Speaking Words of Wisdom

Have any of you read Rachelle's Urban Abbess blog at Monkfish Abbey? It's amazing and Rachelle is my hero. This recent post regarding Ted Haggard's unfortunate situation is a perfect example of why I love to see her site highlighted in bold at my Bloglines account (though that keeps me from seeing a great looking site as well).

So This post is really two wrapped into one:

1. Rachelle's thoughts on this are as close to mine as anyone else's I have come across, so this is all I have to say as far as Ted Haggard (but not necessarily homosexuality with Haggard's situation as an example, watch for my next post) is concerned.

2. Don't miss out on all the great things you can find at Monkfish Abbey. They are an amazing group of people. If we had more groups like this around, the world would be a greater place.

Democrats Control the Congress

Democrats take control of the House and Senate. The final action to push Democrats over the top was Webb's concession to Allen in Virginia's senate race at 4:15pm today.


As an added bonus, Democrats hold a majority of governor's seats as well.

Democrats lost no previously held seats and gained everything they needed to provide the necessary governmental checks and balances that had been lacking over the last six years.

The Great Winds of Change in America

Just in case anyone wishes to take a look at what the elections spell for issues on a national stage, consider this: No Democrat seeking re-election for the House, Senate, or Governorship lost their race. None. Democrats took control of the House and are currently positioned to take control of the Senate (both independents would caucus with the Democrats to give the Democrats a 51-49 majority). If this fails to register as a wake-up call for Republicans, perhaps nothing will. After a stolen presidential election in '00 and a dubious-at-best election in '04, the chickens are coming home to roost. The number one issue voters claim as the reason to vote the way they did: corruption. Last time around it was "values", but both sides claimed that term even as it was being snatched up by Republicans as their own. Now we see republicans voting for democrats and saying that the corruption must end. To be honest, corruption can be found on both sides, but to maintain that honesty would be to admit that it's been found in the Republican party in spades lately.

It should come as no surprise that George Bush refused to speculate on a Democratic win tonight. He claimed to believe that Republicans would hold both the House and the Senate, no questions asked. When pressed to comment on any plans he had just in case the Democrats won one or both portions of Congress, Bush refused, insisting that he knew a Democratic shift just wasn't going to happen. Just like he knew the mission was accomplished back in '03, that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, and that we'd be greeted by a rose-petal parade in Iraq and Afghanistan. Funny how that works.

Disgusted by "Christian" Nationalism

I'm watching TBN right now. George Bush just wrapped up an interview and was followed by some correspondents extoling Bush's unblemished Christian virtue. This was followed by remarks that make me want to puke. This is not hyperbole. My stomach is upset and I feel physically ill. I am a Christian and I am not a supporter of the republican party, yet TBN unabashedly links the two together. War, prayer, nationalism, patriotism, faith; it's all thrown together in a manner that should raise red flags in rational minds. TBN blatantly ties being American to be Christian and a Republican. Why is there no shame in there action? A man on this show said that he was saddened to know that 20 million Christians didn't vote and then he said that if every Christian voted "we'd" take every election. Ok. Bullshit. "Take"? Where? Not to mention the astounding arrogance to assume that every Christian votes in lock-step. What kind of Christian nation will we have? There is a place in politics for faith in that our beliefs inform our actions, but that's it. America will not be a Christocracy, theocracy, or theocratic republic. I'm just going to wonder whose Christianity will get to be the "American" political religion...

Methodist? (United, AME, Free....?)
Catholic?
Lutheran? (Missouri Synod, ELCA?)
Pentecostal?
Evangelical?
Mainline Liberal?
Charismatic?
Quaker?
Mennonite?
Amish?
Anglican?
Baptist? (Southern, Free, American....?)
Presbyterian?
Reform?
Fundamentalist?
Emergent?
Liberal?
Protesant?
Conservative?
Eastern Orthodox?



another wretching update: Now some guy on TBN is spewing on about how Christians can better market (shitty) movies becuase our faith traces back to martyrs dying thousands of years ago....

Books

1. One book that changed your life: Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. After reading this book, I began searching for information, either for or against, much of the ideas and situations in this book. It has lead me on a great adventure of shifting paradigms and broadened horizons. The next book, My Ishmael, had a similar effect.

2. One book that you’ve read more than once: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card and Imajica by Clive Barker. They're significantly different from one another, but I've enjoyed them repeatedly over the years. Also, collections of Calvin and Hobbes remain regularly re-read fair.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island: The Soul of Rumi, a collection of Sufi poet Rumi's works as translated by Coleman Barks.

4. One book that made you laugh: Pronoia is the Antidote to Paranoia by Rob Brezsny. This could easily be listed under "changed my life" as well. It's a great book.

5. One book that made you cry: I have never read a book that caused me to shed actual tears, but parts of Speaker for the Dead (when the piggies are dying) brought me close.

6. One book you wish had been written: The Progressive Christian Youth Ministry Handbook. And I'll write it, too.

7. One book you wish had never been written: the left behind series

8. One book you’re currently reading: Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson (to be followed by parts two and three, The Confusion and Systems of the World respectively)

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read: I have to pick just one? Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke.

10. One book you’d like to write: The Life and Times of the World's Worst Youth Minister, a humorous psuedo-memoir I'm actually hunt-and-pecking away at already (but will not finish for the forseeable future, for certain).

Admit It: It's a Griffin Baby

At first, I was reading this article because I am always interested in reading about the rare animal oddity that pops up every so often. Taking a good look at the picture, however, gave me cause for even greater joy: this thing is a griffin!



Alright, it may not have the body of a lion (or other great cat, if you so desire), but this bird certainly looks like a griffin chick. I would love to see more pictures, especially some of the bird standing or walking. If all goes well (and the limbs are seperately functional), this chick will adapt to a life of extra appendages. If so, I'd be curious to see more pictures of this fine critter as an adult.

Now if only I could find one for myself....

Amazing Papercraft Artistry

Peter Callesen creates amazing works of art by cutting white paper into delicate sculptures making incredible use of both the positive and the negative space. I would love to try and emulate this style of artistry, but where would I begin? It appears as if Mr. Callesen has spent very long periods of time examining not only what effect his cuts would have on paper, but what exactly can be done with what's removed by those cuts.

The Large Scale Paper and A4 Paper galleries are my favorites, but his whole site is worth wandering through with child-like wonder.

My Site as a Graph

I came across this site that takes URLs and turns them into a neat graph image. I've provided this site as an example:

























I'm not too sure what practical use this has, but it looks cool.

The Infantile Nature of a Miserable Failure

Pardon my hostilities during this post, but our Miserable Failure continues to astound me even when I continue to believe he could not do anything else, short of resign, that would surprise me. Honestly, there are several things I could write about in this area, since it has been so long (aside from yesterday's Penis Pokey post) since I have posted, but I have two today. The first issue is serious while the second issue is serious as well, but will certainly be decried by a few zealots as frivolous.

Issue One: Possible Indefinite Detention, Without Representation, of US Citizens


It should frighten every American that the idea has been put forth by our own government that American citizens, no matter how heinous their actions, could be seized and held without trial or explanation for as long as the president or the military desires to do so. That is what has been proposed by Bush's new endless war anti-terror bill. Thankfully it appears to be coming under heavy scrutiny, but where is the action and the outrage from the average American? As unthinkable as this bill is, so, too, is the massive dose of apathy oozing from the American public. At no point in our history have Americans been subjected to the erosion of their civil rights and civil liberties than under the reign of President Bush. Spineless non-thinkers will put forth the weak strawman argument that I am grossly exaggerating because we are more free than any other country and that no law abiding citizen has anything to fear. How shameful it is that these few administration echo-chambers actually seem to have most of the country nodding in agreement. It is not that anyone has anything to hide that we enjoy our freedoms, it is because those are our inalienable freedoms from the beginning. Privacy, speech, belief, and dissent are not granted to us, they are ours from the very start. Those who proclaim the innocent have no need to fear from surveillance are the least patriotic among us as they seek to pacify Americans into forgoing there rights and privileges as a citizen of the US and as a human being. It is my hope that we collectively begin to realize this and beat back the creeping tide of anti-American sentiment expressed by these people and, apparently, our own presidential administration.

Issue Two: The Unabashed Infantile "Nyah-Nyah" With Regards to Church/State Separation

Why does this garbage continue to flow over our land? In the interest of full disclosure, I am a Christian and trust in God as I know God, but that has absolutely nothing to do with our country. This is Bush (and his brother, Jeb, my governor) acting like a small child. His rampant crusade to Christianize the United States in a way unheard of by American founders is baffling given his blatant lie regarding himself to be a uniter, not a divider. As the link shows, Bush has done nothing but actively, of his own volition, divide the country through shallow partisan politics and a push for recognition of an American generic-though-monotheistic religion. So, if I may ask, in whose God do we trust: Muslim, Jewish, Christian, or other? If, perchance, the Christian God, which Christianity are we speaking of: Catholic, protestant, Baptist, Unitarian, charismatic, Mormon, or other? And what of the atheistic Americans that find a phrase such as, "In God We Trust" to be practically opposing to the very idea of American government? You were not assuming I meant today's atheists, were you? Not so, I am referring to patriotic America atheists such as Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson (say 'deist' if you want to, but it is fairly clear that they did not differentiate themselves all that much other than to avoid a lynching of one sort or another). "E Pluribus Unum" ("Out of Many, One") was, for over one hundred years, our American motto; a magnificent and aptly fitting motto to be certain. It was sectarian American Evangelicals in the 1800s who pushed for recognition of phrases akin to "In God We Trust" to be stamped onto our coinage. Sadly, atheists continue to be unmeritorious mistrusted, held in suspicion merely for their belief that there is no supernatural portion of our existence. How, with an honest examination, is this to be seen as far-fetched or untrustworthy? And yet they continue to be consciously and unconsciously persecuted for their beliefs/unbelief while the liar "uniter" shuts his eyes and sticks out his tongue at them, like the runt of the playground he has shown himself to be.

You put your penis in, you take your penis out.....

....then you sell the book used on Amazon.com.














You may have seen the book, "Penis Pokey" (link to Amazon) in a post at BoingBoing, but they're mearly mentioning the fact that 60% of people who view this book on Amazon go on to buy a children's Bible instead (I don't even want to know....). I would like to point out something a bit more discomforting.

Or hilarious.

Let's split the difference and say discomlarious.

There are eight of these books available used. USED. There are eight available editions of this book pre-touched by male genitalia.

"Um.... It was a gift. I never used it. Really...."

Discomlarious.

NaCoDraMo's New Home

NaCoDraMo now resides at the NaCoDraMo blog. You can also send messages and request information through NaCoDraMo@gmail.com rather than the comments section as previously suggested. Can you tell that I'm excited about this? I honestly can't wait for June 1st. Whether creator or spectator, I hope you feel the same.

NaCoDraMo

I recently purchased No Plot, No Problem by the creator of the National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo and thought, "I'd enjoy this a bunch more if it had more to do with drawing rather than with writing". Now, don't get me wrong, I love to write and I really have a few dead horses I've been beating ideas I've been tweaking for the last ten+ years, but drawing is my first love. So the idea of creating a graphic novel, instead, came to mind. I googled "NaCoDraMo" and had no returns. Then I thought maybe people would be confused and think I was talking about the strips you read daily, rather than a book or collection. So I tried googling "NaGraNoMo" and... got a hit? Unbelievable. One hit. One person had the same idea I had and called for submissions... back in 2004. The blogger got one person to sign on, too, but that's no matter. Simultaneous idea generation (well, not so simultaneous, but still independent) wrecked my idea. I still wanted to go forward with the drawing portion of my idea, so I went back to NaCoDraMo and decided that the "wrong idea" people might get about it was actually a great idea. One comic per day, every day, for a month. Imagine the possibilities; journals, short dramas, serial adventures, political cartoons, it's nearly endless!

So this is my big idea: National Comic Drawing Month. I'm impatient when it comes to this "hits me in a flash" ideas, so we'll start in June. The rules are very loose to some degree. The hard and fast rule is this: One comic per day, every day. Maybe you won't post your comic every day, but stick with the timing or else you will bog yourself down in no time. Also, there's no rule against generating ideas ahead of time, but put out a finished comic (one panel, three panels, full page, you choose) once a day. I suggest posting your work to Flickr, Blogger, MySpace, or any other spot that lets you put up images on a regular basis and that has an RSS feed. If you wish for others to see how you're doing, send me the link to your work and I'll add it here in my Bloglines sidebar. The RSS part is important, so please make sure you're posting to a site that can be tracked in that way.

So here's the recap:
-June is NaCoDraMo, from the 1st through the 30th.
-Create a comic each day
-Post to an rss-enabled site
-send me (and your friends & neighbors) the link to your site.

Good luck and much enjoyment!

Unbelievably Far Behind

This has certainly become "The Blog Without a Brain". I started it with the intent of posting political and theological thoughts, but I got burnt out on that. Then I posted who-knows-what in the aftermath. Now it's been updated once in the last several months, with a good two months since that post.

I don't want to quit, but I don't know what to put here. I didn't want this to be a diary, so I thought I'd post cool stuff I stumbled across. Every time I thought of that, though, I hated the idea of being a cheap copy of MetaFilter or BoingBoing. I even compiled a list of amazing Lego creations I've come across, but it seems that every thing I feel is "post-worthy" is posted on BlockLog, almost exactly post-for-post (I bet we're both one of the four subscribers to the BriskShel rss feed....). Well, he's got great taste in Lego creations, I can say that.

So maybe I don't want to quit merely for the fact that we're all raised thinking, "quitting=bad". If I really didn't want to quit, I'd actually post those two or three entries I actually think about each day. I've thought of keeping an "analog" blog of sorts. If I write down my posts, then I can go back and post in batches based on what I wrote in a notebook. Maybe I'll try that. Maybe.

Ok, there is some news that made me smile, though. Two bits, actually, but one will be posted separately in just a moment. The other one has to do with my penchant for cobbling together Lego parts for fun and wonder. A couple months ago, I posted some pics of a Lego creation to Flickr and BrickShelf of a nifty little two-legged walking machine piloted by a Victorian-looking gentleman. Recently, the pics were found and displayed by a steampunk-Lego oriented site called "The Rusty Clank". I was pleasantly suprised and happy to see that something I had created was "post-worthy" by somebody else on their own space. So, here's my steamwalker on Rusty Clank. (Yeah, it's only a sentence or two, but it still got noticed!)

The Truth Fish feeds again....

Imagine what hilarity/spasming/sorrow ensued within my feeble mind when I stumbled across a blog post pointing me towards this mockery of sane thinking. Well, within a short while, I was able to merrily go about my business knowing I had restored some modicum of rational thought in my life through my creation of this:







I bet this will look great on my bumper, too.
I also bet that some of you nifty FSM folk could whip up a mean decal, too.
Let me see it if you do.

Joseph DuRocher is a Hero

I believe the following to be an open letter, of public domain, and fit for public reprint. Whether or not this is true, please view the original page.

President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

As a young man I was honored to serve our nation as a commissioned officer and helicopter pilot in the U. S. Navy. Before me in WWII, my father defended the country spending two years in the Pacific aboard the U.S.S. Hornet (CV-14). We were patriots sworn “to protect and defend”. Today I conclude that you have dishonored our service and the Constitution and principles of our oath. My dad was buried with full military honors so I cannot act for him. But for myself, I return enclosed the symbols of my years of service: the shoulder boards of my rank and my Naval Aviator'’s wings.

Until your administration, I believed it was inconceivable that the United States would ever initiate an aggressive and preemptive war against a country that posed no threat to us. Until your administration, I thought it was impossible for our nation to take hundreds of persons into custody without provable charges of any kind, and to "disappear" them into holes like Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram. Until your administration, in my wildest legal fantasy I could not imagine a U.S. Attorney General seeking to justify torture or a President first stating his intent to veto an anti-torture law, and then adding a "signing statement" that he intends to ignore such law as he sees fit. I do not want these things done in my name.

As a citizen, a patriot, a parent and grandparent, a lawyer and law teacher I am left with such a feeling of loss and helplessness. I think of myself as a good American and I ask myself what can I do when I see the face of evil? Illegal and immoral war, torture and confinement for life without trial have never been part of our Constitutional tradition. But my vote has become meaningless because I live in a safe district drawn by your political party. My congressman is unresponsive to my concerns because his time is filled with lobbyists'’ largess. Protests are limited to your "free speech zones"”, out of sight of the parade. Even speaking openly is to risk being labeled un-American, pro-terrorist or anti-troops. And I am a disciplined pacifist, so any violent act is out of the question.

Nevertheless, to remain silent is to let you think I approve or support your actions. I do not. So, I am saddened to give up my wings and bars. They were hard won and my parents and wife were as proud as I was when I earned them over forty years ago. But I hate the torture and death you have caused more than I value their symbolism. Giving them up makes me cry for my beloved country.

Joseph W. DuRocher

I took a moment to respond to Mr. DuRocher. My response is free to be posted elsewhere under the conditions that it be done so only in conjuction with Mr. DuRocher's letter and only in its entirety. My requests are made in the quest to prevent malicious intent through intentional misquotation and juxtaposition.

Dear Joseph W. DuRocher,

My name is Adam Myers and I will be 28 this December. I have had nowhere near the experiences in life as you have had, but your words resonate within me. I serve as a youth minister for a United Methodist church outside of Jacksonville, FL. There are two military facilities nearby, Mayport Naval Station and Naval Air Station: Jacksonville. This is also a largely Republican-dominant and Evangelical-dominant (with much crossover) region. As a person who loves God and as many other human beings as I humanly can, I can't express how frustrated I have become during these last six years. This, too, is a very safe area for Republicans. I am regularly ribbed (many times good-natured, many times not) as to my political and social beliefs, that I am a "liberal who will grow up someday". I often campaign civilly and nonviolently for the protections you both mention and served for, while many people exclaim how un-American, misguided, and disrespectful I am for opposing the war or our president in war-time. I have been told from within my own congregation that God blesses the US to go to war because we are the "peacemakers" as mentioned in the beatitudes. I've had recent conversations where people explain that they're not worried about wire-tapping, the Patriot Act, or other measures because they're not doing anything wrong. People have said to me that it is better to torture others who may have information we need because it would be worse if we didn't and another 9/11 or worse were to occur (are they trying to convince me or themselves?). I, too, support and engage in nonviolent action yet wonder how effective can it be when relegated to nonsensical "free speech zones", is not the US a free speech zone?

Writing to you is part cathartic, part grasping for the solution you, too, seem to be grasping for. I have nothing to send the president as you have, but I should send a letter none-the-less. Thank you for your inspiration, its worth for me today is invaluable.

With warm regards,
Adam Myers

Why the Public is Fearful of Evolution

Editorandpublisher.com is reporting a new Gallup Poll study stating that a whopping 54% of Americans believe God created human beings wholesale, as we are in present form.

What, exactly, is it that so many people find offensive regarding the wonder, majesty, and mystery of evolution? I believe it has less to do with the idea of evolution itself and more to do with the minority of religious fundamentalists espousing a fear of science. These preachers framed the debate long ago by referring to early life as "pond scum". It was, and continues to be, an emotional appeal based on semantics rather than either faith or science. Who wants to believe that they, a mighty human being, were ever related to algae or bacteria? Additionally, they continued to push the "Adam and Eve as factual history" line, which is impossible to support except by referring back to the story itself, which makes no claim to be history, and some conversational connection later on by something Jesus said, though that link between Jesus' comment and the historicity of Adam and Eve is tenuous at best.

Evolution is an incredible phenomenon supported by mountains of evidence, observation, and research. Yet people call for proof and then ignore the supplied material. There is an infinitely smaller amount of evidence for support of Creationism (or ID/Intelligent Design), and yet people will cling to it out of fear and lack of knowledge. Evolution says, "Here is a tremendous amount of information pointing towards evolution being the biological means in which we are what we are today". Creationism (ID) says, "There are some gaps in the theory of evolution and we think the authors of the book of Genesis had a good theory, so it must be that we are here by the creation of God". The trouble is that Creationism/ID continually falls back to being a "God of the gaps" theory where, if an event were to be unexplained, it must be that God did it. And yet the evidence for evolution continues to pour in, while the scant scientific support for Creationism continues to shift as it's picked apart.

I believe Creationism gets a larger podium than it deserves for several reasons. Firstly, it's what people want to hear. Human beings want to hear that we are special, that there is no way we could be related to other animals, much less algae and bacteria. For some, it's probably gross or unsettling, for some it's a matter of vain pride, and for some it would mean a fundamental shift in our actions towards either animals or other human beings. For example, it may mean that we should either rethink or use of beef or ponder why we're not hunting people in overpopulated areas. If we're all related biologically, why not treat all biological organisms the same? Except this falls apart for a very simple reason: we decide what type of world we will be accepting of and then act accordingly. Currently, I fear that (even with billions of people of varying faiths that should believe otherwise) the type of world we accept has fallen increasingly out of line with what each of the world's major belief systems says is acceptable. Secondly, Creationism is being touted by religious fundamentalist leaders who have large audiences and by high US government leaders who say it should be taught in schools. This allows the message to be repeated over and over and over again. An erroneous message, repeated often enough, by enough people in positions of authority, will eventually be clung to by many, if not most, people. There are many examples of such, the most famous of which I will refrain from mentioning for fear of invoking some form of Godwin's Law. I believe the majority of people who profess a belief in Creationism do so not out of an well-informed decision, but out of either an instilled fear of hell/God's wrath as if belief in evolution were somehow contrary to belief in God or out of a lack of knowledge on the support behind both Creationism and evolution. Many people I have spoken to who identify themselves as Creatonists/ID-ers say that evolution, "seems far-fetched" or, "is to scientific to understand", though this is merely personal anecdote. Thirdly, I believe that the scientific community has estranged itself from the general public in the same way that organized Christianity has estranged itself from the general public. Polls repeatedly show the vast majority of Americans claim to attend church while only a minority actually do so on a regular basis and that while a majority of people believe in God, a majority of people also have a distrust of "organized religion". In the same way, people generally benefit from science and scientific advancement every moment of their lives, and yet there appears to be a healthy dose of skepticism towards science, scientists, and scientific study. General comments include things such as, "Scientists are arrogant or out of touch" or "scientists don't speak in a way I can easily understand". Either of these may be true, and yet neither of these actually negates what it is the scientific community is trying to convey. Unfortunately, most listeners will turn away and make decisions based on information obtained outside of scientific study and credible peer review.

As a person who identifies himself as a Christian, and as a person who finds evolution the most compelling and credible explanation for our biological reason for existence,I feel trapped between two worlds: one community which rejects my beliefs which are based on reason, study, experience, and discussion, and another community which does exactly the same.