The Coming Attrition

If you’re part of one of those Googleplex Gigachurches. You know, stadium seating, myriad people and all that. Look for a marked rise in small group attendance while seats in the auditorium stay the same or have less people occupying them. This will also accompany apologetic sermons on behalf of King Saul.

Apologies

The Road to Control

Okay today the Supreme Court backed up the 2nd amendment. This struck down the move to prohibit gun ownership in DC. Do not think that we haven’t moved closer to gun control nationwide. The fact that it was challenged at all is the evidence. This is the Bill of Rights that is being challenged in these cases. It’s not over. Not yet. The conveyer system moved a notch or two and then stopped. That’s all. Anytime we’re questioning the constitutionality of the Constitution, we’re in trouble.

Tera-Thumb

A friend at work and I thunk up the idea for this. We’ve barely gotten 1TB 3.5″ hard drives on the market. So don’t y’all embarrass yourselves by going to Best Buy, Circuit City or Fry’s, ’cause it ain’t there.

Eyes

It’s been said that the eye is the window to the soul.

That is one time when we should not say, “I don’t do windows.”

A Fallacious Appeal

In philosophy, a fallacious appeal to popularity is usually the charge when someone names a specific number of people and says that is why we should accept whatever they’re saying…”300,000,000 people can’t be wrong.” The reason it is called a fallacy is that whatever number is presented is not sufficient reason for accepting the premise. The flipside of this is what I call a Fallacious Appeal to the Herd. This is not something you are going to read in any text book on logic. It may go by an “appeal to common knowledge.” It is the “everyone knows x” fallacy. People toss about these kinds of fallacies for a variety of reasons, most of which have to do with some form of manipulation. Sometimes it’s to cover ignorance, “everybody knows that rule…” While they may know they’re supposed to do whatever it is, the truth is that they haven’t been doing it and want to cut short the questioning. Other times people appeal to the herd in order to cloud the truth. A while back Fmr. Sec. of State Colin Powell said in an interview, “…well everyone knows that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.” The reason it is a fallacy is that if we can find one case where it does not apply, like anyone who has never been to Iraq or seen WMDs in Iraq, then the argument fails. Powell’s use of it was part of a larger manipulation which works far too often. If one repeats absurdities often enough, people will believe them.

Farewell, George

George Carlin died yesterday, 22 June, 2008. He was 71. He will be missed.

What?

What’s up with you people? Are you pissed? Are you scared? Are you happy? Are you sick to your stomachs? Are you thinking as long as it doesn’t reach me? Are you thinking G-d won’t let it happen? Are you thinking it’s going to pass over you? Are you expecting rapture? Are you wrapping yourself in your security blankie? Are you wrapping yourself up in the flag? Are you tearing out bible pages and covering yourself in that? What?

War on the Mind

Back in 1991 I was in a men’s group meeting at a church I was attending when I lived in Los Angeles. One of the guys there was talking about his success dealing with his problems related to sex and abstinence. He said, “…what I’ve started to do lately is fight lust, and that’s seemed to work the best…”

Now we have government officials telling us we’re fighting “terror.” Every now and then they’ll say terrorism and every now and then they’ll say terrorists but mostly what we hear is that we’re engaged in a war on terror. Terror and lust are both states of mind. These are personal conditions that the individual has to deal with. By saying we’re fighting a war on terror they might as well be saying we’re fighting a war on lust because either way what they’re really saying is that we’re at war with the mind.

When war is declared on the mind, the only winner is insanity.

H/T: Michael Tsarion

Java

Evidently Java does not overwrite the previous version. I have four versions on my laptop and they are all the same size. So I am clearing them off and installing a single copy. iPod software used to do that. I don’t know if it does now because I am running the OS Crack and I don’t upgrade.