  If they invite the public to christen a ship in the modern internet era, then they need to take what they get.  Besides, read the article for all the new spins on this wonderfully hilarious turn of events.

Quint was right

Sometimes us wealthy young college boys don't have the education enough to admit when we are wrong.  And wrong we are.  Often.  Who can forget that part of the legendary movie JAWS?  The rough and tumble, ill-fated shark fisherman with a personal grudge against sharks vs. the wealthy young scientist, money handed to him, studying sharks for the love and admiration of their nature.  The clash between them was one of the more meaningful story lines in the movie, and it added to the depth of their characters, especially as mutual admiration eventually takes over and builds a bond between them. From what they say, a similar course of events happened between the actors Dreyfuss and Shaw, who apparently weren't on best terms, but who at least came to regard one another positively during filming (at least Dreyfuss appears to have built a lasting respect for Shaw the actor).

Thinking on that, the working class guy vs. hip educated kid, I've been kicking things around for a while.  I work more or less as a bean counter in a giant, multi-billion dollar corporation.  My ministry and education days a thing of the past.  There is no union, and at any time I could go in and find my position has been cut.  It's already happened there, just as it happened to my wife a couple years ago. I get the problems with unions, but sometimes working in large corporations sans unions does engender an appreciation for collective bargaining.  Anyway, because of that, there is no shortage of people on edge about their jobs, talking about this job or that job, asking about other jobs and trying to find ways to solidify their positions while always keeping one ear open for other opportunities.

Listening to the conversations that take place has made me realize something.  Most everyone I work with has a college education.  The average age seems to about about mid thirties, with a few in their later 20s, and some my age or older.  But from what I can tell, I think everyone has a college education.  That would be because most companies require college degrees even for the most menial positions.  Based on this article, this is because of a Supreme Court decision that made any other way of measuring potential workers unconstitutional.  I'll get back to that little phenomenon down the road.

But for now, it's enough to say everyone in my department is a college graduate.  And what I hear!  A few weeks ago, my supervisor, who happens to be Catholic, set out some rosaries she picked up somewhere as sort of a witness.  One afternoon, a coworker looked at them and asked 'is that one of those chastity belts'?  Now, I'm not being mean.  To be honest, I hear things like that all the time. But think about it.  The guy has a college degree.  He's working on his Series 7 exam.  College educated.  And he asked that?  Again, it's not just him.  The things I hear people say are stunning.  The things people don't know.  I once quipped to a manger that I had been in the eighth circle of hell regarding a task I was finishing.  The person looked at me puzzled.  I explained I was referencing Dante.  Blank stare. 

All of this has shown me something.  On the internet, you read stupid things.  Appalling things.  Unbelievably stupid, brain dead, moronic things.  Not just on atheist blogs, or fundamentalist blogs, or ABBA fan blogs, or even Catholic blogs.  It's everywhere. On one hand, people will discuss things with an attention and grasp of detail that would shame a prize winning physicist.  On the other, you can see some of the most stupid things ever written.

For some time, I thought it was some Internet phenomenon. The Internet must make us stupid.  People can't be that dumb, not with college degrees.  Not in an era that boasts more college graduates than at any time in history. Something on the Net must be tainting our smarts.  But then I thought of it.  It isn't the Internet making us dumb, it's that the Internet is giving us a false sense of smart when we were dumb already.  

You see, I have a college degree in history and education.  I went back to school and got my Masters in Biblical studies and Church history.  I began a PhD in Systematic Theology (I wanted historical theology, but the school had recently gutted its professors in the name of doctrinal purity, and the options were limited).  I didn't finish (woe is me for that decision) because it was at that time I began toying with leaving Protestantism altogether and looking for other (read: Catholic) options.  

That means in the realm of history, particularly modern 20th century American history as well as Medieval history, I'm not altogether bad.  I also have a decent grasp of Biblical interpretation.  Handy stuff for a former pastor.  I also have an appreciation for the development of Scriptural texts as well as the development of historical theology (with less concern about the systematic nature of it).  Along the way, I noticed I had a knack for geography (always loving maps) and since my original thought was going into political science, I have followed and studied politics for decades.  In those areas, I'm not bad and can hold my own.  In addition to all that, I enjoy music and, for no particular reason, enjoy art.  And each year, at least for many years up until recently, I always tried to pick a subject and study it (language development, archaeology, architecture, a particular country).  

During that time, I had to take other courses: Chemistry, biology, economics, and other such courses which were BER (Basic Education Requirements).  Out of all of those I took, there are about seven things I remember.  But here's the thing.  For whatever reason, timing, the era I grew up, the fact that my parents were older, I don't know, I feel I have a more rounded education for the simple fact that I know what I know, and am keenly aware of what I don't.  Just because I have a degree, doesn't mean I know everything. For that matter, it doesn't mean I know everything about the subjects I know much about.  It certainly doesn't mean I know chemistry, or nuclear physics, or how to make a quilt, or a million other subjects.

And I think that's the point.  Education was once seen as the key to liberty.  The key to living and breathing free.  It's why we didn't want our slaves reading, because that leads to education, and that leads to breaking bondage.  Certainly our Founding Fathers were children of the Enlightenment who saw education as the cornerstone of a free society.  And to be honest, negative stereotypes notwithstanding, the Christian faith has long understood education as important for the right living that leads to Salvation, even if that education was always understood properly as being filtered through Church teaching (a debt it owes to its Jewish ancestors).  Hence the rise of universities in Christian Europe as opposed to anywhere else on the planet.

So education good.  But it means more than 'I have a degree.'  Education means educated.  It means knowledgeable about many important things.  It means being smart enough to avoid the stupid self enslavement of the uneducated. It means knowing better than to sell your birthright for a bowl of stew.  It also means knowing what I don't know.  It means many things that I get the impression have been forgotten about in our modern era of 'the more degrees handed out, the better'.  

First, because education has changed.  An ideological battleground, most public and higher education is where indoctrination fights against counter-indoctrination.  Educating is less important than having our minds right.  Second, today education is seen as a means to a vocational end.  Get educated, get a job.  Technically, that's the role of vocational training.  But because college degrees are needed whether or not the job necessitates such a degree (see above), and because so much emphasis is on science and math and technology as we desperately scramble to save the sinking ship U.S.S. America, people forget that it's not knowledge of math, science or technology that keeps the chains off.  That would be those subjects being forgotten about in the modern scramble to succeed.

Finally we have the Internet itself.  I've always enjoyed Shakespeare and in my ministry days, I enjoyed dropping quotes from the Bard into my sermons.  Not emphasizing them, just dropping them casually in a sentence here or there.  I don't do that now, thanks to Smart Quotes.com and any other website where you can go, never having read a scrap of Shakespeare in your life, and pull an appropriate Hamlet reference for just the occasion.  What does it mean on the Internet to quote Shakespeare?  Or Whitman?  Or Poe?  It means you have access to Google and nothing else.

I could write the following: Nanoarchitetonics.  What's that?  I don't have a clue.  I just Googled 'Scientific terms', found the first Wikipedia article, clicked and grabbed the first term I could find. But give me a half hour with Google and guess what?  I'm the Nanoarchitetonics master!  That's the problem.  I've seen that trend before of course.  But it never dawned on me that the problem isn't just that people can rush over to Google and try to be experts based on the always unreliable Wiki world of knowledge.  I realize now that being college educated doesn't automatically mean we're educated at all.  We may not be smart people cheating on Google.  Truth be told, we may be idiots with degrees cheating on Google.  If we are educated, it may only be about a few subjects, and yet the illusion of 'the Information Superhighway' leads us to believe we are smarter than we are.  

Far beyond just lazily learning by Google searching this or that, with the corresponding lack of appreciation we have for the knowledge since we didn't really earn it, we may be less educated than we believe, while developing an unhealthy confidence because of what we can glean in a few minutes on the Web.  And there is nothing worse than being worse at something than you think.  If knowledge is power, the illusion of knowledge is cognitive impotence.  For an idiot who knows he's an idiot may be willing to listen to an expert.  A genius who is arrogant about being a genius might still be educated and smart enough to avoid putting his head in the trap.  But an idiot who, because of a piece of paper and a Wikiwebsite, thinks he knows all there is to know about Nanoarchitetonics and therefore refuses to listen to anyone in the world but those who sing his praises for being the goto guy for everything Nanoarchitetonic, is likely setting himself up for trouble.  Multiply that a millions times, and you might just have our modern era setting a direct course to disaster. I can hear the chains a'rattling as I write. 

A little learning is a dangerous thing;

drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:

there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

and drinking largely sobers us again. 

(And yes, I read that famous quote in a book of poetry years ago, long before I had access to something called the Internet).

I'm OK with this

Really.  Even as a Catholic, I see no need to flush America down the toilet, even if it appears to be heading that direction.  So when I see images like these:

I don't feel the immediate need to exclusively focus on Indians slaughtered, slaves owned,  minorities discriminated against, women oppressed, homosexuals persecuted, witches burned, A-bombs dropped, Imperialism, racism, sexism, fundamentalism, puritanism, ignorance, boorish behavior, intellectual inferiority, or inevitable communist tyranny.  If anything, focusing on the majority of the list is probably the number one reason we will likely end up at the end of the list.

I say this because, as I meandered around this morning and went to CAEI, I saw two posts running with the whole 'all countries are equally better than America' mantra, with numbers of comments jumping in to sound the great Amen.  A growing tendency in not a few Catholic websites in recent years.  A pity.

Jon Stewart and Bill O'Reilly

Are going head to head!  And I'm supposed to care why?  Actually I do care.  I care that we live in an age when those who made their billions in America are giving a big middle finger to America and leaving it, and wondering if there is a valid point.  And I care that as such things are happening, Americans turn to a media blowhard and an agenda driven comedic yap-dog for guidance.  One has a 'comedy' show, willing to manipulate and edit reality to discredit those who stand in the way of the greatest threat to religious liberty in 200 years.  The other is an obnoxious and ill-informed blowhard who spouts forth on subjects with less knowledge than I have about nuclear physics.  So why this is even happening, much less news, much less that big event of the season, is beyond me.   Unless it is yet one more sad sign of the times.

The miracle of the Internet

Is not that it makes us smarter.  On the contrary, I sometimes think it leads to a deplorable intellectual laziness on the part of those who look to the net for learning.  On the other hand, it has its benefits.  Chief of these is the ability to track down just about any tidbit of information on the most obscure subject you could ever think.

When I turned five years old, my family moved into town from living out in the country.  That house, which was built almost from the foundation by my Dad, was the only home I had known.  So I was sad to be in this new place next to a nest of kids who made Jack's clan on Lord of the Flies look tame by comparison.  I was also mortified to find out that my Mom had gotten rid of several of my toys, including two of my favorites: a toy highway that you could build for Hot Wheel cars, and an aluminum castle set with figures. I remember playing with the latter in the hallway while my Dad continued to labor on the house.  Gone.  They were just gone. 

Well I was researching some information pertaining to Medieval Europe, and lo and behold, my mind began to wander as it is wont to do.  This lost toy set suddenly appeared in my mind's eye, and I decided to see if I might be able to find it somewhere in Cyberspace.  And there it was:

Or at least I think.  Those were many moons ago, and quite frankly, I have only the faintest wisps of memory when it comes to its appearance.  But the picture does ring a bell, especially the red towers, and it seems to be of aluminum, which would be consistent with what I do know.  I don't know.  Maybe it's just a similar set.  But even similar, I can't help but get swept up in the memories and remember playing in that hall so many ages ago, when my troubles were so far in the future, and times were happier. 

Lila Rose in her own words

Lila Rose, of Live Action fame, tells of her conversion to Catholicism.  I throw this out to add my own mite to the debate and at least give some little expansion to her platform.  The reason is due to the firestorm her actions caused about a year or so ago.  Beginning with a full broadside from Dawn Eden, the conversation quickly moved from 'wow, that could be serious if Planned Parenthood is breaking the law in order to help minors get abortions' to 'that lying bitch! how dare her sin when she's trying to save babies and teenagers.'  

Whether or not one should tell any lie ever in order to save the lives of innocents, or if such is ever prudent or could lead to moral dilemmas down the road, was of course fair game.  The Church, at this time, appears to fall on the side that lying is never - N.E.V.E.R. - right.  Fair enough.  But in typical Internet fashion, the comboxes became a sludge-pit of judgementalism, self-righteousness, and service to the pro-abortion crowd that was more than happy to join in the Lila-Trashing while agreeing that we should ignore the man behind the curtain.

So here's Lila.  Take her story for what it is.  I take it at face value and, even if I see the problems with her tactics, feel that a pastoral nudge toward the right way would be the better approach to helping her in her mission, rather than just hamstringing her because I didn't come up with a better way of fighting such gross injustices in the first place.

And speaking of pi, the mention of goofy Chuck Norris facts led to goofy math facts which brought to mind this video (yeah, my mind works that way):

TTFN

Looking for the puppets

James Maliszewski is a good read. He has a blog called Grognardia. I'll leave folks to figure that title out on their own. It's dedicated to all things Role Playing, particularly the history of the hobby as well as various products, influences, and other subjects of interest. I have to admit that entire libraries could be filled with books containing what I don't know about the hobby of Role Playing Games. Beyond Dungeons and Dragons, I would be hard pressed to name three more of the genre. Plus, I'm neither much of a sci-fi fan, nor a fantasy fan - my fantasy interests beginning and ending at the door of Bag End.

But I stumbled across his blog a year or so ago, searching as I was for some information on J.R.R. Tolkien. Since then, I've been happy to return, and every now and then Mr. Maliszewski bats one completely out of the ball park. Today was no exception. He posts on a book recounting the production of The Empire Strikes Back. You know, that movie that President Obama keeps mentioning.

Anyway, he reflects on how the movie was made sans CGI. He goes on to lament the current obsession with, and reliance upon, CGI to solve our modern movie making dilemmas. It's a feeling with which I wholeheartedly agree. I have yet to see Avatar, and from all I've heard, it's a movie a mile wide and an inch deep that's more or less a superficial Dances With Wolves and Video Game combination. I also agree that CGI heavy scenes, even in such noteworthy films as Lord of the Rings, can't help but look dated in only a few years. If not dated, they look sallow, stale. Only those movies that used CGI sparingly to enhance and add to, rather than substitute (and cheat) - like the original Jurassic Park - maintain any sense of freshness. But again, they relied upon real places, people and things rather than a mere computer keyboard.

In his post, as he unfolds a growing frustration and general malaise regarding modern movies, Mr. Maliszewski writes this:

Human beings are rightly enamored of technology, but it should always be used as a tool with which to create, not the creation itself.

And that kiddies is why I keep going back to his blog, novice though I may be. We are enamored of technology, and if I may add an observation, often end up venerating science simply because it makes such technology possible. But technology should ever and always be a mere tool to be used, not the end all creation itself. Brilliant. Wonderful. I wish I could have insights like that. Someday I might. Right now I'll be content to advise folks to follow the link and indulge in a little nostalgia, and maybe even a few keen insights.