No... No Way!

Apparently some countries want to negotiate a "cyber peace treaty" that would effectively prevent people from posting internet content that criticizes their government.

Using the term "mass psychologic [sic] brainwashing," the agreement said that the dissemination of information "harmful to the spiritual, moral and cultural spheres of other states" should be considered a "security threat."

Sounds like tyrants want to make it illegal for anyone in another country to point out their tyrannical policies. Technically such a treaty would only bind the government itself, but I suspect the countries pushing this "treaty" (including Russia, China, India, and Brazil) are just trying to get a foot in the door for suppressing all internet criticism.

I do hope our representatives have sense enough to know that our Constitution forbids signing or ratifying such a treaty.

Something that isn't Coq au Vin

I'm in the process of cooking a dish that isn't Coq au Vin, but should vaguely resemble it. I've got chicken breasts cooking in the oven, and I'll be slicing them up. In a small pot I have two cups of red wine (box-o-cabernet), a medium sauteed onion (very coarse chop), some honey, black pepper, and some prepared portbello mushrooms and roasted peppers (Delallo brand from the European Market & Deli, to be specific).

We shall see if this is good to eat...

(time passes)

Not bad at all. Definitely not Coq au Vin, but still pretty good in its own right.

Trust the Corps

I just find this amusing.

In 2012...

...nothing happens.

I love this one.

Crop Circle

See also the significance of the symbol.

Anomalies

And this is why I think "Ghost Hunters" is bad comedy.

A Comment on The New Communism

Sunsara Taylor was scheduled to give a talk to a Humanist association, and her photographer got arrested for taking pictures during a police arrest. That’s a particularly idiotic thing to happen, and I do think the charges should be dropped (although he has apparently been convicted at this point, appeal pending), but that’s not what I’m on about today. In a comment on the arrest, she had the following to say:

“The themes of my talk, which drew on the theoretical framework developed by Bob Avakian in his book, AWAY WITH ALL GODS! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World, examined the basis for a morality that is rooted neither in the brutality and ignorance of Biblical times nor the narrow-minded individualism and relativism of modern U.S. capitalism. I posed the need for a morality that both reflects and serves the struggle to bring into being a world free of all forms of exploitation and oppression, a communist world, a world where everyone contributes whatever they can to society and gets back what they need to live a life worthy of human beings.”

How very Star Trek of her. Communism seems to be undergoing some kind of resurgence in popularity among the sort of people who don’t remember what life was like for people in the Soviet Union and its satellite states during the late 20th Century. Somehow, these people missed, forgot, or never learned about the dismal failure of Communism.

You can find the kind of altruism needed to operate a successful commune in a fairly small group of hand-picked people, but when you try to implement Communism on a national scale, it falls apart, and you end up with bread lines, rampant corruption, and people who are willing to risk death to escape from their own country. Communist nations have historically used walls, barbed-wire fences, minefields, and military force to keep their citizens from leaving.

In theory, you could have a government run by altruistic officials and supported by an altruistic population, but there simply aren’t enough altruistic people in reality for that to work. There are some, but not nearly enough. So, maybe you could give power to altruistic officials and have them enforce altruistic behavior from the rest of the population. That kind of power is dangerous, though, if it ever ends up in the hands of the corrupt. Again, see the Soviet Union for an example of what happens in reality when you concentrate power in the hands of a few idealists, no matter how pure their intentions were in the beginning.

Capitalism may not be the kindest and gentlest economic system in the world, but it has proven to be effective, and it allows people with talent to excel and become successful. Around the world, as societies have changed from managed communist economies to free markets, standards of living have improved. I’m not some crazy anarcho-capitalist who thinks the magical market will do everything right, but Capitalism is easily a better system than Communism.

King Defender

This looks like too much fun.

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Yet another spam letter

Here's hoping that all my friends who are actually at Dragon*Con are having a great time.

Terrible Movies

see more Lol Celebs

But, strangely enough, I watch a lot of bad movies, and I love them anyway.

Not sober, of course.

Food Porn: Assorted Dinners

First up, a little oyster boil that I shared with Nena last week. Witness the aftermath!



The salad is fresh tomatos, fresh basil, and fresh mozzarella with some olive oil, spices, and balsamic vinegar. The oysters are steamed in butter, sauteed onions, and Pinot Grigio.

(Yes, I use a screwdriver to open oysters. It's a multi-tasker.)



In another meal, we have a beef kielbasa from the European Market and Deli (in Mt. Juliet, TN) that is very tasty with some onions and peppers.






And finally, just for myself, Brussels sprouts sauteed with bacon, because bacon can make just about anything delicious.

Blogiversary

I passed 100,000 visits this week!

(That is all.)

The Bleak World of Ray Comfort

Ray came up with a particularly depressing post a little while back.

There are some people who mistakenly think that it is wrong for anyone to respond to the gospel, simply for the reward of Heaven. Their belief is that we should do what's right just because it's right, not because of fear of punishment or promise of reward.

Ray’s opening statement is false. The people he’s talking about say that it’s morally superior to do right just because it’s right instead of doing right just to receive a reward or to avoid a punishment. Of course, restating what his critics said into what he thinks they said is pretty typical for Ray.

However, such idealism is unrealistic. We are sinners with desperately wicked hearts, and we are incapable of such noble motives. [emphasis mine]

However, God has "wired" us to respond to rewards and punishments. From the moment we are born, we have the ability to respond positively to a smile and negatively to a frown. We respond positively to incentives. We work towards a wage, run to win the medal, and climb to reach the highest peak. Again, it's our nature to be motivated by these things.

In one of the places I’ve worked, the chief of security cited a statistic that one person out of three will steal if he thinks he can get away with it. Ray apparently thinks that statistic is too low, and it should be three out of three.

In Ray’s world, no one ever does anything for anyone else without some sort of carrot or stick to motivate them. I’m wondering what I get when I let a car make a turn into my lane on the highway, knowing that I will probably never see that person again, won’t get a reward for letting them in, and won’t receive any sort of punishment if I drive by and leave them to wait. What benefit did I get when I picked up a twenty dollar bill blowing by at a gas station on a windy day, saw who had dropped it, and gave it back when I could have just driven away with no one the wiser?

That's why we have court systems that threaten punishment to lawbreakers. If we violate traffic rules we are punished by a ticket or even imprisonment.

The selfish and antisocial will always be with us, but that doesn’t mean that everyone acts solely out of self-interest all the time.

It is therefore evident that it is legitimate for any sane person to respond negatively to the threat of Hell and positively to God's free gift of eternal life.

As noted, Ray completely missed the point. While it is legitimate for a sane person to modify his or her behavior to avoid punishment or to gain a reward, it is also legitimate -- and more moral -- for someone to behave in a moral manner just because it’s the right thing to do, without expecting some kind of reward for doing it or punishment for not doing it.

Trenchmore

There was, of course, a ball at the Royal University of Meridies. I didn't take video, but Fiona's husband did.



Some of the dancers said I was understating things when I said that Trenchmore is a moderately aerobic dance. The music is a live band, by the way; it's nice to see that becoming a more regular feature.

Preventing the Fall of Man

This was too funny not to share.

Food Porn: Tuscan Salad

I discovered this little jewel at a fund raiser lunch at the Second Harvest Food Bank.

My version has:

• Fresh cucumber
• Fresh tomatos
• Multi-grain "baton" bread
• Vegetable oil (would have used olive oil, but discovered to late that I was out)
• Balsamic vinegar
• Salt, pepper, basil, and oregano

Improvised Minestrone

Sorry, no pictures, but it was easy to make. I’ll try to remember the camera next time.

• One quart of beef broth
• One can of diced tomatoes with Italian seasonings
• One can of seasoned black beans (drained)
• One cup of dry lentils
• About half a box of whole wheat pasta (shells)
• Half a teaspoon of fish sauce

Bring all that to a boil in a suitable pot or sauce pan, then turn the heat to low and leave to simmer covered for about 40 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Swelter

Since my P90X partner is out of town this weekend, I went for a run this morning. That's rough in 90-degree heat, but I suppose when I end up running a marathon, there won't be any way to control the temperature.

Paks went on the run with me, and she thought it was hot, too. Of course, when we stopped to turn around, I rubbed her fur a bit and pulled out about a sheep's worth of wool. She's a shedding machine.

Going to try to rack some wine tonight.

The Wrong Message

I'm one of the people who find Chick tracts to be amusing. The over-the-top fundamentalism is hard to take seriously, but there are apparently people who think these things are good proselytizing tools.

"Charlie's Ants" is a particularly amusing one to me. It's targeted at children, which might explain how it hilariously sends messages that I don't think the author ever intended.

The basic idea in this tract is to use a child's concern for the fate of an anthill as an analogy for God's love for humanity, but Chick does it so badly that he manages to describe God as some kind of incompetent, petulant child. The "I'm trying to SAVE you!" frame is the perfect example. Is Chick really trying to say natural disasters like the Nashville flood, hurricane Katrina, and the earthquake in Haiti were all the consequences of God throwing a temper tantrum because he couldn't communicate effectively?

And I'm sure that if I asked Jack Chick if there were anything God couldn't do, he would be quick to say that "with God, all things are possible." Yet he's quick to put limits on God when he needs to explain some of God's behavior that doesn't easily fit into his image of God's perfect love.

My religious views aren't mainstream, but I can't see how even a conservative Christian would be comfortable with the way Jack Chick talks about things that God "cannot" do and how the way God chose to act in the New Testament is the "only" way that he could have acted. It strikes me as terribly presumptuous for Jack to place limits on God so casually. He doesn't say that God "won't" allow sin into Heaven, he says that God "can't" allow sin into Heaven, and speaking as someone who makes a living choosing the right words to describe things, there's a huge difference between "can't" and "won't".

Fundamentalists are usually quick to argue that there are no contradictions in the Bible. Maybe if they could see the contradictions in themselves, they'd be more able to understand the problems that many of us have with Biblical literalism.

"Yeti" on Syfy

I watched Yeti: Curse of the Snow Demon on Syfy on Friday night. I did a blow-by-blow review on my Facebook profile, but I thought I'd share a copy here, as well. Click through to read it.

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